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.
Greg House says:
April 21, 2012 at 8:07 pm
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 21, 2012 at 5:01 pm
Yet Mr. House, bizarrely, asks why I “so easily agree” with the IPCC’s current estimate. I did not say I agreed with it: on the contrary, …
===============================================
Cristopher, these are your own words you wrote earlier on this thread:
„Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 21, 2012 at 9:56 am
We have been adding CO2 and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere in appreciable quantities since 1750, and the radiative forcing we have caused since that date is about 3.1 Watts per square meter – a forcing equivalent to five-sixths of the 3.7 Watts per square meter that is the IPCC’s current estimate of the CO2 radiative forcing.“
Or do you mean you agree only with „3.1 Watts per square meter“ and not with „3.7 Watts per square meter“? Did you or someone else physically measure it?
If not, then it is probably a sort of model adjustment based on the assumption as well, that there is something they are trying to prove based on this assumption. Aristotle and humble me are very confused.
But, you know, If you do not agree with that estimation now, then I am happy, thank you.
&
E.M.Smith says:
April 21, 2012 at 8:34 pm
Lord Monckton,
I believe the explanation lies in lies. The art of propaganda is all about the deliberate construction of untruths that appear true. The use of “useful idiots” depends upon it.
========================
What’s the logical fallacy here of someone who promotes himself as an upholder of the greats against accepting consensus to reach the truth, stressing the search for truth be paramount, but then insists that all responding adhere to the unproven claim by consensus he presents as the premise of his argument? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/20/the-illogic-of-climate-hysteria/#comment-962814
rogerkni;
And here’s the specific intrade market for next fall’s Arctic sea ice extent:
https://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/?eventId=91516
Mike Jonas says:
April 22, 2012 at 12:01 am
Gunga Din …. “Follow the money”. (Sorry. I don’t know the Latin for that.)
Sequere pecuniam.
she has only one brain and it is disconnected she should see a shrink to see if you can connect again I don,t think it is possible
:- 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.
========
Indeed it’s a pity that Erin Delman, an impressionable undergraduate, becomes the poster child for unreasoned argument.
However, I think The messy hair reference is merely confirming the stereotype that the appeal to concensus is coming from, and not without some reliance on bossiness and a suggestion of hysteria, both techniques used to back up weak arguments.
Too bad Aristotle didn’t include the straw man fallacy. Monckton certainly uses it liberally.
To those who think Lord Monckton began his article with an ad hominem …
“You are dimwits” is an assertion.
“You can’t spot an argument because you are dimwits” is an explanation.
“You can’t spot an argument, so you are dimwits” is an argument.
“You are dimwits, so you can’t spot an argument” is a fallacious argument (specifically an ad hominem).
Hope this helps.
Miss Delnam in the picture has clearly adopted a stance of defensive agressiveness, thereby strongly marking her repugnance to be convinced by the speaker’s arguments. In layman’s terms: she’s closed off completely. That her hair is “messy” is merely because students like to adopt a “care-free” appearance (i.e. hairdressers are too expensive… I write from experience by the way), but when you’re a spokesperson people do expect a bit more grooming.
The article however is hilarious. I do like the exposition on bad arguments. And as was described in the article, Aristotle was the first to write about them, but the list was augmented later by Latin-writing philosophers hence they are written in … Latin. That is also how they are taught at my university when I read Communication Sciences there.
Naomi Oreskes in her analysis 928 abstracts using the keywords ‘‘global climate change’’ managed to find none that refuted the following statement:
‘‘Global climate change is occurring, and human activities are at least part of the reason why”.
Which is remarkable, since I doubt there is a single skeptic/climate realist who would disagree with that statement.
Some “consensus”.
His lordship doesn’t know the difference between induction and a formal argument, I’m afraid. Defering to the opinion of experts instead of a pompous dilettante, for example, is not a “fallacy”.
