Articles by Coby Beck

In 2008, did temperatures drop as much as they rose over the whole 20th century?

(Part of the How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic guide)   Objection: Temperatures plummeted over the last year (2007-2008). If you look at this data from the Met Office Hadley Centre you can clearly see that in one year alone global temperatures dropped .6°C, an amount equal to the entire warming over the 20th […]

Articles about climate skeptics

Even while rejecting the authority of the most comprehensive and reviewed scientific document on any subject, namely the IPCC report, one of the most common climate delusionist tactics is the argument from authority. Whether it is Alexander Cockburn responding to George Monbiot or some anonymous person on some blog, everyone has some personal "scientist" friend who assures them the rest of the world has gone mad.

When an argument from authority is invoked it is perfectly legitimate to then examine said authority's, um ... authority, to see if there is really a good reason we should take their word over the word of ... well, just about everybody who would know.

Real Climate tears apart another fraudulent presentation from E. G. Beck

Over at RealClimate today, they present and debunk another fraudulent reconstruction from German school-teacher-plays-skeptic-scientist E. G. Beck. First it was his groundbreaking (as in stick your head in the sand) work on CO2; now he turns his attention to temperature reconstructions for the past millennium.

When bad science still doesn't get the result you want, why not spice it up with a bit of plain and simple fraud?

Public divided over whether costly steps are needed

From the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA):

An international poll finds widespread agreement that climate change is a pressing problem. This majority, however, divides over whether the problem of global warming is urgent enough to require immediate, costly measures or whether more modest efforts are sufficient.

Read the rest at their website. One data point: 39 percent of Americans think global warming is an important threat, 46 percent think it is a critical threat, only 17 percent think it is not important at all.