From the Powerline blog:
Nebraska attorney Dave Begley is our faithful Omaha correspondent. Dave reports: (video follows)
Friday night in a crowd of 500 to 700 people at Creighton University it appeared that I was not only the only conservative, I was also the only person who was thinking clearly and critically. One of global warming’s oldest and most revered leaders, Dr. James Hansen, spoke prior to his protest at the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders’ meeting on Saturday. I have never heard such nonsense in my life. He gave a rambling and incoherent presentation for nearly two hours. Three times he forgot the question or lost his train of thought. Since the Jesuits taught me logic, I could easily identity his use of the context, bulls-eye, omission and appeal to authority fallacies.
…
The really shocking thing for me was how many times he contradicted himself and made admissions against interest. If he was under oath and subject to cross examination at a trial, Power Line’s own John Hinderaker would carve him up.
…
His main assertion was that the ice sheets were melting and it was causing the sea level to rise. He predicted that coastal cities would be under water. No date given. Not even a range of dates. And he never identified man as the cause of this impending disaster and that gradual warming is not just the natural evolution of the Earth over time. One young woman asked him “when Earth will be uninhabitable.” Hansen assured her that would not happen in her lifetime but it was still an emergency. Act now!
The deadline aspect of the CAGW scam is actually quite important. Doomsday is coming but no range of dates is given. If a date is given it is so far off that you will forget that the prediction was made when the date passes or you will be dead due to natural causes. But it is essential for the government to spend other people’s money now to save Mother Earth.
Howler number one: Violence between nations is caused by global warming. Tell that to ISIS. Howler number two: It is too hot to work outside. No lawn mowing this summer by your kids. Howler number three: 10,000 people per day die due to air pollution. I suspect that if that number is accurate, people are not dying from carbon dioxide poisoning. Howler number four: His predictions about future events based upon his models were “as certain at the law of gravity.” Roll over, Newton, tell Einstein the news.
…
I asked the first question. I reminded the Iowa native that he was in the home city of the Union Pacific Railroad and it has had recent significant layoffs due to a serious decline in coal car loadings. I then asked him, since his models have been mostly wrong for 30 years, why we should believe his models were any more accurate in predicting the disaster that is going to hit when everyone in the room was dead 70 years from now.
He asserted that his predictions were not based upon models but “observable evidence.” False. He dodged, stalled and avoided. He threw out some numbers and put up a slide depicting the Hiroshima bomb explosion. His answer was non-responsive. If I could have cross examined him at length I would have destroyed his answer, but he knew the format.
James Hansen is not impressive at all. If he is the best the Greens have, we conservatives should win this fight. The whole CAGW scam is based upon speculation and the veneer of science. The proposed remedies are costly fantasies. Their only real solution is to tax Americans back into pre-industrial poverty.
(added) Here is part 3 of a four parts video where the question is asked:
The caption for the video reads:
At the request of Nebraskans for Peace, Dr. James Hansen came to Omaha Nebraska to speak in favor of the shareholder resolution regarding climate change that NFP had placed on the agenda for Berkshire Hathaway shareholders’ meeting. Nebraskans for Peace worked primarily with Dr. Richard Miller at Creighton University to have Dr. Hansen give an informative lecture about his work to stop global warming and climate change from getting much worse.
Full report here h/t to reader QQboss
It should be noted that Berkshire Hathaway shareholders rejected Hansen’s nonsense in a vote.
Hansen lost it in that twitchy video about boiling oceans. He must be a real mess now.
james hansen needs psychiatric care.
Probably has needed it for a long time, ever since the CO2 of Venus scared the brains out of him.
Actually he stowed away on NASA’s first moon shot and forgot his lead trench coat and hoodie. Lost a few brain cells, etc.
@chaamjamal – are you implying that you actually believe in the pseudoscience drug racket known as “psychiatry”? Or that any psychiatrist actually “cares”, beyond pushing toxic drugs, and writing bogus nonsense “diagnoses”?….
Is Scientology rearing it’s ugly head?
He’s made his millions. A plea of insanity is his exit strategy.
Like all of the “sky is falling crowd” long on rhetoric short on factual evidence ,in oz we get the standard the proof is irrefutable with no chance to refute .
the empirical evidence for AGW is built on correlations between cumulative values. these correlations are spurious.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2725743
Hansen lied on the very first question. He knows paleo climate reconstructions have no predictive power at all, none.
Lying batard!
There’s the models
Then he lies again and said observations support the models, they dont.
