This paper is a refutation of the argument “Top Ten Reasons Climate Change is a Hoax” by Elmer Beauregard. This article is ten reasons why he believed global warming is not real. The article was interesting but was not an effective argument. Each paragraph explains why a different point from Beauregard's article has fallacies and is ineffective. It is not an effective article because the evidence used was out of context, out of date, and not thoroughly read.
The article also featured non-sequitur connections and hasty generalizations. Out of the ten points made by Beauregard, three were analyzed. The three points are record snow, 99 percent of scientists believe climate change is a hoax and record ice (Beauregard, 2015). The fallacies found in the point of record snow are non- sequitur connections and generalizations. The second point, 99 percent of scientists believe climate change is a hoax, has the fallacies of being outdated and hasty generalizations. The last point of record ice had the fallacies of out of context evidence and non-sequitur connections.
Elmer Beauregard wrote an article titled "Top Ten Reasons Climate Change is a Hoax" and theorized that global warming is not real. He gave ten reason why he believed climate change is not real with multiple pieces of evidence. Although, Beauregard used evidence to support himself, it was wrongly used and there were generalizations and non-sequitur connections. The argument was interesting but did not have the evidence to be a reliable and effective argument.
One of Beauregard's points was the record snow in the year 2014. His argument said “2014 saw record snowfall in many areas, remember when they said that global warming would cause snow to disappear and children won't know what snow is” (Beauregard, 2015). He used the generalization that if snow was at a record high then there could not be high temperatures. In the same article Beauregard used as evidence, the article stated "the amount of snow does not necessarily correlate with temperature … Temperatures that average 1-2 degrees F above normal over the globe can still support snow in many places. Furthermore, slightly warmer than normal temperatures increase atmospheric moisture content, elevating potential snow amounts where they occur” (Samenow, 2014). The title of the article showed global warming is not affecting the amount of snow, but global warming did affecting the amount of snow if you read the article. The evidence was totally out of context and did not support the claim.
Another point by Beauregard was 99% of scientists do not believe in man-made global warming (Beauregard, 2015). After the evidence used in the argument was researched, there was no sign of it anything that proved that 99 percent of scientists did not believe in global warming. The first link had no context to what scientists believed. It was an article about how the state of Minnesota reduced their carbon footprint in the year of 2008 (Wilkening, 2008). Not only was the article not against the idea of global warming, the article gave ways to help reduce the effects. The second link was a petition that stated “We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals” (Robinson & Robinson, 2005). The petition was signed by 31487 scientists. His argument was that 99 percent of scientists did not believe in global warming but how does 31487 people make up the millions of scientists in the world. He is made a small sample of people make up the entirety of scientists, which was not an accurate representation. Also the petition is dated about 11 years and the information is dated about 18 years which is too long to be able to assume the scientists believe the same thing from the year 1997. The evidence used is falsely generalized and did not support his claim.
NASA posted a webpage called “Scientific consensus: Earth's climate is warming” (2014) that stated “Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities". This web page showed over 25 different organizations that believed that global warming was not a hoax. There was line graph that showed four different organizations that collected data about the temperature and received very similar results that can conclude that global warming is real and 97 percent of scientists from the organizations believed so.
In his argument that global warming was a hoax, Beauregard made a point about record ice in 2014. Beauregard (2015) said “In 2014 there was record sea ice in Antarctica in fact a global warming expedition got stuck in it" and after the article was read, only true fact is the record ice in Antarctica. The first link was an article by NASA about the record ice in the Antarctic Sea. The article stated “A warming climate changes weather patterns, said Walt Meier, a research scientist at Goddard. Sometimes those weather patterns will bring cooler air to some areas. And in the Antarctic, where sea ice circles the continent and covers such a large area, it doesn't take that much additional ice extent to set a new record” (Zell, 2015), which showed that the record ice was caused by the increase in temperature. The second link was about an Antarctic expedition that was stranded by ice. Beauregard said that it was a global warming expedition but nowhere in the article it said what kind of exhibition it was. Also, the expedition article is from the year 2013 while the record ice article is from 2015. The two article have no correlation of being related. The evidence used was out of context and non-sequitur connections that did not support the claim.
Elmer Beauregard does make an interesting point about if global warming was a hoax or not. His article was very easy to understand and right to the point. Even with the points made, his argument fell short because it had unsupportive evidence, generalizations, and non-sequitur connections.
A Refutation of the Arguments of Elmer Beauregard in His Article Top Ten Reasons Climate Change is a Hoax. (2021, Oct 31). Retrieved from http://envrexperts.com/free-essays/essay-about-refutation-arguments-elmer-beauregard-his-article-top-ten-reasons-climate-change-hoax