We love it when alarmists open their mouths an debunk themselves.
In “As Climate Change Worsens, Scientists Feel Increasing Pressure to Speak Out“, climate alarmist Ben Santer says, Inside Climate News reports,
… “The bottom line is that the climate system is telling us an internally and physically consistent story,” said Benjamin Santer, an atmospheric scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who delivered the 2011 AGU Stephen Schneider Memorial lecture. “While there will always be sizable scientific uncertainties, there can be no reasonable debate about whether the planet is warming,” or that fossil fuel burning is a prime contributing factor, said Santer, an IPCC report contributor, whose work linking climate change with anthropogenic factors has been attacked by climate change skeptics…
Later Inside Climate News reports,
…”Never engage in science by assertion,” said Santer, sharing advice from the late Stephen Schneider, a Stanford University professor and climate scientist who became famous for his defense of climate science.
Roger that, Ben.
In my experience those who do not grasp the fundamentals of evidential reasoning (Falsifiability, Logic, Comprehensiveness, Honesty, Replicability, and Sufficiency) are prone to use the principles of rhetoric (the Ancient Greek Art of persuading reindeer herders that they need to buy refrigerators) in lieu of logic, which inevitably leads to error and hypocrisy.
The Principles of Rhetoric are practically built around Aristotles Fallacies of Informal Logic. In their haste to discount the arguments against them they resort to ad hominem attacks, double sstandards, and other rhetorical devices: http://www.fallacyfiles.org/index.html
“Science by assertion” is covered in the discussion of ‘ipse dixit’ fallacy, along with this *lovely* quote:.
“It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition.” – Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy
Whenever someone says that there can be no debate, it means he has a weak argument.
I suspect that Dr. Santer sees not the slightest conflict between those two statements. Five ‘ll get you ten that the first statement is, in his mind, not an assertion but rather a mere statement of the facts.
I think it is important to understand that this is indeed how their minds work.
One wonders if he sees a Jackass when he looks in the mirror… and which end?