Facts are the enemy of both Left and Right in our America

Larry Kummer, Editor

12 years ago

Summary: Another in a long series of studies illustrating America’s inability to process information, and our collapse into tribes incapable (or unwilling) to communicate with one another. Today we look at reactions to posts on the FM website. These attacks from both Left and Right test its accuracy and fairness. You judge the result.

Here’s a hors d’oeuvre. Yes, they’re both talking about me:

“The North Pole is a frickin’ LAKE, you ass. You are either being paid well for these posts, or you are off your meds. I swear, these Baghdad Bobs are going to be crowing about the earth cooling right up until their proteins start congealing from the heat.” {by Lidia; link}

“Perhaps a step back on your global warming doom nonsense is in order as well.” {by climate change skeptic Jeff Condon, aka Jeff Id, of The Air Vent; link}

Journalism
Examples of attacks by the alarmists
Examples of attacks by the skeptics
Conclusions
For More Information

(1) Journalism

Most of what we do at the FM website is journalism, citing data and experts in ways that attempt to illuminate trends in America and the world. In a society become madly tribal, how you tell if the reporting is accurate and fair? Here are some answers to these questions for the FM website.

Accuracy

Hindsight — applying the test of time to old posts — provides the acid test of accuracy. For the FM website posts you can see the pages on the top menu bar recording past successes and mistakes (Smackdowns) going back to 2003. I believe you’ll find it an impressive record.

Fairness

Subjective evaluation of balance and fairness is more difficult. Fortunately others do this for us. For examples see Politics of the FM site: radical leftist reformer or right-wing iconoclast? I’m the former to the latter, and the latter to the former.

For a more recent example see the post 184 posts about climate change. Straight journalism: excerpts from reports of the IPCC, the major climate agencies, and the peer-reviewed literature (plus analysis of the politics, which is mostly ignored). I thought these would be useful and uncontroversial. As I should have known, these have received attacks from both sides — with few substantive rebuttals. It’s an indicator of fairness and balance, perhaps the best available in mad 21st C America.

We can draw wider inferences from this data, and the similar results on thousands of other websites. In America truth is tribal. Wearing blinders is mandatory. Heterodox thought is condemned. Evidence follows (mostly from other websites; the comments to the posts themselves sizzle with outrage).

(2) Examples of attacks by the alarmists

(a) Comment by Robert Marston Fanney (fantasy writer; bio here), at his blog RobertScribbler: “Scribbling for economic, social, and environmental justice”, 27 January 2014. In reply to a comment citing my post about the pause and a post contrasting hysterical statements about climate doom with an exchange of views between two climate scientists.

“This is classic poor representation of the science from a blog that appears to have been wrapped up in right-wing misinformation, at least in this case.”

He follow with a series of simple factual errors. Details here.

(b) From a comment thread at Naked Capitalism, in a post where Yves Smith cites two of my posts.

“The fact that he’s a climate denialist also doesn’t do much for his case.” {By Joe; link}

Joe’s reasons were frivolous (my posts steadfastly defend the IPCC consensus), but steadfastly held. Next, a fun attempt at rebuttal:

“The North Pole is a frickin’ LAKE, you ass. You are either being paid well for these posts, or you are off your meds. I swear, these Baghdad Bobs are going to be crowing about the earth cooling right up until their proteins start congealing from the heat.” {by Lidia; link}

The story about a lake at the North Pole was denied as bogus by the science group it was attributed to. The bit about global cooling is tribalism. I’m called a denier, therefore I must believe in global cooling. QED! In fact I’ve written 4 posts debunking the subject. No admission of error from Lidia, of course.

(c) Roger Pielke Jr (Prof Environmental Studies, U CO-Boulder) published “Disasters Cost More Than Ever — But Not Because of Climate Change” at 538, provoking a two-minute hate by the Left. I had the temerity to cite the peer-reviewed literature supporting his view (and the lack of offsetting articles in rebuttal). See the responses; feel the hate flow.

