Letters to the Editor

• The Scamming of Sam Sham (pt. 1)

  I took a break from this debate yesterday. I come back and I see you officially jumped off the deep end into repetitive insults at the expense of real debate. Sorry to see your emotions got the best of you. You need to step back and take a harder look at your own methods and responses.

  You commit the frequent error of responding to a point with a non-sequitur. When somebody makes a point, you will respond with a different point that, while perfectly valid on its own, bears no direct relationship to the first point that was made (though it might have a distant relationship). You do this time and time again and then try to pass it off as if it is evidence that the other person's position is wrong or is ignoring your arguments. (I think James Randi would have serious issues with this approach.)

  You also keep trying to divert the debate from global warming to other subjects. I may not have the expansive knowledge of cult medicines and other quackery that you do, and I may not visit all of your links (because you have copied and pasted dozens that have turned out to be utterly irrelevant), but it hardly matters since the subject of the debate is global warming.

  You have ignored every attempt I've made to focus the debate to the subject at hand. Here is the bottom-line of what I am saying: The evidence for global warming is peer-reviewed, tested, re-tested, scrutinized, analyzed, checked for falsifiability, compared to control groups, and refined over and over again. This is in stark contrast to the evidence for all the quack new-age medications you've mentioned, which tend to avoid any sort of rigorous testing and instead exist at the peripheries of small social groups who apparently get some sort of psychological satisfaction from exploring them.

  You also keep confusing the completely separate subjects of (1) whether the scientific concept of human-caused global warming is true or not, and (2) whether the proposed solutions, in Europe and elsewhere, are unnecessary, overkill, or otherwise harmful to Capitalist society. I am primarily concerned with the first subject because it is what Camille Paglia was addressing in the article. The second subject is something I do not see any point in discussing at the same time as the first subject precisely because of people like you who are unable to avoid confusing and separating the two issues. Thanks for whatever links you gave me, but again, they have no bearing whatever on the question of whether the science is true.

  Here is an example of you answering my statement with an unrelated statement and trying to pass it off as if it were a legitimate debate response:

  Me: "It certainly is untrue within the realm of scientific journals, who have been examining global warming (and debating its merit openly) since the 1970s."

  You: "I asked you about the change in the 1995 IPCC report - you ignored it."

  My statement was that there has been open and steady debate in the scientific community about global warming for decades (you had claimed otherwise). Your response, above, involves a tiny detail about a report, which you had mentioned elsewhere, and which I found too irrelevant to the debate to even address. Whatever your point was, I find it highly unlikely that a single example invalidates my contention that scientists have been openly discussing and examining global warming for decades. Let's stick to a single issue at a time, shall we? Your debate tactics are disingenuous and diversional.

  Here's another example of diversion by you:

  Me: "The important difference between global warming and all the garbage you're mentioning is that global warming science is tested and studied by actual scientists."

  You: How, if you're correct about the separation of cults and science, are homeopathy and TT in hospitals?"

  I was talking about global warming and trying to bring the subject around to global warming (because that's what Camille Paglia discusses in the article). My point was that climate science is rigorously tested by scientists using the scientific method and a wide academic process of peer-review and so forth. This separates it from cultish things that do not have rigorous testing. Your response is to refer to a single example where some cultish thing managed to sneak into a realm usually reserved for science. But this hardly means anything about global warming unless you're saying that all of climate science has been infiltrated by new agers, which is obviously not the case. So your entire response doesn't really mean anything.

  Here's where you completely lose it, Sham Sam:

  "You sound like some Ivory Tower-type with no idea where I'm coming from because you're not in the real world with me."

  This is hilariously ironic. It's also a descent to ad hominem attack. I am not sure why you feel the need to label me "Ivory Tower" just because I hold a different position than you do. Do you label all your opponents? Do you believe that you alone possess a monopoly on the One True Reality and all others are deluded? I wonder what a psychologist would have to say about that point of view.

  -- Xrandadu Hutman
  [Read Xrandadu Hutman's other letters]
  Permalink Thursday, April 12, 2007 05:41 PM