04 December, 2009

Invalid Arguments

Deary, deary me.  It seems that Cons, various deniers, and other such idiots have seized upon leaked emails to declare science dead:
The right's misuse of the old, stolen emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit continues in increasingly foolish ways.


The Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger, for example, argues today that the CRU materials are evidence proving that "science is dying." He went on to describe the release of the stolen emails as "an epochal event."

And people wonder why the WSJ editorial page isn't taken seriously.

Well, it isn't taken seriously by people with two functioning neurons, anyway.

Listen up, people.  A few snarky emails among scientists do not invalidate science, just like Newton's snarky personal letters do not invalidate calculus and laws of motion.  Scientists in East Anglia may have been snarky, but the earth still warms.  A few ill-tempered internet exchanges can't refute the mountains of evidence from multiple sources.

But I see how it is.  We're dealing with people who can't be swayed by science, reason, or evidence.  There's only one thing to do: speak to them in terms they might, possibly, be able to comprehend.









Alas, I am afraid that even this level of discourse is too sophisticated for these dipshits.  One can but try.



Update: go here for a list of changes since Kyoto.  It ain't pretty.

2 comments:

Cujo359 said...

The assertions the WSJ and others make are classic logical fallacies. The most obvious one is quote mining, where the author simply ignores the rest of what's in the letter, and the context of it, to make a smallish quote seem like something it's not.

The people who make these arguments are fundamentally dishonest. Whether it's just to themselves or everyone else is the only question.

london said...

Its a international conspiracy...