By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Special to the Financial Post (reposted here with permission from the author)
“But there’s a CONSENSUS!” shrieked the bossy environmentalist with the messy blonde hair.
“That, Madame, is intellectual baby-talk,” I replied.
I was about to give a talk questioning “global warming” hysteria at Union College, Schenectady. College climate extremists, led by my interlocutor, had set up a table at the door of the lecture theatre to deter students from hearing the sceptical side of the case.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle, 2300 years ago, listed the dozen commonest logical fallacies in human discourse in his book Sophistical Refutations. Not the least of these invalid arguments is what the mediaeval schoolmen would later call the argumentum ad populum – the consensus or headcount fallacy.
A fallacy is a deceptive argument that appears to be logically valid but is in fact invalid. Its conclusion will be unreliable at best, downright false at worst.
One should not make the mistake of thinking that Aristotle’s fallacies are irrelevant archaisms. They are as crucial today as when he first wrote them down. Arguments founded upon any of his fallacies are unsound and unreliable, and that is that.
Startlingly, nearly all of the usual arguments for alarm about the climate are instances of Aristotle’s dozen fallacies of relevance or of presumption, not the least of which is the consensus fallacy.
Just because we are told that many people say they believe a thing to be so, that is no evidence that many people say it, still less that they believe it, still less that it is so. The mere fact of a consensus – even if there were one – tells us nothing whatsoever about whether the proposition to which the consensus supposedly assents is true or false.
Two surveys have purported to show that 97% of climate scientists supported the “consensus”. However, one survey was based on the views of just 77 scientists, far too small a sample to be scientific, and the proposition to which 75 of the 77 assented was merely to the effect that there has been warming since 1950.
The other paper did not state explicitly what question the scientists were asked and did not explain how they had been selected to remove bias. Evidentially, it was valueless. Yet that has not prevented the usual suspects from saying – falsely – that the “consensus” of 97% of all climate scientists is that manmade global warming is potentially catastrophic.
Some climate extremists say there is a “consensus of evidence”. However, evidence cannot hold or express an opinion. There has been no global warming for a decade and a half; sea level has been rising for eight years at a rate equivalent to just 3 cm per century; hurricane activity is at its lowest in the 30-year satellite record; global sea-ice extent has hardly changed in that time; Himalayan glaciers have not lost ice overall; ocean heat content is rising four and a half times more slowly than predicted; and the 50 million “climate refugees” that the UN had said would be displaced by 2010 simply do not exist. To date, the “consensus of evidence” does not support catastrophism.
“Ah,” say the believers, “but there is a consensus of scientists and learned societies.” That is the argumentum ad verecundiam, the reputation or appeal-to-authority fallacy. Merely because a group has a reputation, it may not deserve it; even if it deserves it, it may not be acting in accordance with it; and, even if it is, it may be wrong.
“But it’s only if we include a strong warming effect from Man’s CO2 emissions that we can reproduce the observed warming of the past 60 years. We cannot think of any other reason for the warming.” That argument from the UN’s climate panel, the IPCC, is the argumentum ad ignorantiam, the fallacy of arguing from ignorance. We do not know why the warming has occurred. Arbitrarily to blame Man is impermissible.
“The rate of global warming is accelerating. Therefore it is caused by us.” That is the fallacy of ignoratio elenchi, the red-herring fallacy. Even if global warming were accelerating, that would tell us nothing about whether we were to blame. The IPCC twice uses this fallacious argument in its 2007 Fourth Assessment Report. Even if its argument were not illogical, the warming rate is not increasing. The notion that it is accelerating was based on a statistical abuse that the IPCC has refused to correct.
Superficially, the red-herring fallacy may seem similar to the fallacy of argument from ignorance. However, it is subtly different. The argument from ignorance refers to fundamental ignorance of the matter of the argument (hence an arbitrary conclusion is reached): the red-herring fallacy refers to fundamental ignorance of the manner of conducting an argument (hence an irrelevant consideration is introduced).
“What about the cuddly polar bears?” That is the argumentum ad misericordiam, the fallacy of inappropriate pity. There are five times as many polar bears as there were in the 1940s – hardly the population profile of a species at imminent threat of extinction. There is no need to pity the bears (and they are not cuddly).
