That headline is NOT a typo, that’s what they say:
If there was even any doubt about Hansen changing from scientist to advocate, that doubt is now shattered.
Meanwhile, amazingly, James Hansen has agreed to a debate. Hansen is going to debate with Don Blankenship of Massey coal company.
This just in, from NASA climate scientist James Hansen, in response to Massey Energy President Don Blankenship’s challenge to debate global warming, the coal industry and the West Virginia economy. I received this note from Dr. Hansen, who asked that I forward the information on to Blankenship.
This is going to become ground zero for the issue. Word has it the people of WV are becoming quite energized.
Hansen has a new commentary on Yale’s Environment 360 blog called “A Plea to President Obama: End Mountaintop Removal.”
Stay tuned. This is going to escalate most likely.
Big Jim ought to check the thermometer.
=========================
It is past the time to grant Hansen his wish, martyrdom. He should be fired immediately for multiple violations of the Hatch Act.
Sounds like a bad idea to me. Blankenship is an accountant not a scientist. I doubt that he would have the scientific knowledge to successfully debate Mickey Mouse. This debate will likely be a huge loss for the skeptics side. Maybe there is something in it for the coal company, like a billion dollar grant for clean coal research of some such thing.
Here is a picture of last winter in London… http://thechive.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/amazing-photography-49.jpg
That should be a reminder of where we are heading, and it is not going according to their climate models… that poor girl!
Hopefully they’ll prove Hanson for what he is, a political advocate and no longer a scientist.
I’d love to know how the debate turns out, and whether Hanson will use the prospect of El Nino as an attempt to say the upward trend will continue.
BTW: What happened to the common El Nino cool pool, it was there yesterday, now look at the new map of subsurface SST’s for today, it vanished
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/jsdisplay/plots/gif/Dep_Sec_EQ_5d.gif
Clearly in past El Ninos it doesn’t show up for a whopping one day and then just disappear?
Is there someone at Massey who will be helping Blankenship prep for this encounter? Might they be interested in some well-documented bullet points from the skeptic’s arsenal? Anyone know of an email address for such a person?
kim (09:48:31) said :
Big Jim ought to check the thermometer.
AND the sun. We’ve got TWO of the cutest little Sun Flecks going at the same time (a NEW RECORD FOR SC24!!), but tellingly the 10.7 cm flux is hovering around 67 again. Looks to me like vestigial spots (to coin a phrase) which are doomed to rapid extinguishment (another one) as there are insufficent Joules behind them.
Where is that big uptick in flux that NASA was crowing about?
Flecks do not a cycle make.
In fact, the more this short-life fleck pattern repeats itself, the more Livingston & Penn are lookin’ good. Imagine YEARS of this [expletive preemptorily deleted]. Yikes. Buy coal.
JumboTron Jim’s claim to being a Climate is settled Scientist is based on the output of a computer model?
Now, the moniker of Climate Killing Coal is a subliminal message if I ever heard one. That one could get someone in a lot of trouble or cause a tsunami of a flap.
That is really below the belt and uncalled for.
I would be insulted, Mr. President.
To be fair, removing entire mountaintops on scale is an extreme approach to mining of coal. He’s using that as a “guilt by association” to unfairly villify buring coal. That’s the trick here.
Can’t I be against mountain top removal, a hideous insult to the environment, and also be a climate skeptic?
The Protest Warriors need to re-open their website with a new direction. It would be hilarious to protest against the coal protesters and walk amongst them.
The pictures alone would be pure comedy.
Now how is this going to help bring alternative energy into the mainstream? Science does not happen just because people wish it to. Research and development takes time and money and many promising leads never pay off.
If all the people who believe global warming is being caused by man-made carbon emissions would just go ‘off grid’ (just turn everything off), then this ‘crisis’ could be delayed for years.
The debate will be declared by the media to be a major win for Hansen no matter what the outcome. The best hope is that a lot of people actually hear the debate because Hansen’s dementia will be obvious. Let him go off on one of his “death train” rants and he will alienate far more people than he could ever convince.
Some of Hansen’s more recent speeches reveal a man at the end of his rope. His theories are in shambles, his predictions wildly inaccurate, his demeanor increasingly shrill. He will be unable to control himself and the reckless verbiage that he will unleash will probably bring an end to his long and dubious career.
I sure hope this guy has his ducks in a row. If he’s not entirely up to speed on the “issues” Hansen will slaughter him. Hansen is nothing if not very intelligent. Misguided, but intelligent nontheless….
BTW, I hope the Greenpeace activists are charged with piracy…
David Segesta (09:53:21) :
Sounds like a bad idea to me. Blankenship is an accountant not a scientist. I doubt that he would have the scientific knowledge to successfully debate Mickey Mouse. This debate will likely be a huge loss for the skeptics side. Maybe there is something in it for the coal company, like a billion dollar grant for clean coal research of some such thing.
=======>
Typical AGW debate menatality (regardless of whose side you are on, I suspect not the side of Fair and Open Debate) , elevating science to some sort of unreachable height that is the sole domain of the chosen few. Then even before the debate discount and maginalize the participant, then bring the “evil coal industry lookign for money” argument at the end.
Your arguments are old and tired, talking points from the “man without a point” handbook, and lack any sort of relevance to the debate. If it is like other debates on the subject, he will talk down and lecture instead of concentrating on coherent arguments.
If Hansen’s debate points are as persuasive as yours I think he is doomed, Blankenship is a seasoned speaker and has a good grasp of the relevant science and has been vocal in communicating his positions.
I believe that Hansen, who surrounds himself with yes men and is shielded from dissent, will find that a prepared non-scientist foe is far more dangerous than he is as an arrogant irrational advocate who never has to defend himself or his “science”. Yet he could surprise me and I do not totally discount his arguments, he has been known to moderate his rhetoric at times.
Should be fun to watch though no matter which way it goes.
That, of course, is what they demand that YOU do, but they don’t have to because they’re “getting the message out”.
I wonder if the debate moderator will halt any ad hominem and other logocal fallacies in their tracks, assume he or she can identify them.
Hansen should look at the USHCN gauges in WV. He’ll be nearest to the one of top of the roof of the Army Corps of Engineers Winfield Lock and Dam control building, surrounded by concrete and asphalt. Funny, the temperature is said to have gone up a little over a degree in that part of the state during the last century…no wonder, considering where the gauges are.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/17/how-not-to-measure-temperature-part-64/
If he doesn’t like the one at Winfield, he should visit the ones in other parts of the state at the water treatment plants, or the ones at the airports. For a rural state, with lots of open spaces, you’d think this would be a perfect state to get reliable long-term temperatures from. In fact, all the USHCN gauges are considered rural, however none appear to be following the correct location rules for reliable temperatures. And, of course, the historical record is lacking for most of these sites in the Meta data.
Yes, you can be against Mountaintop Removal, as I am, but also be against the use of junk science to say that C02 is driving the temperature and climate. The two should be approached as separate issues.
The USHCN temperature gauges themselves in this rural state show the lack of trustworthy science and data gathering techniques which Hansen is among the prime users of.
Maybe skeptics shoud attend to balance the audience – maybe ask the really tough questions that might not get aired. Has the arctic been warmer in the past 300yrs? -(the recent post on Arctic exploration history 18th Century and on). Why has it been cooling for the past 10 years and particularly the past two ro three. Get him to repeat his forecast a world record high temp in the next year or so. Get him to agree to abandon the models and the settled science if it doesn’t come to pass. Get him to forecast when the Arctic Ocean will be essentially free of ice……
Go, Jim! Go!
He is making the arc of a prophet, and the profits of AGW, whom he is oging to inevitably annoy, will not tolerate him.
What Climate Heretic said . Except that Don Blankenship can be a bit of a hothead , from what I understand .
Hansen probably thinks this guy won’t be much of a challenge. Maybe he’s right. Or maybe this guy will kick his can. Wait and see. All I know is, personally I’d prefer someone up against Hansen whose knowledge I’m more familiar with. Who knows what this guy knows? I don’t.
I’m going to go against the the general tone here and say I support any method of getting coal that people want to do. If “mountain-top removal” is profitable, then they will do it. The alternatives may also be highly undesirable. Underground mines, for instance, that are mined manually, are notoriously dangerous to work in. I suspect that technology will eventually sort out the issues with most approaches, perhaps by making them totally obsolete. All I know is that if you really don’t want people doing it, asking the government to coerce them is sinister…why not just boycott power generated from coal mined in such a way? As a consumer, you have that power.
I want to know what time the debate is going to be (preferably relative to Greenwich Mean Time) so that I (everyone here??) can hold it in prayer…
Climate Heretic (10:47:35) :
Spot on.
Stopping coal mining will be good for the economy of West Virginia? What else, pray tell, will they be doing for money there then?
Any chance a pinch hitter can be sent in for the debate?
One would have to have a ready-to-go presentation given there is only one day’s notice.
“..as many friends as you can muster..”
They may have trouble mustering : do they wish to be parted from their bongs due to a stay in jail?
Really bad news. This debate will NOT be about AGW, it will be about ripping the tops off mountains, which is a NO LOSE situation for Hansen – and will reflect badly on deniers everywheres, as we will be lumped together with idiots that rape nature.
Bad bad bad move.
“Hansen is going to debate with Don Blankenship of Massey coal company.”
I do imagine that he wouldn’t debate anyone whose name didn’t have a coal company attached to it.
I would like to see drops of sweat rolling down his face in a debate with John Christy.
Bill Illis (11:26:10) :
Any chance a pinch hitter can be sent in for the debate?
I would pitch in money for a plane ticket to get Monckton here for such.
I think that Blankenship can also argue the futility of the economics on the cost/benefit analysis on this in conjunction with the substantially more than offsetting effect that India and China will have.
rosalind (10:20:17) :
Can’t I be against mountain top removal, a hideous insult to the environment, and also be a climate skeptic?
Yes, you can.
Hansen, et al, are piling on, lumping the good with the bad, and that is ugly.
The ideal climate skeptic separates the chaff from the wheat, and burns it to generate electricity, tosses it in with the biomass, or composts it.
In this case, Hansen should be fired as he is abusing his job description, inciting mob action,
and being a real drag on progress.
Gino Danno Bruno (11:26:08) : They could get into carbon accounting….
Gino Danno Bruno (11:37:02) : Not a chance he’d agree to that (Hansen, not Monckton) but besides that, switching out would be cheating.
