Counterarguing Colemans Allegations that Global Warming...

The argument put forward by John Coleman, in his article â€Å"Global Warming Greatest Scam in History!†, is flawed mainly due to numerous logical fallacies. â€Å"Ad Hominem†, â€Å"Guilt by Association†, â€Å"Red Herring†, â€Å"Appeal to Irrelevant Authority†, â€Å"Hasty Generalization†, and â€Å"Genetic Fallacy† are some of the logical fallacies that can be observed to prevail in Coleman’s argument. As a consequence, the soundness, validity, clarity, reasoning and consistency of the whole article are insubstantial. Coleman’s premises fail to support his proposition that global warming is a scam, making the whole argument distorted and faulty. The first defective premise that Coleman uses to support his claim, is that the scientists are â€Å"dastard†, â€Å"manipulative† and†¦show more content†¦He is trying to argue that because the scientists want to become rich and popular, their findings must automatically be untrustworthy. This is fallacious logic in that the scientists’ intentions have no influence on their findings’ weight. This is another case of Coleman’s baseless premise. The second flawed premise in the argument is that PHD students are â€Å"more likely than not, part of that single minded culture.† In this case, Coleman is saying that all PHDs are of the same type, their only aim is money and glory. Coleman uses hasty generalization and genetic fallacy to support it, which are both faulty logics. First of all, hasty generalization can be observed as Coleman reasons that because he got his PHD, all other PHDs must be like him, which follows that since all PHDs he knows are single minded, all PHDs must also be single minded. This generalization in itself is shaky since the sample group of students is far too small to be used as a generalization of the whole population. Furthermore there is not enough evidence to support this generalization; various important variables such as university attended, age and gender are not taken into account. Coleman does not have any evidence to hold this generalized proposition, rendering it void. In an attempt to put more weight to this proposition, Coleman also states