Comments MisterNiceGuy has made

There are a couple of comments posted above that suggest widespread starvation would occur if CAFO agriculture ended.

I think that suggestion might be a little overwrought.

There are many millions of vegetarians in this world, and their diet would not be affected in the slightest if all meat CAFO’s ceased operation tomorrow.

The millions of vegans among them wouldn’t be affected if the dairy and egg CAFO’s disappeared too.

If the vegetarians and vegans would not notice the loss of CAFO, let alone starve, why would the loss of CAFO cause meat-eaters to starve?

They might be forced to become unwilling vegetarians and learn to fulfil their dietary needs without meat or dairy, and that is a learning challenge that shouldn’t be glossed over, but vegetarians are living proof that the loss of CAFO agriculture needn’t result in anyone’s starvation.

Please note – I’m not looking for a debate about vegetarianism.  I’m just commenting about the claims of imminent starvation.

----------

Hope this helps…

Don't need to be "sure" to be cautious

Some attention above has been directed at the question of whether scientists are "sure" that increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and other GHG's are accelerating the long-term rate of global warming.

That desire for certainty is good, but it's very important that we realize we don't need to be anywhere close to "sure" about a potentially bad outcome to justify caution.

My chances of being killed in a car accident today are only about one in three million.  The odds are very slim.  But the consequences are so serious (being dead) that I'm going to put on my seat belt despite the slim odds, because it's a cheap and easy way to reduce my exposure.

The IPCC seems to think it is likely our GHG emissions will cause trouble for future generations.  The word "likely" implies odds far greater than the one-in-three-million odds that prompt us to put on our seatbelts while driving.

Everyone who understands the logic of wearing their seatbelt thus sees the wisdom of using a "GHG seatbelt" in their daily lives.

Using a "GHG seatbelt" means taking easy steps to regulate the amount of CO2, methane, N2O, and other GHG's we dump into the atmosphere as long as there are uncertainties about the negative effects those emissions might have.

It's very easy for me to use less fossil fuel by walking, cycling, carpooling, driving a more efficient vehicle or not driving at all, using public transit, living close to work, telecommuting, etc.

It's easy for me to buy organic food, and to buy local produce in season.  It's easy for me to eat less meat [zero, actually, but you must make your own choice there].

It's very easy for me to live in a multi-unit building with energy-saving shared walls, and to turn down the heat in my home and wear extra clothing.  If I needed air conditioning it would be easy for me to set it to a higher temperature, but instead I just wear short pants.  I can use a programmable thermostat to reduce my energy use when I'm away from home.  It's easy for me to air-dry my laundry indoors most of the year.

Many of these easy-to-do things save me money on top of being easy.

I'm also fortunate to live in a democracy where I can vote for the additional risk-reduction measures that only governments can administer, such as:

• Changes to urban planning, raising energy-efficiency requirements in building codes, and improving public transit;
  
• Moving toward renewable, low net-GHG power sources for our public utilities;
  
• Making long-term policies aimed at smoothly transitioning to a low GHG society over the next 40 to 50 years.

If, as time goes by, research indicates with absolute certainty that human-caused GHG's are no problem, we can take off our "GHG seatbelt" if we choose (though by then we might be so happy with the reduced air pollution that we won't want to go back).

I don't need to be "sure" that CO2 and other human-caused GHG's are accelerating the rate of global warming in order to justify caution.  As long as it is "likely" that this is happening, that's more than enough risk to justify the steps described here.

Everybody who willingly wears their seatbelt understands this.

-----

Hoping to be nice.

Lifestyle threats

The following question was asked:

<<
...what is the greatest threat to our consumerism lifestyles?
>>

Tragically, the answer appears to be:

<<
...our consumerism lifestyles.
>>

-----

Hoping to be nice.

MisterNiceGuy's hidden agenda

1.  Do no harm.

2.  If you have time left over, try to make things better than they were when you arrived.  While attempting to do this, try not to violate hidden-agenda item 1, noted above.

Hoping to be nice.

Thanks for the recalculation

Thanks for the rapid recalculation, biodiversivist.  I really appreciate it when someone goes to the trouble of doing calcs for the benefit of others.

The comment by atreyger above, that grazed animals often eat things humans can't digest is a nice reminder, considering the last comment I posted.  That's particularly relevant if the grazing is done on land that wouldn't (or shouldn't) support grain farming, though we would want to be careful that the land would (and should) support the grazing.