The only reason there are two low end model runs in the spread is to capture the actual temperate in the spread of runs.
These lower end projections do not and never did serve the IPCC, they are there, fudged to be low sensitivity in order to lend some relevance to the models.
So they did this and changed their charts to this, which looks very different to the one above, and this is what Schmidt went with to obfuscate the fact that Christy showed quite clearly that almost all models run way too hot.
If temperature is tracking 2 out of 90 models, that’s not 5-95% range temp is tracking, it’s 1.8% of all RCPs that UAH is tracking. Fudged low sensitivity models, 2, that’s all.
Also look at the blue line in this chart closely, it’s very thick, and passes outside of the HADCRUT4 observational uncertainty to climb into a trend of RCP relevance.
Slight of hand, lies, not science.
To see and understand the trick used in the bottom graphs see :
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2016/04/why-gavin-schmidts-temperature-plot-baseline-issue-is-irrelevant/
Mark,
The bottom chart doesn’t show uncertainty ranges. The shaded grey area shows the 5-95% range of model projections and the outer grey lines show the upper and lower range of projections; i.e. the warmest and coolest of the 299 model ensemble members.
Your chart is also out of date, with HadCRUT4 stopping in 2013, I think. Ed Hawkins, who produced the updated chart you posted, has now updated it further to end 2015: http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/files/2016/01/fig-nearterm_all_UPDATE_2016.png
As you can see, observations are now well inside the 5-95% range of projections.
Now we have to wait for the current El Niño to shift into La Niña, and observe whether the temperature anomaly takes a “step up” or drops back outside the 5-95 range in 2017-18-19???
@DWR54
Just looking at Schmidt’s chart alone, one would never know that only two of the models were running along the lower boundry, while the other 88 were very much above. And where is UAH anyway???
What shoddy work.
I was going to say the same thing Fernando. Not only that, but the sun is trending towards a minimum. It’s April 30th, I almost can’t stop laughing, too hot to cut the grass. Just as soon as the foot of snow that fell Thursday melts.
Yirgach
The chart I posted was from Ed Hawkins, not Gavin Schmidt. It shows 298 model ensemble runs covering all RCPs. The Spencer/Christy chart is confined to 88 models. We are not told which are chosen or whether they only show the warmer RCPs, etc.
UAH is not shown in Hawkins’s chart because it is based on the IPCC AR5 fig. 11.25, as has been mentioned several times. Fig. 11.25 only looks at global surface temperature projections, not lower troposphere.
Mark,
Schmidt’s chart uses “All RPCs”. By their nature, the four RPCs represent different future scenarios of CO2 concentrations. That means Schmidt has included the much lower CO2 scenarios of RPC4.5 and RPC2.6. Looking at Christy’s chart, it appears to me that the 90 models that are shown are actually based on RCP8.5, given that their mean indicates a temperature increase of just over 1 degree Celcius over 45 years. That makes sense given that real world CO2 concentrations are actually tracking fairly closely to the RCP8.5 scenario projections.
Using model outputs from all four RCP scenarios is disingenuous, because while their temperature increases will obviously be lower, they achieve that by using lower projections of future CO2 concentration:
Secondly, the use of the 5-95% range is equally misleading. My understanding of computer models is that each model “output” is actually numerous individual runs (I’ve previously used 32 runs as a minimum to enable statistical analysis). Each individual coloured line in Christy’s chart is actually the model’s mean result over all runs generated.
It makes sense to identify a 5-95% interval around an individual model’s mean, as that spread would indicate the level of variance for that particular model. However, the CMIP5 experiment used 25 different models, each with very different starting conditions, different parameter settings, and in the case of Schmidt’s chart, with different CO2 projections.
http://cmip-pcmdi.llnl.gov/cmip5/docs/CMIP5_modeling_groups.pdf
That ensemble of 299 models does not represent a single population. So statistically speaking, the 5-95% range as Schmidt has drawn it doesn’t mean what we would normally expect it to mean. My simple conclusion is that all Schmidt has done is inappropriately conflate all CMIP5 results to “prove” that temperature observations are tracking within IPCC projections. As you say, sleight of hand, not science.
`You must understand that the models are actually spot on. This is because the error from the models is so small compared to the error in the models themselves. The models have an accuracy of +-10C after 20 years. So, a 0.5C variation from the models values is well within the error range. In fact temperatures could be down 10 C and still be within the models tolerance.
