Colin McNickle Of The Tribune-Review: Science Denier

In yesterday's Tribune-Review, columnist Colin McNickle uses a rather old-fashioned logical fallacy in his paper's ongoing crusade to discredit the undeniable - that Climate Science is valid and the Earth is warming up due to us..

Here's what he does:

“The Arctic seems to be warming up,” wrote George Nicolas Ifft, the American consul to Norway, in a report submitted to the State Department. “Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers who sail the seas ... all point to a radical change in climatic conditions and hitherto unheard of high temperatures on that part of Earth's surface.”

But this was no contemporary dispatch from a modern-day climate-clucker flapping his wings and his beak, squawking that the world as we know it will end unless the world reorders the world economy by essentially destroying the world economy to “save the world.” (Such fanatic rhetoricians typically repeat the word “world” far more times.)

No, Mr. Ifft's report was filed nearly 92 years ago, on Oct. 10, 1922. A month later, it was published in the Monthly Weather Review. And “change” hardly was framed as a pejorative. In fact, and if anything, Ifft's dispatch contains the hint of potential new business opportunities and, sorry, cluckers, intimations of the recognition of the vagaries of climate.

See that?  The arctic warmed up way back in 1922!  So all the science that says it's going on now is obviously false, right?

The only problem with this whole argument?

It was debunked 4 years ago.

Professor Goreau's explanation of this "Wagga Wagga" logical fallacy:

Those who seek to deny global warming constantly use transparently obvious tricks, selecting data from a single time, a single place, or both, to deny the larger long-term global patterns. This is easily done as climate is constantly fluctuating, so picking out the mean patterns and trends requires that one integrates the data over the largest time and space scales possible. So if one dishonestly wants to misrepresent the larger patterns, one can always find a particular place at a particular time that does not agree with the all the rest averaged together. This is sometimes referred to as the “It’s a cold day in Wagga Wagga” approach, and is repeatedly used by the climate change deniers to fool people who haven’t looked at the data themselves. The changes in Arctic Ice are no exception!

And he specifically cites Ifft's publication:

This set of observations from a limited area (Spitzbergen) in one year has been used by deniers to suggest that there are huge natural fluctuations, and to imply that there is no global warming.

Globally however the sea temperature trend is obvious:

Regionally, though, there does seem to be a rise in Arctic temperatures in the 20s:

But notice what McNickle decided not to tell you.  According to the data, there was a big increase in Arctic temperature followed by a big decrease that ended sometime in the early 60s.  Then another rise (one that corresponds with a rise in the "various sources of energy used during the century" (gas, coal, oil among them).  Imagine that.

So so interesting that Colin McNickle decided not to tell you the full truth.  It's either that or he failed to fully research his topic before writing his now debunked column.  Which is it?  Incompetence or dishonesty?

Colin, my friend, you really really need to do your homework better than this.  If you had, you wouldn't look as foolish as you do right now.

Embarrassing, Colin. Just Embarrassing.

Given the vast array of fact-checking tools (aka The Google) that should be available to the folks over at Scaife's Tribune-Review, you'd think that someone somewhere would check out Colin McNickle's opening quotation:

Why should freedom of speech and freedom of the press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government?

— Nikolai Lenin (1920)

We all know who Lenin was right?  He's the guy who founded the Russian Communist Party and is the "Lenin" part of "Marxist/Leninist" thought, right?  But Colin I gotta ask you, wasn't that Vladimir Lenin?

So who's this "Nikolai" quoted?  Couldn't possibly be Vladimir's younger brother Nikolai who died in infancy in 1873 when Vladimir was only three, right?  The source of the quotation couldn't be that Lenin because that Lenin wasn't even alive in 1920, right?

Doesn't The Google work on Tribune-Review drive?  Took me about 5 minutes to check this.

So that's mistake #1.  Colin McNickle meant to write Vladimir Lenin when he wrote Nikolai Lenin.

Mistake #2 is even bigger, though subtler.  Can we even be sure that Vladimir said what Colin McNickle mistakenly said that Nikolai said?

And...we can't.  Did you know that no less a source than the Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations puts those words in the mouth of... Winston Churchill?  Perhaps they got it wrong, those Oxfordians, as they're basing their assertion on just one bio of Churchill, just one bio of Churchill, written by Piers Brendon.

Maybe Brendon got it wrong.

So where does the attribution to Lenin (Nikolai) come from?  According to the Quoteinvestigator, it comes from H. L. Mencken's 1942 Book of Quotations.  This is probably as far back as McNickle went.  He should have gone farther.  But where did Mencken get it?  From Quoteinvestigor:

QI has traced this expression back to a diary entry that was written in 1920 by George Riddell who was a powerful newspaperman and close friend of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Lloyd George. Riddell later became the 1st Baron Riddell. The text in Mencken’s reference is very similar to the text in Riddell’s diary, but it is not identical.

The words attributed to Churchill also appear in the passage in Riddell’s diary. But QI believes that Riddell was describing a speech by Lenin and not the words of Churchill. Hence, QI thinks that the ascription to Churchill is almost certainly incorrect.

