Bishop Hill Obama and the abusive analogy
Jun 15, 2014 Climate: Parliament Chapter One of How to Win Every Argument, Madsen Pirie's systematic survey of the use and abuse of logical fallacies, is on the abusive analogy. This is a wonderful book for those seeking to enhance their rhetorical skills through underhand means, but I sense that President Obama is one man who could have written the book himself. This conclusion is based on his speech to an audience of college graduates in California during which he discussed dissenting views on climate change:
"It's pretty rare that you'll encounter somebody who says the problem you're trying to solve simply doesn't exist. When President Kennedy set us on a course to the moon, there were a number of people who made a serious case that it wouldn't be worth it," he continued.
"But nobody ignored the science. I don't remember anybody saying the moon wasn't there or that it was made of cheese," Obama said.
I would have thought that someone who was trying to deal with an existential crisis would have been moving heaven and earth to unite people rather than divide them. Using fallacy - and abusive fallacy to boot - makes him look more like someone who sees global warming as a useful wedge issue than someone who really thinks he is trying to save the planet.
Reader Comments (93)
You can always spot a busted political flush; when a political career is dying, the politico always does 2 things:
1. Prance around the world stage as a great statesman, dispensing pearls of wisdom - at least it makes them think that they have achieved something.
2. Jump on the AGW bandwagon to garner a few votes from warmists - bed news, it does not work anymore and warmists are mainly lefties anyway
People who are bluffing their way into a "foreign" system. How come? Couldn't give a toss!!
I really can't wait for the release of the confidential documentation in the coming decades.....well, I hope it's within two decades anyway cos I'll be checking out round about then.....!
Hunter is on the money about Obama.
Does the Sunday Time still have Andrew Sullivan every week? He used to write a column where every one of Obama's setbacks was actually a strategic masterstroke. Each reverse was actually one of those judo moves where you use your opponent's strength to defeat him. Truly delusional stuff. And deeply partisan as well - success was measured by wrong-footing the dastardly Repubs - never by any real-world objectives.
@ Hunter
...First, I disagree that all politicians lie as a matter of course. Politicians are people and not all people lie...
Er... I detect a logical fallacy here. Some people lie. Politicians are inside that subset of people who lie (amongst other things). It's a requirement of the job, just like misrepresenting the issue, avoiding discussing the issue honestly, and silencing those who dare to disagree or resist. And then when policies fail, blaming those who were cut out of the process and denigrated.
If you don't do that, and more, you won't succeed in modern politics. And I speak from 20 years experience as a Whitehall civil servant...
"I would have thought that someone who was trying to deal with an existential crisis would have been moving heaven and earth to unite people rather than divide them."
It's kinda late even for false concern for those who willfully shut their eyes and ears in confronting Anthropogenic Global Warming. Can you be any more juvenile?
"Using fallacy - and abusive fallacy to boot - makes him look more like someone who sees global warming as a useful wedge issue than someone who really thinks he is trying to save the planet."
You're a smart guy, Richard, or Andrew, or whoever you are. Therefore, I propose you are being disingenuous as you throw the raw meat of false umbrage to your acolytes here on this blog. I say this, because after 6 years it has been blatantly obvious that President Obama has been exasperatingly accommodating and irritatingly conciliatory toward those who appear--suddenly after 2009--to be on the opposite side of progress and pragmatism. The President has been a major disappointment, but not because he has been divisive. Those divisions were already there, but by his very existence, Barack Obama has served to amplify these divisions with all its manufactured outrage fueled partly by the dirty energy elite.
Again, it's too late and too simplemindedly superficial to frame the president as using the reality of global warming for political gain. But really, you already knew that.
Obama's gonna draw a red line in the green cheese.
================
Jim Spriggs is a typical blend of ignorance and cynicism amongst the climate kooks.
Ignorant of why there are skeptics, cynical of what motivates skeptics, and imputing motives of cynical lying to what our host writes.
And then to make certain we all know he is ignorant, he claims that Mr. Obama's chief failure is that he has not been harsh enough on those critics. And to underscore his ignorance he asserts skeptics were all on board with CO2 obsessed ideas about climate and the policies to deal with the alleged problem until Mr. Obama showed up.
