I teach about rhetorical fallacies at a community college, and I feel fairly certain that my students could spot the fallacies in this article about Churchill, Manitoba, which was cited by Drudge (naturally) for the proposition that this whole global warming business is overblown:
Today, the polar bear population may hover healthily around 25,000 (they live in Russia, Alaska, Greenland, Norway and Canada).
Yet, we are repeatedly warned [by environmentalists and climatologists], if the planet continues to overheat at
the present rate, within four decades our biggest carnivore will be
extinct, starved to death as its natural hunting grounds disappear.
"Come up and see them while you still can," is the gist of their depressing refrain.
To some Churchill residents, who base their opinions on personal
experience rather than fancy charts and computer models, this is so
much nonsense put about by scaremongers for their own dubious ends.
Here we see the ad hominem fallacy.
Don't need no fancy pointy-headed scientists telling us about bears; I can see 'em with my own eyes. Silly scientists with their "fancy charts and computer models" are, in this line of argument, untrustworthy and ill-informed. Note that nothing is said directly about the scientific data itself.
[Churchill resident] Dennis Compayre raises bushy grey eyebrows as he listens to the environmentalists predict the polar bear's demise.
"They say the numbers are down from 1,200 to around 900, but I
think I know as much about polar bears as anyone, and I tell you there
are as many bears here now as there were when I was a kid," he says as
the tundra buggy rattles back to town across the rutted snowscape.
Here we have the fallacy of the hasty generalization. Compayre sees
the same number of bears around Churchill and concludes that there must
be the same number of bears elsewhere. But as the article points out, the reason that there are just as many--if not more--polar bears around Churchill these days is because the bears' natural habitat is disappearing and their hunting season--the period of time that the Hudson Bay is frozen over--is getting shorter. Naturally, the bears are turning toward other sources of food, which means the garbage dumps and other man-made food sources in the Churchill area.
"Churchill is full of these scientists going on about vanishing bears and thinner bears.
"They come here preaching doom, but I question whether some of them really have the bears' best interests at heart.
"The bear industry in Churchill is big bucks, and what better
way to keep people coming than to tell them they'd better hurry to see
the disappearing bears."
Again with the ad hominem. The scientists are idiots and the "bear industry" is just trying to make some bucks.
After almost three months of working with those who know the
Arctic best - among them Inuit Indians, who are appalled at the way an
animal they have lived beside for centuries has become a poster species
for "misinformed" Greens - Nigel Marven finds himself in broad
agreement.
"I think climate change is happening, but as far as the polar
bear disappearing is concerned, I have never been more convinced that
this is just scaremongering.
"People are deliberately seeking out skinny bears and filming them to show they are dying out. That's not right.
"Of course, in 30 years, if there's no ice over the North Pole, then the bear will be in trouble.
"But I've seen enough to know that polar bears are not yet on the brink of extinction."
And finally, we have the straw man argument. No one is claiming that as of 2007 the polar bear is "on the brink of extinction." It's clear, though, that the polar bear's habitat is under stress, and that even critics of those scientists who study the bears point out that the melting of the polar ice cap would be disastrous for the bears.