How To Tell a Climate Science Denier

Who would believe how often professional fact-checkers fail spot-checks of their accuracy?

On Feb. 9, 2021, PolitiFact's Daniel Funke had his byline appear on a fact check that featured this:

The Epoch Times attributed the tally to John Droz Jr., who it described as a "physicist and environmental advocate in Morehead City, N.C." Droz is a political activist who has denied the science of climate change and advocated against legislation aimed at mitigating sea-level rise.

Funke's fact check looked at a chart Droz created and the Epoch Times used as the foundation for a story about the outcomes of court cases addressing the 2020 presidential election. Funke's implicit ad hominem and genetic fallacies aside, we wondered if Droz was the climate change science denier Funke claims.

Is That True?

PolitiFact says it picks which claim to check partly by simply running across claims that cause one to wonder "Is that true?" That's the method we used for this spot check.

 

We would expect a professional journalist using URL hotlinks in the body of a story to use them to properly back up the claims in the story. So where "has" and "denied" feature those hotlinks in the context of claiming Droz denies climate change science, we expect at least one of them to offer solid evidence of Droz denying climate change science.

WRAL

The first hyperlink led to the news site WRAL.com dated June 6, 2012 (archived Feb. 10, 2021). The article claims Droz denies climate change science. It does not quote Droz to that effect (bold emphasis added) and offers no relevant examples to illustrate its claim:

On the front lines of the debate is NC-20's science consultant John Droz, a retired realtor and climate change denier who's become something of a cause celebre in conservative circles. 

Promoted by the conservative John Locke Foundation, Droz has given presentations on energy and climate change around the state. He's also a fellow of the conservative American Tradition Institute, along with former Locke Carolina Journal editor Paul Chesser.

Is it proof enough for Funke and PolitiFact that an article hosted at WRAL.com called Droz a climate change denier? Did Funke even notice the update to the article, dated the day after it published (June 7, 2012)?

Update: In response to this post, Mr. Droz contacted us to seek a retraction. He says he is not a climate change denier, and says he has "never claimed to be a climate expert."

WRAL offered no rationale for refusing Droz the requested retraction.

Funke used a news report claiming, without evidence, that Droz was a climate change denier and with an addendum that featured Droz denying he is a climate science denier.

We consider that extraordinarily weak evidence Droz counts as a climate change science denier.

Scientific American

Funke's second hyperlink led to Scientific American, a magazine and website long considered a reputable source.

The title of the Sept. 30, 2013 article said Droz "has notched a remarkable record fighting sea-rise science, coastal development limits and renewable energy plans."

And the evidence of climate science denial?

The strongest evidence in the piece appears to consist of an expert's opinion that Droz's work criticizing scientists may lead to lower trust in scientists who promote various climate change ideas. This:

The efforts of Droz – and those who present similar arguments in a similar fashion, notably Fox News and other conservative media – erode the public trust in scientists, said Dana Nuccitelli, an environmental scientist at a consulting firm in California and an advocate for responsible energy policies.

An outsized voice
It also discredits the notion of global warming, added Nucitelli, who recently co-authored a study looking at the scientific consensus on climate change.

Was Nucitelli turned into a newt or what?

Funke's evidence that Droz counts as a denier of climate change science comes across about as strong as the evidence of witchery from the witch trial in the classic film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." 

That's minus the accused turning out to weigh the same as a duck, of course.

Maybe there's good evidence Droz counts as a climate change science denier. If there is, Funke and PolitiFact should mention the evidence in the fact check.

Otherwise, take out the line accusing Droz of denying climate change science.

Fact Check not at PolitiFact Illinois

One of the characteristics of PolitiFact that drags it below its competitors is its penchant for not bothering to fact check what it claims to fact check.

Our example this time comes from PolitiFact Illinois:

From the above, we judge that "Most climate scientists agree" that we have less than a decade to avert a worst case climate change scenario counts as the central claim in need of fact-checking. PolitiFact hints at the confusion it sows in its article by paraphrasing the issue as "Does science say time is running out to stop climate disaster?"

The fact is that time could be running out to stop climate disaster while at the same time (Democrat) Sean Casten's claim could count as entirely false. Casten made a claim about what a majority of scientist believe about a short window of opportunity to avoid a worst-case scenario. And speaking of avoidance, PolitiFact Illinois avoided the meat of Casten's claim in favor of fact-checking its watered-down summary of Casten's claim.

The Proof that Proves Nothing

The key evidence offered in support of Casten was a 2018 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The problem? The report offers no clear evidence showing a majority of climate scientists agree on anything at all, up to and including what Casten claims they believe. In fact, the report only mentions "scientist" or "scientists" once (in the Acknowledgments section):

A special thanks goes to the Chapter Scientists of this Report ...

A fact checker cannot accept that report as evidence of what a majority of scientists believe without strong justification. That justification does not occur in the so-called fact check. PolitiFact Illinois apparently checks the facts using the assumption that the IPCC report would not claim something if a majority of climate scientists did not believe it.

That's not fact-checking.

