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Democrats still embrace their slavemaster roots– The party of slavery, segregation and the Klan now runs eco-slavery operations by Paul Driessen

Published October 21, 2021 | By campconstitution

History isn’t always quite what’s portrayed in popular culture or taught today in schools, especially regarding racial politics. Do your kids know the Republican Party was formed in 1854 to keep slavery out of new American territories? Or that for over a century Republicans battled Democrats who supported slavery and segregation, poll taxes, pre-vote “literacy” tests, Jim Crow and Ku Klux Klan terrorism?

Today, Democrats and their media, social media, teacher union, Black Lives Matter and “mostly peaceful” Antifa rioter allies advance 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory (CRT) claims that America was founded on racism and is still plagued by systemic racism – while hiding, whitewashing and rewriting the Democrat Party’s long, sordid role.

Commentators accurately observe, “This is not your parents’ Democrat Party.” Indeed. The Democrat Party now embraces some of the most radical, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, anti-energy, America-bashing elements in American history. A favorite tactic is “greenwashing” policies with assertions that Democrats are “saving the Earth” from climate change and other purported environmental disasters.

Their power grabs recently led an African-American Democrat California Assemblyman to say these policies “systematically drive racial economic inequities and fuel environmental racism,” by constantly and repeatedly increasing energy costs for poor and minority families and businesses.

It’s not rocket science. Ban leasing, drilling, fracking, pipelines and coal use, as the Biden-Harris team is doing – and energy prices skyrocket as supplies dwindle. Since the 2020 election, crude oil prices have doubled, to over $80 a barrel, and US gasoline is up more than a dollar a gallon. Families that heat with natural gas could pay up to 50% more this winter than last year.

That’s still well below Europe’s Green Madness prices, but congressional Democrats continue to push “clean power” fantasies that would eradicate secure, reliable, affordable US energy – and the Biden-Harris Administration could unilaterally impose numerous equally destructive measures. And for what?

A recent study in Nature calculated that reducing US carbon dioxide emissions 95% by 2050 would have an annual price tag greater than what America spent in 2019 on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid combined: nearly 12% of our Gross Domestic Product – $11,300 per person per year! Meanwhile, China, India and 100 other countries will continue using fossil fuels and emitting prodigious amounts of plant-fertilizing CO2. Net climate benefits? Somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.06 to 0.30 degrees F by 2100!

Moreover, this entire energy-and-climate-crisis charade is based on the assumption, the assertion that – after countless millions of years of natural climate change – every climate and weather fluctuation and aberration today is due to fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions. The Democrat ruling class and its government-funded “scientist” acolytes have models but no actual data or evidence to back up their claims.

But they don’t need any, because pressure groups, the media and academia endlessly repeat and validate their unfounded claims – and cancel, silence, deplatform and defund alternative viewpoints and evidence. Meanwhile, their corporate collaborators rake in billions in taxpayer subsidies and guaranteed loans.

Climate change is their ticket to controlling our livelihoods and living standards: they as our masters, we as their servants – with no accountability for their mistakes and lies, or the damage and death they cause.

Wags like Dave Chappelle would be banished if they suggested that the Master Race has devolved into the Master Party. But today’s Democrats are the most radical in Congressional and Executive Branch history. Egged on by even more radical activists, they truly think they’re smarter than the rest of us, and were ordained to rule us unwashed masses, employing all the powers of centralized government.

The way they see it, we and our states and communities must simply accept our new subservient status, our lost personal freedoms, our reduced living standards – and the overseas child and slave labor and environmental desecration that Green New Deal technologies are inflicting.

40,000 Congolese children as young as four already labor alongside their parents – for slave wages, under constant threats of cave-ins and exposure to toxic mud, dust and water – to mine the cobalt needed for electric vehicle and backup batteries. The ore is sent to China for processing in plants with equally abominable safety and pollution conditions.

Rare earth mining and processing in Inner Mongolia has destroyed agriculture, created a vast toxic dump, and brought life-threatening health issues to workers and residents. China also uses thousands of Uighur slave laborers to manufacture solar panels for sale to the US and EU.

John Kerry doesn’t think Uighur slavery should affect America’s climate strategy – and Democrat California legislators voted down a bill requiring that the state certify that electric vehicles sold there must be free of any materials or components involving child labor. Certification would cost too much and imperil state climate goals, they said.

Fair Trade and Fair Wages are vital for T-shirts, coffee and sneakers. But ignore them for Green Tech.

Green New Deal schemes would multiply these human rights abuses many times over. They would make the US dangerously dependent on an increasingly belligerent China for “green” metals and minerals.

Worse, Democrat overseer roots have metastasized into a global cancer that infects government programs, foreign aid and financial institutions, with often deadly results. It is eco-imperialism – Green power that brings widespread Black death.

People desperately seeking better health and lives in Africa, Asia and Latin America are told any US and Western help will be limited to what radical activists determine is ecological and climate friendly.

Improve your living standards, the Masters say, but only to degrees that can be supported by wind and solar power – not by fossil fuels, nuclear or even hydroelectric power. Our banks and other institutions will approve and finance only land-intensive, wildlife-killing, raw materials-hungry “renewable” energy.

Improve your agricultural productivity and crop yields – but only through agro-ecology. Modern herbicides, insecticides, fertilizers and even tractors must be banned. Stoop labor will reign supreme.

