: : There are compromises and compromises. Any compromise that fails to preserve your biosphere in a habitable state is as good as no compromise at all. Part of the problem lies in the argument as to how much action needs to be taken to "save the world".: Here, you've already assumed that it's in danger. This is the logical fallacy of begging the question.
Not quite. As I replied to your assertion in the Anything Else room that the Greenhouse Effect was a scare story whipped up by politicians, I have fairly good data backing my belief; can you provide similar data to back yours?
I should point out that my degree subject at University did cover climate science in great detail; I'm not pretending that my opinion is more valid than yours, but I would argue that it is more informed. I can cite papers that back up my claims. Thus I am not merely begging the question; I have yet to come across truly compelling evidence against the Greenhouse theory.
For example, to quote Myers and Kent in their 1995 paper, the estimated cost of defending low-lying coastal regions against rising sea levels in the next 50 years is estimated at 17.5 to 20 trillion US dollars. That's just one of the effects of global warming; there are others such as the spread of vector-borne diseases like malaria and trypsomaniasis, the failure of crops due to changing weather patterns, etc.
The economic cost of these effects is likely to be crippling to the world economy; they represent a significant financial outlay by every government for each of their citizens.
(Myers, Norman and Jennifer Kent. June, 1995. Environmental Exodus: An Emergent Crisis in the Global Arena. Washington, D.C.: The Climate Institute.)
As I've also pointed out, science in the real world is a fuzzy entity; actual hard "proof" is impossible to come across; this doesn't mean that the existing evidence is an insufficient reason to draw conclusions; I consider the existing climatological evidence compelling, in my opinion; I would refer you to the year-on-year polar ice shrinkage and sea surface data from the E.S.A. ERS (Earth Remote Sensing) family of spacecraft.
: : As to using your own words against you, I am merely highlighting a fairly obvious flaw in your arguments; human languages are emotional languages.
: Yes. And they're arguementative, too. Appeals to emotion seek to replace logically valid arguments with pure emotive statements. For example:
: Hitler was a horrible man because he killed 6 million Jews
: and
: You are a mean, greedy person because you support capitalism
: The first is logical arguement that utilized emotion while the second was an appeal to emotion as it sought to replace logical arguements altogether with emotive statements of opinion.
The first is not logical; the association of "killing" with "horrible" in axiom 3 of statement 1 is a subjective one; a common one, but subjective. To someone who liked killing and death or was an anti-Semite, the killing of six million Jews would not be "horrible". It's an assertion based on a value judgement, not a logical argument.
In fact, there are three axioms in the first statement;
"Hitler was a man" (axiom 1) and "Hitler killed 6 million Jews" (axiom 2) and "killing people (of whom "Jews" are a subclass) is horrible" (axiom 3). The combination of axioms 1,2 and 3 gives your conclusion.
As I've said, axiom 3 isn't a given; there are circumstances in which it can be "kind"; ask Kevorkian.
Thus, you cannot logically say Hitler was horrible purely because he killed 6 million Jews; the first statement is as illogical as the second.
: : You cannot say *anything* in English without there being emotional baggage of some sort attached to it; be it implied, emphasised or explicit. It goes deeper than the mere words; the very sounds of our language are loaded with emotional resonance, hence the power of onomatopoeic words like "plod".
: See above. Arguing from emotion is qualitatively different than arguing with emotion; you and Lark do the first while I do the second.
See above; your distinction is flawed, as you have not indicated an example that validates your contention.
: : Thus, pointing to the illusory audience and saying "Look! my opponent is irrational! He uses emotional language!" is fundamentally hypocritical; especially when addressing an audience;
: convincing a mass audience is as much a matter of appealing to their emotion as their reason.
: Reason without emotion is dry. Emotion without reason is extremely dangerous.
Yet a purely logical argument should contain no emotion whatsoever, for emotion clouds logical thinking; this is part of the problem. We are *human*, not robot; thus people can be swayed by non-logical emotion.
: : You are attacking their style of debating in this fashion rather than attacking their logic;
: That's that whole point, though. Y'all don't offer logic; you simply offer emotion and opinion in place of logic. I openly admit to my biases, emotions and opinions. However, I do not substitute them for logical arguements as so many her often do.
Really? See my exploding of your example above.
: : as such, appealing to an audience to disregard X's logic because he is emotional is using emotion yourself; throwing yourself upon the sympathy of your audience.
: Again, pointing out that someone else's arguement was pure emotion with enough big words to sound logical does not a logical arguement make. And again I fully admit to emotion, but the difference is that I don't try passing it off as a logical arguement.