Brad Delong (Prof Economics, Berkeley) posted in the comments.
“Thursday Idiocy: Fabius Micromus” posted at Loyal to the Group of Seventeen, 27 March 2014 — posts the comment thread with DeLong. He considers it “idiocy”, but doesn’t say why.
Brad DeLong applauds. Again, he doesn’t explain. True believers don’t ask questions during the Two Minute Hate.
“The Launch of fivethirtyeight.com and Climate Change Disaster Weblogging: (Trying to Be) The Honest Broker for the Week of March 29, 2014“. By “honest broker” he means misrepresenting what I said, and substituting his judgement for the peer-reviewed literature. Plus smears.

(d) In my post about Pielke Jr I cited “In the Eye of the Storm“ by James Hanley (Assoc Prof of Political Science, Adrian College). His reply is pure tribalism:

“Oh, lord, why did you have to reference me. I’m not on your side.”

This is especially odd as my post fully agreed with his. Does he know “what side” I’m on? Does he disagree with the conclusions of the IPCC and major climate agencies?

(3) Examples of attacks by the climate skeptics

(a) Daft, but amusing: Steve Goodard’s response to my comment describing the mechanics of Google News.

(b) This is my favorite of all those listed here, nicely illustrating several of the mad aspects of today’s America. It’s from Jeff Condon (nom de plume “Jeff Id”) at his website, The Air Vent (mentioned favorably in 3 previous posts). He’s said to be an aeronautical engineer. He posted this graph, citing Anthony Watts as the source (you have love the opening text):

Anthony Watts made a rather extraordinary announcement on his blog WUWT (AKA the center of the internet). It has the potential to initiate a necessary change to climate science at its foundation, because if he is correct in his assertion, measured warming trends in the US and ostensibly globally have been overstated. I see his claims as revolutionary, which is a pretty strong word, because they have the potential to change much of our understanding about global warming science. To make my case, lets start first with what climate science doesn’t disagree with:

Adjustments to trends:

An odd start to his post, with this obviously wrong graph (ditto for the text as well, but that’s another subject). Nick Stokes posted this comment:

That’s an official looking USHCN graph that you have posted. But it’s not from the link that you cite. It’s actually prepared by Steven Goddard. At the risk of being a sceptic abuser, I’ll remark that he is not a reliable authority. He just took a total average of all stations. And it seems the glitch in 2014 resulted from the fact that some stations did not have adjusted values posted. It’s the difference of two different station sets. Goodness knows what he did with the rest. …

This thread eventually ran to a more accurate graph. I posted a comment on a smaller point:

I second Nick’s comment. This is a common problem on skeptics’ websites, and bad for their credibility: unsourced tables and (especially) graphics. Somebody, often of dubious reliability (e.g., Goddard) prepares a powerful graphic — and it goes viral, often without citing the source (which would ruin the play).

It’s somewhat similar to the incidence of fake quotes so often found on conservative’s websites. This is not often found in the work of climate scientists, who tend to be careful about selecting and citing sources.

You can follow the thread, uninteresting except as a demonstration of raw tribalism. I posted a brief mention of this yesterday. Jeff Condon posted in reply, with two notes of special interest. First my comment — asking for skeptics’ websites to more carefully cite sources for tables and graphics — was a “nonsense critique“. Second, and more significant:

“Perhaps a step back on your global warming doom nonsense is in order as well.”

In form this is the same as Lidia’s statement (above)., a nice demonstration that after 2 decades of bickering warmists and skeptics have come to resemble each other in their tribalism and thinking.

I second Nick’s mention of lack of proper citation in a post by Anthony Watts.
Therefore I must believe in “global warming doom.”
QED.

This is also false (i.e., tribalism makes people stupid). I’ve written 14 posts condemning doomsterism, and dozens critiquing climate doomsterism.

(4) Conclusions

There is no reality-based community in America today. So long as this remains so, reform is just a dream.

Do you have a Left eye and a Right eye? If so, beware. Both sides seek to pluck out your offending eye. Our ruling elites prefer us divided, and blind.