Reduce malaria and yellow fever – but only with bed nets and “integrated pest management.” Larvacides and insecticides, or DDT to keep mosquitoes out of homes for months with one spray – absolutely not.

Climate change will make summers hotter and winters colder; people will die. Wrong. With today’s housing and energy systems, people will do just fine – unless climate and energy policies take away their air conditioning and heating, ration them, make them unaffordable, or subject them to recurrent blackouts.

Americans “use too much” and “live too well,” they claim – so our overseers want to limit our homes to 640 square feet and “allow” us to fly on vacation or to see family only once every three years!

Bear in mind, all this is just the climate and energy cabal of the Democrat Master Party. Other equally loud, demanding, unaccountable elements want to defund the police, and disarm us as crime skyrockets. They’re indoctrinating our kids in CRT, gender fluidity, preferred pronouns, explicit sex, and far more.

Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe doesn’t think parents should have a say in what schools teach. (The UN Human Rights Declaration specifically says “parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.”) Attorney General Merrick Garland has a growing list of outspoken parents and other conservatives whom he and the National School Boards Association want investigated, harassed, prosecuted and even jailed as “domestic terrorists.” They embrace and impose seemingly endless totalitarian Covid mandates.

All this is why the 2021 Virginia elections are so critical: Glen Youngkin versus Terry McAuliffe, Winsome Sears vs. Hala Ayala for Lt. Governor, Jason Miyares vs. Mark Herring for AG, and dozens of senate and delegate seats. Other state elections two weeks hence are equally important. And the 2022 national elections will be a watershed moment in US history. Responsible voting is an absolute must.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.

Contact me: pkdriessen@gmail.com

Defending Christopher Columbus From Howard Zinn’s Lies

Published October 8, 2021 | By campconstitution

(Reposted by permission from the author)

The following excerpt is adapted from “Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation against America,” a recently published book by scholar Mary Grabar.

Howard Zinn rode to fame and fortune on the “untold story” of Christopher Columbus—a shocking tale of severed hands, raped women, and gentle, enslaved people worked to death to slake the white Europeans’ lust for gold.

Today, that story is anything but untold. Zinn’s narrative about the genocidal discoverer of America has captured our education system and popular culture. The defacement of statues of Columbus with red paint had already become an annual ritual in many places.

Zinn is the inspiration behind the current campaign to abolish Columbus Day and replace it with “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.” High school teachers cite his book in making the case for the renaming to their local communities. In October 2018, San Francisco, Cincinnati, and Rochester, New York, joined at least sixty other cities in replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Six states also do not recognize the holiday as Columbus Day.

Many articles reporting on this trend cited Howard Zinn’s role in the change in attitude.

Stanford anthropology Professor Carol Delaney, who was quoted in a Courthouse News Service article to provide a counter-narrative, informed reporters that Columbus acted on his Christian faith and instructed his crew to treat the native people with kindness. But such inconvenient facts are inevitably drowned out by the Columbus-hate that Howard Zinn has succeeded in spreading.

Presumably extrapolating from the “many volumes” he had read, Zinn found the inspiration for the dramatic opening sentences of “A People’s History of the United States”:

“Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island’s beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log: ‘They . . . brought us parrots and balls of cotton, and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells. They willingly traded everything they owned. . . . ’”

The quoted passage from Columbus’s log continues with Columbus’s description of the Arawaks. They are “well-built” and handsomely featured. Having never seen iron, they accidentally cut themselves on the Europeans’ swords when they touch them. The passage ends with Columbus’s now infamous words: “They have no iron. Their spears are made out of cane. . . . They would make fine servants. . . . With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

The ellipses in this passage are Zinn’s, not mine. Those omissions are essential to Zinn’s dishonest retelling of the Columbus story. By leaving crucial words out of the quotation, Zinn makes Columbus say something very different from what he actually said.

It’s unlikely that he even read as much of “Columbus’s journals” or the works of “Las Casas, the great eyewitness” as he claimed. The truth is that Zinn’s description of Columbus’s first encounter with the American Indians is lifted from “Columbus: His Enterprise: Exploding the Myth,” a book for high school students that Zinn’s friend and fellow anti-Vietnam War activist, Hans Koning, first published in 1976.

Zinn perpetuates Koning’s smears. In Koning’s telling and in Zinn’s, Columbus set out to enslave a uniformly gentle people for the sole purpose of enriching himself with gold. In fact, that is far from the truth. European efforts to find a sea route to Asia had been going on for hundreds of years. As William and Carla Phillips point out in “The Worlds of Christopher Columbus,” Columbus’s voyages of discovery were a continuation of Europeans’ ventures of sailing to Asia—at first, around Africa—that had begun in 1291. For centuries before Columbus, Portuguese and Spanish explorers had also ventured farther and farther out into the Atlantic Ocean.

Thus, Columbus’s mission was multi-faceted and inspired by several different motivations: “to reach the East Indies, so as to take Islam in the rear, and to effect an alliance with the Great Khan—a mythical personage who was believed to be the sovereign of all that region, and favorable to the Christian religion—and finally . . . to diffuse Christianity throughout that unknown continent and trade with the traditional sources of gold and spices.”

