Form of Argument: Adventures in Rhetoric
Form of Argument: Adventures in Rhetoric
In 2009 I received some questions from Westview High School in San Diego, California (see here). A few weeks ago I heard from the same teacher, Bob Whitney, and he was curious about how I would respond to the issues raised in this posting on Rogues and Scholars. This is a long exchange of postings between two engineers, Burt Rutan and Brian Angliss.
In my blog, for better or worse, I have tended away from engaging in the type of discussions that are represented by this exchange. A couple of reasons: One, this line of argument that works to discredit climate change is at this point political, and as I argued here, engagement in this argument is not productive. Two, while it is necessary to address the factual inaccuracies that are stated in this type of discussion, it has been done repeatedly and well by many others (look around, for instance, at Real Climate). That said – what do you say to students who have the discussion between Rutan and Angliss at hand and want to make sense of it all?
When I look at the words used by Rutan, I see words anchored around fraud, dishonesty, alarmist - this is an argument that relies on discredit and personal attacks. Such an attack quickly raises the emotion and takes the discussion away from a knowledge base. It is the sort of attack that has become pervasive in our political conversation in general, and it is an excellent diversionary tactic. It raises the specter of distrust.
I tell students to look for the form of argument. So, first, does it rely on discredit? In this case, it does rely on discredit, and it relies on discrediting thousands of scientists, writing many thousands of papers, over many years, from many countries. It is fundamentally conspiratorial, and not only is it conspiratorial it requires that many years before climate change emerged as an important environmental problem, that the foundation for the conspiracy was being laid down. To me, this lacks any credibility in reason, but if conspiratorial beliefs are held, then it is virtually impossible to provide convincing counterarguments to the person who holds those beliefs. If the form of argument relies on conspiracy, then it is immediately suspect.
One way to address, rationally, issues of dishonesty and conspiracy is to seek external review and, ultimately, judgment. The body of climate science research has been subject to extensive external review. Governments, the National Academy (here as well), non-climate-science scientists, and lawyers have reviewed climate science. They have all affirmed the results to be well founded and based on proper scientific investigation. The studies have documented that scientists have foibles and that peer review captures the vast majority of errors and prejudices and that there are no fundamental shortcomings in the conclusions that the Earth has, at its surface, on average, warmed and with virtual certainty will continue to warm. But if you dismiss climate science on the principle of conspiratorial malfeasance, then it is simple to dismiss external review. If you stand on only your own review and have the foundation to dismiss all external review because of conspiracy, then you are always right. Hence there is no discussion. There is no possible way forward for the student other than looking at the evidence and behavior and form of argument and standing as judge.
Does the argument rely on invoking moral levers of trust and distrust based on the belief of conspiratorial fraud?
Does the argument pull out single pieces of information and ignore other pieces of information? Does the argument rely on planting belief and disbelief by reaching for metaphors outside of the field? Does the argument assert that broad claims are made when there is no evidence to support such assertion?
So for the student – you have to think about the whole, not just isolated points that are meant to be provocative and planted to grow on an emotional state fueled by claims of amoral behavior.
Yes, carbon dioxide acts as a fertilizer, but is that the complete story of the vigor of plants? Is there any denial of this role of carbon dioxide in the climate literature? Can you find quantitative, science-based studies of the carbon dioxide fertilization effect?
Yes, there was a lot of carbon dioxide when there were dinosaurs; it was warm – what is the relevance of that argument? Does that establish that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant? Can’t things that are natural also be a pollutant? Isn’t that why we don’t want mine tailings in our drinking water? Isn’t that why we manage our sewage?
There is a wealth of information out there. There are ways to analyze that information, to evaluate its validity. If this sort of argument is encumbering, then there is a need to synthesize, personally, that information to form defensible conclusions.
If you look at the form of argument that relies on emotion, picks out pieces of information to support the argument, ignores pieces of information that do not support the argument, paints moods by long reaching metaphors, and ultimately relies on a belief that a field is corrupt, and that corruption requires a conspiratorial organization extending across decades and all nations – if that is the form of argument, then how is that robust? How is that believable? It is a prejudicial form of argument directed only at making someone believe the person making the argument; it is not seeking knowledge-based understanding.
That’s how I would look at that discussion.
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Figure 1: A summary figure I use after I walk through about 10 lectures on the basics of climate science and global warming.
If you made it here - Here are links to a PDF and a Powerpoint Slide Show that includes several viewgraphs on thinking about arguments that are frequently raised in the political argument opposing the science of climate change. (They are each about 5 MB).