-----

Hoping to be nice.

Minor unit conversion glitch

Thanks for the comparison calculation, biodiversivist.

I think the [acre to hectare] conversion factor you used was accidentally inverted.  I believe there are roughly 2.47 acres per hectare, not the other way around.

I think your point might still stand, but the gap might thus be smaller than the calculation currently shows.

Hope this helps...

Regarding the current food "crisis", I believe a low-meat diet is actually quite relevant to this "big picture" issue.  I'm under the impression we would have an enormous surplus of food grains if we ate the grains directly instead of feeding them to animals and eating the meat.

-----

Hoping to be nice.

Time spans in trend calculations

There has been a fair amount of attention paid on this thread, and other threads here at Grist, to the time spans being included in temperature trend calculations.

Grist readers who would like to see the effect of different time spans on the shape of the trend lines being calculated can look at the following links:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.C.lrg.gif

The above graph shows the monthly linear trend lines for the monthly average global temperature anomaly for the past ten years, for both the meteorological stations and the land-ocean index.  The unusually high temperature anomalies during the el niño of 1998 and the lower temperature anomalies of the la niña of 1999-2000 are readily visible, as are the lower la niña temperature anomalies of the past winter.

This is to some extent a graph of monthly weather, presented in the form of the anomaly, and obviously the trend lines are a zigzag.  To see the effect on the trend lines when calculating the trend over longer time frames, you can try the next three links:

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/crutem3/diagnostics/global/nh ...

The graph at the top of this page apparently shows a smoothed trend through the annual average global temperature anomaly, using a "21 point binomial filter".  For those who don't have a math background, it should be noted that this isn't like laying a ruler across a 21 year time span.  You would only get that kind of "ruler" effect if you were calculating "linear" trends for 21 year (or other) time spans.

Instead, this is a "moving point average" where the "weighting" of each of the 21 years in the "time span" varies like a bell curve with almost all of the weight assigned to the 5 years before and 5 years after the point being calculated.

If you're curious, the weighting is described here:

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/smoothing.html

There has been some complaint on this thread and other threads here at Grist that this smoothing takes place over too long a time span to reveal brief perturbations in the weather.  The relevance of those perturbations depends on what you're looking for, of course.  To see what a shorter time frame for the trend calculation looks like, Grist readers can compare the 21-point-smoothed graph to the following graph:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif

On this graph, there are two trend lines.  The black dotted line on the graph is the annual linear trend between yearly anomaly points.  This line shows the kind of weather variations seen from year to year, expressed as an anomaly.

The red line is a moving-point average calculated over a 5 year span, which is visibly "lumpier" (i.e. more "responsive") than the 21 point smoothed trend line in the earlier graph.

This red, 5 year average might be the kind of trend calculation that would appeal to readers interested in shorter term trends, such as the trend over the past ten years.  Note, however, that the trend line must always end "two years ago" due to the 5 year averaging method.

Hopefully by looking at these three graphs, showing monthly linear trend, yearly linear trend, 5-year moving-point-average trend, and 21 point smoothed trend, Grist readers can see the effect of the various time spans used in the trend calculations and weigh the significance of the various downswings and upswings in the temperature anomaly over the past 150 years.

-----

Hoping to be nice.

Question for John Cross re: monthly time series'

First, thank you josullivan58 for the link to the New Statesman article.  The graph with the multiple 8-year trend lines is something I was eager to see.  It looks almost like a coarse moving-point average and is very helpful.

Second, I have a question related to the autocorrelation article (see link a few comments above) posted by JCross.

I don't want to add to your workload, John, but I am hoping you might be able to find the time to help me understand something about the monthly time series being used to calculate the trends for the last 5 - 10 years.

In a comment above, you calculated the linear trend based on the annual average temperatures for what I assume were the past seven years, from which I quote:

<<
I use the D-N annual values from the GISS L/O series.  The actual values are:  45, 57, 52, 50, 61, 53, 59.  If you calculate the slope using a linear regression you get a slope of
+0.15 C/decade.  However I stress that the trend is not significant and the R2 value is only 0.35 and that ignore[s] the whole fact that we are dealing with an autocorrelated series.
>>

However, at least two other commenters on this thread insist that we use monthly data instead of  annual averages, and seem to have calculated flat trends using that method.  Disregarding the question of whether the trend for such a short time period is relevant to anything, I must admit I'm curious to know why the monthly time series seems to produce a different trend compared to the yearly time series.

