Anthony Watts is on a roll wheeling out one greenhouse effect denier after another. Yesterday it was Dr Lu who reckons that CO2 isn't working anymore. Now it's Jim Steele (archived here).
This article is quite long. It's not a bad example of denialism in action - from the WUWT article itself through to the idiotic comments that followed it. As well as relying on the very same scientific papers (and scientists) he scoffs at, Jim misrepresents them. Jim uses cherry picking mixed with disinformation. If Anthony Watts really wanted to be taken seriously, he wouldn't be promoting greenhouse effect deniers like Jim Steele. But Anthony doesn't want to be taken seriously, except as a true blue disinformer and fake sceptic. His first priority is to impress all his science-rejecting fans who willingly send him their hard-earned cash, and patrons like the Heartland Institute.
Jim Steele fails Logic 101
I don't know if Jim is lacking in the intellect department or if he's just pretending to be dumb, but he doesn't start off his article too well. He begins by attacking an article at SkepticalScience.com, without linking to it of course. He wrote:
At the website deceptively named SkepticalScience, they list “Climate Changed Before” as the skeptics’ #1 “mythical” argument. But the website’s authors have fabricated a straw man argument writing, “The ‘climate changed naturally in the past’ argument is a logical fallacy known as non sequitur, in which the conclusion doesn’t follow from the arguments. It’s equivalent to seeing a dead body with a knife sticking out the back, then arguing the death must be natural because people died naturally in the past. It fails to even consider the available evidence.”Jim doesn't say what he finds to be the strawman in that passage that he quotes. I can't see one. Perhaps a reader can explain it. All I see is an explanation of why the notion that climates having changed in the past from other causes is no reason to reject the notion that it's human activities that are causing the current climate change. Pretty straightforward, I'd have thought.
Jim goes on and writes:
Then after wading through theoretical gish-gallop, the Skeptical Science author concludes their argument with a non-sequitur of their own-“Past climate change actually provides evidence that humans can affect climate now.”Jim thinks the SkepticalScience article is a gish-gallop. Jim doesn't know what a gish gallop is. He is also mixing up two articles. SkepticalScience.com has two responses to the denier illogic: "climate changed naturally in the past [therefore it must be changing naturally in the present]". There is a short basic version and a longer intermediate version. Jim has taken the last sentence of the intermediate version out of context and wrongly labelled it a non-sequitur. (Jim isn't an expert in climate and evidence shows that neither is he competent at logic.) The statement is factual, accurate and stands on its own in any case. Past climate change does indeed provide evidence that humans can affect climate now.
Click "read more" if you want to read lots more nonsense from Jim Steele.