Jan P. Perlwitz says:
April 21, 2012 at 9:23 pm
well from a fake skeptic to a fake scientist all I was doing was answering your question if my ad hominem attack was to call those named in my post high priests then what would you call them they (and you) want us to take without question (that is on faith) that they are right in all of their pronouncements without providing the slightest bit of VERIFIABLE, REPRODUCIBLE, HONEST science now that sounds to me like a high priest.
Yep … note the crossed arms.
Crossed Arms means I’m in total defense, and you are not getting in.
ali says:
April 22, 2012 at 6:56 am
His lordship doesn’t know the difference between induction and a formal argument, I’m afraid. Defering to the opinion of experts instead of a pompous dilettante, for example, is not a “fallacy”.
Deferring to the opinion of “experts” is a perfect example of an Appeal to Authority, which most certainly is a logical fallacy, and your use of the phrase “pompous dilettante” is a perfect example of an ad hominem. Using inductive reasoning, one can therefore conclude the following:
1) Most Warmist trolls, judging by their words and actions are idiots.
2) You are obviously a Warmist troll.
2) Therefore there is a strong possibility you are an idiot.
Another baseless and false accusation.
Christopher Monckton, thank you for the article. I found it educational and also found many comments quite educational as well.
Have you had an opportunity to view and analyze the video of Murry Salby’s speech posted on WUWT recently? Somehow, I doubt Jan Perlwitz and some of the other CAGW snake cult accolytes posting here would have a clue how to respond to it without exhausting the list a fallacies you’ve highlighted in your article.
Will Nitschke says:
April 21, 2012 at 6:28 pm
Yes because lesser minds treated his claims dogmatically as true and the scholastics dared not question the ‘consensus’ of opinion that they created around this man.
– – – – –
Will Nitschke,
Well said.
I think that the consensus (authority) fallacy committed by those (predominately Catholic) scholastics wrt Aristotle’s original work is instructive of the fundamental logical fallacy being propagated by the blog site which falsely calls itself ‘Skeptical Science’. SS has a false ‘a priori’ pre-science premise. SS’s false ‘a priori’ pre-science premise is the existence of an authoritative scientific consensus which they posit as being all the IPCC products and only that science which supports the IPCC CAGWism.
By its very nature SS contains the epitome of basic logical error. Their continuing descent into irrationalism is inevitable unless they remove their fallacious fundamental logical thinking.
John
Yeah..But..No..But!!
ali says:
April 22, 2012 at 6:56 am
His lordship doesn’t know the difference between induction and a formal argument, I’m afraid. Defering to the opinion of experts instead of a pompous dilettante, for example, is not a “fallacy”.
Sorry, but your statement’s a fallacy. An opinion is merely an opinion, and a pompous dilettante may have just as well-informed an opinion on a subject — or many subjects — as an expert.
Various trolls have tried to confuse the issue of whether the climate-extremist case is illogical by making some unsupported (and false) allegations. Let me respond to them.
Mr. House says the holocaust (which was not mentioned in the article by me that is the head posting in this thread) was “not based on scientific consensus”. It was indeed based on a particularly unpleasant and very widespread scientific consensus: eugenics. The hateful notion that if humans were bred like racehorses the stock would be strengthened was accepted and actively promoted by the scientific community throughout Europe in the decades before the Second World War. It was only a short step from that notion to the kindred notion that the Jews were less than human, would pollute the stock if they were allowed to breed, and should accordingly be rounded up and first isolated and then murdered. If skeptical scientists had spoken up plainly when governments and fashionable newspapers and Leagues of Health and Beauty were openly spouting eugenicist nonsense, the holocaust might not have happened. At least the scientists should have tried, rather than cowering in silence when faced with the “consensus”.