DWR54:
Gavin Schmidt’s graph also shows updated forcings.
ie those that actually occurred since the models where run – and not those that were expected and projected for.
Pauly
Just on a point of accuracy: as I pointed out to Mark above, the chart he attributed to Gavin Schmidt was actually produced by Ed Hawkins of Reading University and the blog ‘Climate lab book’. The chart Mark linked to is also 2 years out of date, ending in 2013. Ed updates this chart every year with the latest full-year values. The latest update (to 2015) is here: http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/files/2016/01/fig-nearterm_all_UPDATE_2016.png
Note that the parameters used in this chart were not selected by Ed Hawkins (nor Gavin Schmidt!). They are governed by parameters used in the IPCC AR5 report, fig. 11.25. They show annual updates of global surface temperatures as anomalies from the 1986-2005 average against all CMIP5 ensemble members over all RCPs, just as the IPCC figure showed.
The Spencer/Christy chart shows 5 year running averages, not annual totals. As a result, the very high temperatures of 2014 and 2015 are amalgamated into the cooler years 2011-13 in that chart; whereas in the Hawkins/IPCC chart the full impact of those warm years is seen.
@DWR54
Thanks for clearing that up.
Nothing like comparing apples and oranges, eh?
Mark,
“Lying batard!”
I like your use of French even if it is inadvertent. I would have included the circumflex for bâtard, but it works either way.
Feet of clay.
The CAGW ‘gods’ crumble to dust when someone who pays attention starts to ask ask them hard questions.
And lately there seems to be more and more people asking questions.
Sounds like CAGW is well past its shelf life as a theory. All that’s left are half-cooked appeals to emotion and authority like this clown. NOBODY’S going to cave to being “taxed back to pre-industrial poverty.” I think most of us see the man behind the curtain pulling the levers now . . .
Especially now that the militant vegans and malthusians amongst the alarmists are becoming more vocal in their demands to end the meat industry and genocide half the human population in the name of “climate change”. They’re starting to show their true anti-humanity colors.
Not at all facetiously, is it possible that Dr. Hanson is looking forward to prosecution on charges of malfeasance in public office, and building up evidence supporting a diminished capacity defense?
“10,000 people per day die due to air pollution”
“Life expectancy in Beijing and Shanghai has reached 80 years and it’s 82 in Hong Kong. All have massive pollution problems. Life expectancy in Berlin is 79.8, San Francisco and New York are barely 80 and the list goes on”
http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/china-health-miracle
But in European cities air pollution is increasing because the EU promoted the use of diesel engines because they produce less CO2 but produce more particulates. Deaths by CO2 are very rare short of falling into a tank of fermenting beer. So now the idiots are looking to punish those of us with the diesel engined vehicles they encouraged us to buy.
Please check into the facts a bit more.
Modern diesels do not have any particulate missions to speak of.
“Janus100 May 1, 2016 at 3:56 am”
Rubbish. Utter rubbish!
As someone who actually measures particulates (spent the whole afternoon doing just that) I can confirm that a modern diesel engine as used in European autos is extremely clean-burning. What was discovered that was unexpected in this feat of engineering is that the number (not mass) of nanoparticles produced increased. In short, the combustion is so good that there is virtually nothing in the sizes where mass matters from 0.1 microns and larger.
The nanoparticles are so light they are not reported on the basis of mass but by ‘counts’. The effect of nanoparticles on human health is poorly understood. It is not true that the smaller the particle the more likely they are to enter deep into the lungs, a commonly repeated myth. The human breathing system is amazing effective. I just saw a presentation at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Riverhead Long Island by a PM expert showing a chart of the efficiency of the capture of nanoparticles by the ‘head end’ of the human air passage. The efficiency at collection nanoparticles on the very small range (under 10 nanometers) approaches 100%. The mechanism is that the particles are wetted as they pass through nose, grow in size and are captured on the walls (and eventually coughed out).
Generally a well adjusted diesel engine burns clean and part of that accomplishment is the lower speed of the crankshaft. This gives the fuel more time to burn completely than, say, a gasoline engine. Also a diesel engine runs with a high excess air level which mitigates against the creation of soot.
Modern EURO 5 diesel engines also emit primary NO2 which is causing many UK cities to fail the EU NO2 air quality objectives. All health evidence is pointing to diesel vehicles being the primary source of both NO2 and more importantly particles. NO2 trends were declining until the introduction of these EURO class diesels as NO2 was seen as a secondary pollutant
if diesels are so clean, VW would not need to cheat on the emissions test.
ferdberble:
VW cheated on nitrogen oxides, not particulates, so still “clean burning” just not for NOx.
