Last weekend I posted an essay on what I considered to be a pointless invocation of Godwins Law by my friend James Delingpole:
The battle of the pointless Nuremberg insults: Romm -vs- Delingpole
(Note: For those of you who don’t know, Delingpole was the first to pick up on Climategate and give it MSM legs in the Telegraph, for that we owe him gratitude. )
In my essay I had harsh words for people on both sides of the climate debate, pointing out where there’s more than enough instances of blame to go around. Both sides have fallen into the Godwin’s Law trap. From Wikipedia:
Godwin’s law (also known as Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies or Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies) is an observation made by Mike Godwin in 1990 that has become an Internet adage. It states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” In other words, Godwin observed that, given enough time, in any online discussion—regardless of topic or scope—someone inevitably makes a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis.
When James invoked Nuremberg comparisons, he became another Godwin’s Law statistic, joining some other loud voices on the AGW advocacy side of the debate.
Normally, when you point out where they’ve fallen into such a rhetorical trap, especially with friends, they thank you for helping them to realize this. I was quite surprised to find that Mr. Delingpole has made not one, but two critical responses to my essay:
In the Telegraph: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100211704/apologise-to-michael-mann-anthony-id-rather-eat-worms/
In the Spectator: http://www.spectator.co.uk/columnists/james-delingpole/8885551/no-i-wont-say-sorry-even-to-a-friend/
After contemplation of his reaction, I wrote a thank you letter to James for the kind words that he did mention about me (to which he responded positively), and I have now condensed the problem of our differences down to what I believe is a simple misunderstanding on Mr. Delingpole’s part.
I wrote in my original essay:
My point is, no matter who says it, in whatever context, it will turn into a shouting match no matter how many qualifiers or caveats you attach to it, and we simply don’t need it, because all it does is polarize the tribal nature of the climate debate even further.
To Delingpole, take a cue from Dave Roberts at Grist: fix it and apologize. To Mann, Romm, and others, clean up your own house before taking your outrage further.
James took that as me suggesting that he should apologize to Dr. Michael Mann. No, I’d never make such a silly suggestion, because while Dr. Mann does have a right to be upset at what Mr. Delingpole wrote, as is typical of Dr. Mann, he took the issue, made it his own, inflated it, ran with it, and added his own brand of specially seasoned Team Outrage Sauce to it:
Should we be surprised at this inflation of Delingpole’s Godwin’s Law rhetorical flourish to “calling for my murder”? No, not at all, because Dr. Mann is quite good at taking small insignificant bits and turning them into issues, it’s what he does as his hockey stick critics will tell you.
But here’s where I think James missed a critical point, and that might be my fault for not making it clearer in my initial essay. I think my mistake was dashing off my original essay too quickly, which left some things open to interpretation.
I wasn’t suggesting James apologize to Dr. Mann, nooo, I was suggesting that James apologize to climate skeptics.
Why? Well, consider what goes on in the climate blogosphere on an almost daily basis. Since AGW proponents are having a hard time successfully arguing the science these days, what with the pause, climate sensitivity, IPCC modeling -vs- reality and other issues not working out like they hope, and with the public cooling their interest, AGW proponents rely more and more on rhetorical tricks to make their points. We see more and more hyperventilated media claims of every bit of odd weather being caused by global warming, only later to discover they are nothing but hype. We see desperately silly claims of “anything goes” when it comes to connecting AGW to weather, where no matter what the forecast and result, the unseen hand of AGW is to blame.
But, probably the most desperate examples being used by AGW proponents are the execrable tactics pioneered by Dr. Stephan Lewandowski of the University of Western Australia and his sidekick John Cook of Skeptical Science. Their tactic is the same as what was once employed in the communist USSR, a political abuse of psychiatry: paint your opponent as being mentally aberrant.
And, it is we individual climate skeptics who are the ones having to fight those rhetorical battles in the blogospheric trenches. We’ll now be in a defensive position over Delingpole’s article.
My issue with James Delingpole simply had to do with handing our opponents another tool to beat us up rhetorically with. When they want to use a broad brush to paint all climate skeptics as nutters, the last thing you want to do is indulge their fantasy by invoking Godwin’s Law, giving them rhetorical ammo that they’ll re-purpose and fire back at us. One thing I’ve learned is that climate extremists have no shame, they’ll take any issue and throw it back at us with wildly inflated claims, just look at Dr. Mann’s tweet above to see this in action.
In his letter to me James wrote that:
As a scientist you are inevitably going to think this is all about the science. it isn’t – and as I documented very carefully in Watermelons – it never was.
No, I’ve never thought that. While James and I fight the battle using different tools at our disposal, we both know that that battle lines of global warming/climate change are constantly blurred between science and politics. Some days they are entirely interchangeable as Al Gore, James Hansen, Joe Romm, Kevin Trenberth, Michael Mann, and Bill McKibben routinely demonstrate to us.
