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Flame » in reply to There's that "expert" again.

You're Confused
Marsby — (archived)

An authority arguement is basing ones position on the backing of some authority rather than a rational discussion of facts such as CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Siting someone else's review of someone else's work is a lame attempt at an argument of authority because it has no indpendent reason and it's second hand.

All these "these people disagree" counters to AGW are arguements of authority. Sure they are not the accepted authorities, but that makes them even weaker arguements not better.
You can claim that not all scientists agree on AGW based on this information, but anything beyond that is not a scientific discussion. A layman is certainly entitled to doubt and argue against accepted scientific conclusions, but can't claim to be applying the scientific method by ignoring fundamental facts like CO2 is a greenhouse gas and Mankind has released enough to account for the observed increase in atmospheric CO2. Many great scientific discoveries have been made by people working outside their field of training through the benefit of an unbiased eye, but they have done this by applying reason and looking at data not ignoring them. There is no reason to treat anyone as credible that ignores basic facts.

The issue is not that "this person is not an expert" it's trying to foist their work off as having any weight of authority.

Regards,
Mark

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