David Segesta, I think that the debate challenge was Global warming, Coal Mining, and the W. Va economy. I don’t know just what Dr. Hansen is degreeded in but I very doubt that he is an expert in coal mining or the W. Va economy. I think that he very much is a computer modeler that loves to build models that modify the data to account for differences of temps. I suspect that when all is said and done if you count points Mr Blankenship will win but the MSM will declare Dr Hansen the winner and we will never see any thing but spin from the debate.
Bill Derryberry
Gino Danno Bruno (11:26:08) :
Stopping coal mining will be good for the economy of West Virginia? What else, pray tell, will they be doing for money there then?
Go back to drift and lognwall…. i.e. – underground.
MC (10:54:07) :
Hansen should look at the USHCN gauges in WV… considering where the gauges are.
You assume that Hansen is concerned that stations should not be contaminated by UHI.
I’ve seen a somewhat one-sided presentation on MTR, replete with video of people dying of emphysema, etc. Even allowing for the propaganda, MTR seems to have a pretty drastic short-term effect on the local environment, and is not without some medium term drawbacks, as well.
That is why I strongly suspect that Hansen will try early on (possibly even BEFORE the obligatory ad hominem attacks) to divert the debate onto coal mining, using MTR as a red-herring. He’ll also probably use the “new, unpublished study” ploy, purporting to show that anti-AGW facts are based on outdated information. The studies will, of course, turn out to be the usual poorly peer reviewed Mann-o-matic statistical quagmire. The media will then make obeisance, kiss Hansen’s feet, and declare him the winner.
timetochooseagain (11:42:35) :…, switching out would be cheating
I don’t see how.
Is it a fair fight for Hansen to only debate someone representing a coal company? He should be unafraid to debate anyone.
BTW, I wouldn’t have a problem if Hansen switched who would be debating on his side.
MTR ?!?
Do we really need an acronym for mountain top removal?
I understand that Black Mountain Mining Co. in Harlan county, KY has long term contracts for $80/ton and has plans for opening 3 mines in Black Mountain near Lynch, KY. Residents are concerned because their houses (built on backfill when mining started years ago) are already settling badly. Coal mining provides just about the only significant number of non-minimum wage jobs in that part of KY. There has been interest in building a plant that would convert the waste coal slag into gasoline for less than $1.00 / gallon. Life expectancy is pretty low in Appalachia.
Here’s a question I just posted on the Guardian website. It’s one that I’d love Dr Hansen to answer – perhaps Mr Blankenship may oblige by asking.
When we hear about global temperatures rising, by 3 C for example, what does that mean exactly. If at a particular location for a certain period, the current average low is 10C and the high is 20C then I assume that this would give an average temperature of 15C. If this goes up to an average of 18C then how is this expected to happen?
If the low stays at 10 and the high goes up to 26 – we get an average of 18.
If the low goes goes up to 16 and the high stays at 20 – we get the same 18C.
If the low goes up to 13 and the high to 23 -18 C again
If the low drops to 0 and the high rockets to 36 C – same once more.
I think you get the picture – same increase – totally different outcomes for the future. So I will repeat my question – what does a 3C rise mean?
rosalind (10:20:17) :
Yes you can.
But I do have a question : what are those residents of West Virginia to do instead for income?
rbateman ,
I don’t think that drift and longwalling are feasible in seams that are close to the surface – I could be wrong . BTW , I have nothing against surface mining , except that it gives all coal mining a bad name . Face it , those pictures look really bad .
Gino Danno Bruno (11:48:46) :
“I wouldn’t have a problem if Hansen switched who would be debating on his side.”
I would, it violates the understanding of the “contract” made by agreeing to a debate. Hansen agreed to debate him, he agreed to debate Hansen. Neither made any agreement to debate anyone else. They would be perfectly within their rights to call such a debate a breach of understanding, thus making the debate agreement null and void.
Of course, Hansen is being sneaky in the first place, but the basic rules of a “contract” should not be violated, and that’s what the agreement between these two men constitutes, bad deal or not.
An accountant may be just what is needed to ask the questions most people care most about:
1) An end to mining in WV will cost the average family $$$
2) Jobs lost in mining trickle down to the rest of the economy: engineering suppliers, service companies, local retailers, schools. The cost is $$$
3) Where are your kids going to work?
4) Cap n’ trade = $3,000 per household…
Mine/drill or just close down the US and beg China to send the welfare checks
RoyFOMR (12:00:15) : This is I think essentially a question about the diurnal temperature range. From what I’m aware, the max temps rise more slowly than the min, to a greater degree in observations even than models suggest. That means somewhat higher highs and much higher lows.
(NOTE: Min temps are probably more contaminated by land use than Max-See Pielke et al. 2007 “Unresolved Issues…”)
I’ll leave it to you to decide what that means.
Remember, this will be a public debate and after their respective presentations, they will take questions from the public. We must just inssure that there will be people from both sides of the issue in the room.
Reply: Gak! ~ ensure~ charles the “button just got pushed” moderator
My brother-in-law, an engineer, worked on coal strip mining techniques and economics fifty years ago. This summarizes his attitude.
MTR is just another technique. But it is one that turns the area into wasteland. Nature will recover but that may take a decade or millennia depending on local conditions.
There are two considerations. First the top material originally removed must be moved back and stabilized; but the rock must be put back first, then the soil. A specific contour must be designed so that water erosion will not be great. The area must be replanted, with grasses for immediate effect and trees for the long term.
Our states, and I am rather sure the federal government, have legislated that the areas mined be restored. But fifty years ago there was not such legislation.
I don’t know how vigorously restoration laws are enforced. IMO that is the real issue with MTR and strip mining.
Well, what the “accountant” needs to point out is that mountain top removal is merely the FIRST stage towards renewable energy: The second stage is concurrent: the overburden (cover rock) moved into the valley below.
The third stage is to keep digging the mountain down to make a hole up at the top of the mountain.
Then the hydro-power pumped storage facility can come on line as the lake fills up behind the old tailings and overburden in the dam in the valley below ….
I agree that MTR and the use of coal as a fuel should not be debated or discussed together.
They are separate topics; MTR is a technique and the government should regulate it. Burning coal is a global economic question; when should we stop?
Expect the debate to be chaotic. Hansen will probably equate coal trains with death trains to Auschwitz. And declare the science is settled, etc. The skill of his opponent is unknown. It won’t matter, it debate will not be about facts. And the audience may misbehave too.
The truth will out:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/5599916/Polar-Bears-are-not-dying-out-say-scientists-in-book-on-popular-scare-stories.html
Boss Obama will not ban MTR because doing so would not offer him any particular political advantage. However, threatening to ban it would make a lot of business people very anxious to curry favour with him, which translates into generous campaign donations and a willingness to provide sinecures for friends of the Boss. That’s the Chicago way.
The greens won’t get their way on MTR, and will find that the “death trains” keep rolling as long as is necessary to ensure that the administration doesn’t get blamed for causing an energy crisis. In fact, they will find that almost all “green” legislation is aimed at maximising tax revenues and extending government power rather than actually changing how people live. After all, that kind of thing can cost votes.
So there will certainly be escalation. The greens will become more and more frustrated by public scepticism and political cynicism. Most will not be willing to go beyond peaceful protest, but a minority will escalate to non-violent “direct action”. A minority of that group will escalate to violent intimidation. A minority of that group will form an echo chamber and convince themselves that literally anything is justified in the name of their cause.
Ray (12:19:51) :
Opps, sorry Charles the moderator… English is not my first language and at times, one can slip out.
Reply: Nothing to apologize for. I normally am unconcerned with grammar and spelling. However, the misuse of insure is one of my personal pet peeves, and to misuse and misspell at the same time just “pushed my buttons” ~ charles the overly sensitive and sometimes ridiculously pedantic moderator.
timetochooseagain (12:09:03) :
Thanks. So am I getting this right: a 3C rise in the example above, would more likely trend to the (10C->14 C and 20C-> 22C) scenario rather than the (10C-> 12C and 20C->24C) picture.
Your explanation makes a lot of sense. If we had a summer of cloud then this would make the nights warmer and the days cooler. I recognise that kind of summer!
So our nights will be less chilly and our days a bit warmer. Doesn’t sound too catastrophic to me.
Your note about possible UHI contamination of lows being a bigger issue than highs was most thought provoking. It certainly adds a new dimension for me as to why the surface station project is so important.
I don’t think he should debate global warming with Hansen, he should concentrate on why we should all be sceptics.
The failure of peer review.
Predefined outcomes, rather than letting the science lead you where it goes.
The bias of funding.
The appalling secrecy of the climate community.
The general lack of debate and claims that ‘the science is settled’.
The divergence of real data from models and lack of acknowledgement or explanation.
The attempts to completely cover up the warm periods in the past.
The admitted exaggerations.
Trumpeting global warming catastrophe claims and then quietly withdrawing them.
Allowing the public to confuse fact from fiction (movies).
The biased reporting.
The failure of the precautionary principle to consider alternative disadvantages.
Ignoring completely the benefits of global warming.
Our very real need for energy.
The total lack of reliable alternatives (esp when the Green community are against nuclear too)
The huge amounts of money already wasted on vanity power production.
The inability of climate change proponents to live up to their ideals.
Carbon credits – using your wealth to buy someone else’s CO2 allowance rather than actually cutting back.
How can you trust anyone who supports that mess?
“rosalind (10:20:17) :
Can’t I be against mountain top removal, a hideous insult to the environment, and also be a climate skeptic?”
Well this time Jimbo has got the sceptics running scared, hasn’t he? Nobody likes the idea of mountain top removal, nor of ripping up Wyoming earth with open cast mining. I see this as Hansen’s trump card up his sleeve on the eve of the EPA deadline, and a sign he’s losing the argument.
Can we take some comfort here? http://www.climaticoanalysis.org/post/security-trumps-environment-as-obama-gives-green-light-to-us-consumption-of-alberta’s-oil/
Never forget that Obama is first and foremost a politician. As such he cannot afford to turn a deaf ear to Hansen, neither can he afford to wreck the economy.
I for one am not downhearted yet.
Debates like this remind of the old chestnut about wresting with a pig. You both get dirty but the pig likes it. Hansen and his ilk have abandoned reasoned discourse but love publicity. Did anyone catch The Goracle’s smug expression when speaking to congress? He laughed off any real questions and ignored the holes in his theory confident that the main stream media would cover his warts and he was correct for vast majority of the media. I am just not sure about going into a debate where “being correct” counts for very little.
West Virginia has Zero long-term warming. Using the IPCC-favored start date of the 1970s shows warming, but using the long-term data since 1895 there has been ZERO.
