4 ms·

I'm confused. Skeptics don't make claims, they doubt claims. How has the burden of proof for climate-change claims shifted to a skeptic? Renaming doubt as "c

by djcjr 17y ago

I'm confused. Skeptics don't make claims, they doubt claims. How has the burden of proof for climate-change claims shifted to a skeptic? Renaming doubt as "claims" and then "debunking" the doubt reminds of straw man, no? Labeling a climate-change skeptic as "pretending-to-be serious" reminds of ad hominem, no?

gjm11 17y ago
Lomborg makes plenty of claims. The burden of proof is not determined by whether one is claiming or doubting. Someone saying "I think there's some room for doubt about geocentrism" would bear the burden of proof, for instance. "Debunking the claims" is straight from the original article title. It seems to be pretty well justified by the article itself; someone has gone through the references in one of Lomborg's books and found them full of junk. (Of course it might turn out that the new book is itself all lies or something, but the mere possibility of that doesn't justify complaining about the word "debunking".) A straw man is a position falsely ascribed to one's opponents to make them easier to debunk. What false position do you think is being ascribed to Lomborg to make him easier to debunk?
- cwan 17y ago
  Have you bothered to read Lomborg's rebuttal? It thoroughly addresses each of the claims that Friel makes [at least in the book review]. (as linked by Luyt: http://www.lomborg.com/dyn/files/basic_items/118-file/BL%20reply%20to%20Howard%20Friel.pdf http://www.lomborg.com/dyn/files/basic_items/118-file/BL%20r...) Did you even read Begley's screed? As WindsofChange notes: http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/where_tone_torpedoes_credibility.html http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/where_tone_torpedoes_c..., Newsweek discredits itself in its opening paragraph. Since when is "fact checking" so distasteful so as to be considered to be one of the worst jobs by Newsweek? I mean isn't that supposed to be sort of their job? And they wonder why circulation continues to freefall (falling from 2.6M to 1.5M http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-washington-post-company-reports-2009-and-fourth-quarter-earnings-2010-02-24?reflink=MW_news_stmp http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-washington-post-company...) in one year alone! There was no "debunking" here. What exists, appears a desperate editor watching her circulation plunge while she attempts to hype a made up controversy to plug the hole. There's a journalistic dictum if I recall that goes something like: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" [Thanks sailormoon for the correction]. The evidence from both Begley and Friel do not rise to this level especially as Begley attempts to trash not only Lomborg, casting aspersions on both the reviewers of Lomborg's work and Lomborg himself. What is particularly galling is how profoundly unskeptical Newsweek was of Friel's claims and the remarkably anti-intellectual stance they've taken.
  - sailormoon 17y ago
    It's "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
  - gjm11 17y ago