And More Proof of Nothing

Making this fact-checking farce even more sublime, PolitiFact Illinois correctly found the report does not establish any kind of hard deadline for bending the curve on carbon emissions (bold emphasis added):

Th(e) report said nations must take "unprecedented" actions to reduce emissions, which will need to be on a significantly different trajectory by 2030 in order to avoid more severe impacts from increased warming. However, it did not identify the hard deadline Casten and others have suggested. In part, that’s because serious effects from climate change have already begun.

So PolitiFact did not bother to find out whether a majority of scientists affirm the claim about "less than a decade" (burden of proof, anyone?) and moreover found the "less than a decade" claim was essentially false. We can toss PolitiFact's line about serious effects from climate change already occurring because Casten was talking about a "worst-case scenario."

PolitiFact Illinois rated Casten's claim "Mostly True."

Does that make sense?

Is it any wonder that Independents (nearly half) and Republicans (more than half) think fact checkers favor one side?


Afters

Also worth noting: Where does that "'worst-case scenario'" phrase come from? Does Casten put it inside quotation marks because he is quoting a source? Or is it a scare quote?

We confirmed, at least, that the phrase does not occur in the IPCC report that supposed served as Casten's source.

We will not try to explain PolitiFact Illinois' lack of curiosity on this point.

Let PolitiFact Illinois do that.


Update Sept. 4, 2019: We originally neglected to link to the flawed PolitiFact Illinois "fact check." This update remedies that problem.

The unquotable Judith Curry

Judith Curry's Twitter avatar.

A reader tipped us to the fact that climate research expert Judith Curry has posted interview questions she received from PolitiFact's John Kruzel, along with her responses to those questions.

Kruzel solicited Curry's views in the context of fact-checking a statement about carbon dioxide's role in climate change. Kruzel's fact check lists his email interview of Curry in its source list, but the fact check does not quote, paraphrase or summarize Curry's views.

In accordance with its Creative Commons licensing, we present Curry's account of her PolitiFact interview, following the format she used at the blog she hosts, Climate Etc. (we added a bracketed explanation of the IPCC acronym):

On June 20, John Kruzel, the author of the Politifact article, sent me an email:

We’re looking into Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s recent claim that the main cause of climate change is most likely “the ocean waters and this environment that we live in.” We’ve asked the Department of Energy why Perry disagrees with the IPCC  [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] that human activity is the main cause of climate change; we’ve received no response so far.

I’d be grateful if you’d consider the following questions:

Questions from Politifact to JC, and JC’s responses:

Do you consider the IPCC the world’s leading authority on climate change and why?
The IPCC is driven by the interests of policy makers, and the IPCC’s conclusions represent a negotiated consensus.  I don’t regard the IPCC framework to be helpful for promoting free and open inquiry and debate about the science of climate change.
 .
Do you agree with the IPCC that effects of man-made greenhouse gas emissions “are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”
It is possible that humans have been the dominant cause of the recent warming, but we don’t really know how to separate out human causes from natural variability.  The ‘extremely likely’ confidence level is wholly unjustified in my opinion.
 .
How solid is the science behind the conclusion that human activity is the main cause of climate change?
Not very solid, in my opinion.  Until we have a better understanding of long term oscillations in the ocean and indirect solar effects, we can’t draw definitive conclusions about the causes of recent warming.
 .
What is your response to Perry’s statement?
I don’t have a problem with Perry’s statement.  There is no reason for him to be set up as an arbiter of climate science.  He seems clearly committed to a clean environment and research to developing new energy technologies, which is  his job as Secretary of Energy.

JC question:  So what are we to conclude from PolitiFact’s failure to even mention or consider my responses, after explicitly asking for them?

We suggest it's safe to conclude Kruzel had his mind made up on this fact check before contacting his expert sources. Asking experts if they agree the IPCC is the leading authority on climate change qualifies as a classic leading question, and offers a strong indication that the IPCC's leading role in the story was central before Kruzel contacted Curry. The second question counts as another leading question, set up by the first leading question.

It looks like Kruzel was trying to lead the experts toward giving quotations to back what he had already decided to write.

Kruzel's third and fourth questions are fine. A serious fact check could have worked based on those questions alone, dropping the leading questions and Kruzel's/PolitiFact's confident proclamation regarding the IPCC (bold emphasis added):

The world’s leading authority on climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has concluded that human activity is "extremely likely" to be the main driver of warming since the mid 20th century.

While it’s still possible to find dissenters, scientists around the globe generally agree with this conclusion.

Kruzel might have added: "We actually found one such dissenter without even really trying!"  But since PolitiFact does not publish its email interviews (unlike one transparent fact checker we know of), there's no telling whether PolitiFact found more than one such dissenter in its small pool of expert sources.

Seriously, what is the basis in fact for calling the IPCC "the world's leading authority on climate change"? Such designations stem from popular or expert opinions, don't they? Objective reporting makes such distinctions clear. What Kruzel did was not objective reporting.



Correction June 28, 2017: Belatedly added a hyperlink to the PolitiFact fact check that cites Curry without quoting Curry

More PolitiFact climate change shenanigans, featuring PolitiFact Wisconsin

One of PolitiFact's more reliable bends to the left occurs on the issue of climate change. The arbiters of truth, for example, class Republicans as climate change deniers if they do not go on record affirming man-made climate change. So much for PolitiFact's burden of proof criterion, right?