Desires to find new lands for more resources and to escape enemies and persecution are not impulses unique to Europeans. The natives of North America “in prehistoric times” themselves came from Asia and “crossed the land bridge across the Bering Strait to the lands of the Western Hemisphere.”

When he encountered naked natives instead of the Asian merchants he was expecting, Columbus did not jump to thoughts of working them to death for gold as Zinn, following Koning, suggests. For example, in his log entry for October 12, 1492, Columbus wrote, “I warned my men to take nothing from the people without giving something in exchange”—a passage left out by both Koning and Zinn.

But Zinn’s most crucial omissions are in the passage from Columbus’s log that he quotes in the very first paragraph of his People’s History. There he uses ellipses to cover up the fact that he has left out enough of Columbus’s words to deceive his readers about what the discoverer of America actually meant. The omission right before “They would make fine servants” is particularly dishonest. Here’s the nub of what Zinn left out: “I saw some who bore marks of wounds on their bodies, and I made signs to them to ask how this came about, and they indicated to me that people came from other islands, which are near, and wished to capture them, and they defended themselves. And I believed and still believe that they come here from the mainland to take them for slaves.”

In his translation of Columbus’s log, Robert Fuson discusses the context that Zinn deliberately left out:

“The cultural unity of the Taino [the name for this particular tribe, which Zinn labels “Arawaks”] greatly impressed Columbus…. Those who see Columbus as the founder of slavery in the New World are grossly in error. This thought occurred to [Samuel Eliot] Morison (and many others), who misinterpreted a statement made by Columbus on the first day in America, when he said, ‘They (the Indians) ought to be good servants.’ In fact, Columbus offered this observation in explanation of an earlier comment he had made, theorizing that people from the mainland came to the islands to capture these Indians as slaves because they were so docile and obliging.”

Zinn’s next ellipsis between “They would make fine servants” and “With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want” covers for Zinn’s dishonest pretense that the second statement has anything at all to do with the first. The sentences that Zinn joins here are not only not in the same paragraph—as he dishonestly pretends by printing them that way on the very first page of A People’s History— but they’re not even in the same entry of Columbus’s log. In fact, they’re from two days apart.

Zinn’s highly selective quotations from Columbus’s log are designed to give the impression that Columbus had no concern for the Indians’ spiritual or physical well-being—that the explorer was motivated only by a “frenzy for money.”

But literally the explorer’s first concern—the hope that he expressed in the initial comment about the natives in his log—was for the Indians’ freedom and their eternal salvation: “I want the natives to develop a friendly attitude toward us because I know that they are a people who can be made free and converted to our Holy Faith more by love than by force.”

Zinn just entirely omits the passage in which Columbus expresses his respect and concern for the Indians. Zinn also suppresses—and, where he doesn’t suppress, downplays— the evidence from even the sympathetic Las Casas that the Indians could be violent and cruel. Zinn has to admit that they were “not completely peaceful, because they do battle from time to time with other tribes.” But, like Koning, he is eager to explain their violent behavior away, arguing, “but their casualties seem small, and they fight when they are individually moved to do so because of some grievance, not on the orders of captains or kings.”

In Zinn’s telling, the Arawaks—or black slaves, or Cherokees, or New York Irish, or whoever—must always be persecuted innocents and the condemnation of their sufferings must be absolute. The officially oppressed cannot be blamed even for any crimes they themselves commit, which are inevitably the fault of their oppressors.

According to Zinn, there’s no such thing as objective history, anyway: “the historian’s distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interests, where any chosen emphasis supports (whether the historian means to or not) some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial or national or sexual.”

Once ideology has become a moral virtue, Zinn can discount standards of scholarship—such as those of the American Historical Association—as having to do with nothing more important than “technical problems of excellence”—standards of no importance compared to his kind of history, which consists in forging “tools for contending social classes, races, nations.”

Thus it would seem that the noble political purpose behind Zinn’s history justifies him in omitting facts that are inconvenient for his Columbus-bad-Indians-good narrative.

Debunking Howard Zinn is available from Regnery Publishing.

MORE: Howard Zinn’s Zingers

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Supreme Court Decides to Hear Camp Constitution’s Christian Flag Lawsuit

Published September 30, 2021 | By campconstitution

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court granted Liberty Counsel’s cert petition and will hear the case regarding the censorship of the Christian flag in Boston. The High Court will likely hear oral argument early next year with a decision expected by June 2022.Although the city of Boston created a public forum for private speakers to temporarily raise a flag on one of its poles and never censored any of the prior 284 applications, it censored the Camp Constitution’s flag during its Constitution Day event because the application referred to it as a “Christian flag.” Camp Constitution wanted to highlight the Christian Founders during the Constitution Day event. Without seeing the flag, Boston censored it solely because of the word “Christian” on the application. Boston took the position that it was permitted to censor the flag because it controlled the flag poles and it was government, not private speech. The lower court and the court of appeals ruled twice in favor of Boston. This case will resolve the issue of government versus private speech.

Liberty Counsel filed a lawsuit on behalf of Boston resident Hal Shurtleff and his Christian civic organization, Camp Constitution, arguing that the city of Boston violated the First Amendment by censoring a private flag in a public forum merely because the application form referred to the flag as a “Christian flag.”

