Fallacies

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/opinion/27havel.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

Op-Ed Contributor
Our Moral Footprint

By VACLAV HAVEL
Published: September 27, 2007

OVER the past few years the questions have been asked ever more forcefully whether global climate changes occur in natural cycles or not, to what degree we humans contribute to them, what threats stem from them and what can be done to prevent them. Scientific studies demonstrate that any changes in temperature and energy cycles on a planetary scale could mean danger for all people on all continents.

This paragraph doesn’t contain any kind of fallacies. I hope that the other ones do and this one doesn’t because it is an introductive piece but who knows.

It is also obvious from published research that human activity is a cause of change; we just don’t know how big its contribution is. Is it necessary to know that to the last percentage point, though? By waiting for incontrovertible precision, aren’t we simply wasting time when we could be taking measures that are relatively painless compared to those we would have to adopt after further delays?

Rather than fallacy, this paragraph is using blaming as a rhetoric to say that we shouldn’t care much about it. When the author says, “By waiting for incontrovertible precision, aren’t we simply wasting time when we could be taking measures that are relatively painless compared to those we would have to adopt after further delays?” You could say that he intends to make us realize that we are wrong and therefore, you could say that he is using “Argumentum ad Populum” (argument to the people) to prove his point. In this case, it would be a combination of Bandwagon approach, in which he says everybody is doing it but saying that they are all wrong. The fallacy could also be a Snob approach, by making us all believe that smart people, are the ones that think like him and therefore, you could say that that paragraph contains fallacies.


Maybe we should start considering our sojourn on earth as a loan. There can be no doubt that for the past hundred years at least, Europe and the United States have been running up a debt, and now other parts of the world are following their example. Nature is issuing warnings that we must not only stop the debt from growing but start to pay it back. There is little point in asking whether we have borrowed too much or what would happen if we postponed the repayments. Anyone with a mortgage or a bank loan can easily imagine the answer.

In this paragraph, the author blames everyone but Europe and United States in special, according to him, they are responsible for what’s occurring in regards to global warming. I’d say that this paragraph uses Genetic fallacy to attack the people of the U.S. and Europe but there are too many people being attacked by him. I think that with this fallacy he wont win any more votes up on him because it attacks rather than convinces.

The effects of possible climate changes are hard to estimate. Our planet has never been in a state of balance from which it could deviate through human or other influence and then, in time, return to its original state. The climate is not like a pendulum that will return to its original position after a certain period. It has evolved turbulently over billions of years into a gigantic complex of networks, and of networks within networks, where everything is interlinked in diverse ways.

This paragraph doesn’t have any kind of fallacies but the trick I think he used is to try to confuse ordinary readers by using word repetition. If you read this, you wouldn’t understand it unless you were really interested in this subject. He also used metaphors but I think those were to decorate the text.

Its structures will never return to precisely the same state they were in 50 or 5,000 years ago. They will only change into a new state, which, so long as the change is slight, need not mean any threat to life.

I cant find any kind of fallacies in this paragraph. Yet, the author uses rhetoric by logic to prove his point.


Larger changes, however, could have unforeseeable effects within the global ecosystem. In that case, we would have to ask ourselves whether human life would be possible. Because so much uncertainty still reigns, a great deal of humility and circumspection is called for.

The author asks us to re-think about the situation but there arent fallacies in the text.


We can’t endlessly fool ourselves that nothing is wrong and that we can go on cheerfully pursuing our wasteful lifestyles, ignoring the climate threats and postponing a solution. Maybe there will be no major catastrophe in the coming years or decades. Who knows? But that doesn’t relieve us of responsibility toward future generations.

He blames us for fooling ourselves and for avoiding our responsibilities and what I realized is that the author uses inverted fallacies than those stated in the text you gave us in class. He appeals to tradition in saying that we keep making the same mistakes so instead of saying that we should do it because we’ve always done it, he is saying that we should stop from doing it although we’ve been doing it from years. I don’t know it those statements are fallacies but I’m writing them down because I haven’t found fallacies mentioned in the text given in class.

I don’t agree with those whose reaction is to warn against restricting civil freedoms. Were the forecasts of certain climatologists to come true, our freedoms would be tantamount to those of someone hanging from a 20th-story parapet.

In this paragraph, he uses abusive fallacy when he says that people are wrong and compares them with people that hang on to 20th-story parapets. I don’t think that he should attack people just because they think differently to him.

Whenever I reflect on the problems of today’s world, whether they concern the economy, society, culture, security, ecology or civilization in general, I always end up confronting the moral question: what action is responsible or acceptable? The moral order, our conscience and human rights — these are the most important issues at the beginning of the third millennium.

I don’t see any fallacies in this paragraph but I have to say that I like his writing style. I don’t know what how he writes that makes his pieces highly attractive.

We must return again and again to the roots of human existence and consider our prospects in centuries to come. We must analyze everything open-mindedly, soberly, unideologically and unobsessively, and project our knowledge into practical policies. Maybe it is no longer a matter of simply promoting energy-saving technologies, but chiefly of introducing ecologically clean technologies, of diversifying resources and of not relying on just one invention as a panacea.

There aren’t fallacies either in this piece of text but I noticed that he tries to convince us by playing the boss. He supposedly knows what to do and what do we have to do and blames us all for things that he is probably responsible too! Maybe he is right on what he says but I think he is no ones boss to be telling us all what should we do.

I’m sceptical that a problem as complex as climate change can be solved by any single branch of science. Technological measures and regulations are important, but equally important are support for education, ecological training and ethics — a consciousness of the commonality of all living beings and an emphasis on shared responsibility.

The author doesn’t use any fallacies in this paragraph.

Either we will achieve an awareness of our place in the living and life-giving organism of our planet, or we will face the threat that our evolutionary journey may be set back thousands or even millions of years. That is why we must see this issue as a challenge to behave responsibly and not as a harbinger of the end of the world.

He doesn’t present any fallacies but I can clearly see that he uses rhetoric by choice or in future tense.

The end of the world has been anticipated many times and has never come, of course. And it won’t come this time either. We need not fear for our planet. It was here before us and most likely will be here after us. But that doesn’t mean that the human race is not at serious risk. As a result of our endeavours and our irresponsibility our climate might leave no place for us. If we drag our feet, the scope for decision-making — and hence for our individual freedom — could be considerably reduced.

In this last paragraph, he uses fallacy by appealing to emotions when he says that the world isn’t going to end but our lives are in danger. He also blames scientists because of their anticipated “ends of the world” and he concludes that we have to behave in a different, more responsible way if we are planning to survive the occurrences related to global warming.

I think that this author is really talented with his writings. If your plan isn’t to find and evaluate any fallacies used on the text, then you’d be surely convinced by him. He is very persuasive and as I already stated in one of the paragraphs before, he tends to write in a style in which he doesn’t try to convince us but he tries to make us do what he wants us to do by taking a superior position than the readers. I enjoyed this op-ed and I found it interesting to evaluate this kind of writings in a different way.

Vaclav Havel is the former president of the Czech Republic. This article was translated by Gerald Turner from the Czech.