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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Goldie on April 21, 2012 at 5:02 pm said:
” Please can Josh make a poster of these, I’ll gladly pay for it! ”
You mean of the Aristotelian fallacies, or of Aristotelian Climate perhaps, as the original article might have it ?
Yes, I’d buy the T-shirt.
For impact though, it might be better to do just one at a time. His ensembles really do contain so much talent and hard work, though I think they might be better appreciated as individual cartoons. A series perhaps.
Josh is certainly the ‘ cartoonist in residence ‘ we first think of and rely on to convey these messages in an effective way.
Jan P. Perlwitz says:
April 22, 2012 at 11:30 am
“May have counteracted……”? This based upon a model and not observation I take it.
It is interesting how desperately some commenters try to keep alive the discredited and discreditable notion that, as Brendan H puts it, “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”. No. In scientific discourse the argument from authority is not legitimate under any circumstances. As Huxley says: “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.” All that Brendan H is really asserting is that he would prefer the headcount fallacy and the reputation fallacy not to be fallacies, so that the climate extremists might continue to rely upon them in the absence of real-world confirmation of their fanciful predictions. But fallacies they are, and mere otiose repetition of them does not alter that fact.
Mr. Perlwitz seems not to understand how scientific discourse is conducted. It is not appropriate for him merely to assume that I have, as he puts it, “fabricated” the climate-extremist arguments that were outlined and demonstrated as fallacies in my article for the Financial Post in Canada. To make a baseless accusation that a statement has been “fabricated” is a libel, and a serious one. Mr. Perlwitz is not entitled to make any such allegation unless he is sure of his facts, which in the present instance he is not.
Only after some pressure from other commenters, he finally attempts to support his previously unsupported allegation by saying I had fabricated the IPCC’s argument that it is only if a substantial influence from CO2 be posited that its models can reproduce the warming of recent decades. Yet that is one of the most prominent arguments advanced not only by the IPCC but also by its acolytes and adherents worldwide, over and over again. The IPCC’s 2007 report even illustrates its fallacious argument by showing model-generated graphs of global temperature flatlining if no warming from CO2 is assumed, and only rising in accordance with observation if a high climate sensitivity is assumed. This is a spectacular example of the argumentum ad ignorantiam – the argument from ignorance, which is a fallacy.
In future, Mr. Perlwitz should be very careful indeed before making unsubstantiated and libelous allegations that I have fabricated evidence. He works for a federally-funded organization that profits mightily by the climate scare, and the courts have in the past held such organizations responsible for the libels of their servants, even when those servants have not stated that their allegation is made by or on behalf of the organization. The civilized approach, if he would like to imagine that I have made something up but has no evidence whatsoever that I have done so, would have been to get in touch with me, be specific about which point or points he considers to have been fabricated and why, and ask for my comments before shooting his unscientific mouth off.
Mr. Perlwitz – one hopes that he is not writing his libels on the taxpayer’s dime, and unless he withdraws his allegation of “fabrication” very smartly enquiries will be made of his masters to draw their attention to his libels and to ensure that he does not have their backing in perpetrating them – also takes me to task for having determined climate sensitivity incorrectly. His contention is that I failed to make allowance for a very strongly negative aerosol forcing that has been widely posited in the literature. The aerosol forcing is highly speculative (it is yet another quantity that can neither be measured nor inferred by any theoretical method, and even its sign is in doubt), and is really best seen as a fudge-factor to make climate sensitivity higher than it is, See, for instance, Murphy et al., 2009, where it is assumed – on no evidence – that the negative aerosol forcing altogether cancels the positive forcing from CO2 over the period of study. See also the IPCC’s 2007 report, which adopts a not dissimilar approach, again with no very sound basis either in theory or in observation.