One difference between these two approaches is that the yearly time series is "seasonally balanced" and the monthly time series is not.  What I mean is that the northern hemisphere isn't identical to the southern hemisphere, so the temperature anomaly for a northern summer might be more-or-less consistently different from the temperature anomaly of a southern summer, and likewise for the north vs. south winters.

Trends calculated from annual averages take that into account to some extent, since each data point includes four seasons.  But the monthly time series doesn't seem to do this if it starts in month X of year Y, and ends at approximately month X in year [Y + n].  (i.e. the time series might start with data from the northern spring and end with data from the northern winter.)

My question is whether this is significant for the past decade.  Is this why the short-term trend calculated using the yearly averages differs from the short-term trends for monthly series, which have been posted on this thread with start/end dates in the Jan - Feb - Mar time frame?

I'm wondering whether the short-term trends calculated from the monthly series would be the same if their start and end dates were both in the Oct - Nov time frame instead, such that the data set starts with the data from northern winter, and ends with the data from northern autumn.

If the trend of the monthly time series were being calculated over the span of decades, this might not be very significant, but for the 5 - 10 year time frames being discussed here, how significant do you think this "seasonal imbalance" in the monthly series' might be?

Thanks in advance for your consideration of this question.

-----

Hoping to be nice.

NASA GISS

Also, for the benefit of Grist readers who have read my post above, titled "Temperature trend calculations", here's a little more info about the second link in that post, which linked to a Grist story with a temperature graph.

I haven't confirmed this with the author of that Grist story, but I think the graph on that page was derived from NASA GISS data.

The link below, to a NASA GISS web site, has a very similar graph on it, which as I mentioned previously uses a different method of calculating the trend than Hadley used with their data.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/

There are other graphs of temperature on that web page as well.

This GISS web page is the responsibility of James E. Hansen, which is probably why one of the other commenters on this thread referred to the graph in the aforementioned Grist story as an "IPCC" graph.

Grist readers should be aware that there is more than one "data set" of temperature data in use by climate researchers.  Hadley and NASA GISS are two of them.  The data sets apparently don't precisely agree with each other and each data set has its supporters and detractors.

-----On Global temps may drop this year but, alas, world still warming posted 1 year, 7 months ago 132 Responses

Hadley

For the benefit of Grist readers who have read my post just above, titled "Temperature trend calculations", I would like to confirm that the first link in that post was indeed a Hadley Centre web page.  I have pasted the link again here so you can confirm this for yourselves.

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/n ...

When you visit this web page, look at the header at the top of the page.  You will see that you are at the Met Office Hadley Centre observations datasets web site.

Look at the graph on this page.  This isn't a Grist graph.  It isn't an IPCC graph.  It is Hadley's own graph, with Hadley's trend line calculated from Hadley's data.

Judge for yourselves...

-----
On Global temps may drop this year but, alas, world still warming posted 1 year, 7 months ago 132 Responses

Temperature trend calculations

There are several comments on this thread, and on at least one other Grist thread, that ask Grist readers to visit the Met Office Hadley Centre's observation data website, and to calculate, from the data there, the linear trend line for the global average temperature data from the most recent decade or so.

I would encourage all Grist readers who are curious about this to use the link below, visit the Hadley web site, and look at the graph which Hadley plots from their data set, for the years 1850 - 2007.

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/n ...

The blue line on the graph is the smoothed annual average of the annual average temperatures, within their 95% confidence bars.  As best I can read the graph, this blue "smoothed annual average" line shows a temperature increase of around 0.1 degrees C for the eight years from 1998 - 2005 inclusive, with a slight decrease of perhaps 0.01 degrees C from 2005 - 2007, giving an overall increase of 0.9 degrees C over that specific ten year span.

This trend does not seem to be flat.

We might reasonably wonder how it is that a commenter on this thread can calculate a flat trend from the Hadley data, when Hadley's calculations from the same data show a significant temperature rise.

The answer might be that a linear trend line is not very good at showing trends in data with non-linear variations, such as this temperature data.

That may also explain why Hadley does not use a linear trend line on their graph of their data.

For comparison, another graph of the temperature trend was recently posted on Grist, accessible at the link below:

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/4/4/121748/2663

This graph uses a 5 year mean (the red line on the graph) to try to identify the trend.