See: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/WestVirginia.htm for graphs of WV annual and summer temperatures
Gino Danno Bruno,
When the AGW extremists turn off the coal, the locals willjust warm up a few more meth labs.
The survivors will move out and move on.
Hank (11:51:31) :
MTR ?!? Do we really need an acronym for mountain top removal?
I’m with you. I was wondering what ‘MTR’ was.
I come from a small town called Aberfeldy in Perthshire, Scotland. There is a huge barite deposit in the mountains to the north which has been mined for about 30 years now and is nearing exhaustion. (Barite is used primarily in the oil drilling industry as an additive to drilling muds.) There is an even larger deposit of barite a few miles to the east for which permission to mine has not been granted because of ‘the damage the mining will do to the environment’. Note that in the 30 years since mining started at Aberfeldy have been absolutely no environmental problems.
The green powers that are would rather the mining be done in somewhere like Morocco (there are huge barite deposits there for example), where there are no controls on environmental issues, than in the UK where the controls are extremely strict.
I think that ‘NIMBY’ is the appropriate term.
Alan Cheetham (12:53:52) :
Looks like West-Virginia is situated at the Nexus of climate change. Maybe we should move all those poor people threaten by AGW there.
I suspect a combination of Google journalism and politically-correct sub-editing.
“He also believed that there was a link between solar activity and the earth’s climate, although he never argued that there was an association with global warming.”
“It is now believed that solar activity has a real climatic effect, although smaller than that produced by anthropogenic greenhouse gases.”
Why that stuff needs weaving in there beats me. Bad show.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/science-obituaries/5595750/Jack-Eddy.html
I’ve just had a look at the link from the top of the post: ‘It’s getting hot in here’. I see it’s from the ‘Youth Climate Movement’.
Oh dear. Oh dearie dearie me.
I don’t know about you but I was a bit of a twat when I was a youth and I thought I could change the planet. At least then I didn’t have a blogosphere to air my adolescent and immature views and on which I would no doubt be looking back upon now with extreme embarrassment.
An interesting situation, this debate. The problem is is that the enviromental movement ascribes to nature an instrinsic value; that its pristine appearance is a value in itself, without defining the basis of ‘value’. At some point it comes down to this – the coal will be removed either through mine shafts or mountain top removal (with later restoration). In either case there will be subsistence.
[snip]
I hope the debate goes along the lines of showing where Hansen has been wrong and where there is significant doubt. Trying to promote any kind of alternate theory is fraught with it’s own set of doubts. The key is Hansen and his cronies are pushing an agenda driven, not by science, but by questionable models and questionable data.
Leon Brozyna (13:16:18) : Especially considering that the nature of “value” has been subject to many philosophical and economic debates. I subscribe to marginal utility personally but not even the “opposite” (Marx’s “labor theory”) side of the spectrum could justify the apparent green definition, which appears to be the logic of a small child…pretty=valuable.
Steve (Paris) (13:10:55) :
I suspect a combination of Google journalism and politically-correct sub-editing.
Political correctness offends me deeply.
Mr Blankenship should ensure the debate takes place in an enclosed, darkened auditorium, then at some point in the proceedings have the power disconnected.
That should demonstrate quite clearly the future without coal.
Who said rapid mountain “errosion” was bad for life? Cutting down mountain tops is just a form of accelerated errosion, right?
Take a look at this article: Erosion of vast mountain range led to explosion of early life
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/2204/erosion-vast-mountains-led-explosion-life
“Now experts have found evidence that this early evolutionary explosion came about because of rapid erosion led to a massive influx of nutrients into the ancient oceans.”
It might not be all that bad for life for coal companies to release all those minerals back in nature. Just like CO2, plants need minerals to grow, produce oxygen, fix CO2, etc.
Bring it on. Accountant? No problem/ They are used to making pitches to securities analysts and bankers. They also and I emphais9ize do NOY get allowance for forcasts and projections. it is against the law. Hansen will toss out all kinds of future numbers and an accountant can shred that tactic in a minute.
All Blankenship has to do is display how far Hansen past forecasts exhibited a variance from actual. Accountants are up there with psycholigists as baloney detectors. In fact, the total collapse of hansen can be done in the form of 3-4 questions that will take away all doubt that hansens arguments are emotions he twists facts to defend.
Hansen has it all to lose. All we have to do is look up his history and demand he defend why he was so far off the mark in a forecast.
Has Hansen ever made a forecast off by more than 8 degrees?? YUP
If he has, is he admitting he is known to err? Yep
So how can we believe his model has no error when his past forecasts always have various errors?
By the way, our planet is loaded with volcanos. They are mountain top removal events. God designed it that way.
The difference is the mass extent of the deposition of volcanic ash. Shall we declare volcanos illegal?
Ray-Can I give you my PayPal account? Move where is the question.
Seriously, Massey has done a fairly good job of restoring some of its “top mining” sites as well as their strip operations-it does take several years afterward to become “aesthetically pleasing”. Blankenship will probably have some slides of those and he seems to be pretty up to date on comparitive costs of wind/solar vs coal/Not gas.
nice comment at the end of the page 😉
http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2009/06/17/get-arrested-with-james-hansen-to-stop-mtr/
[snip – sorry, for your own good]
Hansens’ argument is that if there is a problem, shut everything down.
Don’t allow anyone to do something different, change the way they do business.
Like they did to our forests after fires. No salvage logging. All the fuel left kept acting like kindling to take even more sustainable yield forest off the market.
Nobody is allowed to do anything but go to green rallies and pretend they got there without producing any Toxic CO2.
No solutions allowed.
“We must just inssure that there will be people from both sides of the issue in the room.
Reply: Gak! ~ ensure~ charles the “button just got pushed” moderator”
If they’re both going to be in the same room, a little insurance might be in order….
Reply: Noted ~ charles the moderator
You can’t throw whole mountaintops into streamsbeds any more than the Hydraulic Mines filled California’s rivers with debris and got eventually shut down. W.Virginia needs a coal industry for it’s economy, but it doesn’t need coal mining totally shut down in hard times.
Which is no doubt Hansen’s aim.
And the people of W. Virginia will be stuck both with a crippled economy and a mess that won’t get taken care of because the operators will simply leave.
Joe Appalachia is the one who will get hurt.
Hansen and the Greenies won’t be sticking around to help out after the coal operators are gone.
Manfred (14:23:28) :
nice comment at the end of the page 😉
http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2009/06/17/get-arrested-with-james-hansen-to-stop-mtr/
I checked it out – liked it – and added my own. What would Shakespeare have said?
“To moderate? Or not to moderate? That is the question!”
He’s got to be able to rebuff the accusation of raping the landscape, by explaining that modern mining operations, which incidentally are still essential for every natural resource from cement to steel to aluminium to paint, cosmetics and jewellery, now operate on a policy adhering to and exceeding all mandatory environmental requirements for landscape sensitivity and rehabilitation, with far less impact on visual amenity than for instance wind farm batteries. And back it up with before and after examples. Then move to the proper debate.
Jimmy Haigh (14:24:37) :
I’ll drink to that !
Actually, I was thinking of sending Gore & Hansen to an Antarctic station. They can come back when the place is fully melted.
After reading up on Don Blankenship today I feel confident that , regardless of the tenor of the debate , he will not be intimidated by either Hanson or a hostile audience . Unfortunately , I have no idea how well informed he is on the science . I would love to be there .
?
Whenever I debate seasoned alarmists (actually, people like me, who are interested laymen, but on the other side of the debate), all I ever hear is the “but it’s peer reviewed science!” line of argument. To be fair I hear this from Schmidt, Gore, Mann and every Scientist who ventures forth with their sanctimonious lecturing. Presumably Hansen will use this line too. It’s hard to argue with in a way, because it’s an argument from authority; if you question the underlying process of review it’s almost as if you’re attacking Science itself. The proponents of AGW are able to cite hundreds, maybe thousands of papers supporting their position in one form or another. I’ve read Wegman and read Steve McIntryre’s blog, so I understand the very serious problems with peer review in Climate Science, but I do worry that without serious, published counter-points in the literature, it’s going to be an uphill struggle for any debater.
“”” RoyFOMR (12:43:12) :
timetochooseagain (12:09:03) :
Thanks. So am I getting this right: a 3C rise in the example above, would more likely trend to the (10C->14 C and 20C-> 22C) scenario rather than the (10C-> 12C and 20C->24C) picture.
Your explanation makes a lot of sense. If we had a summer of cloud then this would make the nights warmer and the days cooler. I recognise that kind of summer!
So our nights will be less chilly and our days a bit warmer. Doesn’t sound too catastrophic to me. “””
Actually RoyFOMR, you have the cart before the horse; you should have said:- If we had a summer of warmer nights and cooler days, this would make the nights cloudier.
It’s the lower surface conditions that form those cloudy nights; not the other way round. Just think how a high cold low pressure lower density cloud, is going to radiate enough IR radiation downwards (half will go upwards), that has to run the gauntlet of an increasingly warm and dense atmosphere full of water vapro and GHGs, that produces an every broadening absorption band, as you go lower, that is going to re-absorb that upper sourced IR, and then re-emit it again (with half going back up), until the multidivided dregs finally reach the ground with its much higher thermal capacity, and tries to change the temperature of the ground.
Ain’t gonna happen; and least not in any great amount.
The atmosphere is graded in density and temperature to make multiple re-absorption and re-emission cascades preferentially progress upwards, rather than downwards. The broad emission due to collision and Doppler temperature broadening, at ground level radiates upwards (1/2) to a cooler less dense higher atmosphere layer, with a lowere GHG molecular density, and an ever narrowing absorption spectrum as the pressure, and temperature slowly drop.
The ground can easily warm the clouds (and drive them to higher altitudes); much more difficult for those low density cold clouds to heat the ground.
Geiorge
If I read the Green Agenda right, they will not only try to get coal mining shut down entirely, they will also coninue thier efforts by obstructing any attempt at mitigation of the environmental mess, claiming that cleanup is not natural.
And that is the argument I’d hit him with hardest.
It’s already happened on scale to the forests in the Pacific Northwest, much to the dismay of the US Forest Service and the communities devastated by loss of economy and ravaged landscape.
I’ve seen this movie.
Jimmy Haigh (14:24:37) :
[snip – sorry, for your own good]
Fair enough! But Mr R Bateman caught it!
Da da da da da da da da Bateman!
There is a better way to mine coal than Blankenship’s.
There is a better way to study climate than Hansen’s.
As someone observed, this is a Goliath Vs Goliath fight.