Hypocrites.

This related example comes from PolitiFact Wisconsin, checking on a claim from Senate candidate Russ Feingold that his Republican opponent does not believe humans contribute to climate change.

PolitiFact Wisconsin's approach to the fact check resembles the incompetent methods used by other iterations of the PolitiFact family. A Zebra Fact Check critique of PolitiFact's past fact check foreshadows the problems with PolitiFact Wisconsin's fact check of Feingold:

First, interpret an unclear statement according to a more clear statement by the same source.  Second, in judging what a person thinks in the present place greater weight on more recent statements.

PolitiFact Wisconsin does not apply these commonsense principles.

PolitiFact Wisconsin's evidences, in chronological order

2010
Johnson: "I absolutely do not believe in the science of man-caused climate change. It’s not proven by any stretch of the imagination."

2014

"There are other forces that cause climate to change," Johnson told Here and Now’s Robin Young. "So climate does change and I don’t deny that man has some effect on that. It certainly has a great deal of effect on spoiling our environment in many different ways."

But Johnson softened his view as soon as the next sentence: "I’ve got a very open mind, but I don’t have the arrogance that man can really do much to affect climate."

2015
Johnson votes against a proposed amendment to a bill touching the Keystone Pipeline. The amendment would have described the sense of the Senate on the issue of anthropogenic climate change, including the ideas that humans "significantly" affect the climate and that climate change increases the severity of extreme weather events (such as hurricanes).

2015

"Man-made global warming remains unsettled science. World-renowned climate experts have raised serious objections to the theories behind these claims. I believe it is a bad idea to impose a policy that will raise taxes on every American, will balloon energy prices and will hurt our economic competiveness (sic) – especially on such uncertain predictions."

2016

"Listen, man can affect the environment; no doubt about it," he said. "The climate has always changed, it always will. … The question is, how much does man cause changes in our environment, changes in our climate, and what we could possibly even do about it?"

Assessing PolitiFact Wisconsin's evidences

Following the principles mentioned above, Johnson's clearest statements on humans having some role in climate change comes from the 2014 and 2016 quotations. In 2014, Johnson said he does not deny humans have a role in climate change. In 2016, Johnson said humans "clearly" have a role in changing the climate. Johnson's clearest statements on the subject directly contradict Feingold's claim.

Our principles also guide us toward giving a preference to more recent statements. Therefore, we consider the 2015 climate change amendment for some sign that Johnson denied a human role in climate change.

Is there a worse proof of a legislator's specific views on a topic than their willingness to vote in favor of a "sense of the Senate" amendment? Particularly when that amendment does not feature language narrowly tailored to suit the question?

Would Johnson have voted in favor of the amendment if he believed there was good evidence that undefined "climate change" causes an increase in severe weather events? Who knows? We don't. But if you're PolitiFact Wisconsin you can simply assume the answer is "no" and call it fact-checking.

PolitiFact concludes:

Johnson did not support a Senate amendment to acknowledge a man-made role in climate change and expressed skepticism each of the few times he acknowledged humans might contribute. He has acknowledged at times that humans can play a role but downplayed how significant that role might be.

For a statement that is accurate but needs additional clarification, our rating is Mostly True.

PolitiFact's conclusion consists of spin.

The Senate amendment was not simply about "a man-made role in climate change." It stipulated a significant role as well as a worsening effect on severe weather.

When Johnson said humans play a role in climate change he did not express skepticism about whether humans play a role. He expressed skepticism about the extent of that role. They're not the same thing, and skepticism about the latter does not contradict Johnson's recognition that humans play some role in affecting the climate. PolitiFact says Johnson says humans "can" play a role. But that's just more spin. Johnson did not simply say humans "can" play a role. He said humans do play a role, and he said he does not deny humans play a role.

If Johnson says humans play some role in causing climate change, that statement cannot support Feingold's claim that Johnson does not believe humans play any role in climate change.

Johnson's statement cannot reasonably justify the "Mostly True" rating with which PolitiFact Wisconsin gifted Feingold. The statements could reasonably justify "False" or "Mostly False" ratings if PolitiFact's definitions for its ratings meant something.

PolitiFact's continued inability to apply simple logic in the course of its fact checks continues to boggle our minds. At the same time, we're not surprised. This is the type of error that results when left-leaning journalists rate the truth of political statements on a subjective scale.

PolitiFingers on the scale

Did you know that PolitiFact is objective and nonpartisan?

Yes, well, it was a trick question.

Yesterday PolitiFact gave us a fantastic example of placing fingers on the scale to change the outcome of a fact check

The example comes from PolitiFact's March 1 fact check of President Barack Obama. Here's the visual:

The problem?

We just don't find it anywhere close to obvious that this:

"None of the GOP candidates have a climate change plan"

is a plausible paraphrase of this:

"There is not a single candidate in the Republican primary that thinks we should do anything about climate change."

