How to Not Lose an Argument

The first rule of persuading a negatively disposed audience - rationally or otherwise - is not to say the things they expect you to say. The expected just gets filtered out, or treated as confirmation of pre-existing beliefs regardless of its content.

You've overlooked another way to "win" an argument: To persuade otherwise uninvolved third parties.

Typically, two people arguing are already thoroughly fortified in their opinions. Few people find argument for its own sake enjoyable and thus are unlikely to be lured into a debate they have no emotional stake in; as well, upon rising to the occasion to defend their side, their resistance to acknowledging their opponent's valid arguments will be stronger than ever.

Less-involved bystanders, however, can view the argument with a more impartial eye, and are much more likely to be persuaded. Of course, this is typically the justification made for the style of debating you argue against in this post--especially on the internet, where bystanders are plentiful and social dynamics are strongly subject to John Gabriel's G.I.F. Theory--but it's not at all clear that such an approach is actually effective for this purpose, any more than it is for persuading the opposing party.

As an aside, I can think of at least two other reasons to engage in debate; but neither derives value from actually winning the argument, and thus are irrelevant in this context.

The science of winning arguments is called Rhetoric, and it is one of the Dark Arts. Its study is forbidden to rationalists, and its tomes and treatises are kept under lock and key in a particularly dark corner of the Miskatonic University library. More than this it is not lawful to speak.

Huh? This can't be the consensus view here. Is it?

Because my opinion has developed over the years to conclude the exact opposite. Rhetoric has always been "the study of how to use language well." What has happened? Wikipedia defines it as "the art and study of the use of language with persuasive effect". Ah, that happened to it. Anyone interested I invite to compare the definitions provided by various dictionaries. Some dictionaries will offer both kinds of definitions, because lexicographers aren't supposed to decide which definition is best.

But I implore others, especially those with a rational bent, to not give up the decent meaning of the term rhetoric. It isn't just "flowery language" that some allege can only be used to obscure thought. It's a whole study, what was once a whole discipline(1). It's the art of how to use language well.

I used to think otherwise, until I've been in too many rather strange discussions with people online who are, otherwise, intelligent people. What happens in many cases is that people misunderstand each other, but this misunderstanding isn't due to the semantics of the language used. In many cases, for instance, my meaning is exactly contrary to what others apprehend; yet, the words are all there, how did they misunderstand?

What I didn't understand but realize now is that we need to take some responsibility not just for the semantics of language, but for the pragmatics. That is, some thought and skill needs to go into not just the meaning of what we say, but the effect we have on others by saying it. Even between rationalists.

One of the most common things I've seen, not just in my own discussions, but in observing the discussions here and elsewhere on the web, is misleading emphasis. For instance, obviously, it should be the very point you're making that you should be emphasizing in your language. But if this emphasis is done poorly, readers may not realize that you're making a point at all, and might ask "get to the point". In other cases, the wrong point is being emphasized, and the writer or speaker is dumbfounded when he realized that his point was missed altogether.

I'm not someone who has studied much rhetoric. I'm just realizing it's something I should have already been studying, and now I'm engaging with it. I don't think studying rhetoric will cause you to become a better writer or speaker; most of us become better writers by reading good writers. But I think it is useful, for a rationalist community such as this one, to have a set of terms for various rhetorical tropes. This could begin the process of rationalists engaging each other in rhetorical critique, as well as logical and grammatical critique(2), which I think would be a net benefit.

(1) Case in point: This sentence is what rhetoricians call mesodiplosis.

(2) My philosophical dictionary alludes to a notable contradistinction between grammar and rhetoric: grammar is about using language correctly, rhetoric is about using language well.

This post goes hand in hand with Crisis of Faith. Eliezer's post is all about creating an internal crisis and your post is all about applying that to a real world debate. Like peanut-butter and jelly.

If you want to correct and not just refute then you cannot bring to the table evidence that can only be seen as evidence from your perspective. Ie. you cannot directly use evolution as evidence when the opposing party has no working knowledge of evolution. Likewise, a christian cannot convince an atheist of the existence of God by talking about the wonders of His creation. If you picture you and your opponent's belief systems as vin-diagrams then the discussion must start where they overlap, no matter how small that sliver of common knowledge might be. Hopefully, if you and your opponent employ crisis-of-faith properly, those two circles will slowly converge.

