Debunking
illconsidered | October 18, 2010If you have a spare couple of hours, I am sure the YouTube below is well worth the time. I don't, so I can't comment on anything but my expectations and the approval of Dessler's performance from Eli Rabett and Deltoid.
Thanks, Eli, for the link.
illconsidered | October 18, 2010Just to pick up an ongoing conversation where we left off over at the recently closed How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic thread, I wanted to provide a more serious answer to a likely unserious visitor because I think myhrr's issue deserves an answer, even if myhrr obviously doesn't. Kind of like the "we can't predict the temp 2 weeks from now" argument, this one has an intuitive appeal to perfectly fine people who are just not well informed for whatever reason.
myhrr is wondering why CO2, being heavier than air, does not just stay close to the ground. Okay, he actually claims entire…
illconsidered | August 31, 2010I haven't played Asteroids(tm) since the days when Atari was computer games King and 124K was an incredible amount of memory. And before any young gamers out there laugh at what an old geezer I must be, I will insist that that says much more about how fast computers have evolved than it does about how old I may or may not be!
But as the subject of asteroids was raised here in the comments recently, I thought I might play a climate customized version of that game today.
Before we get started, I would like to answer crakar's referenced comment seriously because it may indeed resonate with some…
illconsidered | August 27, 2010Greenman's latest:
Entertaiing and informative, as usual!
I did not know there was a "theological" debate about CO2 levels in the atmosphere, interesting.
illconsidered | August 23, 2010Via a new blog started up this summer, Fool me Once (sounds like wishful thinking ;-), proprieter Alden has graciously permitted me to embed a most excellent video he has produced on arctic sea ice.
He is covering a standard denialist talking point, that arctic sea ice has/is recovering, so the concepts will not be unfamiliar to any regulars here, but the very clear trains of argument and great use of data and graphics make this well worth watching.
The original posting is here.
His other post from about a month ago, is similarily clear and compelling. (Warning: video starts automatically,…
illconsidered | August 9, 2010Regular readers will recall a recent post pointing to Dr Roy Spencer being cannabalized cannibalized over his stubborn insistence that the Greenhouse Effect does not violate the laws of thermodynamics.
Well, he seems to be a glutton for punishment as he is taking another crack at it.
This time, I am only pointing it out because he has taken a high tech experimental approach to observe the actual atmospheric back radiation and an interesting post results (hi tech compared to his last hotplate device!).
I just skimmed the comments, like last time, and while the die-hards are still hard to…
illconsidered | July 23, 2010"I don't think that anyone disagrees with the fact that we actually are in a cold period that started about nine years ago."
Um...okay. I guess that's true if your definition of "anyone" excludes every single scientific agency that concerns itself with climate indicators and those of us who actually look at them. A good dose of boring old real reality from the Union of Concerned Scientists follows:
In response to a question during an ABC News / Washington Post interview today about recent heat waves and record temperatures, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said, "I don't think that anyone…
illconsidered | May 11, 2010Some old news here and some new, all of it about my favorite climate contrarian, Lord Cristopher Monkton. He is my favorite because he is a clown and the more he is put forth as denialism's "Septical Champion" the better.
First the old news. You may recall Tim Lambert debated Cristopher Monckton in Sydney a couple of months ago. Well that debate is up on YouTube in full. It is a 15 part playlist, but Tim tells us his presentation is part 3 and 4. I watched most of it and it is worth the time.
I think it is kind of amusing, and revealing, that Monkton claims some rather intimate knowledge…
illconsidered | May 4, 2010A regular here recently offered us this PDF from Willie Soon and Lord Monkton's Science and Public Policy Institute and asks what is wrong with the graph in there.
As it happens, Michael Tobis has already taken a look at another very similar construction and identified three deceptions (he kindly called "bugs") in what is technically correct data.
different smoothing is used on the two types of data. Temperature is presented in monthly mean whereas CO2 looks to have had the seasonal rise and fall removed. This gives the impression of a steady rise in CO2 in stark contrast to the jitters of…
illconsidered | April 24, 2010Richard Lindzen has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal for Earth Day and exhibits the best of climate denialism's ability to flip reality on its head. I was considering going through it and highlighting its many falsehoods and logical holes but Arthur Smith has done a fine job of it already.
