Do we want 'truth' or 'truthiness'?

Now while I appreciate the editor's acceptance that believers are like that, I guess that in his terms I must be a 'climate sceptic'. But I don't have 'beliefs' about climate; rather, and as with other important issues, I try to find and deal with the 'facts', working towards the 'truth'. The latter still eludes me, though I think I am closer to it than I was ten years ago. I don't have beliefs about climate change, to repeat, and therefore my social identity isn't constructed around them. Indeed, most people I know are unaware of what I think about global warming, unless, ignoring the kick on the ankle from my wife at a dinner party, I am impolite enough to say something about it.

And I am unaware of any overwhelming evidence, against which views should be tested. There's lots of data, lots of information, and lots of argument, but none of it is 'overwhelming'.

Nonetheless, as with the editor's note, if you go into the articles and comments on many of the essays at The Conversation, you'll find an abundance of 'truthiness' - authors quite sure of themselves, and commenters who plainly feel that if you say something again and again, and are scornful of anyone who disagrees with you, you have upheld your position against the enemy, and protected the truth.

I think it's 'truthiness', not the truth, and I wish there were vastly less of it.