December 13, 2022

Can Leftists recognize the difference between fact and falsehood?

I was inspired to write the question above by a recent edition of the once-scientific "Scientific American". It long ago became a Leftist organ, with an interest only in the bits of science that Leftists like. Behold below the cover of the October "Special" edition:

It amused me that a Leftist organ had set itself up as an arbiter of truth. Leftists often seem to have no regard for the truth at all. Elon Musk has recently shown that the old Twitter management were energetic suppressors of the truth about Biden Jr's laptop, for instance.

And when cornered in an argument, Leftists often try to get out of jail free by saying "There is no such thing as right and wrong". And I think they do believe that. Calling somthing true has propaganda value for them but they don't really care if it is truth or not. There are certainly some philosophical difficulties with truth claims but denying the possibility of truth is denying the possibility of discourse, which is a dead-end if ever there was one.

Anyway, I decided to have a look at what the lavishly produced and illustrated "Special" edition had to say. I have a hard copy of it. Leftists avoid hearing conservative arguments like the plague but some of us have no fear of what both sides of an argument may have to reveal.

So I turned to the section about climate, a Left/Right touchstone if ever there was one. Getting the story right there would be very central to establishing the truth in current politics.

One reason why I turned to that section is that the statistics about climate are widely available and well agreed on among those who talk about the "science" of climate change. The statistics are there. It is only the construction you put on them that varies

In the hard copy of the magazine, the relevant section is headed: "Climate Miseducation". On reading such a heading, one would have thought that the first step would be to look at the climate statistics. Surely the debate cannot proceed until we do that.

But there is nothing like that in the article. The article is just a typical Leftist rave about evil oil companies and such bugaboos. Oil companies are often very profitable so there is no way they can be anything but evil in Leftist eyes. So, far from looking for the truth, the article was just a whine

No mention that for 30 years between 1945 and 1975 atmospheric CO2 levels shot up but there was NO corresponding rise in global average temperature -- a 30 year period when the global temperature did not do what it should have. A huge and very adverse truth about global warming was not even considered.

I read no more in the magazine. I binned it. I am too interested in truth to waste time reading drivel.




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