Mr. House also says: “If someone manages to create an impression of scientific consensus, they win.” Win what? To anyone properly instructed in logic, an impression of scientific consensus, or even the reality of scientific consensus (if there were one) would not in any way colour the examination of the question whether the proposition to which the imagined consensus is said to assent is true. To any seeker after objective truth, the argument from consensus is a fallacy. Anyone seeking to depend upon it to demonstrate a scientific result is merely perpetrating and perpetuating that fallacy, and no attempts to muddy the waters by those unfamiliar with logic (or familiar with logic but wicked) will alter the fact that the question whether or not there is a scientific consensus has no bearing on objective scientific truth.
SystemsThinker makes the unsupported allegation that I am guilty of the straw-man fallacy, but fails to supply, still less to provide evidence for, a single instance. This sort of comment is mere yah-boo, and is the unfailing mark of a troll.
Ali makes the unsupported and nonsensical allegation that “His Lordship does not know the difference between induction and a formal argument.” Again, not a single instance or reason for this allegation is either given or supported by any evidence. However, Ali should know that induction is itself a species of formal argument, and that he is accordingly making the rather silly statement that I am unfamiliar with the distinction between a subset and a set.
Ali also says that “Deferring to the opinion of experts … is not a fallacy”. It is a fallacy, and a very commonplace one: the fallacy of reputation or of appeal to authority. As the head posting makes explicit, merely because we are told many experts say they believe a proposition to be true, it does not necessarily follow that the proposition is true. There may or may not be many experts who say they believe the proposition to be true; their reputations as experts may or may not be justified; they may or may not say they believe it to be true; they may or may not believe it to be true; even if they believe it to be true, they may or may not be acting uprightly in accordance with their expertise and reputation; and, even if they are acting in accordance with their reputation, they may be wrong. To cite Huxley again: “The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. To him, skepticism is the highest of duties: blind faith the one unpardonable sin.” Al-Haytham made the same point. Or, to put it in Michael Crichton’s succinct words: “If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus.”
Myrrh says that to rely upon Aristotle’s fallacies is to rely upon “an unproven claim by consensus”. While it is welcome that Myrrh now recognizes that the argument from consensus is a fallacy, for otherwise he could not reasonably have sought to rely upon it, his allegation that Aristotle’s fallacies represent a “consensus” – indeed, an “unproven consensus” – is unsupported. As I have explained in an earlier comment, since mathematics and logic became fused in the quite recent discipline of mathematical logic it has become possible to use remarkably rigorous mathematical techniques – in particular, the technique of propositional calculus, which in turn depends upon Boolean algebra – to demonstrate formally that the fallacies codified by Aristotle are indeed fallacies. They are fallacies not because there is a consensus that they are fallacies but because they have been demonstrated rigorously to be fallacies, just as Pythagoras’ Theorem is true not because there is a consensus to the effect that it is true but because it has been demonstrated rigorously to be true.
And, as I have pointed out before, those who consider that science is or ought to be done by head-count among “experts” [x, an unknown quantity; spurt, a drip under pressure], the near-unanimous consensus in the peer-reviewed literature of the science of economics holds that attempting to mitigate global warming is so cost-ineffective in comparison with the far lesser and later cost of focused adaptation to any adverse consequences of warming that little or no spending on CO2 mitigation is justifiable today. The argument from consensus is a fallacy: but those who – largely for political reasons – find it expedient to adhere to that fallacy must understand that the economic consensus is implacably against them. The correct policy to address a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing. Since the premium exceeds the cost of the risk, don’t insure: that is a precautionary principle worthy of the name.
Bill Tuttle, at April 21, 2012 at 10:10 am, wrote:
“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.”
Yes, that is what I mean. I suspect Monckton just invented some statements that are allegedly made by climate scientists, or he distorted the real arguments made by the scientists too a large degree. One example from his original article:
““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,…”
I do not know where the IPCC (what does he mean with “the IPCC” anyway? The IPCC-Report?) used this argument, particularly that the given reasoning for the statement in the first sentence was the one in the second sentence as asserted by Monckton. I strongly suspect he made this up.
