Logic and fallacies used to be introduced in 9 th grade, but based on a review of recent congressional debates, reader's comments, and a New York times column, many folk need a refresher course.
In his Sunday's New York Times column, Paul Krugman, a Nobel Laureate in Economics, captured national attention as he bluntly concluded House members who voted against the Clean Energy bill, "show no sign of being interested in the truth."
Krugman accused these nay-sayers, especially House Republicans, of "treason against the planet."
Krugman's ire was aroused by more than just the "no" votes; he saw crimson at the collaborating fallacies that aided their cause. These fallacies twisted the language of government espoused by Thomas Paine, a language of "simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense," divested of "prejudice and prepossession."
Now, as a badge of the nation's lost innocence, fallacies, (arguments built on errors and flaws), are shouted from the House well and even applauded from the floor. Krugman notes the most dramatic of these fallacies charged the whole issue of climate change is no more than a scientifically perpetrated "hoax."
Krugman views the fallacies as as a potent threat to liberty and national sanity.
In fact, the logical fallacies do inflict irreparable harm to the planet, and are as grave a danger as the physical consequences of climate change. Yet, in his urgency, Krugman only challenges the fallacies emotionally, as "unforgivable," "willful," and a pretense "that there's nothing to worry about," a means to "feed their denial."
Krugman's clarion call is powerful, and hit a deep nerve-his column gathered over 500 comments in just a few hours, and each comment, for and against, received 100 to 1,000 recommends. His column remains atop the Times most e-mailed list.
In a Biblical analogy, Krugman sees the House members as watchmen who saw the sword coming and did not blow the trumpet to warn the people. Krugman labels them responsible for the impending carnage.
But the members reliance on fallacies make their accountability unlikely.
The operational link between the fallacies and the "no" votes, has to do with attitudes, what Frederick Douglass in his 4 th of July speech called a "sad sense of disparity." The House, and many in the nation, have entered an illogical covenant whose disjointed bonds are hard to break. Its writ: cast out reason if you don't "like the political and policy implications" of a bill. Vote no, and as Krugman says, and "grab any argument."
When incoherence is applauded on the house floor and lauded as the discovery of a "hoax," the rules of debate need to be reviewed. Fallacies shift debate away from the facts, or analyzing the evidence. Fallacies trumpet only "prepossessed" conclusions. By definition, they are common
untruths- diametrical to Paine's open, plain arguments.
The common Congressional fallacies beg the question, use red herrings, argue the slippery slope, resort to personal attacks, and build enormous straw men.
In begging the question, our national leaders and officials ignore the reality of data we paid for. They substitute as truth their own assertions: climate change is a hoax.
And of course, "tree huggers" have a hidden agenda that will destroy American enterprise, a wonderful red herring.
And who will be left on the land if we are all in the poor house? Which our free spending, unbridled opponents seek to achieve by burdening our children with a mountain of debt, according to personal attacks against the opposing group.
The best straw man turns the opposition's position into an exaggerated, distorted, ridiculous position. Assuring the public that New York City won't sink in the ocean's rising waves does little to actually address the issue of climate change or its effects, on American communities or the world.
The use of fallacies is more egregious because there are real issues on which to challenge the bill.
The Republican Minnesota governor opposed the federal bill because it didn't do
enough to diminish risks and he believes the costs involved are too high.
If anyone actually checked the bill, they know global warming is only one of the bill's four parts. It is the most controversial because it authorizes the implementation of a cap and trade system for carbon emissions produced by utilities, oil companies, industrial firms that emit more than 25,000 tons of CO2 a year, accounting for "85 % of US global warming emissions. Federal permits will be issued, and may be purchased and traded to allow firms to increase or decrease their carbon footprints based on free market principles.
The eight House Republicans who voted for the bill are already being personally attacked, smeared, and labeled "turncoats," "selling out the American tax payers" for a "junk science bill."
One out-of-office Republican who is considering a run for President touts electric bills will go up 90 percent.
The actual CBO estimate for all of Waxman-Markey's provisions is under $175 per family a year, with poor families realizing a net gain of $40 annually.
In careful terms and without grandstanding, Krugman argues that the abundance of gathered evidence is unambiguous and clear: scorched earth and raising seas from climate change will soon shake the global foundations of human life and economy. His logic is equally as rigorous: why put future generations vulnerable to a known, documented peril? Why risk the threat progressing from yellow to green, orange, and then to red?
Yet, rather than counter arguments, fallacies and myths persist and are repeated.
This comment is a familiar mantra:
As to climate change, we have no certainty on it at all - the science is not settled, and there's plenty of debate - not to mention the fact that even the IPCC asserts that the kind of changes being proposed would have minimal impact on anything. High cost, minimal impact - it's enough to make you wonder what the real goals are. Either way, a collapse of the currency is a far, far bigger problem with much more immediate risks within the US. The most recent IPCC reports directly contradicts this assertion. It states:
model simulations agree that the warming and resulting decline in salinity will significantly reduce deep and intermediate water formation in the Labrador Sea during the next few decades. This will alter the characteristics of the intermediate water masses in the North Atlantic and eventually affect the deep ocean. Other widely discussed examples of abrupt climate changes are the rapid disintegration of the Greenland Ice Sheet, or the sudden collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Model simulations and observations indicate that warming in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere is accelerating . . . The report's executive summary reaffirms that climate change is certain:
All models assessed here, for all the non-mitigation scenarios considered, project increases in global mean surface air temperature (SAT) continuing over the 21st century, driven mainly by increases in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations, with the warming proportional to the associated radiative forcing. . The summary goes on:
It is very likely that heat waves will be more intense, more frequent and longer lasting in a future warmer climate. Cold episodes are projected to decrease significantly in a future warmer climate. The best science on the planet clearly says climate change is no hoax.
And Currency collapse? Sounds like a red herring.
What Krugman observed were arguments riddled by fallacies, short on facts and analysis, long on self absorbed beliefs and prejudice, true only on the same basis of evidence as used by Alice's Red Queen.
Like the votes they backed, these fallacies also add up to treason against liberty. Their easy contempt lowers the bar for political discourse set by Thomas Paine. By relying on fallacies, House members are employing abysmal standards of thinking and behavior. High traditions of reason and logic are overturned that extend to the foundations of Western thought. But stupid can't be fixed, or put on trial.
Wont we remember this bit of dialogue between Alice and the Red Queen:
"One can't believe impossible things," says Alice. " I daresay you haven't had much practice," replies the Red Queen. "When I was your age I always did it for a half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