Boston censored the religious viewpoint of Camp Constitution’s flag, which was to be raised for about an hour on September 17 in observance of Constitution Day, while supporters gathered around the flagpole. The flag was part of the ceremony to honor the Constitution and recognize the Christian Founders.

Never has Boston censored any flag until the Camp Constitution’s flag, which is white with a blue square in the upper corner and a red cross. The flag contains no writing. Under oath, the city official testified the flag would have been approved if the application did not refer to it as a “Christian flag.” The word “Christian” on the application alone triggered the censorship. The official said he had never heard of a “Christian flag” until Camp Constitution’s application. Therefore, his testimony revealed that if Camp Constitution had not referred to the flag on the application with the word “Christian,” it would not have been censored.

The city refers to its flagpole as a “public forum” and allows private organizations to temporarily raise their own flags on the flagpoles. The city of Boston’s website even states the goals for flag raising events include, “We commemorate flags from many countries and communities at Boston City Hall Plaza. We want to create an environment in the city where everyone feels included.”

The city has even attempted to argue its flagpoles are used for private flag raisings only “15% of the time.” However, since the city has designated it as a “public forum,” this argument is useless since the city’s documented “public forums for all applicants” policy has resulted in a 100 percent approval rate, or 284 flag raisings by private organizations over the course of twelve years, except for the Christian flag.

Other flags raised on the city’s flagpole include the Turkish flag (which depicts the Islamic star and crescent) and the Portuguese flag (which uses religious imagery). City officials have also never denied the “messages” communicated by the “Chinese Progressive Association,” the rainbow flag of Boston Pride, and a “transgender” pink and blue flag. The flags of private community groups include Albania, Brazil, Ethiopia, Italy, Panama, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, as well as of Communist China and Cuba. No flag was ever denied until the city denied the flag of Camp Constitution.

Shurtleff and Camp Constitution first asked the city in 2017 for a permit to raise the Christian flag on Boston City Hall flagpoles to commemorate Constitution Day (September 17) and the civic and cultural contributions of the Christian community to the city of Boston, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, religious tolerance, the Rule of Law and the U.S. Constitution.

The First Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the city of Boston finding that the flags were government speech. The Court wrongly accepted the city’s argument that the Establishment Clause justified its censorship. However, (1) the application form designates the flag pole as a “public forum” open for private speech; (2) the city never censored a flag in the 12 years prior to Camp Constitution’s application; (3) the city approved 39 flags (averaging over three per month) in the year prior to Camp Constitution’s application; and (4) the flags of the foreign countries could not be government speech because under state law it is a crime to raise the flag of a foreign country on city property.

Liberty Counsel’s Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “We look forward to the U.S. Supreme Court hearing Boston’s unconstitutional discrimination against Camp Constitution’s Christian viewpoint. The city cannot deny the Christian flag because it is ‘Christian’ and allow every other flag to fly on its flagpoles. There is a crucial difference between government endorsement of religion and private speech, which government is bound to respect. Censoring religious viewpoints in a public forum where secular viewpoints are permitted is unconstitutional and this case will set national precedent.”

Open Letter to a recent Climate Feedback “fact-check” article makes multiple false and misleading claims about a new study

Published September 24, 2021 | By campconstitution

Camp Constitution, at the request of Professor Willie Soon, an instructor at Camp Constitution’s annual family camp, is reposting this open letter and urges all who read it to forward and/or repost

Dear Drs. Vincent and Forrester,

We are writing this open letter to you because it has recently come to our attention that your Climate Feedback website has published an article making multiple false or misleading claims about an Epoch Times newspaper article (by Alex Newman) that reported on a new peer-reviewed paper we co-authored. Your website’s “fact-check”/”feedback” also made false or misleading claims about our paper.

This means your website is effectively spreading the very misinformation that you purport to be trying to fight. Additionally, because your website is currently one of Facebook’s approved “independent fact-checkers”, anybody who shared or tries to share a link to the Epoch Times article now receives a warning like the following:

Inline image

In other words, not only is your “fact-check” promoting misinformation, but you are effectively hindering the public from sharing important information with their friends and family.

We are writing to you to ask you to immediately correct this erroneous “fact-check” and to inform any groups that may have been using your website as an “independent fact-checker” (including Facebook) of the error.

We are also cc’ing and bcc’ing various parties who are either directly affected by the consequences of this “fact-check” or may be more generally concerned about the arbitrariness of the “fact-checks” offered by websites such as yours, and the problem of “who will ‘fact-check’ the fact-checkers?”

We believe the discussion below is of relevance for everybody given the recent trend of the media, social media and internet search engines towards using “independent fact-checkers” like yourselves for down-ranking, suppressing or even deleting content. Therefore, we have chosen to make this an open letter. We encourage people to share our letter and our accompanying “fact-check fact-check” with the public – although we ask people to first redact the e-mail addresses.

The article in question is this one edited by Dr. Lambert Baraut-Guinet: Link here

Dr. Baraut-Guinet claims to have “fact-checked” an Epoch Times newspaper article (Link here) by Alex Newman which compared the findings of our recent scientific review paper (Link here) to the findings of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group 1’s recent 6^th Assessment Report (AR6, link here).