    I have no way to assess Lomborg's rebuttal without having a copy of Friel's book and Lomborg's earlier books to hand. I have a copy of one of Lomborg's books, but not where I am right now, and don't have Friel's at all. However, I don't think I believe that Lomborg's 27-page rebuttal can possibly address every claim made by Friel in a 272-page book, no matter how wrong those claims might be. (Rebutting claims, even very wrong ones, notoriously takes more space and time than making them.) The Newsweek review does not claim that fact checking is a distasteful job. It claims that fact checking Lomborg is a distasteful job. The two are not equivalent. No one is claiming that the Newsweek review does any debunking. It reports on someone else's alleged debunking. Just for reference: Have you read Friel's book and checked his analysis of Lomborg's references?
    - cwan 17y ago
      The Lomborg Deception isn't out yet (March 16 is the ship date according to Amazon). I should have specified that Lomborg addresses each of Friel's claims made in the book review/editorial and then some. Why would fact checking anyone, that by Newsweek's own admission has had high praise from policy makers and any number of publications, be "distasteful"? Newsweek makes the claim that Friel's book is a debunking and achieves its task by referencing three of his primary claims. Begley however does not even bother to thoroughly examine them or take Lomborg's pointed rebuttals into consideration in her sloppy "analysis".
      - gjm11 17y ago
        Why would fact checking anyone be distasteful? Well, for instance, if I'm understanding correctly what Friel claims, it's something like this: Lomborg makes lots and lots of citations; their relation to the material they're cited in support of is often unclear; it often turns out that they don't in fact support what he's saying. If that's true, then fact-checking him would be a lot of work because of the many citations, and the vagueness of reference that would require more work per citation, and the (hypothetical) fact that often the citations are no good. (Failed searches usually take longer than successful ones.) Begley doesn't claim to be offering analysis. It's a book review. Do you seriously think it would have been appropriate for the review to be twice as long in order to go into more detail on each claim it mentions? Anyway. You say Lomborg addresses "each of Friel's claims made in the book review" (weird way of putting it, btw). OK, let's look at the first one: what's happening to the population of polar bears. Well, er, the word "bear" doesn't appear in Lomborg's rebuttal. There's a bit about populations of penguins; nothing about polar bears. Oh. Next: heat deaths and cold deaths. There is certainly some discussion of this in Lomborg's rebuttal, but he doesn't seem to have anything to say about one of the most striking claims Begley says Friel makes: that Lomborg cites a study from 2006 as showing that global warming will save 1.4 million lives that would otherwise be lost to deaths from cold, when in fact the figure claimed in that study is 850k. Next: stuff about the Larsen B ice shelf. No occurrence of "Larsen" or "shelf" in Lomborg's rebuttal. Your claim that Lomborg addresses every claim of Friel's that's found in the book review appears to be totally false. Did you read Lomborg's rebuttal, or did you just hope I wouldn't? Incidentally #1: Why the quotation marks around "distasteful"? That word is yours, not Begley's (still less Friel's). Begley used a different term. Incidentally #2: Why the quotation marks around "analysis"? My best guess is that it's because I used that word. But I used it about Friel's 272-page book, not Begley's 2ish-page review. Incidentally #3: Why "book review / editorial"? It says "Book review" at the top. It is dedicated to describing and evaluating a book. Its author is not an editor. It's a book review; it's not an editorial.

