I think a more appropriate analogy, as highlighted by pegminer's answer, is Russel's Teapot.

They want skeptics to launch a spacecraft and search for the teapot and prove it is not there.

Interesting, but not applicable. The US Navy who has a vested interest in the artic, along with the Russian Navy and the Canadian Navy, the Brits and Norway, Sweden and Denmark. They ALL agree that the Artic ice pack is steadily and significantly decreasing in thickness, extent and in the ratio of 'old ice' to 'new ice'. ALL of insurance companies that deal in ocean cargo insurance also agree as do ALL of the ocean shippers, oil exploration companies and commercial fishing companies that do business above 50 degrees North Latitude.

What do their scientists say? They say that the climate is in historical terms AND geological terms rapidly changing to a warmer world and that change is a result of the burning of fossil fuels over the last 200 years. None of these organizations have any political ax to grind... it's all about our navy's operational requirements, the operational requirements for other navies and possible profits for the commercial users of the oceans above the artic circle.

Conclusion: To disregard the science and the data accumulated by these organization is a strange attitude... an attitude that needs major explaining. Just saying it's a power grab by the 'liberals' is just way too thin to consider seriously.

No. It is silly even to suggest that alarmists use only the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy.

There are, in fact, three techniques in use and the aforementioned is but one. The others are:

? Paint a target at every possible position on the side of the barn and document each one with a peer-reviewed paper. Then, when someone shoots at the barn, the appropriate paper can be cited as confirmation. The credibility of those scientists is consequently raised and their data automatically becomes more "robust".

? Decide beforehand where you think the bullets should hit and paint the target there. You then need a set of excuses as to why the holes appeared elsewhere. For example, hand moved, wind, sights not calibrated correctly, the holes are hiding, natural varability etc.

I hope this helps :)

Which of these sounds more like a Texas sharp-shooter to you?

"Worldwide glacial mass has declined" vs "This particular glacier is growing"?

"Average worldwide global temperatures have risen over the last 30 years in all data sets" vs "Average worldwide global temperatures have fallen over the last 16 years", "Average temperatures in this region have fallen", "Average temperatures have fallen in this data set", et cetera

"Every year in this decade was warmer than the average temperature of the previous decade" vs "This particular year last decade was warmer than this particular year in this decade"

And the list goes on.

You'll see a lot more "Ha ha, where's your global warming now" posts when there's a particularly cold period in the winter than you will see "See, global warming" posts during a particularly hot summer (most realists recognize that an overall trend of warming does not mean that every particular instance of warm weather wouldn't have happened without that trend). In general, since the realists have actual facts to back them up, they're less likely to rely on fallacies and debating tricks, and more likely to rely on, well, the actual facts.

'Alarmists' are aware that the Arctic is only a small fraction of the world, although a major one when talking about GW. Knowledgeable 'alarmists' use the glacial mass of ice all ice caps, glaciers, and so on. Luckily this has already been done.

https://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate...

ftp://arda.eos.ubc.ca/pub/vradic/literat...

ftp://dns.soest.hawaii.edu/coastal/Clima...

http://www.ess.uci.edu/researchgrp/velic...

http://www.ess.uci.edu/researchgrp/velic...

http://rkwok.jpl.nasa.gov/publications/K...

I think it is far more likely that skeptics adhere to the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy as they do such things as only mention Antarctic sea ice or surface temperature evolution since around 1998 and so on. Almost every one of them that posts in here do that.

They also have a tendency to only use temperature data from one dataset that fits their objective, (eg. cooling RSS since 1998 while the rest show a warming trend) or take temperature measurements from moderate El Nino episodes to strong La Nina episodes while ignoring the fact that what they are doing is not measuring the trend but instead measure year-to-year noise over short time scales. (eg. decline since 2002 and so on) and they only take surface or lower tropospheric measurements. You explain to them that there has been a consistent energy imbalance over this time period indicating more energy is being stored in the system yet they ignore this, claim that the system is cooling, and then ,in a round-about way, claim that that energy has miraculously disappeared. And the reason some of this would give for this is that 'God has control over the environment'.

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/

When looking at results of climate models, they declare the models were correct, just because some models were within range of reality, therefore we should believe the ensemble average.

Certainly applies for the hockey stick folks.

http://climateaudit.org/2008/08/08/caspa...

It sounds to me like you're the one ignoring data. It's not specific glaciers that are shrinking--it's a majority of the world's Alpine glaciers. The "particular time of year" when ice levels are examined is the time when it's at its minimum, because that's the most revealing. And global temperature has been going up--the most recent decade is the warmest on record.

The funny thing is that you can't come up with ANY data that refutes it.

EDIT for Ottawa Mike: Only stupid people and liars call AGW unfalsifiable.

Where as denialists use a fallacies like cherry picking, ad homenim attacks and ignoring the facts, sounds like your the pot calling the kettle black and lying in the process

LOL, you are trying put the shoe on the wrong foot! The shoe that you are trying to put on belongs on the foot of all of those have denied the observations and the science that best explains the observations.