Claim vs. Fact

April 29, 2004 11:31 AM

Claims vs. Facts Database
"Conservatives have spent the last 20 years distorting reality and getting away with it. That is about to change. The Center for American Progress has launched this new database project to chart the dishonesty and lies of conservatives – and compare them with the truth. In this database, each conservative quote will be matched against well-documented facts. And we need your help."
posted by mapalm (29 comments total)

You know, I'm pretty far left of center, but I have an inkling that there are plenty of liberal politicians who've lied to us as well. I think the lies and distortion are symptomatic of politics in the USA, not of one specific group of people. I would be in full support of an "lies of all politicians" data base, though.

Also, doesn't this site strike anyone as being sort of "do our work for us?" Maybe I am just cranky.
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:42 AM on April 29, 2004

Yeah, I wish there was a database for quotes vs: fact for everyone, everywhere, ever.
posted by agregoli at 11:51 AM on April 29, 2004

Bad Politico. No Cookie.
posted by Rob1855 at 12:15 PM on April 29, 2004

My, what a fountain of truth that is.
150,000 people a year? That means that almost every single one of you should know of a dead family member due to global warming. I know of at least 10, myself. Oh wait. I don't.

What a waste of bandwidth. It'd better be used transferring warez than that political tripe.
posted by shepd at 12:29 PM on April 29, 2004

shepd: Your link references an HTML form post that was local to your browser, and not to us.

I'm assuming you're talking about death under temperature duress caused by symptoms of global warming.

If that's the case, I know 2 such relatives. So, I cover for you.
posted by thanotopsis at 12:38 PM on April 29, 2004

this is my favorite searchable database!
posted by nyoki at 12:53 PM on April 29, 2004

Yeah, I wish there was a database for quotes vs: fact for everyone, everywhere, ever.


Ditto.
posted by rushmc at 1:08 PM on April 29, 2004

@*#$(@ liberals.

</troll>
posted by psychotic_venom at 1:10 PM on April 29, 2004

Conservatives Politicans of all stripe have spent the last 20 years distorting reality....
posted by dhoyt at 1:10 PM on April 29, 2004

lets kill the rich and make them blink 16 times
posted by Satapher at 1:12 PM on April 29, 2004

What a lovely idea. I'm sure a conservative version documenting liberal lies will appear in response, giving everyone a new way to preach to their respective choirs while continuing to ignore the opposition. What a revolution.

Utterly pointless. Now, a database for quotes vs: fact for everyone, everywhere, ever -- that's an idea.
posted by Tubes at 1:19 PM on April 29, 2004

Sorry, but the lies and distortions of this administration are not your run-of-the-mill "politicians just being politicians." The deliberate mis-statements and the perpetual shroud of secrecy are of a whole new breed, they require much more vigilance, and they demand an outraged response.
posted by mapalm at 1:39 PM on April 29, 2004

Sorry, but the lies and distortions of this administration are not your run-of-the-mill "politicians just being politicians." The deliberate mis-statements and the perpetual shroud of secrecy are of a whole new breed, they require much more vigilance, and they demand an outraged response.

And conservatives said the same thing about Clinton.
posted by jammer at 3:10 PM on April 29, 2004

Sorry thantopsis. Here's the quote they say is fact.

Topic: Environment

Speaker: Barton, Joe - U.S. Rep. (R-TX)

Date: 5/23/2001

Quote/Claim:
“The whole concept of global warming may be exactly wrong, could be totally 180 degrees wrong.”

Fact:
"Global warming killed 150,000 people in 2000 and the death toll could double again in the next 30 years if current trends are not reversed." - World Health Organization "A new study by the Union of Concerned Scientists shows Iowa could see a 22 degree increase in just 100 years, wreaking havoc on the state's agricultural economy." - Des Moines Register, 1/7/04

BTW: If you really do have a death certificate that lists cause of death as "Global Warming", it might be a bit morbid, but you'd definately change my mind on the matter if I might be able to see it. If it's just heatstroke, people died of that before they could even set fire to things, so that clearly doesn't count.
posted by shepd at 3:14 PM on April 29, 2004

lets kill the rich and make them blink 16 times

Is it just me or is Satapher on a roll today?
posted by loquax at 3:30 PM on April 29, 2004

“The whole concept of global warming may be exactly wrong, could be totally 180 degrees wrong.”

I don't really feel like going through the whole database, but since when is the above statement a lie? Does that man know for a fact that the "concept of global warming" is correct and is purposely deceiving the public? Is it dishonest because he feels it is correct in his heart but denies it? Or are they attacking someone's opinion because the way right-thinking people should think? Not to nit pick, but it looks the fine folks at CAP are picking some nits of their own.
posted by loquax at 4:07 PM on April 29, 2004

This is good, although incomplete, but the fact that traditional media no longer does this at all is a shame.
posted by amberglow at 4:21 PM on April 29, 2004

P. Pilate: "What is truth?"

J. Christ: "Truth is the man that stands before you."

P. Pilate: "Yeah, right. Guilty. Next case."
posted by kablam at 4:32 PM on April 29, 2004

BTW: If you really do have a death certificate that lists cause of death as "Global Warming", it might be a bit morbid, but you'd definately change my mind on the matter if I might be able to see it. If it's just heatstroke, people died of that before they could even set fire to things, so that clearly doesn't count.