So we see: derivative, uninformed, motive assignment and responsibility avoidance all in one post. Jim Spriggs could work in the White House writing insulting drivel for the President's teleprompter and the quality would be unchanged.
Interesting reactions here.
Commenters complain mightily about Obama's suggestion that sceptics ignore the science.
There's no complaint about the suggestions that sceptics accept there is a climate change problem, but regard it as best ignored, ; or as beyond solving.
Nor is there any complaint about being referred to as a radical fringe who regard climate science as a liberal conspiracy.
EM,
We are early on in the deconstruction of Mr. Obama's latest bit of immature acting out.
And here you slink in to further misrepresent the case.
What is about being a climate kook is it that makes so few of you able to read for content or to think critically?
Mr. Obama's name calling, after something close to six years, is now a sort of pink noise, an unnuanced mindless sound.
You still have a wee bit of nuance left, but are clearly working hard to lose the bit you have.
Since we don't ignore the science but are well informed in the science we are able to enjoy your red herring false choice for the shallow bit of game playing it is. As for fringe: since this fringe is winning elections and forcing government after government to face reality and reduce or abandon climate obsessed policies in favor of reality, calling skeptics 'fringe' is just another example of Mr. Obama's shallow name calling. Americans are used to our childish President's need to name call; we know he only does it when he is fibbing. He name calls a lot.
You are a bit disappointing, EM. You did not accuse skeptics of being a part of Koch brother funded conspiracy.
You are slipping up. Loser.
I think you are all missing the important and illuminating aspect of the speech. Here we have the leader of the most important country in the West saying that it is idiotic denialism to be sceptical about the reality of catastrophic global warming.
He then goes on to trumpet a program which appears to lower US emissions by about 1 billion tonnes of CO2 over about 4 years. So he is proposing to take around 250 million tonnes a year out of the US total emissions of about 5 billion, or the world total of about 35 billion.
Now, that's not insignificant. Its about half what the UK does each year. So its quite a big chunk of emissions. But let's suppose that the 35 billion if continued and increased really is going to lead to catastrophe. Is reduction of 250 million an effective and appropriate response?
Clearly not. And this raises for me the question that the climate debate is always raising. If people really do believe what they say, why on earth are they advocating doing lots of very expensive things that do almost nothing about the supposed problem? It make no sense. If they really believed what they say, they would be advocating and doing entirely different things.
It is a bit like someone predicting back in the days of the mad cow disease that there was going to be a huge epidemic if we carried on eating beef, and proposing by way of remedy that we should all resolve to eat fish once a week but otherwise not change our eating habits. You cannot really believe what you are saying, we would conclude. Or someone predicting an imminent stock market crash and putting 5% of his equity funds into gold. You are not acting as if you believe it, we would say.
It is incomprehensible. If Obama really did believe that the world was faced with a catastrophe, he would be proposing totally different measures.
As for China, its quite obvious that we have several billion people in a serious state of denial. Not only are they not reducing their emissions, they are actually planning to increase them - double them, in fact.
If Obama really believed it, and wanted to save the planet, his speech would be on the lines of a desperate appeal to the Chinese to stop now while there is still time. What he is actually doing, if he believes it, is somewhat on the lines of handing out teacups to the passengers on the Titanic, and telling them to get to work bailing because every little helps, and we have to set an example.
"If Obama really did believe that the world was faced with a catastrophe, he would be proposing totally different measures."
This is true Michel, and generally, if a AGW believer on the street will actually communicate with you, you'll find that they don't really believe it is, either. But they've had their spines removed. They will do nothing but go along. They've long since abdicated any responsibility to the truth about this, even if they feel some.
Andrew
Michel, your analogy with teacups on Titanic is fantastic.
One of the many tells that Mr. Obama is either very cynical or very ignorant regarding climate is that even if the sensitivity projections they are using to justify their attack on American industry were correct, and even if the proposed EPA curtailments and regulations on coal were fully implemented, the impact on climate by their own calculations would be less than 0.05o. Trillions of dollars are to be taken from productive work to make a change, at most, much less than the margin of error.
