Lord 1000frolly's echo-chamber debate style - "Ghosting" challenging comments

edited 12/30/15 am
There's a character out there in YouTube land who's been pumping out incredibly deceitful videos at a prodigious rate.  Rumor has it, it's none other than Lord Monckton.  When I asked him directly he was very coy about it.  I would expect no less from one of the world's foremost political entertainers.  I'd already had a couple comment go-around with 1000frolly, and I have an acquaintance with the Lord going back five years now, so I wasn't surprised that he (er… 1000frolly) has chosen to "Ghost" me at the 1000frolly YouTube channel.

This from men who self-righteously demand that serious full-time working professionals stop everything to run off for a kangaroo debate with self-certain dabblers.  Interestingly, these same people never stand up to a constructive debate themselves?  Nor do they ever learn from information that's been shared?

To underscore the disingenuous nature of their challenge, they refuse to follow through on serious fact based rational debates that they are challenged with, instead opting to remain within their echo-chamber.

One tactic is "Ghosting" - challenging commenters on one's YouTube channel.   
How "Ghosting" works is that a targeted individual can see his/her own comments when logged in, making it appear that your comments are a part of the discussion.  However, if you log out of your account and return to the same video you will see that your comment has disappeared, for example: 

See, nicely cleansed of all questions and information challenging their party-line.

THIS IS WHAT GLOBAL WARMING LOOKS LIKE

It's another sad day for firefighters and the rest of us citizens.

The combination of drought, record heat, extremely dry wood and brush, dry lightening, erratic winds, conspired with fate to trap and kill 19 Hotshots - who within a few freak minutes found themselves trapped by a wall of fire, with no way out they reacted professionally and deployed their last-ditch emergency fire-shelters - but their bodies couldn't endure the minutes of smoke and heat - by the time the flames cleared out 19 young men and women (among America's best) had given their all in the service of others.

What's troubling is that while the media embraces another profound tragedy with Hollywood zeal - they ignore the real story - THIS IS WHAT GLOBAL WARMING LOOKS LIKE and we have just begun down this road that the Republican power-politics and their deceptive pet "Think Tanks" such as Marshall Institute, SPPI, Heartland and all their parrots such as Mr Anthony WUWT - with their irrational disconnect from what serious science is telling us about our planet's biosphere that seems little more than an "economic externality" to them - they have dictated a path for America's and the world's future - that will guarantee ever greater misery as these next years roll by.

All the while our "representatives" in Washington, Democrats as well as Republican continue to ignore the reality of what we have done to our atmosphere and how that is impacting weather patterns throughout the world.  Meaning that actually confronting the issue seems as distant now as it was twenty years ago.

With that sad introduction let's take a look at the Republican state of mind - courtesy of DeSmogBlog and Chris Mooney "Science of Truthiness: Why Conservatives Deny Global Warming.

Chris Mooney: "Anthony Watts and Defensive Reasoning"

I came across this article today and believe it's worth sharing.
Tip of the hat to Chris Mooney and DeSmogBlog.com

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Anthony Watts and Defensive Reasoning: Three Episodes
Chris Mooney, November 16, 2011 ~  desmogblog.com

"Over the last year, I’ve had numerous blogospheric encounters with the conservative climate “skeptic” Anthony Watts, the author of WattsUpWithThat.

"In the process, I’ve been particularly struck by how Watts handles inconvenient evidence.

"Twice now, I’ve seen Watts make a mistake, and then seem to rationalize it, rather than simply correct it. 

"I’ve also seen Watts shift the goalposts, refusing to accept inconvenient evidence even after saying he would do so.

"What’s up with that?

"Look: We all make mistakes. And we all adopt beliefs that later turn out to be incorrect. There's nothing wrong with that per se; it's actually quite natural. What really matters is what we do after we’re proven wrong. So let’s see what Watts does:"

~ ~ ~

"Research on Astroturfing. A while back, I introduced the blogosphere to a social science study on online anti-global warming astroturfing. Watts then leapt in, accusing the researchers of having “setup fake websites to gather fake data."
{...}
"Note the underlying point here. Watts launched a baseless attack on the astroturfing study. When his error was pointed out, he tried to blame the study authors, and came up with new criticisms, including protesting that they should have conducted the study in a way that he himself had previously claimed would have been deceptive and misleading, or even unethical."
~ ~ ~ 

"On to episode two:
The BEST Study. I just wrote about this one, and it is quite telling.

A while back, Anthony Watts wrote of the headline-grabbing Berkeley BEST study that “I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.”
But when the study came out and he didn’t like its findings, Watts instead engaged in  a phenomenon called goalpost shifting. Look at how he now talks about the BEST work: In a recent post, he referred to the “incomplete and rushed, non quality controlled, error riddled BEST science.”
Are we noting a common theme here?"

~ ~ ~
"On to episode three:
The Republican Brain: My next book will not be out for about 6 months. Nevertheless, much like the Astroturf study, Watts attacked it without reading it. He justified doing so by claiming that someone else had reviewed the book, so he could rely on that review instead: link"

==========

"Why is all of this significant?

If you can’t admit it when you’re wrong,

 you also can’t know when you’re right.

If you don’t hold your opinions and beliefs tentatively, subject them to scrutiny, and then try to parse out which of them truly hold weight, then you run the risk of rushing headlong into all manner of self-serving biases."
~ ~ ~ 

"And please note: This has nothing to do with whether or not you’re smart.
Smart people (like Watts) are in fact particularly vulnerable to this problem, because they’re extra good at rationalizing their views. Even as they’re super awesome at finding apparent problems with the arguments of those who disagree with them, and arguing back against their opponents, they're often oblivious of their own biases.

But it doesn’t matter how many great arguments you can spin out to defend what you believe, if you can’t also perceive where your beliefs might be untrue.

Without self criticism, all your self-supporting arguments amount to little more than spinning your wheels—while you remain stuck in the mud."


Chris Mooney

As posted at DeSmogBlog
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