Yvain, I enjoy your posts, and generally find them useful, informative, and well written.

I also recognize that this view is controversial in some circles, but one thing that would make me enjoy them rather more is if you managed to ferret out the implicit assumption that crops up every now and then that your rationalist protagonists are necessarily male. (Or at least predominantly so, I haven't been back to do an exhaustive stock-take of your gender specific pronoun usage, but I do recall being struck by this at least once before, so I figured it was worth a comment this time.)

Just to clarify, I don't mean Theo here. If you want to use a specifically male example, that's fine. But phrases like "the most important reason to argue with someone is to change his mind" and "[e]ither a person has enough of the rationalist virtues to overcome it, or he doesn't" strike me as problematic.

I'm not for a moment suggesting that you're being consciously sexist here. In fitting with the theme of this post, I spent a fair while rejecting others' calls for gender neutral language under the mistaken (largely emotional) impression that agreeing with them would have be an admission of some deep moral flaw in me, rather than merely a small and relatively painless step towards inclusiveness - and ultimately better communication.

Most of the comments in this discussion focused on topics that are emotionally significant for your "opponent." But here's something that happened to me twice.

I was trying to explain to two intelligent people (separately) that mathematical induction should start with the second step, not the first. In my particular case, a homework assignment had us do induction on the rows of a lower triangular matrix as it was being multiplied by various vectors; the first row only had multiplication, the second row both multiplication and addition. I figured it was safer to start with a more representative row.

When a classmate disagreed with me, I found this example on Wikipedia. His counter-arguement was that this wasn't the case of induction failing at n=2. He argued that the hypothesis was worded incorrectly, akin to the proof that a cat has nine tails. I voiced my agreement with him, that “one horse of one color” is only semantically similar to “two horses of one color,” but are in fact as different as “No cat (1)” and “no cat (2).” I tried to get him to come to this conclusion on his own. Midway through, he caught me and said that I was misinterpreting what he was saying.

The second person is not a mathematician, but he understands the principles of mathematical induction (as I'd made sure before telling him about horses). And this led to one of the most frustrating arguments I'd ever had in my life. Here's the our approximate abridged dialogue (sans the colorful language):

Me: One horse is of one color. Suppose every n horses are of one color. Add the n+1st horse, and take n out of those horses. They’re all of one color by assumption. Remove 1 horse and take the one that’s been left out. You again have n horses, so they must be of one color. Therefore, all horses are of one color.

Him: This proof can't be right because its result is wrong.

Me: But then, suppose we do the same proof, but starting with on n=2 horses. This proof would be correct.

Him: No, it won’t be, because the result is still wrong. Horses have different colors.

Me: Fine, then. Suppose this is happening in a different world. For all you know, all horses there can be of one color.

Him: There’re no horses in a different world. This is pointless. (by this time, he was starting to get angry).

Me: Okay! It’s on someone’s ranch! In this world! If you go look at this person’s horses, every two you can possibly pick are of the same color. Therefore, all of his horses are of the same color.

Him: I don’t know anyone whose horses are of the same color. So they’re not all of one color, and your proof is wrong.

Me: It’s a hypothetical person. Do you agree, for this hypothetical person—

Him: No, I don’t agree because this is a hypothetical person, etc, etc. What kind of stupid problems do you do in math, anyway?

Me: (having difficulties inserting words).

Him: Since the result is wrong, the proof is wrong. Period. Stop wasting my time with this pointless stuff. This is stupid and pointless, etc, etc. Whoever teaches you this stuff should be fired.

Me: (still having difficulties inserting words) … Wikipe—…

Him: And Wikipedia is wrong all the time, and it’s created by regular idiots who have too much time on their hands and don’t actually know jack, etc, etc. Besides, one horse can have more than one color. Therefore, all math is stupid. QED.

THE END.

To the best of my knowledge, neither of these two people were emotionally involved with mathematical induction. Both of them were positively disposed at the beginning of the argument. Both of them are intelligent and curious. What on Earth went wrong here?

^One of the reasons why I shouldn’t start arguments about theism, if I can’t even convince people of this mathematical technicality.

I am curious about the large emphasis that rationalists place on the religious belief. Religion is an old institution, ingrained in culture and valuable for aesthetic and social reasons. To convince a believer to leave his religion, you need not only convince him, but convince him so thoroughly as to drive him to take a substantial drop in personal utility to come to your side (to be more exact, he must weigh the utility gained from believing the truth to outweigh the material, social, and psychic benefits that he gets from religion).