America seems to have more than it’s share of demagogues in powerful positions.
I think gold and copper mining is many times worse than coal extraction, yet we don’t hear about that. You can be sure they will never lobby to shut down gold mines since it would completely destroy the economy of all countries.
http://www.nodirtygold.org/dirty_golds_impacts.cfm
rbateman (14:49:05) :
Jimmy Haigh (14:24:37) :
I’ll drink to that !
Actually, I was thinking of sending Gore & Hansen to an Antarctic station. They can come back when the place is fully melted.
They could, in fact, sail back on Al Gore’s yacht!
(This expedition was fuelled by renewable energy sources. No empty or non-empty oil drums, which were not used to fuel this expedition, were left on the rapidly melting ice (unlike Caitlin!) to cause untold havoc on the cascading, plummeting, lemmings-being-pushed-off-a-cliff-by-Disney (allegedly)-documentary-makers, Arctic polar bear population during the making of this Antarctic real-life documentary.
Don’t worry folks, If Hansen and the other scaremongers
would like to close coal mining, let’s happen:
“let’s give ’em freeze”, they wiil be the first ones, complaining.
We, OTOH, can try to be prepared. And when they are knocking
at the door, barn it.
Unfortunately, I am sceptic, that we can avoid
the “Worst of Folliness” – stupidity has to run full circle
until it’s exhausted. Only then, reason has it’s chance.
“When the stupid’s are running, don’t get into their way.
When they stumbled and fell, you still can help them up
and steering them to running in the right direction.”
I checked out Blankenship on Google. Looks like a huge idiot. Probably why Hansen agreed to debate him. Blankenship comes across like the worst kind of corrupt capitalist stereotype.
Personally, I think Hansen gave up his claim to impartiality along time ago. But I do agree that Mountain Top removal needs to stop. There is way to much pollution that takes place as a result and it is destroying the beauty of the mountains of West Virginia.
The only reason to mine coal at the top of a mountain is because there is coal at the top of the said mountain! That’s what rocks do. Coal is a rock. Sometimes it outcrops on the surface but, like most rocks, it’s usually underground. Usually there are rocks at the tops of mountains and occasionally the rocks there are coal. Sorry for being flippant. But… For the benefit of the AGW brigade….
Being, as I am, from Scotland, with its 284 ‘Munros’ of 3000ft and higher (http://www.munromagic.com/), I’ve seen lots of things at the tops of mountains. Usually litter left by the bearded-woolly jumper-folk music loving-finger in the ear-brigade.
Especially lots of cigarrette butts.
Which was always a mystery to me: why every green I’ve ever met – smokes or smoked?
David Segesta (09:53:21) :
“Sounds like a bad idea to me. Blankenship is an accountant not a scientist.”
I wonder why Hansen agreed to debate him.
NIMBY
This is what people say when they really mean NIMNY – Not In My Neighbor’s Yard…. (because I might upset me if I might possibly see it from my backyard).
I just hope the debate is video recorded. Its been a long time since Hansen has faced anything like proper open debate.
Britannic no-see-um (14:45:56) :
He’s got to … explain that modern mining operations now operate on a policy adhering to and exceeding all mandatory environmental requirements for landscape sensitivity and rehabilitation, with far less impact on visual amenity than for instance wind farm batteries. And back it up with before and after examples.
Not even Saatchi and Saatchi could make this guy’s mining operations look good. Let’s face it, open cast mining is an environmental disater wherever it’s practised. Blowing the tops off mountains and filling the valley heads with the spoil is… well… words fail me.
I’m not for sending anyone to their doom, only sending the agenda to where it belongs.
The end does not justify the means, else we are no better than the doomsayers.
Hansen & Gore can survive in Antarctic stations proving thier melting case.
If they cannot, they can throw in the towel.
The Greenies have some explaining to do, likewise, for the results of thier own agenda.
The folks in W.V. deserve nothing less.
I am interested to see what the locals think fo all this
Sorry for being sort of off topic but this is really funny.
[yes but its just a bit too much OT, sorry. – Anthony ]
Hansen…Sir Hansen????/
confusion is the famous man.
“I just want to be alone” (Greta Garbo)
Steve (Paris) (12:37:39) :
From the article :
“Maldives property owners are so confident the sea is receding, they are building a number of upmarket seafront hotels.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/5599916/Polar-Bears-are-not-dying-out-say-scientists-in-book-on-popular-scare-stories.html
Hey maybe Blankenship can get Christopher Moncton to step in as his surrogate!
Ray (13:58:00) : It might not be all that bad…
No, no, Ray! We’re supposed to believe that man has damaged the earth beyond repair. We are supposed to feel guilty. 😉
It occurs to me that if Hansen is arrested, he won’t be able to make it to the debate …
don’t tarp me bro (14:04:12) : …our planet is loaded with volcanos. They are mountain top removal events…the mass extent of the deposition of volcanic ash. Shall we declare volcanos illegal?”
No, no, tarp! Where’s your obligatory guilt! 😉
rbateman (14:42:33) : “W.Virginia needs a coal industry for it’s economy, but it doesn’t need coal mining totally shut down in hard times.
Which is no doubt Hansen’s aim.
And the people of W. Virginia will be stuck both with a crippled economy and a mess that won’t get taken care of because the operators will simply leave.
Joe Appalachia is the one who will get hurt.
Hansen and the Greenies won’t be sticking around to help out after the coal operators are gone.”
It looks like James Hansen isn’t taking the time to think about others.
James Hansen—a non-thinker for the ages.
“GlennB (15:40:25) :
I wonder why Hansen agreed to debate him.”
Because he’s easy meat (I’ve just googled him).
Steve (Paris) (12:07:38) : Mine/drill or just close down the US and beg China to send the welfare checks
Nicely put!
Great idea! Let’s kill people unnecessarily for aesthetic purposes!
Hansen is a computer programmer not a climatologist. He should make iPhone games instead of trying to be a Biblical style prophet with a keyboard and mouse.
Bill Ryan (16:50:01) :
Hey maybe Blankenship can get Christopher Moncton to step in as his surrogate!
I’m sure they are already on the phone
I don’t see any solar cells or wind turbines on the roof of GISS.
But I do see the restaurant from Seinfeld on the ground floor of the GISS’ building (no kidding).
I can see Hansen getting arrested and then finding out at trial, that Hansen’s supercomputers use a mountain of coal-fired electricity each year.
That would make a great Seinfeld episode and they wouldn’t have to go very far to film it – just down the elevator powered-by-electricity-from-coal.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/about/
Hansen is a disgrace to NASA and the normal citizens of the USA. The way things are going, we may end up like the situation in Iran and marching on Washington
towards the bottom of the following link David Evans makes some usefull points which could dent hansen’s position.
http://sciencespeak.com/MissingSignature.pdf
The Money Connection
So what is going on here? In time-honored journalistic fashion, follow the money:
The anti-AGW spend is around US$2 million per year. It comes primarily from big-oil and skeptic organizations such as Heartland.
The pro-AGW spend is about US$3 billion per year, about 1,000 times larger. It mainly comes from big government spending on pro-AGW climate research and on promoting the AGW message, and from the Greens.
Emissions trading by the finance industry was US$120 billion in 2008. This will grow to over US$1 trillion by 2012, and carbon emission permit trading will be the largest ―commodity‖ market in the world—larger than oil, steel, rice, wheat etc. Typically the finance industry might pocket 1% – 5% of the turnover, so even now their financial interest matches the pro-AGW spend and soon it will vastly exceed it.
Presumably therefore it is the finance industry that is driving the carbon emission permits agenda. It is not that the ―science is settled‖ (a fine piece of anti-science propaganda!), but that the science is simply irrelevant now because big money interests are in control.
OT
Today was the hottest day ever for parts of Florida.
http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&issuedby=MFL&product=PNS&format=CI&version=1&glossary=1
Aron (17:52:16) :
“Hansen is a computer programmer not a climatologist.”
That’s quite debatable! Have your ever seen the FORTRAN listings for GISTEMP or Model E? If not, go here…
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/sources/
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/
Gino Danno Bruno (12:01:26) :
I’ll bet that one went right over her head.
I don’t see much good that can come out of this… Google blankenship speech and listen to some clips… I didn’t see much in the way of a decent argument other than he doesn’t believe in it. Hansen could win this unless he has some seasoned realists preparing a scientific presentation…
Bill Illis (11:26:10) :
Why would any skeptic organization agree to allow the alarmist contingent set the agenda, by giving the opposition the right to pick the skeptics’ own debater?
Does the skeptic side get to name their opponents? OK, then let’s have Al Gore front and center. Otherwise, each side should choose who it wants. Anything else is shenanigans.
What is human life worth? According to many of the environmental people, humans are not worth much. But I guess mountains are worth a lot more than people, too. Open pit mines which were originally mountains are just a tad safer than having human burrow through the insides of said mountains. They used to have slaves work mines, during most of human history, because it was such dangerous work that nobody else would do it, no matter what the salary. So now, in our modern age, we still hold that mountains are more important than humans, especially human miners.
I personally think that mines should be open pit, whenever possible. Just my humble opinion.
i and my wife are of Appalachian coal miner stock.Her Pop worked in a mine in Kentucky,I had family in mines in West Va. and Pennsylvania. We are the Saudi Arabia
of Coal.People like Hansen do not want happy prosperous Hillbillies _or_ anyone else for that matter.He needs to debate Monckton…
Agree w/Janice. Very few mountains are made of coal. That’s what power companies are looking for. Coal. Anyone who is unfamiliar with West Virginia may not realize it, but there are tens of thousands of similar ‘mountains.’ The very few that contain large amounts of coal are rare, and thus are overly photographed and reported.
And the EPA — closely scrutinized by the enviros’ lawyers — makes certain that all the i’s are dotted and all the t’s are crossed. When mining operations at any particular location are completed, the environment is restored, as close as humanly possible, to its natural setting. [Certainly much closer to nature than any environmentalist’s back yard.]
These 0bama children in the “Youth Climate Movement” know absolutely nothing about West Virginia. They are pawns in the game; useful fools to be discarded when convenient.
Wikipedia sure does a hatchet job on this gentlemen but he gets guillotined on this ABC segment on YouTube:
I think there is likely to be many more comments like this one which you can find after the You tube excerpt:
I saw Blakenship speak at WVU. He’s an evil, evil man, who reminds me of the old city bosses from the early 20th century. This guy doesn’t care that he’s killing West Virginia’s people, environment, or mountians, all he wants is to line his pockets. I’m so glad that ABC ran this news story even after their reporter was attacked. I hope they continue to cover the awful politics of the coal companies like Massey. DOWN WITH COAL!
