The power of the pen, when used irresponsibly, serves not to illuminate and progress human discourse, but to confuse and stifle it. Christopher Booker’s article does a disservice to climate skeptics and climate activists alike.
Christopher Booker’s article, “The world has never seen such freezing heat,” published yesterday in the UK’s Telegraph, attempts to come across as a shocking exposé of a blunder big enough potentially to bring climate change science to its knees. It falls considerably short. Instead, the writing is simply the latest in a series of posts designed to push the author’s own personal opinion against renewable energy and climate change action. This may be of little surprise as Mr. Booker has previously summed up climate change as “chicanery.”
Unfortunately, the credibility of Mr. Booker’s article as a rational piece of scientific journalism falls apart as early as the first paragraph under the weight of his personal bias. Moreover, the writing is so riddled with logical fallacies that the article actually does an injustice to the “climate skeptics” whose arguments it seeks to support.
Before listing some of the article’s bias and logical fallacies, one brief contextual note is necessary. It’s important to understand that science operates by searching for errors in existing theories and using those errors to improve the theories. Therefore, so-called “skeptics” play an important role in honing the accuracy of any theory. By locating inaccuracies, scientists can correct the theory to better model observable phenomena. However, the logic used in Mr. Booker’s article assumes that an error in a theory discredits or invalidates the entire theory. This is bad science writing. It undermines the mechanics of the scientific process and does a disservice to anybody earnestly interested in progressing the scientific body of knowledge.
Bias in “The world has never seen such freezing heat”
The writer uses strongly emotive words rather than rational language to sway readers. Emotive words reveal the author’s bias and strip the article of credibility as far as scientific journalism is concerned.
First, consider the negative emotional words used to describe climate change data and scientists studying climate change: surreal, blunder, alarm, notorious, startling, “huge question mark,” suffered, freak, lamely, extreme, dangers, glaring, confusion, scare, episode, hastily, etc.
Now consider the positive connotations behind words used to describe climate change skeptics: “expert readers,” leading, detailed, “astonishing discovery,” fame, “expert debunking,” etc.
A sampling of the logical fallacies in “The world has never seen such freezing heat”
Logical fallacy #1: hasty generalization. The writer infers that a single error made by the GISS brings into question all data GISS has ever published. This reasoning says, “you were wrong about X; therefore you must always be wrong about everything.”
Logical fallacy #2: ad hominem. The author engages in personal attacks of climate scientists. First, he describes a GISS spokesman as “lame” and he describes the GISS as lacking resources and quality control; second, the author implies that Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is either naive or gullible with language like “Dr. Pachauri … may believe what Dr. Hansen tells him.” The additional inferred bandwaggon logical fallacy here is “reasonable people would not believe Dr. Hansen.”
Logical fallacy #3: non causa pro causa. This is one of the most common types of logical errors committed in the argument against climate change. It confuses coincidence with causation. The author reasons in the following way: The weather in a few local areas was cold. Therefore, the global climate must be cold. The global climate is neither caused by local weather nor does it directly dictate local weather from day to day. What’s more, the climate change model does not predict uniformly hotter weather around the globe; it describes the average temperature around the globe. In other words, October snow in London does not mean the average global temperature is colder than normal.
Logical fallacy #4: genetic fallacy. The author links Al Gore to Dr. James Hansen and Dr. Hansen to the error. This serves two purposes. Firstly, it seeks to discredit the GISS in the eyes of anyone who dislikes Gore, who is a somewhat politically contentious figure. Secondly, it says that if the GISS is wrong about climate change (see hasty generalization), then Gore must also be wrong to the delight of his detractors. Genetic fallacies attempt to undermine an argument by undermining somebody credited with giving birth to the argument. Although climate science did not originate with Al Gore, he’s sometimes seen as the father of the current push to respond to climate change scenarios.
Logical fallacy #5: straw man. This type of fallacy essentially says, “This person supports argument X and this person is clearly a bad person, therefore argument X is wrong.” The author attributes responsibility for the GISS to Dr. Hansen. In fact, he stops just short of attributing all climate change science to Dr. Hansen. Then, he attacks Dr. Hansen. First, the author attributes a large amount of the recent global concern over climate change to Dr. Hansen in the sentence, “If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr. Hansen….” (Note the heavily slanted use of the word alarm used to describe climate change science.) Then, he attempts to tie Dr. Hansen to “criminal” Greenpeace activity in order to discredit him, and by extension, the GISS, and by further extention, climate change.
