So who's the Loon now...

Sigh.

The loons are at it again.

This article is once again typical of how journalism fails it readers: presenting beliefs as facts.

It's even in the first sentence: it's all about the beliefs of someone, not the facts.

Who cares if he's the chair of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (which, of course, means that he's got an agenda the size of a storm front (duh)). This is argumentum ad verecundium, a logical fallacy that appeals to authority. That doesn't make him an authority on frequency of hurricanes: he's a zoologist. His speciality is population dynamics and biodiversity of birds and insects.

But that's not what the problem is: the article delivers not a single bit of fact, but rather it's ALL belief and speculation, coupled with opinion.

And there's a fundamental confusion with causality and correlation: because one thing happens at the same time as another, it doesn't mean that the one causes the other.

Then again, it's from the Independent.

John