Know nothing about the man myself but from what I have seen, I would sure prefer Christopher Monckton in my corner.
On Florida, yes it seems the high pressure center is sitting in the worst possible spot for Florida heat, smack in the middle of the gulf according to some weathermaps, it’s not sitting over Texas like usual.
Or we can use that to make a scare-fest statement saying that life in the Northern Hemisphere will end in a massive inferno in a few weeks, can’t cut back now, watch for your local waterways to boil by next year and watch steel melt on concrete O.O
Also, how much of the South Florida heat compared to the 1940’s is from UHI and giant condo towers blocking any breeze from the sea, there’s tons of condo towers, tons of concrete around airports, and tons of surfaces for heat to radiate off of in more crowded areas.
Frank K. (18:37:06) : You are both wrong. He’s an astronomer.
Aron says:
It’s a curious feature of the internet that people with God-knows-what credentials can critique the credentials of someone like James Hansen. Here is Hansen’s CV: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/cv_hansen_200702.pdf
Among the highlights: He is a PhD physicist who has studied radiative transfer in planetary atmospheres for over 35 years and global climate issues for almost that long. He is the recipient of numerous scientific awards and honors including being elected to the National Academy of Sciences, being a Fellow of the AGU, and winning a trifecta of awards from the major relevant professional societies: the American Geophysical Union, the American Physical Society, and the American Meteorological Society. (He won the AGU’s Revelle Medal which is awarded annually and “recognizes outstanding accomplishments or contributions toward the understanding of the Earth’s atmospheric processes, including its dynamics, chemistry, and radiation; and toward the role of the atmosphere, atmosphere-ocean coupling, or atmosphere-land coupling in determining the climate, biogeochemical cycles, or other key elements of the climate system”. He won the APS’s Leo Szilard Lectureship Award, given annually “to recognize outstanding accomplishments by physicists in promoting the use of physics for the benefit of society in such areas as the environment, arms control, and science policy .” And, he won the AMS’s Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal which “is presented to individuals on the basis of outstanding contributions to the understanding of the structure or behavior of the atmosphere. It represents the highest honor that the Society can bestow upon an atmospheric scientist.”)
You may not like Hansen, his political views, or even his scientific views, but I think it shows quite a lot of arrogance to disparage his credentials!
This is a bit off topic but the analogy to Hansen and Climate is unmistakable. Imagine a concensus model in use for 25 years that is suddenly discovered to be wrong!
ScienceDaily (June 22, 2009) — The largest animals ever to have walked the face of the earth may not have been as big as previously thought, reveals a paper published June 21 in the Zoological Society of London’s Journal of Zoology.
Scientists have discovered that the original statistical model used to calculate dinosaur mass is flawed, suggesting dinosaurs have been oversized.
Widely cited estimates for the mass of Apatosaurus louisae, one of the largest of the dinosaurs, may be double that of its actual mass (38 tonnes vs. 18 tonnes).
“Paleontologists have for 25 years used a published statistical model to estimate body weight of giant dinosaurs and other extraordinarily large animals in extinct lineages. By re-examining data in the original reference sample, we show that the statistical model is seriously flawed and that the giant dinosaurs probably were only about half as heavy as is generally believed” says Gary Packard from Colorado State University.
The new predictions have implications for numerous theories about the biology of dinosaurs, ranging from their energy metabolism to their food requirements and to their modes of locomotion.
There is little to be gained from this debate. One man will be portrayed as wanting to destroy mountains and the other as having dedicated his life to saving mankind. Unless Blankenship is full of surprises, he’s going to be trounced and further demonized at the same time.
But maybe, just maybe, people will be asking why a world renowned climate scientist is debating an accountant instead of another scientist. I.e., why go after easy pickings instead of debating a real challenger?
He’s an astronomer.
Which makes it even worse. He should know about the changes in the outer planets.
He should also know that for every time a factor with inherent uncertainties is inserted into his model in a simplified form, the uncertainty of the outcome is compounded.
Model output should read 0 C change += 8 C for all it’s worth.
rosalind (10:20:17) :
Can’t I be against mountain top removal, a hideous insult to the environment, and also be a climate skeptic?
Yes.
Part of my grandparent’s farm was ripped up by one of the sons (my uncle) operating a dragline for the company that owned the mineral rights. These issues are old and complex. A good read is “Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area” by Caudill, now available on Amazon. You will not solve this issue here, now, or in the immediate future.
Let’s not get sidetracked. Any mining whether for coal, copper, iron ore, or uranium, or wind farms, or hydro dams, or highways, or drilling in pristine natural areas and so on are issues unto themselves and all can be objected to. They are also issues that relate to national security, for how can we be secure if we are dependent on our enemies for our basic necessities?
But the main issue at the moment is our government’s assumption that CO2 is a problem and the driver of draconian policies that won’t solve the problem they claim it is. They want control of the economy and the culture so they can take the wealth and manipulate society in the manner they find attractive.
I have suggested before, I think Hansen hates coal because of something in his past – maybe he lived by RR tracks carrying coal trains. I don’t know what this current protest is about but it is not about climate science.
Adam (18:36:09) : Today was the hottest day ever for parts of Florida.
“Floridatrend: It’s Hot But Don’t Blame Global Warming”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/10/floridatrend-its-hot-but-dont-blame-global-warming/
John F. Hultquist (20:19:40) :
I have suggested before, I think Hansen hates coal because of something in his past – maybe he lived by RR tracks carrying coal trains.
Or maybe that’s what he found in his stocking every Christmas.
Douglas DC (19:11:21) : i and my wife are of Appalachian coal miner stock.
This talk of coal mining and NASA puts me in mind of the movie “October Sky”, a true story (for the most part) set in Coalwood, West Virginia.
“You may not like Hansen, his political views, or even his scientific views, but I think it shows quite a lot of arrogance to disparage his credentials!”
Hansen disparages his own credentials, by:
1. Attempting to use those credentials to promote political stunts, with a particular fondness for “civil disobedience” (harassment, trespassing, etc.).
2. Choosing to debate an accountant instead of a peer. How many times has he refused to engage in public debate with other scientists? Now he steps up to have a “science” debate with a coal company exec.?
Hansen needs no help from anyone here dragging his reputation in the mud. I don’t think he cares anyways, now that he apparently has an adoring army of youth climate activists.
Me, I’m not impressed to the same degree as are you. From the linked article:
\\
CITY/CLIMATE SITE OLD RECORD AND DATE NEW RECORD SET JUNE 22 2009
———————————————————————
MIAMI INTL AP 94 1998 AND 1992 98 NEW DAILY RECORD
FT LAUDERDALE/
HOLLYWOOD INTL 96 1956 100 NEW DAILY RECORD
98 JUNE 21 2009 100 NEW MONTHLY RECORD
100 AUG 4 1944 100 /TIED/ ALL TIME RECORD
PALM BEACH INTL 95 2004 AND 1992 96 NEW DAILY RECORD
TEMPERATURE RECORDS EXTEND BACK TO 1895 AT MIAMI, TO 1912 AT FORT
LAUDERDALE, AND TO 1888 FOR THE WEST PALM BEACH AREA.
NOTE…THE FORT LAUDERDALE RECORD OF 100 DEGREES ON AUGUST 4 1944 IS
SOMEWHAT DUBIOUS BECAUSE OF INSTRUMENT EXPOSURE AND BECAUSE ALMOST
NO OTHER SOUTH FLORIDA REPORTING STATION REACHED 100 DEGREES ON THAT
DATE. HOWEVER, THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT MANY SOUTH FLORIDA LOCATIONS
REACHED 100 DEGREES ON JULY 21 1942, EVEN THOUGH THE RECORD FOR FORT
LAUDERDALE FOR THAT MONTH IS INCOMPLETE.
THE FORT LAUDERDALE HOLLYWOOD INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TEMPERATURE
ACTUALLY TOUCHED 101 DEGREES FOR A FEW SECONDS JUST AFTER 4 PM EDT
BUT DID NOT HOLD IT LONG ENOUGH TO BE CONSIDERED THE MAXIMUM
TEMPERATURE FOR THE DAY.
THE DATE OF JULY 21 1942 IS LIKELY THE PREVIOUS HOTTEST DAY EVER FOR
MAINLAND SOUTH FLORIDA, AS MANY LOCATIONS REACHED OR EXCEEDED 100
DEGREES. THE FOLLOWING IS A LIST OF REPORTED MAXIMUM TEMPERATURES
FOR MAINLAND SOUTH FLORIDA ON THAT DATE…
JULY 21 1942 MAX TEMPS
FORT LAUDERDALE 100 EST
FORTY MILE BEND 99
HIALEAH 100
HOMESTEAD 100
HYPOLUXO 98
LOXAHATCHEE 101
MIAMI BEACH 98
MIAMI INTL AP 100
MOORE HAVEN 100
NAPLES 96
POMPANO BEACH 100
WEST PALM BEACH 101
$$
//
For one thing, Miami Intl. AP is in fact warmer, 100, on 7/21/42 than on the “new record” day, 98, of 6/22/09. WUWT?
Also, considering the possibility of increasing heat island effects over time at airports, perhaps the “true” Miami Intl. AP area temp. maximum has actually decreased rather significantly from 1942?
The Ft.Lauderdale record is not “new” or “hottest ever”. And the article notes that wind and pressure conditions on 6/22/09 were not usual, preventing the usual cooling.
Where is “West Palm Beach”, 101 in 1942, compared to Palm Beach Intl., 100 in 2009?
Airports, calibrations, words, and so on. I’ve forgotten exactly what that semi-retired Professor of Meterology quoted at WUWT a while back had to say about Florida temps, but it’s probably also relevant.
I have a feeling that this debate won’t be anything to do with climate or science but instead will be pure Enviro-Theatre, politics and propaganda.
This will be a media construct that will make Hanson look good and the fossil fuel industry look bad.
Adam from Kansas (19:43:53) :
See this excellent work done by the man featured in this WUWT thread :
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/10/floridatrend-its-hot-but-dont-blame-global-warming/
J. Peden (20:48:23) : I’ve forgotten exactly what that semi-retired Professor of Meterology quoted at WUWT a while back had to say about Florida temps, but it’s probably also relevant.
Morton D. Winsberg, Florida State University professor emeritus, ref :
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/10/floridatrend-its-hot-but-dont-blame-global-warming/
p.s. I don’t mean to be redundant posting it again. The man did excellent work!