“For 60 years we have added CO2 to the atmosphere. That causes warming. Therefore the warming is our fault.” That is the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, the argument from false cause. Merely because one event precedes another it does not necessarily cause it.
“We tell the computer models that there will be strong warming if we add CO2 to the air. The models show there will be a strong warming. Therefore the warming is our fault.” This is the argumentum ad petitionem principii, the circular-argument fallacy, where a premise is also the conclusion.
“Global warming caused Hurricane Katrina.” This is the inappropriate argument from the general to the particular that is the fallacy a dicto simpliciter ad dictum
secundum quid, the fallacy of accident. Even the IPCC admits individual extreme-weather events cannot be ascribed to global warming. Hurricane Katrina was only Category 3 at landfall. The true reason for the damage was failure to maintain the sea walls.
“Arctic sea ice is melting: therefore manmade global warming is a problem.” This is the inappropriate argument from the particular to the general that is the fallacy a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter, the fallacy of converse accident. The Arctic ice may be melting, but the Antarctic has been cooling for 30 years and the sea ice there is growing, so the decline in Arctic sea ice does not indicate a global problem.
“Monckton says he’s a member of the House of Lords, but the Clerk of the Parliaments says he isn’t, so everything he says is nonsense.” That is the argumentum ad hominem, the attack on the man rather than on his argument.
“We don’t care what the truth is. We want more taxation and regulation. We will use global warming as an excuse. If you disagree, we will haul you before the International Climate Court.” That is the nastiest of all the logical fallacies: the argumentum ad baculum, the argument of force.
In any previous generation, the fatuous cascade of fallacious arguments deployed by climate extremists in government, academe and the media in support of the now-collapsed climate scare would have been laughed down.
When the future British prime minister Harold Macmillan arrived at Oxford to study the classics, his tutor said: “Four years’ study will qualify you for nothing at all – except to recognize rot when you hear it.” The climate storyline is rot. To prevent further costly scams rooted in artful nonsense, perhaps we should restore universal classical education. As it is, what little logic our bossy environmentalists learn appears to come solely from Mr. Spock in Star Trek.
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Jan P. Perlwitz says:
April 21, 2012 at 9:52 am
… if such a thing doesn’t happen to you when you use the other languages you have learnt in the course of your life …
I only ever ask for beer in the other languages I have learnt. 🙂
good article but too bad you start it out with an ad hominem attack on the young lady’s appearance and demeanor.
If anyone tries to argue that ‘all reputable scientists believe…’ just remind them that at one time all reputable scientists believed that the sun went around the earth (and they had models for that too)! Today’s scientific certainty may well become tomorrow’s ROTFL.
Jan P. Perlwitz says:
April 21, 2012 at 9:39 am
The NOAA “State of the Climate in 2008” stated:
“Near-zero and even negative trends are common
for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”
Santer etc. recently moved the goal posts out to 17 years. What is the Latin term for the logical fallacy of moving the goal posts? An extra two years gives you a little more breathing room but if Gaia doesn’t cooperate with your models, are you going to move the goal posts once again?
(Thank you Bill Tuttle says:)
Jan P. Perlwitz says:
April 21, 2012 at 9:39 am
You yourself had referenced the paper by Santer
True, but my intention was not to say that because I agreed with him but to show that 15 years and 5 months is 90.7% of the way there.
You mention “chosen time-scale is too short…”
See the following with two 30 year trends, the most recent one and the other from 1912 to 1942. The slopes are essentially identical. So how much can you attribute to CO2?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1900/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1912.33/to:1942.33/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1982.08/to:2012/trend
Aristotle put forth a methodology for analyzing the validity of argumentw, not facts.
I believe you are trying to say that the facts should speak for themselves, and that rhetoric is used to mask the truth the facts reveal. I believe Aristotle is your friend in analysis of rhetoric and not your enemy.
The facts speak but their meaning is always open to interpretation.
There temperature today is 62 degrees F. Last year on this date it was 47 degree F. Those are facts which speak for themselves…. but what does that tell you?
This is where Aristotle’s methodolgy comes in.
Bill Tuttle wrote:
“There *is* no curve — both HadSST2gl from 1995 and from 1997-98 are flatlined. For global warming to be happening, the SST also has to be rising — and it isn’t.”
