Coby Beck’s Posts

• A roomful of cynics

  A look at the non-experts speaking at Heartland Institute's denialist sideshow 23

  Posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago

  

  When the science behind Gore's CO2 "hockey stick" slaps you down, there's nothing like indulging in old-fashioned denialism.

  What is to be done when the world's leading experts in a field come together in the largest, most extensively peer-reviewed inquiry in the history of science and arrive at a conclusion that is diametrically opposed to your own long-held worldview? Most of us would reevaluate our ideas so they actually mesh with reality. That's called learning.

  But if you are the staunchly "free market," anti-regulation… Read More

• Hansen wants the skeptics thrown in jail--Did James Hansen really want to try the climate skeptics? 6

  Posted 12 months ago

  (Part of the How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic guide)

   

  Objection:

  In his June 23, 2008 testimony before the United States Congress, James Hansen called for the punishment of climate change skeptics for "crimes against humanity." This is a mockery of free speech, the antithesis of scientific investigation, and a clear indication that global warming "science" is just another religious persecution like the Catholic Church's persecution of Galileo.

  Answer:

  The accusation is simply false. James Hansen never called for punishment of climate skeptics. This urban myth is likely a deliberate misreading… Read More

• October 2008, yet another phony record

  Was there another breathless announcement of another phony record, and another quiet retraction? 1

  Posted 1 year ago

  (Part of the How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic guide)

  Objection:

  In October 2008, Al Gore's science adviser, James Hansen announced yet another "hottest" month on record. After all the alarmist banner headlines sank in, yet another "correction" quietly contradicted this, and October was not particularly warm after all. This is yet another example of why the temperature record can not be trusted.

  Answer:

• It was asbestos times, it was the worst of times ...

  Oil refineries are full of asbestos, not just carbon 0

  Posted 1 year ago

  I received this article about the connection between mesothelioma cancer and oil refineries via email along with a request to share it. As we continue to rely on oil, some will face worse consequences than losing their shirts. The original article is posted below:

• 'Global warming comes from within'--Is heat at the Earth's core the real cause of global warming? 10

  Posted 1 year ago

  (Part of the How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic guide)

  Objection: We all live on a thin crust that floats on a huge ball of molten iron, and at its core, the Earth's temperature is over 5000 degrees C! It's pretty far fetched to think a few parts per million of CO2 can have a bigger effect that all that heat!

  Answer:

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Coby Beck’s Recent Comments

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  goose and gander

  Hi HalSF,

  Yes, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and one can disregard claims of expertise from environmental activists in just the same way.  I don't recall ever seeing a group of activists masquerading as a conference of elite climate scientists before.

  A and simple way to evaluate the level of real expertise is using Google scholar to see peer review publishing records and citations of work by other scientists.  When one is truly an expert in a field, others in that field will be frequently referencing their work.

  Check out this page for an example of what that information can show.

  As for who can attend Heartland's event, I believe the speakers were specific invite only, I don't know about the audience.

  "The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest." -- Kilgore Trout

  On A look at the non-experts speaking at Heartland Institute's denialist sideshow posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago 23 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  such deception!

  Sorry for the sneaky title, Zephaniah!  That is the format of the whole "Skeptic guide" and actually has a great side benefit: I get tons of hits from search engines by people searching for things like "global warming is a hoax" and "CO2 is not important" etc.  So I get the folks hoping to confirm their preconceptions, and maybe, just maybe, one or two of them are rattled enough to think for themselves...

  "The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest." -- Kilgore Trout

  On Is the American Physical Society a crack in the climate change consensus? posted 1 year, 2 months ago 3 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  energy in must equal energy out

  jabailo,

  No matter what the the content of the atmosphere, when at equilibrium, the earth will be radiating out as much energy as is coming in.  Right now, during a state of disequilibrium, the radiation leaving the top of the atmosphere should be less, the difference going into warming the surface layers.  Elevated CO2 will cause infrared to stay in the system longer, but ultimately the same amount will escape (aagain, once the sutem has acheived a new equilibrium)
  

  "What if this weren't a hypothetical question?" -- unknown

  On Is the IPCC so wrong their theories contradict a basic laws of physics? posted 1 year, 2 months ago 23 Responses

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  Not incomplete graph

  JeffID:

  2008 is not on the graph because it is not over yeat.  We need all 12 months of data to determine the average for the year.