The WSJ op-ed is behind a paywall, but if you click the first result in this google search, you can read it in full. Arthur's take down is here.
illconsidered | April 14, 2010Climate denialists are fond of arguments regarding the falsifying of hypotheses. There are two main thrusts they use here, (ironically enough mutually exclusive thrusts**). The first is that global warming is an "unfalsifiable" theory and therefore not a true scientific construct. I don't recall any good example essays making this point to link to (maybe someone can post a link in the comments?), but I believe the idea comes mostly from the all too common conflation of the actual science and the mainstream reporting of the science. They say that the IPCC claims that extreme warmth and…
illconsidered | March 3, 2010While on the subject of great work by Tim Lambert, his recent debate with Christopher Monkton is available for viewing here.
It is 113 minutes long and I am pressed for time, so I am posting it before watching it. Feel free to point out favorite parts in the comments. Thanks to the Sydney Morning Herald for putting it on.
I have no doubt it will be educational and entertaining, can't wait to see it!
illconsidered | March 3, 2010Here is an interesting analysis designed for those who claim that CO2 does not correlate to temperature. (Sound familiar?). It is by a recently familiar name from the comments, Joseph.
I am not statistically well endowed, but Robert Grumbine comes to the same conclusion that when you accept the noisy nature of the data (aka reality) the fact is that CO2 does correlate to the modern temperature record very well, as expected.
How does Joseph's analysis look? He has some big numbers in terms of confidence.
illconsidered | March 2, 2010Unfortunately for an unscientifically inclined mind, one bitter cold winter is worth many mountains of research in the quest for the truth about climate change. And unfortunately for our choking biosphere, political action will likely remain an impossibility until we are well and truly past the alledged cessation of warming.
I received an apparently sincere comment that expressed what must be a common feeling in the general public:
You guys are so far scientifically over my head that it is impossible
for me to participate in this conversation. But consider that most
people are like me,…
illconsidered | February 16, 2010I know this is old news, but I just found the youtubes of this debate. You will recall how Plimer declined to answer some very straightforward requests for evidence of a handful of his most egregious fabrications that George Monbiot put to him as a precondition of a debate. Well, not because Plimer decided to be forthcoming, the debate went ahead in December with no preconditions.
It can be viewed in three parts below.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
If you don't have time for it all (~24 minutes) I would recommend starting at part 2.
Is anyone impressed with Plimer's evasivness. He might as…
illconsidered | February 12, 2010The good thing for those interested in reality, is that arguments about short tem trends only last for...um short terms. The bad thing for the denialism movement's argument recycling machine is that they can't rely on copy/paste, or at least shouldn't!
Check out Things Break for a rather amusing example of this. Morano recylces a moronic argument about how sea levels are falling, which was true on the uninformative timescale of 2006 to mid 2009. But he amusingly links to current data[PDF] which shows that temporary lull is over and 2006 has been surpassed.
Also in that article is the…
illconsidered | February 1, 2010A commenter just asked on the original "One or two warm years is not Global Warming" thread if the article is still true five years later.
Certainly the logic of it, that the temperature trend is unequivocally warming and we are not claimig global warming because of a record or two, still holds, but I thought it might be interesting to revisit the specific data points I raised in it and ask if they are still true.
The temperature data points are from the GISS analysis and can be found here (as you see, I have discovered where they hide their data!).
The statements I made are as follows:
every…
illconsidered | January 26, 2010The Oregon petition seems to be getting a small revival in the press and blogosphere lately, including in the comments here. I don't have a guide article for that, though I suppose I should. So much has been written about it, I don't know if I have anything original to say.
Some example critiques are from Scientific American:
Scientific American took a random sample of 30 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science. Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases, 11 said they still agreed with the petition --- one was an active climate researcher…
illconsidered | December 18, 2009WUWT's Willis Eschenbach has supposedly uncovered how Evil scientists have fabricated a warming trend in Darwin. Deltoid has the details on why those pesky adjustments were actually made. Of course those details were cleverly hidden, like Jone's decline, where no denialist would ever find it: in the peer reviewed literature!
This fake investigation is called cherry picking, digging through the batch to find the slightly off colored examples. But what happens if you look at the whole bowlful all at once, as did this Italian Medical bio-technologist? (Yes, yes, not a climatologist, not even…
illconsidered | December 9, 2009Here is a fabulous boil down approach to the climate debate.
The main site is called "Information is beautiful" and like Robert Rhode's Global Warming Art, it provides a compelling and beautiful graphical presentation of an otherwise rather dry and technical topic.
What do people think? Too simplistic? Too technical for a lay audience?