PDF
PPS
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Feel free to believe what it pleases you to believe. As long as you don't try to palm it off as a fact, we're good. :)
No, but I was 12 once. That was during the Nixon Administration. His first term. You know, the one where he didn't have to resign. :)
(I hope that you are trying to be amusing. Because I'm getting a real kick out of it.)
Thank you for illustrating the topic in the OP! I find it interesting that some can't resist those tactics.
I find it amusing, too, particularly in the context of our little sidebar. :)
Likewise, pure fantasy never injures the subject of the fantasy. So, fantasize away, my man. I promise that I won't be heartbroken. lol
Why is it that every time I think we are starting to have a reasonable dialogue, you return to snarking.
I'm not sure that it matters in relation to the piont I was making 'how much'. But, for what it is worth, I told you how much more: a $5 tax per gallon on gasoline. A similar but lesser tax on coal. Credits to offset costs to power plants, farm equipment and trucking and certain other vital industries. There would also be the emotional cost to get you to use public/low energy transportation occasionally.
Why am I so worried about America? I am American. Duh. I do worry about Italy but not in the same way.
Not to mention the new Bike Sharing Scheme!
Below are some of the evil socialist communist professional societies and research institutions involved in the conspiracy. ;)
National Academies of Science (US)
Royal Society (UK)
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia
Academy of Science of South Africa
Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Italy
Academia Mexicana de Ciencias, Mexico
Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina,Germany
Académie des Sciences, France
Royal Society of Canada
Indian National Science Academy
Science Council of Japan
Australian Academy of Sciences
Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts
Caribbean Academy of Sciences
Indonesian Academy of Sciences
Royal Irish Academy
Academy of Sciences Malaysia
Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
State of the Canadian Cryosphere (SOCC)
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Royal Society of the United Kingdom (RS)
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Physics
National Center for Atmospheric Research
American Meteorological Society
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Woods Hole Research Center
American Astronomical Society
American Physical Society
Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO
British Antarctic Survey
Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
Environmental Protection Agency
European Federation of Geologists
European Geosciences Union
European Physical Society
Federation of American Scientists
Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies
Geological Society of America
Geological Society of Australia
International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA)
International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
Royal Meteorological Society
Royal Society of the UK
American Association of State Climatologists
Federal Climate Change Science Program, 2006 (the study authorized and then censored by Bush)
American Chemical Society - (world’s largest scientific organization with over 155,000 members)
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Stratigraphy Commission - Geological Society of London - (The world’s oldest and the United Kingdom’s largest geoscience organization)
Union of Concerned Scientists
The Institution of Engineers Australia
National Research Council
International Council on Science
African Academy of Sciences
Cameroon Academy of Sciences
Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences
Kenya National Academy of Sciences
Madagascar’s National Academy of Arts, Letters and Sciences
Nigerian Academy of Sciences
l’Académie des Sciences et Techniques du Sénégal Uganda National Academy of Sciences
Academy of Science of South Africa
Tanzania Academy of Sciences
Zimbabwe Academy of Sciences
Zambia Academy of Sciences
Sudan Academy of Sciences
How do we know the Earth's climate is warming?
Thousands of land and ocean temperature measurements are recorded each day around the globe. This includes measurements from climate reference stations, weather stations, ships, buoys and autonomous gliders in the oceans. These surface measurements are also supplemented with satellite measurements. These measurements are processed, examined for random and systematic errors, and then finally combined to produce a time series of global average temperature change.
A number of agencies around the world have produced datasets of global-scale changes in surface temperature using different techniques to process the data and remove measurement errors that could lead to false interpretations of temperature trends.
The warming trend that is apparent in all of the independent methods of calculating global temperature change is also confirmed by other independent observations, such as the melting of mountain glaciers on every continent, reductions in the extent of snow cover, earlier blooming of plants in spring, a shorter ice season on lakes and rivers, ocean heat content, reduced arctic sea ice, and rising sea levels.
(CNN) -- With just months to go before the presidential campaign ends all meaningful activity on Capitol Hill, members of Congress are struggling to move a few must-pass pieces of legislation. One of the most pressing is the highway bill, which Congress is considering this week. Not only does all federal funding for transportation depend on passing a bill by March 31; the highway trust fund itself is scheduled to go broke in 2013 and the deal in the making pays for only two years.
This is essential national maintenance. Yet Congress is - you guessed it - gridlocked.
We all know Washington is broken. What's less clear: Did it ever work better? If it did, what was different? What ingredients have been lost, and can we recapture them?