If there is a positive reason that this all cost and no benefit approach to governance should be acceptable to any reasonable person, I would like to be made aware of it.
He will be out of office in 2 years.
His actions are needed to get a new position in UNEP politburo or central committee?
Hunter writes:
"Ignorant of why there are skeptics, cynical of what motivates skeptics, and imputing motives of cynical lying to what our host writes."
Wrong. Your host pasted and commented on a passage from Obama's speech about science deniers, not "skeptics." I know that the word skeptic refers to someone who's withholding judgement in lieu of more information. If you can't tell the difference between a skeptic and a denier by now, then who is ignorant?
This part concerns my not being clear enough: I didn't say that being conciliatory was the president's chief failure--I meant to indicate it was one of many, but being divisive was certainly not among them. And about being for it before 2009 and then suddenly being against it after Obama's election, I meant it in a general sense--in basically everything he has tried to do. The global warming denial juggernaut has only intensified since then. But we all know that the push-back against doing anything about global warming began decades ago, even before the tobacco industry "scientists" (who denied smoking causes lung cancer) jumped ship and hopped aboard the fossil fuel industry's more lucrative lie machine.
And, yes, Hunter, I am ascribing a motive of false indignation to your host because that's what it is.
;The Extremely Flawed Foundation of Global Warming
Some text modifications are shown in [***] by Berthold Klein
What is the basis of global warming?
Every scientific theory [hypotheses]has a basis, a foundation if you will. Consider the modern study of genetics. It has a foundation in the discovery of DNA almost 60 years ago. Before the discovery of DNA there was no ability to determine exactly how traits were passed on from one generation to another.
Global warming has a basis, but unlike the discovery of DNA it was a flawed theoretical idea, even from the beginning. Unfortunately it was 80 years before it could fully be proven as incorrect and as a result the flawed idea had plenty of time to become well entrenched in the scientific community. There are few places harder to dislodge old, popular ideas than the scientific community.
That is especially so when the idea originated from a Nobel prize winner. In the case of global warming that original idea was from Svante Arrhenius. He was a brilliant chemist (by research, schooling in physics) whose work in mathematically describing chemical reactions is still used in chemistry today. Since he was so well recognized and this theory so well entrenched that even in the face of mounting evidence that his theory was wrong in the 1970′s, there were many that tried to prove his theory correct (they still are too). The conflicting ideas from the 1970′s laid the foundation for the continuing debate on global warming today.
In fact today’s debate is really just a continuation of one that started more than 100 years ago between Arrhenius and another very famous scientist by the name of Knut Angstrom. He was a physicist who specialized in radiative heat transfer. Specifically he investigated the transfer of energy from the Sun to the Earth and precisely how the atmosphere absorbed energy.
Arrhenius’s original idea was that the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere determined the temperature of the Earth. His original equation is still used (in a highly modified form) when projecting the future temperature based on CO2 levels despite the fact that it has no basis in scientific fact. However his idea that doubling the amount of CO2 would cause the temperature of the Earth to rise 5-6 °C is still widely in use today.
His idea is solely based on the observation that CO2 absorbs infra red energy. He ignored the evidence from Angstrom which showed that CO2 was very limited in its ability to absorb infra red energy. Water vapor is in fact a much more powerful greenhouse gas[IRag-IR adsorbing gas] than any other gas. All of this is ignored by anyone claiming that CO2 determines the temperature of the Earth. Knut Angstrom immediately pointed out the weakness of CO2 to Arrhenius, but much like climate scientists today ignore the physics of radiative heat transfer, Arrhenius ignored Angstrom and the peer review of the leading scientist on the topic.
If Arrhenius was correct, here is what the temperature of the earth would have been like for the past 80 years.
Arrhenius Theory [hypotheses]for Global Warming
Oops. I see a problem.
The higher the CO2 gets, the more incorrect the Arrhenius theory is from reality. Normally when the results don’t match the theory[hypotheses], the theory gets thrown out. In this case it didn’t happen because a skeptical peer review was simply ignored, much like the real science continues to be ignored today.