But what a way to go!
Here in Aus we are exporting canned air to China at AU$18.20 per can. Serial.
How are you dealing with the resulting vacuum?
John Harmsworth: that’s easy. We built Canberra.
Right? If BS were electricity, this guy would be a nuke plant.
3M deaths per year is roughly 10,000/day: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/09/16/health/air-pollution-deaths-rising/
Arithmetic check: 10K a day is 3,650,000/year (22% error over 3M); if 3M is the correct(?) number, the daily rate is 8.2K (8.2K->10K = 22%).
I wonder if the increase in Chinese longevity is due to their not eating as much processed or junk food?
Longevity is a meaningless statistic (“meaningless statistic”, I realize, is a phrase that “climate science” is fast making a redundancy); longevity has been “rising” around the world due to the fact that fewer infants and young children are dying.
Dave, did anyone else in the audience speak with you afterwards? Did they see what you saw?
Dave Begley, Esquire, was commenting on the Powerline blog and not here, Otter, so I don’t think it is likely he will respond here unless someone gives powerlineblog a heads up to let him know.
I have to fight against feeling sorry for this guy. I bet if they hooked him up to a polygraph, he’d pass. I have personal experience with delusional people, and this is how they talk, with vague associations, faulty logic, and above all, absolute rock solid certainty…
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” –Upton Sinclair
Dave I think you should be applauded for sitting through two hours of Hansen’s drivel. I would also like to say that they no longer do dates with regard to coastal flooding, glacier melting etc, because they have learned from their past mistakes; as far as I am aware, not a single dire prediction has come true within the specified time frame. I also think they realise that the game is up. Untrue and contradictory predictions do not make for sound science.
This Solar Gloom cooling effect of particulate carbon and sulphates etc. within emissions did occur. This is what Hansen now believes caused the pause: – the recorded temperature rises were far lower than previously forecast by CAGW theory as a result of the cooling effect of the massive uncontrolled increase in particulate carbon and sulphates over the last 15-20 years from the massive and ongoing increases in Developing Countries’, mainly China’s, uncontrolled emissions.
Hansen apparently never appreciated that this hard evidence and his belated attempt to use it to sustain the temperature/CO2 religious belief actually exposes and discredits the warmist theories. From the 50’s onwards, prior to the Developing World’s massive increase in emissions, the West had Clean Air Acts and later Anti-Acid Rain Regulations which very significantly decreased particulate carbon and sulphates emissions. In addition, particulate carbon and sulphates in the atmosphere are not like CO2 as they have a relatively short half-life.
All this means that Hansen now unwittingly accepts that the temperature rises recorded from the 50’s onwards have as much to do with the reduction in particulate carbon and sulphates for the 30-40 years from the 50’s as the increase in CO2 levels. Take out the effects of the West’s reductions in particulate carbon and sulphate emissions and the later Developing World’s increase in such emissions and you get a much shallower temperature versus man-made CO2 relationship, i.e. we have had a relatively little AGW and not the massive CAGW that warmists believe. This is what very many scientists agree with and a far less severe effect on climate that can be far more easily, simply and cheaply accommodated and managed at a much later date well into the future. In other words, the vast £billions being spent and still being spent, dictated by the CAGW religion, is totally unnecessary!
Read Christopher Booker’s article this week in the UK’s Daily Telegraph regarding a joint letter to the Times on Green issues from several UK eminent Lords, none of whom are Scientists or anything vaguely technological but many of whom have declared interests in renewable energy. They are demanding that the Times ceases publishing any articles contrary to the man-made CAGW/Climate change religion which includes the amazing additional statement that they are not attempting to restrict any freedom of speech.
Are their actions the result of some form of “Group Think” induced hallucination or indoctrination, as suggested by Booker, or matters of self commercial interest, or in fact signs of desperation knowing that their Green campaigns over the last 20 years or so is becoming unsellable and unbelievable even to the general public.
After contacting Disqus about my comments being continually deleted as spam, despite none of the listed criteria for such actions ever being applicable, and their subsequent assurances that the moderators have been advised to correct this, I assume the imposed automatic deletions will not now occur.
I agree that James Hansen is not impressive; he never has been. Hansen was the typical bureaucratic “scientist”; he sold catastrophe to the public for his masters in government who want to use “global warming” to increase their power over the people and the economy.