Does PolitiFact writer Lauren Carroll make an effort to justify her paraphrase of Obama? Not from what we can tell.

Carroll's conclusion features a representative gloss:

Bush, who was in the race when Obama made his comment, and Kasich both have said they believe human-caused climate change is real and have said pursuing these alternative energy sources could mitigate the problem. But neither has outlined a specific plan.

For some Republican voters, this stance might be a plus. But it doesn’t change the veracity of Obama’s statement.

So advocating increased private-sector reliance on renewable energy sources to mitigate climate change means that Bush and Kasich think we should do nothing about climate change?

Seriously?

One can make Obama's statement somewhat true by (charitably) assuming that by "we" he means the federal government. If we make enough unfounded assumptions, we can find some truth in Obama's statement. But by the time we've made those assumptions we're not really engaged in fact-checking.

Yet that's what PolitiFact did, effectively putting its PolitiFingers on the scale. It's not logical to conclude that lacking a plan for the federal government to act means that there is no desire to address a problem.

This was yet another sham fact check from the fraudsters at PolitiFact.



Afters

Here's Ben Carson explaining that it's important to sustain the environment. After that, he condemns Obama's climate change plan for putting a high price tag on accomplishing almost nothing:




Jeff Adds: This editorial from Carroll seems like a rating searching for a quote. PolitiFact openly admits they select claims to rate partly based on what they find interesting.

In this case, it's easy to imagine Carroll wanting to highlight (in her view) the GOP's lax attitude toward the climate change issue and went fishing for a quote to use as a vehicle for her to express that view. That scenario would plausibly explain how she made the leap from Obama's explicit claim to the different (and invented) claim she rated.

This example highlights the selective nature of PolitiFact's body of work. Contrary to the myth that they're dispassionate researchers uncovering the truth of all claims, they're partisan actors promoting or ignoring narratives as they see fit.

PolitiFudging climate change consensus

PolitiFact jumped on Republican congressional hopeful Lenar Whitney's recent claim that global warming is a hoax.

We're not going to delve into whether Whitney's claim was true or false, or even whether her YouTube video promoting her beliefs was a wise election strategy.  We're simply concerned in this case with the methods PolitiFact uses to support the claim of a scientific consensus backing climate change (a.k.a. global warming).

First:

Among climate researchers most actively publishing scientific articles, at least 97 percent believe in anthropogenic climate change, found one 2009 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a scientific journal. The study examined published scientific articles and surveyed experts.

At Zebra Fact Check, I reviewed each of the evidences used to support the claim of a scientific consensus on climate change.

The study PolitiFact describes above was led by William R. L. Anderegg.  PolitiFact's description of this study is reasonably accurate, but glosses over the following concerns.  Anderegg and company deliberately narrowed the survey group down to the researchers publishing most actively.  That method allows intimidation of the editors of scientific journals to artificially establish the expertise of the survey group.  Part of the scandal discovered through the release of the East Anglia email concerned the efforts of scientists to keep journals from publishing articles by climate change skeptics.

It's manifestly obvious the study's methodology was designed to give added weight to the views of scientists who had published the most.  And that's not a good method for measuring scientific consensus in the field of study.

Second:

Another survey out of the University of Illinois found that 82 percent of earth scientists (out of more than 3,000 respondents) believe that global temperature shifts are human-caused. Among climate-specific earth scientists who responded, 97.4 percent said they believe in human-caused climate change.

In this case, PolitiFact and Lauren Carroll are simply guilty of bad reporting.  The survey PolitiFact used as its evidence, by graduate student Maggie Kendall Zimmerman and professor Peter T. Doran, concerned the answers to two questions:

1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?

In other words, 82 percent of earth scientists surveyed believe human activity is a significant contributing factor.  PolitiFact helpfully translates that into "human-caused."

Among earth scientists studying climate, 97.4 percent believe human activity is a significant contributing factor.  PolitiFact likewise translated that into believing climate change is "human-caused."

Thanks to the muddled definitions supported by the media, it's likely that most climate change skeptics believe humans are a significant cause of climate change. A skeptic may not believe humans cause most or all of climate change yet at the same time think humans contribute significantly to climate change.

It's heartwarming, if not exactly a cause of global warming, to see PolitiFact routinely engaging in behavior that, if performed by a Republican, would warrant something like a "Half True" rating (or worse) on the "Truth-O-Meter."


Clarification Aug. 9, 2014:
Added the word "following" in the midst of the first sentence of the fifth paragraph to clarify intent.

PolitiFact's compound problem

Why PolitiFact's rating of Steve Doocy was unfair

After criticizing PunditFact's failure to own up to its mistakes in post this Wednesday past, we promised an example of how PolitiFact applies its rule for compound claims inconsistently.

What is a compound claim?

 

A compound claim is a claim that asserts more than one truth.  For example:

• The car is a red Chrysler

The statement makes two assertions of truth:  The car is red, and the car is a Chrysler.

In its statement of principles, PolitiFact says it divides compound claims into segments, grades the segments separately, then rates the overall accuracy:

We sometimes rate compound statements that contain two or more factual assertions. In these cases, we rate the overall accuracy after looking at the individual pieces.

