More childish reasoning from the NYT

They have up an article headed:  "We Are Conservatives and We Believe Climate Change Is Real".  And everything they say in that connection is perfectly correct -- but irrelevant.

Their modus operandi is to find one conservative in a number of countries who does believe in climate change and put up a whole series of short videos in which these selected people affirm their belief in climate change.

But it is an unutterably childish exercise.  If they had asked me whether I believed in climate change I too would have said "Yes". So it is not the answer that is wrong but the question. If they had asked me "Do you believe that climate change is caused by humans?", I would have said "No".

So they only looked like they had addressed what is at issue in the climate debate.  They have in fact completely slip-slided away from it.

They also say that climate change is controversial in America only.  I could introduce them to a lot of Australian Federal politicians who think climate change panic is all hokum.  Australia once had a carbon tax -- introduced by a Leftist government.  The next government was a conservative one  -- who made it their first order of business to abolish the carbon tax.  So pretending that climate skepticism is unique to the USA is quite simply a lie.

In any case the whole exercise falls foul of Logic 101.  It is an argument by example.  And you can prove anything by example.  If, for instance, there were only one conservastive in a country who  believed in climate chnge, you could could interview him and him only and create the impression that many or most conservatives in the country believed in climate change -- a conclusion which would be grossly erroneous.  Examples cannot be used to prove a generality. 

But Leftists have to use such invalid arguments.  Science, logic and the facts are not kind to them -- JR.


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