Is there some kind of fallacy for attacking the substance of an argument AND the source?
In theory, attacking an argument by attacking the source can fall under the ad homenim fallacy. Attacking the substance is always ok, assuming that the attack is otherwise legitimate.
My opinion only.
If you liked my post you could call it “multitasking,” if you didn’t “delicious irony.” 
I’m guessing brazil isn’t going to debate in this thread anymore - anyone want to get back to the original topic of the thread?
So far I think I’ve posted simple explanations of:
- Why I think global warming is occurring.
- Why I think humans producing greenhouse gases are a major culprit.
- Why we need to be worried about the effects of the process.
Anyone want to debate one or more of these?
No, I’m just not going to debate with you anymore, in any thread.
If most others care to try to answer the question that wevets has been evading (what caused the rapid warming in roughly the first half of the 20th century), (or related questions), I am happy to discuss it with them.
If most others care to defend the claim that “the warming of the last century or so is not small compared to natural variations on the same timescale,” I am happy to discuss it with them.
Pouting and running off with your ball isn’t a very compelling debate strategy.
This entire thread was predicated Leffan’s ignorance and willingness to accept one dingbat’s version against the preponderance of the world’s scientists because it supported his biases. If the vast majority of climate scientists on Earth agree that the evidence points to something happening, you don’t refute it by semantic needling and pointing at individual charts in random journal articles. You refute it by performing real science and getting published.
There is one thing I am curious about. In post 169 you say
I looked a little more on that same site and came across this: http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/climate_change/causes_co2.htm
It seems pretty clear from that chart that global temperatures vary directly with CO2 levels. With the spike on CO2, wouldn’t that imply that global temperatures should go up accordingly?
I do not get the argument.
If global warming is real ,we have a chance to save the planet by stopping our polluting ways.
If global warming is not a threat, we will have a cleaner atmosphere by cleaning up our wasteful and stupid practices.
What’s the defense? I want to pollute because I can make more profits.That is not a convincing argument. It costs money to clean up? So what. We may be paying the ultimate price with a horrible catastrophe. if not. we will continue polluting until we can no longer breathe.
We have to quit our dirty ways.
Not necessarily. It depends on which way the arrow of causation points. Warren Meyer described the issue as follows:
It seems to me that one would need to know the costs and benefits involved.
For example, if you pay me ten million dollars, I will promise to stop driving to work every day, thus reducing the amount of auto exhaust in the atmosphere. Sound like a good deal?
Fair enough, but clearly the arrow doesn’t go (global temperatures) → (CO2 Levels) because the CO2 levels have skyrocketed without being preceded by rising global temperatures. When you have a correlation, and one of the causation arrows gets thrown out, the other starts to look more likely.
It seems to me your argument assumes that recent increases in CO2 have essentially the same cause as past increases. But why assume this? There is an obvious and reasonable candidate for recent increases in CO2 levels, which is mankind’s CO2 emissions. Further, one can be reasonably confident that this cause essentially did not exist in pre-history. So increases in CO2 most likely had a different cause.
Here’s what Warren Meyer says:
I’m following you. It sounds like the models of the past will not be adequate to predict the future, due to this historic rise in CO2 that we are pumping out. So what effect do you think the roughly 40% rise in CO2 over the average levels will have on the climate?
Minor warming.
There are many parallels bewteen the Man-Made Global Warming debate of today and the Geocentric/Heliocentric debate of the Seventeenth Century.
In the Seventeenth Century, the accepted “science” of the day “proved” that the Earth was the center of the universe. Anyone who doubted that was cast as a heretic. Heliocentric thinkers were either forced to talk in quiet rooms or simply dismissed as loonies. The Geocentric community didn’t even want to debate it.
Today, the accepted “science” seems to “prove” that Global Warming is man-made. Anyone who doubts this is cast a heretic, and are either forced to talk in quiet rooms or are dismissed as loonies. The Global Warming community doesn’t even want to debate it.
Why the quotation marks around “science” and “prove”? Do you even know what those terms mean?
So, let me ask you, assuming your description is correct, do you also believe that there are strong parallels between the evolution / [creation - intelligent design] debate and the Geocentric/Heliocentric debate? You can read all about how the intelligent design folks are being discriminated against here: http://www.expelledthemovie.com/
There are in fact tons of truck-sized holes in your analogy. First of all, I question the historical accuracy with which you describe the geocentric/heliocentric debate…and you completely ignoring the differences between how science operated back then and how it does now, and the influence of the church.