For rationalists' attention, there are myriad more important and relevant issues where human irrationality has an effect on the world. In addition, these issues are normally easier to change people's beliefs about.

People have been believing in God for 500,000 years. People have been believing unsupported things about Global Warming for 30. I would rather teach people how to be skeptical and cautious about modern policy debates than have Yet Another God Conversation.

I was scarred by religion growing up. I understand the impulse to despise it and oppose it. But there came a time in my life when I realized that it was going to be around for as long as humanity, though its fortunes may wax and wane. It's time to move on.

American Rhetoric is an incredible site and there are some real gems that aspire to rational persuasion with some flair.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/top100speechesall.html

Malcolm X's "Ballot or the Bullet" navigates the fact that he is black, widely regarded as dangerous and Muslim all at once while urging people to put these things aside and think about his plans and their outcomes. He does a first rate job of tailoring his rhetoric to increase your emotional desire to think and not react.

Milton Friedman is another person to watch live. He gets a bad rap from people who don't watch him, but if you have ever heard him speak, he excels at softly thinking through positions with the listener while still taking bold positions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfdRpyfEmBE&feature=player_embedded

They said it best in Howard Stern Private Parts:

"I want to hear what he'll say next."

Gladwell is probably the best for presenting fact and figures in speeches. You might not like his numbers or rigor, but his presentatoon methods are top notch, often focused on challenging his listeners beliefs with academic research:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6204900041349106153&ei=YRTDSerTM4qIqwLbn9yuCw&q=Gladwell&hl=en

Sometimes the harsh approach has surprisingly good results. Example.

But Christopher Hitchens always struck me as too black-and-white and just plain irritating

Tangential, I know, but this surprises me. Hitchens, with his literary background, strikes me as a very nuanced thinker, attuned to the various shades of gray. (For example, he's by no means unmoved by religion's contributions to art and culture.) Maybe you're thinking of his talent for devastating rhetorical flourish, as in his infamous comments on Jerry Falwell?

This post was actually pretty enlightening. I've had the typical religious debate with a theist before, and I use to go ahead with the 'kill them with arguments' method, and I did notice that it left people more convinced of their beliefs than they were before, even if I 'won' the argument.

In Rhetoric, they call this technique "Concession".

My goal going into arguments is not to crush them or convince them that I am right. I try to keep a more open mind and understand their arguments. If you start out with a goal of crushing them you won't be in a state of mind to admit if their arguments are stronger.

My sense is that the most rational argument is the one that gets you closest to your true goal. The theme of my most persuasive arguments is usually something like, "Once we sort things out I bet we'll see that we're really in substantial agreement." Dale Carnagiesque or not, to me rhetoric doesn't have to be a "dark art," full of manipulation and cant. Instead, I try to give respect and keep in mind what I really need to take away from the transaction. I also conceptualize what my erstwhile opponent needs and why. This way, minds may yet meet and all parties have a line of social retreat.

But the most important reason to argue with someone is to change his mind.

It feels so quaint to see the generic "he" in an Yvain post. (I think he later used novelty gender-neutral pronouns for a while and now uses the singular "they".)

The inventors of the original form of rationalist virtue AND rhetoric sure didn't think that the latter was a dark art. Rationalists should WIN!

I didn't end up deconverting him on the spot, but think he left with a much better appreciation of my position.

Indeed. I've had similar thoughts to you, and take care to leave a social line of retreat. In the case of religious people, it doesn't work. In other cases, it works great, though I can't think of any off the top of my head. I just have a general recipie in my head "to convince someone, make it so that they'll look and feel good if they agree with you"

Definitely a great point offered up here and a well-thought out technique that I'd like to try in subsequent debates. Though I think it would be nice to see an example of how leaving a line of retreat would play out. For the example given:

"Let's say you approach a theist (let's call him Theo) and say "How can you, a grown man, still believe in something stupid like talking snakes and magic sky kings? Don't you know you people are responsible for the Crusades and the Thirty Years' War and the Spanish Inquisition? You should be ashamed of yourself!"

This suggests the following dichotomy in Theo's mind: EITHER God exists, OR I am an idiot who believes in stupid childish  things and am in some way partly responsible for millions of deaths and I should have lower status and this arrogant person who's just accosted me and whom I already hate should have higher status at my expense."

