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Original Question
The question: "What is the greatest contributor of carbon dioxide affecting climate change?"
Can you identify the possible fallacies?
How would the fallacy-free question be posed?
Answers
3Its begging the question, ie, it assumes in advance that carbon dioxide affects climate change. Yes some people still dispute this.
The claim of climate change itself is begging the question as some people think climate change is a hoax.
The proper way to phrase it would be to say " Climate change is real, and carbon dioxide emissions contribute to climate change" etc etc, then ask what is the greatest contributor is.
You should support your claims of climate change being real and the connection with CO2 emissions by citing evidence.
This poses an interesting question: when does a fact become a fact? If I wanted to know if the earth bulges more at the poles, I wouldn't preface the question with "assuming the earth is not flat..." or feel obligated to cite research supporting a spherical earth. Yes, it technically begs the question that the earth is spherical, but in non-fallacious way (i.e., it is not unreasonable to work with accepted facts, even though not everyone accepts certain facts). According to NASA Carbon Dioxide affects climate. ( https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/). This is good enough for me to be accepted as fact.
No fallacy, a vague question. I would think all sources of C02 collectively (minus C02 absorbers) would affect the climate. The question can lead to misinformation.
What is the greatest source of carbon dioxide released into the atmoshere
What are the sources and percentages of man-made (or natural) carbon dioxide released into the atmoshere.
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