a) As it is common ground that recourse to fallacies is not allowed, and as appeal to absent authority is a fallacy, therefore you will have to prove each proposition by showing evidence and reason for it in this thread. Posting links that you claim prove your point will not do: I am not to be sent on an errand to construct your argument for you.

Showing evidence and reason on all the issue of climate science will require a very voluminous correspondence on many questions of particular facts and methodolgly which are in issue. This process will be very involved and time-consuming.

b) It will all have ultimately served no purpose if, as I predict, you turn out to be completely unable to even begin establishing your case as to the issues of ecology, or of economics. Anthropogenic global warming is necessary, but nowhere near sufficient to the warmists’ argument, which is that it’s likely to be highly detrimental, and requires an urgent high level international policy response.

Therefore I would like to suggest that you start at the other end. Let us strike to the root. Talk of global warming would not be a public issue if no-one’s liberty or property were to be violated on the pretext of political action to remedy it. It will save us a lot of time if you can prove your case in favour of a policy response, because if you can’t, the rest will be redundant.

Dear JKJ,

I think a pessimist and cynic would look at your last post and decide you were declaring the result before the contest had really begun. However I am an eternal optimist.

We do however seem to have gone directly from (in your words) 'a perfect building block ' to 'show me the whole structure or there is no point in continuing'. From my very hazy recollection of the Greeks this was not the form of argument they took nor what I had assumed to be the one you initially flagged for our exchange.

You write;

“Showing evidence and reason on all the issue of climate science will require a very voluminous correspondence on many questions of particular facts and methodolgly(sic) which are in issue. This process will be very involved and time-consuming.”

As I am not a climate scientist nor I wager are you then this may well be seen by some as an attempt to declare the contest won by setting the bar impossibly high. Not I of course because you have indicated a desire to not argue from bad faith, which of course this would undoubtedly be. To require proofs at each and every step, regardless of whether the other party deems them truly contentious or not, would not be efficient, fair, nor in the Aristotelian spirit.

Cont..

cont..

I would have thought the most obvious way forward, without inflicting the onerous burden of describing the history of science from its infancy or to wade through its innumerable proofs, is to behave like gentlemen and continue building until we reach our true point of contention.

For instance if I were to say that through the application of accepted physics I predict the Sun will come up tomorrow, and you decide to reject that prediction, I think I have the right to ask you to narrow down the particular physical law that you are contending will not be valid tomorrow. It could be the conservation of momentum, the theory of gravity, nuclear physics, planetary physics etc.

So when I present you with the following;

1. CO2, where present in a atmosphere at a planetary level, contributes toward the so called 'greenhouse effect' which in turn raises temperatures above what they would be if without the presence of this gas.
2. Atmospheric CO2 contributes to the greenhouse effect on this planet.
3. Atmospheric CO2 levels on Earth are increasing at a sustained rate.
4. Human activity causes increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

I feel I am entitled to pose these for consideration as givens and expect that only in the circumstance of you find any of these contentious would you require proof. For instance if you do not accept that human activity causes increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere then tell me and we can then set about debating that point otherwise let us accept it as a given and move forward.

You must agree that if this was indeed the point of contention then it would be silly to be asked to lay out extensive proofs for the rest.

Or to paraphrase your good self 'It will save us a lot of time if you can lay out your point of contention and see if we can move beyond it, because if we can’t, the rest will be redundant.

"I feel I am entitled to pose these for consideration as givens and expect that only in the circumstance of you find any of these contentious would you require proof."

I have considered them as givens, and find all of them contentious. Each one of them contains numerous assumptions and sub-issues that go not just to the questions of positive science, but also to the methodology and theories to arrive at those propositions.

But there's a much more fundamental point that you keep going past without closing on, and your last post avoids this fundamental point yet again.

For reasons I have given, the major point of contention is that EVEN IF all the climatology were granted, which it's not, it would not be sufficient for the rest of the warmist argument to follow - far from it. You would still be two complete refutations away from even beginning to make a case that the world faces anthropogenic global warming that is significantly detrimental and justifies a policy response.

But we don't even know if you're arguing that yet, because you refuse to state your case!

If you rest the warmist case on the climatology alone, then you must lose the argument, because climatology does not supply value judgments, and policy requires them. The best that could be said of the line of reasoning you are now following is that, even if it were granted, it would end in a simple non sequitur, and so it is common ground that the warmists must lose that argument.

But if you don't rest the warmist case on the climatology alone, then you need to state the case you are asserting and which you want me to answer.

I have told you the real point of contention. Would you please now specifically let us know whether or not the warmist argument you are offering to defend, includes that sustained global warming is
1. anthropogenic
2. detrimental rather than neutral or beneficial; and if so, significant enough to warrant political action
3. amenable to improvement by policy.

Dear JKJ,

There is a sense that having laid the minefield you are reluctant to take a step.

“I have considered them as givens, and find all of them contentious. Each one of them contains numerous assumptions and sub-issues that go not just to the questions of positive science, but also to the methodology and theories to arrive at those propositions.”

Yet when I look at a given such as “Atmospheric CO2 levels on Earth are increasing at a sustained rate.” I see it as something that is thoroughly quantitative and the most basic of scientific data collection. Why don't you?

Perhaps it might help if I change the terminology to better reflect your own. I offer the following 'proposals';

That CO2, where present in a atmosphere at a planetary level, contributes toward the so called 'greenhouse effect' which in turn raises temperatures above what they would be if without the presence of this gas.
That Atmospheric CO2 contributes to the greenhouse effect on this planet.
That Atmospheric CO2 levels on Earth are increasing at a sustained rate.
That Human activity causes increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

So let us apply your afore stated proscriptions which were;

So are the above “capable of being answered yes or no, starting with ‘whether’ or ‘that’ “? Yes they are.

“The party asserting a proposition must state it.” Done.

“It must be stated in the positive, not the negative (“that X is not true”).” Done.

“The other side can then either admit each proposition, deny it, or admit it but say it doesn’t have the effect the other side is contending for, in which case it then becomes a sub-issue which the responder must state.”

So my dear fellow I invite you to either admit, deny, or admit but say it doesn’t have the effect on what I am contending for, the above propositions.

Obfuscation; “(or beclouding) is the hiding of intended meaning in communication, making communication confusing, wilfully ambiguous, and harder to interpret”,

However delicious the word “beclouding” our path surely is now clear.

What a bloviator you are csteele; you posit some elelmentary leading questions, quaint but typical in their quasi-syllogistic form and then preen yourself for being smart.

Let's take the first one:

"That CO2, where present in a atmosphere at a planetary level, contributes toward the so called 'greenhouse effect' which in turn raises temperatures above what they would be if without the presence of this gas."

Define 'greenhouse effect'; consider how a bare increase in the emissivity of the gases in the atmosphere due to the presence of CO2 can cause heating; consider how it can be that atmospheric pressure does not contribute to the temperature profile of the atmosphere; explain how the increase in emissivity of the gases of the atmosphere, at Earth conditions, caused by an increase in CO2, can increase the temperature profile of the atmosphere.

Explain the mechanism by which CO2 causes the energy balance of the Earth to become negative.

Do not dissemble by reasserting I have not answered your 'question' about the title of this article; it has been answered but your didactic pedantry prevents you from accepting that.