NASA's James Hansen's big cherry pick

What was the source of Hansen’s temperature data?
I don’t see it mentioned anywhere.
GISS, fully adjusted (and readjusted, and readjusted)?

I used to like cherries.
Duncan B (UK)

If it doesn’t fit, you must omit…
apologies to Johnny Cochrane.

“James E. Hansen: “When I testified before the Senate in the hot summer of 1988 , I warned of the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our planet. I painted a grim picture of the consequences of steadily increasing temperatures, driven by mankind’s use of fossil fuels.”
If global temperatures are increasing over a time interval, it is out of the methods of science to predict global temperatures for the future without the knowledge of the physical mechanism of increasing or decreasing global temperatures. Each disregard of this limit of physics is not a method of science and/or a fallacious argument, which includes in the case of an authority the fallacy Argumentum ad verecundiam (Appeal to authority). ‘The Appeal to Authority uses admiration of a famous person to try and win support for an assertion.’.
Independent from this argument it needs not much logic to conclude that with increased global temperatures the processes driven by a higher heat must change in its effects. It seems to be intelligent to take the consequences in the adaptability as humans ever have done.
A further disregard of the methods of science is to take the old fashion dept phantom, people have controlled by kings, religions, and governments for many millennia, and mix it into a prediction of an authority, without any valid scientific argument.
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/agw_poll.jpg
In a new analysis of the past six decades of global temperatures, which will be published Monday, my colleagues and I have revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present.
To understand the nature of global temperatures it is necessary and possible to analyse the reconstructed and measured temperatures for the time interval of about 1 million years or for the time interval of about 10 ky to present. This is inalienable because a supposed linear increased temperature of 6 decades can be a phase of a oscillating function of centuries or millennia. From this it is not possible to extrapolate time interval of temperature into the future.
This is not a climate model or a prediction but actual observations of weather events and temperatures that have happened.
No Sir. You do say two times a word on prediction and future.
Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change.
No Sir. Your analysis shows simple that you think there is an connection between high global temperatures and effects from that level. But that is not a new recognition. That’s what wrong is, that your analyse shell show that ‘global warming will increase’ something, because this suggests a knowledge about the future, but this is not analysed.
our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.
That is not the point in climate science. The point in climate science is to explain the cause for the analysable global temperature periods from many kiloyears to month. Periods which are well known since Bond have analysed the frequencies after Fourier’s method with an example of about 1 period per 1800 years. But it seems that there are 2 periods in 1800 years, and the temperature reconstruction from Zorita et al. fit with Bond’s data. There are 13 increasing temperature phases over 11.000 years but as you can see, there are also phases of decreasing temperatures after high global temperature levels
:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/bond_vs_zorita2.gif
This may show that an analysis of your chosen time interval of 6 decades with an increasing phase is not useful to make predictions to the future. You cannot rule out from the scientific point of view that the natural period of 1800 years, or better 900 years, occurs in a new decreasing phase of the global temperature.
To whom it may concern, analysed solar tides can be simulated from 3000 BC until 3000 CE. The pattern of some solar tide functions indicate, it fits with Bond et al. and Zorita et al. and lower temperatures in the next decades to 2040 CE..
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/bond_vs_zorita3.gif
V.

[joke]I have an idea for where all this excess heat is coming from. It comes from Trofim Lysenko spinning in his grave at 3600 RPM at an abuse of science that makes his life’s work look trivial by comparison.[/joke]

[Snip. Read the site Policy. ~dbs, mod.]

I suppose one of his great many cherry picks must be the largest. That’s like trying to pick out the largest elephant in Africa though. There’s a lot of them and they’re all big.

For this kind of exercise to make sense either 1) The set of stations whose data they are looking at needs to be constant throughout the entire analysis period; or 2) The set of observations in each years needs to be an independent random sample out of all possible locations. I am pretty sure (1) is not true. I am also pretty sure (2) CANNOT be true (see )
As such, this pretty animation cannot show anything other than the fact that the distribution of temperatures at the stations whose data continue to make it into the data set shifted right.

Jim @10.27 am. Hansen did include the 1950s from 1955 on

The period chosen, 1955-1999 leaves out the warmer 1930’s and the cooler 2000’s. Why?
The period from 2000-present has no statistically significant warming. Leaving that period out biases the presentation.
Well, it might help if you actually watched the animation. It shows 1955, 1965, 1975 and then 1985-2011. The 1930s were warmer in the US, not the whole NH, and the 2000’s were by no stretch of the imagination ‘cooler’.
4. The period chosen exhibits significant postwar growth, urbanization is not considered.
No factors are ‘considered’ this is just a map of recorded temperatures. However according to Richard Muller “I think the conclusion that urban heat islands contribute essentially zero to the warming we see is on very solid ground.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/aug/03/scepticism-climate-study-richard-muller

JohnnyBoy says:
August 6, 2012 at 10:55 am
Typical warmist. Complete opposite of the truth. I have seen only exponential growth in skeptic numbers. The delusion of the warmists is what is growing.

JohnnyBoy says:
“Anthony seems to react without thinking, no substance at all in his complaints. The “global warming denial church” is falling apart and the debate will soon be over.”
You forgot the sarc tag…

In my comment above, I had meant to link to my animation. See also Joanne Nova’s illustration of the main point: Not only is the set of thermometers that make it into the data set not constant over the years, the patterns inspire, shall we say, curiosity.

Is there a link to the PNAS paper? There doesn’t appear to be anything at the NASA link except the uninformative news blurb…

Just another example of the Warm = Warming = Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming non-sequitur.
It is all we’ll get from them, because that is all they’ve got, because it isn’t warming and they know it.
They have a limited amount of time to try to get their political lock in place, before the lack of warming vs their models becomes untenable to the majority of scientists who are not personally invested in their oversold conjecture. They know that too, so expect the frequency and stridency of these opportunistic shenanigens increase.

Andreas says:
August 6, 2012 at 10:49 am
I’m a bit jealous of you over in North America with your excellent summer, over here in Scandinavia it’s the coldest and wettest summer in many many years. There is also a very interesting phenomenon occurring this year in that the northern parts of Scandinavia and areas 1000m above sea level will miss this summer completely, in meteorological terms that is (temperatures of more than 10 degrees C for more then five days).

Here in the MidWest this summer, we’re having heat like when I lived in Las Vegas. But the worst part is the accompanying drought.
Be careful what you wish for.

Didn’t Hansen have some input on this paper back in the 70’s ?
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/173/3992/138.short
”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. .. S. I. Rasool, S. H. Schneider
”
So it cant be Carbon Dioxide causing Hansen’s warming. If the logarithmic effects of CO2 are correct, (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/) then the rate of warming ass described in this new paper can not be CO2 and would have to be some other natural phenomena.

