The Pros And Cons Of Climate Change

In the Climate Change debate, there are two sides, both hoping to make real differences in the lives of Americans. Climate change proponents, or people who believe that the continual emission of carbon dioxide poses real risks, hope to change America—make it a leader in renewable energy and reverse the International Panel on Climate Change’s projected outcomes regarding global temperature and sea level rise. On the other side, climate change deniers believe in a free market, not disrupted by regulation on industry for a cause they believe is untrue. Currently, there is a stalemate in the debate; neither side has gained an overwhelming victory over public opinion, effectively silencing action on climate change. Both sides have major incentive to continue pushing their views, however. ‘Winning’ the debate means vastly different economic, political and social futures. In order to “win” their preferred future,

both sides need to gain followers through persuasion. However, in their quest to convince, climate change opponents and proponents alike are guilty of making fallacious claims.
For young adults who have grown up with President Obama’s administration, the debate on climate change has been present for as long as they have been aware of politics. The uncertainty in steps to take or even in the science itself is a fairly new occurrence, though. The PBS documentary series Frontline explored the evolution of the debate in its episode entitled “Climate of Doubt.” Before 2008, there was widespread consensus on climate change. The documentary showed a commercial in which Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi sat together to tell Americans, “We do agree; our country must take action to address climate change.” Climate change skeptics and deniers, who today have a large influence on national politics, hardly existed then. In the documentary, their side admitted that in 2007 and 2008, people told them that they should tone down their argument because climate change had already become fully accepted in public opinion. Seeing as how the subject is currently contentious, this idea was far from true. Even with much less resources, over time the climate change denier argument gained traction fueled largely by Myron Ebell and the Cooler Heads Coalition, along with British scientist Christopher Monckton and the Heartlands Institute. The issue began to split along party lines. Republican candidates who believed in global warming like Representative Bob Inglis from South Carolina found it difficult to get reelected. Other Republicans became quiet or changed their views, including Newt Gingrich, who claimed that he was “stupid” for making a commercial with Nancy Pelosi, and that he was unsure about man-made climate change. Because of the efforts of the opposition to climate change activism, it is now a contested issue (Hockenberry). The pervasion of both sides has nearly ceased active debate. Many people find it difficult to choose which side is right because both sides strongly rely on fallacy, obscuring the truth.
Proponents of climate change often believe that their own side is based on science, while the other misrepresents information and presents fallacies. However, the proponents use many fallacies of their own. Often, climate change scientists appeal to ethos and pathos because most of their evidence is based on numbers (logos), and adding these other rhetorical devises make their arguments seem better rounded. For example, in the documentary climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe works to disprove the idea that the Earth has been cooling for long spans of time in recent history. She first uses a visual tool to demonstrate how anyone can manipulate statistics to show trends of cooling, even when the global temperature had increased overall. However, this argument is unlikely to have any influence on a climate change denier because of a lack of credibility in the speaker. To mitigate this, the proponents appealed to the fallacy of ad hominem. Ad hominem occurs when a person’s character is used as supporting evidence for an argument rather than facts about the argument itself. Generally, this fallacy is used negatively, as when a politician will insult some aspect of his opponent’s life, rather than critique his or her policy ideas. However, there is also positive ad hominem, where a side that supports the speaker will highlight a portion of the speaker’s character to make his or her argument seem more believable (The Ad Hominem Fallacy). The proponents use positive ad hominem with Mrs. Hayhoe. They spend almost half of her time on the documentary showing her in a church service where her husband acts as pastor, and later defending her faith. Spending so much time on these personal aspects of her life implies to the audience that they should believe what she says about global warming because she goes to church. Ad hominem, in this case, appeals to ethos, or ethics. Appealing to ethos uses the credibility of the persuader to support an argument. Adding Mrs. Hayhoe’s belief in God makes her more credible to many people, thus fitting into the ethos appeal.
This fallacy can be quite convincing for a climate change denier who has the idea that proponents of climate change scientists are ‘Godless’ and therefore cannot be believed. She presents her entire argument, and her reliability as a source is solidified by presenting her faith, making her argument more believable with the aforementioned group. However, at the same time many people would not experience benefit from this appeal to ethos. People who do not value the religious nature of Hayhoe would see the time taken to present this side of her life as a waste of time, and this is critical because little time is taken throughout the documentary to objectively refute the opponent’s argument. Therefore, the flawed argument should be avoided. The best way to do so would be to fill this time with objective evidence about climate change so that neither side is manipulated or confused as to the relevance of the information.
Finding public support was the primary challenge for the climate change deniers. To make their side seem more trustworthy, this side tried to show that they had large scientific support by creating a petition. People signing the petition agreed to the statement that ‘there is no convincing evidence that human activity causes global warming.’ In all, 31,487 people signed. Climate change skeptics used this large group of people as evidence that climate change denial is a valid way of thinking. When a group uses widespread agreement to prove their argument’s credibility, however, they are falling into the fallacy of ‘appeal to popularity.’ Many people agreeing that climate change is not caused by humans does not make the argument more or less true; even if only one scientist in the world did not believe in global warming, but he was right, his side would still be true (Appeal to Popularity).
Appeal to popularity is often a successful fallacy because it appeals to logos, or to reason.

It makes sense that if a large group of trustworthy people believe that something is true, that it is true. This is not always the case though. To make this argument more sound, climate change skeptics should move away from relying on a large support of people toward a large support of facts. For example, it would be far more credible to say that ‘37,487 scientists found through different experiments that the Earth’s temperature has been stable for 200 years.’ Using appeal to popularity got the climate change skeptics in trouble as well. In order to feed the appeal to popularity and include more names on the list, they allowed anyone with a Bachelor of Science degree or higher in any subject to sign the petition. Many questioned whether some of the signatories had sufficient knowledge in order to have an objective opinion of the subject. Therefore, many saw through this appeal to popularity and saw the absence of fact. In effect, they ruined their own

believability.
Climate change arguments are often fought with fallacies because climate change has high stakes, and both sides are desperate to win. Fallacies are an easy way to gain support, because manipulation of the audience’s logic is often easier than finding empirical information. If proponents of climate change win the argument, the fossil fuel industry, the automobile industry and power plants would all be faced with the pressure to change their business models, and this would affect every consumer in the United States. On the other side, not changing habits could lead to future problems with sea level rise, elevated carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and rising global temperatures, again affecting every person in the United States (and the world). In either case, the stakes are enormous—they both lead to drastically different futures coupled with dramatic current changes.
However, perhaps the high stakes mean that it is even more necessary to allow facts to dominate, and keep fallacies out of argument. It starts with the awareness of the people; those learning about the climate change debate need to separate true arguments from fallacies in order to come to an objective truth about the situation. Because the world’s future depends on understanding these arguments, the sources too need to provide a wide range of truthful, unbiased information that can lead to well-informed policy decisions. Then, one side does not have to win—everybody will win.