One place to look, especially apt in this instance: The 1956 congressional debate that created the interstate highway system.
The 1956 Federal Aid Highway Act was the health-care legislation of its day, an epic Washington battle. The pressure had been building for decades as the number of cars exploded. Traffic was a national nightmare. Many intercity roads were hardly passable, and most Americans recognized that new highways were essential to continue the unprecedented growth the country had been enjoying since the end of World War II.
Tamar Jacoby
Tamar Jacoby
What no one could agree on was how to pay for the new system.
The 1950s were a more consensual era, of course. Both Democrats and Republicans had wanted to nominate Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower for president in 1952, and during the debate over the highway bill, his approval ratings rarely dipped below 70%. But that doesn't mean there were no disagreements.
Opinion: What's wrong with Congress? It's not big enough
Ideological divisions were if anything sharper than they are today -- Republicans were the party of big business, Democrats the champions of the people and the New Deal. Elections were just as competitive, partisan jockeying just as intense. And the debate about how to pay for the highway system -- tolls, taxes, bonds or some other way -- wasn't just about money. It was about values - what kind of country we wanted to be.
The debate built in intensity through the early '50s. There were blue-ribbon commissions, competing proposals, an array of shifting alliances and armies of lobbyists. The president's proposal and a rival Democratic plan were both shot down in early summer 1955. The main obstacles: truckers, motorists and the oil industry, all resisting new gasoline, tire and vehicle sales taxes.
While the American Trucking Association worked behind the scenes in Washington, a national grassroots campaign whipped truck drivers into a frenzy, producing thousands of phone calls and telegrams to Congress.
But something strange happened over the next nine months -- a last, pivotal round of deal-making -- and a compromise package passed easily in April 1956. The biggest public works program since the pyramids, all told -- highways plus local connecting roads -- came in at $50 billion, more than two-thirds of the federal budget in 1956. But the years of negotiating paid off, and the deal held. In the end, only one Senator voted no, and the bill passed on a voice vote in the House; approval was so overwhelming, there was no need to count.
What changed in those nine months?
Part of it was leadership, with sheer determination by lawmakers. The bill had dozens of moving parts and many fathers on both sides of the aisle.
But the last, critical puzzle piece was the highway trust fund, which set aside the taxes paid by truckers and motorists for the highway system and nothing else. And the two men who worked together to advance the trust fund could hardly have made an odder couple: Treasury Secretary George M. Humphrey, a Midwest Republican and former corporate executive who came to Washington to cut government spending, and U.S. Rep. Hale Boggs of Louisiana, a glad-handing, big-spending, bring-home-the-bacon liberal Democrat.
Both were more interested in problem-solving than ideological purity, in part because in 1956, only problem-solving would win votes. Both parties knew they needed to deliver a highway system.
But America was different, too. The truckers and motorists who blocked the highway bill in 1955 changed their minds in 1956. Flouting one of the nation's most ingrained traditions, they accepted a voluntary tax.
They recognized that though they would pay, they would also benefit, and in the end the roads would be more than worth the cost. This was partly because of the trust fund. But that wasn't all.
Truckers, motorists, auto manufacturers, oil companies and others understood that better highways would mean more commerce. More commerce meant industry would produce more goods. More production would put more people to work. And their increased consumption would lead to yet more growth.
This was the win-win-win perpetual-motion machine that had been driving the economy since 1945. And based on the prosperity of the previous decade, most voters believed a rising tide would still lift all boats.
Can we apply these lessons today? I'm not sure.
So much is so different, and we can't turn back the clock. Still, it's something to ponder as Democrats and Republicans shout past each other on Capitol Hill in coming weeks. It doesn't have to be this way.
Short Version - S and P: Not the Best Judge of Credit-Worthiness | EconProph
Longer Version - Credibility, Chutzpah and Debt - NYTimes.com
Yup, but the facts.................
Hurt!
Debt, is exactly that,,,, Painful....
Eventually, you run out of other peoples money.
Hence the downgrades.
It is what it is and folk who watch it, know it.
Warm an fuzzy, it is not! :)
baseline 1961-1990
Now with a different baseline which should be warmer watch what happens
baseline 1971-2000
And that folks is how man warms Greenland by at least 3C or 4C in the same day. Neat trick
The government can never run out of money.
So who are we to believe, you or our lying ice?
Oh, and for the record, you are using maps that measure things in two different ways. One is land only, and one is blended land and sea.