As is normal with PolitiFact, these principles are more like guidelines.  We'll look at the Doocy rating and compare it to another recent PolitiFact rating, this one looking at a statement from liberal columnist Sally Kohn.

Doocy:
"NASA scientists fudged the numbers to make 1998 the hottest year to overstate the extent of global warming."

PolitiFact rated Doocy's claim "Pants on Fire."

Kohn:
"Hobby Lobby provided this (birth control) coverage before they decided to drop it to file suit."

No, wait.  The above quotation is the one PolitiFact said it was checking.  But the actual sentence went on a bit longer (bold emphasis added):

"Hobby Lobby provided this (birth control) coverage before they decided to drop it to file suit, which was politically motivated."

PolitiFact rated Kohn's claim "Mostly True."

With the amputated ending restored, it's easy to see the parallel between the two claims.  Both Doocy and Kohn make assertions of fact, followed by judgments of motivation.  Doocy's claim arguably reports the results of the numbers-fudging rather than asserting that the scientist were motivated to achieve a particular end, but that point isn't necessary to show PolitiFact's inconsistency.

Given the similarity between the two claims, why did PolitiFact treat Doocy's compound claim as a unitary claim and Kohn's as a two-part compound claim?

Slanted.

We suggest a two-part theory.  Treating Doocy's statement as a compound claim might result in a "Mostly False" or better rating for a claim skeptical of human-caused climate change.  Liberals wouldn't like that.  Treating Kohn's claim as a unitary claim, or even dealing with her evidence-free claim of a political motivation for the Hobby Lobby lawsuit, harms the narrative liberals prefer on that topic.

In short, PolitiFact acted inconsistently because of political bias.  That's the theory.  If anybody has a better one, feel free to leave a comment.

The failure to consistently apply its principles provides avenues for the biases of PolitiFact's staffers to suffuse its fact checks.  This is just one example among many.


Additional note on the Kohn fact check

I can't figure out why PolitiFact fact checked Kohn if it wasn't intended to implicitly support her charge that the Hobby Lobby suit was not based on a sincere religious objection.  PolitiFact said "We can’t determine if politics motivated the company."  Without that charge, who cares if Hobby Lobby covered morning-after pills before it decided to bring a suit against the administration?  Despite its disclaimer, PolitiFact goes out of its way to make a circumstantial case supporting Kohn's charge:

The Greens re-examined the company’s health insurance policy back in 2012, shortly before filing the lawsuit. A Wall Street Journal story says they looked into their plan after being approached by an attorney from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty about possible legal action over the federal government’s contraceptives requirement.

That was when, according to the company’s complaint, they were surprised to learn their prescription drug policy included two drugs, Plan B and ella, which are emergency contraceptive pills that reduce the chance of pregnancy in the days after unprotected sex. The government does not consider morning-after pills as abortifacients because they are used to prevent eggs from being fertilized (not to induce abortions once a woman is pregnant). This is not, however, what the Green family believes, which is that life begins at conception and these drugs impede the survival of fertilized eggs.

We can't determine PolitiFact's motivation for doing this fact check, but ... you get the picture.

Additional additional note:

Somehow, PolitiFact neglected to include the following information from its implicit concurrence with Kohn's attack on the Hobby Lobby's owners, the Green family:

54.  Hobby Lobby's insurance policies have long explicitly excluded--consistent with their religious beliefs--contraceptive devices that might cause abortions and pregnancy-termination drugs like RU-486.

This is from a court document PolitiFact cited in its fact check of Kohn.  PolitiFact used the next item from the document, No. 55, out-of-context against Hobby Lobby.  That was Hobby Lobby's admission that it unwittingly covered two morning-after drugs that may cause abortion.  No. 54 just wouldn't have fit Kohn's narrative, would it?

Jeff Adds: (7-5-2014) It's worth noting that both the Doocy and Kohn ratings were edited by Aaron Sharockman, so the inconsistency cannot be explained by the different journalistic styles of two people.


Update 7/8/2014:

Here's another recent case of the same compound problem, this time featuring Hillary Clinton (bold emphasis added):

"It’s very troubling that a salesclerk at Hobby Lobby who needs contraception, which is pretty expensive, is not going to get that service through her employer’s health care plan because her employer doesn’t think she should be using contraception," Clinton said.

No worries, Mrs. Clinton.  PolitiFact will just focus on the first part of the claim.  It's not really a fact checker's job to point out that Clinton's claim conflicts with Hobby Lobby's willingness to cover 16 kinds of contraception, right?  Nor should we consider Hobby Lobby's religious objection to paying for certain types of contraception.


Edit 7/5/2014: Added links to PolitiFact's Doocy and Kohn ratings - Jeff
Edit 7/5/2014:  Corrected some misspellings, including Mr. Doocy's name.

The Doocy-Goddard update

On June 30 we posted about a PunditFact fact check that drew a response from Steven Goddard, the pseudonymous climate science blogger who runs "Real Science."  Goddard pointed out a number of problems with PunditFact's fact check.  We considered it unlikely PunditFact would revisit the issue.

We were only half right.

