Fallacy literacy training 11/15

In the case of our argument

“I just saw a documentary about Egypt and they say that 4000 years ago there was a drought that lasted 150 years and caused the death of many, many people and animals. As far as we can see, ‘climate change’ is cyclical and has always existed”.

Premise 2 (explicit): “They say that 4000 years ago there was a drought that lasted 150 years.”

Premise 5 (implicit): “Similar events to this drought can indicate broader climate patterns.”

Conclusion: “As far as we can see, ‘climate change’ is cyclical and has always existed.”

Let us observe that the argument takes a single climatic event that occurred 4,000 years ago in a specific location (Egypt) and concludes from this one event that global climate change is cyclical and has always existed. As can be seen, this is a hasty generalisation because it relies on a single instance to make a broad claim about global climate change over thousands of years.