BPSDB Of course most people will recognize this phony argument (logical fallacy) in it’s more popular form “have you stopped beating your wife?”
In this verbal trap, if you answer ‘Yes‘ you are admitting to having beaten your wife before, and if you answer ‘No‘ you are admitting that you still beat her.
The climate change Deniers love to use logical fallacies, and this one is the Loaded Question. It is “loaded” because if you answer it in the way that it is posed, you lose no matter how you answer it. In this example the question is ‘loaded’ with the assumption that you were beating your wife before, and there is no way to answer the question as asked without accepting that premise.
With respect to climate change science the loaded question comes packaged in various forms of “the debate is not over” canard, but really they all boil down to the same ‘Loaded Question’ logical fallacy.
Greenfyre's 