Slate's Climate Desk — "a journalistic collaboration on climate change" — wants you to know that "Internet Trolls Really Are Horrible People/Narcissistic, Machiavellian, psychopathic, and sadistic."

By Chris Mooney, who, based on that headline, is himself trolling, so I'll take that as a confession that he's narcissistic, Machiavellian, psychopathic, and sadistic.

Mooney — who wrote a book called "The Republican War on Science," which sounds like trolling — tells us of some new research (from the University of Manitoba) into the psychology of trolls. So how did the researchers determine who counted as a troll so that they could study what these people are really like inside? If you restrict the category to horrible people, it's no surprise that you find that the horrible people are horrible.

But why does this belong at Climate Desk? You can guess without reading this sentence: "Last year Popular Science did away with its comments sections completely, citing research on the deleterious effects of trolling, and YouTube also took measures to rein in trolling."

From the link to Popular Science: "A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again."

I feel like trolling Slate's Climate Desk over this. Oh, but if I do, I guess I'm one of the "horrible people." Thanks for the advance pushback, but I'm not taking it. Who says things like "you're a horrible person"? I'd say a child, but maybe also an excessively emotional adult. Mooney would like to disqualify skeptics as toxic evil-doers. I'm sure he — like Popular Science — is tired of fending off arguments he feels have already been answered conclusively, but expressing that exasperation by demonizing his opponents is none too scientific.

Meanwhile: "1 in 4 Americans unaware that Earth circles Sun."