Facebook is finally working with some of the experts like John Cook who the Denier Roundup’s been telling you about for years now, announcing last week that they’re starting to incorporate more thorough fact checking measures.
Better late than never!
But this also means that the complaints from deniers are about to reach a new tenor. Even before the new announcement, the Global Warming Policy Foundation was complaining about a fact check by one of Facebook’s fact-checking partners, Climate Feedback.
Seems Climate Feedback had actual scientists take a look at a Breitbart post about a recent GWPF-published report by Dr. Indur Goklany that denies the connections between climate change and extreme weather. Turns out, legitimate scientists found it had “several inaccurate claims and cherry-picks information in a way that misleads readers about the scientific understanding of climate change.”
Angry about their lies being exposed, GWPF issued its own rebuttal “to set the record straight.” It has nine points, of which only the last four actually address the scientific content, and only one actually attempts to make a substantive point — by citing Trump-defending, conspiracy peddler Roger Pielke Jr’s debunked and “normalization” schtick. Then there’s one dismissal of a citation request (science-speak for there’s no evidence for this). On the last two points, the GWPF just claims the Climate Feedback fact check proves Goklany’s point anyway.
As for the first five complaints, they’re mostly semantics. But interestingly, they too reveal that even in responding to a fact checking, GWPF clearly and intentionally lies ... or everyone there is just real dumb. For example, they accuse Climate Feedback of not linking to the content, but the fact check is of the Breitbart coverage (not the GWPF .pdf itself), and CF provides the link in a special, stand-out grey box that says “see all the scientists’ annotations in context.” Did GWPF not notice the link? Or just not care that it was there?
But GWPF’s first complaint is that “Climate Feedback claims that GWPF is a political advocacy organisation," which GWPF says is, "untrue [because] GWPF is an education charity and is non-partisan.” Unfortunately for GWPF, however, in 2014 a British judge ruled that GWPF’s actions were that of a political advocacy organization, not a charity. In response, the Global Warming Policy Foundation did not change its behavior, but instead spun up a political advocacy organization which it named the Global Warming Policy Forum, or, GWPF, of which it is a wholly owned subsidiary of GWPF, and does their political advocacy.
So technically, it is totally correct to describe GWPF as a political advocacy organization— a judge has ruled as much! Dr. Benny Pesier is Director of both GWPF and GWPF, so clearly he knows that GWPF does political advocacy. And then if people are confused by GWPF being both a political advocacy organization and an education charity, the only ones to blame there are GWPF and GWPF.
GWPF's next complaint is that Climate Feedback “claims that Goklany’s study is a ‘blog post.’ This is untrue. It is a report which runs 40 pages...” That "report," however, wasn’t released by any type of publisher, and it wasn’t peer-reviewed by any independent external experts, and it wasn't evaluated by an external editor at an academic journal. It is simply a .pdf posted to their blog. Or in other words, a blog post.
GWPF is also very angry that Climate Feedback said it is misleading to call it a “study” (like Breitbart did) because it’s not original research or peer-reviewed or formally published in a journal. But that’s exactly what a study is. “The suggestion,” GWPF writes, pearls tightly clutched, “that ‘studies’ can only include original research would rule out thousands of review papers and indeed the IPCC assessment reports themselves.”
But here’s the thing: review papers and the IPCC assessment reports aren’t studies! That’s why GWPF just called them papers and reports, but not studies! And in this fact check rebuttal GWPF published, they referred to it as a “study” only once, but a “report” seven times. The report itself calls itself GWPF’s “Report 46” of the GWPF. The GWPF websites have menu bars for their “Latest Postings” and a “GWPF Publications” drop-down menu that features options for “reports,” as well as “briefing papers,” “notes,” “essays,” “technical papers,” “annual accounts,” “annual GWPF lectures,” and “translations.”
But oddly, there aren’t even any drop-down options for studies! (Because they know that’s not what they produce!)
In their press release calling for Climate Feedback to withdraw their fact check, they refer to it as a “report” six times.
The word “study” does not appear.
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