What's the best strategy to employ so that Theo is able to retreat? In other debates, what's the best way to come up with such strategies?

Cool Article, a nice and useful reminder.

Possibly just a quick question.... I remember some years back there being some sort of post on "Why does it seem like all the rationalists here are male?" and.... all the hypothetical people in your post are guys. In particular "Either a person has enough of the rationalist virtues to overcome it, or he doesn't."

Would it be useful to use more gender neutral pronouns? Especially when trying to give examples of persons who expresses rationalist vitures, assuming them to be Male seems.... like it might inadvertently act to exclude people.

I thought it to be a nice illustration: Dawkins vs. Tyson This is a 2-minute-excerpt of "Beyond Belief", where Tyson accuses Dawkins of "the first type of winning an argument". (But his answer is no more than "You're right. But some people are worse".)

But there's another line of retreat to worry about, one I experienced firsthand in a very strange way. I had a dream once where God came down to Earth; I can't remember exactly why. In the borderlands between waking and sleep, I remember thinking: I feel like a total moron. Here I am, someone who goes to atheist groups and posts on atheist blogs and has told all his friends they should be atheists and so on, and now it turns out God exists. All of my religious friends whom I won all those arguments against are going to be secretly looking at me, trying as hard as they can to be nice and understanding, but secretly laughing about how I got my comeuppance. I can never show my face in public again. Wouldn't you feel the same?

I think everyone has trouble dealing with situations like this, but I find that if you want to salvage status, it helps to make a display of your impressive ability to gracefully change your mind.

Bad, bad idea. There's no way to avoid losing an argument, because most of the time arguments are social wrestling contests / displays of influence and status.

The only thing you can do is to always make sure you're supporting the right side. That doesn't guarantee that you don't lose, if losing is defined as not coming out as the social victor and failing to convince your opponent or your listeners.

You can't control the responses of others. You can force them to be rational. All you can do is be correct.

As a rationalist, that's all you should really care about anyway. But precious few of us are rationalists.

TOMIN And you think I'm crazy for believing in the Ori? VALA Not crazy, Tomin. Just...wrong...

TOMIN There are still so many things about it that mean a great deal to me. VALA I don't doubt that there's morality and wisdom in it. That's what made it such a powerful lure for so many people. I think in principle, the idea of bettering ourselves...is what it's all really about

Well watching people argue, ways to "win an argument" - to give everyone the impression that your points are better - include

a) not listening to the other person b) intimidating them by claiming or implying they are stupid for not agreeing c) making better points and counterarguments

c) usually gets lost in the messy nature of arguments. But you can make the better points, and because of the limits of human knowledge, they still tend to be 'the best guess we have is that X is true', so could still be wrong

In debating technique, I spotted a while ago that it was clever to sidestep the confrontational style of argument sometimes, and turn the conversation to things you can both - apparently harmlessly - agree on. That way when you deliver your logic - even if it, in reality, contradicts what your opponent is saying, their stubbornness hasn't been tweaked in the same way. If they disagree they may well do it more sensibly

Doesn't always work that way. Some people - even if they are very capable of dispassionate analysis - are politically passionate by nature, and prefer to have a cause, and a whopping great shouting-match :)

Libertarians, you have a particular problem with this.

You killed our minds. I'm dead now.

evolutionary psychology tells us humans are notoriously bad liars

Does it? I genuinely don't know, since I haven't really studied the subject yet, but it strikes me that if lying didn't work, we wouldn't have developed this whole arms race of deception and social games. You might as well say that the Dark Arts in general don't really work, that humans are notoriously bad at them. Yet my own impression is that if you find something to say that's nice or what the other person wants to hear, regardless of whether you mean it, a lot of people will lap it up if you aren't too crude about it. As has been said elsewhere on lesswrong, it takes effort to detect falsehood, whereas acceptance is natural.

If you believe morality is impossible without God, you have a strong disincentive to become an atheist

That idea is distinct from whether or not God exists. In arguments about evolution I have made the point that it is compatible with both the existence and non-existence of God. I did not say that to "leave a line of retreat" for the Christian anti-Darwinist I was talking to, but because I believed he held an incorrect notion of what Darwinian evolution is. The notion of leaving a line of retreat for others seems less rationalist, for it implies valuing certain beliefs themselves rather than the truth per se. The reason to leave a line of retreat for yourself is because it is always possible you are wrong about something and so it is wise to be prepared.