I simply think we shouldn’t hand our opponents new weapons (such as Godwin’s Law eruptions) that they will inevitably use against us; it just isn’t a good strategy. For those in the blogospheric trenches who will now be forced to defend Mr. Delingpole against hyperinflated claims of “calling for my murder” like Dr. Mann has made, I think Delingpole should offer a simple mea culpa to them for the extra difficulties they will now face in the battle.
James also wrote this in his letter to me:
We’re free and open in expressing our differences. Compare and contrast the way, for example, after Gleickgate the greens/alarmists throughout the blogosphere and the MSM pretty much closed ranks and got behind Gleick regardless of the gravity of his crime. Our side would just never do that. If any one of us was involved in serious malfeasance like identity theft, we’d be quick to condemn it.
Indeed we would, we police our own, which is why I’m pointing out this Godwin’s Law instance to James.
James does make some very good (and entertaining) rhetorical points though about the eco-oriented left , and you can read about them in his book: Watermelons: The Green Movement’s True Colors
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Anthony
Was it a communications problem?
“My point is, no matter who says it, in whatever context, it will turn into a shouting match no matter how many qualifiers or caveats you attach to it, and we simply don’t need it, because all it does is polarize the tribal nature of the climate debate even further.
To Delingpole, take a cue from Dave Roberts at Grist: fix it and apologize. To Mann, Romm, and others, clean up your own house before taking your outrage further.”
—————————————-
“To Delingpole, take a cue from Dave Roberts at Grist: fix it and apologize.”
You didn’t say what to fix nor to whom he should apologize.
Your next words:
“To Mann, Romm, and others”, …………..
It may have been how the lines were laid together that caused confusion.
I very well could have missed the rest of that sentence and started my response, immediately.
Game over, Buddy.
In a letter from a friend being told that somehow apologizing “To Mann, Romm, and others” would “fix it“. No way. I’m not apologizing.
Let’s hope I’m right.
cn
Anthony, that’s how it struck me when I first read it.
cn
REPLY: Yes, as I point out, I probably dashed this essay off too quickly, then I didn’t allow comments, because I was irritated that we had to go down this road again and I was in no mood for moderating the usual OTT comments last Sunday while at home with my family. The juxtaposition of those sentences wasn’t as well delineated as it should have been. – Anthony.
To James and Anthony:-
“While you’re out there smashing the *****s , don’t forget to keep a smile on your lips and a song in your heart!”
The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers
I have sometimes referred to Warmists’ crimes against humanity. This is not meant as an ad hominem, I mean it. >>> Food to fuel, fraud, energy poverty, UK excess winter deaths etc.
Fixed!
/pedant
A point that may well be missed is that there is the “2 countries separated by a common language” issue. It is often not understood that the two nations are also separated by emotional response to events. Even for those of us with feet in both camps it can occasionally lead to unexpected reactions and unintentional upsets. So one has to be extremely careful with use of metaphor – an analogy that would perhaps lead to a wry smile in a reader in UK could trigger a vitriolic response in the USA although more often it is merely polite bafflement. James’ original piece was written for an Australian audience who tend to be – shall we say – less subtle, so the last lines of his article were relatively measured for that audience. Unfortunately, these days people of the celebrity of James and Anthony cannot expect their writings to be confined to a particular audience and so were read worldwide. Nevertheless, I think James was somewhat taken aback about the way some of his readers started “throwing their toys out of their cots [cribs]”.
However, leaving epistemological theory for a while. In UK energy prices have ‘necessarily sky rocketed’ ™ leaving many people in energy poverty, to the extent that “According to official figures, an additional 2,500 people died in the fortnight ending March 15 than the average over the same period in the past five years. ”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/9955587/Deaths-rise-10pc-in-freezing-weather.html
The reason that two thousand five hundred more people died than usual in a fortnight in UK was that claims of global warming have been used to cripple the fossil fueled power generation infrastructure while ‘green energy’ schemes put up useless windmills at a cost of over £18 Billion ($27Billion) a year in subsidies paid for by the electricity consumers some of whom are now dead. The people currently getting so upset about imagined slights and insults and Godwin’s law etc., need to realize that real people are actually dying because of the claims of global warming – this is not metaphor or analogy it is unpleasant fact. I believe that the relatives and friends of those people who died in energy poverty and of the others who are still having to choose between eating or heating but survived this time, have the right to be quite direct in their use of epithets for ‘people’ who profit from false claims of global warming.
Punch each other in the nose then buy each other a beer. Then move on. I don’t think this topic deserves another space in either of yours blogs.
REPLY: Agreed, I don’t plan any other essays on it – Anthony
I think that Anthony has a point when he says that AGW alarmists will attempt to use James’s piece as a stick to beat us. However, if that’s true then Anthony has added to their armoury.
