It’s pronounced “cow”, as in “coward”

There must be a gene that codes for being a right-wing whackjob. An immunity to facts and fact-based debate must be buried deep in the genome. Not only that, but as is the case with so many genes, it may carry other traits as well, such as an abject terror of being exposed to the aforesaid facts, and a burning need to ensure that no one else sees those facts.

Our old friend Cao (evidently it is pronounced “cow”, as in “coward”) has generously provided a textbook example of how this whacko gene expresses itself. I posted yesterday about the recent column by one James Taylor, who tried hard to debunk a part of Al Gore’s recent presentations on the phenomenon of global warming. Unfortunately, in a doomed effort to give his arguments some undeserved scientific weight, Mr. Taylor chose to create a quote out of thin air and attribute that quote to a recent article in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate. It’s an easy task to look up the article and show that Mr. Taylor was lying about its contents.

I decided to mosey over to Cao’s place and rub her nose in this fact:

Great post, Cao! One little problem:

James Taylor is lying. The quote he used doesn’t come from the Journal of Climate at all. Nope. It’s a complete fabrication.

Funny, how easy it is to sucker you into helping to spread a lie, isn’t it?

Her response was as predictable as it was hysterical:

Prove it. I don’t believe anything you say because it’s you who’s saying it. You are like a feces flinging monkey with the word ‘liar’. It is meaningless when it comes from you…it only means you’re having a fit over something someone said. You’re like a child sitting in a high chair, banging his spoon.

So I did as Cao requested, and provided the evidence she asked for. You won’t find this comment on her site, because she immediately deleted it. That’s her terror of informed debate expressing itself:

Here’s the article Taylor claims to be quoting:

http://tinyurl.com/2t23v7 (HTML)

or

http://tinyurl.com/3d2qcz (PDF)

Find the quote (“Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains…”).

It’s not there.

Taylor is a liar.

This feces-flinging monkey knows how to check the facts, Cao. This is a talent you apparently do not possess.

(Bonus points: What is the actual source of the quote Taylor used? Do you even have the faintest idea how to find out?)

She did post a follow-up comment, showing that she didn’t understand, or just didn’t read, my response. She seems to think that I claimed that the article couldn’t be found:

Your argument is an invalid fallacious argument because picking on one thing because it’s not online doesn’t make it a “lie”. All three contentions; that the one thing you picked on is false because you didn’t find it online, and the presumption that it renders the rest of the article and sources cited a ‘lie’, plus the writer of the article a ‘liar’ make all three of your premises false, therefore your conclusion is false.

Note that I made no claim “that the one thing [I] picked on is false because [I] didn’t find it online”. In fact, I did find the article online, and provided Cao two links to that article. I guess she’s so afraid of the facts that she simply invents a comment I never made, and excoriates me for a claim I never made.

Fear makes people do funny things. In Cao the Coward’s case, it moved her to make herself look like a complete fool.

UPDATE 07/12/07 06:22 AM EDT: Cao is now railing against the “intellectual dishonesty” of other people. Check your own blog, Cao… it’s a veritable textbook example, day after day, of the intellectual dishonesty you yourself champion. Hilarious.