The problem is with the comment “we conservatives should win this fight”. You are not just fighting James Hansen or “scientists” like him. The fight is against the State itself. The US government at all levels, along with its willing partners in the main-stream press, science journals, and elsewhere, are pushing this “global warming” delusion. And since the climate has, indeed, warmed since the end of The Little Ice Age the idea of “global warming” is superficially saleable. (or you can sell it to the superficial — which is most of the neo-leftists in this country)
The only reason that the US Empire has not gone even further in its draconian embrace of the idiocy of “global warming” is that Mother Nature has not played ball. She has given us some harsh winters and fairly mild summers around the globe. (with great variations as always) She has given us no warming at all for 20 years even with the US governmental agencies cooking the books.
The story has changed over time to fit the propaganda needs of the warmists, but we were promised early on that the night time temps would warm in low altitudes, along with the daytime and nightime temperatures at high latitudes like in Canada and Russia. What is wrong with that? Well, they say we will all drown is the floating ice at the north pole melts. (they did not take high school physics!)
It is hard to win a propaganda war against the State and the Media. We can only hope that Mother Nature remains on our side. That is the only thing that might bring some sense into this fight.
absolutely spot on mark stoval. anyone looking for salvation to the “conservatives” is going to be very disappointed .
Some time ago I read that when AGW first came on the scene around thirty years ago, the really first class scientists quickly realized what total scientific nonsense it was and never jumped on board. The mediocre and second rate “scientists” such as Hansen and Mann eagerly climbed aboard the gravy train hoping to become rich and famous even though they didn’t have the smarts to do first class science. Thus the “hockey stick” and all the other baloney they fed to the gullible non-scientific imbeciles who make up the political class. Stupid is as stupid does.
Along these lines, I would like to see a permanent headline set of statements at the top of this site. “What AGW says” followed by “What investigation reveals”.
1)Manmade global warming is underway- The planet has been gradually warming since the little ice age and we understand very little about what drives these multi- decadal trends
2)The Antarctic is melting and will cause worldwide flooding- The Antarctic actually appears to be gaining about 80 billion tons of ice per year at present. Antarctic sea ice is close to the greatest extent ever seen
3) Ocean acidification will destroy life in the oceans- Ocean pH varies worldwide from about 7.5 to 8.5 and will not change regardless of what we do.
4)Sea level rise will cause massive coastal flooding- Sea level rise is very hard to quantify and impossible to stop but is likely no worse than it’s been in the last 3000 years.
Add to this list or change the order as fits the alarmist flavour of the week. I’m putting it on a poster in my shop.
http://www.scannatoa.org/images/WOMENSHISTORYMONTH2020/QUOTES_DOROTHYPARKER.jpg
There is general agreement that temperatures in various regions have gone up to a certain extent, weather that is 0.8 or 1.1 C is debatable.
If that is of concern we need to know if anything can be done about it or not.
To do that, the cause has to be clearly identified and if it is possible to affect it.
We know that the major index embedded in the N. Hemisphere’s temperature (and consequently global) is the N. Atlantic SST. We also know that the greatest changes have taken place in the Arctic area, so it is logical to start from there.
In this link there are graphic illustration of four data sets ( NA SST, Arctic atmospheric pressure, high latitudes volcanic activity and Central England temperature CET) related to the area, plus solar activity Group Sunspot number GSN index.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NAM.pdf
Although first three variables show closely correlated trends, they have progressively increasing time delay, starting with the beginning of the last century, coinciding with the start of the temperatures major rise.
For longer term correlations comparisons (going back to 17th century) CET and GSN are shown.
None of these show such close correlation with the CO2 as they do among themselves.
It looks to me that there is a very little room left for the CO2 role, and that there is not much that it could be done to change either the rise or fall of temperatures, and that is what matters in the final analysis.
If drastic temperature rise or fall has catastrophic consequences then: adapt or perish.
‘If that is of concern we need to know if anything can be done about it or not.
To do that, the cause has to be clearly identified and if it is possible to affect it.’
Cause not needed. Geoengineering attacks the (alleged) symptoms, not the cause.
Vulcanic…I think the point from the issue of policy that the failure of the models is also a failure on policy recommendations. Are we to believe that a failed model is informing us of results that will occur if we change the trivial contribution of human kind to the atmosphere? It’s ridiculous. Gamecock “cause not needed” That’s a pretty ridiculous statement as well on a system as complex as the climate we just start turning the dials? How about we use the world’s nuclear arsenal to provide ourselves with just a little nuclear winter? That should cool things off don’t you think?