But let us be kind and assume a quite strongly negative forcing of, say, 1.1 W/m2 from anthropogenic non-greenhouse forcings. Since 1750, whence IPCC dates our influence on climate, a recent study (Blasing, 2011) shows 3.1 W/m2 of forcing from our greenhouse-gas emissions, less the 1.1 W/m2 from non-GHG influences. Global temperature had risen by 0.5 C° from 1750-1983 (Hansen, 1984), with a further 0.3 C° since (HadCRUt3, 2011). Of this 0.8 C° warming, 50 to 100% may be manmade. Thus, the 261-year transient climate sensitivity parameter is (0.4 to 0.8)/(3 – 1) = 0.2 to 0.4 C° per Watt per square meter. Multiplying by the forcing at CO2 doubling, i.e. 5.35 ln 2 W/m2 (Myhre et al., 2001, cited by IPCC, 2001, 2007), one obtains a transient sensitivity of 0.75 to 1.5 C° by 2100, when CO2 concentration will have doubled. Dividing this value by 0.7, the fraction of all forcings attributable to CO2, allows for non-CO2 forcings, so that expected warming over the 21st century would then be 1.1 to 2.1 C° to 2100, 32 to 62% of IPCC’s central estimate of 3.4 C° on the A2 emission scenario, and also well above the 2.8 C° implicit central estimate of the IPCC (taking the average of the projections on all six emission scenarios). Even Mr. Perlwitz says the sensitivity is only 1.7 C°, a long way below the 2.8 C° central estimate of the IPCC.
I do not think it likely that the non-greenhouse forcings are anything like as strongly negative as the climate extremists have to assume in order to maintain a case for high climate sensitivity in the teeth of the evidence that warming is not even occurring at the very least rate predicted by the IPCC in 1990. Yet in the above calculation I have assumed it, purely for the sake of argument. The truth is that all of the quantities whose values must be determined with some precision in order to obtain a respectably reliable projection of climate sensitivity are either altogether unknown (such as the aerosol forcing and all temperature feefbacks) or not known to a sufficient precision (such as the CO2 forcing and the Planck parameter). I have said it before and I shall say it again: in the absence of proper knowledge of the relevant quantities, there is no, repeat no, scientific basis for any assumption that climate sensitivity will be anywhere near as high as the IPCC and its followers would like us to believe.
Lest anyone should think I have been too tough on Mr. Perlwitz in this reply, it is really unacceptable that he or anyone should carelessly make allegations that I have fabricated the arguments of the usual suspects. A serious allegation deserves an appropriately tough response. Perhaps he will now be kind enough to withdraw his malevolent and unfounded allegation.
So, you have gone from “there is no consensus” to “there is a consensus, but it’s ‘argumentum ad populum’.” Desperate times for the non-believers, I say!
‘ “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. ‘ Can you really trust a man who so grossly misrepresents himself. I’m a member of the House Of Lords, too. Or maybe I’m the PM. Mr. Monckton seems to think these things don’t matter. Words and truth matter.
Very illogical, Mr. Monckton!
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 22, 2012 at 1:02 pm
I do not think it likely that the non-greenhouse forcings are anything like as strongly negative as the climate extremists have to assume in order to maintain a case for high climate sensitivity in the teeth of the evidence that warming is not even occurring at the very least rate predicted by the IPCC in 1990. Yet in the above calculation I have assumed it, purely for the sake of argument. The truth is that all of the quantities whose values must be determined with some precision in order to obtain a respectably reliable projection of climate sensitivity are either altogether unknown (such as the aerosol forcing and all temperature feefbacks) or not known to a sufficient precision (such as the CO2 forcing and the Planck parameter). I have said it before and I shall say it again: in the absence of proper knowledge of the relevant quantities, there is no, repeat no, scientific basis for any assumption that climate sensitivity will be anywhere near as high as the IPCC and its followers would like us to believe.
Your conclusion doesn’t follow.
‘there is no, repeat no, scientific basis for any any assumption that there is any climate sensitivity at all.
Is the logical conclusion.
If you’d end your pieces logically, the rest of your arguments would make excellent sense.
