Sunday, December 18, 2016

Re: Global Warming


Stephen W Gordon
Stephen W Gordon Oh and yeah I do know more than you on this topic. The proof is that you are in the climate denial camp. 
I had to teach a climate change unit in science class. So I had to stay current on this stuff.
So on this topic you are just flat wrong. The debate is over. From here on you just look silly. (No insult) 
John when we would actually talk in person there were plenty of topics I would gladly listen and learn from you on. Climate change wasn't one of them.
John Coffey
John Coffey "The proof is that you are in the climate denial camp. " So you won't address any of my arguments and just declare me wrong and say that the debate is over and that I look silly. Nice way to win an argument. So the idea of man made disastrous warming is a religion intolerant of dissent , hugh? Where is the evidence that we are going to get 5 degree celsius warming? I just don't see it. Maybe in another 400 years, but by then we would have figured something out.
John Coffey
John Coffey We are not climate deniers as I see it. We are climate skeptics. Give me evidence that the gloom and doom predictions will come true, and I will believe it. When someone says that the earth has warmed and there is a 95% chance that this is caused by man, there is no disagreement. The issue is how much has the earth warmed up and how much will it warm up in the future? Then the next question is does this warrant government action that will kill our prosperity and cause more people to die from weather related deaths? The final question is if this will even make a difference?
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John Coffey
John Coffey http://www.telegraph.co.uk/.../Winter-death-toll-to...
Campaigners say the figures are a "tragedy" and that more should be done to help vulnerable…
Steve Kusaba
Steve Kusaba "Oh and yeah I do know more than you on this topic. The proof is that you are in the climate denial camp.
I had to teach a climate change unit in science class. So I had to stay current on this stuff.
So on this topic you are just flat wrong. The debate is over. From here on you just look silly. (No insult)
John when we would actually talk in person there were plenty of topics I would gladly listen and learn from you on. Climate change wasn't one of them."

I'm not taking a side in this but it appears to me that John actually talked about the science and you have just made your position "Really smart people think this so why do you oppose it?" 

Since it is a question of science, why don't you talk about the science?
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Stephen W Gordon
Stephen W Gordon Same reason I don't get into debates on the existence of Santa Claus.
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Toly Zharkikh
Toly Zharkikh Even basic common sense would tell you that if global warming had a positive feedback loop, we would have had runaway warming a long time ago. Not to imply that climate hysterics have any common sense.
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Steve Kusaba
Steve Kusaba " Same reason I don't get into debates on the existence of Santa Claus."

Either A. You don't understand the science or B. You don't understand the science. 

If someone tells me that the accelerated dragon has been busted I take up the other side to see if there is something to it. When someone tells me very absurd stuff like birther stuff or truther stuff, I take it head on and tell them they are full of it, where's your facts. 

For being on the side of something that you claim is *so obviously true* it is remarkable that you come up with literally not even one sentence that is addressed to the issue. 

You may be right. But you'll never advance the case for this the way you deal with it.
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Stephen W Gordon
Stephen W Gordon Hey Steve, troll much?
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Steve Kusaba
Steve Kusaba Whether I troll or not doesn't seem related to this issue. 

You can't shut someone down about their position without offering some form of evidence or rebuttal. John is saying that the argument is about the degree in which certain events will happen. I've read articles in Time many many years ago where claims about the degree in which California's beaches would be lost to rising water. Of course it never happened. No one called that falsification. So the issue isn't even what climatologists are thinking. Its the hubris that non-climatologists display when they talk about a subject that they know absolutely nothing about.

I mean, for hell sake. Can you even state what the actual premise of global warming is and what evidence would refute it? What does it specifically mean? Do you think it is 100% absolute? Or do you hold a 2% window that it could be wrong? (whatever *it* is) 

Its really popular these days for people who are not climatologists to declare things with absolute certainty. 

Of course its OK to declare things but would it be such a burden to discuss it?
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Toly Zharkikh
Toly Zharkikh On the topic of climate hysterics, they point to data that goes back just 400,000 years and point to the "catastrophic" heating on the chart. The folks that I argued with seem to think a 50 million year timeframe is irrelevant. We used to have about 5 ...See More
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John Coffey
John Coffey Stephen W Gordon If you are such an expert, what do you think that the Climate Sensitivity is to a doubling of CO2? If you say between 2 and 12 degrees Celsius, then you agree with one of the myriad models. However, since 1880 we are three quarters of the way there and the temperature has only gone up .85 degrees. How do you reconcile this?
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John Coffey
John Coffey Stephen W Gordon What is really starting to look silly is all the failed predictions by the chicken little alarmists. This is so obviously politically driven drivel. It is an excuse to tax and control us. This is why nobody takes it seriously anymore. Of all the issues that voters were polled about in the 2016 election, global warming was the least of their concerns.
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John Coffey
John Coffey Stephen W Gordon The real disaster is not global warming, but following this policy of phasing out fossil fuels or making them too expensive to afford by taxing ourselves to death. I hear stories of people freezing to death because they can't afford energy. England had 40,000 winter related deaths. It is freezing in Indiana today . Fossil fuels are for the moment what separate us from death, and are critical to our prosperity. The alternatives are still too expensive and not plentiful enough. Maybe we can change that over time. We are likely within 20 years of having viable nuclear fusion.
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John Coffey
John Coffey Stephen W Gordon If the temperature data were to change to support a much higher Climate Sensitivity, then I would be more than happy to change my position. However, people make assertions today that are clearly not supported by the data, but nobody seems to care. The reason for this is that the politics and the money are driving the issue. The real disaster is government pushing an agenda.

