If At First You Don't Succeed. . .

[peristaltor]

. . . Lie through your teeth.

Or, more specifically, commit perjury before congress.

From beachofdreams, a bit of a tale from a scientist regarding what happened to him during a debate:

In late 1998, I was asked to debate the well-known greenhouse skeptic Dr. Patrick Michaels of the University of Virginia

Comments

[peristaltor]

I've been trying. Note I qualified the last paragraph with "Many of these skeptics," rather than make a blanket condemnation.

As to the claim that my claims are dubious, I can back that up with citations, people funded by the cited "special interests" who use their scientific credentials to obfuscate the "debate" and thus mislead the public.

Sadly, the incident mentioned in the article is far from isolated.

Oh, and I can only dream of sounding Gomezticational!

[beachofdreams]

To be fair to "the Testator", the ad hominem argument came only after the evidence was presented for why Micheals is wrong on at least this point; and it was at the very leasy very careless of Micheals to present a straw man of Hansen's arguments; dishonest and insidious at most.

[beachofdreams]

Actually, Gore never stated that Antartica would melt in our lifetimes.

[beachofdreams]

In order to be charitable to Gore, he did NOT state that the sea level would rise that amount this century. To interpret him like that would be to commit a straw man argument against him. The indication that he did mean this is more or less illusory. I will vouch for the position that there are many advocates for the truth of the alarmist position that don't really justify their claims well, but Gore, and to a lesser extent the producers of AIT, aren't a part of that group

[beachofdreams]

No, I didn't claim that you were making a generalization.

[beachofdreams]

How is asking you to be careful of accusing someone of making a hasty generalization the same as claiming that you, yourself, are making a generalization? Read my posts more carefully.

[beachofdreams]

I think I have a right to be correctly understood. I didn't realize that making sure your co-interlocutor understands you correctly is an instance of semantic "ass-coverage".

[beachofdreams]

No, I'm serious. You have misread what I have to say, just like you obviously misread what Gore's statement was. If you want to carry on a meaningful debate, you must make sure to get the position of the other correct.