Debunking
illconsidered | December 8, 2009greenman has done a fine job of debunking the various exagerations, misrepresentations and lies circulating about the recent Swiftwacking of CRU (aka Climategate).
I recommend having a look, below:
illconsidered | December 7, 2009The Globe and Mail has an article by Thomas Homer-Dixon and Andrew Weaver on "responding to the sceptics" that can be read here. It is rather shorter than How to talk to a climate sceptic, having only 4 points.
This is the overview of their Q&A:
"GLOBAL WARMING HAS STOPPED."
Nonsense.
"RECENT WARMING IS MOSTLY DUE TO AN INCREASE IN THE AMOUNT OF RADIATION COMING FROM THE SUN."
Rubbish.
"THE CLIMATE IS ALWAYS CHANGING."
Yes, but so what?
"SCIENTIFIC UNCERTAINTY IS SO GREAT THAT WE CAN'T MAKE FIRM POLICY DECISIONS."
Wrong.
Of course they offer a lot more detail, which you can read here.
illconsidered | November 12, 2009Peter is remixing his videos with improved sound quality. Here is "All wet on Sea Level":
Watch, learn, discuss!
illconsidered | October 25, 2009Crakar said:
The peer-reviewed literature is unanimous in finding that the residence-time of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 7 years. The UN's climate panel, however, chooses a complex and unsatisfactory definition of residence-time that allows it to pretend that the residence time is in fact 100 years. This is one of many respects in which the climate panel, while claiming to represent the "consensus" of scientific opinion, is in fact entirely at odds with the peer-reviewed literature.
Crakar is confusing the residence time of an individual CO2 molecule with the residence time of an increased…
illconsidered | October 24, 2009Crakar said:
Sea level is scarcely rising: The average rise in sea level over the past 10,000 years was 4 feet/century. During the 20th century it was 8 inches. In the past four years, sea level has scarcely risen at all. As recently as 2001, the IPCC had predicted that sea level might rise as much as 3 ft in the 21st century. However, this maximum was cut by more than one-third to less than 2 feet in the IPCC's 2007 report. Moerner (2004) says sea level will rise about 8 inches in the 21st century. Mr. Justice Burton, in the UK High Court, bluntly commented on Al Gore's predicted 20ft sea-…
illconsidered | October 23, 2009Crakar said:
The 3300 Argo bathythermograph buoys deployed throughout the world's oceans since late in 2003 have shown a slight cooling of the oceans over the past five years, directly contrary to the official theory that any "global warming" not showing in the atmosphere would definitely show up in the first 400 fathoms of the world's oceans, where at least 80% of any surplus heat would be stored. Source: ARGO project, June 2009.
I would like to rely on commenters to handle this one properly, I am aware of the talking point, have read rebuttals but have not researched it myself.
Though the…
illconsidered | October 22, 2009Crakar said:
We are shown the results of computer model programmes that predict an apocolyptic future, these programs are based on modelling 16 (yes thats right only 16) parameters, many are considered by the IPCC as having a very low and low level of scientific understanding. Do the models incorporate the ocean cycles? or the atmosphere/ocean interactions? No they dont. There are many more parameters that they do not incorporate, but wait thats not all. We are expected to believe in these computer programmes because the IPCC scientists are in general agreement with them even though they…
illconsidered | October 21, 2009Crakar said:
We are told that increasing CO2 levels cause/are causing the temps to rise, however the geological record shows this to be the opposite. Even if we look at the past 70 years (post 1940) when mans activity is supposed to be most pronounced we find that CO2 has risen for all 70 years but the temps have been either stable or falling for 40 of the 70 years. This would suggest to me that CO2 does not in fact cause the temp to rise but for others this information is of no concern because there is a general agreement amongst some scientists (IPCC) that the opposite is true.
One thing at…
illconsidered | October 16, 2009The Reef Tank has kindly republished one of the How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic articles, the one about the claim that observed temperature increases indicate a much lower sensitivity to doubled CO2 than the general consensus figure of 3oC.
It is an old argument, but it still comes up frequently here and elsewhere so bears some repeating.
You can not use only the current temperature to assess sensitivity to 35% increased CO2 because:
the oceans have a large heat capacity so it will take several decades to see the full effect
CO2 is constantly rising
CO2 is not the only factor affecting…
illconsidered | October 8, 2009Peter Sinclair is remixing some of his Climate Crock of the Week videos to improve the sound quality.
I would like to use this Mars Attacks! episode as an opportunity to close the Mars is Warming too thread.
Watch and learn:
illconsidered | October 5, 2009Yet another faux fraud in the climate wars with the same liars and hypocrites piping in.
Real Climate has a nice display of all the hockey sticks out there, and Denial Depot has the most compelling attack.
