{"id":417,"date":"2007-06-26T14:36:27","date_gmt":"2007-06-26T18:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=417"},"modified":"2007-06-26T20:52:07","modified_gmt":"2007-06-27T00:52:07","slug":"caution-to-the-wind-principles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=417","title":{"rendered":"“Caution-to-the-wind Principles”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adding to earlier<\/a> diagnosis of the ad infantem<\/em> fallacy: The argument the author <\/a> over at the WaPo is making seems to me to be that the worry
\nover climate change is disproportionate to the danger or the likelihood
\nof the threatened harm. It is an increasingly common reaction to
\nclimate change warnings as the straight-up deniers seem to be
\nretreating to their Hummers. It rests on a reasonable premise:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Concern should be proportional to risk, where risk is proportional to magnitude of harm and likelihood of occurence.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Then you attack Al Gore for hyping the risk, while presenting a
    \nposture of cool headed calm in opposition to Gore\u2019s climate hysteria
    \n(and benefiting the children as well!). It generally depends on making one of two claims:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. the harm will be less severe than Gore predicts.<\/li>\n
    2. the harm is less likely than Gore claims .<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Arguing these claims would require scientific argument\/evidence.
      \nThis editorial flails around in the proximity of these claims but
      \nsettles on the related claim:<\/p>\n

      3. we don\u2019t know what the likelihood or severity of the harm is. <\/p>\n

      The author supports this claim with<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. an argument about the inability of climatologists to predict the
        \nweather in August. Therefore it is unlikely that they can predict the
        \nweather in 2100.<\/li>\n
      2. an argument about the \u201ccontroversies\u201d surrounding whether storms
        \nare exacerbated by climate change or not. (Committing what we might
        \ncall the fallacy of appeal to a single uncontextualized scientific
        \nstudy. Well, to be fair she doesn\u2019t really commit this \u201cfallacy\u201d since
        \nall she wants to do is suggest that we don\u2019t know.). On this see the
        \ndebate over         here<\/a> or the related discussion here.<\/a> We can also add that this is not exactly the most significant part of the harms imagined in the IPCC\u2019s 4th report.<\/a> (In fact it\u2019s barely mentioned). Finally, as pointing out in the first link, contrast her use of this study with the WaPo’s own reportage.<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        These very weak arguments for 3, then allow the author to suggest
        \nthat we shouldn\u2019t be too alarmist about climate change and certainly
        \nnot scare the children! Al Gore should be ashamed! Until you are
        \ncertain, don\u2019t scare the children.<\/p>\n

        This sort of editorial probably takes about 5 minutes to write.
        \nReally all that\u2019s going on is<\/p>\n

          \n
        1.   find some disagreement in the
          \nscientific literature<\/li>\n
        2.   therefore we shouldn\u2019t worry too much. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          Somewhere in there is something akin to the appeal to ignorance. It
          \nisn\u2019t quite an appeal to igorance because the conclusion isn\u2019t simply
          \nthe negative conclusion:<\/p>\n

          a) climate change isn\u2019t a risk<\/p>\n

          but rather, something like: <\/p>\n

          b) we don\u2019t know whether it is a risk, so we should treat it as though it isn\u2019t a (big) risk.<\/p>\n

          There\u2019s much more to be said about this latter step, as clearly sometimes it is a perfectly good inference. In environmental ethics we discuss something called the "precautionary principle." Roughly this is a principle that shifts the "burden of proof" to those who advocate a policy that is potentially very dangerous. For example, the advocates of a policy might have to demonstrate that the risk is minimal, or manageable, etc. <\/p>\n

          The sort of argument that we are analyzing here seem to rest on a "caution to the wind principle" which seems to suggest that in the absence of conclusive demonstration of certain and determinate harms, we shouldn’t worry too much, and we definitely shouldn’t upset the children. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          Adding to earlier diagnosis of the ad infantem fallacy: The argument the author over at the WaPo is making seems to me to be that the worry over climate change is disproportionate to the danger or the likelihood of the threatened harm. It is an increasingly common reaction to climate change warnings as the straight-up … Continue reading “Caution-to-the-wind Principles”<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,34,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-appeal-to-ignorance","category-argument-analysis","category-op-ed-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}