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
“Godwin’s Law” itself is a very dangerous thing in that it teaches people to ignore fascistic moments when they do happen in a mistaken belief that the experiences of the 1930’s and 1940’s are unique and unrepeatable. They are neither. So when someone claims, like Al Gore, that “the niceties of democracy” needs to be suspended to save the species, or when someone claims skeptics should be “tried for crimes against humanity,” there is nothing wrong with pointing out the fascistic qualities of that. As the Sherlock inspired meme states, “No, I’m not insulting you. IO’m describing you.”
All anyone has to do is spend some time reading the material produced by the Earth First! wing of the environmental movement to discover they fit every definition of a fascist movement, up to and including advocating violence and a rejection of rationality. Sadly, that kind of junk has been more repeated than criticized among the more mainstream elements on the other side, who have often said that they “admire the passion” of the Earth First! types.
Sometimes, principled people have to call them as they see them. Churchill did that all through the 1930’s and was derided as a hateful war monger for it. Today he is seen as a hero and as one of the few who understood what was at stake. Are any of us so sure Delingpole has mis-identified our opponents?
So far the wrong way that I don’t even know where to start.
1) “Godwin’s Law” isn’t a law, it’s a censorship tool.
2) Mann’s comment is what should be being illuminated here; basically, pointing out how bad he is at drawing reasonable conclusions from available data as DP didn’t “call for his murder”.
3) There’s no difference (other than someone hasn’t named it) between comparisons of Nazis and comparisons of communism. If the analogy fits; use it (just as Anthony compared The Lew to the communist propaganda machine).
4) Since, the AGW extremists invoked the “Big Lie”; thereby proclaiming they are Nazis to anyone familiar with history, any possible “Godwin’s Law” protection from being called a Nazi is null and void.
5) All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing because they yielded to nonsensical made up laws.
In the long-run, temperatures will silence the debate.
In the long-run, history books will be written about this debate.
Its usually better to be right and on the winning side when the history books are written.
And its usually better in the long-run, to maintain the high road and be a good person.
If the climate scientists are wrong, which is increasingly looking to be the truth with every day that passes, the history books will not be kind to them. A few scientists will have their own chapters.
What I like about James is he is really good at shaking his opponents out of their comfort zone.
Far too long, alarmists have been using blatantly insulting, biased, vicious tactics, as a show of STRENGTH. Only the dominant, the bully, gets to throw their weight around – everyone else has to just sit back and take it, while wittering on about how unfair their opponents are.
Sometimes its good to put the bully in his place – to pop the bully on the nose, so to speak.
The reason I believe Mann and others reacted so strongly to James’ article is, in their hearts, they know they are losing. They know their bully act doesn’t wash anymore. And they don’t like it.
There is no purpose to arguing if the subject of the discussion is not commonly agreed upon. In the case of climate change, the watermelon side is that human civilization is inherently immoral and requires authoritarian control to effect the desired outcome. They believe that production in excess of need is inherently evil. They believe that wealth is an outrage and that capitalism is theft.
Opponents of the watermelon side presume despite all evidence to the contrary that because the watermelon side speaks the language of science that discussion is possible. This is why opponents of the watermelon side are surprised over the support of jihadist Islam over the Christian right, are surprised at the eviction of native people for carbon offsets, or even surprised at the silence over the latest outrageous behavior of the authoritarian government of the week.
The watermelon side understands that their beliefs are not and never will be in the majority. They understand that baldly stating their objectives will always result in their defeat at the ballot box. They understand that the only elections that they win are those that are rigged by fraud or sold by deception.
Until we are willing to admit and discuss the fact that the watermelon cause produces widespread human suffering and death, we are on the defensive. By trying to win by logic, we are denying ourselves the most effective offensive weapon we have.
Delingpole is entirely correct. We are fighting Nazis. Godwin’s law does not apply.
Godwins Law is so 1990s. The modern Internet is a vicious nasty place. And the enemies of freedom deserve to be kicked in the teeth (metaphorically).
Mike Mangan, 4-14 at 11.00am,
“Your’e up against thieves, charlatans, and bitter misanthropes who would blithely ruin millions of lives if they had their way. Stay in their face, never back down, meet them wherever you find them with clenched jaw and closed fist. Mock them, berate them, and spit on their views. I’ve seen nothing in seven years of following this that makes me think they deserve otherwise.”