They also assume that any trend in heat waves / extreme weather etc… is directly caused by co2 levels but provide no physical mechanism for this and exclude/ignore hundreds of other potential factors. Even is droughts were getting more frequent, it could be due another cuase, for example changes in ocean currents etc… cherry picked and extremely week, the AGW crowd will jump straight onto this, its their kind of science i.e. it reafirms their beliefs like a christian who finds a piece of wood in the desert confirming Noah was there

Have a look at the Geoengineering map here, I see no mention of possible manipulation in any of the topics above, perhaps we should also consider this as a factor in any figures.
http://www.etcgroup.org/content/world-geoengineering

Back in my days in the creationist wars, I used to see probability arguments like this:

It follows that we can state, with a high degree of confidence, that extreme anomalies such as those in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 were a consequence of global warming because their likelihood in the absence of global warming was exceedingly small.

used as proof that God HAD to have created life on Earth.
Now I don’t mean to get that particular kerfuffle started in here; however I find it highly significant that climate science has reached the point of using probability as evidence.

It was cooler in 1951-1980? Really, Jimbo?

Unprecedented, Mr Hansen. Unprecedented.
GISS – Gloriously Inept Statistical Sh_t.

There is an old saying….Statistics don’t lie but liars can do statitstics. Case in point!

Phil Clarke says:
August 6, 2012 at 11:30 am
The period chosen, 1955-1999 leaves out the warmer 1930′s and the cooler 2000′s. Why?
The period from 2000-present has no statistically significant warming. Leaving that period out biases the presentation.
“Well, it might help if you actually watched the animation. It shows 1955, 1965, 1975 and then 1985-2011. The 1930s were warmer in the US, not the whole NH, and the 2000′s were by no stretch of the imagination ‘cooler’.”
You did not address the question asked.

Marketing opportunism at it’s barest and most shameful.
Mr Hansen should be selling us Icecream and suntan lotion at the same time.

I forgot to mention, the increase in the summer temperature anomalies is only in the northern hemisphere ex-tropics. Not only are greenhouses gases not the cause, the cause isn’t a global effect. Likeliest cause is decreased anthropogenic aerosols.

Phil Clarke says:
August 6, 2012 at 11:30 am
The period chosen, 1955-1999 leaves out the warmer 1930′s and the cooler 2000′s. Why?
The period from 2000-present has no statistically significant warming. Leaving that period out biases the presentation.
Well, it might help if you actually watched the animation. It shows 1955, 1965, 1975 and then 1985-2011. The 1930s were warmer in the US, not the whole NH, and the 2000′s were by no stretch of the imagination ‘cooler’.
Phil
Have you compared the temperatures back to the start of the Holocene? We are currently in a cold period with a continual trend down from the Holocene optimum. There are many periods where temperatures rose and fell far more sharply than they have done in the last 100 years – before anyone was pumping an extra 2 – 3% CO2 into the atmosphere. Yet you feel there should be alarm about the current period to the extent that it becomes THE threat above all others that mankind should face? More than famine, more than disease, more than poverty that are actually killing huge numbers of people NOW. Yet a completely unexceptional variance in climate that is still far cooler than the current interglacial average is cause for concern? Why?

The article is J Hansen et al. Perception of climate change, http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/07/30/1205276109.full.pdf+html ; I haven’t had time to read it all yet, but they do mention that winter figures are available at http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/07/30/1205276109.full.pdf+html , not included for space reasons.

A wonder how many of the CAGW bletheren realise that the REAL DANGER comes if they are wrong, and people like Easterbrook are right.
A drop into a cold period, with the current world wide state of energy supply systems, crushed by the alternative energy agenda, will have devastating consequences.
CO2 is GOOD… Warmer is GOOD… Colder is VERY BAD !!!!!!!!!!!!!

A drop into a cold period, with the current world wide state of energy supply systems, crushed by the alternative energy agenda, will have devastating consequences.
Excellent point. And if the cold is triggered by a volcanic eruption, we would have no time to prepare.

Its time to start lobbying for cuts to NASA’s budget.

And the MSM lapped it up and spewed wildly. I’m about ready to pack it in and become a drunken backwoods hillbilly or desert rat. Chuck it all, say goodbye to the madness as I hermit away in my declining years.

The bell curve animation is of ten year periods starting every year from 1951 to 2001.

I have an analysis of the story about Hansen from a different angle: http://meteorologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2012/08/science-by-press-release-story-about.html

What’s amazing is Hansen’s utter gall in the face of so much proof he is quoting BS that he continues to do so and he even has media outlets that will publish it!
When will this guy just shut his pie hole and go golfing?

If they really want a study to see if warmer periods have gotten longer, pick a REALLY extreme period and location – Marble Bar, Australia.
The town set a world record of most consecutive days of maximum temperatures of 37.8 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) or more, during a period of 160 such days from 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924.
So when Hansen states that “…Such anomalies were infrequent in the climate prior to the warming of the past 30 years, so statistics let us say with a high degree of confidence that we would not have had such an extreme anomaly this summer in the absence of global warming…”, he needs to ask, how would the Russian heat wave of 2010 (during July and early August 2010) stack up against this record?
“…During December and January, temperatures in excess of 45 °C (113 °F) are common, and the average maximum temperature exceeds normal human body temperature for 6 months each year…”
If THAT average is going up, then they may have a point.

henrythethird: Great observation about world record HIGH temperatures.
One would have to be stupid to not wonder if the “extremes” of today are really all that extreme.
 What follows are world record high temperatures: World (Africa) El Azizia, Libya; Sept. 13, 1922, (136F):
North America (U.S.), Death Valley, Calif.; July 10, 1913 (134F);
Asia; Tirat Tsvi, Israel, June 21, 1942, (129F):
Australia ,Cloncurry, Queensland; Jan. 16, 1889 (128F):
Europe, Seville, Spain,Aug. 4, 1881 (122F):
South America, Rivadavia, Argentina; Dec. 11, 1905 (120F):
Canada,Midale and Yellow Grass, Saskatchewan, Canada; July 5, 1937 (113F):
Oceania;Tuguegarao, Philippines, April 29, 1912 (108F):
Persian Gulf (sea-surface): Aug. 5, 1924 (96F):
Antarctica; Vanda Station, Scott Coast, Jan. 5, 1974 (59F):
South Pole, Dec. 27, 1978, (7.5F).
Highest average annual mean temperature (world): Dallol, Ethiopia (Oct. 1960 Dec. 1966), 94° F.
Longest hot spell (world): Marble Bar, W. Australia, 100° F (or above) for 162 consecutive days, Oct. 30, 1923 to Apr. 7, 1924. Notice anything regarding the dates of these records? Anyone heard of the dust bowl & wasn’t that in the 30s
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001375.html
This information is also at this link:
http://www.worldfactsandfigures.com/weather_extremes.php
Now for the question. If the earth is suffering this fever that these dishonest kind of people such as hasen want people to believe, then why haven’t these all time high records been broken?

and Hansen’s explanation for the Texas 1950-1957 drought, which was far worse than the Texas drought that stretched through last year, is?

Patrick Davis
Not only is the report getting lots of mileage in the warmist Fairfax press, it gets the obligatory “ooga booga” survey with a somewhat expected answer if they’ve just read the article.
“Do you believe extreme weather events are being caused by climate change?”
67% “Yes”. Hypothesis achieved!