Global SST has “flatlined” since 1995? Really?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1995/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1995/trend
And here the global temperature anomaly from HADCRUT4 from 1995 to today:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1995/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1995/trend
Where is the alleged “flatline” of the global temperature anomaly?
“Santer originally said it would take 15 years — it was only after he saw 15 years of no change that he moved the goalposts to 17 years.”
I naively would assume how many years are needed isn’t a question of a normative, just making up some number by definition, a “goalpost”, some magical threshold. I rather would think this is a question that only can be answered by analyzing the actual data. How long does it take until the trend can be seen for a given background noise due to natural variability? The answer may vary depending on the magnitude of the noise and the slope of the trend. If a trend is larger it will take less years, if the trend is smaller it will take more years.
Am I wrong?
@Ras. I’m good, hope the same goes for you. Grateful as always for the Founding Sons chatroom. Pop in tonight if you get time.
Pointman
= = = = =
Jan P. Perlwitz,
Are you confusing some logical fallacy with a normal scientific process of open dialog about the statistical treatment of times series? Please tell me what logical fallacy you think has been committed.
Regarding statistical treatment of times series, if you are somehow implying it is appropriate to use Santer as a primary unbiased authority in objective application of statistics related to time series then that seems ill advised considering the following BH post;
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/4/21/madrid-1995.html
I do not suggest rejecting Santer research out of hand, but I assess that Santer needs to be evaluated at extreme arm’s length and with some considerable risk evaluation by independent scientific thinkers (aka skeptics). I say that because I wonder; does Santer adopt the Post Normal Science of Jerome Revetz where ideological/societal/political beliefs should inform the outcome of scientific research?
John
to be politically correct-I should have said too bad you started out with what might be construed as an “ad feminam” attack on her appearance and demeanor
Mr Perlwitz says:
“I naively would assume how many years are needed isn’t a question of a normative, just making up some number by definition, a ‘goalpost’, some magical threshold.”
‘Magical’ is the right term. Recall that the 17 year number is fabricated and owned by your side. And as predicted, the goal posts are already being moved:
“The answer may vary depending on the magnitude of the noise and the slope of the trend. If a trend is larger it will take less years, if the trend is smaller it will take more years.
“Am I wrong?”
Yes. The long term trend from the LIA is intact. It is not accelerating. The current temperature stasis is clearly troubling to the wild-eyed alarmist contingent. It means that the planet itself disagrees with the “carbon” conjecture. Who should we believe? Rent seekers? Or the ultimate Authority, planet earth?
Jan P. Perlwitz says:
April 21, 2012 at 11:06 am
Hey, Jan! How’s it goin’, bud? If you wish to see applied mathematics and how observed data is used to understand and improve a product, watch NASCAR on the Speed Channel. Have a great weekend!
Here is a question, how can these people be so illogical and not even know it? And that brings us to the topic of Spock, not Mr. Spock, Doctor Spock. It has been shown that the chief difference between “leftists” and and “right wingers” (as the words are used today) is whether or not the person was spanked as a child. It was Dr. Spock who wrote a book advocating that children should not be spanked. Much later, after having actually seen the results of that idea, he has repudiated it, and has been pointedly and deliberately ignored. Now how, you might ask, could spanking or not spanking as a child effect whether they can understand or use logic and thus spot the rot in a fallacious argument? Simple, spanking teaches a lesson, “Actions Have Consequences”. A child that is never spanked usually never learns this.
They also do not learn the idea of delayed gratification, learning instead that you can get anything you want if you just scream loud enough ( it was said that you could spot a “Spock baby” if you went to their house and could not hear yourself talk). If you look at the typical “demonstration”, 60’s style, and understand this, you will realize that what you are looking at is simply a mass temper tantrum, which is what these people learned to do when growing up. Look at one again, see the silly costumes, remind you of kindergarten? Notice their signs, about everything under the sun, even totally irrelevant subjects than the supposed reason for the protest (“save the whales”). Notice their ages, still mostly in college, still mooching off dear ol’ dad, not as they may become later when, having left all that and proceeded out into the real world, they discover that yes, actions do indeed have consequences. Many never learn it even then, instead banding together into organizations to deny (loudly) that there are consequences of actions (they instead find someone to blame) or that their is any need for delayed gratification, or hard work to achieve that gratification (socialism basically says that you can let someone else do all that work and then take their money).