Can’t you just see Dr Mann trumpeting to all who will listen – ‘Even that well known climate sceptic Anthony Watts has condemned Delingpole’s murderous outburst’?
REPLY: Since I’m critical of Dr. Mann in this and in the other essay, and because his ego is so large that The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has to put out orange road cones ahead of him when he travels, I doubt that he will link to/cite the piece. 😉 – Anthony
It matters little what we say. Hansen, Mann and schellnhuber are paid by the state to give the state excuses for taxation and control, not to advance science. Hansen for instance has done his best to destroy knowledge about the temperature history, not advance it.
The Hansens, Manns and Schellnhubers will continue to get paid by the state for this; the state-owned media will continue to spout their drivel, reality alone will be the judge; over the pseudoscience as well as over the Keynesian state.
At the moment it looks like the Keynesian state will fall BEFORE the pseudoscience.
Can’t we let Delingpole be Delingpole which seems to be the point of his response? The Lewandowsky stuff is something different all together in my mind.
We do seem to be in a contentious mood this weekend. Let’s keep that aimed at the other side.
Anthony, Leave Delingpole alone.
Let him do his (excellent) work and you do your (excellent too) own.
You do not have to defend him, he can do it by himself, but most important, as already been said above, the CAWG crowd does not need any post or “godwin’s law” to resort to name calling, bullying or just plain whining, anything one says is enough.
Since as you said, this is not just about science but also about politics, let Delingpole mend to that part.
Also. I believe the proper response to crybaby remarks like Mann’s is complete ignorance.
Let him wail. It is just pathetic.
Godwin’s Law is irrelevant nonsense and nothing more than an attempt at censorship. To be clear it’s nothing more than mindless drivel. If one can’t make comparisons with the prime example of the Nazis when appropriate one is being denied freedom of speech by a silly made up “law”. I give zero credence to “Godwin’s Law” as it is merely a device to end the conversation by invoking Godwin’s Censorship Law.
You can’t control the climate debates. Get over it (sound familiar?)
PS: I agree with “pwl”, just above.
Some want to beat them with data while others want to beat them with a stick..
I say nothing but the best for our climate con men and women..
They surly deserve both..
Lets not forget that reality always was the ace in the hole in this political battle..
Betting on the weather / climate to get the public to fund your political movement through taxes.
Breaks about every democratic funding election law there is. Our tax dollars used to deceive and bribe their way into power..
A very sad state of affairs..
War is Hell. Currently, we Skeptics/Climate Realists are winning, thanks in large part to Mother Nature, and to the actual Truth getting out to the public, thanks to WUWT and others. Their tactic of choice now seems to be one of playing the “victim”. So be it. I imagine most will see through it, though. The enemy needs to be crushed ruthlessly, while they are down.
Anthony or James? Sorry, but I choose both. As someone who’s been writing for a living for the better part of three decades in all manner of fora, from newspapers to deliberately inflammatory political blogs to blancmange briefing papers to scholarly academic journals, I’m much less exercised by this non-issue than most other folks seem to be. Anthony and James are fighting the same war, but with different weapons and, hence, tactics. This does not necessarily render either approach less valid or less useful any more than swooping Walpolisms make Christopher Monckton’s eye-wateringly trenchant essays any less beneficial a contribution to our common cause. Steve McIntyre’s work is made no less readable or necessary by its (to we non-mathematicians) impenetrably dense statistical analyses; as with Monckton, this is his voice, and thus he thunders.
James is a columnist, a professional scribbler plying his flourishes in the ancient bastion of the English language. No thinking person perusing his original piece would reasonably have assumed that he was advocating mass judicial execution for those with whom he disagrees. He used the term “Nuremburg” because it is a recognizable metaphor in our common tongue. He might just as well, and perhaps more accurately, have called for a climatic “Truth and Reconciliation Commission”, save that the resultant scratching of low foreheads would have showered the darker corners of the internet with dandruff. That the warmist mafia (oops, there’s another metaphor! I presume we can all agree that I’m not actually accusing Mann et al. of being lupara-toting mobsters from the Sicilian hinterland?) might selectively cite and deliberately distort the content of his pieces in the same manner that they selectively cite and distort observational evidence should come as a surprise to none. They will do so no matter how milquetoast our declamations. He would be a fool to allow such fears to crimp his style. One does not eschew a well-crafted weapon out of fear that it might be used against you.
I say, Fight on, the pair of you, but choose your targets with care. Intramural scuffles are a waste of energy, and I beg you, as two of our finest marksmen, to reserve your straightest shafts for the enemy. The game is yet afoot. Our foes may be shaken but they are still feisty, the more so as they now can hear the gusts of incontrovertible observational evidence rattling the bare branches of their models and their grants. For those of us who understand the link between cheap energy and civilization, there’s a world to win.
