MNN - Mother Nature Network

A logical fallacy is an argument that's made with no logical basis that results in a misconception or presumption. Logical fallacies are often used by people arguing for causes or arguments that don't hold up to fact-based scrutiny and as such, are a favorite weapon of the paid shills and confused deniers of the science of anthropogenic climate change. They make false arguments like "global warming is a hoax because Al Gore uses a lot of energy keeping his home and office warm" (Ad hominem) and "we can keep doing things as we've been doing them or we can cut emissions and all go back to living in dark damp caves" (false dilemma).

 

It's powerful to be able to spot and diffuse different kinds of logical fallacies that you might come across in conversations or in the media, even if it's only in your head. The world of climate change is a complex one that is easy to intellectually muddy with some fast false arguments and the more people who are able to see through the duplicitous haze, the more likely it will be that we'll be able to defeat the monied interests fighting to maintain the climate and emissions status quot.

 

There's a good post over in the Reddit "Explain it like I'm Five subreddit (I wrote about it last year) with easy to understand explanations of some of the most well known logical fallacies and Wikipedia has "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy">a good page detailing everything else. Take a little time and arm yourself against those that would attempt to pull the logical wool over your eyes.

 

 

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