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Saturday, December 17, 2016

Re: Global Warming

Stephen W Gordon Wow. I'm so glad that you have straightened that out. And boy do I feel foolish for going along with all the world's major scientific organizations.
You should go to NASA and NOAA and get them on board. 
And if you have time "educate" the 180 or so countries that signed the Paris Accord. 
(Insult to follow)
Because I'm sure some guy living in the middle of Hayseed, Indiana knows more than the world's top scientists.
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John Coffey
John Coffey I would assert the politically motivated science, especially when tens of billions of dollars annually are involved and people on the extreme left and extreme environmental movements have much to gain from this - the increased government control of our lives, is not really science at all. Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy, and not all scientists agree with you which weakens the argument. It ignores that there are potentially valid alternate theories out there.  And I am trying to approach this scientifically. Unlike you, I have actually looked at the atmospheric CO2 and temperature data. Where is the evidence that actually supports that the Climate Sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 is going to be 2 degrees Celsius or much more as have some have asserted? It is not there. They only have speculation. When the evidence supports these assertions then I will I gladly jump on the bandwagon, but I won't have to because within a couple of decades we will have nuclear fusion. However, in our lifetime we are likely to see doubling of CO2 over the last two centuries, at which point we will know what the real Climate Sensitivity is. Keep in mind CO2 would have to double again to have the same effect.
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John Coffey
John Coffey To match the alarmist predictions we would have to see a sudden upturn in the rate of temperature increase and maintain that for at least a couple of decades.
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John Coffey
John Coffey You have to be one of the most insulting people I have ever met. There have been a number of times I have been offended. You called me a nitwit on Facebook and compared me to the flat earth society. I like you anyway, but I think that you owe me an apology. I may be from Hayseed, Indiana, but do you really think that you know more about this issue than I do? I have been following this issue closely for thirty years. I started out really concerned about it and thinking that we need to take drastic action to combat global warming. It was when I started to look at how little the earth has warmed up and seeing alternate points of view going back 25 years that I began to think that this was a drummed up issue from extremists designed to scare us.
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John Coffey
John Coffey Consider the following paragraphs from an article on Global Warming: 

"The report will say there is a 95 per cent chance which it defines as extremely likely that humans are responsible for the majority of climate change through their greenhouse gas emissions. This compares with the 90 per cent figure given by the previous IPCC assessment in 2006. This, in turn, was a significant increase on the 66 per cent certainty reached in the 2001 assessment and just over 50 per cent in 1995.

The report will say that the global combined land and ocean temperature data show an increase of about 0.8C between 1901 and 2010 and of about 0.5C between 1979 and 2010."

The Skeptics are not saying anything different. The rate at which temperature and CO2 have gone up would indicate a moderate Climate Sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 and things would have to change dramatically for it to be any different.

Global Warming

This graphic is so insulting to people's intelligence. Any educated person in the 15nth century knew that the earth was round. People have known this for 2,300 years. Instead Columbus asserted that you could get to India faster by sailing west. He was wrong.

Climate skeptics are not deniers. The skeptics believe that humans are warming the planet, but at a moderate rate that isn't going to be much of a problem. It has taken 136 years for the Earth to warm by just 0.85 degrees Celsius.

The skeptics have been saying the same thing for 25 years. The argument is all about the feedbacks. The direct effect of a doubling of global atmospheric CO2 is well understood by everyone to result in a global temperature increase of 1.1 degrees Celsius. The alarmists claim that positive feedbacks will multiply this between two and tenfold. However, the positive feedback models remain unproven and are unsupported by the data.

There is a global warming industry that is profiting tens of billions of dollars yearly from government research grants. These people have a vested interest in the alarmism. The IPCC is staffed by Greenpeace types. People have resigned in disgust from the IPCC because they claim the organization is too biased. (And people in the global warming movement have claimed that their goal is to get rid of Capitalism.)

Of the thousands of papers written about global warming, less than 1% assert that global warming is happening and is going to be a problem. The vast majority of papers are of the type that try to predict what will happen if global warming occurs. For example, "How global warming will affect the mating habits of frogs."

The people who have a vested interest in alarmism are claiming that the science is settled. The science will not be settled until there is conclusive data to support their assertions. Right now we are not even close. I calculated from existing data that the Climate Sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 was not the 2 to 12 degrees Celsius that the alarmists predict, but only 1.18 degree Celsius. (Official predictions of Climate Sensitivity have been going down for years because their original predictions were way off.)

Moderate increases in CO2 have been highly beneficial to humanity resulting in a greening of the Earth.




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Sunday, November 13, 2016

Good political radio show about the virtue of small towns.

It is a bit long, but I thought that it was an interesting show.  I was able to listen to this on my iPhone while I was driving and shopping.



Sunday, November 6, 2016

Facebook political discussion

Nick is a former three time state chess champion of Florida who occasionally came to our chess club in Salt Lake City while there on business.

Nick Paleveda

Trump does not do well among educated people who are more discriminating when it comes to specific plans. Anybody with a masters degree or higher support Trump out there?



John Coffey
John Coffey Does it surprise you that people who spend up to seven years in government funded indoctrination centers, where the ratio of Democrat to Republican professors has been shown in some cases to be 15 to 1, turn out liberal?
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Nick Paleveda
Nick Paleveda Educated people tend to be more liberal as they are trained to think. Uneducated people are conservative as they are trained to obey.
John Coffey
John Coffey What an elitist position!   People who benefit from government spending, even if that is a publicly subsidized education, are going to lean toward government spending. Since the professors and public teachers all benefit from government spending, they are going favor government spending when educating the masses. But people who can actually think, and aren't just indoctrinated, realize that taking from one person to enrich someone else is stealing, and realize that excessive government is the path to bankruptcy and collapse. Sorry that we disagree. Best wishes, John.


Nick Paleveda
Nick Paleveda I am an elitist capitalist and anti-Trump as his tax and economic policy is a disaster.