Due to limited computer access because I’m in the midst of moving, I haven’t had a chance to read all the comments above. But my sentiments are the same as Mike Mangan. Michael Mann and friends are continuing to promote the biggest, costliest and perhaps deadliest hoax in the history of mankind. They deserve nothing but condemnation. And I totally agree with James Delingpole’s piece – the words and the sentiments.
[snip – fake name, fake email address, policy violation Mr. Petrie – mod]
Anthony’s objection to Delingpole’s article is that it gives ammunition to those who would denigrate non-believers in AGW. So what has actually happened?
Apart from Mann’s tweet, what has the response been from “that side”?
So far as I can tell, absolutely nothing.
I looked at the sites listed on WUWT as pro-AGW, as well as ScepticalScience (nothing), DeSmogBolgs, and Greg Laden (which I recall from exchanges here). I do not know the full extent of such sites. Of all of these, only Tamino and DeSmogBlog mention this issue. And in a way that is as much defensive as anything. Judging from comments, or lack of them, the interest is as close to zero as is possible.
The idea that this is a unhelpful development is wrong. This is a non-issue in that way.
This accords with my first response when having read the article, and then seen Mann’s tweet reproduced here, the immediate impression was of someone exaggerating to a an easily seen fraudulent degree.
My strong sense since, is that no-one on “that side” wants the word “murder” brought up.
Because people are DEAD. They have been KILLED by policies adopted directly and undeniably because of the agendas of identifiable people.
If any of those people can be shown to have distorted and misrepresented the truth or lied or falsified data or results – and they can – whether they be “scientists”, “journalists”, “activists” or any other, they ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THOSE DEATHS. And they must be held fully to account.
Looking at the sites mentioned above, having gone to them from here, was something of a surprise, even a shock. There is no-one there. This issue is FINISHED.
All the noise is now from a tiny group of those reacting out of habit, profiteers, the beneficeries of structural advantage, those exposed by previous actions, and zealots.
The back up “supporters” will still affirm, but outside those effectively mentally infirm, there will be little energy behind this. This has not been an intellectual commitment by many. For those for whom it has been, it is impossible to deny that there are at the least major holes in this theory.
Mostly, support has come from those who just believe. This is an absolute condition. If they have any reason to doubt, it is over in entirety for them. They are now at that point.
Anyone capable of reading Delingpole’s article, who is not already irredeemably on “that side” cannot fail to understand the message and that it was not calling for the arbitrary killing of people he disagrees with.
Mann, by trying to ramp this up into “murder” has just lost a significant proportion of literate people. He has demonstrated crudity of either comprehension or expression. And/or the obvious attempt at manipulation. This will not go down at all well at dinner parties.
It will now not just be all right but socially required that he be seen as somewhat unreliable.
Anthony, I think, is possibly viewing this from the bunkers of 5 years or so ago. Those days are over. It is now time to take photo’s of the corpses of those killed and shove them in the faces of those who would support this. Put it to them: are you responsible for this?
How did Dellers actually invoke Godwin’s Law?
His blog post does not mention Hitler or Nazis (Or make any comparison to the same), which is the necessary prerequisite for Godwin.
He offers Mann (metaphorical Mann) an electric chair (Murder she cried!) Moonbat gets a longer neck and Flannery walks like an (ancient) Egyptian into the crocodile tummy.
Dellers mentions Nuremburg twice. How does this short hand for International Military Tribunal
invoke Godwin’s Law? It is amusing that Mr Mann immediately concludes he would not get a fair trial!
Godwin’s “Law” is a reincarnation in the internet era of Leo Strauss’s caution to avoid
Reductio ad Hitlerum as support for an argument. So:
You want to ban use of animals in medical testing.
Hitler liked animals.
[snip]
I part ways with Dellers specifically on dreaming of a Climate Nuremberg,
We already have poor Climate science, we should not add poor justice.
Because someone had to post it…
http://xkcd.com/261/
Sorry, but when AGW fanatics act like Nazis and promote Nazi-like thinking, I think it’s entirely fair, and altogether obligatory, to call them out on it, “Godwin’s Law” notwithstanding. If you take “Godwin’s law” to its logical limit, you couldn’t call Hitler a Nazi.