I’ve looked at the paper now and the “analysis” based on good ol’ GISTEMP (ugh). And it has it’s highly charged political closing paragraphs (a Hansen trademark).
But if you think this is bad (and it is), just wait until PNAS publishes this:
Scientific case for avoiding dangerous climate change to protect young people and nature. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., submitted.
Some highlights:
“The most basic matter is not one of economics, however. It is a matter of morality – a matter of intergenerational justice. As with the earlier great moral issue of slavery, an injustice done by one race of humans to another, so the injustice of one generation to all those to come must stir the public’s conscience to the point of action.”
“Can the human tipping point be reached before the climate system passes a point of no return? What we have shown in this paper is that time is rapidly running out. The era of doubts, delays and denial, of ineffectual half-measures, must end. The period of consequences is beginning. If we fail to stand up now and demand a change of course, the blame will fall on us, the current generation of adults. Our parents did not know that their actions could harm future generations. We will only be able to pretend that we did not know. And that is unforgiveable.”
Yes, you read that right (first paragraph) – Hansen just compared “ending” global warming to slavery! This is perhaps the most repulsive and repugnant statement I’ve ever seen a scientist make in printed media…
Please, read it all…and don’t be surprised when you start to see lawsuits based on the Hansen junk science, which cause your energy prices to “necessarily skyrocket” (to use phrase from our current president).

1. Note all of the missing southern hemisphere data. There are operating weather stations during his time, but they are excluded from the analysis. Why?
See Michael Sweet’s post.
2. The period chosen, 1955-1999 (in the bell curve animation) leaves out the warmer 1930′s and the cooler 2000′s. Why?
Globally, the 1930’s were at about the same temperature as the 1951-1980 period, and colder than the 2000’s, which were globally the hottest decade on record. Furthermore, the 2000s ARE taken into account in the paper, if not in the animation–and considering that the paper is available to you, it puzzles me as to why you’d expend energy criticizing the animation.
3. The period from 2000-present has no statistically significant warming. Leaving that period out (of the bell curve animation) biases the presentation.
The mentioned period is covered in the paper itself, and is also present in the animation.
4. The period chosen exhibits significant postwar growth, urbanization is not considered.
Urbanization is considered, actually, as the data used has already been adjusted and homogenized specifically in order to remove spurious temperature trends, including the UHI effect. I’m aware, mind, that you don’t think that those adjustments are done correctly; fair enough. I’m just pointing out that from Hansen’s perspective, he doesn’t NEED to take urbanization into account because it’s already been taken into account.
5. As for severe weather, Hansen ignores the fact that neither tornadoes nor hurricanes have shown any increase recently. Only smaller tornadoes show an increase, due to reporting bias thanks to easily affordable and accessible technology. NOAA’s SPC reports that July 2012 seems to be at a record low for tornadoes.
Hansen makes no specific claims regarding tornadoes or hurricanes in his paper, which deals primarily with departure of temperature from the mean, not with extreme weather. This “criticism” is irrelevant to this specific paper.
6. My latest results in Watts et al 2012 suggest surface station data may be biased warmer over the last 30 years.
Watts et al 2012, while no doubt representing a significant effort on your part and on the part of others (and, furthermore, very useful in that it updates your previous surfacestations classifications, bringing them up to currency with the standards introduced by Mennes et al 2009), does not take into account known biases in the temperature record and therefore, as is, says little to nothing about the actual global temperature trend. I eagerly await, though, your application of the necessary adjustments for station relocation, instrumental changes, and time of observation changes to the stations you’ve classified, at which point you should be able to actually say something defensible about what United States temperature trends are.

TomRude says:
August 6, 2012 at 6:29 pm
It’s so nice to see that Hansen’s paper is not behind a pay wall… Thank you Rattus.
“The climate dice are now loaded to a degree that a perceptive
person old enough to remember the climate of 1951–1980 should
recognize the existence of climate change, especially in summer.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Having been around to watch the heat, the floods, the storms, and the heavy snows and resultant devastation from rapid spring melts during that period in the area where I grew up, especially in the early 1960’s when asphalt was melting in the streets; and having my parents talk of ranching and farming through the 30’s, I can hardly get excited about our current weather as I have seen it all before. Nothing new here. Let’s move on ;-P
Hansen must be around my age so I can only conclude he is a Charlatan.

Sam Yates;
Globally, the 1930′s were at about the same temperature as the 1951-1980 period, and colder than the 2000′s, which were globally the hottest decade on record.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
All the more reason to include them. If heat waves similar to the current period happened in the supposedly cooler period, that would pretty much falsify the while paper wouldn’t it? How is it that all that time and effort went into the paper and yet excluded data on hand for a time period when historical references makes clear had extreme heat waves? In the era of computer simulations, how hard would it have been to include the extra few decades of data and compare heat waves then to heat waves now?
Leaving them out is inexcusable, and when one considers how easily they could have been included, one can only draw a negative inference from the fact that they were not.

Davidmhoffer: I’m not sure what you’re referring to; as far as I know, in no data sets, adjusted or otherwise, do global temperatures during the 1930s and 1940s compare with temperatures now. Are you talking about this US adjustment? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/28/nasa-giss-adjustments-galore-rewriting-climate-history/ If so, it had little effect other than to shift a few records around, and the trend was left mostly as it was–and in any case, concluding that an adjustment is false because it results in warming, without even being familiar with why the adjustment is being performed, seems to me like it might get you into trouble. What are your reasons for believing that the adjustments aren’t valid?
As for your concerns about the time period used, Hansen et al defend that choice in their paper:
“We choose 1951–1980 as the base period for most of our illustrations, for several reasons. First, it was a time of relatively stable global temperature, prior to rapid global warming in recent decades. Second, it is recent enough for older people, especially the “baby boom” generation, to remember. Third, global temperature in 1951–1980 was within the Holocene range, and thus it is a climate that the natural world and civilization are adapted to. In contrast, global temperature in at least the past two decades is probably outside the Holocene range (7), as evidenced by the fact that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are both losing mass rapidly (8, 9) and sea level has been rising at a rate [3 m∕millennium, (10); updates available at http://sealevel.colorado.edu/%5D well above the average rate during the past several thousand years. Fourth, we have used this base period in scores of publications for both observational and model analyses, so it is the best period for comparisons with prior work.”
I would recommend, incidentally, taking a gander yourself at, say, drought indices over the 20th century (here, for example: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/jhm-386.1), as well as the times during which heat records were set (readily available on Wikipedia); I think you’ll find that in the former case, drought has been steadily increasing during this century, and in the latter there have been far more high temperature records set in the 2000s than is, statistically speaking, likely.

This does seem to be a shift in policy by Mann et al. Rather than predict terror in the future, prove we’re already suffering now. You can see the attraction: no need to use those flaky models, just rely on people’s perceived recent experiences.
Already I hear people saying how the weather is “weird” now, that it’s hotter/wetter/colder/you name it. The tactic is working because people remember the odd days and forget the normal ones.
So I guess we’ll see more of this. If it requires a dependence on ignoring half the world, leaving out the last 10 years and using distorted temperature records then so be it. The end justifies all possible means for these people.

Following the NASA link at the top it reports the data source :
“Platform/Sensor/Data Set: GISS Climate Dice Analysis (1950 through 2011)”
I guess that project means dice as in loaded dice.
Other problem is that data link gets a 404 error !

Philip Bradley says:
Hence, winter minimum temperatures are an unreliable measure of winter night time cooling.
I’m not quite sure what your point is. I suppose it depends upon what we are implicitly assuming all these temperatures mean.
Are we assuming that changes in global mean temp is some measure of global heat content. For land probably not. Land temps do relate to what we live in and how frosts etc affect crops that we need to eat and livestock.
Minimum daily temperature would seem to be an important parameter irrespective of whether it depends on early morning cloud. If it freezes crops still fail irrespective of just why.
This is why I think looking at the distribution as is done here is more informative. I’d like to do the same thing for winter if they’d only fix the broken link to their dicey data.

Here’s a copy of the comment I left on the YouTube page:

In the computer code in Climategate you had the “fudge factor”. Welcome to the “smudge factor”. By having a 10-year average it eliminates any signal in the data smaller than 10 years, hence conveniently erasing the last 10 years or so of flatlining temperature. The smudge factor works in conjunction with choosing your starting and ending points carefully — to show the trend you want. For example, if you considered the period starting from 1930’s and went to 1970’s it could be a different result

Giant cherry picking excercise? I must say, Anthony, you must have some balls to say that… Excluding Antarctica, just how much of the Earth’s land surface is actually in the southern hemisphere? How does the answer compare with the proportion of stations in urban locations?
And in any case, none of your alternative hypotheses can possibly explain the steady shift decade-after-decade (i.e. observed reality not model prediction) that has now resulted in extremely hot weather events (i.e. greater than +3 StdDev relative to baseline) being 50 to 100 times more prevalent in the northern hemisphere – because your alternative explanations are either random or cyclical – end of story.
REPLY: Hey, you have the same lack of perception as Hansen. Martin Hoerling of NOAA thinks the paper is crap too, saying:
Dr. Hoerling has published research suggesting that the 2010 Russian heat wave was largely a consequence of natural climate variability, and a forthcoming study he carried out on the Texas drought of 2011 also says natural factors were the main cause.
Dr. Hoerling contended that Dr. Hansen’s new paper confuses drought, caused primarily by a lack of rainfall, with heat waves.
“This isn’t a serious science paper,” Dr. Hoerling said. “It’s mainly about perception, as indicated by the paper’s title. Perception is not a science.”
Be as upset as you wish.
– Anthony

Watch and learn…

Rattus Norvegicus: “Anthony, if you read the paper you wouldn’t look like such a fool.”
I could give a rats tail what the paper says, when the associated P.R. piece is written as to mislead the public as to what the paper says.
Hansen: “We’re asserting that this is causally connected to global warming, and in this paper we present the scientific evidence for that.”
Only in this post-scientific world would an “asserting” of “causally connected” be allowed to stand, let alone be published in J.P. of National Academy of Sciences.
As for N.A.S.A.’s Hansen, I no longer trust N.A.S.A. in that a reputable organization, especially one funded by we Taxpayers, would have at least shuffled a political activist hack to a back room in middle of nowhere. If not terminated him or her; rather than allowing said person to continue to be their face and abuse their past-reputation.
Apologies to team members of Spirit, Opportunity, & Curiosity, but N.A.S.A.’s mismanagement is overshadowing your excellent work.

Martin Lack: “… none of your alternative hypotheses can possibly explain the steady shift decade-after-decade”
There has been NO “steady shift decade-after-decade”, thus the point of your Alarmist comment is rejected.
Do yourself and the rest of the humanity a big favor, quit taking political activists hacks’ P.R. and Cohort Review Papers as fact. Do your own research, analyze the historical temperature data, think through the AGW claims, factor in the hypocrisy of claiming 0.01 degree precision based on data that is +/- 2.0 degrees accuracy (insert ‘2XFacePalm’ here) And for blanking sakes ask why have the proponents of AGW had to keep morphing their Alarmism.

JJ says:
August 7, 2012 at 7:02 am
JJ – The overt political spin in Hansen’s current PNAS “scientific paper” is NOTHING compared to this:
<a href="http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha08510t.html&quot; Scientific case for avoiding dangerous climate change to protect young people and nature. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., submitted.
I urge everyone here at WUWT to READ THIS. I really proves that mainstream CAGW climate “scientists” have gone over the edge and are now into full derangement mode…

JJ
I was going to rip Sam Yates a new one for his defense of the indefensible, but you beat me to it. Well done.

Frank K. says:August 7, 2012 at 7:34 am
The overt political spin in Hansen’s current PNAS “scientific paper” is NOTHING compared to this:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha08510t.html
Hansen, J., P. Kharecha, Mki. Sato, F. Ackerman, P.J. Hearty, O. Hoegh-Guldberg, S.-L. Hsu, F. Krueger, C. Parmesan, S. Rahmstorf, J. Rockstrom, E.J. Rohling, J. Sachs, P. Smith, K. Steffen, L. Van Susteren, K. von Schuckmann, and J.C. Zachos, (2012) maintain:
„Global warming due to human-made gases, mainly CO2, is already 0.8°C and deleterious climate impacts are growing worldwide.”
s. a. pdf: http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/notyet/submitted_Hansen_etal.pdf
They all show a graph as Fig. 2. (B), using reconstructed temperatures of the past 800,000 years (32). The amplitude pp is about 7 to 8 K.
A fast Fourier analysis shows that connected mode resonances of saw tooth oscillations in the range of 10ky ^-1 to 400 ky^-1 exhibit the terrestrial spectrum. From this it is easy to simulate spectrum with Ehrlich modes:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/bentic_f_graph.gif
It seems to me that an oscillator with a fundamental frequency of ~190 ky^-1 and a lot of higher modes loading ~8K more heat to the earth over many ky (20+ ky), needs an oven.
It is the Sun?
Hansen and they all show a graph as Fig. 1. using hadcrut3 temperatures of the past 132 years.
Again an analysis of the temperature frequencies of the past 10 ky, especially of the past 50 years show that solar tide functions, fitted in the strength of the tide pairs respectively, match with the global temperatures. Lower frequency simulations need 6 planets and higher temperature frequencies need 11 planets.
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/temperatures_1880_ff.gif
To explain terrestrial global temperatures of the past centuries and decades and years with solar tide functions and the terrestrial global temperatures of the past 1 million years with Ehrlich modes suggests that processes in the solar system caused the climate of the Earth, and there is no place for an idea that little changes of CO2 in the atmosphere is relevant for the dynamics in climate.
I urge everyone here at WUWT to READ THIS.
I think not.
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/agw_poll.jpg
Science is not to find errors in the minds of other people; science is to find real relations between structures in nature. War is easier but no valid method in science.
V.

Volker Doormann says:
August 7, 2012 at 10:26 am
Frank K. “I urge everyone here at WUWT to READ THIS.”
I think not.
Science is not to find errors in the minds of other people; science is to find real relations between structures in nature. War is easier but no valid method in science.
—
With all due respect, Volker, people here should read the cited PNAS paper because we need to know what these people are thinking, and how it will affect EVERYONE in the years to come. If the CAGW activists are not countered, we will end up with an oppressive government that controls every aspect of our lives – what we can eat, what we can drive, our jobs, our houses, our land, how many children we can have. And it’s already starting – look at the coal industry! Soon there will be a huge glut of lawsuits, and like-minded liberal judges will start the process of outlawing products and services not deemed “environmentally friendly”. This will all come to pass…unless we act,
November…

JJ:
“’We choose 1951–1980 as the base period for most of our illustrations, for several reasons. First, it was a time of relatively stable global temperature, prior to rapid global warming in recent decades.’
i.e. – We chose the period to minimize the quantified variability, which will exaggerate the quantification of recent extremes.”
Not at all; in the paper they also show the effects of using 1981-2010 as their base period, and although the widening of the bell curve is not quite as visible, the shifting of its midpoint (and the increased incidence of extremes of temperature) is still clearly apparent.
“‘Second, it is recent enough for older people, especially the “baby boom” generation, to remember.’
WTF? What kind of scientific criterion is that? This paper was peer reviewed? If the inclusion of such nonsense in a ‘scientific’ paper doesn’t send chills down your spine …”
The focus of the paper is whether or not people nowadays should be able to recognize climate change based solely on their own observations, and the paper is entitled “Perception of Climate Change.” The use of a recent base period is extremely relevant.
“‘Third, global temperature in 1951–1980 was within the Holocene range, and thus it is a climate that the natural world and civilization are adapted to.
i.e. – We assumed our conclusion. And look what we found! Surprise!”
…I’m afraid I don’t quite follow. What conclusion are they assuming? He’s quite correct to note that the temperatures during the period from 1951-1980 are within the Holocene range; surely that’s not controversial. And that climate IS what we’re adapted for, since it’s the only one that humanity has experienced. Would you mind elaborating on this a bit?
“‘In contrast, global temperature in at least the past two decades is probably outside the Holocene range (7), as evidenced by the fact that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are both losing mass rapidly’
Sooooooooo … the Vikings didn’t live during the Holocene? Time to ‘adjust’ the history books.”
Where Vikings did or did not live in the past is utterly irrelevant. Greenland covers approximately 0.4% of Earth’s surface, which is easily small enough for it to have been, in the past, as warm or even warmer than now without having any real effect on global temperatures. The modern period is unique due to the global nature of the current rapid temperature change, in contrast to the rapid regional and glacially (if you’ll excuse the adverb) slow global changes that occurred in the past.
“‘(8, 9) and sea level has been rising at a rate [3 m∕millennium, (10); updates available at http://sealevel.colorado.edu/%5D well above the average rate during the past several thousand years.’
WTF? Its on the same trend that started @ 1900, according to their own data. Gratuitous.”
Um…No it isn’t: http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_hist_few_hundred.html
“‘Fourth, we have used this base period in scores of publications for both observational and model analyses, so it is the best period for comparisons with prior work.’
Yes Jimmy, when you hit upon a dodgy cherry pick, you are loyal to it.”
You have yet to demonstrate that it IS an example of cherry picking. He has a point that using the same reference period makes comparisons easier, and as he showed in the paper itself, using a different, more variable period (1981-2010) does not dramatically affect the results. The rightward shift of the gaussian is still very much in evidence.
“Given the recent discovery of the PDO, which operates on @ 60 year cycle and which is known to affect land surface temperatures dramaitically, the choice of a base period that is only 30 years long, and which (coincidence, I am sure) just happens to start at the bottom of a PDO cycle, and then is used to interpret the recent peak of same … well that choice is in need of some “defense”, now isn’t it?”
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/biondi2001/biondi2001.html There you go, a reconstruction of the PDO from the mid-1660s to 1991. And here’s another one, for a shorter period of time: http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/ Note how the current state of the oscillation is not terribly unusual, climatologically speaking, while global temperatures…are. Note, also, that according to the PDO index we should have been cooling since ~1985, which fairly obviously is not what has actually happened.

Sam Yates;
Upon review, you are correct! The paper is actually called “Perception of Climate Change”!
And a fine example of perception management it is!
If you are looking for people stupid enough to accept this as a reasonable explanation for excluding decades of data, and for trumpeting unfounded conclusions to the media, I am certain that you will find them in droves.
But not here. And you reveal yourself for what you are by attempting to do so.

DavidMHoffer:
Hm. I think we may need to backpedal a bit; we’re obviously just talking past each other at this point. If you don’t mind my asking, what would you expect to see in the chart if a longer interval had been used for the baseline comparison? What would you expect to see if a different interval of the same duration had been used? And why so? I want to establish (appropriately enough) a baseline, so that I know where you’re coming from here.
…And on a completely unrelated note, may I ask how quotes and/or italics are managed on this site? My last post was nigh-unreadable thanks to formatting issues, and I’d rather not subject y’all to that again.

Sam Yates;
Sam Yates says:
August 7, 2012 at 7:05 pm
DavidMHoffer:
Hm. I think we may need to backpedal a bit; we’re obviously just talking past each other at this point. If you don’t mind my asking, what would you expect to see in the chart if a longer interval had been used for the baseline comparison?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
1. PERCEPTION of warming is about as scientific as…. well, to be frank, it is the antithesis of science. Science is about separating fact from perception. Sometimes the two coincide, but until you have the facts, you don’t know that, and frequently perception is wrong.
2. As to what I would EXPECT, I don’t have a clue. Expectation is the root of confirmation bias. Iif the hypothesis is that there are more extreme events due to global warming, then the frequency and intensity of such events in the cooler past would either falsify or support that hypothesis. From the late 20’s to the early 40’s we have anecdotal evidence from all over the world that periods of intense drought and heat waves scorched various parts of the globe. My PERCEPTION based on my reading of the historical record and my PERCEPTION from stories told by elderly relatives of that period of time suggests that these were MUCH worse than what we are experiencing in recent years. But my PERCEPTION is not science. Examining the DATA from that time period is SCIENCE. If in fact my PERCEPTION is correct (as borne out by the data), and that time period was cooler than current times (which according to Hansen it was) then the hypothesis is falsified. If the data doesn’t support my perception, then so be it. But by excluding that important period of time, and focusing on perception of the data rather than the data available, Hansen as left science behind and entered the realm of perception management.
dmh

DavidMHoffer: Well said. I agree wholeheartedly with everything you wrote except, perhaps, the last sentence, which I would quibble with for reasons I’ve mentioned earlier (no indication of 1930s/40s being exceptional in the global record, no great alteration in the appearance of a shift in temperatures when a different baseline is used, etc.)

Sam Yates;
Until you do the same analysis on the data from the 30/40’s that Hansen did on the data he did use, that is just your perception.

Hottest summer I remember was in 1978. Forty plus days of 100+ temperature where I lived. Haven’t come close to that in 34 years here in Memphis, and I’ve lived here the whole time. This year is warm, but not as bad as that and we have temperatures in the sixties forecast for later this week.
But that is all just weather I suppose, not climate. But it does counteract Hansen’s claim that his base period was memorable as being cooler than currently. It all depends upon what temperature records you are looking at.

Frank K. says:
August 7, 2012 at 10:55 am
Volker Doormann says:
August 7, 2012 at 10:26 am
Frank K. “I urge everyone here at WUWT to READ THIS.”
I think not.
Science is not to find errors in the minds of other people; science is to find real relations between structures in nature. War is easier but no valid method in science.
—
With all due respect, Volker, people here should read the cited PNAS paper because we need to know what these people are thinking, and how it will affect EVERYONE in the years to come. If the CAGW activists are not countered, we will end up with an oppressive government that controls every aspect of our lives – what we can eat, what we can drive, our jobs, our houses, our land, how many children we can have. And it’s already starting – look at the coal industry! Soon there will be a huge glut of lawsuits, and like-minded liberal judges will start the process of outlawing products and services not deemed “environmentally friendly”. This will all come to pass…unless we act,
November…
Hi Frank K.,
I give my greatest respect to people, who are realizing freedom to fight as worrier of truth. History is full of stories (and movies) about brave people all over the world, but also in the U.S.A. Regarding the change in the spirit of the time one can see that the old fashion structures like finance, governments, authorities, parliaments, curt’s of justice, universities, or armies, but also religions and climate science are breaking in piece, because they have failed to respect the dignity of each human essence. You and me and most of all brave simple people of the folk of all countries take the freedom of speech to reinstall the balance of justice in the public affairs.
There is no doubt that therefore is a recognition necessary about what is wrong in reference to that what is right, but the very point is that to know what is wrong one must know what is right. All old fashion breaking structures take all their magic power to hypnotise people in WUWT, peer reviewed fantasy papers or sponsored catastrophic TV channels and blogs and sorry, WUWT is part of this if only the output of people are trumped who are trying to save their chairs, and comments are trumped back noisy.
The simple point is that all presumptive ‘wrong’ depositions must be found by strong arguments, because in the case of an absence of strong arguments there would be no difference between the depositions of authorities like Hansen et al. and your deposition that everyone should read that presumptive wrong depositions.
If everyone is reading all presumed junk science stuff, it leads not autmatically to the truth. OK, WUWT is not a science blog, it is a blog on global warming and climate change with the aim to discuss and trump errors in the thinking of the established Earth climate science community.
My way and my postings include strong arguments in this discussion regarding the claims of Hansen et al. as shown in two graph links above, but you haven’t a word on it and nobody else. Ok its science, but the rules in in the science of philosophy concern also the science of logic and argumentation, depositions like ‘The dog is red’ are no arguments.
However, thank you for your brave words.
V.

Volker,

My way and my postings include strong arguments in this discussion regarding the claims of Hansen et al. as shown in two graph links above, but you haven’t a word on it and nobody else.

I’m sorry that none of the scientists, nor any of the bloggers that you approached felt any need to respond to your assertions regarding the synodic tide aspect of Pluto and Quaoar in relation to terrestrial climate.
I hope that some day someone of authority will recognize your genius and pay proper respect to your findings..

Rob Dekker, Sam Yates;
Your defense of the indefensible does not speak well of you. Quoting Weaver in support of Hansen is like quoting a parrot. As for not reading the science, as I said in my comment, if the paper linked to has merit, it doesn’t change one by one iota that Hansen’s paper has none. Ignoring decades of data and then trumpeting conclusions about “perception” and offering them up as indicators of anything at all isn’t science, particularly in a field like climate where change takes place over many decades and centuries and separating fact from perception requires looking at all the data at hand precisely to remove perception from the equation.

[SNIP: Please check site policy here. And you don’t get to decide what is illogical and then present it here to disparage commenters. The antics of Anderegg and Doran are not welcome here. Whining about “cenbsorship” won’t do you any good either. -REP]

Second attempt at comment (first having mysteriously failed to appear).
[Moderator’s Note: You keep complaining about this. Your posts are not being “disappeared”. Maybe you need to check your connection. -REP]
With the greatest of respect, Anthony, Hansen has cherry-picked nothing. Excluding Antarctica, what percentage of the Earth’s land surface is in the southern hemisphere; and how does this compare to the 2% of the contiguous USA (or the global % of sites in urban locations)…?
As for the word “perception” in the title of Hansen et al (2012), this is used in place of “attribution”. The paper was not about psychology; it was about statistics – the statistical analysis of historical facts. Similar, in fact, to James McCarthy’s comprehensive rebuttal of everything John Christy said in the E&PW Senate Committee Hearing last Wednesday.
Opening statements of Sen. Boxer and Sen. Inhoffe and written testimony of all Witnesses:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_id=c0293eca-802a-23ad-4706-02abdbf7f7c3

There are several issues which have not been raised here.
The first is a the choice of names for the “warming” categories. From Figure 5:

Area covered by temperature anomalies in the categories defined as hot ð> 0.43σ), very hot (>2σ), and extremely hot (>3σ), with analogous divisions for cold anomalies. Anomalies are relative to 1951–1980 base period, with σ also from 1951–1980 data.

It needs to be stressed that in the paper, these categories are actually defined as the difference of the observation from the mean temperature for that local region during the 1951 to 1980 time period and not relative to an absolute measure. A region that was very cold will contribute “extremely hot” anomalies as the temperature warms even slightly despite that the fact that the actual warmer than usual temperatures could not reasonably be described as “hot” in any fashion.
The use of “extremely hot” however serves the propaganda purpose very well when the authors mention the relatively fewer localities where extra warming could be a problem. By mixing all of the locations together, they create a false view of exactly how prevalent the existence of genuinely extremely hot conditions might be.
The second is a more technical question. If one were examining extremes, why would you choose to use the mean rather than the more informative maximum temperature?
The mean temperature is affected by the possible changes in both the maximum AND the minimum temperatures. If the maximum were to stay the same and the minimum increase, the average would also increase. To describe this as a “more extreme” situation would be a misnomer.
The maximum temperature would be more variable than the mean so that using the Hansen metric would very likely not produce as dramatic effect. However, one would expect that such a consideration would not prevent its use in a scientific paper. Interestingly, I could not locate any data of max and mins on the GISS web site.
Just for fun, I went to the Climate Explorer website and had the site calculate the mean difference between the CRU 3.10 summer max and min temperature anomalies relative to 1951 to 1980 for the northern hemisphere. The result is interesting:
(In case the image does not show: http://statpad.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/summer_diurnal_1901_2009.jpeg )
The difference max – min is relatively constant from 1901 to the late 1970s at which point to drops dramatically. The change basically stabilizes at a new level from that time point. The effect of this was to add a substantial contribution from the minimum temps to the overall increase of “extreme temps”. I wonder if Mr. Hansen et al were aware of this…

DavidMHoffer: I think you skimmed a bit too quickly. Those are probability distribution graphs, and hence the TOTAL incidence of all temperatures is normalized to 1; consequently, the y-axis values are not percentage values. 0.1 on the y-axis does not represent 0.1%, it represents 10%. It’s the x-axis that’s percentage, and the bell curve in those graphs show that very few of the temperatures fall EXACTLY at the average value, most are a bit higher or lower, and a very few are FAR higher and FAR lower–precisely as you would expect, considering how much temperatures fluctuate on the short term. The location of the peaks, furthermore, is not really the main point of interest; all that that shows is that average temperatures have been sidling slightly upwards. The reason I brought the graphs to your attention is that you can see clearly that as average temperatures increase slightly, due to the shape of the bell curve extreme temperatures (that is, temperatures that were rare to nonexistent in the previous timespans) increase dramatically–and you can also see that the addition of the period 1900-1950 does not render the last thirty years any less remarkable.
I acknowledge that it would be nice if more stations were used, but then more stations are always to be wished for, and considering that the stations in question are globally distributed, and thus wouldn’t share the same micro or meso-climate, there’s no obvious reason why they would be untrustworthy.
I’m sorry that you think our conversation has been a waste of time, by the by; I’ve enjoyed it, myself, and come across some information that I otherwise wouldn’t have stumbled across. If it’s so very noisome to you, though, I’m willing to let the matter rest–although, of course, I’d prefer to keep it up, because as I said I’ve been enjoying this so far.

Sam Yates
I suggest you check the update from Michaels in the more current thread on this issue.

DavidMHoffer: I’ve seen it, but I’m puzzled as to why it only dealt with the US; that’s less than 2% of the Earth’s surface, after all, and when the entire globe is examined, a somewhat different picture emerges. I’d particularly direct your attention to figures 6 and 7: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/jhm-386.1
Clearly, the US is not the best test case when it comes to figuring out what the globe is doing, drought-wise. I don’t know how important this is or if there are other effects, of course, but I would guess that part of the reason that the US doesn’t show the same relationship between the two that the world does is because drought in the US is often associated with La Nina years, which tend to starve the Midwest of water while still being fairly cool. I would guess that, in the US at least, unusually warm years are associated with drought due to the increased evaporation from the soil, while La Nina years (which are also going to be unusually cold) are associated with drought due to the air and water circulation patterns in our neck of the woods. I do NOT insist on that, mind; it’s just speculation on my part, and there might be a completely different reason why the US shows no correlation between temperature and PDSI, while the globe does.

2% all crammed together, and therefore under similar climatic effects, overall. The stations from the paper I mentioned earlier are scattered all over the globe, and consequently are not exposed to the same climatic effects and can be expected to more accurately represent global trends. If you want to figure out the average temperature of an object, you don’t cram a few hundred thermometers in one part of it and assume that the rest follows that behavior (unless you have an excellent reason for believing that that one section is representative of the rest); you take measurements from all over, so that any local variations are averaged out.

Hm. When you say I’m rationalizing, are you disagreeing with my statement that a global record is more useful for determining global drought trends and correlations than a local (US) record, or are you just referring to my views on the validity of Handen’s paper? If the latter, again, his stated reasons are related to the ability of people nowadays to perceive the effects of climate change. His purpose is not to show that the temperatures today are hotter than they’ve been for a thousand years, or two thousand years, or however many millenia you might wish; they’re to show a perceptible increase in temperature relative to what people can remember, and to demonstrate that the dramatic temperature excursions like the 2003 heat wave in Europe, Australia’s millenial drought, etc. can be credibly linked to the slight increase in average temperatures that has occurred over the Earth’s surface. It seems to me, and I grant I could be wrong, that you’re blaming him for failing at a task he never attempted.
As to the CET record–well, it’s valuable, no doubt about that, but it’s LOCAL. Just as the US is local. It, by itself, says effectively nothing about global climate and the occurrence of extremes.

Sam Yates;
As to the CET record–well, it’s valuable, no doubt about that, but it’s LOCAL. Just as the US is local..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
There you go again. What I said was that US and CET and OTHER temp records from ALL OVER THE WORLD give the same answer.
dropping thread, this is going no where.

Hansen (and colleagues) writes about the “tails” – contain extremes.
There is no, however, in his references: Ruff and Neelin (2012), Long tails in regional surface temperature probability distributions with implications for extremes under global warming (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2011GL050610.shtml) with interesting conclusion: “Surface temperature distributions with long tails have a much smaller change in threshold exceedances (smaller increases for high-side and smaller decreases for low-side exceedances relative to exceedances in current climate) under a given warming than do near-Gaussian distributions. This implies that models used to estimate changes in extreme event occurrences due to global warming should be verified regionally for accuracy of simulations of probability distribution tails.”
Hansen (and coauthors) writes: “We calculate seasonal-mean temperature anomalies relative to average temperature in the base period 1951-1980. This is an appropriate base period because global temperature was relatively stable…”
Should be (again) recalled: years 1951-1980 – this is only the negative phase of PDO (currently it is positive), it was “a passage” from positive to negative phase of the AMO (1981 – minimum) – at present is “the reverse”. Oscillations of the NAO and AO (such as ENSO) – were also other phases (than today). The differences for “oscillatory conditions” for 1951 to 1980 – present period – are obvious.
Nielsen-Gammon writes about it (http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2011/09/texas-drought-and-global-warming/) so: “So at present, both the PDO and AMO are properly configured to produce droughts in Texas, and this fact explains the current cluster of droughts.” “…Texas would probably have broken the all-time record for summer temperatures this year even without global warming.”
Dr. Hansen: “For example, an unusual atmospheric “blocking” situation resulted in a long-lived high pressure anomaly in the Moscow region in 2010, and a strong La Niña in 2011 may have contributed to the heat and drought situation in the southern United States and Mexico. However, such meteorological patterns are not new and thus as an “explanation” fail to account for the huge increase in the area covered by extreme positive temperature anomalies.”
But if – for La Niña – add the current oscillations “conditions” – AMO, PDO, ENSO, etc. …
In Europe, all the recent heat waves (2003, 6, 10) were perfectly configured with the rapid start of La Nina (and again, let us add, for example, the positive phase of the AMO …).
Blockade weather. The references Hansen paper, there is no paper Francis and Vavrus (2012), Evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in mid-latitudes (http://www.deas.harvard.edu/climate/seminars/pdfs/FrancisVavrus2012.pdf) showing the influence of AA on strengthening the blockades (“weakening” of the jet stream) – extremes of weather.
… and me – by the way jet stream – recall such reports:
Dispatch from AGU: An equable climate curveball [“equable climate problem”]
http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2011/12/dispatch-from-agu-an-equable-climate-curveball/
“… 6,000 years ago and the last interglacial period 125,000 years ago. Both periods are thought to be warmer than the present-day climate.”
“So in both seasons, the detectable segment of the pole-to-equator temperature difference was smaller than at present, and at high latitudes the seasons were less dramatic than at present.”
“What could cause such a thing? The answer probably lies either in the position and latitudes of the jet stream (Davis’s idea) …”
NASA in „The Impact of Climate Change on Natural Disasters” (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/RisingCost/rising_cost5.php), – about “equable climate problem”: “As a result, global warming may cause the temperature difference between the poles and the equator to decrease. and as the difference decreases, so should the number of storms, says George Tselioudis, a research scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and Columbia University.” “If we are creating an atmosphere more loaded with humidity, any storm that does develop has greater potential to develop into an intense storm,” says Tselioudis.”
However …: “We designed the computer simulations to show that as the ocean temperature increased, hurricanes would form more rapidly and easily, even in the presence of wind shear,” says Nolan, associate professor of Meteorology at the Rosenstiel School. “Instead, we got exactly the opposite result. As the water temperature increased, the effectiveness of the wind shear in suppressing hurricane formation actually became greater.” (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080812160615.htm)

WOW! A lot of comments. Hansen has become a statistician and no longer practices good science. I think he should change the orbit of the Earth, its declination, and its wobble. This being done he should handle the sunspot issues, and the solar weather. Having accomplished this he can change the Earth’s cyclical behavior and therby the climate. Even this may no control weather which are daily, weekly, monthly type events. Moreover, Jimbo. stop giving us the concensus argument – science is not based on CONCENSUS. By the way , Jimbo, ever hear of historical geology – try the 1st year course.
I invite you to read my blog: http://energycrisis12.blogspot.com. My e-book – The Sky Will NOT Fall – Unmasking the Green Revolution – Amazon, Barnes & Noble. Forthcoming e-book – soon to be puiblished – Beyond Our Control – Debunking Manmade Global Warming.

richardscourtney says:
August 9, 2012 at 12:00 am
“The technique is clear;
(a) make an untrue assertion
(b) ignore or misquote any rebuttals […]”
That is unfortunately drastically eased by currently WUWT not having coding to allow images to be shown in comments, an aspect which would be best to change. Usually, on any site, only several percent or less of readers will click on a link, but the argumentative tactic of being able to count on such collapses in event of images being harder to scroll past without seeing. Such as my prior post ends up at an order of magnitude less effectiveness because of critical images not being blatant.
For the Northern Hemisphere average, for 5 year means, the CAGW movement basically claims that there was only around 0.1 to 0.2 degrees Celsius temperature decline 1940s-1970s, followed by around 0.6 degrees warming 1980s-2000s. However, without their fudging of past temperature data, including skewing by adjustments predominately in the opposite direction of proper correction for UHI, the actual picture for such NH several-year averages is closer to around 0.3 degrees Celsius temperature decline 1940s-1970s, followed by around 0.3 to at most 0.4 degrees temperature rise 1980s-2000s, with the latter mainly just taking temperatures back to near the levels of the late 1930s.
In images, how the 1930s were about as warm as the 1990s is seen in http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/Images/arctic_temp_trends_rt.gif
first for the arctic, and, secondly, for the average over the Northern Hemisphere as a whole when without dishonest revisionism of past temperature measurements, in http://www.real-science.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ScreenHunter_296-Apr.-08-09.29.jpg
when combined with http://hidethedecline.eu/media/PERPLEX/fig75.jpg
Any net warming of the Northern Hemisphere mean in the 1990s-2000s compared to the 1930s drops to the level of hundredths of degrees at most, not even tenths of a degree. So much for grand global warming. (There was more major net global warming before the end of the 1930s, but the 19th century and the early 20th century were part of recovery from the Little Ice Age, while human emissions were many times less then than a century later, not supporting human effects being dominant).
Full non-fudged southern hemisphere temperature data is harder to acquire, but, beyond partial segments like http://hidethedecline.eu/media/PERPLEX/fig47.jpg , the overall global temperature average would be related to what global sea level data shows: slower rise rate in the second half of the 20th century than during the first half (“1.45 ± 0.34 mm/yr 1954–2003”
versus “2.03 ± 0.35 mm/yr 1904–1953” as http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2006GL028492.shtml notes).
The preceding is discussed with many more illustrations and references in
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/part1-the-perplexing-temperature-data-published-1974-84-and-recent-temperature-data-181.php
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/part2-the-perplexing-temperature-data-published-1974-84-and-recent-temperature-data-183.php
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/part3-the-perplexing-temperature-data-published-1974-84-and-recent-temperature-data-184.php
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/part4-the-perplexing-temperature-data-published-1974-84-and-recent-temperature-data-185.php
and
http://www.real-science.com/hansens-tremendous-data-tampering
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/16/rewriting-the-decline/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/18/weather-balloon-data-backs-up-missing-decline-found-in-old-magazine/
among others.
(The last two, like the others, are good articles, but WUWT has never directly shown many people the biggest picture seen by such as http://www.real-science.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ScreenHunter_296-Apr.-08-09.29.jpg and http://hidethedecline.eu/media/PERPLEX/fig75.jpg in combination together at once, so people can see what happens when both of those Big Lie techniques are removed simultaneously instead of discussing one at a time separately; if I’m lucky, perhaps several people may click on these links, but major articles get thousands of times the views).

I am amazed that Martin Lack would complain about the moderator on Watts Up With That. I had first encountered him while engaging in a debate on Climate Denial Crock of the Week with Peter Sinclair
“Duluth Storm: Yet Another Postcard from the Future”
June 25, 2012
http://climatecrocks.com/2012/06/25/duluth-storm-yet-another-postcard-from-the-future/
http://climatecrocks.com/2012/06/04/post-flood-midwest-farms-a-wasteland-deniers-they-need-more-co2/comment-page-1/#comment-10630
Now for how one is treated on his blog and to think that he is shameless enough to complain on Anthony’s site is deplorable.
The Yellow River basin in China – Part 4
http://lackofenvironment.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/the-yellow-river-basin-in-china-part-4/

Jim says:
August 6, 2012 at 10:27 am
I notice he also conveniently left out South America and Australia, where they’ve been having record cold temperatures.

RTWT. Anthony:

1. Note all of the missing southern hemisphere data. There are operating weather stations during his time, but they are excluded from the analysis. Why?

South America and Australia are, rumor has it, in the SH.
Side note: South Africa had snow in all 9 provinces this winter for the first time on record.

scientist5 says:
August 9, 2012 at 1:03 pm
WOW! A lot of comments. Hansen has become a statistician

WOW! Statisticians world-wide are howling in outrage at your gratuitous insult.

the concensus argument – science is not based on CONCENSUS.
…

I hope your editor can spell better than you. The c’s and s’s in that word are not evenly divided. I leave it to your research abilities to determine which should be cut back, and which increased.