Baraut-Guinet alleges that Newman made false claims that were “incorrect” and “misleading” in his reporting. He similarly asserts that several other media outlets publishing articles repeating some of Newman’s reporting were “incorrect” and “misleading”. Baraut-Guinet also asserts that our peer-reviewed paper makes “incorrect” and “misleading” claims.

Background to Newman’s article:

Our paper that Newman was reporting on is a detailed scientific review on the complex challenges of establishing how much of a role solar activity has played in northern hemisphere temperature trends since the 19^th century (and earlier). It was co-authored by 23 experts in the fields of solar physics and of climate science from 14 different countries and was published in the peer-reviewed journal Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics (RAA). If you don’t have time to read the full article, here is a short press release summary: Link here

The title of our paper is, “How much has the Sun influenced Northern Hemisphere temperature trends? An ongoing debate”, and it was published online in early August. Coincidentally, a few days later, the UN’s IPCC AR6 was published. While the IPCC AR6 had concluded that it was “unequivocal” that recent climate change was human-caused, our findings were much more circumspect and cautious, e.g., from the abstract of our RAA paper:

“For all five Northern Hemisphere temperature series, different TSI estimates suggest everything from no role for the Sun in recent decades (implying that recent global warming is mostly human-caused) to most of the recent global warming being due to changes in solar activity (that is, that recent global warming is mostly natural). It appears that previous studies (including the most recent IPCC reports) which had prematurely concluded the former, had done so because they failed to adequately consider all the relevant estimates of TSI and/or to satisfactorily address the uncertainties still associated with Northern Hemisphere temperature trend estimates. Therefore, several recommendations on how the scientific community can more satisfactorily resolve these issues are provided.”

That is, the IPCC was offering a remarkably confident claim about the “attribution” of recent climate change, whereas we were explicitly warning that it was too premature to be drawing such conclusions. Our analysis found an alarmingly wide range of plausible estimates for a solar contribution (in the paper itself we elaborate on how plausible estimates for the solar contribution range from 0%-100% of the long-term warming since the mid-19^th century!).

Newman was apparently intrigued by the contrast between the two studies both coincidentally published at around the same time. He interviewed several of us to learn more about our findings. He also reached out to the IPCC for their response, as well as to other scientists who might disagree with our analysis as well as some who might agree. If you read his article, his efforts to carefully and openly present multiple perspectives are self-evident.

If you compare Newman’s ‘balanced reporting’ journalistic approach to the framework you provide at Science Feedback for informative reporting (Link here), it is clear that Newman was taking considerable care to avoid any of the aspects of misinformation that you identify as problematic. In contrast, as we will detail in the attached ‘fact-check fact-check’, Baraut-Guinet’s ‘fact-checking’ of Newman’s article is littered with almost all of the hallmarks of misinformation which your framework warns against.

Yet, ironically, Baraut-Guinet’s “fact-check” is currently being used by Facebook (and probably other platforms) as a justification for censoring Newman’s article.

According to your website’s “About” page “Our first mission is to help create an Internet where users will have access to scientifically sound and trustworthy information. We also provide feedback to editors and journalists about the credibility of information published by their outlets.” Therefore, we hope you share at least some of our concern about the fact that this article by Baraut-Guinet on your website is now promoting misinformation – and as a result effectively misleading editors, journalists and also several of your partners & funders that you list on your website, e.g., Facebook’s “Third Party Fact Checking program”.

We hope that after reviewing the information in this e-mail, you will get Baraut-Guinet to correct his erroneous analysis, update his flawed verdict of “Incorrect” & “Misleading” to “Correct” & “Accurate”, and also to contact the various groups (including Facebook’s fact checking program) who have mistakenly used his flawed analysis to warn them that your website had posted an erroneous “fact-check”.

Different scientific approaches of the IPCC and us

In our “fact-check fact-check” we explain how the approach we took to reviewing the scientific literature in our RAA paper was fundamentally different to that taken by the IPCC. We also explain that our objectives were fundamentally different too.

The IPCC explain on their website that they were set up by the UN Environment Program (UNEP) in conjunction with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) with the primary objective of providing “scientific information that [governments] can use to develop climate policies” (https://www.ipcc.ch/about/, accessed 5^th September 2021). As we explain in the fact-check fact-check, the specific climate policies the IPCC are interested in are those that will help the UNEP in arranging international agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

On the other hand, our primary objective was “to convey to the rest of the scientific community the existence of several unresolved problems, as well as to establish those points where there is general agreement”.

That is, the IPCC’s scientific assessments are carried out to help governments in implementing the UN’s political goals, while our scientific assessments are carried out to help the scientific community (of which all 23 of us are members) to improve our collective understanding of the causes of climate change.

So, different goals. But, we also used different methods.

The IPCC’s approach is a “consensus-driven” one of trying to identify a “scientific consensus” on each of the key issues. This approach works very well when there is indeed universal scientific agreement on the point. However, it is problematic whenever there is scientific disagreement on a given issue. And ironically, most scientific research occurs when there is ongoing scientific disagreement on the subject. Therefore, this is a surprisingly common occurrence. The IPCC’s general approach to dealing with scientific disagreement appears to be to use “expert judgement” to identify the most “likely” perspective on the subject (ideally one which best suits the UNEP’s aims) and then use “expert judgement” to dismiss those studies which dissent from that perspective.

