I have stared at this Tom Toles cartoon and wondered: What the hell is he saying? Seriously, the problem must be with me. Click on it for yourself and note how far you fall short:
Should I strain myself to interpret Mr. Toles' subtlety? Would it be worth anything if I did?
Honestly, the cartoon strikes me as utterly puerile, the sort of thing one might find in a quarterly journal at a junior high school.
Non causa pro causa fallacies abound...shamelessly.
Peace.
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3 comments:
I think I get it, but you are right: it is puerile.
Global warming advocate points to the burning oil (it's not really burning, of course) and says, 'Now this!' meaning 'More warming! Aarg!'
GW denier(TM) says, 'Now what?' meaning 'I can't see any evidence for GW, so I can't see the fire either.'
Dumb.
Here's a more useful link to the latest on this subject at Jerry Pournelle's site (click on 'More on climate theory'):
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2010/Q2/mail620.html
It is probably not worth the effort to try to get it. I can only assume that the cartoonist accepts the global warming hypothesis that burning fossil fuels will cause global warming and our eventual demise, and that our use of oil for fuel leads to oil spills and controlled burns of said oil spill.
I prefer Peanuts.
This sort of thing is rather typical of the type. Ignore facts, ignore reason, just immediately deploy the implicit or explicit ad hominem attack, i.e. Anthropogenic Climate Change skeptics are idiots. Of course, the cartoonist is too dense to realize his visual representation is completely idiotic.
Cheers.
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