PunditFact did not change its original article, as we expected.  Instead, it added an article ("After the Fact") underneath the original article under the title "The man behind the science Fox quoted responds."  The article links to Goddard's response but does not quote from it at all.  Goddard lambasted the original fact check pretty thoroughly, but PunditFact just teased out one of the criticisms via paraphrase:

He noted that one of the experts we quoted in our initial piece has since revised his views of Heller’s research.

It's true Goddard (Heller) pointed out statement of reversal from Anthony Watt, the expert in question.  But that was the least of Goddard's criticisms.  It was the least of Goddard's criticisms because PunditFact quoted Watt on a different subject than the one it was fact checking.  Yet PunditFact gives its "After the Fact" update without addressing or even explicitly acknowledging Goddard's other criticisms.  There's no admission that PunditFact conflated two different issues in its fact check.

PolitiFact's response represents a pretense that there was nothing wrong with its original article.

Goddard made his central point the fact that the raw temperature data make the 1930s the hottest decade.  Fox's Steve Doocy turned that fact into a compound claim, attaching the adjustments to the data into a willful deception.  In terms of logic, there's some foundation for rating Doocy's entire compound statement as one claim--but that's not the usual practice we see from PolitiFact/PunditFact.  As PolitiFact says in its statement of principles:

Statements can be right and wrong – We sometimes rate compound statements that contain two or more factual assertions. In these cases, we rate the overall accuracy after looking at the individual pieces.

Or not. It depends on what PolitiFact feels like doing on any given day.

Consistent with PunditFact's principles, Doocy is more correct than not that the raw data need an adjustment to make 1998 hotter than peak temperatures from the 1930s.  And after that PunditFact might have considered what it would take to fact check whether the adjustments were done to intentionally overstate global warming.

PunditFact's response to Goddard lacks the needed correction. Nor does it do much to clarify the misleading aspects of the original fact check.


Addendum:

We've run across another PolitiFact story that helps illustrate how PolitiFact treated Doocy's claim unfairly compared to the alternative practice PolitiFact applies for compound statements.  Look for a story on that later this week. That post can be found here.


Edit 7/5/2014: Added links to PFB posts in first and last sentences and one link to original PolitiFact article- Jeff

Real Science: 'My Rebuttal to PolitiFact'

A climate science blogger who writes under the pseudonym Steven Goddard, sent out a blistering response to last week's PunditFact piece on Fox News Channel show host Stephen Doocy.

Goddard made public the email he sent to PolitiFact writer Jon Greenberg.  Here's the first part:

Politifact accused Steve Doocy of being a liar,  for accurately reporting on a blog post made on my blog (stevengoddard.wordpress.com) which showed how NASA has altered the US temperature record over time.

Politifact’s claim is the result of a failure to understand the topic, for the following reasons.

Sour grapes, right?

Not so fast.  It appears PunditFact conflated two different issues, and one of the persons quoted going against Goddard's conclusions, Anthony Watts, has since reversed himself.  Plus the basic criticism, that NASA has adjusted the temperature record, isn't contested despite the "Pants on Fire" rating.  Read Goddard's letter for the details.

Clearly, it's appropriate for PunditFact to revisit the issue and amend its fact check.  The question is whether PunditFact will bother.

Place us firmly in the skeptics' camp on that one.


Jeff Adds:

It's worth noting Watt's reversal was unequivocal (emphasis in original):

All of that added up to a big heap of confirmation bias, I was so used to Goddard being wrong, I expected it again, but this time Steve Goddard was right and my confirmation bias prevented me from seeing that there was in fact a real issue in the data and that NCDC has dead stations that are reporting data that isn’t real: mea culpa.

It's dishonest for PolitiFact to present Watt's original position without updating their story to reflect his further investigation into the matter. It would be reasonable to expect an update from an outfit that claims to help you "sort out the truth" of an issue. But PolitiFact appears to have less interest in uncovering the truth than they do in advancing an agenda.

Update July 3, 2014
PunditFact responds, sort of, and we clear away PolitiFact's smoke.


Clarification 4:02 a.m. EDT, July 1, 2014:  Substituted "an update" for "that" in the last paragraph.

Is PolitiFact incapable of objectivity on climate change?

We noted PolitiFact's failure to report accurately on Marco Rubio's climate change statement from May 11, 2014.  Whatever's much bigger than doubling down on its disgraceful reporting on climate change, that's what PolitiFact's doing with its May 19 fact check of California governor Jerry Brown.

Brown said virtually no Republican in Washington D.C. accepts climate change science.

PolitiFact's fact check of Brown's claim is comical.

PolitiFact cites polls showing Republicans are more skeptical of mankind's role in causing global warming.  That isn't directly relevant to whether Republicans in D.C. reject the science of climate change.  PolitiFact doesn't bother telling its readers over 20 percent of Republicans in a 2013 Pew Research poll think humans are the primary cause of global warming.

PolitiFact touts many (mostly unnamed) examples of Republicans questioning climate change science "to some degree."  The degree is kind of important when we're talking about rejecting science, isn't it?

PolitiFact cites Marco Rubio as a recent example of a climate change denier.  We showed why PolitiFact's charge against Rubio is false.

