Saturday, July 26, 2014

Globe trotting climate change advocate

Article: Harvard historian: strategy of climate science denial groups 'extremely successful'

Why are conspiracy theories respectable? 

Article: Globetrotting Harvard Prof Takes Break From Jet-Setting To Gripe About Climate Change Deniers

Two questions:
1) If the science is so "settled" why is necessary to use ad hominen logical fallacies?
2) If global warming/climate change is such a crisis, why not act like it is a crisis? And reduce one's own, personal carbon footprint?

Quote from the 2nd article:
Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard University professor [she is a geologist, specializing in the history of science] who flies around the world in pollutant-spewing jumbo jet airliners to proclaim that climate change is a terrible menace, has co-written another book warning about the planet’s dire environmental situation.

Just since June 2008 when then-candidate Barack Obama promised that his presidency would usher in “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal,” Oreskes has visited Norway, Germany, Denmark, New Zealand and Switzerland — just to name a few places. She also took an extensive tour of Australia in 2010 to promote a book she co-wrote....
Logical fallacies employed in the two articles:
1) Ad hominen - Quote:
Finally there is the power of rationalization—people whose bread really is buttered by the fossil fuel industry [ed., as opposed to one whose bread is buttered by the climate change industry?], or people who are heavily invested in the industry in one way or another, and just don’t want to accept that there is a fundamental problem.
I have seen this conspiracy theory charge repeatedly, with no citations. There is one exception, repeatedly used. An MIT professor, who is a skeptic, admitted to taking a small honorarium, decades previously, from a symposium sponsored by an oil company. If you have to dig this deep, and go this far back, for such a small amount of money, and with such a tenuous connection to the "industry," it proves that your charge is false.

2) Ad hominen - repeated use of the "denier" label (based on "holocaust denier").

3) Straw dog? Reverse ad hominen? - Quote:
The professor describes “the denial industry” [ed., conspiracy theory again] as a motley crew of “very cynical individuals” “with little or no regard to the consequences for others” as well as people who believe that environmentalists are “green on the outside, red on the inside — and that climate change is just an excuse to bring in socialism by another name.”
Since this charge is objectively true, what is the issue with it? In the Guardian (a UK socialist/communist newspaper) interview, she talks about free-market failure, that is, the failure of capitalism. This is a standard communist critique. Why make it, unless you believe it? Why make it, unless you want the communist/socialist solution put into effect?

"No regard for the consequences for others," you are calling your political opponents evil.


4) [Double] ad hominen and straw dog  - "American Tea Baggers." Admittedly, this was by the Guardian interviewer, but she did not object. "Tea bagger" refers to a (usually) homosexual act, not a political group. And "American tea parties" have generally not been focused on global warming as an issue. Mostly, the tea parties want to restore a limited federal government. This is vilified by the left, which is totalitarian and collectivist. Double ad hominen. As for the straw dog logical fallacy: "this group of stupid, uneducated Americans believes..., which everyone knows is stupid."

Hat tip to the Instapundit:
I’LL BELIEVE IT’S A CRISIS WHEN THE PEOPLE WHO KEEP TELLING ME IT’S A CRISIS START ACTING LIKE IT’S A CRISIS: Globetrotting Harvard Prof Takes Break From Jet-Setting To Gripe About Climate Change Deniers.

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