John Cook of the SKS project (neither of which need an introduction here) has teamed up with Peter Ellerton and David Kinkead, both of the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project, to offer a way of “Deconstructing climate misinformation to identify reasoning errors”. The offering in Environmental Research Letters seemingly takes the reader through the logical steps needed to defeat the evils of denialism — hence the term ‘denial*’ is used 34 times in the article. The method outlined in the letter is reproduced at The Nonversation by Ellerton in the form of ‘Six steps to evaluate contrarian climate claims’. But, as we might expect from angry climate warriors, it suffers from exactly what it accuses ‘deniers’ and fails to deliver what it promises.

We offer a strategy based on critical thinking methods to analyse and detect poor reasoning within denialist claims. This strategy includes detailing argument structure, determining the truth of the premises, and checking for validity, hidden premises, or ambiguous language.

The method would be familiar to anyone who has completed the first week of a philosophy degree. Or perhaps even philosophy GCSE. Indeed, ‘critical thinking’ is essentially philosophy lite (not even logic 101), the conceit being that good arguments — i.e. propositions — have structure, such that the conclusion is supported by premises. Conversely, the conclusions of bad arguments do not proceed with validity from sound premises. In short: all denialism is wrong, ergo, all deniers’ arguments will have some gaping logical flaw in them, such that, equipped with the tools of critical thinking, the logical climate warrior will be able to vanquish deniers like some kind of Gaia-bothering Buffy. We’ll come to the method shortly.

The first problem for Cook Ellerton and Kinkead (hereafter CEK), is that logical ‘deconstruction’ is a double-edged sword. I haven’t noticed any improvement in Cook’s argument since he has been introduced to something approaching formal logic. Indeed, who has not seen warmists proceed from untruthful and hidden premises, through invalid arguments and ambiguous language, to unsound conclusions? And who needs a formalised method to identify it, and to call it out? Put bluntly, what the f… is this BS doing in an academic journal?

As a veteren of the below-the-line online climate war, I often encountered individuals who believed that a list of logical fallacies equipped them sufficiently to send us deniers back to where we came from. However, the neo-eco-Aristotle’s own argument invariably revealed no grasp of either the formal definition of the fallacy itself or the argument that had been judged to have committed that fallacy. Pointing it out — you don’t seem to have understood…’ — meant committing the ‘ad hominem’ fallacy. Latin, being the climate blowhard’s real weapon of choice. I encountered it often enough to give it a name: the fallacy fallacy — the use of a logical fallacy (picked by random from a list) to defeat an argument that hadn’t committed it. The point being that seemingly delving into the structure of an argument in fact often forces the discussion away from it. Which is what Consensus Enforcers want.

There is no harm at all in trying to expose the logic of an argument. Indeed, this might adequately describe much of the substance of debates between competing propositions of substance. However, there is harm in simplifying complex debates at the expense of understanding the argument, such as reducing the climate debate to the propositions “climate change is real” vs “climate change is not happening” — i.e. as a debate between ‘science’ and ‘denial’. And there is harm in allowing people to become preoccupied with tactics by presenting ‘tools’ that can only mislead.

Anyhow, back to the letter…

Misinformation, defined as information initially presented as true that is later found to be false (Lewandowsky et al 2012), is a societal issue of growing concern. The World Economic Forum listed online misinformation as one of the top ten global trends threatening the world (WEF 2014). Oxford Dictionary named ‘post-truth’ the 2016 word of the year (Flood 2016) while Collins Dictionary named ‘fake news’ the 2017 word of the year (Flood 2017) in recognition of the prevalence and impact of misinformation.

What preoccupies Lewandowsky or the World Economic Forum is of no concern to me. I judge them both to be highly suspicious (though to different degrees of problem). Ad homs first: the former is a political hack dressed up as an academic, and the latter is a club for billionaires more famous for their epic gas-guzzling hypocrisy than for any meaningful commitment to ‘tackling’ issues like climate change. Reasoning second: it was notably Blair who believed that democracy had failed, and that the future or progressive politics lies with the beneficence of people at Davos. Chilling stuff, which provides the context of ‘societal concern’ belying much deeper political movement: routine contempt for democracy and for the demos… People. And it was arguably Trump who most effectively used the term ‘fake news’ in the year that the Collins made it their word {sic} of the year… Truth, again, is a double-edged sword.

