Articles by Coby Beck
Former musician, turned tree planter, turned software engineer. Same old story... I have been blogging about climate change since 2006 at A Few Things Ill Considered.
All Articles
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‘The Medieval Warm Period was just as warm as today’–Repeating this point does not make it true
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)
Objection: It was just as warm in the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) as it is today. In fact, Greenland was green and they were growing grapes in England!
Answer: There is no good evidence that the MWP was a globally warm period comparable to today. Regionally, there may have been places that exhibited notable warmth -- Europe, for example -- but all global proxy reconstructions agree it is warmer now, and the temperature is rising faster now, than at any time in the last one or even two thousand years.
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‘It was warmer during the Holocene Climatic Optimum’–This period was not global and not like today
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)
Objection: It was warmer during the Holocene Climatic Optimum than it is today -- without any human influence.
Answer: Though some temperatures during that period were in the same range as today, they were confined to the northern hemisphere and the summer months.
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‘Hansen has been wrong before’–Maybe, but not about the climate!
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)
Objection: In 1988, Hansen predicted dire warming over the next decade -- and he was off by 300%. Why in the world should we listen to the same doom and gloom from him today?
Answer: While in some instances it is ignorant repetition of misinformation, at its source this story is a plain lie.
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‘They predicted global cooling in the 70s’–But that didn’t even remotely resemble today’s consensus
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)
Objection: The alarmists were predicting the onset of an ice age in the '70s. Now it's too much warming! Why should we believe them this time?
Answer: It is true that there were some predictions of an "imminent ice age" in the 1970s, but a cursory comparison of those warnings and today's reveals a huge difference.