Logical fallacy #6: proof by assertion. The author’s assertion that, “[global temperatures] have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped” is supported by no data other than the author’s own authority. This reasoning claims, “X is true because I say it is.”
Image credit: _StaR_DusT_ via Flickr, under a Creative Commons License.
While I agree that Booker’s article is laden with a number of logical fallacies, your response fails to address the underlying claim and warrants for the argument. Before I continue, let me confirm my current bias: I contend that the probability of GW as an anomalous event is still less than majority. I’d contend that right now the chance that GW is attributable to mankind is less than 25%. I argue that the move for government intervention is based on the weighted payout should the 25% event actually occur because the downside is so great. Because I place more chance on the side that the geo-climatic events taking place are in context of the historical record, the positive pay-offs involved if we minimalize efforts are trebled. Thus, as a skeptic, the role of pro-GW is to address why there is a higher chance that that the fallout is attributable to us.
That being said, information that has come out regarding Hansen’s data and the GW movement as mentioned in Booker’s article cannot be overlooked. You mentioned ad hominem and straw man attacks: your response to Booker’s article constitutes the same. Calling his article and methods into question does not address the underlying claim that GISS and Hansen must reconcile recent data that does not fit their regression analysis predictions. Can the 10 years prior to 2007 be considered an outlier the same way the 1930s were in the regression? The answer should not be made “yes” or “no” but with some degree of probabilistic expectation.
It is the certainty with which people like Hansen and Gore market that is so offensive to skeptics. It is the disregard for human misjudgment that calls the GW conclusion into question. Data like this seems confirms – in my mind – that there is a better than 90% chance that Gore and Hansen are relying more on their confirmation bias than emperical data. Then again, there is a 10% chance I could be wrong.
T. Martin: Thank you for the thoughtful comment. Although I’m not qualified to place bets on the reliability of any given climate model, I will wholeheartedly agree that marketing any science as a certainty does a disservice to science. If there’s anything I learned in my college physics classes, its that we only know what we know until a better explanation takes its place. My personal opinion is that climate change actions are prudent as a means of insurance in case the disadventageous outcomes of many of the current climate models do occur.
Gavin:
Thank you for your reply as well.
You chose the word “insurance” and I think it is an appropriate one. Like you, I am not a ‘scientist’ in the strictest definition. I work in corporate finance. In my job I’ve had to work directly with large insurance companies and their business models.
Insurance is based on statistical representations and their derived actuarial tables. These tables determine cost of premiums that clients pay in to the program to participate in the protection extended by insurance. A 70 year-old male, no history of high blood pressure, married and working as an accountant will pay “X” amount of dollars for a term life policy. The actuarial tables are designed to insure that if you pool enough people of like demographic, the company will be able to pay out. What happens, however, if the data shifts and the actuarial tables are not shifted accordingly: what if the demographic becomes more risky, the mortality rate increases? The company becomes insolvent and is unable to meet its obligations (sidenote: this post is for anecdotal purposes only and in no ways is a commentary on the present financial crisis). Thus, the participants who paid in and collected early (i.e. died first) get the benefits while the participants who decided to live longer are out the money.
The moral of the story is that deciding to pay on an insurance policy is made on the basis that the underlying data is sound and the probablity of the event is correctly assigned. If the data changes, the models must be revised.
Now, your contention is that the likelihood of the event could be very small, like 5%, yet the fall out – should it actually occur – could be so great, that the benefits of doing nothing are dwarfed. Look at it this way:
You have two choice: Do nothing or do something. There is a 5% chance that GW does occur and a 95% chance nothing happens. If you Do Nothing and GW does occur, then you lose 10,000 points; however, if you Do Nothing and there is no GW then you gain the opportunity cost of 500 points. The expected value of making the decision to do nothing is -25 points ((.95*500)+(.05*-10,000)). If you Do Something and GW does occur, you can impact the outcome by a factor of 10 and only lose 1,000 points; however, if you Do Something and GW does not happen, you lose the opportunity cost of 400 points and are left with 100. The expected payout of this happening is 45 points ((.95*100)+(.05*-100). So since 45>-25, you would choose to Do Something because the fall out is so great should GW actually occur.