Hold the phone, Jan. You work at GISS and claim to have never read the IPCC Report, you keep twisting my words (“You still try to shift the burden of proof for his sources toward me”), you insist on sources for statements that have been in the news and the subject of debate in the very fields you’ve authored papers on, and then you state (April 22, 2012 at 11:30 am) : “The system is not in equilibrium because of the heat flux into the ocean abysses” and don’t even bother to reference it.
Now you have a real problem, because according to your sister organization, NOAA, the “ocean abysses” have been cooling since 2005… http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
Or did you base your statement of one of your computer simulations?
Pierre says:
April 22, 2012 at 1:09 pm
So, you have gone from “there is no consensus” to “there is a consensus, but it’s ‘argumentum ad populum’.” Desperate times for the non-believers, I say!
‘ “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. ‘ Can you really trust a man who so grossly misrepresents himself….
__________________________________
This is how he represented himself.
Monckton, on returning from Australia from his tour this autumn, consulted Hugh O’Donoghue, a leading constitutional lawyer at Carmelite Chambers, overlooking the River Thames just a mile downstream from the Houses of Parliament. His question: “Am I or am I not a member of the House of Lords?”
Seems you are very very WRONG because you did not do a simple internet search.
Pierre says:
April 22, 2012 at 1:09 pm
‘ “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.”…
Can you really trust a man who so grossly misrepresents himself. I’m a member of the House Of Lords, too. Or maybe I’m the PM. Mr. Monckton seems to think these things don’t matter. Words and truth matter.
————————-
You claiming that you are a “member of the House Of Lords” and Monckton’s claim to be essentially an honorary member of the HOL’s are not equivalent. Monckton has some traditional/historical basis for his claim. He is a lord afterall. You may buy it or not, but he’s not just making it up out of thin air. The clerk of the HOL’s, Beamish, actually isn’t the final word on the matter either. It seems like one of those things that would have to be settled in court.
[Reply: And that will end the discussion of this particular subject. Whoever is right is immaterial. This question of peerage brings out endless ad hominem accusations and counter-accusations. Further comments on Monckton of Brencheley’s peerage status will be deleted. ~dbs, mod.]
Reason is something that can take root in the mind independently of culture. It’s a product of Mother Nature and the architecture of the human mind. (Or some human minds.) A study of the classics gives one training in logical thinking, but that training is not strictly a necessity. How did Aristotle discover these fallacies? Perhaps Socrates was his teacher — or someone else — and perhaps Socrates or the someone else, in turn, had a splendid teacher. But farther back, somebody somewhere has to have had the “ah ha!” moment, and my guess is that Aristotle had his own “ah ha!” And a certain human urgency requires each of us to seek his or her own “ah ha!”
Whoever lacks at least some acquaintance with a classical education has our sympathy, but still has no excuse. The illogic of the AGW arguments has always been visible to anyone who has cared to look. And the motives of the illogic have not been all that difficult to discover either.
“An appeal to authority” may be one of the logical fallacies that is the hardest to spot. The accumution of Man’s knowledge and education depends on accepting what something someone else has said true. Where it becomes a fallacy is when what they said proves to be wrong. Thomas Edison (Was he a “scientist”?) accomplished great things. He said that transmitting DC power was better than transmitting AC. Was he right or wrong? To say he was right because he invented the light bulb would be a logical fallacy.
(Now, someone might say that he promoted DC, not because he actually believed it was better than AC but because stood to gain $$ by DC over AC transmission. That brings us back to “Follow the Money”.)
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 22, 2012 at 10:15 am
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.
===========================================
Let me tell you first, Christopher, why I do not call my opponents here „trolls“ or any other names. It is not just because it would be unethical, it is mainly for the reason, that if I did that, it would damage MY reputation in the first place, not theirs, and then people would take my comments less seriously.
To your Holocaust example, I have never heard of a scientific consensus specifically on, as you put it, „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.“ You are welcome to provide the evidence, otherwise it looks like just an unsupported claim.