Applying that term to the alarmies is fully justified by their tyrannical and patently racist (because it will harm people of color the most) agenda. It fits the Nazi model perfectly, right down to the new Holocaust it will bring about.
By their actions we shall know them.
Anthony, you are a far nicer man than me.
My father served in the Canadian Infantry against the Nazi’s, well into his 80’s he was still researching brainwashing and the use of child solders, in an attempt to understand the depravity he observed.
Lest we forget, the path that led to world war two, is one of the possible futures of our civil society, too much respect for law and legality is as, or more dangerous than too little.
What haunted my father was the fact that Germany was a civilized society, that fell into madness.
I respect your reservations about Delingpole’s language, but Goodwin’s Law is just an early expression of the gutting of our discourse via political correctness.
As for handing the activists another weapon to use against society, well they do seem to have a preference for self inflicted wounds. Given the teams ability to metaphorically shoot their own feet off, I would be uncomfortable trusting any of them with a real shotgun.
On a sarcastic note, we could end their entire campaign by handing them a real nuke.
Finally I fully support your decision to limit the political discussion of the CAGW abuse of science and reason, here on your blog.
You do great work here by shredding the facade of science the cause has hidden behind.
James says:
April 15, 2013 at 7:08 am
Until we are willing to admit and discuss the fact that the watermelon cause produces widespread human suffering and death, we are on the defensive. By trying to win by logic, we are denying ourselves the most effective offensive weapon we have.
Delingpole is entirely correct. We are fighting Nazis. Godwin’s law does not apply.
I echo your thoughts’
PS – I’m lovin the posting and comments, great stuff!
Alarmists have no cloak. Their actions are obvious, every time.
So, if they act like “little Eichmanns” ( academic Ward Churchill’s term) we should stand up, point to their behavior and compare their actions. Explain how what they demand be done will lead to huge problems and major damage.
If what they’re doing will put families out of work we need to show the suffering.
Be it starving children around the world or killing raptors here at home we need to be as graphic as they would be in our position.
That’s how they play.
Remember it’s not their minds we need to change….it’s the people and they don’t do science.
The game is emotion and PR is how is how it’s played.
cn
First post ever on WUWT, and possibly the last …
In reply to Hilary Ostrov 🙂 – I can assure you Hilary that Bernard Keane is a non-entity on the Australian scene, whom I had never heard of before; presumably he is well known to the Melbourne left-wing twitterati, whose peculiar view of the world is likely to suffer a spectacular reality check come election day 2013.
imho Dellers is in the right in this contretemps, and Anthony you are in the wrong – simple as that. Leave him alone to contribute to the fight in his own effective style, while you continue using your very different but also valid softly-softly approach. If anyone is owed an apology it is Dellers – from you.
Sorry to be late to this sequel but:
At which point you won the argument hands down for me Anthony. Thank you for everything you do for the integrity and good sense of the skeptic cause.
Don’t forget that Michael Mann claimed you were on the pay of “Big Oil” because you gave him a $15 calendar. He will manipulate anything to try and make his enemies look bad, since that is all he can do.
Armagh Observatory says:
April 14, 2013 at 1:42 pm
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?
Your memory is too short. Before there was the world wide web there was usenet newsgroups and email. There were also dial-up computer bulletin boards that hosted chat rooms and electronic rantings of many forms (from which rantings Godwin drew is “law”) and “gateways” to the internet. W3 has simply displaced the many other tools that were out there. Email and usenet (the alt.hypertext newsgroup in fact) were critical to initiating the use of W3 on the internet. The Domain Name Service and TCP/IP all had to be functioning before W3 could be used. You could only acquire W3 code or binaries with FTP unless you begged someone to send it on floppies, or use a series of attachments to emails that could be reassembled into a single file and recombined and compiled. Archie, Gopher, WAIS and Veronica were key internet research tools now obsolete. You could even delve into Library of Congress holdings using them.
That should read “Godwin drew his “law”…
I’ve read JD’s two responses, plus the opening paragraph. from his Australian piece (couldn’t get around the paywall), and I have to say that I mostly agree w/ him.