Reading tea leaves or consulting a psychic is as comparable a scientific predictor as CO2 levels. The reason for this is simple, CO2 level does not determine the temperature in any way. If there were no CO2 in the atmosphere at all, the earth would be ever so slightly cooler[based on thermocondutivite of CO2 the temperature would increase a minute amount], but barely enough to notice. Once there is about 50 ppm in the atmosphere, any additional amounts do not matter. That is what the actual science predicts and that is what the results show.
The times where the Arrhenius theory is closest to being accurate is of course the periods where the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) are in the warm phase. When the AMO is in the cool phase, the difference is immense. The one year events where the difference drops happens to be years with an El Nino. As usual, the natural ocean oscillations strike again.
The simplest fact is that CO2 has essentially no impact on the Earth’s temperature and it never has. The scientific foundation of “global warming” is fundamentally flawed.
- See more at: http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2010/09/the-extremely-flawed-foundation-of-global-warming/#sthash.6r93muHA.dpuf
I also raise a teacup in appreciation of michel's Titanic analogy.
Mr. Klein,
All you did was copy and paste the entire body of text from your website's home page.
You say:
"If there were no CO2 in the atmosphere at all, the earth would be ever so slightly cooler[based on thermocondutivite of CO2 the temperature would increase a minute amount], but barely enough to notice."
Uh, I think people would notice living on a snowball. Because that's what would happen if we had no CO2. Your misconceptions don't even rise to the level of "average Joe." Either get with it or step aside.
Jim Spriggs
Reference for living on a snowball
Jim Spriggs
Much of Obama’s speech was same ol’, same ol’. The Bish didn’t need to dissect the whole thing for us to know what those familiar tropes would be. The discussion point Mr Montford chose to highlight was the fact that without the side Obama was deriding, there will be no significant reduction in CO2. It might make the President feel good, by showing off to students, but in the scheme of things they’re amongst the least influential. Sure, the theory goes that they will grow up, get important jobs and change the world but life doesn’t work that way. Of those who do go on to lead big companies, most will also grow up enough to realise that Obama knows almost nothing about climate change, his speeches are largely inaccurate bluster and that saying you’ll cut CO2 is easy, doing it is almost impossible. That sort of superficiality makes people close their minds to genuine communication that might one day be important.
Like many warmists, Obama makes insupportable promises with other people’s money and effort. He makes no attempt to either understand the issues or live by the rules he espouses. As some have pointed out, these things are stock in trade for politicians, and we know how reliable that species is. Give us one good reason why we should do anything other than mock him?
"joking aside, I often thought the hypothesis that the moon was made of green cheese was superior to the theory that CO2 was going to lead to catasrophe."
Jun 15, 2014 at 7:18 PM | EternalOptimist
And that's exactly why you're a clueless evidence-free anti-science denier.
Aha, a denier of anti-science. That surely must be something good!
(I realise this must be snipped. It's a temporary joke.)
TinyCO2:
This is very well said. What concerns me much more are those who go into government (and related crony capitalist positions dependent on government). Some of them, like the dedicated Marxist Thomas Sowell, will see the ineptitude there and have the honesty to let this change their simplistic vision of politics and economics forever. But surely history teaches that Sowell is an outlier in this regard. Some will remain smugly certain of self-flattering 'truths' received long before. So Obama parachuting in to affirm the likes of Lewandowsky in teaching impressionable graduates the right attitude to have to climate change deniers I'm less sanguine about:
As Steve McIntyre let me say on Climate Audit in March. (I was surprised not to be snipped. It doesn't make what I was saying right, of course.) The radicalisation of a uncaring future elite does bother me. Obama is using the great name of POTUS to pour fuel on the fire. Happily, forces of future scepticism are also going to be engaged, as you rightly say. As Sowell himself says, he'd be much more of a pessimist if he hadn't read the prophecies of some many intellectuals throughout history and seen how wrong they were. He's just holding out hope that he himself is going to be just as wrong!