Several researchers have praised the IPCC for this “consensus-driven” approach as they say it allows the IPCC to “speak with one voice for climate science” (e.g., see Beck et al. 2014; Hoppe & Rödder 2019). This is very helpful for the UNEP’s goals, since it allows the governments to focus on their negotiations without being distracted by scientific disagreements within the scientific community. However, we believe that it is unfortunately hindering scientific progress and the process of scientific inquiry.

For this reason, we explicitly avoided the IPCC’s “consensus-driven” approach and instead chose “…to emphasize where dissenting scientific opinions exist as well as where there is scientific agreement”. As Francis Bacon noted in the 17th century, “if we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; but if we begin with doubts, and are patient in them, we shall end in certainties.”

These are different goals and different methods. So ultimately, it is not that surprising that we came to different conclusions on several key scientific questions.

When different scientists come to different conclusions by following different scientific approaches, it is very challenging to decide which one is “factual” and which is not. We appreciate that this can create problems for an “independent fact-checker” like your organization when asked to weigh in on a scientific disagreement. However, as we will discuss later, maybe this is not something that you should even be trying to do.

Science thrives best when scientists are allowed to disagree with each other. Rather than trying to shut down one side of a given scientific disagreement as “incorrect” and promoting the other side as “correct”, maybe we should be welcoming the fact that scientists are still “doing science”.

Who has been cc’ed and bcc’ed

A major problem with the current set-up of your website is that you purport to provide “fact-checks” or “feedbacks” on articles, but if anybody disputes your “feedback”, the only formal mechanism you currently offer on the website is to submit a comment through your on-line “contact us” form. We were unable to find an e-mail address for Dr. Baraut-Guinet, the editor in charge of the article in question. However, you are currently listed on the Science Feedback website as the Founder & Director (Dr. Vincent) and Science Editor, Climate and Ecology (Dr. Forrester), and we were able to find your e-mails on-line. Therefore, we assume that you are the appropriate people from your website to contact, and that you can contact him.

We have also cc’ed and bcc’ed several people whose professional reputations have been directly attacked by Dr. Baraut-Guinet through his accusations, as well as several people whose reputations have directly or indirectly been used by Dr. Baraut-Guinet to justify his claims.

Specifically, we have cc’ed Alex Newman, since Dr. Baraut-Guinet is (falsely) accusing him of not having carried out his journalistic duties. We have also bcc’ed our 20 co-authors on the research paper in question (Connolly et al., 2021, Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, https://doi.org/10.1088/1674-4527/21/6/131), since Dr. Baraut-Guinet is smearing our scientific reputations by (falsely, as we explain in our ‘fact-check fact-check’) accusing us of making “incorrect” and “misleading” claims in our scientific research.

Additionally, we have bcc’ed Prof. Tim Osborn, Dr. Britta Voss and Prof. Patrick Brown. Dr. Baraut-Guinet has taken quotes from each of them from previous reviews on your website, and copied-and-pasted them the “Scientists’ feedback” for his “fact-check” on Alex Newman’s article.

Your Science Feedback framework claims that the “Scientists’ feedback” is needed before the editor can reach a verdict:

“Process for deciding on a verdict

The final ruling regarding the verdict attributed to the claim is made by a Science Feedback editor based on suggestions by the scientists contributing to the review.”

Therefore, it should have been a warning flag that none of the three scientists listed in the “Scientists’ feedback” section had contributed suggestions specifically about Alex Newman’s reporting. Instead, their ”feedback” was copied-and-pasted from feedback on previous articles or claims.

We appreciate that Baraut-Guinet did include an explanatory note for each of them saying, “[ This comment comes from a previous review…”. But, many casual readers would miss this. Indeed, we have already heard from several friends who independently told us about the article and none of them had noticed this caveat.

At any rate, we have bcc’ed these three scientists to let them know that Baraut-Guinet is using quotes from them on different articles to imply that they had also directly commented on Alex Newman’s article.

We have also cc’ed Jonathan Lynn (Head of Communications and Media Relations of IPCC), the representative from the IPCC that provided statements to Alex Newman for his article, since Baraut-Guinet misleadingly implies in his article that Newman failed to present the IPCC’s position on the various points made. This is factually inaccurate as well as misleading, lacking in context and also a Strawman argument (i.e., 4 of the types of misinformation criticised by your framework), since Newman states clearly in his article that he specifically reached out to the IPCC for comment, and reported the IPCC’s responses. This included a clarifying statement from Prof. Panmao Zhai (co-chair of Working Group 1 AR6), who we have bcc’ed.

Finally, we have bcc’ed multiple people who we know are concerned about how influential “fact-checking” organizations like yours have become and are wondering “who will fact-check the fact-checkers?” We think they will find our “fact-check fact-check” of your fact-checker, Dr. Baraut-Guinet’s article helpful. We suspect they will also be interested to see how your organisation will respond to this problem.

Details on our “fact-check fact-check”

We have attached in both pdf and MS Word format our detailed “fact-check fact-check” on Dr. Baraut-Guinet’s “fact-check” of Newman’s article.