You could even argue that it is more slanted because if you choose to Do Something then there are additional benefits should GW not happen.
The underlying issue, however, is how big will the fall out be and what are the probabilities. If you re-assign the numbers, you influence the expected values and the decision can flip-flop.
This is a very technical description (and singular variate) and does not completely reflect what people ponder when making decisions. Cash payouts and economic models do not capture the psychological aspects that go into people decisions.
On the other hand, this does illustrate that the data us important. We consider the data and if the data changes, our models need to change as well. They may not change enough to make our decision change, but they do need to change.
I would respect the GW community much more if they would concede that the GISS data for October is problematic, but ONLY for an audience that believes a month’s worth of data is enough to discredit a compelling body of previous data. This is where Booker truly betrays his bias: his knee jerk reaction to a single month of information shows that he is just looking for confirmatory evidence to support his view. In the interest of convincing the skeptics that GW remains a viable threat, I urge the GW community to refrain from doing the same.
The Telegraph is entertainment masquerading as news, not a scientific journal. Christopher Booker is entirely justified writing in the style that he did, especially when lambasting such an obvious target.
Around 1987, a couple of years before the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a small U.S.-based newspaper called “The Spotlight”. They predicted that fighting communism as a means of manipulating the populace was just about tapped-out, and the next big scheme would be “the environment”. Now, were they right, or were they right?
Whenever we’re told a scare story about the environment today, we should pause a moment and consider whether that story has any merit — then laugh out loud at the ridiculousness of it all.
I would like to add my insignificant opinion here if I may…
I think I was shocked to hear the excuse offered for this error. They don’t have enough funds to verify their data? You have to be kidding me? This is Hansen’s baby here. Should he get a pass when he’s found guilty of passing bad data? Would so called “deniers” be given the same treatment? Remember, Hansen has openly called names and even said people should be jailed for not believing his version of reality. Now we’ve found Hansen, yet again, with bad data and unchecked methods. Why are we trusting this agency, which admits to not having the funds to do their job properly, with such an important task?
Anyone doing statistics with global climate looking to debunk global warming is an idiot. They are assuming that somehow, based on no science, people observed a warming trend, and then decided humans were involved.
Define strawman folks, because this is it.
Really, the greenhouse effect is the most simple thing in the world. The earth emits as much energy as it absorbs, in the long term. This is emitted as light (all objects emit light, based on their temperature). The Sun, being much hotter than the earth, emits much higher frequency, more active light.
Several substances absorb the light emitted by the sun and the earth. O3, Ozone, absorbs the ultra-high frequency light, preventing it from hitting the earth. Carbon Dioxide has absorbation points in the mid-low spectrum. Right in the center of the Earth’s emission points.
Earth is now emitting less energy (at the same temperature) than it used to. Net result? Absorbing energy. Absorbed energy = heat rise. This will continue until we’re in equilibrium again.
This really is the most simple thing in the world, and it’s a miracle and a tribute to our modern marketers that PR spinners have been able to turn simple science into the most complicated thing you ever did see, complete with nonsense graphs, adjusted data, etc.
Problem is it’s just marketing folks. All of the science is well documented. All of it is simple. They’ve never refuted it, they just sit there and look stupid when they’re hit with it. So hit them with science, and ask them to address it.
Surely the main ad hominem attack here is on Christopher Booker. I am delighted by the idea that Man’s actions can ‘fight climate change’, but I’d strongly recommend that We finish the Tower of Babel first, just for practice.
The belief that Man’s CO2 is affecting the planet requires a studied ignorance of science (and a belief that an ignorant received opinion is as valid as personal research) or an awfully large grant for ‘further research’ on the end of it. Since we are in the realm of ‘deniers’ we know that mere facts must not intrude on the cult.
However, may I point out to anyone who wishes to call themselves Green, that the symbolic colour green represents photosynthesis on which all Life on Earth is based (apart from sulphur based deep-ocean/cave ecosystems). Photosynthesis is limited on Earth compared to past times by the below average levels of CO2 in the air. ‘Capturing’ CO2 reduces the plants ability to grow, inhibits regrowth of rain-forests, lowers agricultural harvests and, of course, helps the deserts grow.