Richard Drake - the girl is working on the Feynman diagram for a science/anti-science annihilation event.
GrantB: Absolutely!
Well I still find it hard to believe that politicians are happy to reduce growth. The real problem is the large number of strident activist-scientists in the US. The IPCC produces a report which largely confirms that skeptics were right to be skeptical and ratchetting down the rhetoric (ignoring the political summary that contradicted the report body). Then just when you hope that common sense will break out we get yet another dumb, alarmist report from 250 publically-funded US busybodies who don't like what the IPCC or nature is telling them and instead pretend that the US is somehow a lot worse than the rest of the world despite it being only just as warm there as it was in the 1930's. There seems to be no proper oversight of these clods so no pessimism is ever too great. Of course employing Holdren was a poor decision: Likely that stupid cheese joke was originally his. The fact is that the use of shale gas has increased carbon-based fuel efficiency more than anything else. Anyone who ignores that is not at all interested in CO2 reduction - but growth reduction instead.
"not to care what inferior people think but persist with policies that could ruin them." Too true but that's where politicians underestimate the public (rich and poor). If the public get riled up enough about something, they can and do throw a spanner in the political works. The most usual demonstration of this is if they aren't happy with the policies they don't vote but if they REALLY aren't happy they vote for the other side or for the new option like UKIP. Cameron did the Conservatives significant harm by his 'vote blue, go green' claims. Green is politics. Politics the blues didn't and don't support. The result was a failure to get a majority when it should have been a doddle.
It's true to say that a lot of politcial view point is formed in childhood, long before University, but even political parties change over time. The left and right of today are not the same as those 30 years ago. People come to see that certain policies do or do not work irrespective of politcal alligience. Seeing the light can be delayed by how offended the would be converts have become. Obama risks pushing any serious action on AGW further into the future because he is indulging in name calling now.
I DO remember some people saying the Moon would be covered in dust (a possibility if it were not for vacuum cementing) and thus couldn't be landed on. They went to find out anyway.
Jim Spriggs,
Like most bigoted cowards, you rely on dehumanize and delegitimatizing those with whom you disagree by by name calling.
"Ni**er" is what redneck bigots call people of African ancestry. "Denier" is what cowardly shallow unoriginal twits like you call skeptics. "Denier" was specifically selected by cowardly climate extremists to dehumanize skeptics of global warming/climate change/ etc. by pretending they are like Holocaust deniers. Well f you, twit.
You climate obsessed extremists are the ones denying science and reality by claiming there is a climate crisis, and you deny that each and every policy designed to 'stop' climate change has in fact failed.
You deny that even if this man-child President's draconian anti-CO2 rules were fully implemented, they would fail to reduce the Earth's temperature in any significant way at all. Even if the rationalizations on which the rules are based are correct.
As to your take on Mr. Obama- it is as far removed from reality as your ignorant take on climate.
As to our host and his article, your reluctance to actually read and understand what is written is a hole you have chosen to dig. Like most willfully ignorant people, you are likely to continue digging.
Ben Pile over at Climate Resistance describes your behavior rather well.
Keep on trolling
TinyCO2: I salute your determination to fight and not give way to fatalism and despair. If none of us knows, and dark forces feel the need to co-opt the man called the most powerful in the world ... well, what an adventure.
I remember a sketch on TV, almost certainly the Two Ronnies, set in a parliamentary debate. The insults across the house get more and more ridiculous until one of the MPs descends to "Well you didn't eat your greens yesterday."
At the time it was satire but we get closer to life copying parody every day.
Part of a speech delivered by David Victor of the University of California, San Diego, at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography as part of a seminar series titled “Global Warming Denialism: What science has to say” (Special Seminar Series, Winter Quarter, 2014):
"First, we in the scientific community need to acknowledge that the science is softer than we like to portray. The science is not “in” on climate change because we are dealing with a complex system whose full properties are, with current methods, unknowable. The science is “in” on the first steps in the analysis—historical emissions, concentrations, and brute force radiative balance—but not for the steps that actually matter for policy. Those include impacts, ease of adaptation, mitigation of emissions and such—are surrounded by error and uncertainty. I can understand why a politician says the science is settled—as Barack Obama did…in the State of the Union Address, where he said the “debate is over”—because if your mission is to create a political momentum then it helps to brand the other side as a “Flat Earth Society” (as he did last June). But in the scientific community we can’t pretend that things are more certain than they are."
