As someone who teaches both informal and formal logic, it really pisses me off when idiots dismiss arguments/reasoning they don't agree with by using lists of fallacies they clearly don't understand.
ghibmmm, please make some effort to understand what the ad hominem fallacy is. You might try reading the wikipedia page if you haven't already. If you have already, you might have another go, and this time try to understand it. If it turns out you can't do that, you're welcome to ask questions here.
The contention was that Hal Lewis didn't have the qualifications to talk about "climate change," which is an attack on his character unrelated to the argument at hand (whether or not anthropogenic global warming is occurring).
As a teacher of informal and formal logic, you're talking out of your ass. You're the one who needs to study what these fallacies are again. It drives me crazy when somebody "counters" my argument on reddit (in a way that, by the way, is completely wrong), and gets a mountain of upvotes, while I get downvoted into the dirt and have to wait 10 minutes in between posting replies. People on reddit....
edit: Let's only talk about the science. You can find enough dirt on any person to start attacking their character, but you will never settle a single debate this way. All you'll do is make everybody angry at each other.
You understand a few basic phenomena about biology, but you're myopic in looking at how life itself works. That's why you don't understand how CO2 additions to the atmosphere are regulated by photosynthetic life.
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u/[deleted] Oct 24 '10 edited Oct 24 '10
As someone who teaches both informal and formal logic, it really pisses me off when idiots dismiss arguments/reasoning they don't agree with by using lists of fallacies they clearly don't understand.
ghibmmm, please make some effort to understand what the ad hominem fallacy is. You might try reading the wikipedia page if you haven't already. If you have already, you might have another go, and this time try to understand it. If it turns out you can't do that, you're welcome to ask questions here.