A New Means of Disinformation

Posted by rbroberg 8 years, 7 months ago to Philosophy
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The article attached would not be read by many Gulchers due to the assumed content. Perhaps it shouldn't. Still, I cannot help but be struck by the strangeness of the title itself. The particular article title is "Climate change made Louisiana's catastrophic floods much more likely". Now, setting aside even legitimate arguments against climate change, please take a closer look at the title itself. The claim is that a process made (past tense) a past event more probable. In the common usage, the words likely or probable tend to denote future events -- events such as economic growth or decline, Iranian adherence or revocation of nuclear agreements, rain or shine.

This is because the probability of a past event occurring is a unity. The probability of the Spanish Inquisition is 1. We know this as historical fact. The probability of a leaning tower leaning is 1. We open our eyes and see the angle that tower makes with the earth. And no one is going to bet on a coin toss that has already occurred.

Now, we can bet on the result of something that has happened under the guise that we just don't have all the information. But the truth is, either the spaceship made it to Pluto or did not. Betting on it won't affect the outcome. So it is with the example provided by the article. The application of probability to a past event, is, at best, gambling on a scientific process.

Climate change fallacies range across the spectrum. The particular argument reference in the article's title I would classify as Argument From Ignorance or Non-Testable Hypothesis or Non Sequitur.

How would you classify this fallacy?

In summary, assigning a probability to a past event is a new means of disinformation. It relies on the concept of probability while destroying it's foundation. It is a stolen concept.


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  • Posted by mia767ca 8 years, 7 months ago
    a good read on this subject is "Against the Gods" by Peter Bernstein...how probability came to be...
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  • Posted by $ CBJ 8 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The occurrence of the flood at this particular time made it more likely that left-wing opportunists would blame it on climate change.

    Either that, or it was all Bush's fault. :-)
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 8 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Problem Reaction Solution. First a problem is created and designed to elicit a certain reaction out of the public. Then the people demand something be done about the problem and willingly accept the pre-planned New World Order solution; a solution that always involves actions or legislation that never would have passed under normal circumstances.

    And to do that, they elicit new connotations to words and concepts, usually the opposite of what we use in the original definition...after a while, it's difficult to discern exactly What they mean...
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  • Posted by $ blarman 8 years, 7 months ago
    Great identification and analysis. Although I'm not quite convinced this is post hoc fallacy. It is simply an unsupported hypothesis: Did "climate change" make the floods more likely? That is the question being posed, although rather inarticulately. The problem is that they suppose the false reality of man-made climate change in the first place, which is a false premise but not necessarily a fallacy. I'd just call it gross ignorance! ;)
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  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 8 years, 7 months ago
    I think "non-testable hypothesis; however, this article hints at exactly what is obscured by the media and greenies about climate change:
    The basis of climate change is water vapor!

    ALL present climate models use significant feedback mechanisms for water vapor. Why, because CO2 itself is wholly inadequate to cause any global warming. The only way this works is with additional water vapor. That is the culprit. Their obfuscated argument is really that CO2 causes additional water vapor, which causes climate change. This doesn't grab people's attention, and it sounds less certain, so they hide this fact. I cannot believe how hard it was to figure this out as a lay person, even a technically oriented lay person. I still can't find the equilibrium equation I came across from a University of AZ class on the subject. There is a well-establish equation for the equilibrium temperature of a planet. It is first-order, but simple and pretty close. CO2 is NOT the first order culprit.
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  • Posted by 8 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Yes, there is a host of stolen concepts out there. Stolen concepts appear to be "necessary" in order to make contradictory claims, but I have yet to understand what a Hegelian dialectic is. The best description I can muster is that it is this: observing a range in the degree of an attribute and then calling the extremes of that range "opposites".
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 8 years, 7 months ago
    Liberal progressives are crafty little buggers...they are the one's that confound our language, it's definitions and forever changing the connotations; attempting complex hegelian dialectic themes, so lame, that, if one just opens an eye, can see right through.
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  • Posted by freedomforall 8 years, 7 months ago
    I agree, the wording of the article is somewhat inaccurate in itself, rbr.
    Propagandist looters have to find a dark cloud in every silver lining. They have admitted that warmer temps result in fewer hurricanes with less damages onshore. Lots of money saved via the lower damages that they neglect to trumpet.
    http://dailycaller.com/2015/10/23/the...
    So there may be a tradeoff in occasional heavy rains if this study doesn't prove to be as flawed as all the global warming rubbish before it..
    No link has been proven between man's actions and climate changes. Until that is proven, this is just one more irrelevent hypothesis.
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