Ah...so let's look at what Riddell wrote.  He wrote of a conversation he had with Churchill:

I told Winston of Lenin’s speech, in which he said that the day of pure democracy was finished and that freedom of speech and the freedom of the Press were its two chief characteristics. “Why should these things be allowed?” he went on. “Why should a Government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticised? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. And as to the freedom of the Press, why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the Government?”

Brendon, obviously, thinks that Riddell is referring to Churchill in the second sentence and  Mencken thought Riddell was referring to Lenin.

But is there any actual evidence that Lenin actually said it?  QI writes that no one's been able to find any reference to the speech in Lenin's other than Riddell's diary.  For example it's not found in the Marxists Internet Archive.

And yet Colin McNickle said it was from Lenin (though the wrong Lenin, of course).  Isn't that embarrassing?

This is not to say, of course, that Vladimir Lenin was a friend to the free press.  Did he, in fact write anything about a free press?  Why yes, yes he did.  In Letter To Gavril Myasnikov, dated 8/5/20, Lenin wrote:

All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake “public opinion” for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.

Sound familiar?  If you're reading the Tribune-Review you're actually reading a real-life example of what Lenin actually described.  Need an example?  How about:

• This?
• Or this?
• Or this?

But what Lenin was describing of course wasn't actually a press that is free - he's describing a press that's bought and paid for.

Fact-Checking A Fact-Checker - Colin McNickle Edition

In a rather scathing indictment of a Republican (and conservative, though obviously not conservative enough) member of Congress by a conservative columnist writing for the conservative paper in that Congressional district, the Trib's Colin McNickle writes this about Congressman Tim Murphy:

“We were promised a website where people could easily compare plans and costs,” said Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., on Thursday during a contentious hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on the many failures of the ObamaCare website.

“Five-hundred million dollars later” (it's actually something like $700 million and counting) “we find that the American people have been dumped with the ultimate Cash for Clunkers, except that they had to pay the cash and still got the clunker,” the Upper St. Clair legislator said.

It's a great line but one laced with hubris, irony, hypocrisy and whistling past the graveyard.

For you see — and many of you might have forgotten and Mr. Murphy obviously is hoping you have — Murphy voted for Cash for Clunkers, that odoriferous multibillion-dollar government intervention that would have been funny if it weren't such a perversion.

What McNickle also left out was Congressman Murphy's support of the strained rollout of Medicare Part D in 2006.  Here's what Murphy said THEN about that glitchy Bush-era guv'ment program:

It is of no value, as a matter of fact, it is a negative value and of questionable ethical value I think sometimes if people only spend their time criticizing the glitches that have been in the program, as with any program that occurs, whether it is a public or private program, criticizing it, standing on the outside and frightening seniors, frightening seniors into thinking that because there was complexities and difficulties, therefore they should not sign up. [Congressional Record, Page H1665]

But that's a minor point - the major fail of McNickle's fact-check is the cost of the Obamacare website.  He says it's something like "$700 million" and reality says otherwise.

From the Washingtonpost's Glenn Kessler.  His initial assessment is admittedly fuzzy:

So here’s where we stand.

A conservative figure would be $70 million. A more modest figure would be $125 million to $150 million. Or one could embrace the entire project, as outlined by GAO, and declare that it is at least $350 million.

But he added a few updates - one with an upper/lower limit:

The floor for spending on the Web site to date appears to be at least $170 million, with an upward potential of nearly $300 million.

Significantly lower than the "factual" numbers so innocently slipped by your eyes by the "fact-checking" Colin McNickle.

According to Mediamatters, there's only one place where such a large number as McNickle's is found (though they go up to a billion).  That would the the Scaife-owned Newsmax.

And, as we all know, Scaife owns the Tribune-Review.  Where Colin McNickle hangs his fact-checking hat.  How interesting.

Colin McNickle Left Something Out

Hardly surprising, considering that he writes for the Tribune-Review.

Take a look at this:

Lots of people were making lots of U-turns here Saturday on southbound Route 19 just past Ace Sporting Goods. And lots more northbounders were parking on the wide berm just waiting to get into the parking lot of the popular gun shop.

It was another afternoon of what‘s become the new norm at Ace, known for its wide selection of handguns and rifles...

Know what else this Ace Sporting Goods store is known (or should be known) for?

Take a look at this from September 7, 2001:

First of all, we know Mr. Baumhammers traveled to Ace Sporting Goods in Washington, Pa., April 30, 1999 and for $528 purchased a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum Revolver, the murder weapon.

Nine days later, just nine days after buying a handgun, Richard Scott Baumhammers was voluntarily mentally committed to St. Clair Hospital, agreeing he was mentally disabled and in need of treatment.

And then almost exactly a year after that (on April 28, 2000) he took that Smith and Wesson and went on an "unhurried, methodical" shooting spree - killing five and maiming one.

So I am wondering how many in the crowd McNickle described knew that they were frequenting the very same establishment where Baumhammers plunked down his five twenty-eight for his three fifty seven.

And if they knew, would it make any difference?

Because the price of this "freedom" to stockpile firearms (out of a "paranoid fear of a possible dystopic future") will be that eventually some nutcase will shoot up yet another school yard or shopping mall - and someone else's kids or siblings or loved ones or parents will die horribly because of it.

It's as simple as that.  Yay, 2nd Amendment.  Yay, NRA.