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- Some quick notes from Monckton's Critical thinking article
- argumentum ad populum – the consensus or headcount fallacy
- argumentum ad verecundiam, the reputation or appeal-to-authority fallacy.
- "But it’s only if we include a strong warming effect from Man’s CO2 emissions that we can reproduce the observed warming of the past 60 years. We cannot think of any other reason for the warming.” That argument from the UN’s climate panel, the IPCC, is the argumentum ad ignorantiam, the fallacy of arguing from ignorance.
- The Fake 97% Sureveys : Two surveys have purported to show that 97% of climate scientists supported the “consensus”.
- However, one survey did not state explicitly what question the scientists were asked and did not explain how they had been selected to remove bias. Evidentially, it was valueless. Yet that has not prevented the usual suspects from saying – falsely – that the “consensus” of 97% of all climate scientists is that manmade global warming is potentially catastrophic.
- The other paper “was based on the views of just 77 scientists, far too small a sample to be scientific, and the proposition to which 75 of the 77 assented was merely to the effect that there has been warming since 1950.” That is an obvious reference to Doran and Zimmerman 2009, but it was even worse than that description.
It referenced warming since the pre-1800s, not since 1950.
The two survey questions to which they got almost all saying yes were:
- “1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
- 2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
Source: PDF
* The “pre-1800s” were the Little Ice Age.
- The so-called consensus reportedly found by the 2 survey questions was only that:
1) It is warmer now than in the Little Ice Age … obviously.
2) Humans have a significant effect on temperatures in the scientific sense of non-zero, which is something skeptics imply when talking about even the existence of the Urban Heat Island effect but does nothing to validate the CAGW movement’s claims of temperature rise vast enough to be a net negative at all in cost versus benefit.
- Futher Critical Thinking Education - Here, for example, is a brief synopsis of the syllabus for the AQA examining board’s foundation unit for A level Critical Thinking…
- recognise when reasoned argument is taking place;
- recognise the area of discourse to which a particular argument or debate belongs;
- classify and evaluate different kinds of claim;
- analyse and interpret texts involving argument to reveal the structure of the reasoning;
- identify assumptions that are implicit in an argument;
- evaluate arguments, understanding that there are varying standards for assessing their adequacy;
- consider consequences and their impact on arguments;
- consider the impact of additional evidence, counter-examples, analogies etc;
- identify ambiguity and vagueness and understand the importance of clarifying terms;
- distinguish between the reasoning in an argument and the use of persuasive language;
- recognise bad (flawed) arguments, and be able to identify what is wrong with them (fallacies);
- draw comparisons and contrasts;
- use their experience of analysis and evaluation to present cogent arguments;
- acquire a basic vocabulary of terms associated with reasoning, and use them appropriately
"The current generation of MSM journalists would benefit gratefully from such a course. "
- See Also -
Straight_and_Crooked_Thinkingon Wiki
- logical fallacy list
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