  "What if this weren't a hypothetical question?" -- unknown

  On In 2008, did temperatures drop as much as they rose over the whole 20th century? posted 1 year, 2 months ago 71 Responses

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  Meat? looks more like well gnawed bones...

  [coby]"It is too soon to say what the long term trend is over the last 11 years, we need ten more years to know what the trend is today in the CRU data."

  [saluki]That's really silly Coby.  I would have expected better from you.  The purpose of smoothing is not to learn what the temperature is after a given time.  It isn't even to discover a trend.  It is simply to get a better idea of what is going on without looking at all of the variation in the detailed data.

  These are such ridiculously argumentative statements!  Now you say we aren't even trying to find a trend, so what are you even on about??  Oh yeah, an 11 year trend... :-

   We have the temperatures for the past 11 years now.  A future smoothing process is not going to change that.  The trend for the past 11 years is defined by a linear regression trend line for those 11 years.  Not by a smoothed curve.

  This is my last comment to you on this issue.  11 years of data does not tell you /anything meaningful.  You are not making any point that is not specifically addressed in the original post.  Hadley need 10 years before, plus your 11 years, pluss 10 years after to make their plot, sorry it is a simple fact.  And why would you want to throw away data we do have, ei 100 years of pre-1998 data and focus on a single 11 year window?  The only reason to do that is to fool yourself or your audience.  

  I am not saying that what effects the global temperature on small timescales is not an iteresting question to ask, but it is not a question about climate, it is a question about weather.

  Your further use of Hadley Centre data to make statements about decadal trends in the 21st century is simply willful ignorance (eg "NASA and Hadley disagree").  Please read the original post again and follw the link to the description of their smoothing process.  We do not know where that trend line will fall until the data are complete.  That is an unassailable fact, ignoring it simply makes everything you write after intellectually worthless.

  Here is a dirty little secret for you Coby, Mann, as well as many of the other proxy climate reconstructions, use a North American tree ring series, a bristelcone series, that was produced by two climate scientists named Graybill and Idso.  When these two gentlemen were collecting that data they did not do it with the intention of producing a long term temperature proxy reconstruction, but rather they did it with the intention of proving CO2 feeding of the trees.  Their proxy consisted of mainly strip bark trees, and they did get the tree feeding that they were looking for.  Unfortunately, due to Lenah Ababneh's doctoral dissertation, we have found out that going strip bark causes the trees to accelerate their growth.  So what Graybill and Idso thought was CO2 feeding was mostly a stripbark effect with a small contribution from CO2 feeding.  Then Mann saw that this series had a nice hockey stick at the end (due to a strip bark effect), so not only did he use it as a temperature proxy, but he made it his most heavily weighted series.  In fact, he weighted it 200 times as much as his least weighted series.

  My god, that study is tens years old now!  Get over it and move on.  I don't believe what you are saying here, btw, but how can it matter now, except to Soap Opera addicts?  There have been dozens of other reconstructions with all kinds of proxies beside tree rings since then, one very comprehensive and recent one that (uses but) does not depend on tree rings at all for its major conclusions.  Harping on about MBH98 serves no purpose whatsoever anymore, even any constructive benefits M&M could have provided are outweighed by the vicious and personal nature of their attacks.

  But I already regret even getting into this mess...

  In addition there are also reconstructions as well as historical records that show that the current warming is not unusual.

  Please provide some references to global reconstructions that show previous changes similar or more extreme than today's.  And we will of course assume you have put them (if they exist) under the same microscope you have put MBH98.  I know there are not enough historical records to cover the globe for the past 500 years, let alone one or two thousand.
  

  "What if this weren't a hypothetical question?" -- unknown

  On In 2008, did temperatures drop as much as they rose over the whole 20th century? posted 1 year, 2 months ago 71 Responses