Suppose I told you that Santa Claus lives in Santa Barbara.  Now suppose you reported in an article that I told you Santa Claus lives in Santa Barbara.  Now suppose some "fact-checker" slammed you for falsely saying Santa Claus lives in Santa Barbara.

Would the "fact-checker" be right?  Obviously not.  You accurately reported what I told you.

Seems like a pretty simple and obvious difference.  But maybe not if you're a "fact-checker" named Scott Johnson working with "Climate Feedback" and dedicated to stamping out every challenge to the "overwhelming scientific consensus" that human activity has brought global temperature to unprecedented heights and threatens catastrophe for humanity and the world.

Then, if you read an article in which the author describes a graph published in a scientific source as showing that the Medieval Warm Period and Roman Warm Period were as warm as the present or warmer, you go into attack mode.

You charge the article and its author with factual error and put Facebook's strong-arm tactics to work to get the publisher, fearful of economic loss, to retract the article.

Because...global warming, of course.  Because it's going to kill us all, of course.  Because we absolutely must abandon fossil fuels and adopt wind and solar, come what may, even if it means trapping billions of people in poverty that will shorten more lives by more years than anything having to do with climate change.  Because we absolutely must abandon capitalism as the dominant global economic order and adopt socialism, since nothing else will stop greedy people from using those evil fuels and frying us all.

I say all the above because of what happened recently when Gregory J. Rummo, who teaches chemistry at Palm Beach Atlantic University and is a contributing writer for the Cornwall Alliance, published an article in which he wrote that "a graph" in (meteorologist/climatologist) Dr. Roy W. Spencer's book An Inconvenient Deception: How Al Gore Distorts Climate Science and Energy Policy "shows two previous periods when temperatures were warmer than they are now; from 1–200 A.D., an epoch called the Roman Warm Period, and more recently the Medieval Warm Period from 900–1100 A.D."

All that's necessary for what Greg said to be true is that there have been such a graph in Spencer's book.  Indeed, there was.  Here it is:

Spencer adapted that graph from its original, published in 2010 in the article "A New Reconstruction of Temperature Variability in the Extra-Tropical Northern Hemisphere During the Last Two Millennia," by Fedrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, in the peer-reviewed journal Geografiska Annaler.  Ljungqvist's graph has been republished many times all over the web, and Geografiska Annaler has never retracted the article in which it first appeared — which entails that it has survived whatever "fact-checker" challenges have come its way.

Nonetheless, although Greg accurately described what the graph showed (as in "depicted," which is distinct from "proved" — no graph proves anything; only the hard data behind it, if reliable and relevant and accurately understood, prove), "fact-checker" Johnson swung into action.

And quite a swing he made. Here it is:

Now, as you read the words under "CLAIM," you think they tell you what Greg wrote, right?  And if that's what Greg wrote, then it's fair game to contest whether it's factual.  But here's what Greg really wrote (emphasis added):

A graph of the Earth’s mean temperature over the last 2,000 years shows two previous periods when temperatures were warmer than they are now; from 1–200 A.D., an epoch called the Roman Warm Period, and more recently the Medieval Warm Period from 900–1100 A.D.

Johnson left out the underlined words.  They are absolutely critical to his claim that Greg's claim was "inaccurate."  Restore them, and, since indeed the graph in Spencer's book did "show two previous periods when temperatures were warmer than they are now," Greg's claim is accurate.

In short, the "fact-checker" got his "fact" wrong — and in a way that any decent (as in even moderately capable and basically honest) reporter or editor should have noticed.

Indeed, the evidence that Johnson's "inaccurate" charge was false was right in Johnson's own article — though he didn't notice it.  Just inches below what's shown in the screenshot above is this:

So Johnson knew that what Greg wrote was only that "a graph of the Earth's mean temperature ... shows two previous periods ..."

Apparently, Johnson couldn't abide the thought that anyone would question the notion that the Earth is warmer today than at any time in the past 2,000 years.  He couldn't challenge the scientific credibility of the graph as originally published in Geografiska Annaler, so he resorted to misrepresenting an author in a non-refereed publication instead.

You can read some of the backstory on this in Hannah Harris's "The fake news police: Who checks Facebook's fact checkers?" in World Magazine.  When you do, don't miss Marvin Olasky's follow-up, "What are the facts?," in which he cites a major new scholarly history that credits, in part, the Roman Warm Period, AKA the Roman Climate Optimum, covering the two centuries before and after the birth of Christ, for Rome's great growth — and blames the reversion to cooling afterward, in part, for Rome's collapse.

So either Johnson lied or he wasn't bright enough, or careful enough, to notice the difference chopping out those first four words made.

Fact-checker, heal thyself.

E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D. is founder and national spokesman of The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and a former newspaper reporter, editor, and publisher.