Dr. James Hansen and Reto Ruedy of NASA GISS have written a paper (non peer reviewed) with a remarkable admission in it. It is titled Global Temperature Update Through 2012.
Here is the money quote, which pretty much ends the caterwauling from naysayers about global temperature being stalled for the last decade.
The five-year mean global temperature has been flat for the last decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slow down in the growth rate of net climate forcing.
Gosh, I thought Hansen had claimed that “climate forcings” had overwhelmed natural variability?
In 2003 Hansen wrote a widely distributed (but not peer reviewed) paper called Can We Defuse the Global Warming Time Bomb? in which he argues that human-caused forcings on the climate are now greater than the natural ones, and that this, over a long time period, can cause large climate changes.
As we shall see, the small forces that drove millennial climate changes are now overwhelmed by human forcings.
According to Hansen’s latest essay, apparently not. So much for “da bomb”.
Here are some other interesting excerpts from his recent essay, Bob Tisdale take note:
An update through 2012 of our global analysis reveals 2012 as having practically the same temperature as 2011, significantly lower than the maximum reached in 2010. These short-term global fluctuations are associated principally with natural oscillations of tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures summarized in the Nino index in the lower part of the figure. 2012 is nominally the 9th warmest year, but it is indistinguishable in rank with several other years, as shown by the error estimate for comparing nearby years. Note that the 10 warmest years in the record all occurred since 1998.
The current stand-still of the 5-year running mean global temperature may be largely a consequence of the facr [sic] that the first half of the past 10 years had predominantly El Nino conditions, and the second half had predominantly La Nina conditions.
The approximate stand-still of global temperature during 1940-1975 is generally attributed to an approximate balance of aerosol cooling and greenhouse gas warming during a period of rapid growth of fossil fuel use with little control on particulate air pollution, but quantitative interpretation has been impossible because of the absence of adequate aerosol measurements.
That last part about 1940-1975 is telling, given that we now have a cleaner atmosphere, and less aerosols to reflect sunlight, it goes without saying that more sunlight now reaches the surface. Since GISS is all about the surface temperature, that suggests (to rational thinkers at least) that some portion of the surface temperature rise post 1975 is due to pollution controls being enacted.
But, he’s still arguing for an imbalance, even though flatness abounds. Seems like equilibrium to me…
Climate change expectations.
The continuing planetary imbalance and the rapid increase of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel assure that global warming will continue on decadal time scales. Moreover, our interpretation of the larger role of unforced variability in temperature change of the past decade suggests that global temperature will rise significantly in the next few years as the tropics moves inevitably to the next El Nino phase.
Except when natural forcings overwhelm the human component of course.
The energy imbalance isn’t in the direction Hansen fondly believes:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/working-out-where-the-energy-goes-part-2-peter-berenyi/
Scary when even Hansen is trying to climb down.
I will believe it when his publisher has my bookstore move his books ,over into the poorly written fiction section.
why don’t we have a carbon tax based on worldwide temperature anomaly? then we can just stop arguing about who caused what and just wait and see what happens.
If this seems like equilibrium to you, then where is temperature headed over the next 5 years?
Maybe the last post on “clock of doom”, and this one, should be combined–“midnight hour for Hansen and AGWers”??
Can we all go home now? 😉
Same place as if you had made that comment five years ago?
“Except when natural forcings overwhelm the human component of course,” is translated by Dr. Hansen as, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” Compartmentalization is a luxury not available to a practitioner of the scientific method – a point openly ignored by the good Doctor… repeatedly.
Jim Hansen disappoints. – gavin.
The only ones who believe in The Weather Clown anymore are politicians. What does that say?
Unfortunately, Hansen in Figure 4 continues the myth that TSI at the latest minimum was lower than at previous minima. It is now known that this is not correct, the reason being uncompensated degradation of the sensors on which PMOD is based. See http://www.leif.org/research/PMOD%20TSI-SOHO%20keyhole%20effect-degradation%20over%20time.pdf and more importantly the admission here:
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/2011ScienceMeeting/docs/presentations/1g_Schmutz_SORCE_13.9.11.pdf slides 31-33:
“Observed data do not support a measurable TSI trend between the minima in 1996 and 2008”
We shouldn’t be too hard on Hansen – he is taking a step in the right direction & we should be applauding that, which will hopefully encourage him & other like minded people to do the same going forward. As they say “you catch more bees with a drop of honey than you will with a gallon of vinegar”. Recognition of what the data is actually saying by the CAGW supporters will solve the true problem, which is the potential economic damage done in trying to solve the “CAGW problem” – the sooner it is generally realized that this is not a catastrophic problem, the better for society.