"the most important reason to argue with someone is to change his mind."

I don't think I ever try to change anyones mind. If I am involved in a discussion I am only trying to clarify my own thoughts. What other people think is up to them. How can I know, what the other person should think?

The psychological resistance I felt to admitting God's existence, even after having seen Him descend to Earth, was immense. And, I realized, it was exactly the amount of resistance that every vocally religious person must experience towards God's non-existence.

I'm amazed. I totally can't understand this kind of thinking (which you believe to be human nature).

Me, I don't believe that God exists. In fact, I hold the belief in God for little less than a mental disease. That is because there is virtually no evidence to support the existence of God, and a lot of evidence that seems to suggest that God doesn't exist. I don't need to read any of Richard Dawkins's books, because everything he says about religion is so self-evident to me that I find it astonishing that there are people in the world to whom it isn't.

However, should I be shown proof that God exists, I would accept it without any resistance whatsoever. I would simply discard the hypothesis "God doesn't exist" because it has been proven wrong, and base my future actions on the discovery "God does exist". And I wouldn't feel silly in front of all the religious people – because they were still fools to believe in God without any proof. That they happened to guess right on this occasion doesn't mean that their method of forming one's opinions (randomly believing in things regardless of evidence) was superior to mine (believing what is supported by evidence). This one time they were right and I was wrong, but in the long run, I will still be right more often than them.

To sum up, the reason why I don't believe in God, is because the information available to me at this moment strongly supports that. Nevertheless, I am not married to the hypothesis that God doesn't exist. Should He really exist, I absolutely want to know about it as soon as possible. My primary interest is to learn, not to uphold any of my current beliefs.

The people like you, however, don't seem to be interested in finding out the truth. Rather it somehow seems to be important to you that the God do not exist. That's what would make you react with resistance when provided with evidence that He exists. In other words, you believe to be a rationalist, but the thought that the truth might be different from what you believe now horrifies you.

Why would that be so?

Isn't calling rhetoric "the dark arts" using the exact tactic you are advocating against?

I like your idea, but I think it is incomplete. First, I don't like the way you demonize rhetoric. Before labeling rhetoric the "dark arts" I think it needs to be proven that it is truly fact and not rhetoric that convinces people of what is rational. Secondly, I do not think convincing someone that the universe can be moral without God is a a proper line of flight.

In regards to my first critique, I think there is a false dichotomy being draw between reason and value. I do not know how this idea will be received on a radically rationalist blog, but as far as I know no one has yet to prove that reasons can escape values. If you are aware of such an essay/ body of work, please let me know about it, though I do not see how you could ever remove rhetoric from communication. For example, the problem I have in your reasoning about the reassurance of a moral universe is one with your rhetoric.

Basic to the science of rhetoric is the idea that audience determines the nature of the argument. Audience can be interpreted as context. The context of the debate determines what is correct and what is false. You see convincing a theist of the morality of a non-theistic universe as leaving them a line of flight. The assumption that you are making, is that what is at stake for the theist is the issue of morality. The issue of existing in a moral vs. amoral universe is a transcendental one. Likewise, God is a transcendental topic. The problem with your reasoning is that just because God is a transcendental topic does not mean that a theists belief in God is for transcendental reasons. For example, a belief in God not only represents "God", it represents a history, a culture, a family. How can you say that a person’s belief in God is the primarily of transcendental concern as opposed to filial concern (meaning believing in God because of a stronger belief in ones father or mother)?

As of now I cannot claim to have a perfect method of knowing the correct value base of a person's belief, but I am certain that there are people who are theists not for transcendental reasons, but for cultural or personal ones. Let's pretend that it is one of those people that your are trying to correct of their fundamentalist flaws.

If you convince a person that the universe is still moral without God is that going to give them a line of flight? No, it will not. They can either: A.) except that God exists or B.) Except that their parents and loved ones were stupid and wasted their lives believing in something stupid (which would imply that they were raised stupidly). How is this any less damaging to the ego than the alternative you proposed? It isn't.

Please do not misinterpret my meaning. I am strongly in favor of rationalism. I just don't find it rational to deny the irrationality of social existence. Rhetoric and solidarity are more fundamental to human existence that rationality. I am all for increasing rationality, but not in order to eliminate values.