Arguably, ‘truth’ has become ‘a societal issue of growing concern’ not because there is more or less truth in arguments, but because the hollowing out of politics has left only cartoonish, shallow, hollow, vapid claims to truth in place of substantial public debate… From WMDs, through climate change, to Russian hackers stealing elections via social media, claims to truth have increasingly rested, not on a process of judgement, but on the authority of institutions charged with producing it. “Truth” and whose arguments are true, I argue, has less to do with it than ‘who do you trust’? Which makes the subsequent claim all the more interesting…

The issue of climate change has been particularly impacted by misinformation.

My favourite climate misinformation is this…

But for the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change. Yes, it’s true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods – all are now more frequent and intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it’s too late.

It may well be a fact that ‘the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15’. But the appropriate — logical — response is, ‘so what’ — the consequences of slightly warmer years are not obvious or necessary. Of course, the answer is Obama’s next line in his 2013 State of the Union address: ‘Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods – all are now more frequent and intense’. Heatwaves droughts and floods are all bad things, and more of them means more bad things. But it is not the ‘overwhelming judgement of science’ that there are more of these bad things. It was certainly the judgement of some scientists that these bad things would increase. And it certainly is the judgement of some scientists that they will increase. And it is the judgement of some scientists that these things will increase to become a hugely significant problem for very many people. But the judgement belongs to fewer and fewer scientists at each turn and does not relate to empirical observations, but increasingly underwhelming speculation.

So where was the outrage from the Australians assembled on their basis for concern about the claim that ‘NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax’? Where were the cries of ‘fake news’, or ‘post truth’? Where were the fact-checkers, and the army of activist logicians? I saw only praise for Obama’s speech hailing from the SKS camp. Post-truth indeed.

So it would seem that evidence supports the statement I offer here that the CEK’s claim to be concerned about ‘misinformation’ is hollow. This being the case, the cure proposed by CEK is sinister:

Interventions are therefore required to help the public develop resistance to persuasion from misinforming sources.

Who do these people think they are?

Inoculation theory provides a framework for helping people develop immunity to persuasive misinformation (McGuire and Papageorgis 1961). This approach applies the concept of vaccination to knowledge—it is possible to build resistance to misinformation by exposing people to a weak form of the misinformation. An inoculating text consists of a forewarning of an upcoming persuasion attempt as well as counter-arguments that refute the information.

Thankfully, inoculation theory is bullshit. Of course, the first speaker has an advantage in debate if he can anticipate the counterposition. But this is prosaic. The notion that the study of arguments — pka rhetoric — reveals strategies analogous to immunisation is a disease that only academic psychologists and their idiot funders would fall victim to. Everyone else knows that debate does not end at the second move. It goes on, indefinitely. And failure to admit to debate only causes grievance, not consensus.

The proper intervention in response to arguments or claims you believe to be wrong is an argument you believe to be right. Accordingly, in democratic society, authorities don’t merely trust adult individuals and their faculties of reason; it is the free assent of individuals to arguments, claims, and statements, though contest, that ultimately legitimises authority. Thus authorities have no business ‘intervening’ in debates with ‘inoculations’ — the full extent of their right is the same as any other citizen’s: only to offer a better argument. The psychologists’ sinister motivations are political.

The practical problem for the climate psychologist-logicians is that the patient — for that is how they perceive thinking individuals — must be inoculated before he is exposed to the misinformation. Too late. So they propose a cure, much like a visit to an STD clinic.

We examine a different approach to pre-emptively refuting climate denial misinformation using critical thinking techniques—one that focuses on understanding the logical structure of denialist arguments rather than the truth claims they consist of.

It’s a curious sort of ‘pre-emptively refuting climate denial’ that is offered after having admitted that ‘Inoculation […] requires intervention prior to misinformation being received’… How does one act ‘pre-emptively’ after the fact of the act that was seemingly being pre-empted?

Perhaps CEK are not quite as familiar with logic as they claim. How does one pre-empt the logic of an argument one has not yet heard?

It might be possible, only were it the case that CEK had offered an exhaustive account of all possible arguments that could be offered in support of ‘denial’.

Sure enough, as discovered by Barry Woods, the propositions offered by CEK as examples of sceptic’s statements in the article’s supplementary material show that CEK believe they have exhaustively surveyed every possible sceptic argument… But the list of arguments are not actually arguments made by climate sceptics, shown in the context of debate. They are snippits of arguments from CEK’s imagination.

The Royal Society once tried something not dissimilar. In the height of climate alarmism, the RS saw fir to issue a list of “myths vs facts” that seemed to arm people with knowledge but failed to equip them with any understanding. The ‘consensus’ then, is only useful as an appeal to authority… Sorry, that should be argumentum ad verecundiam. All that the climate warrior needs to know is that he is right, and his opponent is wrong. But as we can see, CEK offer only a limited number of statements from the deniers in their heads, not the arguments offered by real life sceptics.