Second of all, it seems to ignore the historical facts involving the global warming theory, which actually spent much of its existence since the hypothesis was first presented by Arrhenius around 1900 (with historical threads going back even further than that) as the underdog. It only gained acceptance once the scientific evidence in its favor all came together. A good history of it is given here: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html
Third of all, how would you explain the triumph of this theory to such a degree that even the quite powerful forces that were allied against it, e.g., many major multinational corporations that made up the Global Climate Coalition, have now accepted the basic science even though, in many cases (BP, Shell, Ford, …), it seems to go against their interests to do so?
Fourth of all, what do you make of what is clearly a much closer analogy, which is that between the evolution debate and the global warming debate? In both cases, you have the scientific organizations all aligned on one side, the overwhelming majority of the peer-reviewed literature on one side, but then you also have people who have strongly held beliefs or interests that make them very unhappy with accepting such a theory. And, these people make a lot of noise outside of the peer-reviewed literature with arguments that have not held the day in the literature. And, of course, they claim that people won’t debate with them and that their views are being suppressed. It is also worth noting that one of the few remaining scientific “skeptics” with a decent publication record, Roy Spencer, has actually bridged the gap between the skeptics and the intelligent design folks by endorsing intelligent design as being at least the scientific equal of evolution.
There are also analogies between the climate debate and the dangers of smoking debate and, in fact, some of the current “skeptics” such as Steven Milloy of junkscience.com cut their teeth working in concert with the tobacco companies (mainly, I believe, on the issue of second-hand smoke).
Fifth of all, if you actually read the scientific literature you would find that there is vigorous scientific debate on many issues involving climate change. However, as is the case in science, some issues over the years have basically been settled (although, technically speaking, all scientific conclusions are tentative and the debate could be rekindled if real scientific evidence is presented to overturn the conclusions that were reached) and thus the debate has moved on to other issues.
It seems to me that the critical point is that situations can and do arise where a popular view is wrong. The related problems of groupthink and moral panic have been around for a long time.
With global warming, it’s hard to say exactly what the popular view is, of course.
See this is where I keep getting confused, maybe because of the sources I am seeing online. For example, I came across this article, which seems to make it pretty clear what the popular scientific view is. This paragraph especially
There is also this IPCC report signed off by 130 countries that says
The only official statement I’ve seen against climate change has been the Manhattan Declaration by the Heartland Foundation, and when I looked closer at their operations found some very shady activity. In terms of popular opinon at the moment at least, it seems global warming is the overwhelming favorite. Can you point me to what I am missing here?
Sure, what I meant is that there would seem to be a bit of ambiguity over what is meant by “global warming.” Is it (1) the hypothesis that global surface temperatures have risen significantly since 1950? Or is it (2), that CO2 emissions are likely to cause some increase in global surface temperatures?
Or is it the hypothesis which I refer to as “CAGW,” which is that CO2 emissions will cause temperatures to rise, which will cause water vapor levels to rise, which will cause further warming, which will cause water vapor levels to rise further, and so forth, resulting in temperature increases which will have singificant negative effects on mankind?
It’s possible that (1) and (2) are true but CAGW is incorrect. If CAGW is correct, a strong case can be made that CO2 emissions need to be drastically curbed. Otherwise, not so much.
This is balderdash. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century astronomers most certainly did vigorously debate the heliocentric hypothesis, and even worked out a number of compromise theories that were briefly popular (such as the Tychonic model of geocentric orbits for the sun and moon but heliocentric ones for everything else in the solar system).
Yes, there were societal pressures such as the influence of the Roman Catholic Church that tried to squelch publication of heliocentric theories, but there certainly was no universal suppression or stifling of debate on the matter. The heliocentrists ultimately won that argument, remember? How do you think that happened if the geocentric establishment was repressing the idea to the extent you describe?
Well, that’s progress, at least.
What money-making industry? Who’s going around putting up vast sums of money to encourage thousands of scientists to regurgitate pre-approved conclusions in peer-reviewed publications, instead of doing their research fairly and honestly?
Saying that there’s a “money-making industry” behind the AGW hypothesis is like saying there’s a “money-making industry” behind the hypothesis that cigarette smoking causes cancer. Look at all those oncologists and surgeons making money off that belief! Um, no, they’re making money for doing their jobs, which involve working with the hypotheses that represent the best-established science currently available.
Likewise, professional climate scientists don’t get salaries for believing in AGW; they get salaries for doing research on climate. Nobody is stopping them from coming up with anti-AGW conclusions: in fact, finding serious and informed reasons to discredit the AGW hypothesis would probably make them superstars.
The “skeptics” have set up a Catch-22: if scientists disagree about details of global warming then it “proves” that the whole hypothesis is suspect, while if scientists agree on the basic scientific conclusions about global warming then it “proves” that they’re being subservient to some kind of groupthink. Heads you win, tails the climate scientists lose.