I am not suggesting that we should tolerate everything. There are bad ideas out there, religious fundamentalism is one of them. I like your idea of leaving a line of flight. My suggestion would be that the line of flight must take into account a base level of irrationality. For example, rather than getting rid of God, I think we should redefine God. There are plenty of theologians who are working to do just this. Religion serves a purpose. That purpose is not to define the empirical world or provide a totalitarian mantra of action and thought. Nothing should do these things, not even science. What we need is not to eliminate religion, but to rectify what it means. The same is necessary for science and for logic. A scientific fundamentalist and a mathematical fundamentalist are just as dangerous as a religious fundamentalist.

The science of winning arguments is called Rhetoric, and it is one of the Dark Arts. Its study is forbidden to rationalists, and its tomes and treatises are kept under lock and key in a particularly dark corner of the Miskatonic University library. More than this it is not lawful to speak.

I recommend looking at some Aristotle rhetoric and rationalist thinking are in no way divorced from one another. In fact part of being an effective rationalist is to make effective use of rhetoric in your arguments. Without going as far as becoming a sophist.

Now as much as I enjoy Yvain's religion bashing its really out of place and unbecoming of an educated person. Regardless of the my personal beliefs and the fact that I am sure this post will be voted down or deleted your anti-religion arguments are essentially straw-men.

Let's say you approach a theist (let's call him Theo) and say "How can you, a grown man, still believe in something stupid like talking snakes and magic sky kings? Don't you know you people are responsible for the Crusades and the Thirty Years' War and the Spanish Inquisition? You should be ashamed of yourself!"

Let us not forget that many of the great rationalists who's shoulders you stand on, and many scientists who's shoulders you stand on are or were Christians. This argument is fundamentally wrong headed you are claiming for atheists some moral high ground which isn't theirs to claim. Ironically enough you share many of the same values as these Christians who's ideas you spurn.

Then as an aside there is this claim of all the evidence that points to the non-existence of God. The problem is that the statement "God exists" is formally unprovable. There is no mathematical proof that God does not exist. You can argue that the evidence points in that direction but straw-men of the opposing position does not do anyone any favors and does not make your case.

If you wonder why atheists like yourself have trouble convincing religious people its because you start the argument assuming your opponent is an idiot and that understanding their world view is irrelevant. Unfortunately this is not the case the most effective way to deal with religious arguments is to debunk them from the inside out. This requires and necessitates you have a clear and accurate understanding of the opposing position. It also means that you don't assume you opponent is an idiot.

I would love to debate God and angels - if for no other reason that it is essentially a harmless debate. Maybe a little hell and a few deaths by the hand of religious fanatics, but nothing compared with total extinction of humans. Science says this is inevitable unless we deal with global warming - and scientists are frustrated and pissed that the message is not getting delivered.

This is the ultimate debate between the rational and delusional.

Oh...excuse me, you are a rhetorical "skeptic" ?? feel free to check: http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/denier-vs-skeptic/denier-myths-debunked/

The science is done. and most disturbing is why the news of a looming colossal crisis is not heard. Now scientists are getting disturbed by the human reaction... see "Climate change blues - how scientists cope" http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/articleALeqM5hfDbOOosZBSfIIlTutM5m42eWhCQ

The carbon fuel industry-backed rhetorical and PR tactics have keep this issue from proper discussion.... (similar tactics from the tobacco industry "We are not really sure that tobacco causes cancer") We are beyond discussion - and now trapped in rhetorical inaction. The tactics and the complicity of mass media means we are doomed by the denialism. Pity. This used to be a hell of a great civilization.

Yale University forestry school just posted an interview with Elizabeth Kolbert who played a major role in trying to bring the issue of climate change to the attention of the U.S. public. "Her award-winning series on climate change in The New Yorker in 2005 became the basis for her influential book, Field Notes From a Catastrophe, and she has traveled from Greenland to Alaska to the Netherlands reporting on the emerging impacts of global warming. " http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2130

And the best discussion I have seen on the wrestling with the rhetoriticians :

http://climateprogress.org/2008/09/30/why-scientists-arent-more-persuasive-part-1/ http://climateprogress.org/2008/10/13/why-scientists-aren%E2%80%99t-more-persuasive-part-2-why-deniers-out-debate-smart-talkers/ http://climateprogress.org/2009/02/16/abraham-lincoln-figures-of-speech-shakespeare/

                       Richard Pauli