PolitiFact cites Republicans John Boehner and Ted Cruz in a similar way.  The Boehner and Cruz examples share essentially the same flaws as the Rubio one.  The press takes statements out of context and draws its preferred conclusion.

PolitiFact cites the Organizing For Action's lengthy list of supposed "climate change deniers," assuring readers that OFA shows evidence for each one.  OFA was President Obama's campaign organization before it changed its name and purpose.  Therefore it's just as objective as press reports taken out of context.

PolitiFact cites an article about John McCain, saying it shows he's changed from his former acceptance of man-caused climate change.  We invite anyone to strain the article for that finding.

After that, we get the list of eight Republicans who supposedly accept climate change science.

And after that, PolitiFact admits that there may be more than eight.  PolitiFact doesn't tell you how many more there might be.  That would involve fact checking.

After all that, PolitiFact rates Gov. Brown "Mostly True":

Brown said that "virtually no Republican" in Washington accepts climate change science. When it comes to on-the-record comments of members of Congress, Brown’s characterization is about right.

We found at least eight Republicans in Congress who publicly voiced support for the scientific consensus and many more conservative legislators who deny either a human link to the changing climate, or the fact that the climate is changing altogether.

A reason for caution, however, is comments from someone like Yarnold — who suggest GOP members of Congress acknowledge climate change science behind closed doors but avoid the talk in public for political reasons.

We rate Brown’s claim Mostly True.

There are two major problems with PolitiFact's rating.

First, it's a mistake to use an all-or-nothing approach to acceptance of climate science.  That approach isn't used in establishing measurements of scientific consensus on the issue, so that measuring stick gives us an apples-to-oranges comparison.

Second, unless PolitiFact is accepting OFA's list at face value, PolitiFact simply assumes that over 200 Republicans are climate change deniers.  And even if PolitiFact accepts OFA's list at face value, PolitiFact is still assuming more than 100 Republicans are climate change deniers.  Those assumptions fly directly in the face of one of PolitiFact's principles, which look more and more like Pirates of the Caribbean "guidelines" with each passing day:

Burden of proof – People who make factual claims are accountable for their words and should be able to provide evidence to back them up. We will try to verify their statements, but we believe the burden of proof is on the person making the statement.

Don't worry, Gov. Brown. PolitiFact will pretend to have the proof you don't have.

Think about it.  If just half the 128 not accounted for from the OFA list plus McCain (Cruz and Rubio are on OFA's list, McCain isn't) and the elite eight, then the percentage of Republicans accepting the supposed science of climate change is 26 percent.  Even overlooking the mind-boggling sloppiness of the fact check, we're left with a range of 3-49 percent (counting McCain as a denier).

It's irresponsible journalism to use biased secondary sources like OFA as the basis for a fact-check finding.  It's incumbent on the journalist to verify the accuracy of such sources.  We see no indication of that from PolitiFact.

This is PolitiFact fact checking.  But there's another name for it.  Crap.


Addendum

Context, Context

Hot Air has a little item on Gov. Brown's statement revealing its original context.  Brown brought up climate change as a cause of California's current problem with wild fires.

It's settled science or something.  Wouldn't PolitiFact have questioned it otherwise?


Correction/Update 5/20/2014:
Fixed assorted grammatical problems and added a parenthetical "mostly unnamed."

More on PolitiFact's deceptive Rubio/climate correction

We've uncovered a bit more evidence of PolitiFact's dishonest correction of its climate-change hit piece on Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

For review, here's the correction notice PolitiFact attached to its amended article:

CORRECTION: This story was updated on May 15 to clarify that 97.1 percent of the studies that took a position on global warming agreed that there's been a negative human impact on the atmosphere; more than half the studies did not take a position. Also, the story clarifies that the 2013 report looked at studies, not individual scientists.

The original article wasn't unclear about the 2013 report. It flatly said the report indicated 97.1 percent of scientists disagree with Rubio's supposed claim (PolitiFact blew and continues to blow the reporting on what Rubio said) that humans do not contribute to climate change.

Here's how PolitiFact was publicizing the Rubio fact check on its list of stories (red oval added to draw attention to the false reporting):

PolitiFact's clarification is not a clarification.  It's a gloss on a reporting error.

Here's how the Rubio blurb appears today:

PolitiFact's original article encouraged readers to conclude that 97 percent of scientists agree the Antarctic ice shelf is collapsing because of human-caused climate change.  That's a deception far worse than the Jeep ad from the Romney campaign that PolitiFact awarded its 2012 "Lie of the Year."  And the current version remains more misleading than that Romney ad.

PolitiFact continues climate change smear of Rubio

I noted over at Zebra Fact Check last year how PolitiFact has enlisted itself to aid in tarring various Republican politicians as "climate change deniers."  PolitiFact continued that effort this month:

Scientists have been issuing more new reports on the irreversible effects of climate change in recent weeks. Two groups reported on May 12, 2014, that the global sea level will rise at least 10 feet, accelerating to a dangerous pace after the next century.