Joel – I must agree with you, that Hansen’s credentials are quite impressive.
However, I work within a community that has more PhD’s per capita than anywhere else in the world. I have worked with a lot of PhD’s. And there is nothing worse than a PhD who is just simply wrong. They can create all manner of reasons for why they are right, and will not listen to any discussions on why they are wrong. There are very very few modest PhD’s.
Credentials can give a person credibility, but they can’t guarantee that the person is right, nor that they can write good code. I would prefer that Dr. Hansen return to the academic role of experimentation and writing scientific papers, rather than be a rabble-rouser. He would be of much more value to the scientific community if he would stay within his area of expertise, which is theorizing about climate.
“Joel Shore (19:55:24) :
Aron says:
Hansen is a computer programmer not a climatologist. He should make iPhone games instead of trying to be a Biblical style prophet with a keyboard and mouse.
It’s a curious feature of the internet that people with God-knows-what credentials can critique the credentials of someone like James Hansen. Here is Hansen’s CV: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/cv_hansen_200702.pdf
Among the highlights: He is a PhD physicist who has studied radiative transfer in planetary atmospheres for over 35 years and global climate issues for almost that long. He is the recipient of numerous scientific awards and honors including being elected to the National Academy of Sciences, being a Fellow of the AGU, and winning a trifecta of awards from the major relevant professional societies: the American Geophysical Union, the American Physical Society, and the American Meteorological Society. (He won the AGU’s Revelle Medal which is awarded annually and “recognizes outstanding accomplishments or contributions toward the understanding of the Earth’s atmospheric processes, including its dynamics, chemistry, and radiation; and toward the role of the atmosphere, atmosphere-ocean coupling, or atmosphere-land coupling in determining the climate, biogeochemical cycles, or other key elements of the climate system”. He won the APS’s Leo Szilard Lectureship Award, given annually “to recognize outstanding accomplishments by physicists in promoting the use of physics for the benefit of society in such areas as the environment, arms control, and science policy .” And, he won the AMS’s Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal which “is presented to individuals on the basis of outstanding contributions to the understanding of the structure or behavior of the atmosphere. It represents the highest honor that the Society can bestow upon an atmospheric scientist.”)
You may not like Hansen, his political views, or even his scientific views, but I think it shows quite a lot of arrogance to disparage his credentials!”
So what? His credentials have nothing to do with condoning criminal activities. Any other person, or group of people, acting in a similar way would be up before the judge and would receive convictions. Notice that didn’t happen to a bunch of criminals in England recently.
I don’t like American foreign policy, but I don’t condone anyone flying aircraft in to buildings and loading a rental truck with fertiliser and diesel fuel to make my point.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/cv_hansen_200702.pdf
rbateman (20:17:57) :
He’s an astronomer.
his cv is above
Actually some say astrophysicist. I say more like astrologer as in sorcery.
Actually some physics questions come to mind for a debate. It would be easy to debate him by using his own internal contradictions and his emotional arguments by which he violates some basic foundations of physics. All you have to do with people like him is get them wound up and then their wheels fall off. Algore won’t debate because he endangers himself.
For one thing, Miami Intl. AP is in fact warmer, 100, on 7/21/42 than on the “new record” day, 98, of 6/22/09. WUWT?
Elementary. Omit the fact that the record you just proclaimed is only for the last 50 years.. That way you can guarantee more new records. Nobody will ever know.
Nothing new in cherry picking the timeslice. Besides all that, when one part of the nation is shivering, it’s a good bet some other place is roasting. Only now, Florida isn’t roasting like it did in 1942.
Speaking of disparaging credentials…
Let’s look at what’s happening to Richard Lindzen. He is probably the most prestigious professor of meteorology, and atmospheric physicist in the world. Is he treated that way?
bio :
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen.htm
James Hansen should be anxious to debate Richard Lindzen and not a coal company executive with question marks in his past….. shouldn’t he? It would be different that way. He wouldn’t be shooting fish in a barrel if he faced Richard Lindzen.
Here is a mini debate between Richard Lindzen and Bill Nye :
I’m trying to submit my comments to the EPA on the greenhouse gas endangerment thing but when I go to http://www.regulations.gov I come to a search page rather than a submissions page. What’s with that? … This is important! The EPA needs to know what happened on the night of June 4, 1859!
Notice the sly shot at our credentials that arguably makes the comment totally hypocritical. The “astronomer” snark all started because of the attack’s on skeptics not being “climate scientists”-which is funny, as cs is an interdisciplinary field. I know of no other such field where input from various disciplines is greeted in such a way. Not even politics (where arguably one’s credentials are a liability rather than an asset).
Joel Shore, what about all the LIES told about my father over on DesmogBlog. I suppose that is ok. The CBC has continually LIED about my father and his being a shill for “big oil”. The LIES about his Climatology degree supposedly being honorary. Suck it up, buttercup. It is your camp that has engaged in the mudslinging for decades. Don’t whine when it happens to your guy. Co2 does not drive climate change and the world is NOT warming catastrophically. This Hansen debate is typical of the AGW side, for they will focus on the coal debate (a small but important aspect) to distract from the central issue of Co2 as a driver. Don King would be proud of Hansen’s choice of opponent.
Show me a coal mine of any flavor that doesn’t look like a disaster area, that’s part of the price of the largest source of energy for electricity production at the moment.
What Hansen and co are trying to do is tie one of the most unsavory aspects of electricity into their web of ecological myths, it’s a good idea as it will give many cult followers a physical crutch to support the burden of the rest of their mythology. The problem is I believe that if push comes to shove people will demand a livelihood and electricity over the rantings of a clown in a safari suit. Unless it’s cattle killin time.
Given the conclusions found in the Synthesis Report of the biggest climate conference of the year
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/files/synthesis-report-web.pdf
I can understand why some people feel some urgency. The surface temperature and heat content of oceans is now even above the most pessimistic IPCC projections, and Greenland is melting rapidly. In total contradiction to what has been said here and there, the global temperature is just as predicted by the IPCC projections also. The graph on page 14 is a sort of a summary of the local projections.
Environmental Fear Factors still burning the midnight oil I see.
joel, where we may agree is,
that climate science is a rather primitive branch of science, with poor or non existent discussion, very poor data management and quality control, widespread poor statistical skills, a non functioning review process, massive political and activist influence and hence the perfect playground for 3rd class hockey players. Having this said, I would agree, that J. Hansen is a climate scientist.
Yes, “side track” is Hansen’s goal here I believe. Man-Made Global Warming is about CO2 and temperature and predictions of world-wide doom, not Mountain Top Removal. The latter conflict (long on-going in WV before “global warming” and “climate change” were in fashion) being adopted by Hansen simply proves that Hansen is not at first a scientist, but an environmental extremist. His credentials cannot make bad or inaccurate temperature data go away.
Indeed, as mentioned somewhere above, even if accepted as accurate data there has overall been zero yearly mean temperature rise in the last 100 years in WV. See “Observed Climate Change and the Negligible Global Effect of Greenhouse-gas Emission Limits in the State of West Virginia” at http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/west_va_climate_change.pdf
Considering that Hansen’s beloved temperature gauges in WV are all sitting in less-than-good locations (for instance, there’s the required, building, concrete, air conditioner and barbecue near the temperature gauge at the Glenville, WV water treatment plant http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=40076), I humbly suggest that over the last 100+ years the temperature has possibly trended down in rural WV, i.e., the USHCN gauges and the artificial heat sources around them may have hidden a long-term cooling.
It is my understanding that all the active USHCN stations in WV have been surveyed, while the remainders have been closed in the last 20 (or so) years and are as-yet unchecked. However, after what Mr. Watt’s showed in Hawaii, you never know until checking.
WV being “the Nexus of climate change” (mentioned somewhere above as well) is right on. I’ve always thought of the state as the ultimate demolition derby smack down in the the Man-Made Global Warming debate. Here are some reasons why: It is a rural state in the middle of North, South, East, and West of this chunk of America, it produces much of the county’s coal and has for the last century PLUS has lots of coal-fired power plants supplying power to out of state; parts of the state have been ravaged by 50 years of strip mining and mountain top removal mining (and 130+ years of deep mining), but other parts are absolutely beautiful (most of state is forested, and a large part of the state is National Forest); and, it has an eastern border just 80 miles from Washington DC where cap and trade law is being considered that could demolish the state’s finances.
This time, it will be extremely hard hit (like no other hit in its history) made by the Man-Made Global Warming hoax, as for the 1.8 million people the major business tax base will be lost, mining and related jobs will be lost, funding for infrastructure, services, parks, etc. could collapse–all the while the increasing cost of energy for homes and cars will leave the already large portion of low-paid (by then unemployed) and aged (retired) population with…with what? Who knows, but there’s no good plan in the foreseeable future for this state and its people.
Yet there sit the USHCN gauges, providing the temperature readings which so much of this debate is about, through Hansen’s eyes the accurate scientific instruments bringing in data from afar as representatives of the rural landscape, but in reality as messed up as those in urban sprawls–just as in need of Hansen’s “adjustments” and “fixes”. There in WV sit some of the best representatives of how this whole “Man Mad Global Warming” hypothesis has been foisted upon us by radical environmentalism making its way into science and government. Bad data collection, you know it, but you can’t admit a mistake, so you’ve got to keep making it worse. The best you can do when the mean temperature hasn’t changed in WV in 100 years…tie to the fight against surface mining techniques.
And, I say that as an anti-mountain top removal, former (I guess? Am I banned from the group?) environmentalist. Now I just say “conservationist”.
Blankenship should show a picture of a temperature gauge on the roof at Winfield Lock and Dam to the people of WV during the debate. I don’t care where you are from, from China, to Philadelphia to a hollow in WV, you can easily understand how a temperature gauge works and that putting it near asphalt or buildings, or on roofs, etc., screws-up the readings. There are reasons the government have their own requirements for placement, as illustrated by the work of Anthony Watts. The data is not reliable to the extent it needs to be. Plain and simple, period.
This guy Appell is the typical AGW activist blogger.
He has an interesting take on our friend Watts.
http://oregoncatalyst.com/index.php/archives/2415-Global-Warming-No!-It-Is-Now-Called-Climate-Change.html#comments
“It’s funny how Watts likes the data when it supports his point of view, but criticizes it when it doesn’t: http://is.gd/19sD7
And scientists have been looking at any purported UHI for a long time. The IPCC 4AR WG1 says “Studies that have looked at hemispheric and global scales conclude that any urban-related trend is an order of magnitude smaller than decadal and longer time-scale trends evident in the series.”