For convenience, we have summarized below the key relevant links:

1. Dr. Baraut-Guinet’s “fact check”/“feedback”: https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/solar-forcing-is-not-the-main-cause-of-current-global-warming-contrary-to-claim-by-alex-newman-in-the-epoch-times/

2. Alex Newman’s article in The Epoch Times: https://www.theepochtimes.com/challenging-un-study-finds-sun-not-co2-may-be-behind-global-warming_3950089.html

3. Science Feedback’s “Framework for claim-level reviews” which Baraut-Guinet’s article claims was used for the fact-check: https://sciencefeedback.co/claim-reviews-framework/

4. Our peer-reviewed paper in Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics that they were reporting on, i.e., Connolly et al. (2021): https://doi.org/10.1088/1674-4527/21/6/131

5. Link to the IPCC WG1 AR6 that they were also reporting on: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/

Our immediate recommendations to Climate Feedback

· Recommendation 1: We recommend you correct the existing “fact-check”/”feedback” on Alex Newman’s article. Currently, your website asserts that his reporting was “Incorrect” and “Misleading”. This should be changed to “Correct” and “Accurate” immediately.

· Recommendation 2: Those groups that are using Climate Feedback as a “fact-checker” should be contacted to let them know of your website’s erroneous analysis of this article.

· Recommendation 3: All of your editors should be reminded that your “framework for claim-level reviews” was presumably not to be used as an inspiration for what to do, but rather for identifying misinformation.

However, once this is done, we would also encourage you (and others reading this open letter) to consider whether the very idea of “fact-checking” on science reporting is as good an idea as it might initially seem.

Commentary on whether this plan of “fact-checking” is working

Finally, we think that it is time for society to reflect on whether this recent trend in “fact-checking” is wise. We note that a lot of this trend can be specifically traced back to debates over journalistic approaches to the scientific reporting of climate change.

Specifically, in the early 2000s, some researchers who believed that the IPCC reports offered the definitive “scientific consensus” on climate change were frustrated that journalists would still report the perspectives of scientists who disagreed with the IPCC reports. In particular, the Boykoff & Boykoff (2004) paper argued that the journalistic norm of “balanced reporting” was leading to a ‘false balance’ by implying that the supporters of the IPCC reports and the critics represented a 50:50 split among the scientific community (abstract here; pdf here).

This study (and more generally the argument) was highly influential and convinced many journalists that they had a duty to stop carrying out what they assumed was ‘false balance’ and instead only report on the scientific perspectives they believed were “correct”. That is, on any given scientific disagreement, the journalists would be obliged to find out what the “scientific consensus” was. If a scientific study disagreed with this consensus, it was not to be reported on.

This alternative journalistic approach is often referred to by its supporters as “reliable reporting”, although critics might call it “narrative-driven journalism” (or “ideological reporting” if the critic disagreed with the journalist’s political ideology).

A major problem with relying on this “reliable reporting” approach to journalism is that it effectively requires the journalist to act as the arbiter of an often complex scientific disagreement. When even the scientists themselves are in disagreement, this puts a very heavy burden on the journalist. Nonetheless, over the years, the argument about ‘false balance’ has convinced many journalists to abandon the classical ‘balanced reporting’ approach.

Today, it is very rare to find journalists like Alex Newman who continue to apply the ‘balanced reporting’ approach when covering scientific disagreements. As a result, over the last decade or so, it has become increasingly difficult to find open-minded and honest discussions on these scientific issues in the traditional media.

However, until recently, it was still relatively easy to find those discussions elsewhere by using social media and internet searches. Therefore, social media platforms and internet search engines are now being criticised for still allowing people to find out about ongoing scientific disagreements. As a result, these platforms are being increasingly pressured to actively suppress “misinformation”. Essentially, they are being pressured to adopt the same techniques of suppression described above which were applied to the media.

But, since the original premise of most social media platforms and internet search engines was to allow users to share and search for the information they wanted, if these platforms engage in this suppression, it is an especially draconian form of censorship.

To try and justify this censorship as “reducing the spread of ‘fake news’ and ‘misinformation’”, platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google/Youtube and others have started relying on “independent fact-checkers” such as Climate Feedback. However, as we demonstrated in our “fact-check fact-check”, attempting to “fact-check” on issues where there are ongoing scientific disagreements (as Dr. Baraut-Guinet did here) is very risky – and can easily result in generating misinformation (as Dr. Baraut-Guinet did here).

Therefore, we suggest that it is time for a re-think on the current reliance on “fact-checkers”, and also for journalists to re-think the “reliable reporting” approach.

Personally, we think that a return to encouraging “balanced reporting” would be a good option. However, we note that there was a recent paper by the Danish philosopher, Prof. Mikkel Gerken, which presents several options: Gerken (2020), “How to balance Balanced Reporting and Reliable Reporting”, Philosophy Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01362-5 [The paper is paywalled. However, if you don’t have access, but are comfortable using the controversial “sci-hub” website, you could probably find a copy that way].

Gerken describes the above approaches to journalism when it comes to science reporting as follows:

1. Balanced Reporting. Science reporters should, whenever feasible, report opposing hypotheses in a manner that does not favor any one of them.

2. Reliable Reporting. Science reporters should, whenever feasible, report the most reliably based hypotheses and avoid reporting hypotheses that are not reliably based.

He agrees that there are valid concerns about both approaches. The first approach can potentially lead to “false balance”, while the second approach can potentially lead to narrative-driven journalism, or even propaganda.