Anthony’s first & biggest mistake is that he apparently misunderstands Godwin’s Law. It is value-neutral – it merely states that the probability of someone in a debate invoking Hitler, Nazi-ism, etc, approaches unity the longer the debate continues. It says nothing about whether this is good or bad. Which begs the question: Why shouldn’t a WWII comparison be made, if it’s appropriate, as JD’s was? JD was extremely careful to qualify his arguments. Mann has no basis for any objection, let alone his lurid claim of [judicial] murder, although I do find his and other warmers’ whining about it deliciously hypocritical, given their frequent calls to make climate realism a capital crime.
I stated above that I mostly agree w/ Delingpole. His position is completely defensible, but it would have been more so had he caveated his Climate Nuremberg statement (even though he was careful to call it a metaphor) with a simple “As has been proposed repeatedly by the warmistas, perhaps Climate Nuremberg trials should be convened for this cynical cabal . . .”
If you want to read Delingpole’s article you should be able to get to it here – without circumventing the paywall
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/deluged-with-flannery-and-covered-with-viner/story-e6frgd0x-1226611185281
I’m with Delingpole on this one
Ian H says: April 14, 2013 at 5:45 pm
Good point about societies having internal mechanisms that calm things down. The discussion here is part of one of those mechanisms, I suppose.
I’m not so sure that a bunch of people put together do have such inborn mechansims, though. We tend to polarize each other and exacerbate the situation: we like to think we are individuals, so we tend to express ourselves slightly more strongly (the more alpha types, anyway) than the group average, to stand out, to make our point carry, to strengthen our self-image etc. etc. We also allow ourselves a certain amount of deviance from the norms of behaviour before we feel uneasy with ourselves. Once enough accept that deviance, it becomes the norm, but since we still accept a slight deviance from the norm, we step it up a notch. I’ve seen this behaviour in many places on the small scale, things that went from harmless kidding to bullying in college dorms to outrageous strange behaviour in isolated geological field parties (trying to blow up down in their holes gophers with JP4, white gas and bear-flares).
The more we talk to just our friends or even ourselves, the more extreme our positions become. As someone said, we don’t know what we think until we say it out loud.
Godwin’s Rule is a warning from a specific case about how we get ourselves offside. George Bush’s “you’re with us or you’re against us” speech probably came from such a place, where agitated angry people raged with other angry, agitated people about doing something now, damnit, not later, yesterday as a matter of fact ….
It takes courage and insight to stop the spring from being wound up. I’d say it is a feature of what we are and how we intereact. If so, it is something we should all become aware of and build in, not expect there already is a build in capacity to calm things down.
@ur momisugly Doug Proctor says:
April 16, 2013 at 5:03 pm
The substance of what you say is reasonable. As a call to prudence before jumping to conclusions or exercising limited understandings, it has credibility and utility.
But some things demand being “wound up” about. There are people dead from AGW policy applications. Killed. That is not something to be calm about. It is not something to equivocate about.
These are facts. Not debatable. The only thing debatable is the level of culpability of individuals in this. This has not been a “mistake”. Actions have been taken in the full knowledge of their implications.
Any call for “moderation” in viewing this is a statement of moral cowardice and is in fact essentially complicity. It is to be an apologist.
Things happen that are beyond the pale. Not to face that and deal with it is the definition of degeneracy, not civilized moderation.
To demand that one side remain civil while the other side demagogues at will is to ignore the lessons of the 1930s. Educated Germans did not believe that their highly cultured country could ever fall into the madness promoted by the Nazis. They believed reasoned debate would win the day. They were wrong.
Most humans are emotional creatures and demagogues throughout history have known this and exploited it. Normally reasonable humans can be transformed into a mob quickly with the right persuasion. Demagoguery is in fact the Achilles Heel of democracy, which is why the American Founding Fathers built a constitutional republic, not a democracy.
In my view, as admirable as he is, Anthony misunderstands the nature of this whole CAGW issue. The warmistas do not view this as a polite debating society exercise, but as war. They do not deal in reason, but rather in raw emotion, scare tactics, and demagoguery. People and nations suffer harm from it. They must be defeated. Dellers fights back and good on him.