Furthermore, in advancing this tool of ‘critical thinking’ as a weapon that anyone can use in their fights with deniers, CEK would turn the bearers of those tools into precisely the uncritical, unthinking automatons CEK imagine deniers to be. That’s not merely insulting to deniers, it’s insulting to CEK’s coreligionists also. It says to them not ‘understand the debate’, but ‘go forth and multiply these memes’. They will fall as soon as they encounter the logic of an argument that CEK has not anticipated. Which is to say they will fall as soon as the start.

So what is this method?

Here it is in flowchart form.

It certainly looks impressive. But to anyone who lacks an intuitive understanding of what sense there is in the chart, it is not as much a map to victory as it is a clumsy instruction manual on intellectual suicide. Imagine…

“Observed polar bear population statistics are well out of kilter with what has been predicted by climate change alarmists”

“OK… hang on… I’m just identifying your claim… Got it… Now just constructing the argument… I’m determining inference… Checking validity… Checking ambiguity… Now checking premises. Yes, true, true…”

“Get on with it…”

“Hold on… Cherry-picking, no. Conspiracy theory… No. False equivalency, no. False cause, no. Fake experts… AHA! According to someone at SKS, the person who is most cited on the subject of polar bears by you climate change deniers isn’t actually an expert on climate change… GOTCHA!”

“Well, even if it were true, which it isn’t, so what? The polar numbers should have fallen. They haven’t. The population stats were produced by other people.”

“Damn. Okay. Hold on…”

“I’m waiting…”

“False dichotomy, no… Impossible expectations, no. Magnified minority, no. Misrepresentation… Aha! You have mispresented the researchers – they say polar bears are still at risk. GOTCHA!”

“But that’s their opinion. What counts is what they claimed – what they predicted – and how that stacks up against what has actually happened”.

“Hmm. Okay, okay. Non-sequitur, no. Oversimplification, yes! So you’re saying that because scientists overestimated polar bear population decline, there’s no such thing as global warming! Gotcha”

“Who said anything about global warming? We were talking about polar bear populations – which some scientists said were vulnerable to global warming, but they have grown”.

“Ok. Red herring, no. Slothful induction… what’s that?”

“I’ve got to go in a minute”.

“Hold on, I’m just downloading the supplementary information, to find out what slothful induction is.”.

“That’s very conscientious of you”.

“It says, ’Ignores relevant and significant evidence when inferring to a conclusion. Similar to cherry picking but with an emphasis on neglecting information rather than selecting highlighting information to draw a misleading conclusion’. Are you doing that?”

“I don’t think so.”

“No. Maybe not… Last one, Single cause… It must be the that one”.

“Why?”

“Because it wasn’t any of the others”.

—–

“Our contention is that a basic understanding of argumentation is sufficient to refute a large number of climate denialist claims”, claim CEK. It seems unlikely to me that they will defeat a single one. To anyone with any brains, the proposed toolkit will appear to be more condescending than teaching granny to suck eggs. The possibility that anyone new to the notion of using logic to either construct or deconstruct arguments, will be transformed into a challenging opponent is far-fetched indeed. Which raises the question, who is this intended for? Is it useful advice, offered in good faith? Or is it yet another example of manifest bad faith – the product of anxious climate academics’ displacement activity?

Consider this, for instance…

Whilst the conclusions of inductive inferences are often stated definitively in everyday language e.g. ‘smoking causes cancer’, they are not intended to be definitive. The majority of scientific claims are open to adjustment, correction and even refutation. The ability to state the conditions under which a theory can be falsified, and hence refuted, is an important determiner for discriminating science from pseudo-science (Popper 1957). Climate denialist claims however, are typically definitive, taking a form such as ‘human activity is not the cause of current climate change’ rather than ‘human activity might not be the primary cause of current climate change’. Similar definitive denialist claims are common (Elsasser and Dunlap 2013) ‘Climate change is not happening.’

‘There is no empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming.’ ‘There is no scientific consensus that human-caused climate change is occurring.’ If we are to accept these denialist claims, then like any definitive conclusion, they must be supported by a deductively valid argument.

What’s notable here is that CEK let statements made in informal debate off the hook – an ‘everyday language’ getout applies to definitive statements made in the light of the putative authority of ‘science’. But CEK expect ‘denialists’ to express their claims formally.

But turn the tables on the imagined denialist’s statements:

‘Climate change is happening.’

