WCWatch on The Daily Kos relays a recording of climate change denier Mark Levin’s idea of an argument against climate change:
On his August 30th broadcast, first he gravely listed scientists from history: “Aristotle, Archimedes, Galileo, Tesla, Faraday, Newton, Pasteur, Einstein and Edison,” while managing to mispronounce “Archimedes” as if his first name were “Archie,” which is pretty funny in itself.
Then Levin popped his serious question: “What do they all have in common?”
If that sounds more like the wind up to a joke (nine scientists walk into a bar, and the bartender says…), well, yeah. Because here’s Levin’s actual answer:
“Not a single one of them ever wrote about man-made climate change.” Levin repeats this several times, as if he’s fathoming a major revelation.
Here’s the recording:
It’s like the most wretched elaborate joke ever. A demonstration of how not to assemble an argument. It’s the worst appeal to authority I think I’ve ever heard.
And yet, it could be extremely useful. Here’s my idea. Someone should hire Gallup to do a survey in which this recording is played for each person polled, and then they’re asked to rate how effective of a counter-argument this is, without considering their own views on the matter.
The higher the rating, the more this country needs to work on teaching thinking skills.