On the other hand, you are completely overlooking another „forcing“: anti-Semitism. Just consider a few things.
First, Jews were traditionally portrayed in the Christian religion as „god killers“. Second, this is what the father of Protestantism wrote 400 years before eugenics: „What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? …I shall give you my sincere advice: First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, …Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed… Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. …For you, too, must not and cannot protect them unless you wish to become participants in an their abominations in the sight of God.. Now let me commend these Jews sincerely to whoever feels the desire to shelter and feed them, to honor them, to be fleeced, robbed, plundered, defamed, vilified, and cursed by them, and to suffer every evil at their hands — these venomous serpents and devil’s children, who are the most vehement enemies of Christ our Lord and of us all…“ (http://www.awitness.org/books/luther/on_jews_and_their_lies_p2.html)
Third, the German nazi party stated in their program: „The Party as such advocates the standpoint of a positive Christianity without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination.“ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Program#The_25-point_Program_of_the_NSDAP)
You can connect the dots.
We can also talk a little bit about the role of the peace loving UK, that prevented the Jews from finding the refuge in Palestine in times of the highest danger in 1939. Palestine was assigned by the League of Nations as a homeland for the Jewish people and the UK got a mandate to administer it. This is how they did it in 1939: they issued the White Paper of 1939, where „a limit of 75,000 Jewish immigrants was set for the five-year period 1940-1944, consisting of a regular yearly quota of 10,000, and a supplementary quota of 25,000, spread out over the same period, to cover refugee emergencies. After this cut-off date, further immigration would depend on the permission of the Arab majority“ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Paper_of_1939). The future 6 million victims had no chance.
So, I think it would be nice, if you could just drop your Holocaust example.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 22, 2012 at 10:15 am
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.
============================================
I am very glad, Christopher, that you are starting to ask questions, I just hope, that your „Win what?“ is not just rhetorical.
I can tell you, what they win. Of course, not a scientific debate, because it is a fallacy, as you perfectly put it. They win the public opinion. You really need to realise that. They actually already won the public opinion and the one of the politicians long ago, remember Kyoto Protocol?
And now you believe to reverse that by just pointing out to the logical fallacies? I am sorry, it is not realistic.
You need to understand, that people always rely on what they are told by respected authorities including scientific ones, like Royal Society or NASA or whatever. This is the reality. Telling people about logical fallacies will not change that. Besides, what are you offering them beside believing you and your references to the papers they will never read? Why should they favour your opinion over the „scientific consensus“? The answer is, they will never do that, except for maybe very few impressed by your personality.
Greg House says:
“I have never heard of a scientific consensus specifically on, as you put it, ‘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.’ You are welcome to provide the evidence, otherwise it looks like just an unsupported claim.”
Have you never heard of Mein Kampf ?? And if you don’t believe that the consensus supported the book’s author, you are out of touch with reality. So let’s just forget the “denier” and “denialist” pejoratives, OK?
Mr. House persists in maundering on about the Holocaust, and tells me to “drop” my “Holocaust example”, when my article for the Financial Post did not mention the Holocaust. It was he, not I, who introduced the topic to this thread. This is trollery, and I call a troll a troll, just as I call a spade a spade. Perhaps he had better drop his Holocaust example: in the circumstances it is an instance of ignoratio elenchi, the red-herring fallacy.
Smokey says:
April 22, 2012 at 3:28 pm
Have you never heard of Mein Kampf ??
=============================================
Is it possible, that you somehow missed the point? Cristopher attributed Holocaust to scientific consensus and I disagreed. Did “Mein Kampf” represent scientific consensus? I do not think so. I mean scientific consensus, not antisemitic or religios consensus. You need to see the difference.
The use of quotation marks in cases like these is problematic. Their ought to be a punctuation mark that signifies paraphrase. It places too great a burden on an arguer in a rapid-fire environment to provide sources for certain claims that were indisputably made by the opposition. (Of course, it’s helpful to the arguer’s case if he does so–in a footnote. It would be helpful for some WUWTer to provide a list of citations that form a basis for Monckton’s paraphrases.) And it’s helpful to be able to “boil down” (summarize and clarify) what an opponent’s remarks amount to, provided it’s done fairly.