Just what have the Greens got against plant life on Earth?
Re: http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/11/power-of-pen.html
Hi Richard,
I’m glad that your article and mine are both stirring some discussion. In particular, I’ve had some great dialogue with people whose views are somewhat different than mine, and I enjoy that. After all, it’s only a conversation if you have more than one viewpoint. If I may, I’d like to add my two cents on your article.
The goal of my article was not to address the GISS data. That’s the job of the climate scientists and informative (not persuasive) scientific articles. I was responding to the scientific journalism of Christopher Booker, which I felt to be of poor quality because of its highly persuasive nature. I admire his general abilities as a writer, but objected to his infusion of strongly emotive words and personal bias in an article that should be informative and not persuasive. I was also dissapointed to find a number of logical fallacies in the article. There is nothing wrong with reporting that climate scientists have made a mistake. If that’s the truth, I certainly hope it is communicated to the public via science journalists. If some day we discover that the climate models predicting climate change are flawed, the information should absolutely be reported upon. After all, science is a process of correcting mistakes to create better models. However, I feel that building bridges based on logical fallacies to connect the error with the personal viewpoint that climate scientists are incompetent or that climate change is made-up is simply irresponsible.
On ad hominem, I tried not to engage in this logical fallacy in my article. I hope I succeeded. I didn’t attack Mr. Booker personally or say anything against him as a person. In fact, as I mention here, I respect his general abilities as a writer. However, I most certainly did wish to attack the reliability of his article, “The world has never seen such freezing heat” for the reasons I’ve mentioned above.
Here’s what I’d like: journalists reporting science news in a way that stimulates intelligent public conversation. Most of us who are not climatologists may not be qualified to “debunk” or “prove” anything related to climate research. But since the topic of climate change has the potential to affect everyone, I think it’s healthy to have a conversation about what (if anything) should be done as a sort of insurance policy in case any of the disadventageous outcomes of many of the current climate models do occur.
Please keep the conversation going.
All the best,
Gavin Hudson
@ T. Martin: Thanks again for another very interesting observation. It reminds me of a video I saw online with a similar conclusion. This article and the comments have actually been something of an eye-opening for me as well. When writing a piece of science journalism, I’ll certainly redouble my effort to avoid the kind of knee-jerk journalism and persuasive writing I found objectionable in Mr. Booker’s article.
@Andrew P: I feel that there is value in the reporting at the Telegraph, and each publication is allowed its own general slant, but this slant should make critical readers think about the reliability of the data. Moreover, the slant of the journal should be left at the door when the article reports on scientific data. As per your second point, I enjoy your the humor you seem to find in life. Humor’s a great tool. As per the “spotlight,” I should point out that there are thousands of writers making tens of thousands of claims each day. Some of them are bound to prove correct; most are not. The spotlights prophecy doesn’t seem to me to be correct.
@SolarCycle24: Agreed. I don’t think there should be “free passes” allowed in science. Moreover, as far as I understand the scientific process, I don’t think that researchers accept data without rigorously analyzing and questioning it. At least, that’s my understanding of how the process should work.
@K Rice: I agree that there seems to be more debate among the public than among climatologists and share your viewpoint that we should leave the science to the scientists, but I certainly value the public conversation about what (if anything) we should do to respond to the possible climate change scenarios.
@Sandy Rham: As I explain above, I certainly tried to avoid an ad hominem attack on Mr. Booker, whose writing abilities I respect. On the CO2 cycle, it’s an error to say that environmentalists are “against all CO2.” As you point out, that would be foolish. As an environmentalist, I’m against pulling old carbon out of the ground and putting it into the carbon cycle as CO2. This places a large amount of carbon above ground in the air, which (as I understand the science) has the potential to cause atmospheric warming.
“This places a large amount of carbon above ground in the air, which (as I understand the science) has the potential to cause atmospheric warming.”
It doesn’t actually, but given that so many ‘scientists’ are prepared to lie for the funds available, it’s quite widely believed.