Just a day before those reports were released, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., sat down with ABC’s Jonathan Karl on This Week. Talk turned to climate change, where the possible Republican presidential candidate denied a link between humans and the changing environment.

PolitiFact wasn't alone in its interpretation of Rubio's remark.  Unfortunately, PolitiFact didn't included enough context to make clear what Rubio was talking about.  Lucy McAlmont, writing at Patterico's Pontifications, took note of the cyclone of media spin and provided that context (bold emphasis carried over from McAlmont's transcript):

KARL: Miami, Tampa, are two of the cities that are most threatened by climate change. So putting aside your disagreement with what to do about it, do you agree with the science on this? I mean, how big a threat is climate change?

RUBIO: I don’t agree with the notion that some are putting out there, including scientists, that somehow, there are actions that we can take today that would actually have an impact on what’s happening in our climate. Our climate is always changing. And what they have chosen to do is take a handful of decades of research and say that this is now evidence of a longer term trend that’s directly and almost solely attributable to manmade activity. I do not agree with that.

KARL: You don’t buy that.

RUBIO: I don’t know of any era in history where climate has been stable. Climate is always evolving and natural disasters have always existed.

KARL: Let me get this straight. You do not think that human activity, the production of CO2 has caused warming to our planet?

RUBIO: I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it. That’s what I do not — And I do not believe that the laws we pass will do anything about it. Except it will destroy our economy.

Reading Rubio's responses to Karl, it should be obvious that PolitiFact reports falsely when it says Rubio denied a link between humans and the changing environment. Rubio acknowledges people contribute to climate change but questions some of the more extreme claims.
 

PolitiFact provided a great example of an extreme claim.  We assume PolitiFact did this unknowingly.

The Ice Sheet

PolitiFact led the Rubio fact check with this:

Scientists have been issuing more new reports on the irreversible effects of climate change in recent weeks. Two groups reported on May 12, 2014, that the global sea level will rise at least 10 feet, accelerating to a dangerous pace after the next century.

That rise in sea level is a result of the irreversible effects of climate change?  And relevant to Rubio's skepticism regarding the size of mankind's role in climate change?

The hotlink embedded in PolitiFact's story leads to an article in The New York Times, where we find this:

Scientists said the ice sheet was not melting because of warmer air temperatures, but rather because relatively warm water that occurs naturally in the depths of the ocean was being pulled to the surface by an intensification, over the past several decades, of the powerful winds that encircle Antarctica.

The Times' story goes on to note that (unnamed) researchers think global warming may have contributed to the wind pattern affecting the ice sheets.

For PolitiFact, somehow the tenuous scientific link between global warming and the collapsing ice sheet makes a perfect intro to its Rubio fact check.

That's irony.

A 97.1 Percent Consensus and a PolitiFact Correction

The original version of the Rubio fact check claimed 97.1 percent of scientist disagreed with Rubio.  We looked forward to dissecting that blunder.  Now we find PolitiFact buried it with the following correction:

CORRECTION: This story was updated on May 15 to clarify that 97.1 percent of the studies that took a position on global warming agreed that there's been a negative human impact on the atmosphere; more than half the studies did not take a position. Also, the story clarifies that the 2013 report looked at studies, not individual scientists.

That's how to do a dishonest correction.  PolitiFact buried its inaccurate reporting by clarifying that the 97.1 figure was a select group of science papers, not scientists.  And simply eliminates the inaccurate reporting, pretending it never happened.

See Also

James Taylor of Media Trackers Florida also brought some attention to PolitiFact's smear of Rubio. We've picked out a section that includes some of PolitiFact's pre-correction malfeasance:

PolitiFact Florida is flat-out wrong regarding its scientific assertions. PolitiFact Florida justified its “False” ruling by claiming, “A May 2013 report analyzing all scientific papers that address the causes of climate change showed 97.1 percent of scientists agree that there’s been a negative human impact on the atmosphere.”

Taylor's quotation makes clear the magnitude of some the false reporting PolitiFact covers up with its correction spin.

Also See

Zebra Fact Check has an article that helps sort out what various studies show about the consensus on climate change.

PolitiFact could have benefited by consulting it before publishing its Rubio smear.

Nothing To See Here: Koch brothers drive climate change (Updated)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says the Koch brothers cause much of global climate change.

Via Politico:

“While the Koch brothers admit to not being experts on the matter, these billionaire oil tycoons are certainly experts at contributing to climate change. That’s what they do very well. They are one of the main causes of this. Not a cause, one of the main causes,” Reid said.

 That's not really something that needs fact checking, is it?  It's only the Senate majority leader.

Nothing to see here.  Move along.


Update 5/8/2014

The Washington Post Fact Checker hit this topic today, giving Reid three "Pinocchios."  PolitiFact still hasn't weighed in.


Jeff Adds (5/8/2014):

Andrew Stiles of the Washington Free Beacon helpfully performs the fact check that Angie Holan is apparently too busy to do:

“The multizillionaire Koch brothers”

False. “Zillion” is not a real number.

“The two richest people in the world”

Nope. According to Forbes, the two richest people in the world are Democratic donor Bill Gates, and New York Times investor Carlos Slim.