Vulcanic vs Volcanic
Yes indeed I would prefer ‘vulcanic’ (from Vulcanus) to ‘volcanic’, but take a look at the google
https://www.google.co.uk/search?client=opera&q=volcanic+eruptions&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
it will not accept vulcanic, but ‘volcanic’ is everywhere.
How do you see this with respect to the last 18 months of subdued NA ssta?
Your pdf graphs look interesting and I must give more time to fully digest the information you provide there.
I have been looking at the Labrador Current as it intersects the Gulf Stream for some months now as the LC seems consistently cold and strong, preventing the export of GC warmth to more northerly latitudes.
However as the effect lasted all winter it seems not to be as result if summer ice melt, but there are no immediate explanations available for this phenomena.
In medium term, the three variables (atmospheric pressure, solar and volcanic activity) all leading the SST and the CET, point towards some cooling in next decade or two.
More than that, it would be (on my part) just uninformed speculation.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimate that 3.3 million deaths are related to indoor air pollution and 2.6 million to outdoor air pollution.
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-26730178
That equals to 9000, and 7000 per day of indoor and outdoor air pollution respectively.
Most of the indoor air pollution comes from traditional cooking on open fires. This way of cooking is used due to lack of electricity.
A substantial part of outdoor air pollution come from unfiltered home cooking and heating with wood or coal.
The best way to reduce this killer, as well as substantially improving the quality of lives for millions of people, is to provide electricity to the homes in the poorest parts of the world.
/Jan
Isn’t it hideous how the green movement uses people who are suffering and dying to promote their political agendas, the goals of which include preventing those same people from being helped?
Now for some facts we’ll never hear on a PBS special.
-Raising people’s standard of living has the greatest impact on reducing human suffering and early deaths.
-Capitalism has been the greatest force in history for raising people’s standard of living.
-Fossil fuels are cheap, plentiful and essential to modern civilization.
-Any CO2 we can add to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels is beneficial to agriculture.
-It would be great if we could pump out enough CO2 to help prolong this short warm spell we’re currently enjoying in the present Ice Age, but that’s probably just science fiction.
Ditto to you Larry
Excellent. I wish I could see this promoted. It’s not yet shouted from the rafters, but at least that information is trickling out. Slowly but surely people are waking up to such truths.
You wrote “Capitalism has been the greatest force in history for raising people’s standard of living.”
Yes, it has. Three that have been tried and failed are Communism, Socialism, and Feudalism. Now there are those whose agenda would take us to world government under political control of the super-wealthy. This will not happen because along the way people will realize that government by an unelected oligarchy of the wealthy amounts to Feudalism, concentration of wealth in the rich with the population reduced to serfdom. The French Revolution signaled the end of Feudalism in Europe. Let’s not go there.
Pochas94,
In the Middle Ages, nobles claimed to be superior to everyone else, the clergy were allowed special privileges as long as they justifyed the noble’s divine right to rule, knights were the muscle that kept serfs in line. And the serfs were little more than sheep and goats who wore clothes and paid taxes.
Today, it’s politicians who are arrogantly obsessed with themselves and power, academics justify politician’s wishes from within their privileged cathedrals, and a myriad of federal and local security forces keep the taxpayers toiling and paying taxes to support them all. Last and least are the lowly tax payers, of whom it’s said are too stupid to rule themselves.
“No one is more of a slave than he who thinks himself free without being so.” –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
+ 1,000 Larry.
And these facts should also be co-mingled with the type of Eco-Nazi quotes that reveal the depth of their cynical push-the-agenda-at-all-costs attitude, like these –
“We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing, in terms of economic policy and environmental policy. ” – Timothy Wirth
“We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” – Steven Schneider
Jan
“The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimate that 3.3 million deaths are related to indoor air pollution and 2.6 million to outdoor air pollution.”
The latest info I can find has it that air pollution kills 5.1m per year, indoor air pollution from cooking fires, 4.3m and smoking 6.2m plus 2.5m for outdoor air. Obviously this doesn’t add up to the total figure for all sources of 10.1m.
The simplest solution to indoor air pollution from cooking fires is to use chimney stoves as China does, as outdoor air pollution coming indoors is a minor problem compared with the current situation in Africa and India. Electric cooking is no solution at all for the vast majority of the distributed poor in large part because of the difficulty distributing it, paying for it, and keeping it turned on. The cost of electricity is rising rapidly to cover the cost of ‘renewable’ boondoggles putting it even farther out of reach of the miserably poor. In many Asian countries the cost of electricity is lower than the cost of maintenance of the wires. Still not cheap enough.