Well, Joel Shore, your hero James Hansen needs you. Go explain to him why the globe is still warming. Explain to him how he needs to ignore ENSO. Explain to him that he is “cherry picking”.
Explain all these things, and maybe he will hearken, but maybe he won’t.
No Global Warming in 16 years.
Inconceivable!
Back in 1988 it would have taken a very brave man to contradict the Beer-Lambert Law and say that global temperatures were not headed in the direction of up.
Let’s commend Hansen’s courage in issuing this partial retraction. And I have a sneaking admiration for a man who stuck to his guns when the odds were increasingly stacked against him.
Remember that a friend is just an enemy that you haven’t made yet!
A big hand for MR. TISDALE! Let’s hear it for Bob!
Be advised, if pointed out he is likely to chide you for referencing a non-peer reviewed paper.
Don’t take the bait.
Do we really know what the worldwide temperature is supposed to be? Do we know what the worldwide temperature is? We have to know both to determine if there is an anomaly, but we don’t know. Besides, they just keep going back into time and changing the recorded temps.
Jeff L says: January 16, 2013 at 8:37 am
We shouldn’t be too hard on Hansen
================================
The question is why has Hansen gone from rank propagandizing to acknowledging the temperature record. Recall, a few months ago he was the high-volume doomsayer about drought, flood, etc. disaster. Now Hansen knew better. He had the same data as the rest of us, yet he chose to peddle panic. A few months later, he has changed his tune.Why?
For a year now I’ve been telling anyone who wants to listen that it’s not El Nino/La Nina which is leading to the long pause – it’s the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. It was in decline from 1940 to 75, when there was also a temperature pause. It was increasing from 1975 to 2005, when it fooled the models into thinking CO2 was powerful stuff. Now it’s in decline again and, as in the 1940 to 75 period, holding temperatures constant.
For more see:
http://www.climatedata.info/Discussions/Discussions/opinions.php
Hansen is everything a scientist is not supposed to be : extremely loose with the facts, opinionated, and driven by what amounts to a fundamentalist brand of global warming religion.
In fact, AGW folks behavior is almost identical to the early Puritans : Man has sinned, Man has defied God (here : Nature, same thing) and Man will pay. Repent, global deniers, or be struck down by them extreme weather events. So when do these warmists erect the tent and find their own Elmer Gantry? Gore’s much too fat (especially above the neck, or at least what passes for a neck) to be Gantry. And Tom Hanks not only is the world’s biggest bore, but incredibly plain looking. He also is quite a jerk, which Gantry was not.
The BBC is starting to change its position on cAGW, only slightly, but the change is noticeable.
1) On Radio 4 they were doing a severe-weather report and they finished the item with words, to the effect that, other climate scientists state that this is all within the limits seen in natural events. Note that they finished with this not the warmists’ doom-mongering statements.
2) There has been some research posted on ‘The Hockey Schtick’ about black carbon. Normally, if we’d linked to it one of the FEC trolls would have dissed it.
2.1) New paper could imply IPCC climate sensitivity to CO2 is exaggerated – http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/new-paper-could-imply-ipcc-climate.html
2.2) Climate change: Soot’s role underestimated, says study
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21033078
Who’da thunk it? There is still quite a bit of BBC spin in their article but any sort of progress still counts as progress.
He is beginning the process of CYA (cover your a**) as he prepares to defend possible law suits and especially counter law suits .
It continues to puzzle me how one can take this stuff seriously:
1/ Claiming to know the “global average temperature” to within +/- 0.2C back in 1880 as much of the planet was; a/ not instrumented and b/ instrumental errors associated with thermometer calibration, accuracy, drift, reproducibility. and siting were not insignificant. Such measurement issues are still a challenge today as Watt’s et al US station survey project demonstrated.
2/ The concept of a “global average temperature” is a dubious physical concept given that the atmosphere is a open highly dynamic system far from thermodynamic equilibrium. What one should be calculating is total heat content, if anything.
Friends:
The writing has been on the wall for the AGW-scare since the failure of the FCCC conference at Copenhagen in 2009. The present priorities are
(a) to hasten the demise of the AGW-scare,
(b) to resist introduction of laws and institutions based on the GW-scare, and
(c) to inhibit introduction of whatever is the next false scare.
Hansen is merely one of the rodents seeking a way to leave the sinkingship.
I agree with Jeff L who says at January 16, 2013 at 8:37 am
Or, to put that into the same terms that Machiavelli explained it to the Prince:
Enemies are a problem and they need to be utterly destroyed. But before you destroy them do all you can to turn them into friends because live friends are more useful than dead enemies.
Richard