Fossil carbon is as we know black, be it coal or oil. The ‘fossil’ tells us that once that carbon was in the atmosphere, once upon a time the carbon was part of a plant or an animal that ate plants.
So we have black carbon that represents ex-life, and green carbon, as CO2, which is the key constituent of the biosphere.
The Greens should surely be called the Blacks given their carbon ‘policies’?
Sandy,
Sorry, but you are a complete idiot.
If you still can’t understand that carbon above the ground in the air in the form of CO2 is a greenhouse gas which traps heat in our atmosphere then I feel truly sorry for you.
The “CO2 is plant food argument” is ignorant in the extreme since it ignores 90% of the scientific case for man made global warming.
Unfortunately it takes ‘dramatic’ articles by the likes of Booker the combat the stream if pro GW articles which are excessive the other way.
My observation is that it is almost impoosble to debate the issue because of fundamental bias on both sides.
Also basic errors of this kind only support the view that the actions that Gov’nts are taking are extreme given the level of reliance on defective recording.
Could you perhaps do an article on the positive aspects of carbon trading – I don’t beleive there are any but hey follow the money!!!
In response to reader interest in the carbon cycle, I spent some time looking for a good video to explain the carbon cycle. Here are two, one spoken and one more artistic: http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=1o4ODWMZq5U and http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=y1EW3yb9Azg&feature=related .
Briefly, as I understand it as a non-expert, the carbon cycle is a constant flow of carbon between the ground, the oceans, plants and animals, and the atmosphere. Over time, a vast amount of carbon has been trapped underground in the form of oil, coal, etc. This carbon been virtually removed from the carbon cycle. It takes millions of years for carbon to be removed from the carbon cycle in this way. Extracting this carbon from the ground and burning it releases a large amount of carbon very rapidly (in geological time) back into the carbon cycle in the form of CO2. That’s why there’s more CO2 in the atmosphere than at any time in the known past. We don’t really know what will happen, but since CO2 is a greenhouse gas, there’s good reason to suspect that the Earth will become warmer due to the extra heat CO2 can retain in the atmosphere.
Graham Cork: I think you make a good point. Surprisingly (for me), I feel that my views are progressively becoming more moderate (pardon the pun) as time goes on. I guess that I am realizing that there’s less value in spreading one’s own point of view than there is in learning from other’s points of view. I realize this might sound a bit hypocritical after trying to explain the carbon cycle (above), but there’s also an important distinction between science and a point of view. I’m of the opinion that spreading science is very acceptable as long as we add the caveat “as far as I understand” and we are willing to change our views as science develops.
On carbon trading, I’ll keep my eyes out for any new developments to write about. (And by the way, my personal bias toward carbon trading is favorable.)
Gavin,
You say you are not a scientist, yet you have ‘an understanding’ of the science. As a scientist, my understanding of the physics of CO2 and ‘greenhouse effect’ is that it is not physics. If CO2 warms due to absorbing infra-red radiation from the esarth’s surface, then its kinetic energy increases and convective forces cause it to rise. As it rises into a lower pressure region of the atmosphere, it expands and does work, so losing that kinetic energy and cooling. Where is the greenhouse effect in this natural process of convective cooling? Answer: It isn’t there and that’s why it’s not be observed by measurement of the atmospheric temperature. Perhaps you can explain to me your understanding of the science which is different from mine?
I think I may come back later and comment on each of your logical fallacies.
Dr Phillip Bratby: Thank you for contributing to the discussion here. I know the internet is a somewhat anonymous forum, but if you would be so kind as to give us a better understanding of what your academic background and current occupation is, it would add value to our discussion. I’m being fairly transparent with my knowledge and background and it matters, of course, whether a person has a PhD in physics or in psychology if he/she is going to lend a voice as a scientist in a discussion on climatology.
As I mentioned above, I think that whenever we talk about science in a public forum, we should say “to the best of my understanding,” since science is ever-developing by nature and no one person’s understanding is complete.
It seems that you are suggesting that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas and/or that the greenhouse effect does not exist. If so, can you please provide links to support the claim? This seems like an understanding of CO2 that is not shared by the majority of the scientific community. I don’t mean to belittle your background; if it’s in physics, I have great respect for you. However, the greenhouse effect is a fairly fundamental concept in geophysics and I don’t believe that the role of CO2 as a greenhouse gas is a major point of contention. For instance, see physicalgeography.net for a brief explanation of the greenhouse effect and greenhouse gases: http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7h.html .