In your comment at April 22, 2012 at 12:51 am, you still try to free Monckton from the burden of proof for his assertions. You still try to shift the burden of proof for his sources toward me, that I hadn’t done my homework, if I didn’t know what his sources were. I do not accept this. I also don’t see what this has to do anything with on what papers I was a co-author. Are you claiming, being a co-author on those papers would make Monckton’s random elaborations he did somewhere where he may have provided the sources a mandatory reading material for me? I don’t think so.
It amuses me how the liberal minded, concerned about the climate and tending to scoff at christian viewpoints as benighted so readily sermonize on a doomed future. People should think more about where they get their ideas.
Monckton of Brenchley, April 21, 2012 at 9:56 am, wrote:
“In that event, can it be demonstrated that climate sensitivity is low? Yes, it can. We have been adding CO2 and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere in appreciable quantities since 1750, and the radiative forcing we have caused since that date is about 3.1 Watts per square meter – a forcing equivalent to five-sixths of the 3.7 Watts per square meter that is the IPCC’s current estimate of the CO2 radiative forcing. Yet global warming since 1750 is only 0.9 Celsius degrees, of which some fraction is attributable to a natural recovery of global temperatures after the Little Ice Age. Even if all of the warming since 1750 were our fault, climate sensitivity would be little more than 1 Celsius degree per CO2 doubling, implying zero or somewhat net-negative feedbacks.”
It sounds generous, when Monckton assumes for his little calculation that all the warming was “our fault”, strengthening his argument effectively, because the assumption is not in favor of it. But not including the about +0.3 W/m^2 solar radiative forcing is only the smaller neglect. The much larger neglect, which strongly favors his assertion of a “low” climate sensitivity, is plainly ignoring the strongly negative aerosol forcing of -1.4 W/m^2 (Ramanathan and Carmichael, 2008, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ngeo156), which may have counteracted up to 50% (+/-25%) of the forcing due to greenhouse gases since pre-industrial times. Thus, including the missing forcings, and repeating the back on the envelope calculation gives then an estimate for the climate sensitivity of about 1.7 K for a doubling of CO2 instead, which is not in contradiction to the values in the IPCC Report 2007 (that says very likely > 1.5 K).
One also would have to take into consideration that the sensitivity for CO2-doubling is for the equilibrium state, but the observed present day temperature change since pre-industrial time is not the equilibrium temperature change due to present day forcing. The system is not in equilibrium because of the heat flux into the ocean abysses. It would take thousands of years to reach the equilibrium.
Monckton of Brenchley: “…merely because we are told many experts say they believe a proposition to be true, it does not necessarily follow that the proposition is true. “
The argument from authority is legitimate as long as the authority in question is genuine and there is a consensus of experts on the subject.
One can then make a valid argument, caveats notwithstanding, that a genuine authority is likely to be right about his subject of expertise, or at least more likely to be right than wrong, and more likely to be correct that the non-expert.
Admittedly, the argument from authority is not very strong, so it’s interesting that in disputing the argument Lord Monckton cites three authorities of his own.
Ms Delman may not understand logic, but she definetely has Monckton beat on the basis of cuteness…. ;-D
Jan P. Perlwitz:
“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.
What is it exactly are you saying here? Do you mean to say that Santer did not do said analysis? Do you agree with him or disagree?
Did he or did he not analyze actual data and come up with 17 years?
Do you mean that this number might be different 2 years from now? Considering that trend for last 15 years was essentially 0, how much more than those 2 years would we need if it stays that way?
In any event, can you actually tell us what is the number is?
Considering how important this number is to CAGW side, I’d expect you to have an automated script doing this analysis on daily basis.
As someone who does models, you should appreciate that models are nothing without proper validation, and since this number goes directly to that, I’d expect you to be able to answer this question very easily.
Or you just hoping that 2 years from now you’ll be able to come up with some other explanation as to why it is 17 years of no warming trend is still not conclusive?