Polis got fact checked?! Taking my own advice. The Colorado Sun's failed Gigafact check.
Polis got fact checked? By someone other than a conservative outlet? A (semi) major Denver outlet?
You could have knocked me over with a feather.
Polis, as you or I or anyone else who doesn't drink the Kool Aid of the left leaning media in the Front Range (and, hell, even shamefully Fox News' Kool Aid), speaks in half truths and lies. His speeches are full of omissions and carefully crafted word usage that leave the truth battered and bleeding by the side of the road.
And, for once, he was called out by someone other than conservative commentators.
The link below is to a 7News story that fact checks our governor's DNC speech and the half truths (or outright lies) he spit out about Project 2025 the left's favorite straw man.
Good reading and by God surprising.
Keep this link and send it to any media people when they talk about their importance to democracy and ask why they don't have similar.
In the post above, I ended it with the following line "Keep this link and send it to any media people when they talk about their importance to democracy and ask why they don't have similar."
If you ever wonder, yes I do take my own advice. I won't claim perfection, but I do make an effort to only preach at you after having done (or right before doing) what I encourage you to do.
Shortly after writing the post above, I did just that. I saw some articles where the reporters dutifully scribed the lies that Polis spouts as easily as you and I draw breath. Dutifully scribe them without any sort of critical thought.
And this despite the fact that it takes probably 10 minutes to go and check online what Project 2025 actually says.
In this case, emails telling Colorado Politics (see their first article about Polis' speech and their follow up fact-check linked second) and CPR (see their amended article about Polis linked third below) that their writing needed to be accurate and capture the fact that Polis lied worked.
In other words, the errors they had got fixed. The omissions were added.
Take the time to call out falsehoods when you see them. Do so not just for politicians but also for the media. Take the time to write news outlets and (in a civil manner) point out the things they're doing wrong.
https://www.cpr.org/2024/08/23/colorado-democrats-speak-at-dnc/
The Colorado Sun's failed Gigafact check.
Let's round out the day with a fact check NOT about our governor. The Colorado Sun recently put out another of their fact checks via their partnership with Gigafact.
In response to (of course) a statement by Trump about wind turbines killing birds, the Sun put up a fact check confirming that they indeed do. That is linked first below.
They kill bats too by the way, but I don't think many people are paying attention to them right yet. Sorry little guys, no Gigafacts for you.
There was something striking in the text of the fact check though. I circled in screenshot 1 attached. Fossil fuel plants kill two full orders of magnitude more (100X) than the number of birds as do turbines--my God, can it be that many?
I'll admit that I've never been close to the coal plant down the road from where I live, but with those kinds of numbers that place must be a literal bird charnel ground!
To the Sun and Gigafact's credit, they do include what they source from, so I was able to go back look it up for myself. I'm glad I did because this most decidedly a case of comparing apples and oranges. In other words, this comparison is not valid even if you take the estimates made by the researchers cited to be reasonable.
Let me explain. The Sun fact check used a 2016 paper (linked second below) to make its claim about bird deaths and this number is indeed quoted there.
Digging a little deeper, however, you see that this 2016 paper bases its claim in turn on a 2009 paper. This 2009 paper, the ultimate source of the claim of bird deaths from fossil fuels, is linked third below.
Just to reiterate. A 2009 paper makes a claim which is forwarded as true by a 2016 paper which is then forwarded as true by the Colorado Sun and Gigafact. So far so ... good?
There are some problems here. To find them, follow me into the very core of the onion, down inside all the layers above.
In a paragraph of the 2016 paper you see a summary of how the 2009 paper arrived at its conclusion about bird deaths from fossil fuels. That's in screenshot 2 attached.
Ignoring the fact that the bird deaths are estimates (and ignoring in this context is fair because all the mortality figures for all energy sources are just that), note what I highlight in red.
The author of the 2009 paper estimated bird deaths by including those from pollution and climate change. He also estimated impacts such as changes to migratory patterns and habitat loss.
We could argue the reasonableness of doing any of those things. We could argue the numbers the 2009 paper arrived at by such a method, but I want to focus more here on what was NOT included in the wind turbine estimates: the amount of birds lost to wind turbines based on pollution and climate change in the manufacture, transportation, and installation of said turbines. Nor was any of the "induced avian mortality" for turbines considered. Some birds don't like to nest near them, probably any more than they do near to coal plants.
It isn't just me that has qualms about the 2009 paper and how it got its estimates either. Other researchers, specialists in the same field, were concerned enough about the 2009 paper and its methods to write and publish a letter to the same journal. They took the 2009 paper's author to task over his methods.** That's link four below.
Two estimates made by different methods cannot be compared in any fair way without adjusting them so they make the same guesses about nature. To do so is to compare apples to oranges.
That is, you cannot fairly compare the data from the 2009 paper with any other data unless and until you make sure to account for all the things the 2009 paper did. This didn't happen.
I wrote the author of the GigaFact piece as well as Larry Ryckman editor of the Sun to ask whether or not they were aware of this, whether they tried in any way to control for this, and to see they really felt this was a valid comparison.
As of this writing I haven't heard anything, but will update if I do.
**Refreshing to see science in action, no? This, by the way is what science is. One publishes, others critique or reinforce and debate happens. THE science you hear about from politicians and the media is about listening to whichever expert happens to say what they want you to believe.
https://coloradosun.com/2024/08/19/are-us-wind-farms-killing-thousands-of-birds/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148116301422
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421509001074
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030142150900620X
Related:
Do not be afraid to question what you read in the news. Even the fact checks.
https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2024/06/28/gaines-fact-checking-media-check-their-own-biases/