Since these people never learned delayed gratification, they never learn to control their emotions. Since they learned that you could get anything you wanted if you just scream loud enough, they believe that they should continue that tradition, believing that if they believe, really believe hard enough, in other words, use pure emotion, that it will be true and they will get what they want (it always worked before). They simply do not understand the idea “stop and think”, because they do not understand the idea “stop”, that would be delaying gratification, which they are now in the deeply ingrained habit of never doing.
The ideas behind CAGW bring immediate emotional gratification, you are “saving the planet” (and the whales, and the polar bears, and…) and this feels good. You can also surround yourself with people who think, or to be more accurate, feel, as you do, which allows them to do what is known as “incestuous gratification”, where a bunch of people get together and reinforce their own beliefs and give each other approval for them and greater approval for ever more extreme forms. You can also get together and blame everything on someone else, this allows you to blow off steam for the bad consequences of your own actions rather than ever admit that you are to blame. Basically, they get together to point fingers of blame at “outsiders”, non believers, to shut up that little inner voice that nags them about their own actions. If everything is “their” fault (evil capitalists, say), then they feel better.
They also go to colleges which now teach things that reinforce these beliefs. For instance, they learn that there is no such thing as right or wrong, which is gratifying since it means that the bad consequences of their actions are not wrong and they really can find someone else to blame for it. Also, it quiets their nagging conscious which is important to them because, never having learned delayed gratification, they have never learned to suppress or control, even temporarily, their emotions, and thus anything that gives them immediate gratification must be “right”, because it feels good. It should also be noted that colleges are now staffed largely with those who never see consequences, in college, it is all theory and no practice, they are isolated from any consequences and only have do deal with ideas, thus they often choose to believe and teach those ideas which feel good.
An example of this, one teacher achieved results with inner city children by teaching them chess. In chess, you must think many moves ahead. The children reported this as a revelation, they had never before thought that actions now might have future consequences. This is not surprising, many have no fathers who would spank and teach this (mother probably doesn’t have time), and they can see how dear ol’ dad dealt with consequences of his actions, running away, and I think we can safely say that their mother didn’t think about consequences either. A large percentage of children now are born without fathers, thus, we can expect that the number of children who never learn delayed gratification, and thus reason, will diminish.
To sum up, many children today have never been spanked, spanking teaches that actions have consequences, and teaches delayed gratification, which teaches you to stop and think before action, which teaches you to reason and not simply believe what feels good. Thus, if you appeal to these peoples reason, you need to understand that they simply do not even understand, even a little bit, the very idea of reason. Reason, to them is as alien as Mr. Spock.
BTW, here is a good list of logical fallacies http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html .
Jan P. Perlwitz says:
April 21, 2012 at 10:10 am
Bill Tuttle wrote:
“If you’re unfamiliar with the examples Lord Monckton used to illustrate the fallacies, then you’re guilty of argumentum ad ignorantiam — you’re personally unfamiliar with the references, so therefore they must be wrong.”
And here we have an example for a strawman argumentation, where an argument is made against a statement that wasn’t made, but which is only a misrepresentation of the statement that was actually made. I didn’t not say the references were wrong.
It’s obvious that English isn’t your first language, so please take this as a positive (instruction) rather than as a negative (correction). Your exact words were “Using alleged examples. Alleged examples w/o proof of source for the alleged quotes or arguments. I suspect most of the alleged examples are just made up by Monckton, misrepresentations of what really was said or what the real argument is,” My emphasis.
What you effectively said was that Lord Monckton fabricated his statements. Re-read them, and if you still think he’s misrepresented anything, be specific about which statements you object to.
jim says:
April 21, 2012 at 10:33 am
good article but too bad you start it out with an ad hominem attack on the young lady’s appearance and demeanor.
========
+1, of course.
BTW, as an example of how much people today even understand the idea of rationality, or of actually looking at the evidence, or even bothering to try, Just two days ago someone bet me $5 that the north pole ice cap would be gone on two years. Totally gone. Think about that. Is this person even capable of understanding even the idea of rational thought, or even the idea of thought?