On logic, I would appreciate any logical errors you might be willing to find and share. Editing is a very time consuming job; the more eyes at the task, the better.
Phil said
The “CO2 is plant food argument” is ignorant in the extreme since it ignores 90% of the scientific case for man made global warming.
Or alternatively the AGW cult ignores the most basic fact about Life on this planet.
But hey, why let basics facts get in the way of your ‘oh so PC ignorance’.
Hi Gavin you wrote:
“That’s why there’s more CO2 in the atmosphere than at any time in the known past. ”
Try:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event
Money quote:
“The event coincides precisely with a catastrophic decline in carbon dioxide levels, which fell from 3500 ppm in the early Eocene to 650 ppm[4] during this event.”
May I remind you we are around 370ppm of CO2 at the moment.
Believe your cult if you must, but don’t call the lies science.
Hi Sandy,
It’s quite late at night where I live, but I’ll look into your link in the morning. Thanks for the research. I’m a little wary of Wikipedia as a source of info, but I’ll do some more checking around. After all, I can only benefit from learning more.
I think we’re all coming from the same angle, which is that we feel defensive of science and hope it’s not misused to accomplish personal goals.
Back again.
logical fallacy #1: Christopher Booker knows that this is just the latest of a long list of errors in the GISSTEMP data (which also contain a lot of adjustments hidden from outside inspection).
logical fallacy #2: RealClimate have admitted that out of their budget of millions, GISS cannot afford to do proper quality control of the data (that seems like a lame excuse to me). In industry, a lot of time and money is spent on quality control – quality control appears not to be important to government scientists.
Dr Hansen is not known for being objective in his statements, so a reasonable person should take cognisance of this fact. Dr pauchari has been known to give lectures which do not tell a truthful story.
logical fallacy #3: Christopher Booker is only doing here what global warming alamists and the MSM do (but he was referring to many incidents of cold weather around the world in October). They blame every extreme weather event on man-made global warming – hurricanes, droughts, rainstorms, glacier melting, etc, regardless of the fact that they are caused by natural weather or climate events.
And don’t believe what climate models tell you – climate models only produce the results the modellers want.
logical fallacy #4: Hansen and Gore are linked by their desire to deceive the world with their contorted view of the truth and their manipulation of the data for political purposes. As Hansen is GISS, then GISS is tarred by Hansen. The problem for Hansen is that he has a conflict of interest. For 20 years he has nailed his flag to the mast of AGW and his climate model predicts an ever-increasing global temperature. The only way his models can be proven correct is by adjusting the GISSTEMP data to fit the models. He shouldn’t be in the position of running the models and running the data. The once-proud days of NASA being able to put a man on the moon are long gone and have been replaced by a bureaucracy that relies on a crumbling network of old land-based thermometers and seems unable to use satellites.
logical fallacy #5: There is no doubt of Hansen’s 20 years of alarmism (how many years to ‘save the planet’, tipping points etc), all based on computer models and not evidence. And testifying in a foreign country in favour of criminal damage is also a fact.
logical fallacy #6: You are right and Christopher Booker should have given a reference to the satellite measurements of temperature that are evidence of his claim.
Gavin,
Thanks for your reply, which I did not see before my 2nd response.
My background is a physics degree and PhD. I am retired from a lifetime of work in the nuclear industry (shock horror!) Hence my knowledge of quality control and quality audit and a healthy scepticism of computer models.
I am afraid that I do not like the term “greenhouse effect” when describing the thermodynamics of the atmosphere, because the atmosphere does not act at all like a greenhouse (for a start it does not have a lid that stops natural circulation). As well as natural circulation cooling of the atmosphere (as explained before), I understand that gases in the atmosphere absorb and re-radiate energy in the infra-red wave band. However, the intensity of radiation is a function of Temp to the 4th power, which makes it a bit difficult to understand how a few parts per million extra of CO2 can have any significant impact when they are able to cool by doing work in expanding and are at a temperature much lower than that of the earth and much higher than the near-zero deg absolute temperature of space. I will try and find some references to explain the physics, but later. Your reference seems to be mostly hand-waving with hardly any physics at all. There is no mention of the major thermodynamic processes going on in the atmosphere.