Also, surface thermometers and satellites do not measure the same thing. The latter measures the “bulk temperature,” which is the average temperature up to about 8 km.
Finally, Watt’s claims are hardly established (or accepted) science and, as far as I know, have not even been submitted to a scientific journal.
#2.1.3.1.1.1.1 David Appell on 2009-06-22 11:49 (Reply)
REPLY: I suppose Appel assumes that knowledge is static, and that I’ve learned nothing of GISS since then. He also fails to note that in the entry he cites, during that period I cited all four global temperature metrics, not just GISS. But I no longer cite GISS. As I said, knowledge is not static. But you can’t please everyone, nor will I try. Appel also doesn’t know how to run a volunteer project. The only way to do so it to provide regular encouraging updates on the progress, which I’ve done on the census as it proceeded. I can’t publish until the data majority is collected, for to do so would heap huge loads of criticism on me (Unless you are JohnV of course at 33% then its OK) for publishing based on a minority sample. Now I have a majority sample, and publication process is beginning. Good things come to those who wait. – Anthony
“Flanagan (22:46:34) :
Given the conclusions found in the Synthesis Report of the biggest climate conference of the year
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/files/synthesis-report-web.pdf
I can understand why some people feel some urgency. The surface temperature and heat content of oceans is now even above the most pessimistic IPCC projections, and Greenland is melting rapidly. In total contradiction to what has been said here and there, the global temperature is just as predicted by the IPCC projections also. The graph on page 14 is a sort of a summary of the local projections.”
The UK had it’s coldest winter in 30 years. The US and Canada are have also experiensed a very cold winter. Snow in Iran, first in 100 years. Snow in China, snow in Saudi Arabia, in June. You wear some searious BS filters in you believe CO2, and only that from human activities, is driving climate warmer.
Appel’s comment about satellites measuring something different than the surface is in fact technically true…but it is very misleading, since rather than show less trend this should make them show more of a trend. That the surface data are contaminated should really be obvious at this point, and yet the denial (and note the naive IPCC quote) of the evidence proceeds on in the circle…
I wonder will he bring the dice?? Im a huge fan of the dice.. hehe.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/nasas-hansen-humans-still-loading-climate-dice/
Personally I have never seen a mine that didnt trash the surrounding area. Ground mines do considerably less apparent damage then a strip mine. But they leave tailing piles and well they get old and dangerous. Mountain top removals must be a lot like what they did to Idaho City here. They trashed the place with water jets, polluted the streams, killed every tree in sight. (gold) Its starting to come back but the place still doesnt look natural. There has to be a fair trade here. Ridge top wind farms arent going to save the mountains either, they are an disaster of their own..
Flanagan, trust me: in 20 years you’ll look back on this stage of your life with the same intense embarassment that some of us feel when we look back on the days of anti-Apartheid, McGuyver, and mullets.
Your proclamation of Greenland melting, IPCC projections being spot-on, and heat content of oceans is absolutely, stunningly incredible.
I have ocean-front property in Kansas that I’ll sell you for a GREAT price…
Of Trofim Lysenko:
You may not like
HansenLysenko, his political views, or even his scientific views, but I think it shows quite a lot of arrogance to disparage his credentials!If possible I’d simply question people’s commitment to their faith in authority.
Scientists say we must use nuclear energy…?
Scientists say GM is safe…?
Then when people add their own caveats about why they trust some scientists and not others, we can begin to add our own questions about how and why some climate scientists may not be correct in their predictions.
Of course, in the end that only leads to more entrenched positions, as it becomes more apparent that AGW believers only believe scientists who are, ethically and politically, “sensitive greenies”, and don’t listen to any scientist who isn’t. In fact they’d happily listen to any celebrity who comes across as a sensitive greenie, over any qualified scientists who doesn’t. That’s the basic accusation when someone is said to be in the “pay of the oil industry”.
Basically there’s a lot about anti-corporations, anti-capitalism, anti-technology, anti-progress, even anti-evolution in the sense that some greenies believe we are a “cancer” on the planet (even though Nature created us).
Nonetheless, let’s ask them about those scientists who say we need GM… and remove their “we’re only listening to peer-reviewed science” fig-leaf.
Flanagan (22:46:34) :
Given the conclusions found in the Synthesis Report of the biggest climate conference of the year
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/files/synthesis-report-web.pdf
I can understand why some people feel some urgency. The surface temperature and heat content of oceans is now even above the most pessimistic IPCC projections, and Greenland is melting rapidly. In total contradiction to what has been said here and there, the global temperature is just as predicted by the IPCC projections also. The graph on page 14 is a sort of a summary of the local projections.
Ocean Heat??? – Flanagan that’s already been debunked. Get in touch with the evidence.
REF: http://climatesci.org/2009/05/05/have-changes-in-ocean-heat-falsified-the-global-warming-hypothesis-a-guest-weblog-by-william-dipuccio/
A rational scientific minded community knows that strip mining an environment endangers habitat and the life around the mining site, this is a given.
Of course in a REAL world, just like a beaver making a dam. You don’t out law beavers because you disagree with them chopping down trees and then dam up rivers for their advantage.
Our amount of human impact? YES, we can work on that!
But this fight has nothing to do with us.
Generally I am very much against any scientist being fired for following an unpopular course. So many breakthroughs in science were made by challenging the known, to find the unknown. HOWEVER, James has pushed that so far past rational that maybe he needs a reality check.
Flanigan
Please refer to the Blackboard for a better description of why your comments about the synthesis report are wrong based on the recent data and IPCC’s own standards of measurement. Your assertions and that report don’t hold much weight in light of the evidence.
Thanks
Edward
Appel who?
Excuse me, but this “report that doesn’t hold much weight” is the summary of the largest gathering of climate specialists in the world. So, sending links to non-reviewed blabla on some blog seems, a least, ridiculous. Anything more consistent, like a recent published rebuttal of sea levels or stuff like that?
My response to Appel. Firstly, EVERYONE likes data that supports their view and criticizes data that does not. ———————————–Secondly, climate and atmosphere “scientists” have NOT looked at how the surface temperature data is being collected—————————-Thirdly, what exactly do the satellite temperatures show? It seems that there are plenty of different interpretations of the data. I think the data is “inconvenient” for proponents of CAGW. ——————————Lastly, it is difficult in the extreme to get anything published that does not fit the agenda. The fact that it has not yet been published is a ridiculous statement that is clearly made out of fear that Anthony will get published.–My 2 cents on Mr. Appels views.
It’s “David Appell” a frequent alarmist blogger
Who claims to be a science writer.
http://oregoncatalyst.com/index.php/archives/2415-Global-Warming-No!-It-Is-Now-Called-Climate-Change.html#comments
“It’s funny how Watts likes the data when it supports his point of view, but criticizes it when it doesn’t: http://is.gd/19sD7
And scientists have been looking at any purported UHI for a long time. The IPCC 4AR WG1 says “Studies that have looked at hemispheric and global scales conclude that any urban-related trend is an order of magnitude smaller than decadal and longer time-scale trends evident in the series.”
Also, surface thermometers and satellites do not measure the same thing. The latter measures the “bulk temperature,” which is the average temperature up to about 8 km.
Finally, Watt’s claims are hardly established (or accepted) science and, as far as I know, have not even been submitted to a scientific journal.
#2.1.3.1.1.1.1 David Appell on 2009-06-22 11:49 (Reply)
Flanagan, look at the surfacestations project and tell me if this does not raise some questions in your own mind. Many “consensus” theories have been shown to be false. This will be the next.
http://www.survival-international.org/news/4696
Peru’s Indians have more guts than Hansen and everyone else in America–why? They’re willling to go the whole distance and lay down their lives for what they know from their daily lives in the rainforest what’s NEEDED, and it ain’t self righteous idiocy and denial of reality. It’s a long trek from Peru to WV but hey, the Indigenous folks can teach the rest of the world a few things about true environmental action and courage.
There are several psych issues here. One is Hansen is as are his adherents feeling incredible guilt on sin against the planet. His consequences are 2 fold. One he feels additional abject failure for not warning and causing the Gobment to stop Massey. The other is redemption.
Having said all this, we could suggest putting 2-4 wind towers on the site. it would appease the carbon demons. It would also represent indulgences to pay back the “historic” planet crime event.
So Hansen feels like he flunked in being able to teach us science.
So if some wind towers popped up, he should be all better.
James Hansen PBUH
Darryl Hannah, scientist arrested at W.Va. mine protest
NAOMA, W.Va. — Actress Darryl Hannah, NASA scientist James Hansen and more than two dozen other mountaintop removal mining opponents have been arrested during a protest in southern West Virginia.
By The Associated Press
Advertisement – Your ad here
NAOMA, W.Va. — Actress Darryl Hannah, NASA scientist James Hansen and more than two dozen other mountaintop removal mining opponents have been arrested during a protest in southern West Virginia.
State Police said about 30 people were charged Tuesday afternoon after they blocked W.Va. 3 near a Massey Energy subsidiary’s coal processing plant in Boone County.
They were among several hundred protesters who held a rally outside an elementary school that sits about 300 feet away from the plant’s coal storage silo.
After the rally, the crowd marched quietly to the plant and attempted to enter the property. They were blocked by several hundred coal miners chanting “Massey.”
Hannah, Hansen, former Rep. Ken Hechler and 27 others then sat on the road and were arrested on misdemeanor charges of obstruction and impeding traffic.
Here’s what I don’t understand…
The College of William and Mary invited Hansen to debate Dr. Partrick Michaels. Hansen refused. So what I’m wondering is what line of reasoning says to Hansen a debate with Michaels is wrong, but a debate with Blackenship is OK.
I saw that YouTube of the Nightline expose of Blackenship posted earlier, and yeah, I can see where Hansen might think of Blackenship as easy pickins.
His strategy is flawed though, because even if he wins, and one would hope he could at least defeat a corrupt, coal, fatcat like Blackenship in debate, how does he then justify any future refusals of debate invites from more reasonable, and knowledgeable adversaries?
Just Want Results… says:
Well, I am skeptical that he is “the most prestigious professor of meteorology, and atmospheric physicist in the world” but I do agree that he is a very distinguished atmospheric scientist. And, at a thread on Real Climate one time when someone in the comments section did disparage Lindzen’s credentials, Mike Mann responded by defending Lindzen’s credentials (while still saying that some of his statements about climate change have been very wrong-headed).
