Global Warming. Fact or fiction??

[Final-Fan]

Tyrannical said:

Final-Fan said:

Tyrannical said:
^----Technicaly not an appeal to authority falacy as the quotes are from authorities on the subject.

An appeal to authority falacy is when the person in question is not a legitimate authority on the subject.

Nope, it would still be an appeal to authority.  You can say that you trust an expert to be right, but when you say that he IS right BECAUSE he's an expert, you've committed the fallacy.

No, it is not an appeal to authority by definition. Each of the quotes was followed by a reason why that person should be considered an authority.

Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.   

UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.  

Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.  

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html

Also Known as: Fallacious Appeal to Authority, Misuse of Authority, Irrelevant Authority, Questionable Authority, Inappropriate Authority, Ad Verecundiam

Description of Appeal to Authority

An Appeal to Authority is a fallacy with the following form:

1. Person A is (claimed to be) an authority on subject S.
2. Person A makes claim C about subject S.
3. Therefore, C is true.

This fallacy is committed when the person in question is not a legitimate authority on the subject. More formally, if person A is not qualified to make reliable claims in subject S, then the argument will be fallacious.

This sort of reasoning is fallacious when the person in question is not an expert. In such cases the reasoning is flawed because the fact that an unqualified person makes a claim does not provide any justification for the claim. The claim could be true, but the fact that an unqualified person made the claim does not provide any rational reason to accept the claim as true.

Since this sort of reasoning is fallacious only when the person is not a legitimate authority in a particular context, it is necessary to provide some acceptable standards of assessment. The following standards are widely accepted:

...

- There is an adequate degree of agreement among the other experts in the subject in question.

If there is a significant amount of legitimate dispute among the experts within a subject, then it will fallacious to make an Appeal to Authority using the disputing experts. This is because for almost any claim being made and "supported" by one expert there will be a counterclaim that is made and "supported" by another expert. In such cases an Appeal to Authority would tend to be futile. In such cases, the dispute has to be settled by consideration of the actual issues under dispute. Since either side in such a dispute can invoke experts, the dispute cannot be rationally settled by Appeals to Authority.

Uh oh, looks like someone didn't fully read his own citation!