Gavin Said
“That’s why there’s more CO2 in the atmosphere than at any time in the known past. We don’t really know what will happen, but since CO2 is a greenhouse gas, there’s good reason to suspect that the Earth will become warmer due to the extra heat CO2 can retain in the atmosphere.”
You should take a serious reading before make such uninformed informations, presented as facts… How can you discuss climate change without knowing simple facts such as the 4000ppm of CO2 in the Cretaceous atmosfere for instance!!! Life flourished these days.
When the Earth warms ants will develop antlers and they won’t be able to eat because of global warming. It’s rather sad. I agree with you.
“You should take a serious reading before make such uninformed informations, presented as facts… How can you discuss climate change without knowing simple facts such as the 4000ppm of CO2 in the Cretaceous atmosfere for instance!!! Life flourished these days.” The Cretaceous peroid was also a very different world than today I doubt a suddenly reverting back to cretaceous levels would be a good thing. And 4000ppm?! Where did you reference that from? Im yet to find anything above 2000ppm, slight exageration maybe?
I fully agree with Christopher Booker. Why is it that whenever someone, be it a bona fide scientist or journalist, disputes your Junk Science they are discredited and vilified? Accept the fact that the argument that CO2 causes global warming is lost. I do hope that you have spotted the 32 factual distortions in the dvd titled An Inconvenient Truth.
If you are trying to discount Mr Booker you had better make a better job of it than this article. Your response makes me even more sceptical on Global warming becaue you don’t use any arguements to discount Mr Booker just personal attacks against him.
I’m a little surprised at this article considering the title of it. You may not like Booker’s style, or his argument logic, but you haven’t used science to contest the main thrust of his article. Do you simply disagree with his written style, or are you preparing another article to contest his actual stance on “warming”?
Gavin Hudson’s polemic serves rather nicely to illustrate a Machiavellian precept, namely that if you want to unsettle an opponent (unlikely in the case of Booker), then a weapon of choice is to charge him with the very vices of which you are yourself most guilty.
RW
You pointed out Mr. Brooks logical fallacies very well, but failed to point out if Mr. Brooks was wrong in his facts. You used the same fallacies in your analysis when you failed to check this out. Just pointing out that he was illogical doesn’t mean he was wrong on his issues and facts. I for one do believe that many of his facts and issues Mr. Brooks points out are right, he just didn’t do it very well.
That’s not what a straw man argument is… A straw man argument is where the arguer constructs a weaker (‘straw’) version of the opposition’s argument, then knocks it down like a straw man, which presents little resistance. I.e, arguing against something that isn’t what the other party actually said. You’ve essentially used the ad hominem twice (or the ad populum?).
This advice is really going to help, thanks.
Dr Phillip Bratby is quite active across the internet and seems to neglect telling people (this site is an exception) that he worked in the nuclear energy industry when he rants against the building of wind turbines.
For instance when ranting to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, he neglects to state that he worked in the nuclear energy industry, or that he still does consultancy ‘energy’ work:
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld200708/ldselect/ldeconaf/195/195we07.htm
The memo to the House of Lords contains classic drivel churned out by all climate change deniers. Snippets of cherry picked information that allegedly proves climate change isn’t real.
In fact Dr Bratby seems to forget his own apparent scientific background and scientific procedures when he writes about wind turbines or climate change.
Instead of putting forward a consistent and logical theory of why climate change is not happening.
In his memo to the Economic Affairs Committee, he instead uses magazine articles and quotes from various non-scientific sources.
A lot of the articles and books by journalists and politicians opposing the theory of MMGW make great play of the “selfishness factor”, whereby you should assume that scientists are sufficiently motivated by pride, career and money that their prognostications are not trustworthy.
That may well be true. However, as the case is equally true of the journalists and policitians laying out the counter-arguments, we have an impasse.
This is doubly so if you assume that the people to whom it has occurred that their enemies may be corrupt do so on the basis that it’s what they would do if the situations were reversed.
I can see now it’s flaming adequate for me to comments
many with the amazing photographs