A skeptic is someone who questions what is posted on WUWT and other "skeptic" blogs. Twenty years ago a skeptic would have questioned AGW, but would have moved on when he/she sees the evidence.
Regarding the question of who is using ad homs, your own question is an excellent example
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index...
Rather than looking at the evidence, you would rather look at the political affiliation of those who accept AGW than the evidence. Why is political affiliation relevant. A scientist does not have to be nice. If we found out that Al Capone and Adolf Hitler believed that Earth is round, should we become flat earthers?
An ad hom uses a person's character or a group's politics as a premise. Saying that we shouldn't believe in AGW because most who do are "leftists" is an ad hom.
When a realist calls someone a "denier" because he/she ignores the evidence for AGW, the word "denier" is a conclusion, not a premise. And the reason to believe, if that is the right word, in AGW, is not because someone is called a "denier," but the evidence.
And, before you ask, "What evidence?" here it is. Global warming is happening
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010...
And we are causing it
http://c1planetsavecom.wpengine.netdna-c...
The ten warmest years in the instrumental record are 2010, 2005, 2009, 2007, 2002, 1998, 2006, 2003, 2011 and 2012.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs...
No, but we need some way to identify people with particular views while avoiding breaking any rules or inflaming others.
It's probably good that we keep to relatively benign terms and avoid anything which is unfairly critical or likely to derail the exchange of views. Gentle derision of those who have strong opinions but haven't actually read anything on the subject they're discussing (or they looked in the wrong places and uncritically accepted bogus sources as trustworthy) seems fair enough to me.
'Cause' is a misleading term; we're trying to educate the masses. 'Heretic' is quite wrong too.
Yes, if it a cause of their bad logic or mis-statements.
They have no facts so they mock people
Try a dictionary. One can be skeptical or in denial of things other than religious dogma. Science, including the science of climate change, is not a "cause," it is a body of knowledge.
No but it makes the mentally retarded feel better.
After all, skeptics and deniers are terms once used to describe people who didn't adhere to specific religious dogmas. If this is the reason why skeptic and denier are used, wouldn't heretic be more accurate?