The remarkable resistance to introducing chimney stoves by major donors running improved stove programs is inexplicable. It is an extremely effective approach. City dwellers with some of the worst outdoor air quality have little exposure indoors unless there is a smoker in the house. In China a huge majority of the men smoke cigarettes. Gas and electricity will not solve that.
The persistent call to replace solid fueled cooking with gas or electricity ignores recent developments in the combustion of, particularly, of wood pellets. I have seen two pellet stoves recently that have lower PM2.5 emissions than LPG, which India just announced they will bring (subsidised) to 50m of their poor. Why bother? It is expensive, less safe, and pellets can be made from some of the 550m tons of Indian agricultural waste that is burned to get rid of it each year. China is doing a lot of work on exactly this solution to crop waste burning. It is illegal to burn the field but people do it anyway, in the night because it has little value at present. The air pollution in Beijing in mid October last year was almost 100% caused by crop waste burning in Hebei province next door. The BBC, of course, called it ‘carbon pollution’ and blamed power stations.
As for the actual contribution of air pollution to the global burden of disease, it is based on highly questionable modeled Disability Adjusted Life Years and attributions of death based on modeled emissions based on modeled consumption feeding modeled dispersion of said modeled emissions causing modeled exposure in turn causing modeled disease causing modeled deaths.
When one traces the original data and publications, the total modeled deaths are more correctly listed as 1-10m. Not “10m”. The modeled deaths are hugely uncertain. Is it better to die of stove smoke in 40 years or bad water and malaria next years? The modelers of death and disability, mitigation and avoidance, should consider the global burden of disease very carefully.
I am involved in development work. Could you give a webpage for those stoves? Thanks
Very interesting information. One item I would wonder about would be the burning of agricultural waste. That was a common practice in Western Canada years ago and is still done to some extent but zero till farming leaves the stubble to trap snow and protect the soil from wind erosion. More herbicide but better soil and productivity.
WHO + UNEP
HELI intiative to support action by developing country policymakers on environmental threats to health.
http://www.who.int/heli/en
UNEP is also involved in health issues. Don’t know about this one!
I would gladly default to WHO statistical analysis versus the Board of CO2 California guesstimates made by a fake grad school student.
Its easy to count the deaths. COPD death of 30 yr old non-smoker female.
whereas EPA includes a woman who died of uterine cancer and another who died in a house fire as victims of c02.
7.8 million per year WHO Indoor pollution deaths
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs292/en/
3.4 million people die every year including 760 000 children from lack of energy to run clean drinking water and sewer systems
http://water.org/water-crisis/water-facts/water/
An Estimated 850,000 people die every year because refrigerated vaccines cannot be maintained.
2 million women and children die every year and another million go blind…easily solved with Golden Rice which is free … but Greens object based on Frankenstien plants
Thank you for your insightful comment Crispin
I agree that the simplest solution to indoor air pollution from cooking fires is to use chimney stoves, but I still think that binging electricity to the poorest homes are essential. With electricity, the kids can use the evenings to do reading and homework, and the families can have refrigerators, which do much to increase the food safety.
Electricity is, together with clean water, sanitation, education and vaccination, key elements in ending desperate poverty. We know that these poor conditions, bad health and poor education are intimately connected to high fertility rates.
When the living conditions improve, the fertility rate goes down; if not, the fertility rate stay high and the problem grows exponentially.
/Jan
Is that the same WHO that was predicting the faux swine flu pandemic two years in advance? That trumpeted the coming of an Ebola boogeyman on a pale horse? That’s hawking vaccines for a phantom Zika virus that never bothered anyone historically? That the Rockefeller medical interests patented back in the 1940s (if memory serves)? You mean that WHO? On a believeability scale of 1-10, both the WHO and the CDC rank right alongside one another at a -8.
You bet Wrussr!
But as I see it, all active people and active organizations make errors from time to time.
If we should stop listening to all people and organizations that have made some erroneous statements, we would be left with those who says nothing but the obvious.
/Jan
It would look to me that the best way is to make it illegal to cook. We’d get immediate results!
About 5 million children are just shrivelling up and dying each year and about 50 million adults from lack of vitamin A. Remember golden rice it was invented to fix this problem, the greens stopped it going were needed. The idiots just recanted and said they were wrong, how many people have to die horrible preventable deaths because of these fools?