David Ball said:
Well, I haven’t followed all of the controversies involving your father in full detail but I thought that I recall that he made some claims (such as being the first to receive a PhD in climatology in Canada or something like that) which may not have been correct. And, with all due respect to your father, I don’t think he is in the same league in terms of his stature or accomplishments in the fields of either climate science or atmospheric science as Jim Hansen or Richard Lindzen are. That is not meant as any sort of insult of him; I am not in the same league as Ed Witten, Bob Laughlin, or hundreds (if not thousands) of other theoretical physicists. That’s just the way it is.
George E. Smith (15:01:13) :
Thank you for your reply to my post. I’m still trying to digest your explanation but, and your reputation precedes you here, I know you’ll be spot on and I’ve been saddling-up the cart rather than the horse!
I suspect that the question I asked has merit, notwithstanding my incorrect analysis. The presumed sign and putative magnitude of future ‘temperature’ change is the weapon that the ‘warmists’ wield. My experience of asking this question to otherwise, highly vocal alarmists indicates that, by their silence, they are unsettled by its asking. That may be reason enough to keep pressing for an answer!
If, as timetochooseagain suggests, predicted rises in temperature are distributed unevenly – with Lows taking a Lion’s share of any increase – a significant and, more importantly, easy to understand point of weakness in the more doom-laden prognostications of the hysterics- an accessible Achilles Heel perhaps.
If, indeed, our mid-century evenings will be less chilly than today with slightly warmer days, then my only regret is that I won’t be round to see them:(
Going back to my earlier examples, given a 3C rise what would be your (other opinions cordially invited) estimation of the temperature distribution?
Joel Shore, then tell me who was first? And then tell me why the weather record from Hudson’sBay ( a very accurate and lengthy weather record nearly 400 years long) is not important. Isn’t one of the claims that the arctic is one of the best indicators of supposed global warming? One can understand why they might want marginalize and discredit someone whose DOCTOR OF SCIENCE in CLIMATOLOGY might be a real threat to their position. Spare me your “I’m not familiar with the controversies surrounding your father”. The fact that he has withstood a (snip) storm of attacks, albeit in Canada, for 30 years, puts him shoulder to shoulder with Richard Lindzen, Fred Singer, and anyone else you care to name. Many have stood up to speak the truth because people like my father were brave enough not to fall for the party line. I wonder what you would do if your research in theoretical physics told you the exact opposite of what being spouted in the main stream media on the subject? Would you have the courage to stand up and say “wait a second”? Somehow I doubt it.
David Ball:
Well, here is a discussion of Dan Johnson’s letter to the editor in which he notes the names of others in the field who got their PhD’s earlier: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/06/dear_tim_ball_sue_me.php I don’t know if the folks listed actually got their PhD’s specifically in climatology, although according to Johnson, your father’s was technically in Geography although his thesis was on a topic in historical climatology. Whatever.
On a MUCH smaller scale, my PhD dissertation was actually coming into a small subfield and claiming that a hypothesis that one could argue seemed to be at least the rough consensus in this small subfield was wrong. (It certainly was not a big enough issue that the mainstream media were involved though!) However, we actually presented compelling evidence to support our claim.
Your father is entitled to his opinions but we don’t all find his arguments to be all that compelling.
Perhaps Anthony would like to address the more important question about his work: why does he accept the surface temperature data when it shows cooling, but deny it when it shows otherwise?
http://is.gd/19sD7
REPLY: That’s revealing of you. Why not simply just label me “denier” and be done with it? Why even presume to ask a question when you load the question with what you already believe to be the answer? i.e. “deny” .
The real answer is because you really aren’t interested. You just want to play “label, label”. Its what you do. Label first, ask questions later.
But I’ll indulge your labeling, because if I don’t then it will be followed by the inevitable “a-ha!” and the glee that comes with it, because again you see, you really aren’t interested in asking the question, you really aren’t interested in the answer, you just want to play a game.
So #1, and lets be clear, I’m not a “denier” to fit your childish labeling. Yes the temperature has gone up in the past 100 years. The causes and contributions are the items in question. CO2 has a component, so does natural variation, solar variance, aersols, ENSO, and yes, station siting. Which one is the dominant one? That remains to be proven.
I suppose Mr. Appel, you assume that knowledge is static, and that I’ve learned nothing of GISS since then. You also fail to note that in the entry you cite, during that Feb 08 period I cited all four global temperature metrics, not just GISS, see here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/02/19/january-2008-4-sources-say-globally-cooler-in-the-past-12-months/
and some detailed looks on the other datasets:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/02/04/rss-satellite-data-for-jan08-2nd-coldest-january-for-the-planet-in-15-years/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/02/06/uah-satellite-data-for-jan08-in-agreement-with-rss-data/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/02/19/another-global-temp-index-dives-in-jan08-this-time-hadcrut/
Just a few days later, I started to get a bit wary of what GISS was doing when I discovered they adjusted a rural station to look warmer, as in Cedarville, CA. There’s no justifiable reason for it.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/02/17/cedarville-and-giss-adjustments/
And on the same day, I discovered a station in Miami, AZ where GISS makes a warming trend brought on by horribly bad siting even worse by adjusting the past cooler. Again, not justifiable. If GISS was in the stock trading business, the SEC would toss their butts in jail.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/02/17/how-not-to-measure-temperature-part-52-another-ufa-sighted-in-arizona/
A few months later, we get a handle on some of the bizarre data torturing that GISS did to Cedarville. The outcome wasn’t pretty:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/18/cedarville-sausage/
And then we have this mistake discovered in November 2008, where GISS can’t even properly track temperatures from month to month and bloggers have to point it out to them:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/10/giss-releases-october-2008-data/
So yes, I no longer cite GISS. As I said, knowledge is not static. I don’t trust GISS anymore, I think the quality control is terrible, and as of today, the dataset has an activist curator with an arrest record, so I don’t trust the gatekeeper to be impartial. But at one time, yes I thought that GISS was a scientifically derived dataset. No longer do I think so.
So label me all you want, I’ll stick with the hard earned knowledge of GISS problems as reason not to take the dataset as being credible anymore. – Anthony
Joel Shore, you seem to know a great deal more about the media manipulation than you first indicated. Hmmmmm. The Calgary Herald printed a retraction to Mr. Johnson’s letter. The source of Johnson’s letter is a questionable character from the University that my father taught at. There was a defamation suit filed and guess who Johnson’s lawyer was paid by? An even more questionable character who funded DesmogBlog and the Suzuki Foundation. Hmmmm. My father’s lawyer wanted $50,000.00 to start the litigation, but my family does not have that kind of money to throw around. The lawyer suggested my father use some of his “oil money”. What a joke that is. There is NO oil money. Great lawyer. Johnson has claimed on DesmogBlog that he “won” the lawsuit, but it never even went to court. Just so you know, there was a Climatology department on the 7th floor of the university, because it was such a new discipline at the time. Where else were they going to put him? The people mentioned as “climatologist” before my father were only doing climate studies at that time, through other disciplines. You have to admit it is an impressive hatchet job on someone just because you disagree with his findings or ideas. What an amazing PR “spin job”. And just so you know, I do not find your arguments to be that compelling either.
Joel Shore, no response to the importance of the Hudson’s Bay records? Read about an amazing man from that time named Samuel Hearne. Any history buffs out there will enjoy reading about this guy. Very cool stuff.
Dr Hansen is not on this crusade this for science or humanity. It is for his grand-daughter. He wishes that she will remember and admire him when he is dead. He said so in front of a royal audience recently in Oslo which was webcast.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/23/archibald-the-ap-index-says-there-will-be-no-sunspots/
The guy in the very beginning of the video is King Harald.
Dr Hansen is not on this crusade for science or humanity. It is for his grand-daughter. He wishes that she will remember and admire him when he is dead. He said so in front of a royal audience recently in Oslo which was webcast.
http://media01.smartcom.no/Microsite/dss_01.aspx?eventid=4090
The guy in the very beginning of the video is King Harald.
Flanagan (22:46:34) :
That sounds very alarming. Good thing none of it is true.
With his quote above, Flanagan has officially gone off the deep end. He’s lost it, folks. Next thing you know, he’ll be saying: “…and down is up, white is black, evil is good, and global warming causes global cooling.”
…Oh, wait. He’s already said that last part.
David Ball,
This really seems like a hijack at this point…but I will just note that
(1) I couldn’t find the retraction you speak of. I’d be curious to see it. Could you tell me where I can get a look at it?
(2) You seem very interested in who is paying for DesmogBlog and the Suzuki Foundation. But, have you ever wondered who the funders of “Friends of Science” are? It seems difficult to find out for sure, as discussed here: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Friends_of_Science
(3) According to this website http://www.science.ca/scientists/scientistprofile.php?pID=168 , Kenneth Hare “joined McGill University as a geography professor, meanwhile earning his PhD as an arctic climatologist.” (This was somewhere between 1945 and 1959.)
(4) I had no idea what Hudson Bay records had to do with what we were talking about, which is why I ignored your references to it. I now see from a web search that it was the subject of your father’s thesis, which doesn’t seem to be at all in contradiction with Dan Johnson’s statement that “Ball received a PhD in Geography in the UK in 1982, on a topic in historical climatology. “
Smokey: things would be MUCH easier if you actually read the link I gave to the conference proceedings. Things are pretty clear: we’re above IPCC projections for sea levels that’s it. And there’s no real importance if it pleases you or not…
Unfortunately we don’t have the ability to measure this nebulous thing you call “sea levels” with anything close to millimeter precision. It’s a total fantasy.
Joel Shore, once again, you seem to know a lot more about this than your initial statement. The end of your post (16:43:19) you stated “we:” instead of “I”, speaking volumes of the deceptive nature of your claims. All just attempts at marginalizing my father and his work. You now mention only one fellow who could very easily be a “geography doctorate” as you claim my fathers is. Who is the we you speak of. When you speak of Friends of Science funding, you are alluding to a “big oil” connection. This is a very weak argument which I would counter with: where does the Suzuki Foundation get it’s funding? Answer: from some of the biggest polluters out there. Your going to have to do better than these hackneyed old attempts to distract from the central issue. Which is the marginalization of someone whose findings raise the giant specter of doubt on AGW or CC or whatever it is called now. Nobody believes you guys anymore and your deceptions are being found out. Co2 does NOT drive climate change and all your little attempts at misdirection will not change the fact that the wheels are falling off your bus.
The Hudson’s Bay stuff is ignored by AGW proponents along with a great deal of the “paleo” stuff. It is just another example of the blinders you guys wear if the information does not fit the theory. How many guys on the Suzuki foundation are paid to watch what Tim Ball is doing? Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer, right?