Winston,
The speech by David Victor that you quote is in its own way worse than the President's.
He is endorsing lying by the President and is suggesting that scientists should endorse the lies as well.
The President can be excused to the extent that he can claim to be given the mushroom treatment: kept in the dark and fed manure by his disreputable adsivers.
Victor has no such excuse. He is knowingly shoveling the manure and profiting directly from it.
Hunter
Thank you for the rudeness. When my opponents resort to such an approach I feel that I am making progress.
Sandy S
Something to start you off on snowball earths .
It is even written in your preferred conditional mode. :-)
Jim Spriggs,
You may be the only person who differentiates between a denier and a skeptic.
Hunter,
While I think you are on target with your characterization of our President, one could give him far greater benefit of doubt and I think he would still not "shine" as President.
In a nutshell, the Presidnet has zero leadership skills. He has two means for dealing with an issue, talk about it or issue an executive directive. His speech at Cal Irving is obviously the latter. He probably knows that EPA's new emissions ruling will not be immediately implemented - i.e. if/when it is will most likely be after he's out of office. So he feels he has nothing to lose playing to core voters. If anything, he might achieve a gain by motivating young voters to vote in the midterms. Yet ultimately he will be judged by what he accomplished and the odds are not looking good at there being any lasting accomplishment regarding climate.
"Reference for living on a snowball"
I think Sandy S wanted a reference (it's not hard to find!):
"Without the greenhouse effect, the Earth's temperature would be about −18 °C (-0.4 °F) . The surface temperature would be 33 °C (57.6 °F) below Earth's actual surface temperature of approximately 14 °C (57.2 °F)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere
Wikipedia has lots of footnotes/sources.
While affairs of state in the USA are no skin off my nose, the Obama presidency has been a huge disappointment for this political watcher from NZ. As his tenure drags on, his performance shows he is not the man of principle he pretended to be when he first campaigned to be President.
EM,
My dear friend, I am pleased I could be of some small benefit to you.
I appreciate and thank you for your kind words in the same spirit you offered them.
Hunter first says:
"Jim Spriggs is a typical blend of ignorance and cynicism amongst the climate kooks."
Then he says:
"Like most bigoted cowards, you rely on dehumanize and delegitimatizing those with whom you disagree by by name calling."
Climb down off your lofty pedestal, Hunter. Your hysterical, Glenn Beck-style rant is only showing everyone you can dish it out but you can't take it.
timg56 says:
"You may be the only person who differentiates between a denier and a skeptic."
Not even close. There's a World Wide Web out there--go check it out.
TinyCO2 says:
"Give us one good reason why we should do anything other than mock him?"
Is it "science," maybe?
Just a shot in the dark.
Does nobody feel like pointing out to Jim Spriggs that most of the Greenhouse Effect is due to water vapour, not CO2? Or are we just afraid of him talking us to death?
Well done michel. You've encapsulated what I've wanted to say for years. I've always been convinced that all high-profile warmists own seafront property!
Hunter said, "The speech by David Victor that you quote is in its own way worse than the President's."
Correct. However, since it's an admission within the catastrophic AGW community of the inability of the current, primitive science of climatology and its models to create projections that are accurate enough to set policy while condoning the lies or ignorance of a President and not bothering to set him straight, isn't that a rather damning quote to use against them? That's why I posted it here.
Jim Spriggs "Is it "science," maybe? "
Obama is not doing science, he's doing politics, so your shot in the dark misses the target. When a large and growing portion of your audience is not on your side, you need to think carefully how you procede. Insulting them is fine if you don't need their support but unless the world has changed in the last five minutes, the students of California can't reduce global CO2 emissions on their own. Obama, POTUS can't either. Climate science is complicated, basic negotiation isn't. Why would I listen to someone who struggles with the bleedin' obvious?