Therefore, he suggests two potential compromises:

3. Inclusive Reliable Reporting. Science reporters should, whenever feasible, report hypotheses in a manner that favors the most reliably based ones by indicating the nature and strength of their respective scientific justifications.

4. Epistemically Balanced Reporting. Science reporters should, whenever feasible, report opposing hypotheses in a manner that reflects the nature and strength of their respective scientific justifications or lack thereof.

He favours the 4^th option. However, either the 3^rd or 4^th option rules out the necessity for the 2^nd option of suppressing the existence of genuine scientific disagreements, and also avoids the risk with the 1^st option of potentially creating a ‘false balance’.

In our opinion, the public are not as prone to ‘false balance’ as the proponents of Option 2 insist. We think that most people recognise that if a journalist provides two competing perspectives on a scientific issue it does not necessarily mean that the scientific community is split 50:50 on it. However, for journalists who are concerned about the risk of ‘false balance’, options 3 and 4 might be suitable alternatives to option 1.

Indeed, arguably, Alex Newman’s approach in his Epoch Times article combines elements of Options 1, 3 and 4.

Importantly, it is only with Option 2 that there is a necessity for “independent fact-checkers” for science reporting. For the other options, the readers are made aware of the existence of differing scientific perspectives and it is up to them to investigate further if they are interested.

Regards,

Dr Ronan Connolly, Dr. Willie Soon and Dr. Michael Connolly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05F9XV7zKO8

My Name is Samuel Adams by Dr. Dan Eichenbaum

Published September 22, 2021 | By campconstitution

My name is Samuel Adams. I was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on September 27, 1722, the son of local merchant and Puritan Church deacon Samuel Adams, Sr. I was privileged to attend Boston Latin School and Harvard College, where I learned from the writings of John Locke that all people were born with unalienable Natural Law Rights and that moral government was based on the consent of the governed. My master’s degree thesis in 1743 explored the legality of resisting the authority of the British King.

In 1748, I inherited my father’s business after he passed away, but I wasn’t very good at running it. After it went bankrupt, I became a city tax collector, but my poor skill at keeping financial records led to significant discrepancies and deficits. A cynic might say I was a politician-in-training, but I would disagree.

Although I was not proficient with numbers, it turns out I was skilled at writing. My early articles advised my fellow colonists about the importance of protecting their individual freedom. I really hit my stride when King George imposed onerous taxes on us to pay for his Seven Years’ War. We colonists had no representation in British government, so I condemned this “taxation without representation” as a violation of our rights.

I was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1765, but soon realized that outright activism against British rule was the only way to gain our freedom. I often met with a secret group of patriots called the Loyal Nine which was the nucleus of what became the Sons of Liberty.

The Sons of Liberty were a grassroots group of instigators and provocateurs in colonial America who used an extreme form of civil disobedience—threats, and in some cases actual violence—to intimidate loyalists and outrage the British government. The goal of the radicals was to push moderate colonial leaders into a confrontation with the Crown.

History.com

You might say I was a member of the very first Tea Party group. In fact, on December 16, 1773, the Sons of Liberty boarded three ships in Boston Harbor and threw 45 tons of tea into the icy water. The event was called the Boston Tea Party. By this time, the British had about enough of me and my Sons of Liberty brothers. So, they sent General Gage to Lexington with orders to seize guns and military supplies of the colonists and, according to some, to arrest John Hancock and me.

At North Bridge in Concord, our Minute Men finally engaged the British. It was indeed the “shot heard round the world”. Our American War of Independence had begun – the upstart colonists of the New World taking on England, the major superpower of the Old World – in order to establish the principles of Natural Law Rights and freedom for each individual.

Here are some of the things I wrote and said. If they apply to your current situation, I implore you to heed my warnings and the wisdom of my experience.

All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they should.

Samuel Adams Heritage Society

Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.

Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists

There can be no property in that which another can of right take from us without our consent.

The Philadelphia Resolutions; October 16, 1773

The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.

American History Central

The Constitution shall never be construed . . . to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.

The James Madison Research Library and Information Center

. . . the necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance.

Samuel Adams Heritage Society

It does not take a majority to prevail… but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.

Shame on the men who can court exemption from present trouble and expense at the price of their own posterity’s liberty!

Samuel Adams Heritage Society

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

Samuel Adams Heritage Society

Resist Tyranny and Trust in Freedom!

By Dr. Dan Eichenbaum of Freedom Forum Radio

Freedom Forum Radio | P.O. Box 39 | Murphy, NC 28906

https://drdansfreedomforum.com

Open letter: A recent Climate Feedback “fact-check” article makes multiple false and misleading claims about a new study and newspaper coverage of it

Published September 10, 2021 | By campconstitution

Dear Drs. Vincent and Forrester,

We are writing this open letter to you because it has recently come to our attention that your Climate Feedback website has published an article making multiple false or misleading claims about an Epoch Times newspaper article (by Alex Newman) that reported on a new peer-reviewed paper we co-authored. Your website’s “fact-check”/”feedback” also made false or misleading claims about our paper.

This means your website is effectively spreading the very misinformation that you purport to be trying to fight. Additionally, because your website is currently one of Facebook’s approved “independent fact-checkers”, anybody who shared or tries to share a link to the Epoch Times article now receives a warning like the following: