Ad hominem attacks against climate scientists—including personal attacks questioning an individual’s character, competence, or motives—remain the most common type of contrarian strategy found in contemporary climate debates. Despite their pervasiveness, climate-related ad hominem argumentation remains understudied by scholars in both the humanities and social sciences. This study adapts Douglas Walton’s critical framework for identifying ad hominem attacks against the climate community and evaluating them for rhetorical errors by analyzing developing critical responses. This article offers guidance for future inoculation interventions, including media literacy campaigns that raise awareness and understanding of ad hominem attacks used by contrarian organizations in misinformation campaigns targeting climate science.

中文翻译：

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对针对气候科学的人身攻击制定批判性回应

针对气候科学家的人身攻击——包括质疑个人性格、能力或动机的人身攻击——仍然是当代气候辩论中最常见的逆向策略类型。尽管与气候相关的人身攻击论证普遍存在，但人文学科和社会科学领域的学者仍未对其进行充分研究。这项研究采用了道格拉斯·沃尔顿（Douglas Walton）的关键框架，用于识别针对气候界的人身攻击，并通过分析关键反应来评估其修辞错误。本文为未来的预防干预措施提供了指导，包括媒体素养活动，以提高对逆向组织在针对气候科学的错误信息活动中使用的人身攻击的认识和理解。