Looks like word is getting out
not until last week, when I sat in on a lecture about climate change and wrote about its potential effects, did I discover how fervently opposed some people are to any admission that global warming exists. I’d describe them as hot under the collar, but that would steam them. They’re certain nothing on Earth is getting warmer.
“Global temperatures have not increased in the last 12 years,” one emailer wrote. “The hottest U.S. temps in recent history were in 1934.”
“Data is being manipulated to attempt to show warming,” another wrote. “The various model forecasts don’t hold up to actual conditions.”
And this: “Perhaps the greater question is why has there been such great effort to promote this factual untruth.”
There were several other messages, more colorful in tone, but they all boiled down to this: A slow-witted simpleton like me should not be allowed to express his opinion publicly. I’m fairly sure that was in reference to the climate change column, but they may have been thinking more generally.
Two of my correspondents identified themselves as Ph.D.s in engineering. One said he’d worked at Livermore Lab. Most emailers directed me to supporting online links, including one site that
listed more than 31,000 American scientists who oppose the 1997 Kyoto global warming agreement (petitionproject.org).
Their petition states: “There is no convincing scientific evidence that the human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouses gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” So there. End of debate.
Who knew people felt so passionately about climate theory?
Barnidge: Beware of global warming — you know, if it really exists – ContraCostaTimes.com
This character needs to step out of his ivory tower once in a while. He leads a sheltered life.
You are making a difference.
Good work Steven!
A lot of people are pretty fed up that this field turned into a junk science industry.
Congratulations to you Steve and all here, and other sites, who are defending the truth against greatest pseudo-scientific HOAX of all time, called AGW.
You have to admire the sneering condescension in his writing. He’d make a good redcoat officer mockingly discussing the colonists’ grievances at the officer’s mess over Yorkshire pudding in a movie. Just about right before Paul Revere is getting on his horse. And like that character, he will never truly understand why his side will so thoroughly lose the fight.
He personifies the incompetence in the public debate, and the arrogance PLUS incompetence of consensus academics, that I have been emphasizing for the last 3 years (only a few months after I first became aware of the climate debate). And no, I don’t admire sneering condescension, in service to such blatant, inexcusable incompetence. His point of view should not even exist, among all those who dare to write about the debate for public consumption.
No point of view is useless. It can still serve as an example of fallacy.
Your argument A ?
B: “Every point of view has a use, even if its only use is to exemplify what cannot be used.”
B ? C: “If a point of view cannot be used, then it can be used to exemplify a useless point of view.”
C ? D: “If a point of view cannot be used, then it is useful.”
A ? E: “If a point of view can be used, then it is useful.”
D & E ? F: “Usefulness = Nonusefulness”
F ? G: “A = Not A” or “A != A”
It is a boundary condition.
Intrinsically, there is no value in a fallacy. The one who espouses the fallacy is not the one who benefits.
Extrinsically, there is great value in studying the fallacy. The student in logic class to whom a professor illustrates the fallacy benefits.
So, outside of the study of logic, some points of view are useless?
My main point was to use Kaboom’s argument as an example of a fallacy. 🙂
RTF