Two of the most ridiculous ad hominems ever written IMHO
Are you
trying to be ironic?
It is, a stupidly put, appeal to authority. IMO. One fallacy in logic, I wouldn’t expect that a scientist would make
To quote you: “You are a real piece of work.”
The sentence immediately before was “Instead I choose to post here – a place where most scientists wouldn’t bother posting.” and immediately after was “and I have always been proud of the modern Catholic stance towards science, defending Catholicism against fellow scientists as being the most “rational” religion, so I was disconcerted when I saw exactly the same kind of thinking on this thread that I only previously associated with American Evangelical Christians.”
How you can turn a simple explanation of my
motives for posting here rather than RC or WUWT into a ridiculous claim like the above is beyond me. It’s too absurd for words.
The
fact that I am a scientist I have neither tried to hide nor use in my arguments here. In fact, I have
gone out of my way to encourage you to be more sceptical of what you read and to check things out for yourself. I have provided links to everything from the scanned-in versions of the raw temperature logs going back a hundred years to the source code for some climate models themselves. I have provided graphs and tried to explain your “oopsies” about lambda. Not
once have I said “You should believe me because I am a scientist”.
The
point of mentioning it above was by way of explaining my motivation: most people I know,
especially the scientists, are either not religious at all or outright atheists and therefore are highly unlikely to turn up here. Furthermore, I have had
many conversations with them explaining
why I’m a Catholic and the
research and
evidence upon which I base my beliefs. I have defended the Church’s record and processes in contrast to many other churches and faiths, and that is
why what I read here was so disconcerting –
exactly as I said.
It beggars belief that someone with honest intent could possibly take that simple statement and cortort it the way you do.
How many times have scientists been wrong?
As I said before: All the time. But not all wrongs are equal. Once again, to quote Isacc Asimov on “The Relativity of Wrong”: “when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.”
The current theory of AGW is
guaranteed to be wrong. But the theory that CO2 is
not the main driver of climate change right now is
more wrong, just like the theory that the Earth is flat is
more wrong than the theory that the Earth is a perfect sphere. The refinements will be made the the
current theory as time goes on, making it
less wrong over time, and those refinements will almost certainly reduce the uncertainties in the current theory, not completely change it altogether.
Models are wrong, too, as George Box said: “Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful”. It is not necessary to reconcile the differences between Quantum Theory and Relativity to design aircraft, plan trips to other planets, or predict the climate. It’s important to
know how wrong the model can be, which is why error ranges are presented, but it is not necessary to be absolutely perfect to know that continuing to emit large quantities of CO2 is going to have dire consequences.
And finally, one of my favourites, since you like to bring some pretty crazy arguments to the debate: “They said Einstein was a fool. They said the Wright brothers were fools. What you’ve got to remember, however, is that they
also said that about an awful lot of fools.”
Why would a scientist need to stoop to logic fallacies. appeal to authority - ad hominems etc - especially debating their pseudo-science unproven hypothesis against a kid ]?
Sigh… Once again:
An appeal to authority is only a logical fallacy if the authority is not a recognised authority. Claiming that an argument that quotes scientific research or scientific bodies is fallacious because it’s an “appeal to authority” is nothing more than a transparent attempt to prevent contrary evidence being presented.
Likewise, an ad hominem is only a logical fallacy if the attack is irrelevant to the argument.
What any of this has to do with you purpotedly being a “kid” I have no idea, except that possible explains why you obviously have no idea what “pseudo-science” and “unproven hypothesis” actually
mean.
Perhaps you would like to have a go at presenting a cogent argument in support of your case that does not rely on a single logical fallacy yourself?
Oh, that’s right – you don’t play that game. Instead you regurgitate ad hominems ad infinitum and justify it on the basis that “it’s their fault” for destroying their credibility with you. As I said, your
entire argument is an ad hominem, and any attempt to point to a credible source is dismissed as an appeal to authority and any attempt to explain why another source is not credible is dismissed as an ad hominem. That would be OK if you were amenable to logic and reason but even the simplest explanation of the most basic concepts just goes round and round in circles.
Do you “get” the problem in Wills’ calculation yet? For some reason you chose to ignore that and focus your entire attack on one sentence explaining my motives. No surprises there, I suppose.
Will God have mercy on their souls? There is too much evidence of Global Warming -already. Two recent findings: