This seems like a good idea, and I’ll be happy to dedicate a page to it if readers help fill in.
WUWT reader Charles Harrison uses the new submit story feature (see header menu) to ask this:
I would like to have a personal collection of AGW quotations to use in presentations, etc. Things like no more snow, the latest proposal to tattoo skeptics, the need to bring about the end of industrial civilization, etc.
I think this would be fun and useful and maybe Anthony could make a spot for it on the reference page. If nothing else, I would like to be sure I have correct attributions when I use these quotes.
Al Gore was gored when Tipper Gore reached her tipping point.
“I have cited many examples of recent climatic variability and repeated the warnings of several well-known climatologists that a cooling trend has set in-perhaps one akin to the Little Ice Age-and that climatic variability, which is the bane of reliable food production, can be expected to increase along with the cooling.” Stephen Schneider, The Genesis Strategy, (New York: Plenum Press, 1976), p. 90
Cooling causes warming, much as warming causes cooling.
“But as Dr. Lamb pointed out calmly, such heat waves have accompanied every past global cooling and are to be expected. A high-pressure zone blocked warm air and chilled the North Atlantic. Now another high-pressure zone was blocking cold air and bringing extremes of heat into Europe. But such blocks were both symptoms of a cooling climate. Such cooling, he said, ‘means more volatile weather. It will be more hot, more cold, more wet and more dry, just as it was in the seventeenth century.’” Lowell Ponte, The Cooling, (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1976), p. 40 “
This laugher from David Suzuki, who apparently does not know physics or chemistry.
“It has been known since the last century that carbon-bearing compounds are transparent to sunlight but opaque to infra-red. In other words, sunlight passes through carbon-containing air whereas infra-red heat rays tend to be reflected by the carbon.
We are familiar with this effect in a car that has sat in the sun. The interior becomes hot because the carbon in the glass keeps the heat in.”
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/features/suzuki/story.html?id=4bee3fa9-9a10-46f1-9d6a-648a19710b30
Suzuki made these 6 elemental scientific errors, in two short paragraphs.
1. Carbon in glass? Maybe in the front windshield, sandwiched between 2 sheets of glass. As glass is mostly opaque to infrared (IR), its moot.
2. Carbon compounds may or may not trap heat. Polyethylene, for example, is transparent to IR.
3. Heat in the car is from modifying convection, not radiation. Decreased convection = increased radiation. Polyethylene vs glass in greenhouses shows no difference in heat retention, in spite of the different IR properties of the two barriers. The heat retention is from preventing convection.
4. Glass is mostly opaque to IR, not the supposed carbon in it. Suzuki assumes it’s not opaque, by needing the “carbon” in it to stop IR.
5. Carbon molecules may, or may not, allow visible light through. Again, it depends on the molecule.
6. Suzuki says carbon bearing compounds REFLECT IR. Some compounds allow IR through. The ones that don’t, ABSORB IR photons, then re-emit photons. They don’t reflect.
‘No Pressure’ 10:10 Campaign
‘It wasn’t my fault, I was home having a baby’ 10:10 Campaign Director
‘We know where you live’ Greenpeace Marketing Guy
‘We have to announce disasters or nobody will listen’ Professor Sir John Houghton
‘Nobody ever asked’ Phil Jones, author of 200+ ‘peer reviewed’ papers on how often he had shown his data and methods to others.
‘Voodoo Science’ Mr Pachauri
Good idea:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/23966774/Climate-Gate-The-Email-Quotes
http://sublimeguile.com/post/261206137/some-choice-quotes-from-climate-gate-the-leaked
Yes! A collection of the QoF (Quotes of Fools). Or WDIST (Why did I say that?) Or ER (elitism reigns).
Will a Chladni harmonic pattern reveal itself?
From the MSM, circa 1970s:
Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned of “extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation.”
Science Digest (February 1973) reported that “the world’s climatologists are agreed” that we must “prepare for the next ice age.”
The Christian Science Monitor (“Warning: Earth’s Climate is Changing Faster Than Even Experts Expect,” Aug. 27, 1974) reported that glaciers “have begun to advance,” “growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter” and “the North Atlantic is cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool.”
Newsweek agreed (“The Cooling World,” April 28, 1975) that meteorologists “are almost unanimous” that catastrophic famines might result from the global cooling that the New York Times (Sept. 14, 1975) said “may mark the return to another ice age.”
The Times (May 21, 1975) also said “a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable” now that it is “well established” that the Northern Hemisphere’s climate “has been getting cooler since about 1950.”
This is a great idea.
Here are a few classics from the old days.
We need to get some broad based support,
to capture the public’s imagination…
So we have to offer up scary scenarios,
make simplified, dramatic statements
and make little mention of any doubts…
Each of us has to decide what the right balance
is between being effective and being honest.”<
– Prof. Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology,
lead author of many IPCC reports
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue.
Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,
we will be doing the right thing in terms of
economic and environmental policy.”</em
– Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…
climate change provides the greatest opportunity to
bring about justice and equality in the world.”
– Christine Stewart,
former Canadian Minister of the Environment
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations
on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.”
– Prof. Chris Folland,
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
“The models are convenient fictions
that provide something very useful.”
– Dr David Frame,
climate modeler, Oxford University
“I believe it is appropriate to have an ‘over-representation’ of the facts
on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience.”
– Al Gore,
Climate Change activist
“It doesn’t matter what is true,
it only matters what people believe is true.”
– Paul Watson,
co-founder of Greenpeace
“The only way to get our society to truly change is to
frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
– emeritus professor Daniel Botkin
“The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and
spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest
opportunity to lift Global Consciousness to a higher level.”
– Al Gore,
Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech
“We are on the verge of a global transformation.
All we need is the right major crisis…”
– David Rockefeller,
Club of Rome executive member
Source
Just a couple for that page:
“Surely it’s time for climate-change deniers to have their opinions forcibly tattooed on their bodies.” link
(EDENHOFER): First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole. link
I suspect that my post on MSM at 08:12 is probably plagiarized. I usually have sources in my database, but this one does not.
If anyone knows where I lifted this, please let me know.
Boatload of quotes have been gathered at this site-
http://www.c3headlines.com/global-warming-quotes-climate-change-quotes.html
and http://www.c3headlines.com/quotes-from-global-warming-critics-skeptics-sceptics.html
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_house_hearings&docid=f:31362.wais
CHAIRMAN BARTON. I understand that. It looks like my time
is expired, so I want to ask one more question. Dr. North, do you
dispute the conclusions or the methodology of Dr. Wegman’s report?
DR. NORTH. No, we don’t. We don’t disagree with their
criticism. In fact, pretty much the same thing is said in our
report. But again, just because the claims are made, doesn’t
mean they are false.
CHAIRMAN BARTON. I understand that you can have the right
conclusion and that it not be–
DR. NORTH. It happens all the time in science.
CHAIRMAN BARTON. Yes, and not be substantiated by what you
purport to be the facts but have we established–we know that
Dr. Wegman has said that Dr. Mann’s methodology is incorrect. Do
you agree with that? I mean, it doesn’t mean Dr. Mann’s
conclusions are wrong, but we can stipulate now that we have–and if
you want to ask your statistician expert from North Carolina that
Dr. Mann’s methodology cannot be documented and cannot be verified
by independent review.
DR. NORTH. Do you mind if he speaks?
CHAIRMAN BARTON. Yes, if he would like to come to the
microphone.
MR. BLOOMFIELD. Thank you. Yes, Peter Bloomfield. Our
committee reviewed the methodology used by Dr. Mann and his coworkers
and we felt that some of the choices they made were inappropriate.
We had much the same misgivings about his work that was documented
at much greater length by Dr. Wegman.
James Hansen in Feb 2009:
The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death. Link to article
Les Johnson has a wealth of them. can he do a data dump?
Quotes without citations are worse than useless – they just lower the SNR.
“42% returns in the world’s next trillion $ market. Invest in carbon credits.”
Yeah! Right!
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/oIqX1-JFqEjS2R11Wi4k3A?feat=directlink
An excellent idea.
Where possible, can people give the names of the people quoted, the organisation they were working for at the time, the date (the year will do), the quote itself, and possibly URLs of sites containing the quotes and context.
I agree. I would really like to see citations wherever possible. Some of the quotes I am thinking of are just so outrageous that people will not believe they are true without knowing where they came from. And thanks to all those who have submitted so far – these are exactly the kind of quotes that are useful.
“A sustainable society will require fairness (equity) and justice locally and globally, both within this generation and between our generation and future generations.” – John Cook and Hadyn Washington (“Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand,” 2011).
“Preventing the collapse of human civilization requires nothing less than a wholesale transformation of dominant consumer culture.” – John Cook and Hadyn Washington (“Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand,” 2011).
“Just because there a professor of something denying climate change does not mean it is not true, it is just that the professor is in denial. This is why one must make use of the preponderance of evidence in science, the collective view.” – John Cook and Hadyn Washington (“Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand,” 2011).
“Monbiot (2006) notes that mostly these groups use ‘selection not invention’. They cherry-pick one contradictory study (and remember science operates by people questioning the accepted) and then promote it relentlessly.” – John Cook and Hadyn Washington (“Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand,” 2011).
Reading the quotes on C3 is rather scary. It seems that while we busy ourselves with exposing the nonsensical science trotted out by the warmista the political liberal/left elite have a totally different agenda. It’s not new to me or you either but we really are playing with our Tonka Toys while the big boys are taking over the sand pit.
Is there a list of politicians and the powerful who are against the idea of one world government and the the destruction of the democratic market economy? This fight needs new tactics.
“None dare call it treason”.
“If a meteorologist can’t speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn’t give them a Seal of Approval.”
Heidi Cullen – Weather Bimbo
http://www.naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-06/ns_clh.html
“Summary: The past half-century has seen a dramatic increase in air temperature and the retreat of small fringing ice shelves around the Antarctic Peninsula. These changes will have little impact on the mass balance of Antarctic ice as a whole or on global sea level but do offer insight into the processes of ice shelf flow. No similar changes have been observed south of the Peninsula. Moreover, model simulations of the large Antarctic ice sheets predict an increase, not a decrease, in ice volume in future warming scenarios.”
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/08/23/environment.glaciers.reut/index.html
Some glaciers retreating, some advancing.
“It’s too early to say if glacier melting is accelerating worldwide” compared to U.N. forecasts in 2001, Jeffrey Kargel of the U.S. Geological Survey told a seminar on glaciers in Oslo. “In some areas it is, but the picture is mixed.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5931596/
“These are natural things,”” Gray stressed. “”Greenland ice-core data show that North Atlantic temperatures swing back and forth on these 30- to 40-year time scales. The people who say humans are causing this hurricane activity — typically they’re the ones who don’t know anything about tropical cyclones.”
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6816
On the subject of what happens after Kyoto … developing countries led by India, China and Brazil insisted on inserting a clause stating that the talks are “not intended to lead to a process for further commitments by developing countries”. Brazil’s delegation head Everton Vieira Vargas said: “We are not prepared to discuss reductions in emissions.”
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_policy_general/000318chris_landsea_leaves.html
From C. Landsea’s letter : “”All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record.
Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricane will likely be quite small. The latest results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st Century (Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted).
Source Unknown, needs to be checked:
This all lead Dr. James Hansen, a prominent greenhouse scientist with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, to write in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
“The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate changes.”
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=d0235a70-33f1-45b3-803b-829b1b3542ef&p=2
Hurricane specialist Tad Murty, former senior research scientist Department of Fisheries and Oceans and now adjust professor of Earth sciences at U of O, points out, “In all other six ocean basins where tropical cyclones occur, there is either a flat or a downward trend.” Murty lists 1900, 1926 and 1935 as the years in which the most intense hurricanes were recorded in the United States. In fact, Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, has stated that global warming has nothing to do with the recent increase in hurricane frequency in the North Atlantic. Murty concludes, “The feeling among many meteorologists is that it has to do with the North Atlantic oscillation, which is now in the positive phase and will continue for another decade or so.”
Revolting stuff, but somebody has to do it.
In 1989 cold fusion was announced to the world. Whoopie!, right. Not so fast, kids: the Los Angelos Times carried an article titled “Fear of Fusion: What If It Works?” (April 19, 1989, A5), now at http://articles.latimes.com/1989-04-19/news/vw-2042_1_fusion-uc-berkeley-inexhaustible:
“It’s like giving a machine gun to an idiot child.” – Paul Ehrlich
“Clean-burning, non-polluting, hydrogen-using bulldozers still could knock down trees or build housing developments on farmland.” – Paul Ciotti
“”It gives some people the false hope that there are no limits to growth and no environmental price to be paid by having unlimited sources of energy.” – Jeremy Rifkin
“Many people assume that cheaper, more abundant energy will mean that mankind is better off, but there is no evidence for that.” – Laura Nader
That intellectual collosus Gordon Brown stating that those who don’t follow the “consensus” were “Flat Earthers”.
Has always made me laugh like a drain, that one.
And don’t forget Heidi Cullen’s comment…
“And the urgency is that the longer we wait, the further down the pipeline climate travels and works its way into weather, and once it’s in the weather, it’s there for good.”
I nominate this gem from Dr. Jimmy (or is it Mr. Jim?):
“Well, there will be more traffic… The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change… There will be more police cars… you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”
Forgot the link
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/18/heidi-cullens-weather-is-not-climate-moment-before-congress/
Hansen predicted in the late 80s, that :
“The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change.” Then he said, “There will be more police cars.” Why? “Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”
http://dir.salon.com/books/int/2001/10/23/weather/index.html
http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=SJ&s_site=mercurynews&p_multi=SJ&p_theme=realcities&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EB7304FF9A84273&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM
San Jose Mercury News (CA) – June 30, 1989
“A senior environmental official at the United Nations, Noel Brown, says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000……… He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect… “
For his part, Pielke returned to Colorado and set up a random number generator to rank RMS’ 39 climate models from 2008 — akin to blindly throwing darts to choose the best model.
The outcome nearly matched the scientists’ consensus.
“So with apologies to my colleagues,” he wrote in his science policy blog, “we seem to be of no greater intellectual value to RMS than a bunch of monkeys.”
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/11/82-billion-prediction.html
From the estimable Flannery, predictor of never ending drought, or, as he calls it, the new climate.
But by far the most dangerous trend is the decline in the flow of Australian rivers: it has fallen by around 70 per cent in recent decades, so dams no longer fill even when it does rain. Growing evidence suggests that hotter soils, caused directly by global warming, have increased evaporation and transpiration and that the change is permanent. I believe the first thing Australians need to do is to stop worrying about “the drought” – which is transient – and start talking about the new climate.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19426084.400-editorial-australia–not-such-a-lucky-country.html
http://www.science.org.au/nova/newscientist/105ns_001.htm
Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.
Kruger, Justin; Dunning, David
Current issue feed
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 77(6), Dec 1999, 1121-1134.
People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of the participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)
http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121
A reduction in Antarctic sea ice volume of about 25-45% is predicted for a doubling of CO2, with sea ice retreating fairly evenly around the continent (Gordon and O’Farrell, 1997). This CSIRO model assumes a 1% yr-1 compounding increase of CO2, corresponding to global warming of 2.1°C. Using a similar but modified model that has a higher albedo feedback and predicted global warming of 2.8°C, Wu et al. (1999) calculate a reduction in mean sea-ice extent of nearly two degrees of latitude, corresponding to 45% of sea-ice volume. These estimates do not represent the equilibrium state, and sea ice can be expected to shrink further, even if GHGs are stabilized.
Climate Change 2001
Working Group 2
16.2.4.2. Sea Ice in the Southern Ocean
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg2/606.htm#16242
The Antarctic wintertime ice extent increased…”at a rate of 0.6% per decade” from 1979 to 2006, says Donald Cavalieri, a senior research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
At 19 million square kilometres in Aug 2008, it is still slightly below records from the early 1970s of 20 million, he says. Since 1979 however, the average year-round ice extent has risen too.
From Dr Emanuel (who published a paper in 2005 suggesting increased storms due to GW):”The models are telling us something quite different from what nature seems to be telling us. There are various interpretations possible, e.g. a) The big increase in hurricane power over the past 30 years or so may not have much to do with global warming, or b) The models are simply not faithfully reproducing what nature is doing. Hard to know which to believe yet.”
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/12/hurricane-expert-reassesses-climate-link/
Dion, as environment minister, called the oil sands a “a tremendous blessing for Canada.”
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/12/08/f-dion-bio.html
“Pharoah and Joseph had
7 YEARS
So have we
2016”
Sir John Houghton, co-chair of IPCC WG1, 2001.
Source: http://www.jri.org.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/JRI_18_Joseph.pdf (2009)
The dangers of modeling. This group, tongue in cheek, modeled Bigfoot’s future habitats in a warming climate. Basically, GIGO.
“We in the modelling community need to be a bit more humble about how precise our predictions are, and acknowledge the errors of estimates, which are huge, more than we do,” says Rahbek. “It’s just damn hard to predict the future.”
Unlikely as it sounds, Lozier’s paper scooped work by another group. “We were trying to do the same thing for the yeti,” says ecologist Carsten Rahbek of the University of Copenhagen. Like Lozier, he wanted to show that models could turn dubious data into plausible-looking predictions.
References
1. Lozier, J. D., Aniello, P. & Hickerson, M. J. J. Biogeogr. published online. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2009.02152.x (2009).
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090707/full/news.2009.641.html?s=news_rss
Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum was caused by something other than CO2.
The conclusion, Dickens said, is that something other than carbon dioxide caused much of the heating during the PETM.
“In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record,” said oceanographer Gerald Dickens, a co-author of the study and professor of Earth science at Rice University. “There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models.”
http://www.media.rice.edu/media/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=12794&SnID=2075327496
“Hypocrisy has a name, or rather two: Quebec and Ontario,” wrote columnist Lysiane Gagnon on Thursday in Montreal’s La Presse.
“In short, it’s thanks to the oilsands that allows Quebec to live beyond its means and offer luxury services such as $7(-a-day) daycares and universities that are practically free.”
Historically, Alberta has always paid more per capita into the equalization program than any other province, Mansell said.
On the flip side, Quebec has been the largest net beneficiary of the program, he added.
In 2006, Mansell said he calculated that Quebec was a net beneficiary of $217.1 billion (in 2004 dollars) from the equalization program between 1961 to 2002. That has represented $767 per year for every Quebec man, woman and child, he said.
Over the same period, Alberta paid out $243.6 billion and Ontario paid $314.5 billion, he said. That has cost $2,510 for every Alberta resident every year, and $758 for every Ontarian.
He said that Alberta’s oil and gas industry has also created spin-off jobs in manufacturing and engineering in Quebec and Ontario.
“The comparative advantage, which we clearly have in Canada, is resources,” Mansell said.
“Whether we like it or not, that has been the driving force in our economy.”
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20091217/Oil_Cash_091217/20091217?hub=QPeriod
I’m paraphrasing from memory, but in an interview a few months ago, Michael Mann said, “I never intended for the hockey stick graph to become the defining icon of global warming science.”
Or something to that effect.
List of 800 links of things caused by global warming.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
Oh the horror!
“I’ve watched in horror as the snow has just melted away from Cypress Mountain,” Suzuki said, referring to the 2010 Olympic Games snowboarding and freestyle skiing venue.
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/winter-233250-games-olympic.html
From a British Think Tank
Warm Words :How are we telling the climate story and can we tell it better?
“ behaving as if climate change exists and is real”
“To help address the chaotic nature of the climate change discourse in the UK today, interested agencies now
need to treat the argument as having been won, at least for popular communications. This means simply
behaving as if climate change exists and is real, and that individual actions are effective. The ‘facts’ need to
be treated as being so taken-for-granted that they need not be spoken.”
http://www.ippr.org/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=485
“But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.”
“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.”
–Ottmar Edenhoffer, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group III, quoted in Neue Zurcher Zeitung, 14 November 2010
How about: ‘Heavy downpours will not stop drought’? Louise Gray – Environmental Correspondent – The Daily Telegraph – UK
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8560127/Heavy-downpours-will-not-stop-drought.html
If rain won’t stop droughts, maybe snow will do the trick?
I know a lot of these quotes have been gathered elsewhere, but I would be very interested in seeing them here – WUWT is always my first stop for climate-related research…
A capital idea, Mr. Watts! I would also encourage readers to cite their sources. I think this could not ONLY be used to challenge the presumptions of AGW proponents, but may be of use to sociologists that wish to study moral panic or group hysteria.
We need to get some broad based support,
to capture the public’s imagination…
So we have to offer up scary scenarios,
make simplified, dramatic statements
and make little mention of any doubts…
This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently
find ourselves in cannot be solved by any
formula. Each of us has to decide what the
right balance is between being effective
and being honest. I hope that means being both.
– Prof. Stephen Schneider,
There, fixed that for you.
“Well, there will be more traffic… The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change… There will be more police cars… you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”
a) The prediction was for 2028.
b) The road Hansen was looking at is no longer there. It was rebuilt in 2001. Apparently the earlier highway was prone to flooding.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=627
http://www.nycroads.com/roads/west-side/
‘We have to announce disasters or nobody will listen’ Professor Sir John Houghton
Fabricated quote used to discredit climate scientist http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/fabricated-quote-used-to-discredit-climate-scientist-1894552.html
Phil Clarke,
As they say, a half truth is a whole lie. There is no “double ethical bind.” There is only the truth – and then everything else. Schneider excused the use of ‘everything else’ as being A-OK in order to push his CAGW agenda.
Please don’t try to convince us that these self-serving alarmist scientists are ethical. They are not. If they were ethical they would abide by the scientific method, providing full transparency and cooperating with scientific skeptics – the only honest kind of scientists.
From the article 1999 Nature article Simulation of recent northern winter climate trends by greenhouse-gas forcing by Drew T. Shindell, Ron L. Miller, Gavin A. Schmidt & Lionel Pandolfo
as they explain why the AO has been steadily increasing. I wonder how the explain its recent downturn?
“The spatial structure of the Arctic Oscillation is reproduced as the leading wintertime mode of Northern Hemisphere SLP in all the GISS models studied. Furthermore, an increase in the AO index consistent with the recent observed trend occurs in response to anthropogenic greenhouse gases in models containing stratospheric
dynamics. This suggests that the observed trend is a signature of anthropogenic greenhouse gases and that trends in surface air temperature associated with the AO should be attributed to human activities, rather than to natural variability”
For me, the quote that sums up the whole scam came from “Harry” in the Harry readme text file
“Here, the expected 1990-2003 period is MISSING – so the correlations aren’t so hot! Yet
the WMO codes and station names /locations are identical (or close). What the hell is
supposed to happen here? Oh yeah – there is no ‘supposed’, I can make it up. So I have.”
They could make it all up, so they did !
from 1999 Climactic Change article “CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR CHANGES OF EXTREMES OF THE HYDROLOGICAL CYCLE WITH CLIMATE CHANGE” by Kevin Trenberth
“With higher average temperatures in winter expected, more precipitation is likely to fall in the form of rain rather than snow, which will increase both soil moisture and run off, as noted by the IPCC (1996) and found in many models.”
From The 2006 Journal of Climate article “Trends in Snowfall versus Rainfall in the Western United States” by NOAH KNOWLES U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, California
MICHAEL D. DETTINGER AND DANIEL R. CAYAN U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego,
La Jolla, California
“If warming trends across the western United States continue, as projected in response to increasing greenhouse
gas concentrations in the atmosphere (IPCC 2001), the snowfall fraction of precipitation is likely to continue to decline.”
Tim Flannery:
“I think there is a fair chance Perth will be the 21st century’s first ghost metropolis”
Prince Charles:
We now only have ninety-nine months – actually very nearly ninety-eight, before we reach the point of no return, with decisions that will lock us in to our future course. The clock is ticking away inexorably; 99 months will pass in a flash, believe you me.
Michael Sanderson, talking about Hubert Lamb:
A holocaust within a century was an even more exciting prospect than an ice age in ten millennia and it all helped to shape contemporary attitudes to global warming.
Paul Ehrlich
Air pollution is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone
Ecotretas
The late, great Schneider expounds at length on exactly what he meant by the ethical bind here:http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Mediarology/Mediarology.html#TheDoubleEthicalBindPitfall
From the 2001 PNAS article “The North Atlantic Oscillation: Past, present, and future”
Martin H. Visbeck*†, James W. Hurrell‡, Lorenzo Polvani§, and Heidi M. Cullen
“The absence of a demonstrated skillful predictive model leaves us with significant uncertainty about NAO variability in the future. The proposed response to increased greenhouse gas concentrations through forcing from warmer tropical SSTs (27) or a strengthened stratospheric vortex (28) implies, however, that the positive index phase might continue.”
“Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?”
Phil Jones to Michael Mann 29 May 2008
Al Gore (18 Nov 2009):
“…People think about geothermal energy — when they think about it at all — in terms of the hot water bubbling up in some places, but two kilometers or so down in most places there are these incredibly hot rocks, ’cause the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees, and the crust of the earth is hot …”
Wow! “Several Million degrees”!
The warming is hotter than we thought!
🙂
“6. Find solutions for Global Warming, Automotive pollution, International Trade, factory pollution, and the whole blasted human economy. Find ways so that people don’t build more housing pollution which destroys the environment to make way for more human filth! Find solutions so that people stop breeding as well as stopping using Oil in order to REVERSE Global warming and the destruction of the planet!” — James Lee
http://warmingglow.uproxx.com/2010/09/here-are-the-discovery-hostage-takers-insane-and-retarded-demands
“What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there’s a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they’re doing is a criminal act,” said Dr. Suzuki, a former board member of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. “It’s an intergenerational crime in the face of all the knowledge and science from over 20 years.”
Davi Suzuki, Addressing the McGill Business Conference on Sustainability, hosted by the Faculty of Management, Montreal, February 2008.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=290513
Science vol 241, July 1, 1988, p. 23
The Western world’s leading leading climatologists have confirmed recent reports of a detrimental climate change. The stability of most nations is based on a dependable source of food, but this stability will not be possible under the new climatic era. A forecast by the University of Wisconsin projects that the earth’s climate is returning to that of the neo-boreal era (1600-1850) — an era of drought, famine and political unrest in the western world.1974 CIA Report “A Study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems”
There ought to be two threads set up, one a curated / moderated thread consisting of non-duplicated material with full citations, the other (this one) a “feeder” of material for moderators to check out, edit, and move to the curated thread.
“I believe in natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels. ”
Nancy Pelosi, Meet the Press, Aug 24, 2008
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12764.html
here’s the michael mann “icon” quote:
28 June 2010: UK Telegraph: Louise Gray: Michael Mann says hockey stick should not have become ‘climate change icon’
The scientist behind the controversial ‘hockey stick’ graph has said it was ‘somewhat misplaced’ to make his work an ‘icon of the climate change debate’
However, speaking to the BBC recently, Prof Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, said he had always made clear there were “uncertainties” in his work.
“I always thought it was somewhat misplaced to make it a central icon of the climate change debate,” he said. ..
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7849441/Michael-Mann-says-hockey-stick-should-not-have-become-climate-change-icon.html
There are many sites that list the most scarily misanthropic quotes attributed to green extremists. But I haven’t found any that give sources for these quotes. That would be a very worthy addition. We need to be careful not to use forged quotes that have just been endlessly repeated on the web.
Bob Hunter of Greenpeace. Talking to Patrick Moore.
” Pat, this is the beginning of something really important and very powerful. But there is a very good chance it will become a kind of ecofascism. Not everyone can get a Phd in ecology. So the only way to change the behavior of the masses is to create a popular mythology, a religion of the environment where people simply have faith in the gurus.”
Here are some CAGW related quotes:
“Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.”
“Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.”
“Carbon dioxide which is a naturally occurring gas vital to the life cycles of this planet”
“This may be a lot of fun for a few scientific and environmental elites in Ottawa, but ordinary Canadians from coast to coast will not put up with what this will do to their economy and lifestyle”
“We can debate whether or not… CO₂ does or does not contribute to global warming. I think the jury is out.”
“My party’s position on the Kyoto Protocol is clear and has been for a long time. We will oppose ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and its targets. We will work with the provinces and others to discourage the implementation of those targets. And we will rescind the targets when we have the opportunity to do so”
“As economic policy, the Kyoto Accord is a disaster. As environmental policy it is a fraud”
Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada.
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,x)
densall=densall+yearlyadj
http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s5i64103
“I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.”
Statement of Dr. David Deming
University of Oklahoma
College of Earth and Energy
Climate Change and the Media
Give “Pulitzer winner” Ross Gelbspan kudos for the 2004 brilliant admonition, and all its prior versions, “For many years, the press accorded the same weight to the “skeptics” as it did to mainstream scientists. This was done in the name of journalistic balance. In fact, it was journalistic laziness.”
From:
http://www.globalwarming.org/2011/06/02/media-too-fair-to-climate-skeptics-say-reporters-whove-been-unfair-to-skeptics
Destined to become a classic:
““From these and other extreme-weather events, one lesson is sinking in with terrifying certainty. The stable climate of the last 12,000 years is gone.”
Sharon Begley, writing at the Daily Beast
http://revkin.tumblr.com/post/5986838354/stable-climate-of-past-12-000-years-hardly
According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
Phil Carke: yes, the highway was rebuilt, due to flooding. But in the elevated sections, because of poor drainage. Not because of encroaching sea levels.
It was a challenge to hold on to the steering wheel at 40 MPH with those cobblestones, and was extremely slick when wet. During heavy rainstorms, the tiny sewer gratings would clog up with road debris and silt, causing water to collect on the roadway at “low points” on the elevated structure. Because the curbing was so high, the water could get deep — about a foot or so — slowing traffic to a crawl. This was probably one of the few elevated roads that could be blocked due to flooding during a rainstorm!
Mary-Elena Carr of Columbia University’s Earth Institute said what is now an annual sea level rise of a few millimeters will increase dramatically by the year 2100.
“There’s just no escaping one meter by 2100. No escaping that. Could it be more? Absolutely. Is it likely to be 10? No,” she said.
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/environment/Rising-Sea-Levels-Threaten-Island-Nations-122628579.html
I’ve got 100 pages of formal quotes & cites from warmists (not just online commenters) that I’d like to submit to moderators / curators of an edited thread. I don’t want to clog this thread with it. Is there some moderator I can e-mail it to?
Put them onto a public file server and then post the link onto the thread
The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.
http://bit.ly/6qYf9a
The verification period, the biggest “miss” was an apparently very warm year in the late 19th century that we did not get right at all. This makes criticisms of the “antis” difficult to respond to (they have not yet risen to this level of sophistication, but they are “on the scent”).
http://bit.ly/ggpyM1
I agree with Roger Knights about the need for an “input queue” and a moderated display area, also with Lachlan O’Dea that the mods need to watch out *very* closely for the urban myths so beloved of the Interweb. (On reflection, a reference page of those might be useful too.) It’s a great idea, and as someone who can often remember a quote, but seldom remember where it came from, I’d find it an excellent resource. Personally, I’d also like to see a related page of similarly validated terrifying quotes from the political arena where so much of this scary stuff sstarts, but there’s always the danger that that would move WUWT too far away from science and towards politics … and that, as “climate science” itself proves, is seriously dangerous to one’s integrity.
“There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.”
– Sir J.E.E. Dalberg (Baron Acton) (who also gave us “Power tends to corrupt”)
There is no reason to give them any data, in my opinion, and I think we do so at our own peril!
http://bit.ly/bn5Js8
“The debate is over … ”
Al Gore
Here’s a special bonus quote just for Phil Clarke:
Effects on the global temperature of large increases in carbon dioxide and aerosol densities in the atmosphere of Earth have been computed. It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For aerosols, however, the net effect of increase in density is to reduce the surface temperature of Earth. Because of the exponential dependence of the backscattering, the rate of temperature decrease is augmented with increasing aerosol content. An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5 ° K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.
The “late, great” Stephen Schneider, 1971
Should we blame mankind for destroying the Earth by ice age or destroying the Earth by fiery floods? I think that’s what Schneider meant by “double ethical bind”.
2 Questions Phil:
#1 – What was causing the original road to flood? Was it higher sea levels (overwashing) or poor drainage?
#2 – Was the road built higher than before? And if so, how much and in what year?
You see, real scientists ask these questions. Disciples of AGW merely parrot what they are told.
Phil Clarke: Just to elaborate on my previous post, and on PhilJourdan’s post, the flooding on the west side high way was NOT due to ocean encroachment.
The highway was elevated, but the drainage was terrible.
I have seen this in Nigeria, with flooding on overpasses, 20-40 ft above ground level. This was the flooding that occurred on the West side highway also.
Hi Anthony,
The response to my post has been great and just what I was hoping to see. I know you’re a busy guy. I would certainly be willing to volunteer my time to help assemble the beast and do my best to provide proper citations for everything if that would be helpful. I have an Ed.D. and I think I could probably get it into a proper APA format so people could use it.
Chip
Phil Clarke provides te usual enterntainment factor and confirmation of blind belief in not bothering to check facts in a hurry to post pro-AGW stuff.
Well thanks for confirming that the road today is not the one Hansen was referring to, (which flooded out in the storms of December 1992 by the way, submerging over 50 cars and requiring drivers to be rescued by scuba divers).
Clearly the correct thing to do is ignore all the thousands of words Dr Hansen has expended in the academic literature, in favour of a misreported ad-hoc remark to a journalist.
Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.
Naomi Oreskes surveys the literature
The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change <Science 2004
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.full
I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.”
Shame Deming couldn’t name his source.
Shame he deleted the mail, the context would have been interesting; and memory can play tricks.
Interesting that Andrew Montford names the source as Jonathon Overpeck, who claims never to have had anything to do with Deming.
Overpeck said last week that he had searched through his e-mails dating back a decade, and could find none like Deming referred to. Overpeck pointed out that he has written papers dating to the late 1990s saying that various records, including tree rings, stretching back 1,200 years, confirm earlier assertions that the Medieval period was warmer than today in the North Atlantic and northern Europe – but not globally.
“My papers are the record of fact, and in this case, I obviously did not try to get rid of the MWP,” Overpeck said. “Instead, I have tried hard to be clear what it likely was and was not.” http://azstarnet.com/news/science/environment/article_e5078cae-6655-5139-aa6c-3f7f33a670a8.html
OK. Not sure you quite got it. The road that was the subject of Hansen’s remark no longer exists – so reproducing his now obsolete prediction is redundant. Clearly we should ignore all the thousands of words he has published in the literature in favour of an offhand remark to a journalist about a now nonexistent carriageway ….
I’m sitting hhere enjoying seeing Philip Clarke trying to back and fill.☺
The scientific understanding of climate change is now
sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action. It
is vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they
can take now, to contribute to substantial and long-term
reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions.
The National Academies of Science of Japan, Russia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, the UK Royal Society and the US NAS. http://www.nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf
the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact .
UK House of Commons Science & Technology Committee http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387/387i.pdf
We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit
Oxburgh Panel http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387/387i.pdf
On the specific allegations made against the behaviour of CRU scientists, we find that their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt.
The Independent Climate Change E-mails Review http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/FINAL%20REPORT.pdf
Petitioners say that emails disclosed from CRU provide evidence of a conspiracy to manipulate data. The media coverage after the emails were released was based on email statements quoted out of context and on unsubstantiated theories of conspiracy. The CRU emails do not show either that the science is flawed or that the scientific process has been compromised. EPA carefully reviewed the CRU emails and found no indication of improper data manipulation or misrepresentation of results.
US EPA ‘Myths vs Facts.’ http://epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment/myths-facts.html
No. It may be “moot”, but it cannot be “redundant” unless he made it repeatedly, and it each time someone listed it here. That could be redundant.
But it is not even moot. Since the original road was at X height, the question then becomes – has the Sea Level risen X+? since the prediction by Hansen? The answer is clearly no, it has not. It has been 20 years (but not 30 as some sources state he gave the outer range for), so the quote is still relevant, not moot.
Philip Clarke: nope, the west side hiway is still there. 9a, or 12 ave, take your pick. Hansen can still see it from his office.
http://maps.google.com/maps?oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=goddard+institute+for+space+studies+NY&fb=1&gl=us&hq=goddard+institute+for+space+studies+NY&hnear=goddard+institute+for+space+studies+NY&cid=0,0,2672757636436746148&ei=69fvTaeZPMG28QPF3rCaBw&sa=X&oi=local_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CB0QnwIwAA
Philip Clarke: Oddly, though, the West Side highway is still about 3 meters above water.
And the birds are the same.
And the trees are the same.
There is no tape on the windows.
And crime has gone down.
Philip Clarke: your
Naomi Oreskes surveys the literature
Tell you what. Maybe things have changed in 7 years. Or maybe not. I will bet you $10,000 to the charity of your choice, that I can find a couple of peer reviewed papers that dispute the orthodoxy. But you lose, you give 10,000 to MSF.
Deal?
Philip Clarke: C’mon. Fess up. You saw the word “flood” in that reference to the west side, and didn’t read anything else, did you?
Just admit your error and move on.
The existence of a strong and positive water-vapor feedback means that projected business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions over the next century are virtually guaranteed to produce warming of several degrees Celsius. The only way that will not happen is if a strong, negative, and currently unknown feedback is discovered somewhere in our climate system.
Dessler et al 2008 http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/229/Dessler_et_al_2008b.pdf
The water vapour feedback has been observed, measured, is in line with the model predictions, and is dangerous.
The portion of the road Hansen referred to, at 114th street, is still there. Only the elevated portion of the roadway, from lower Manhattan up to 72nd street, was rebuilt. This was implied right at the start of the second link above, although the implication wouldn’t have been clear to someone who hadn’t lived in NYC. (But such a person shouldn’t have made assumptions about what it did imply.)
Incidentally, I thought I read somewhere that this interview with Hansen had been published in New York magazine in 1988. If so, a researcher should try to dig it up, to see if he actually said 40 years, or 20.
Oh come on Phil, we all know the Muir Russell and Oxburgh inquiries were a sham. They were not independent inquiries. Rather, they were guided and overseen by John Beddington the UK Govt Chief Scientist. The following email from ‘John to Ron’ that talks about playing a ‘blinder’ exposed these enquiries for the whitewashes they really were (and is my contribution to the classic AGW quotes on this thread):
” Dear Ron, much appreciated the hard work put into the review, general view is a blinder played. As we discussed at HoL, clearly the drinks are on me!
Best wishes, John”
BTW, as I’m sure you know, supposedly ‘independent’ Lord Oxburgh (Ron) is chairman of Falck Renewables, a large wind firm, whose profitability is dependent on government subsidies of wind energy
The following excerpt from the brilliant Steven McIntyre’s ‘Climate Audit’ sums it all up rather succinctly:
“Information obtained through FOI shows that John Beddington, the UK Government Chief Scientist was in direct contact with both UEA officials and even individual panelists, making sure, among other thing, that individual panelists were ‘warmed up”. Contrary to the UK Government’s claim that the panels were independent, one email from a UEA official says that they will keep Beddington “in the loop” and “seek his advice”. Contrary to the Government’s claims, the Muir Russell and Oxburgh panels were not “carried out independently” and the Government had an important role in “informing how these reviews were carried out””
Hey Phil,
From your first link:
But since CRU is joined at the hip with UEA, I would agree its reputation remains intact.
(Zoom ahead to 2:45 if you’re in a hurry.)
Here are two rather amusing quotes written by Joe Romm in an email to me:
1. “The Arctic will be virtually ice free within your lifetime, almost certainly within two decades and probably within one.”
2. “Please do tell your kids you were one of the ones who helped convince the world not to act in time to prevent what they are going to suffer through.”
I think I’m gonna hold him to the ‘ice free’ quote. I’ll have to review the situation in ten years time and then get back to Ol’ Joe for a progress report 😉
Smears and innuendo do not a case make. John Beddington congratulates Ron Oxburgh on a job well done. This is evidence of a conspiracy? Really? Here is the list of committee and panel members who considered the evidence and came to the conclusions above:-
Mr Phil Willis (Liberal Democrat, Harrogate and Knaresborough)(Chair)
Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)
Mr Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)
Mr Ian Cawsey (Labour, Brigg & Goole)
Mrs Nadine Dorries (Conservative, Mid Bedfordshire)
Dr Evan Harris (Liberal Democrat, Oxford West & Abingdon)
Dr Brian Iddon (Labour, Bolton South East)
Mr Gordon Marsden (Labour, Blackpool South)
Dr Doug Naysmith (Labour, Bristol North West)
Dr Bob Spink (Independent, Castle Point)
Ian Stewart (Labour, Eccles)
Graham Stringer (Labour, Manchester, Blackley)
Dr Desmond Turner (Labour, Brighton Kemptown)
Mr Rob Wilson (Conservative, Reading East)
Prof Ron Oxburgh FRS (Lord Oxburgh of Liverpool)
Prof Huw Davies, ETH Zürich
Prof Kerry Emanuel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Prof Lisa Graumlich, University of Arizona.
Prof David Hand FBA, Imperial College, London.
Prof Herbert Huppert FRS, University of Cambridge
Prof Michael Kelly FRS, University of Cambridge
Sir Muir Russell
Professor Geoffrey Boulton
Professor Peter Clarke
David Eyton
Professor James Norton
Then there was the Penn State enquiry and the EPA decision.
Each and every one of them willing to sacrifice their political and scientific credibility and reputations in the service of the conspiracy, which extends to the highest levels of academia and politics in the US and UK, because ‘we all know’ that Ron had a drink with John.
Really?
Look, if you want to ‘prove’ Hansen is wrong, feel free to take issue with his academic work. Analyse his results, reproduce his methods, submit a comment or a rebuttal to a journal and subject it to peer-review. Knock yourself out.
Fact is, his comment to the journalist has been distorted. He was talking about a scenario where CO2 has doubled, or 40 years had elapsed, as the journalist concerned, Bob Reiss, reports ..
“I went back to my book and re-read the interview I had with you. I am embarrassed to say that although
the book text is correct, in remembering our original conversation, during a casual phone interview with a Salon
magazine reporter in 2001 I was off in years. What I asked you originally at your office window was for a prediction
of what Broadway would look like in 40 years, not 20. But when I spoke to the Salon reporter 10 years later –
probably because I’d been watching the predictions come true, I remembered it as a 20 year question
We should discard the academic work, not to mention the book, and disparage Hansen solely because of the faulty recollection of a conversation he had with a journalist reproduced in an online magazine.
Are you serious?
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110126_SingingInTheRain.pdf (footnote)
Speaking of “thorough” investigations conducted by those who have a vested interest in the outcome, here’s one that oddly seems relevant.
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news;_ylt=AmU53Rvk6eRhjMW160lo6k45nYcB?slug=dw-wetzel_why_osu_case_is_worse_than_usc_060811
How could such a shoddy investigation be conducted at a Big Ten school?
Could there be any other examples?
Oh well, I guess if it ever did happen in climate science, it’s such an unimportant field (unlike big time college football), no one would notice.
I will bet you $10,000 to the charity of your choice, that I can find a couple of peer reviewed papers that dispute the orthodoxy.
No deal. I am aware of maybe a handful of papers that challenge some aspect of the concensus. This is wholly to the good. Science progresses by means of such challenges, and they will stand or fall on their merit.
Now, if you were a policymaker, looking at a concensus of scientific conclusion supported by oh, about a thousand mutually-supporting studies, versus 5 or 6 maverick papers, which way would you jump?
“The choice of scientists is sure to be the subject of discussion, and experience would suggest that it is impossible to find a group of eminent scientists to look at this issue who are acceptable to every interest group which has expressed a view in the last few months. Similarly it is unlikely that a group of people who have the necessary experience to assess the science, but have formed no view of their own on global warming, could be found”
Oxburgh is indeed chairman of a renewable energy firm, and he was previously a Director of Shell Oil. Anyone explain why one is relevant and the other not?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3814607.stm
This should get you going:
http://climatequotes.com/
http://green-agenda.com/
http://tinyurl.com/6oqu3m
http://www.changeclimate.org/quotes/
Phlilip Clarke: your
Now, if you were a policymaker, looking at a concensus of scientific conclusion supported by oh, about a thousand mutually-supporting studies, versus 5 or 6 maverick papers, which way would you jump?
I follow the data. For every paper that supports AGW, I can post one that does not.
And, as I have stated, and numerous others, the section of road that was flooded, and replaced, was the elevated section. Not only above sea level, but also above ground level.
Admit your error and move on.
Philip Clarke:
Oxburgh is indeed chairman of a renewable energy firm, and he was previously a Director of Shell Oil. Anyone explain why one is relevant and the other not?
“Previously” is past tense. He is currently chairman of a renewable energy company, and thus propagation of CAGW is to his financial interests.
See the difference?
Phil, my old china,
Do you reall think playing a ‘blinder’ is the right tone to be used for such a crucial enquiry? I don’t know which country you come from, but if you live in the UK the phrase ‘playing a blinder’ implies a skilful act of clever manipulation i.e. to ‘blindside’ the opposition.
So what if Oxburgh once worked with Shell? He’s obviously jumped ship to windfarms
as he realises that’s where the real money can be made with all those government subidies. Whichever way you try to spin it, Oxburgh currently has a vested interest in the promotion of AGW.
Sorry everyone, Phil seems to have led me away from classic quotes, so I’ll shut up!
No. Played a blinder is UK slang for an exception performance, esp. sporting.
http://www.wordreference.com/definition/blinder
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/blinder
The EPA report is subject to judicial review. Is the US justice system in on the conspiracy, then?
Philip Clarke: Ah, I see how it works. When something you say is shown to be wrong, you simply ignore it.
While this may be, for you, a perfectly valid internal coping strategy, it does tend to lessen your external credibility.
One more quote on snow, from CSIRO in Australia, via Andrew Bolt
In May 2008, the CSIRO’s warmists warned of vanishing snow:
Scientists say Australian skiers should prepare for shorter ski seasons because of global warming… CSIRO climate change expert Dr Penny Whetton says Australia’s mountain snow cover could be reduced by up to 54 per cent by 2020.
In August 2008, skiers were snowed in:
CARS buried at Falls Creek and Mt Buller, others abandoned on the Kosciuszko Rd and Alpine Way, massive snow drifts up high at Perisher and Thredbo, blizzard conditions, snowfall accumulations in excess of 40cm. As the big dump continues Friday, skiers are looking up at the scoreboard – with a 2m season well within our sights….Clearly, July 2008 has delivered the best consistent skiing conditions since the great 2004 season – and there is potential for a cold and snowy peak month of August.
And now, in June 2011, the snow has only got better:
Every major resort is opening lifts for the start of the ski season and this is set to be the biggest opening weekend in more than a decade.
Is there something wrong with the CSIRO’s models?
When somebody makes a prediction that X will occur by year Y, is it not customary to wait until year Y before judging the skill of the prediction? Rather than declaring the prediction falsified when most of two decades has still to elapse before the prediction date?
Just askin’… Oh I see how this works, we take an ad hoc remark from an interview with a journalist, described by the journalist himself as a ‘casual phone interview’, containing at least one error of fact that we know about, a prediction that was for about 40 years from 1988, or after a doubling of CO2, and present that as a killer quote that discredits the scientist, all the time of course, ignoring his actual science.
Embarassing.
Phil: your
When somebody makes a prediction that X will occur by year Y, is it not customary to wait until year Y before judging the skill of the prediction?
Depends. If the prediction is sudden onset, one should wait before giggling. Campings rapture is one example. If the projection depends on increases year over year, it can be measured against current progress. This would be Jim’s.
At the current rate of sea level increase, 2.77mm/year at The Battery, it will take 1000 years for the west side highway to flood (which is still there, BTW). For the west side to flood by 2028, the rate of sea level rise will have to increase by a factor of 63.7, from 2.77 to 176.47 mm/year.
There has been no change in the trees in the median strip.
There has been no taping of the windows for higher winds.
The same birds are still there.
The crime rate in NYC has fallen since Jim’s prediction.
By any measure, there is not much progress to report. In fact, at current flood and crime rates, we can project failure.
And you still will not admit that you were wrong on the west side road. Interesting.
ok, let us now look at Jim’s famous 1988 prediction of global temperatures, scenario a, b and c.
Nope, fail there, too. Current temps are below the “c” scenario, which assumed massive cuts in CO2.
Maybe we are going about this all wrong. Perhaps you could give us an example of something that Jim did predict, that actually came to pass.
If the projection depends on increases year over year, it can be measured against current progress. This would be Jim’s.
Cuts both ways. If new information comes to light during the period then it is legitimate to reassess the prediction. There are at least two such pieces of information. Firstly Hansen would have had in mind the contemporary thinking on climate sensitivity, which was then thought to be around 4C for 2xCO2 . Research since then, some of it from Dr Hansen himself indicates a sensitivity nearer 3C. [which is why his model studies from that period, which have proven startlingly accurate up to now are now starting to read a little warm. Plug in the modern number for sensitivity and they are spot on.] So, if we are acutally interested in applying ‘scientific’ rigour to this speculation in a ‘casual phone interview’, then the prediction should be adjusted accordingly.
Secondly: try reading what Hansen was actually asked. He reports
“Reiss asked me to speculate on changes that might happen in New York City in 40 years assuming CO2 doubled in amount”
So the 40 year timeframe is actually arbitrary, Hansen was being asked for a prediction after a doubling of CO2; which nobody on the planet now expects to occur by 2028.
This is one difference between science and reports in the media, a scientific prediction is a test, in this case of three assumptions,
a) CO2 levels can plausibly to double by 2028;
b) Climate sensitivity is 4.2 degrees C per doubling of CO2; and
c) A 4.2 degree C rise of global temperatures above preindustrial levels will raise sea levels sufficiently to flood the West Side Highway.
we now know that (b) is moot, thanks in part to work by Hansen himself, so if by 2028 the highway is not flooded, all we learn is that either CO2 has not doubled, or climate sensitivity is lower than 4.2, or sea rise at 4.2 degrees C is not sufficient to flood the West Side Highway. As we are already fairly certain about the second of those possible conclusions, the prediction is now not terribly interesting. (c), however is actually highly plausible. As the facts change, I change my opinions, what do you do?
So he was right except where he was wrong.
I’d hate to play golf with that guy. He’d claim a Mulligan on every hole.
So he was right except where he was wrong.
Saying Hansen claimed the highway would be underwater by 2008, as happened here, was wrong. Saying he claimed the highway would be underwater by 2028 is equally wrong.
Apart from that – great quote!
I was referring to his 1988 scenarios. You know, the one’s he nailed, except for the sensitivity.
Oh, and Phil…
The current sensitivity is not a “fact”. It is a postulate. If I determine that my previous postulate was wrong, I generally would say “I was wrong”, which is not quite the same thing as changing my opinon.
The new sensitivity is not a “fact”, but it fits the data since 1988 better and allows for a better looking hindcast. It remains to be seen if it is a “fact”.
Phil: your
[which is why his model studies from that period, which have proven startlingly accurate up to now are now starting to read a little warm.
Hardly. Current GISS temps are lower than the projected Scenario C, which involved massive cuts in CO2. I am not sure how you can call this “startlingly accurate”.
Now lets look at Jim’s “assumptions”:
a) CO2 levels can plausibly to double by 2028;
Implausible. CO2 is increasing at 0.6% per year in the atmosphere. It will take 120 years for a doubling. Even doubling the rate of increase will take 70+ years for a doubling of CO2.
b) Climate sensitivity is 4.2 degrees C per doubling of CO2; and
Supported by no known facts. Its “assumed” that a positive feedback exists. A doubling of CO2 by itself will give only about 1 deg C of warming. Positive feed backs need to supply the rest.
c) A 4.2 degree C rise of global temperatures above preindustrial levels will raise sea levels sufficiently to flood the West Side Highway.
4.2 degree C will NOT cause sufficient steric sea level rise to flood the west side. Only melting the ice sheets would give sufficient volume to rise 1 meter or more. And this is impossible in a 40 year time frame.
So, Jim strikes out in the “assumptions” you assume he made. That suggests that the predictions are based on poor foundations, and are not likely to prove out.
According to the mythology the concern in the 1970s was all about global cooling (not the case in the actual literature, of course). In 1988, using the state of knowledge of climate science at the time, and a model that you could run today on a small desktop computer, Hansen projected not only that the climate would warm, but his scenario B got the trend right, to within the limits of observational accuracy, for the next 20 years. In other words, a ‘perfect’ model would not have done better. I call that startling.
Science is always ‘wrong’ in the sense that it is subject to constant revision and improvement and in the decades that followed, one of the parameters used back in the late eighties was revised downwards. The impact is small in the early years but will cause the projections to diverge going forward, however if you recalulate with the new sensitivity parameter the fit to observations remains excellent.
About the same time Hansen was asked to speculate, off the cuff, about the effects of doubled CO2, with an assumed timeframe of 40 years. I am sure he would be amused to find his remarks subject to such scrutiny, almost a quarter of a century later, yet we now think that doubled CO2 is likely to occur mid-century. Here is a study on the likely effect on New York …http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/gornitz_05/ which includes sea level rises easily sufficient to bring the much-discussed highway into the zone at severe risk of flooding.
This was not the academic literature, it was Hansen being given rein to speculate for a press interview within certain parameters, I am not aware that anyone else would be held to the ridiculous standard of every word in such a piece from so long ago being picked over, ignoring all that has transpired in the intervening decades. But I guess if that’s all you’ve got, then that’s all you’ve got…..
Phil: your
According to the mythology the concern in the 1970s was all about global cooling (not the case in the actual literature, of course).
But of course, that was the case. At least according to the NOAA. Well, except Peterson, of course. I don’t know how he missed this, inside his own organization.
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/outreach/proceedings/cdw29_proceedings/Reeves.pdf
In 1988, using the state of knowledge of climate science at the time, and a model that you could run today on a small desktop computer, Hansen projected not only that the climate would warm, but his scenario B got the trend right, to within the limits of observational accuracy, for the next 20 years. In other words, a ‘perfect’ model would not have done better. I call that startling.
I call it startling that you said this with a straight face. Hansen got Scenario B right, but only the CO2 trends, not the temperature. Oops. Batting .500 will get you into Cooperstown, but not the Jeane Dixon hall of fame.
I am not sure that he even got B right. B was the scenario with stopping CO2 at the then current levels. Did I miss a Kyoto treaty in 1990? I mean, one that actually worked?
Currently, Hansen’s GISS temperature is below Scenario C levels, which involved massive CO2 cuts. I call this a startlingly bad prediction.
But I guess if that’s all you’ve got, then that’s all you’ve got…..
Oh, heck no. I’ve got pages of your incorrect parsing and data. That keeps me busy enough.
Phil: your
which includes sea level rises easily sufficient to bring the much-discussed highway into the zone at severe risk of flooding.
No, not really. Those charts you posted show less than a meter of rise in the most extreme model. Water levels need to rise 3 meters to flood the highway. Note that even now, the highway is subject to storm surge, as occurred in 1992. But it will be at least 300 years before the highway is permanently under water, and up to 600 years using the model mean.
Do you even read your own sources?
Hansen got Scenario B right, but only the CO2 trends, not the temperature.
Factually wrong. From 1984 to 2006, the trends in the two observational datasets are 0.24+/- 0.07 and 0.21 +/- 0.06 deg C/decade, where the error bars (2\sigma ) are the derived from the linear fit. The ‘true’ error bars should be slightly larger given the uncertainty in the annual estimates themselves. For the model simulations, the trends are for Scenario A: 0.39+/-0.05 deg C/decade, Scenario B: 0.24+/- 0.06 deg C/decade and Scenario C: 0.24 +/- 0.05 deg C/decade.
The bottom line? Scenario B is pretty close and certainly well within the error estimates of the real world changes. And if you factor in the 5 to 10% overestimate of the forcings in a simple way, Scenario B would be right in the middle of the observed trends. It is certainly close enough to provide confidence that the model is capable of matching the global mean temperature rise! http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/
Phil: perhaps you aren’t paying attention. The current GISS temperature is below Scenario C. Feel free to check.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988_Hansen_etal.pdf
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
As for “startlingly accurate”? Even RC says that to get inside Scenario B, you need 2 sigma error bars, then even larger error bars for “true error”, then 5-10% more on an overestimate of forcing.
That is is lot of fudge factors. Do you think I could use these factors in making up my next budget presentation? It would make proving my forecasting skills an easier task….
Read it again. The conclusion that Scenario B matched observations for the period does not depend on the error bars or forcing discrepency. The predictions were revisited in 2006 in the literature:
Modeled 1988–2005 temperature changes are 0.59, 0.33, and
0.40°C, respectively, for scenarios A, B, and C. Observed temperature
change is 0.32°C and 0.36°C for the land–ocean index and
meteorological station analyses, respectively.
Warming rates in the model are 0.35, 0.19, and 0.24°C per decade
for scenarios A, B. and C, and 0.19 and 0.21°C per decade for the
observational analyses.
Global temperature change PNAShttp://www.pnas.org/content/103/39/14288.full.pdf+html
So the scenario B trend was spot on for 17 years, and continued to be so for several years afterwards.
As I said.
Phil,
From your reference, and for everyone’s lyin’ eyes, Figure 2 with data added through 2010.
http://i51.tinypic.com/rk0wpi.jpg
Remember now, your boy says
Not exactly “spot on”, especially when one considers that 2011 is not going to be as warm as 2010.
I missed this thread first pass. What about the old faithful(s) from Trenberth:
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
And my personal favorite:
“How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty! ”
Speaking of Old Faithful, the site is down at the moment (hopefully not for long), but here’s the link to the infamous email:
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1052&filename=1255523796.tx
Wait a minute. What’s up WUWT’s Up crew? Nobody posted this?
“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
C’mon. MBH 2009:
“The claim that ‘upside down’ data were used is bizarre.”
Jones, BBC 2010, answering this: Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
“Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different .”
There are tons of quotes that could be categorized: team climategate, steer review, abstracts, etc. I personally think it would be a worthy endeavor but it is easy for me to say because I know I can’t contribute much to making it a reality at the moment. But such a repository would be useful. I still have this page bookmarked even though the links are dead:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/20/climate-cuttings-33.html
Never enough time I suppose.
Phil: I will let John M’s chart speak for itself.
Well, thanks, I was aware that the 1988 projections are now starting to diverge from observations. That is what I meant when I wrote
‘The impact is small in the early years but will cause the projections to diverge going forward,’
The cause is almost certainly that Hansen’s assumed value at the time for climate sensitivity of 4.2C was too large, that is what I meant when I wrote that
‘one of the parameters used back in the late eighties was revised downwards.’
However for the first two decades after the predictions were made, the predicted and the observed trends were indistinguishable. That is what I meant when I wrote
‘his scenario B got the trend right, to within the limits of observational accuracy, for the next 20 years. In other words, a ‘perfect’ model would not have done better.’
If you ‘reverse-engineer’ the climate sensitivity from the data we now have using the 1988 version of the model, you get a value of 3.4C, which is strong evidence that the IPCC have got it right….
Alternatively, if your agenda is political rather than scientific, you could insist that every assumption made a quarter century ago must remain fixed forever and so Hansen was ‘wrong’.
See here or here
Phil: your
‘The impact is small in the early years but will cause the projections to diverge going forward,’
Of course it will. They curves all have the same origin. They have to be close at the start of the series. But they are not close now. That would indicate a low predictive skill. Startlingly low, I would say, as current GISS temps are below scenario C.
you get a value of 3.4C,
Which would mean you should see 0.34 degree per decade increase. How much has the temperature gone up in the last decade?
Phil: And Hansen might be fibbing just a bit on his scenarios. In the paper where he describes the scenarios, C is massive cuts, and CO2 levels stabilizing.
Scenario B is where some cuts are made, and atmospheric CO2 only increases linearly.
Scenario A is BAU, and CO2 increases exponentially.
CO2 has been increasing exponentially since records started at Mauna Loa. If it increases by X% per year, its exponential. Or, super exponential, according to Joe Romm.
Over twenty years on, Hansen’s ‘most plausible’ scenario is <0.3C from observations, (compared to a null hypothesis of no warming) … the 95% uncertainty bands in the observed and modelled trends overlap. Not entirely lacking in skill, then.
Which would mean you should see 0.34 degree per decade increase.
You might want to look up the definition of climate sensitivity. It’s fairly key to understanding this stuff.
Not entirely lacking in skill, then.
So which is it? “Startlingly accurate”? Or “not lacking in skill”. There is a big difference in hitting the dart board, and hitting the bulls eye.
You might want to look up the definition of climate sensitivity. It’s fairly key to understanding this stuff.
Its painfully obvious I won’t learn anything from you, Phil.
So, back to the scenarios. “a” is exponential, and “b” is linear. Please describe the slope of the Muana Loa CO2 graph. Is it linear or exponential?
Back to the west side, again. Your own sources show that it will be 300-600 years before that road is flooded. Would you care to comment on Jim’s accuracy in this prediction?
Phil: Now, this gem:
You might want to look up the definition of climate sensitivity. It’s fairly key to understanding this stuff.
Climate sensitivity is how much warming can be expected for a given forcing.
If the predicted temperature is 0.3 degree lower than the measured, that means, everything else being equal, that the sensitivity to that forcing is not as strong as used in the model.
In other words, what you are saying, I repeat, what you are saying, is that the actual climate sensitivity is less than that used in Jim’s model.
Les, Scenario (b) is not linear, a 3.4C climate sensitivity does not imply a .34C/decade increase and none of my sources says anything 300 years into the future.
Other than that ………
corrigendum: my
If the predicted temperature is 0.3 degree lower than the measured, that means, everything else being equal, that the sensitivity to that forcing is not as strong as used in the model.
Should be:
If the predicted temperature is 0.3 degrees higher than the measured, that means, everything else being equal, that the sensitivity to that forcing is not as strong as used in the model.
Phil: your
Les, Scenario (b) is not linear,
You might want to take that up with Jim. It states that it is indeed linear, right in his paper.
From his paper:
Scenario A assumes continued exponential trace gas growth, scenario B assumes a reduced linear linear growth of trace gases, and scenario C assumes a rapid curtailment of trace gas emissions such that the net climate forcing ceases to increase after the year 2000.
a 3.4C climate sensitivity does not imply a .34C/decade increase
Sorry, but that is exactly what a 3.4 degree/century sensitivity is: 3.4/10 =0.34. Pretty simple math.
and none of my sources says anything 300 years into the future.
You might want to look at that sea level rise of places near NYC. The worst case is 90 cm/century, and the model mean is 1/2 that. The west side is about 3 meters above sea level. That translates into over 300 years for the worst case, and over 600 for the model mean.
I am posting that for you again, as you apparently did not read it the first time.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/gornitz_05/
I forgot to post Jim’s paper, my bad.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/1988/Hansen_etal.html
Note that the repeated word “linear” is part of the abstract. Maybe Jim is trying to rub it in for Phil.
Aside from the fact that the political commentary has logical fallacy written all over it, maybe we should just wait 25 years and see if he’s right this time.
You are confusing emissions, concentrations and forcings, you said
“Scenario B is where some cuts are made, and atmospheric CO2 only increases linearly.”
Which is wrong, Co2 and other gases continue to increase in scenario B, however as it is a log. relationship, the resultant forcing is indeed roughly constant. See section 4.1 in the paper you so kindly linked to. The rate of growth decreases, but if something is growing it cannot, by definition, be linear.
In other words, what you are saying, I repeat, what you are saying, is that the actual climate sensitivity is less than that used in Jim’s model.
Yes. The 1988 model used 4.2C, best current estimate is around 3C. I’m sure I’ve said this several times, glad its sunk in.
Sorry, but that is exactly what a 3.4 degree/century sensitivity is: 3.4/10 =0.34. Pretty simple math.
No, that is simply wrong. Climate sensitivity is the response to a forcing, it has no defined time element at all.
It is utterly implausible that Hansen meant to imply a 3m sea level rise by his prediction about the highway, even in a media interview. He is one of the more pessimistic scientists about SLR, but even so predicts a century will pass before we see multi-metre rises.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/2/2/024002/pdf/erl7_2_024002.pdf
Phil: ypur
however as it is a log. relationship, the resultant forcing is indeed roughly constant.
OK, let me explain. You are wrong several ways here. The resulting response to a log relationship forcing is roughly linear. However, the slope of the response changes with the rate of addition. With an exponential increase, the slope is steep, and increases over time. With a linear increase, the slope is gentler, and there is no acceleration over time. With zero addition (scenario C), then the forcing is constant (no change up or down)
let quote Jim again:
scenario B assumes a reduced linear linear growth
lets quote Gavin:
The details varied for each scenario, but the net effect of all the changes was that Scenario A assumed exponential growth in forcings, Scenario B was roughly a linear increase in forcings, and Scenario C was similar to B, but had close to constant forcings from 2000 onwards.
—————————————————————————————
Your
The rate of growth decreases, but if something is growing it cannot, by definition, be linear.
I am gob smacked. There is no such thing as linear growth? You do know the difference between linear and exponential growth, right? Linear is when the same volume is added per time interval. The volume increases, but the amount added stays the same each interval. Exponential is when the same ratio or more, of the whole is added each time interval. The volume increases, and the amount added each time interval increases each time interval.
——————————————————————————-
your
Yes. The 1988 model used 4.2C, best current estimate is around 3C. I’m sure I’ve said this several times, glad its sunk in.
I wish what I was saying would sink in….
So, if the measured temperature is 0.3 degree less than the modeled in a decade, that would mean that the climate sensitivity is about zero. Plus, you seem to be confusing sensitivity with variability.
————————————————————————————-
your
No, that is simply wrong. Climate sensitivity is the response to a forcing, it has no defined time element at all.
You are in way over your head here. Sensitivity is how much change can be expected per unit volume of a forcing. In the case of CO2, its a sensitivity (according to FAR) of about 3 deg C for a doubling. As its expected that CO2 will double in a century, that means 3 deg C per century. As the response is linear (which you have stated), that means that we can divide by 10 to get decadal results. If you want to argue that the time to doubling is less, then we increase the response per century and decade.
——————————————————————————————————————–
your
It is utterly implausible that Hansen meant to imply a 3m sea level rise
You keep changing your story. First it was the west side had been taken down due to flooding. (it was , but for poor drainage, not sea level).
Then you said that NASA predicted the flooding by 2100, with your link. Which is blatantly wrong.
Now you are saying that Jim never predicted this? C’mon, be consistent.
Too much to unravel there, just one question – if ‘its expected that CO2 will double in a century’, and Hansen was also talking about conditions after a doubling, which he was, then why are we assessing the prediction about 80 years too soon?
Phil: your
Too much to unravel there, just one question – if ‘its expected that CO2 will double in a century’, and Hansen was also talking about conditions after a doubling, which he was, then why are we assessing the prediction about 80 years too soon?
1. because Jim said 20 or 30 or 40 years. That is just around the corner now.
2. As discussed, we can project measured data now, vs his prediction. And his predictions don’t fare so well. Nor does your defense of the predictions.
There will be no encroachment of the sea for the next 300 to 600 years on the west side. Or 1000 years if you use measured data.
The crime rate has fallen. The trees are the same. The birds are the same. And there is no tape on the windows.
Temperatures are currently below the C Scenario, which called for total cuts in emissions by 2000. Note that an earlier doubling of CO2 only makes observed differences larger.
because Jim said 20 or 30 or 40 years. That is just around the corner now.
He said none of these. He was asked about conditions after doubled CO2 (about 560ppm). Now you tell us this is not expected until a century. Please explain.
Ummm… no. According to the Salon author, Jim was asked about how warming would affect NYC in 20-30-40 years (take your pick).
Are you not paying attention? Why do you keep trying to change the subject?
Jim said the west side would be flooded in 2008, 2018, 2018. This is impossible, short of an asteroid strike on the ice shields. There is no change in flora or fauna, and no increase in crime.
Just admit you are wrong and move on.
Hansen: Michaels also has the facts wrong about a 1988 interview of me by Bob Reiss, in which Reiss asked me to speculate on changes that might happen in New York City in 40 years assuming CO2 doubled in amount. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110126_SingingInTheRain.pdf
Reiss : When I interviewed James Hansen I asked him to speculate on what the view outside his office window could look like in 40 years with doubled CO2. I’d been trying to think of a way to discuss the greenhouse effect in a way that would make sense to average readers. I wasn’t asking for hard scientific studies. It wasn’t an academic interview. It was a discussion with a kind and thoughtful man who answered the question.”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Examining-Hansens-prediction-about-the-West-Side-Highway.html
20 and 30 years never mentioned, and the 40 year figure came from the journalist and was also conditional on CO2 doubling.
Which we now learn is likely to take a century. Very puzzling.
Not puzzling at all. To assume a doubling in 40 years is wrong. All subsequent predictions based on this assumption must also be wrong.
Like the west side flooding.
Reading the posts and noticed all the jawboning Re: the West Side Hwy in N.Y. What I think is that many of you are getting caught up in the minutia. From earlier posts of sensationalist quotes, the ones that matter the most relate to ‘frighten’ the people or ‘it doesn’t matter whether it’s true’. Point: Once these bad excuse for humans state their sensationalist and most likely false statement, they have accomplished their mission. The media will carry the soundbites and the dumbed-down populace has now mentally absorbed another scenario for catastrophe.
The skeptic scientists are the only ethical scientists (my generality), and this may be unfortunate in that you really have to fight fire with fire in order to win. This is politics and they have been playing real dirty for a very long time, but the good guys are playing nice.
One more Hansen prediction that will likely bite the dust. Hansen predicted that OHC would increase by 2012, and gave a specific number, of about 6.7 * 10^22 joules in the upper 750 meters.
So far, the number is about 0.0.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/2011-update-of-the-comparison-of-upper-ocean-heat-content-changes-with-the-giss-model-predictions/
Bad news, Phil. GISS temperature is now just about 1/2 degree below Scenario B (which was forecast to be 1 degree above the average). Even Scenario C (stopping all emissions after 2000) is above current temperatures.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
“It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s
The impurities in our air and water that are doing it”
— Al Gore