https://bookofbadarguments.com/AIBOBA-white.pdfHeres a book about the fallacies that people like to use when they debate things over the internet. The book is NOT about global warming (lets shut down that argument before it starts right now)BUT it really seems to apply to the antiscience/antiglobal warming crowd.
My favorite is:
"Al Gore has a heated pool. Al Gore is a hypocrite".
That never made sense to me because, first its an ad homonym attack; attacking the content of the messengers character instead of attacking the message. Its kind of lazy and seems like a last resort argument. Like when Einsteins work was called "Jewish physics" and dismissed because the conveyor of the idea belonged to an "undesirable" religion.
The second part of that argument that doesn't make sense is that for Al gore to be a hypocrite then you have to acknowledge what he's saying as true. If you really think he is a hypocrite you have to admit that his heated pool, which is assumed that its ultimately powered from coal fired electrical plants, that is using more electricity from this source is making more CO2, and more CO2 is causing global warming. When you call him a hypocrite you are agreeing with the fact that global warming from CO2 is real, otherwise hes not a hypocrite because his electricity usage would have no impact on CO2 levels. So this argument shoots itself in the foot.
Once you start to see the tactics people use it becomes very easy to shoot down what they are saying. But 98% of the arguing on the internet comes down to name calling, and just ignoring when someone asks you to prove what you are saying. "Yeah well,YOU ARE stupid". Its fun to watch Bill Oreiley and see how simple his arguments really are. He rarely gets into an actual logical debate and will find some little detail the person screwed up on then just derail the whole argument in that direction. Hes really not that good at arguing, he just controls the conversation well and almost all of his arguments fall into the same pattern.