Chalk up another for the ice. It always seems to know exactly when to melt.
The ice must be lying to.
I noticed that the top graphic shows just the land temps and the bottom graphic is of both land and oceans temps. I would also venture a guess that more recording stations were added between 1990 and 2000 and so these areas would not be shown on the 1961 to 1990 graphics or they were not in place long enough to be added to data yet. This would be my guess. Anyone know for sure if this is the case.
You can do better than this, nymore. Winter still exists and the sun has not yet broken the horizon for much of this region. The Arctic sea still freezes during winter and it had to struggle to covering this area this year. .... I truly wish that you are correct and everything is normal or near normal. We both know that this is not the case.
That all depends on when the base stations were added.
You're going to try to build your case on near normal sea ice?
Good luck with that! LOL
So it's genetic? Sorry to hear that.
Again, two different things are being measured in those maps --land temperature anomaly relative to a 1961-1990 baseline; and land + sea surface temperature relative to a 1971 - 2000 baseline. It shouldn't surprise you that they don't show the same anomaly.
If you have *actual* evidence that something is amiss, then post it. (NOTE: Offending your sensibilities is evidence of nothing relevant to temperature anomalies.)
Let us say they added 10 new stations in 1985. You would want to get 10 years of data from these stations to establish a base line for these stations before you started showing any anomalies from these stations. These stations would not show up in the 1961 to 1990 anomalies graph, but they would show up in the 1971 to 2000 anomalies graphic. When you look at the 1971 to 2000 graphic and compare it to the 1961 to 1990 graphic it is easy to see that more reporting stations have been added to the 1971 to 2000 graphic. Looking at the two graphics, this is the logical thought process.
The top graphic does not show the sea surface anomalies, so how can you say what the anomalies were, based solely on that graphic? The 1971 to 2000 graphic shows the sea surface anomalies, but not the 1961 to 1990 graphics.
Catch you? I merely asked a question. There was no accusation stated or implied.
As far as sea ice extent is concerned...well, it's a pretty fine indicator of recent weather, but it has no direct correlation to climate. If you want sea ice to tell you something about the climate, then you want to look at sea ice volume. It tells a very compelling tale at this point. And it's not the one you want to hear.
I doubt anyone really wants to hear it.
Which 3 are you considering? When I take the graphics and do a side by side comparison of them, the same 3 in Greenland look the same to me, but my eyes are not what they use to be.
Maybe. Have you really researched it or are you just going to run with a conspiracy theory based on your own incredulity?
Your choice.
For informational purposes, NCDC puts their email addy right on that page for those who have questions of a scientific or technical nature: CMB.Contact@noaa.gov
If you're curious ask.
Even talking about the weather doesn't help your position. After all, a couple of degrees above normal doesn't mean above 0C. Additionally, the map you use only requires 15% ice coverage to be considered in the ice extent. If we look at sea ice concentration from the same source, we see that there really isn't that much ice concentration around Greenland:
But I agree that it is spread out. :)
I still do not see what you are seeing, but your eyes are younger than mine.
Perhaps, if they show a greater heat anomaly, that this is due to how much more the heat anomalies are, a faster warming, from 1990 to 2000. I would have to study this more to to give you a more definitive answer. I am just guessing now.
I'm not complaining about or arguing with the map you used. That's a fine and dependable source. I'm merely pointing out that the concentration of ice around Greenland, particularly the southern half is quite low.
True, unless the warming has been faster.
You'd have a very good point if both maps were analyzing the same thing. But they are not. One includes data that the other doesn't. So, there doesn't really seem to be a problem.
Shouldn't that sacre you: both show a thirty year window. Slide that thirty year window 10 years later and wow! look how global warming is kicking!
I thought I skimmed a feasibility study for LA. But when I went back all I could find was this.
Still, seems like LA will join the revolution in 2012.
See the cross int he middle of the photo? that is the north pole. Draw concentric circles around that to get lines of latitude.
Look at where there is excess ice: it is all in the lower attitudes. Looka t where the anomolous melt is: at higher latitudes.
Point: all the lower latitude ice is guanteed to melt. It may shield the higher latitude ice for longer than it does in a regular summer but the rate of melt will be very high. On the other hand, the ice that is missing its shield will also melt quicker. The map you show could easily lead to the worst summer ever fro ice melt. Yes, a lot depends on weather and ice transport but I wouldn't be happy if I were you - in fact, I am not happy with the ice situation at all. Most of that lower ice is in fact recent thin briny ice, which you should know from reading this blog.
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