For many people, talking to them about anything like this which involves them using rational thought is a waste of time. However, what you can do is talk to their followers, the people they drag along with them with the force of their personality and the loudness of their advocacy. You could also sway many people by NOT appealing to their reason, since they have none, but to their emotions. The leftist side does this all the time, with 30 second sound bites and emotional images. Maybe we can bombard them with images of too many polar bears eating up all those cute little baby seals (and then dying out themselves). We can also appeal to their immediate gratification, something they do understand, by pointing out that the consequences of their actions are that their lights go out.
Personally, I think of using emotional arguments to sway people as nothing more than propaganada. However, many people today understand nothing else. Thus, you may simply have to take the truth, facts, and present it in emotion laden ways similar to the way the lies are presented. Truth is truth, however it is presented. Just remember that if you try to appeal to many peoples rationalty today, you are appealing to something that simply isn’t there.
One thing that can be done is to use laguage that sways the emotions, as well as reason. A good classical education, such as Lord Mocton has (he had the title at birth, therefore, he still has it) includes ancient rhetoric, speeches, poetry, and the like. On the flip side, the proponants of CAGW have lies that they have been caught in, another way to sway with emotion being to prove that you have been lied to, many people have learned reason when they discovered anger at being lied to.
And if many are not pursuaded by reason, don’t be suprised or discouraged, they simply don’t understand the concept. if you know that they cannot ever understand you (or will ever try), simply make them look foolish so that their followers see this. You can’t change their minds simce effectively they have none, but you can affect the people around them.
Legatus</bI says:
April 21, 2012 at 12:05 pm
Just two days ago someone bet me $5 that the north pole ice cap would be gone on two years. Totally gone. Think about that.
I did. Tell him to make it $20 and then offer him double or nothing on three years.
Original WUWT March 17th article which contains a link to a March 7th Union College post:
Monckton in a rift with Union college Earth scientist and activist
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/17/monckton-in-a-rift-with-union-college-earth-scientists-and-activists/
=========
Of all the locations Monckton of Brenchley visited on his US tour, was the Union College lecture the only place where he encountered “bossy environmentalists”?
@Hugh Pepper: You want consensus, Hugh? I came across my favourite claim to consensus this month: It was the consensus that the Titanic was ‘unsinkable’. Then again, I guess you figure the same about AGW…ooops! I do hope you know where your lifeboat station is (you’re bound to get in; it’s women and children first. 🙂
Some things that are irrelevant to science are: trust, consensus, authority, public opinion and belief in any ideology.
John
Jan P. Perlwitz says:
April 21, 2012 at 11:06 am
And here the global temperature anomaly from HADCRUT4 from 1995 to today:
Hadcrut3 shows a zero trend for 15 years, or at least it would if the February anomaly of 0.19 were added. (Please do not take this next statement as a criticism since it is an easy thing to miss.) But as for Hadcrut4, it only goes to December 2010 so the last 15 months are missing and they have been relatively cold months. See the additions I made to your graph to show the slope for the last 15 years and the slope for the last 17 years, both using Hadcrut3.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1995/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1995/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1995/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.16/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1995/trend
I do not know about the Hadcrut4 slope, but the Hadcrut3 slope for 17 years of [slope = 0.00764992 per year] is NOT significant at the 95% level. I am applying Phil Jones’ definition of 95% significance based on the following:
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/
Focus on the top 95% error bar for 1995 and note that it is way above the bottom error bar for the 2011 line.
I couldn’t help but notice how insecure young Ms Delman appears, guarding her solar plexus so carefully. The whole “consensus” meme seems to be driven by a deep seated insecurity, psychlogical as well as rhetorical.
W^3
Here’s a good graphic- Interesting that ‘appeal to authority’ is described form the other end of the scientific ‘consensus’ argument.
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/rhetological-fallacies/
So you’re the other one. 😉
Honoured in philosophy myself, UBC 1993.
As to Lord Monckton’s missive here, excellent summary of the argumentative traps our alarmist friends routinely fall into. Thank you, sir.
@James Baldwin Bull: April 21, 2012 at 3:09 am
Thanks James – an excellent clip! I hope I have occasion to use that – argumentum ad petitionem principii, the circular-argument fallacy.