-----

I think it is very important to understand that even though non-linear trend calculations are more accurate than linear trend calculations when dealing with non-linear data sets, focusing on small parts of a data set can lead to confusion about overall trends regardless of the calculation method.

The complexity of trend calculations also means that readers who don't have math educations should not rely exclusively on their own calculations, but should seek interpretation from credible sources.

------

Hope this helps...
On Global temps may drop this year but, alas, world still warming posted 1 year, 7 months ago 132 Responses

Dealing with inaccuracies in comments, part 3 of 3

...a continued reply to the original question:

"...how do you think the posters on this thread should deal with what they see are inaccuracies?"

-----

I mentioned in my last two posts that it's important for us to figure out why the "inaccuracies" bother us, and offered two possibilities.  Here's a third:

3.  People spend a great deal of time seeking the acceptance of others, often without consciously realizing they are doing it.  When someone accepts us or our views, we tend to feel "reinforced".  When someone does not accept us or our views, we tend to feel "undermined".  This effect can be particularly pronounced when we are put "on the spot" in a public forum like Grist.

This pursuit of acceptance is often subconscious and can produce counterintuitive behaviors like expending large amounts of effort trying to gain the acceptance of people we don't even like or respect, and who have no intention of accepting us or our views.

If you think you might be subconsciously pursuing acceptance, I recommend the following:

3.1 Ask yourself whether you respect the other commenter.  If you don't respect them, ask yourself how much value you should attach to their acceptance of your view.

3.2. If you discover that their acceptance has no value to you, you will probably lose interest in trying to get them to accept your view.

3.3. Your focus can then return to the Grist readers you are attempting to serve.  Your concern about "inaccuracies" in scientific information can hopefully then be addressed in the manner described in the first post of this three-post series.

-----

Hope that helps...

Hoping to be nice.

Dealing with inaccuracies in comments, part 1

A comment above asked:

"...how do you think the posters on this thread should deal with what they see are inaccuracies?"

-----

When we disagree with someone on a public forum like Grist, we are aware that we have two audiences.  The first audience is the person on the other side of the debate, and the second audience is everybody else reading the thread.

It's important for us to figure out why the "inaccuracies" bother us, because that knowledge is the key to dealing with them.  Here are some possibilities:

1.  We might feel that the "inaccuracies" could lead innocent readers to make bad decisions.  In this context I believe we have a duty to point out the "inaccuracies" and more importantly to provide a little background information so Grist readers can understand the contentious issue.  Generally, the people who post on these threads are quite good at this, which is why I like this web site.

But the question is: What do we do when someone insists on repeating an "inaccuracy" after we have posted to "correct" it?  I would recommend the following:

1.1. Assess the seriousness of the "inaccuracy".  The "corrective" actions should reasonably match the significance, or relative insignificance, of the "error" being "corrected".  Some "inaccuracies" deserve only one "correction".

1.2. If your concern is for Grist readers, post a comment directed at us, with the background information we need to understand the issue.  Don't discuss the other commenter in that post.  Stick to the contentious issue.  Don't overstate anything.  Just try to explain all sides of the issue, including the uncertainties.

1.3. Remember that Grist readers are not a bunch of idiots.  Not everyone has a science education, but I'm guessing most of us have a pretty good BS meter.  Give us the information we need, so we can decide for ourselves.

1.4. If the person posting the "inaccuracy" wants to have the last post, let them.  We can find your comment up above theirs.

1.5 Grist has a "no spam" policy for comments.  If the person posting the "inaccuracy" tries to bury the thread with repeated posts, report them to gristmill@grist.org     (This is fairly severe, so don't abuse this mechanism.)

------

...to be continued in a later post.

Hoping to be nice.

Replies

Two commenters, JC and MM, have recently asked questions and made comments that I think deserve thoughtful answers.

It may take me a while to respond to all of the points raised, so I want to let these two commenters know that I will post when I am able, probably a little bit at a time.

------

Hoping to be nice.

Fear or desire

It is often helpful to reflect upon the idea that human-accelerated climate changes are expected to happen over the span of decades, and the people in positions of influence in today's society will probably be dead before the most significant consequences are felt.

In this context, the term "afraid of an uncertain future" does not seem to capture the situation.

The self-restraint we show today does not come from fear; it comes from a desire to ensure that future generations inherit a healthy planet.

This is why I prefer to use terms like caution, prudence, and risk-aversion when describing my desire to avoid causing long-term damage to this world.