What follows is speculation: The figure probably comes from second-order effects of global warming (here is an animation). For example, if you live in a warm, poor part of the globle that formerly had an average annual temperature of, say, 75 degrees and now it is 77, there will be some predictable increase in malaria outbreaks, and corresponding fatalities. That sort of thing.
posted by adamrice at 5:28 PM on April 29, 2004

and the rise in sea level has caused flooding to worsen, no?
posted by amberglow at 5:34 PM on April 29, 2004

P. Pilate: "Yeah, right. Guilty. Next case."

sorry to split hairs, but pilate actually found jesus innocent.
posted by mcsweetie at 5:45 PM on April 29, 2004

Look, facts mean nothing to some people. How would more facts in one place do anything? They'd say "consider the source" (meaning it's in a liberal database, therefore it's eminently worthy of dismissal) and toddle on even if the topic was the death penalty and the database cited the Ten Commandments, which they themselves wanted in courthouses.

There are people who walk into Barnes & Noble and ask if they have any books. Some are kidding. The people who aren't kidding are the people who wouldn't accept this database as proof of anything, no matter how well documented it was. They're beyond all hope.
posted by trondant at 7:18 PM on April 29, 2004

there's always factcheck.org, which has current factchecking on both parties in the presidential race. i learned it from reading metafilter, yo!
posted by mawlymawnster at 7:46 PM on April 29, 2004

Well, adamrice, I'd be all over that if someone shows me a study where:

- Deaths from overheating are compared from, say, 1900 (prior to global warming) to today...
- ...And show, using that data, that, in fact, more people, per capita, now die from overheating now than then.

If you can't do that then you don't have a solid basis for the argument, do you? (ok, not you, the reporter claiming that, this year, 190,000 people died as a direct result of global warming).

And, I am damn sure more people died in 1900 than today from sunstroke. But don't take my word for it, research it and prove me wrong!

I'm also willing to accept more secondary death causes from global warming, such as more tsunamis, glacier slides, whatever works well for you, over that period of time.
posted by shepd at 7:49 PM on April 29, 2004

Politicians of all stripes have spent the last 20 100,000 years distorting reality....
posted by aeschenkarnos at 8:06 PM on April 29, 2004

Don't forget, aeschenkarnos, today's politicians are eviler than ever before! It's suped-up refined Evil 2.0 with dirtier-burning additives.
Being the lone hero in the wilderness is so romantic, eh mapalm?
posted by darukaru at 6:37 AM on April 30, 2004

I did a little more poking around on the 150,000 dead from global warming thing. Apparently this comes from a book published by the World Health Organization. I haven't seen the book, but some of the quotes in articles (google on "global warming 150,000 deaths" to see lots) do refer specifically to 2,000 deaths from heatstroke in Europe in one year, for example. Apparently that's an unusually high number, so we may be, at least to some extent, talking about first-order effects.

If you can't do that then you don't have a solid basis for the argument, do you?

You might. There could be countervailing effects, such as improved medicine. As a parallel, there's little question that Americans are getting more obese, which should lead to more heart attacks and more deaths. But there have been huge advances in responding to and treating heart attacks, so the survival rate from them is actually much better than, say, 30 years ago.

Assume for the moment (I'm just making up these numbers) that in 1970, 100 out of 1000 people would be expected to suffer a heart attack, and only 20 of them would survive. In 2000, 150 per thousand would be expected to suffer a heart attack--with the increase entirely attributed to obesity--but 75 would survive. That's a big improvement, but that's also worse than we would see if obesity hadn't become a bigger problem. It's 25 deaths per thousand that wouldn't happen if the obesity rate hadn't increased but medicine had improved (and I am assuming that medical advances are not contingent on people getting fatter). The same kind of reasoning might be applied to heat-related deaths. Again, I haven't seen the report, so I have no real idea what's in there.
posted by adamrice at 7:06 AM on April 30, 2004

the fact that traditional media no longer does this at all is a shame.

Understatement of the year.
posted by callmejay at 8:23 AM on April 30, 2004

Another point on the whole global-warming dead horse I keep beating: There are three points that keep getting mashed together.

1. Does global warming exist? Barton says no. Frankly, I think this puts him in league with flat-earthers. There's widespread evidence that it is happening.
2. Is it happening because of human influence? Couldn't it be a natural climate cycle? This is harder to dismiss, since there's no control group in the experiment. Still, the speed with which it is happening seems to be in line with human agency, not geology.
3. Is it so bad? Well, perhaps not if you live in Siberia. If you live in the Netherlands or New Orleans, it's going to suck spectacularly. The "claim vs fact" database undermines its own point by using an "is it bad?" argument to refute a "does it exist?" claim.
posted by adamrice at 11:20 AM on April 30, 2004