‘Well, you’re arguing facts against opinions. OK, I mean, the fact that the amount of carbon dioxide in the air has rocketed up since the Industrial Revolution, and continues to rocket up, is a fact. Now, it’s so much a fact that even the climate change deniers look away from it and don’t deny it.’
— Professor Steve Jones, Feedback, BBC Radio 4, 18 October
Have a look at that last sentence. It represents such a cherishably stupid, rude, fatuous, crabby, bigoted, ignorant, petulant, feeble, fallacious, dishonest and misleading argument that if it turned out the speaker in question was a professor of logic or philosophy you really might want to shoot yourself in despair.
Can you see what the problem is? Let me explain. This angry professor character wants us to believe that there are people called ‘climate change deniers’ who are so far outside the pale of reasonable discourse that even when they are right it’s another sign of just how wrong they are.
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