We and the other species on this planet are well adapted to the current climate.  It is always possible that some changes might be an improvement.  But the changes are likely to be irreversible on normal human time scales, and I think future generations will appreciate our efforts to avoid causing unpredictable changes.

The genius of our species, if there is such a thing, will be revealed by our ability to reduce our potentially harmful inputs to the environment while simultaneously increasing our quality of life.

-----

Hoping to be nice.

Positive CO2 feedback and ocean pH decreases

In an earlier comment on this thread, someone pointed out that elevated atmospheric CO2 levels are predicted to warm the oceans and increase oceanic CO2 emissions.  This was appropriately described as a "positive feedback" which would increase warming.

That commenter also noted that oceanic CO2 emissions raise oceanic pH, and asked how it is possible for oceanic pH to continue to drop if oceanic CO2 emissions rise due to warming.

The short answer to this question is that the oceans are currently estimated to be absorbing 7 billion tons more CO2 per year than they are emitting.

If the increase in oceanic CO2 emissions is below this value, oceanic emissions will continue to be less overall than oceanic absorption, and the pH drop associated with the "net absorption" of CO2 would be expected to continue, at a rate appropriate to the reduced "net absorption" value.

Given sufficient warming, it is possible that the oceanic CO2 emission and absorption rates might become equal; however the global average temperature at which that equilibrium occurs may be harmful to both land and aquatic plant and animal species that are adapted to lower temperatures.

------

Hoping to be nice.

Trends and artifacts of year selection

Regarding the similarity in temperatures during 1998 and 2007, I think this subject has been discussed in another article here:

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/4/4/121748/2663

... and the discussion seemed to indicate that the temperature similarity is an artifact of year selection, not a trend.

On that page there is a graph showing the temperatures and temperature trend from 1880 to the present.

The data on the graph illustrates the artifact of year selection.  If, instead of looking at 1998 and 2007, you compare the temperatures of 1999 and 2007, you see a temperature increase of almost 0.27 degrees.  But that temperature difference is no more significant than the lack of difference during 1998 and 2007.  It is the trend that matters, not comparisons between discrete years.

On that graph, the trend from 1998 to 2007 seems to show a temperature rise of perhaps 0.17 degrees or so.  That seems to be reasonably close to the predicted 0.2 degrees per decade mentioned in a comment above.

Although this makes that prediction look pretty good, we will indeed have to wait and see whether the next ten years continue to follow the warming trend of the past ten years.

In many ways, I hope they don't.  I have serious doubts that warming will be a good thing for everyone, and hoping the prediction is correct is like hoping the Titanic actually hits one of the icebergs it was warned about by other ships in the area.

Hoping to be nice.

Gratitude and caution

I am extremely grateful for my existence on this beautiful little planet in this astounding universe.  As long as my existence is pleasant, I would want to continue existing forever.

But if one does not exist, I think the non-existent-one probably is not able to regret it.  And if one exists and injures the world, I'm not sure one's existence is still a good thing.

If the climate has warmed by X degrees since 1820 and our population has exploded, endangering not just the other species but our own, how can we be sure an additional X degrees of accelerated warming is good?  If the answer is "we can't", should we be cautious in the face of the uncertainty?
On Global temps may drop this year but, alas, world still warming posted 1 year, 7 months ago 132 Responses

Staying in comfort zones

There appears to be some evidence that as the climate moves outside the range of its typical thermal median, considerable loss of life occurs.

Thus one of the key questions we might ask is whether we really want to risk accelerating any changes to the climate we, and all the other species, are currently adapted to, even if our accelerations will not significantly affect the achievable maximum (or subsequent minimum).
On Global temps may drop this year but, alas, world still warming posted 1 year, 7 months ago 132 Responses

PEL's for humans and other living things.

Yes, the OSHA PEL [prolonged exposure limit] for CO2 is 5,000 ppm for humans.

Since humans are not the only species on the planet, one wonders what the safe PEL's would be for the other plants and animals.  For example, I've read comments about CO2 induced acidification of oceans which seems to threaten oceanic food chains.  But I don't know what the PEL is that avoids that problem, and the uncertainty surrounding questions like that seems to stimulate many people's risk-aversion mechanism.

Interestingly, while I was reading the MSDS for CO2 I was surprised to see that rapid asphyxiation occurs at only 10% CO2 due to neurological effects, so 100% displacement of air is not needed.  I was not aware of that.

It's always an eye opener for me to suddenly realize that something is ten times more dangerous than I previously thought.