I beg to differ; see some quotes of yours below.
: : Your posts are emotional, whether you like it or not. As are mine, but at least I'm not pretending to be a perfectly dispassionate observer.
: Never claimed otherwise. However, you and Lark constantly confuse emotive language with logicaly valid arguements; the two are different.
As I'm pointing out, all human language is emotive.
: : In which case, "whining Lefties" must have some strange new meaning I haven't heard of yet (and not the negative emotional message that I assumed, in my folly, that you implied).
: 'Whining lefties' is obviously intended as an insult and not even construed as an arguement. As I've said before ridicule is the only response to the ridiculous.
Your words were "Well Gideon, while all you "no compromise" lefties are whining about how we need socialism and taht nothing good ever comes out of a free-market society..."
This was in response to a post of mine in which I described factual conditions in the Kalimantan area of Borneo. I presented factual evidence, I asked in a courteous and moderate tone what reasons the pro-capitalists have for believing that this would improve with increased deregulation.
Exactly who is introducing non-reasoned emotion into the debate here, Joel?
If you believe my original post to be ridiculous, then explode it. Go ahead, leave me with egg all over my face. If you cannot explode it, then don't just try to pooh-pooh it with emotional and illogical statements.
The basic question; why do you think that deregulated free trade would benefit the world environment, when the current examples of it are doing just the opposite, as can be seen in Indonesia?
You may well argue that the demand is there to be satisfied, hence the illegal black-market logging, but I would contend that our demands are inflated by the society that we live in; that our global capitalist system is educating people to overconsume our natural resources with no thought for the long-term effects and that the extant evidence shows this to be a Bad Thing, ecologically speaking.
Now, you may also imply that correlation does not imply causation; I can furnish you with the equations governing global warming, the graphs showing correlation between atmospheric CO2 and mean surface temperature, the demonstrable effects of deforestation on local microclimate and wider climate, the grey-body signature of various earth surfaces and biomasses.
I can give you causal links between our industrial production of carbon dioxide, global temperature rise and predicted damage to the ecosystem. I merely have to consult my lecture notes on 3C27: Planetary Atmospheres and 3C64: Space Instrumentation and Remote Sensing.
Can you give me a convincing causal link that disproves my assertion?
(oh, by the way, while solar and volcanic activity *are* factors in mean surface temperature, the latest models suggest that they have been outweighed by human-produced sources over the last 50 years)
: : You can't have it both ways, JJ. Are you emotional or not?
: Yes. I simply don't subsitute emotion in place of rational arguement; unlike many here.
Oh, *really*? Let's take a quick tour...
"These are mostly scare tactics from politicians, such as Al Gore, designed to enhance their electability; and, from would-be Platonic Philosopher-Kings who make their arguments from politically-driven academia" (JJ, Feb. 9th 1999, Anything Else room)
"Due to ill-defined property rights and overadvocation of publicly produced goods, people behave in different manners than they other wise would." (ditto the above)
"Maybe if you paid attention to what I was saying you'd actually say something worth responding to. Are you truly unable to follow conversations or is this some obtuse manner of changing around definitions or subjects? Either way is an exceptionally dishonest manner of conversing." (JJ, Feb 12th 1999, Capitalism & Alternatives)
(and others...)
The first is an assertion, pure and simple, loaded with emotional language but from an ill-informed viewpoint.
The second is a generalization made from a superhuman viewpoint. You can't declare anything as large and heterogenous as humanity to do anything uniformly unless it be breathing and eating.
The third is interesting to note, in the light of your behaviour in this topic.
: : I notice also with some interest that you haven't actually responded to any of the points I raised in my last message;
: Hmm, just got here. I'll do so now.
: : you merely attacked me on a stylistic point.
: No. Pointing out that someone substitutes emotion and opinion for verifiably logical arguement is not twiddling over style. It's pointing out that someone is attempting to circumvent arguement by painting their side as intrinsically good or their opponent as intrinsically evil.
Do you have any standpoint you can verify with logic? It's far less easy than you imply. Myself, I'll go for the empirical scientific approach; it's not perfect, but it does give some guidelines to follow. I'm not pretending it's the Ultimate Answer, but it'll do for now.
For the record, where have I said that your standpoint was evil? What I have said was that our political system was destroying our environment and resulting in the unnecessary starvation and exploitation of millions; I think it's a Bad Thing for humanity as a whole, but I've never accused anyone who felt differently of being evil; your attempts to portray my posts as saying such things are nothing more than a straw man (thanks, RD!).
Gideon.