‘There is empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming.’

‘There is a scientific consensus that human-caused climate change is occurring.’

Are these statements any more or less ‘definitive’ or ‘open to adjustment, correction and even refutation’ than the counterpositions? I would say they are equivalent in the sense that they are, as statements, inconsequential. Moreover, the point still escapes CEK that one can agree with the statements ‘Climate change is happening’ and ‘There is empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming’ and ‘There is a scientific consensus that human-caused climate change is occurring’ and still be a ‘denier’. Furthermore, one can agree with all of those statements and be factually incorrect. A bit like Obama, back in 2013.

Moving, on CEK encourage the warrior to check for validity, and then for ambiguity. It’s as if no warmista had ever failed to check his own argument for validity and ambiguity! It’s as if the claim “CLIMATE CHANGE IS HAPPENING” had never been put down, in black and white by so many people who had no idea what it meant. That is to say that the statement, as used widely, is precisely ambiguous – it is so ambiguous in fact that it can mean whatever the person wielding the truth wants it to mean. It could mean, in the hands of Naomi Klein, for instance, that capitalism must be dismantled or replaced by some kind of eco-anarcho syndicalism (Chomsky). Or it could mean in the hands of Tom Steyer or Jeremy Grantham, that capitalism is the only solution. Or it could mean in the hands of wind turbine merchants, ‘more subsidies to save the planet, please’. In the hands of countless civil servants and NGO activists, the construction of another layer of global bureaucracy. Science, it turns out, produces deeply conflicting messages – as different as denial and science.

Yet it is the sceptics’ arguments that are under the logician’s microscope. No hint that it is the responsibility of CEK and their allies to improve the debate by improving their own arguments.

CEK conclude…

Psychological research indicates that explaining the techniques employed to distort scientific information is an important component of neutralising misinformation. This paper lays out a template for systematic deconstruction and assessment of denialist claims, in order to identify false premises and fallacious reasoning.

Broader research than CEK’s reveals that psychological science is in crisis. It is manifestly dominated by a political tendency. It struggles to produce research that can be reliably and independently verified. And it has clearly allowed itself… no… volunteered itself to be used as a political instrument, routinely. Indeed, it seems to be employed more often towards this end than towards understanding human psychology. Cod logicians have lowered themselves to prop up the worst of this ailing science… A science of easy virtue, we might say.

And CEK are keen to signal its virtues, under a red light, to all passers-by…

Typically, inoculation interventions are information-based, containing facts that counter the misleading information. For example, van der Linden et al (2017) countered the Global Warming Petition Project by communicating the 97% scientific consensus on human-caused global warming, as well as explaining specific misleading elements of the Petition Project. In contrast, Cook et al (2017) used a reason-based inoculation against the Global Warming Petition Project that refrained from mentioning the 97% consensus or the Petition Project. Instead, the explanation of the general technique of fake experts was successful in inoculating participants against the negative influence of the Petition Project. Further research into this approach is recommended, directly comparing its efficacy to information-based inoculations, measuring how susceptible reason-based interventions are subject to decay effects, and exploring whether reason-based inoculations can convey resistance against multiple arguments.

These boastful claims of so many SKS scalps are without foundation. Eight references to Cook’s work are cited eleven times in total. Yet all Cook can really claim is to have increased the hostility of the climate debate, and to have dragged the level of academic discourse to the level of Internet flame war.

Let us call bullshit on this science and its search for funding. Referring to the statements that CEK imagine constitute all possible climate sceptic arguments, CEK say…

Our analysis found that all of the 42 denialist claims failed to falsify anthropogenic global warming. However, these claims are effective in misinforming the public and decreasing climate literacy. Consequently, refuting and neutralizing the influence of this misinformation is necessary.

The models of ‘public understanding’ (i.e. individuals) and science that CEK draw from are, by this admission, ineffective: the sceptics are winning. Preoccupation with “strategy” has not led to warmists budging public opinion one bit. Nor even has it led to an effective consolidation of perspectives on the sceptic camp. Rather, the endless strategising — including endless superficially academic exercises in belittling deniers – has only contributed to the continued denial of debate.

It will be a tough day for CEK when they wake up to the fact that, whether sceptics are right or wrong about climate science, they were right about climate alarmism and climate activists, and that the better strategy would be to have had the debate. It really is that simple. The only strategy able to defeat bad ideas if you believe you have a better one, is to offer the better idea.

But debate is anathema to such zealots. In the meanwhile, the intransigence epitomised by CEK and similar enterprises serves us well. Keep it up, CEK.