Deltoid gives us a great run down of the kerfuffle.
illconsidered | August 23, 2009A commenter here brought up the controversy du jour for the denialosphere, how Greenpeace alledgedly admitted lying in a press release. Of course that stretch, (well, it's a stretch to call it a stretch), was further stretched to "Greenpeace just admitted that much of the human-caused global warming hype is also a fraud." Talk about extrapolation!
Anyway, as usual it is not what they would have us believe it is. Michael Tobis has all the details, worth reading. The whole thing rests on the imprecision of the phrase "arctic ice", very commonly used to really mean "arctic sea ice".
The…
illconsidered | August 21, 2009I had an open thread a couple of weeks ago about Ian Plimer's recent novel supposedly exposing the lie that is Anthropogenic Global Warming.
I have not read it. A few commenter's defending the book asked how anyone can judge it if they have not read it.
Well, no one can read every book that is out there, not even every book about global warming. We all have to choose. This of course introduces the possibility of bias confirmation. If I feel it in my gut that this particular book will be crap, I won't read it and I will assume I am right about it.
But here's the thing, it is possible to…
illconsidered | August 20, 2009So this is good news for defenders of the fair use principle.
You can, and if you haven't yet should, watch Peter Sinclair's video demolishing Anthony Watts' surfacestations.org embedded below. Watts' complaint of copyright violation was at best a head scratcher and at worst a cynical and childish outburst but no matter what obviously unjustified.
Watts has a post up supposedly to explain his reasoning, but it is very long and says virtually nothing that is relevant to copyright issues relying mostly on ridicule. It is also rather condescending and smug, an attitude that looks all the…
illconsidered | August 7, 2009A recent comment here brought up the frequent contrarian argument that there is a signature patern to enhanced greenhouse gas warming that is missing in the observational data despite showing up in the models. This is notably absent from the How to talk to a climate sceptic guide, something I hope to rectify Real Soon Now(tm).
I left a comment response but thought I may as well put it here in a new thread as it is OT over there.
Here is the referenced graph:
Figure 9.1. Zonal mean atmospheric temperature change from 1890 to 1999 (°C per century) as simulated by the PCM model from (a) solar…
illconsidered | August 6, 2009A very frequent whinge from climate change denialists is that the big bad environmental industrial complex is suppressing any dissent from the pre-approved party line. This is never accompanied by any actual evidence beyond an occasional anecdote.
One such anecdote emerged last June in what was trumpeted as the EPA supressing one of its own internal documents assessing the state of climate science and refuting the IPCC party line.
Have a look at one of Peter Sinclair's excellent Climate Crock of the Week videos below and see just how, yet again, the story falls to pieces with the most…
illconsidered | July 21, 2009It has come up in the comments a couple of times now, so I would like to state for the record that the following is a lousy analogy of a negative feedback. As far as I know, Richard Lindzen came up with this in his speech at the recent Heartland climate sceptic conference.
The analogy is this:
In your car, the gas and brake pedals act as negative feedbacks to reduce speed when you are going too fast and increase it when you are going too slow.
(You can find Lindzen's presentation, with that quote in it, at WUWT)
Lindzen goes on to imply that the climate models act like a car with the brake…
illconsidered | July 15, 2009Changes? Well hardly. Apparently the shocking "dog bites man" story of minuscule changes in GISS global anomaly data is making the rounds on denier sites.
A poster here embedded the copy/pasted accusation in an off topic thread, it goes thus:
Looks like Hansen/GISS is up to their old tricks;
Here are the June global temperature anomaly comparisons:
GISS .63C
RSS .075
UAH .001
GISS is way above the other two, but it does not end there apparently 2007 has now replaced 1998 as the second hottest year on record this was achieved not by rigorous scientific study and evaluation but by sleight of…
illconsidered | June 21, 2009Remember back in May and early June when the denialists were gleefully proclaiming arctic sea ice had recovered to the 1979-2000 average, and by induction global warming must be over?
Well, gee, I wonder where they are now, now that arctic sea ice this month is near the June 2007 mark. 2007 was of course an historic low, and a dramatic one at that.
This month's numbers reveal nothing about climate change, of course. It does however reveal something about climate denial.
illconsidered | June 16, 2009Of all the myriad climate skeptic arguments out there, the argument that the current rise in CO2 is not human caused truly is one of the most ridiculous positions one could take.
(Please note, I am not saying it is ridiculous to consider, we should consider everything, but like wondering if the light in the fridge really turns off when you close the door, a quick check with your cell phone video camera really should put it to rest!)
It is of course one of the standard denials in the HTTTACS series.
I am closing comments on that thread and directing them here, as surprising as it is to me…