I think most readers understand when paraphrase-type “quotation marks” have been used, and I think it’s pettifoggery to object to their being inaccurate merely because that exact wording wasn’t used by any one spokesman. I’ve rarely seen WUWTers raise that objection when a warmist comes here and employs that tactic. (Or maybe I’ve expunged the bad memory of my side doing so in cases where the paraphrase was fair.) Paraphrase-quotes sharpen the issue and save time.
Has anyone any suggestions as to what such punctuation marks might consist of? I think they ought to be at least two characters long, so they stand out and alert the reader that something unusual is being signified. A pair of asterisks, maybe? Or an asterisk “inside” the quotation mark, buffered perhaps by a space?
Here’s a Nov. 20 WUWT thread on Monckton’s House of Lords-ship issue:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/20/dont-mock-the-monck/
[Enough! ~dbs, mod.]
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 22, 2012 at 3:42 pm
Mr. House persists in maundering on about the Holocaust, and tells me to “drop” my “Holocaust example”, when my article for the Financial Post did not mention the Holocaust. It was he, not I, who introduced the topic to this thread.
==============================================
Cristopher, the problem is, that in your presentations you use your Holocaust example as an illustration of the very idea you expressed on this thread, namely that people should not blindly rely on scientific consensus, and you refer to DDT ban and Holocaust. This is the connection.
I do not command you what to say, it is entirely your choice. Your Holocaust example is indeed rhetorically impressive, let us hope you will be lucky enough not to be confronted with arguments like mine on the issue by someone from the audience or the press.
rogerkni,
When paraphrasing [actually, when quoting someone’s word with a different suffix because the original root word is clumsy in response], I use a single apostrophe, ‘like this’, instead of “quotation marks.”
I agree, quotation marks must enclose only a verbatim quote, with no changes whatever.
But I would give the benefit of the doubt to the one using quotation marks. They have the choice then of identifying the quotation, or apologizing for misquoting.
To paraphrase Jerry Lee Lewis- ‘Whole lotta obfuscation goin’ on !!’
Greg House’s posts are indicative of a cluttered and confused mind. Not very clear and making every attempt to keep the conversation that way. Perhaps this is more comfortable for him.
Greg House says:
“Cristopher attributed Holocaust to scientific consensus and I disagreed.”
Then Christopher is right and you are wrong. A few years ago a media personality [forget who, but I could find it if I felt like it] specifically equated skeptics of runaway global warming with Holocaust deniers. Despicable.
If it takes just four years of study to learn to recognize rot, well then that sounds like a great investment of four years to me! I never studied the classics and hence fall for rot fairly often. It actually took me a fair while to eventually determine that CAGW is rot.
David Ball says:
April 22, 2012 at 4:48 pm
To paraphrase Jerry Lee Lewis- ‘Whole lotta obfuscation goin’ on !!’
Greg House’s posts are indicative of a cluttered and confused mind. Not very clear and making every attempt to keep the conversation that way. Perhaps this is more comfortable for him.
============================================
And this comes after Lord Monckton’s extensive explanations of logical fallacies like ad hominem? It might be very frustrating for him.
On the other hand, it confirms my point about ineffectiveness of such an approach.
Greg House,
Both sides point out logical fallacies. You know why? Because words matter.
Otherwise you would see folks refer to AGW “Theory”…
…oh, wait…
Smokey says:
April 22, 2012 at 4:56 pm
Greg House says:
“Cristopher attributed Holocaust to scientific consensus and I disagreed.”
———–
Then Christopher is right and you are wrong.
====================================================
So, you mean there was scientific consensus on “Jews should be killed”? Just present the evidence.
Was there something like IPJ (International Pannel on Jews)? Did the Royal Society issued their verdict? Or Swedish Academy and so on? No?