Palin's War of Words With 'Washington Post' Columnist

By: Joe Strupp Sarah Palin's controversial Op-Ed in The Washington Post last week about climate change has sparked a war of words between her and Post columnist Eugene Robinson.

The back-and-forth started Nov. 9 when the Post published an Op-Ed by the former Republican vice presidential nominee that took on the issue of climate research and claimed some climate experts out of Britain had provided false information to extol their view that global warming is a real problem.

"With the publication of damaging e-mails from a climate research center in Britain, the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point," Palin wrote, later adding, "The e-mails reveal that leading climate 'experts' deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to 'hide the decline' in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals. What's more, the documents show that there was no real consensus even within the CRU crowd. Some scientists had strong doubts about the accuracy of estimates of temperatures from centuries ago, estimates used to back claims that more recent temperatures are rising at an alarming rate."

She contended that the e-mail "scandal" should have raised concerns over climate issues being discussed at the Copenhagen conference and urged President Barack Obama not to attend.

Robinson responded in his regular column space on Dec. 15, with a piece that noted Palin's column didn't acknowledge "the contrast between what she says about climate change now and what she said -- and did -- about it as governor of our most at-risk state. When she was in office, Palin treated the issue as serious, complex and worthy of urgent attention. Now that she's the iconic leader of a populist movement that reacts with anger at the slightest whiff of pointy-headed, 'one world' intellectualism, she writes as if the idea of seeking ways to mitigate climate change is a crock."

Palin fired back Thursday with a letter to the editor that claimed she did not deny climate change, stating: "As governor of Alaska, I sought common-sense solutions that took real-world costs and benefits into account. That's what I'm looking for now. But that's not what's on the table in Washington or in Copenhagen."