Fortunately I like to maintain a really large safety margin in my daily activities, to protect me from the risks I might have underestimated.

It's a good life.

Hoping to be nice.

Different varieties of uncertainty.

If the association between sun exposure and skin cancer indicates a very solid 2% chance of cancer for a given exposure level, the uncertainty I was thinking about is not whether the 2% number is valid.

The uncertainty I was referring to is whether any discrete individual at that exposure level will be among the 2% that get cancer.

Despite having only a one in 50 chance of a bad outcome at that exposure level, people still take precautions to avoid that exposure because they don't want to perform the experiment with the only body they have to live in.

I am guessing that this risk-aversion is an inherited behavior brought to prominence by natural selection.

Hoping to be nice.

A summary of the comments so far...

It appears there are at least two groups using this thread.  The first group is actively posting comments, and the second group is reading without posting.

Since the comment section has grown to over 245 comments, I thought a brief summary might be helpful, as a service to the second group.

------

The bulk of the comments, particularly the most recent 200, are exchanges between three participants: MM, BW, and JC.  The comments are off topic from the original article, and center on two subject areas:

1.

BW raised concerns about the methods used to measure gases within ice cores and the interpretation of the measurements.

JC disagreed about some of the issues BW raised and agreed with others.  JC agreed that the subject is complex and expressed a desire to defer further discussion while gathering additional information.

2.

MM and BW expressed concern that an IPCC report shows a bias by not including a report on Antarctic ice mass calculations derived from satellite radar altimetry data, and by the weighting given to another report with similarly derived content.

JC disputed the allegation of bias regarding the omitted report, and disputed that the weighting given the included report was inappropriate.

For brevity, I have not listed the peripheral subject areas being discussed.

-----

At this point, MM, BW, and JC have fully expressed their positions on the above two matters, and these participants remain firmly fixed in their original positions.  The discussion has effectively reached an impasse characterized by reaffirmation of previously expressed views.

------

MM has repeatedly expressed a desire to conclude this discussion, which seems appropriate given the impasse.  Unfortunately, many of the recent comments have been posted with sign-offs claiming "victory" in the "debate", and those assertions seem to effectively prevent the other participants from allowing such comments to become the "last post".

------

Barring the unlikely withdrawal of the participants due to fatigue, it appears that this thread might only conclude if the participants stop claiming victory and simply agree to disagree, thus allowing two of the three to accept having the third make the last post.

------

Hopefully this summary allows the non-commenting readers to understand the gist of this somewhat lengthy thread without having to read it in its entirety.

Hoping to be nice.

Who are the donors?

I don't think there currently are any medium to large sized land predators in Antarctica.  Introducing a large predator into an environment such as that would drastically alter the food chain in the area and could put other species at risk.  Nesting penguins would be particularly vulnerable to large, mobile predators, which would probably gather to focus on them when they are nesting because they would be so much easier to catch than seals.

This group's web site says Antarctica has abundant food supplies.  But the dodo was once abundant in its environment too, before large predators showed up.

3,000 bears might cause problems for the seals too, from direct predation and from reductions in the penguin population, on which seals sometimes feed.

I'm not convinced this is a good idea.  I wonder where they got approval to move that many bears.

Having read the promo on their web site, I'd be very interested to know which corporations and private donors are funding this.  It sounds almost like someone is trying to avoid dealing with GHG emissions by moving the high-profile "victims", with little regard for the consequences.  If they can say the bears are "saved", media images showing polar bears may cease to motivate people to reduce emissions.

Hoping to be nice.

Logical Exceptions

Regarding the new example provided of Affirming the Consequent:

<<  If Bill Gates is rich, then he has a lot of money...

Bill Gates has a lot of money.
Therefore Bill Gates is rich.  >>

This is a logical exception within the Affirming the Consequent form, as noted in the description previously posted, which I excerpt here:

-------

Arguments of this form are invalid (except in the rare cases where such an argument also instantiates some other, valid, form).

-------

It appears that the reason why logical exceptions can exist within a logically fallacious form is because the form can be used in at least two contexts:

1. A mathematical context [ a = b , thus b = a ] which is logically correct, and

2. A causal context [ x causes y, thus if y, then x ] which is only logically correct if x is the only possible cause for y, and that depends on the specific case in question, as shown in the illogical relationship found in the previously posted example of Bill Gates and Fort Knox.

Hoping to be nice.