Gaia willing, after the scoundrels have been routed and the battle won, we’ll all meet in the pub for a beer – room-temperature and flat, or ice-cold and hypercarbonated, as per one’s particular cultural predilection. In refreshment as in argument, difference is not venom but variety.
It would be derelict to not invoke the Nazi analogy to describe the totalitarian movement that is underway, of which CAGW is a central pillar.
Delingpole uses hyperbole to attract attention to his arguments in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson uses it to make his points on ‘Top Gear’, However, Clarkson is only trying to entertain and succeeds in doing so, Delingpole is trying to make serious points and in his case hyperbole weakens his position. Of course that’s only my opinion and we all have different ones so surely there’s no need for this argument to continue. So kiss and make up, chaps, eh?
Can’t see what this is about. James never asked for a nuremburg trial much less any death sentences, so what? Exactly what is the weapon he is supposed to have put in the “enemies” (sic) hands?
We all know Mann is a nutter and his reactions is symptomatic to his followers. That doesn’t fault mr Delingpole.
Anthony,
I am one of the ‘climate sceptics’ to whom you think James should apologise and although I have great respect for both of you and I share your view that what James said was inflammatory, I don’t see how he has done anything for which that he needs to apologise. So what if he demonstrated Godwin’s law? Is that taboo? How is Godwin’s law a ‘trap’ as you described it?
Is James ‘trapped’ now as a result of having demonstrated it? I think not. Yes, Mann has reacted with typical misconceived outrage by falsely accusing James of calling for his murder (a charge which can easily be seen to be false by anyone who takes the trouble to read James’s article with their eyes open – evidently Mann didn’t do that). But as far as I am aware Mann didn’t express any outrage specifically because James compared him to a Nazi (something else which anyone can see he didn’t do either just by reading his article properly).
REPLY: Get back to me the next time you get into an argument on this subject at some other venue where we all get painted with the issue. – Anthony
Much as I mostly like Delingpole’s wit, you are right about this one. The whole thrust of the alarmist position is the opposite of true scientists. They seek every spurious reason to discourage anyone from looking at anything that will challenge their beliefs. Accusations, however much we might think they are justified, will be magnified. Lewandowskys linking skeptics with conspiracy theorists, or Desmogblog’s claims about secret funding, or pejorative epithets.
The skeptics will continue to win the argument if people are encouraged to independently test the hypotheses against actual evidence, look for alternative explanations, evaluate the strength of the evidence for CAGW and put the data or theories in proper context.
It would have been a really good idea for you not to comment on JD’s article. You are being a little precious.
We’re in a battle for the survival of technical civilization. No quarter.
I’m surprised that Godwin’s Law dates as far back as 1990.
I have no memories of the internet back then and understood that the Interweb only came into being around 1993.
“Online” back then had no meaning, there could have been no more than a few bashing away at the Arpernet like a glorified CB radio, but was this not confined to geeky University types hiding from the rugby club, and the military?
JohnS said:
“…I would have to say that i think Godwin’s law is nonsense. The second world war, especially nazis is one of the only areas of common ground one can invoke. While it is still (almost) true that everyone agrees on Nazism one ought to be able to use it as an analogy in arguments. Godwin’s law is really just a petulant attempt to limit discussion, by people with a desire to equivocate….”
and I agree with him. Godwin’s law is dangerous nonsense. It depends on a shared assumption by all parties that Hitler’s rule in Germany was something so exceedingly bad that it is in a different league from all other human evil, and that it should never be referred to.
I have news for humanity. Hitler wasn’t so incredibly evil that he must be considered to be in a different league. Humans do the sort of things he did to other humans all the time, and there have been many incidents of similar atrocities in history. A google on ‘genocide’ will soon show you that’ while Hitler’s death camps were chillingly orderly processes, they have certainly had their equals before and since.
Furthermore, the evil which gripped Germany in the 1930s started, as these things often do, at a low level and worked its way up. Many of the laws and justifications for wars which we are currently experiencing in the West were also part of the build-up to the Nazi regime – and many other regimes of equal horror which we do not wish to experience. We should be free to discuss this issue dispassionately – to consider how illiberal we wish to be, and to recognise that human societies are ALWAYS in danger of slipping over the line, and constant vigilance is needed. This sort of discussion simply cannot exist if someone can just say:
“You’re comparing this law to one the Nazis passed – therefore you are defined as having lost the argument”
Godwin’s law is a tongue-in-cheek byword – like Murphy’s law. It has some truth in it – the person who complains that a librarian charging an overdue book fine is ‘like Hitler’ is obviously not best placed to win the argument – but for Anthony to raise this jocular point to the level of an immutable law is excessive exaggeration and, I feel, fighting the wrong battle.