by djcjr 17y ago

gjm11 17y ago

Lomborg makes plenty of claims. The burden of proof is not determined by whether one is claiming or doubting. Someone saying "I think there's some room for doubt about geocentrism" would bear the burden of proof, for instance. "Debunking the claims" is straight from the original article title. It seems to be pretty well justified by the article itself; someone has gone through the references in one of Lomborg's books and found them full of junk. (Of course it might turn out that the new book is itself all lies or something, but the mere possibility of that doesn't justify complaining about the word "debunking".) A straw man is a position falsely ascribed to one's opponents to make them easier to debunk. What false position do you think is being ascribed to Lomborg to make him easier to debunk?

cwan 17y ago
Have you bothered to read Lomborg's rebuttal? It thoroughly addresses each of the claims that Friel makes [at least in the book review]. (as linked by Luyt: http://www.lomborg.com/dyn/files/basic_items/118-file/BL%20reply%20to%20Howard%20Friel.pdf http://www.lomborg.com/dyn/files/basic_items/118-file/BL%20r...) Did you even read Begley's screed? As WindsofChange notes: http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/where_tone_torpedoes_credibility.html http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/where_tone_torpedoes_c..., Newsweek discredits itself in its opening paragraph. Since when is "fact checking" so distasteful so as to be considered to be one of the worst jobs by Newsweek? I mean isn't that supposed to be sort of their job? And they wonder why circulation continues to freefall (falling from 2.6M to 1.5M http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-washington-post-company-reports-2009-and-fourth-quarter-earnings-2010-02-24?reflink=MW_news_stmp http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-washington-post-company...) in one year alone! There was no "debunking" here. What exists, appears a desperate editor watching her circulation plunge while she attempts to hype a made up controversy to plug the hole. There's a journalistic dictum if I recall that goes something like: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" [Thanks sailormoon for the correction]. The evidence from both Begley and Friel do not rise to this level especially as Begley attempts to trash not only Lomborg, casting aspersions on both the reviewers of Lomborg's work and Lomborg himself. What is particularly galling is how profoundly unskeptical Newsweek was of Friel's claims and the remarkably anti-intellectual stance they've taken.
- sailormoon 17y ago
  It's "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
- gjm11 17y ago
  I have no way to assess Lomborg's rebuttal without having a copy of Friel's book and Lomborg's earlier books to hand. I have a copy of one of Lomborg's books, but not where I am right now, and don't have Friel's at all. However, I don't think I believe that Lomborg's 27-page rebuttal can possibly address every claim made by Friel in a 272-page book, no matter how wrong those claims might be. (Rebutting claims, even very wrong ones, notoriously takes more space and time than making them.) The Newsweek review does not claim that fact checking is a distasteful job. It claims that fact checking Lomborg is a distasteful job. The two are not equivalent. No one is claiming that the Newsweek review does any debunking. It reports on someone else's alleged debunking. Just for reference: Have you read Friel's book and checked his analysis of Lomborg's references?
  - cwan 17y ago
    The Lomborg Deception isn't out yet (March 16 is the ship date according to Amazon). I should have specified that Lomborg addresses each of Friel's claims made in the book review/editorial and then some. Why would fact checking anyone, that by Newsweek's own admission has had high praise from policy makers and any number of publications, be "distasteful"? Newsweek makes the claim that Friel's book is a debunking and achieves its task by referencing three of his primary claims. Begley however does not even bother to thoroughly examine them or take Lomborg's pointed rebuttals into consideration in her sloppy "analysis".
    - gjm11 17y ago
      Why would fact checking anyone be distasteful? Well, for instance, if I'm understanding correctly what Friel claims, it's something like this: Lomborg makes lots and lots of citations; their relation to the material they're cited in support of is often unclear; it often turns out that they don't in fact support what he's saying. If that's true, then fact-checking him would be a lot of work because of the many citations, and the vagueness of reference that would require more work per citation, and the (hypothetical) fact that often the citations are no good. (Failed searches usually take longer than successful ones.) Begley doesn't claim to be offering analysis. It's a book review. Do you seriously think it would have been appropriate for the review to be twice as long in order to go into more detail on each claim it mentions? Anyway. You say Lomborg addresses "each of Friel's claims made in the book review" (weird way of putting it, btw). OK, let's look at the first one: what's happening to the population of polar bears. Well, er, the word "bear" doesn't appear in Lomborg's rebuttal. There's a bit about populations of penguins; nothing about polar bears. Oh. Next: heat deaths and cold deaths. There is certainly some discussion of this in Lomborg's rebuttal, but he doesn't seem to have anything to say about one of the most striking claims Begley says Friel makes: that Lomborg cites a study from 2006 as showing that global warming will save 1.4 million lives that would otherwise be lost to deaths from cold, when in fact the figure claimed in that study is 850k. Next: stuff about the Larsen B ice shelf. No occurrence of "Larsen" or "shelf" in Lomborg's rebuttal. Your claim that Lomborg addresses every claim of Friel's that's found in the book review appears to be totally false. Did you read Lomborg's rebuttal, or did you just hope I wouldn't? Incidentally #1: Why the quotation marks around "distasteful"? That word is yours, not Begley's (still less Friel's). Begley used a different term. Incidentally #2: Why the quotation marks around "analysis"? My best guess is that it's because I used that word. But I used it about Friel's 272-page book, not Begley's 2ish-page review. Incidentally #3: Why "book review / editorial"? It says "Book review" at the top. It is dedicated to describing and evaluating a book. Its author is not an editor. It's a book review; it's not an editorial.