Agree, the irrational resistance against golden rice is a tragedy.
But I don’t think the greens are the only ones to blame there. There are much national politics and vested interest to protect in the food industry.
/Jan
I’d bet the family farm that those numbers include smokers. (Or is smoking tobacco safer than cooking with wood/dung)?
On the intertubes since the LATE ’70s and I think that might just my very first hat tip. Xiexienin.
Unfortunately, for some reason, even with a VPN, I am unable to see the comments on the Powerline site from this side of the Great Firewall of China, so I hope they were fun, too.
James Hansen never was impressive, he built his career as a political lackey. Unfortunately that’s too common on both sides of the aisle, get the “expert” that supports your view, and get the press to cover it, or better, get them appointed to an important administrative post.
On a related topic: Here are my three rules for interpreting political speech, 1) remember, all politicians are liars, 2) all political staffers are spineless, unless their boss is spineless, in which case the staffers are evil, 3) most experts that are rolled out to support a political point of view are too stupid to know how dumb they are
I finally wrote Hansen off as a scientist and a man of integrity when, giving evidence, he described trains taking coal to a power station as ‘Death Trains’.
This blatant evocation of the holocaust, along with the term denier, is an insult to its victims,
” Howler number four: His predictions about future events based upon his models were “as certain at the law of gravity.”…..AT should be AS ?
Jimmy Death-Trains Hansen has been telling climate porkies for so long that he has lost all grasp on reality. In another time he would be put in a straitjacket and a padded cell. Every other word out of his mouth is a lie. But he has based his entire career on lies. Now he just mouths them, incoherently. The fact that Greenie ideologues still revere him speaks volumes.
Actually the models reproduce very accurately what’s happening in the real world. Update your dataset to 2016 and look at the whole of the planet not just Mt Everest. Bosh.
‘Mike’ says:
Actually the models reproduce very accurately what’s happening in the real world.
Wrong.
That could be the sign of an honest scientist discussing something complicated.
The IPCC reports are interesting. The summary for policy makers is full of doom and gloom. The actual scientific parts are full of evidence that sounds contradictory or at least doesn’t sound like it supports the alarmist position.
Having said the above, I do agree that a decent lawyer could shred Dr. Hansen in cross examination. A decent lawyer could shred most of us. That’s why we keep logbooks.
I guess that’s ” decent” as a definer of ability rather than moral integrity.
You can be shredded by either a highly ethical or a completely dishonorable lawyer. Eddie Greenspan, a prominent Canadian lawyer, was by any standard highly ethical and insisted that everyone deserved a competent defense.
The best shredding job I have seen recently was by Marie Henein in the Ghomeshi case. She is apparently of high moral character but one of her former clients quipped that she “seemed to channel Hannibal Lecter.”
He has become an expert at using emotional appeal that tops reason. I’m already in fear of those 400,000 atom bombs every day; I mean how could the ice shelves NOT melt. Oh Hansen the Great, where do I send my money! Against this, sadly, he appears to be degenerating as at times he seemed doddering and rambling almost to the point of slobber. Perhaps his evil ways are finally catching up.
You don’t have to send money; they’ll simply come and take it.
It kind of diminishes the significance of the size of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals.
Are those 40,000 atom bombs little ones like the one Democrat President Harry Truman dropped on the helpless Japanese civilians in Hiroshima? Or are they BIG like the “Tsar Bomba” the Soviets set off (although, more correctly a hydrogen bomb) ?
(Wikipedia) “Tsar Bomba (Russian: Царь-бомба; “Tsar-bomb”) was a hydrogen bomb. It was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. Its test on October 30, 1961, remains the most powerful man-made explosion in human history. It was also referred to as Kuz’kina Mat’ (Russian: Кузькина мать, Kuzma’s mother),[2] referring to Nikita Khrushchev’s promise to show the United States a “Kuz’kina Mat'” at the 1960 United Nations General Assembly. Developed by the Soviet Union, the bomb had a yield of 50 megaton TNT
James Hansen is an example of the fact that there is a market for apocalyptic predictions. He has apparently learned that it does not pay for a prophet to be too specific.
It’s deja-vu from early 1800’s when NewYork state earned nickname of the “Burned-over District” when populace consumed with fiery fervor. History set to replay “The Great Disappointment” of 1844 when predicted end of days left never happened, leaving believers who got rid of all their earthly possessions with nothing in the real world.
aneipris wrote at May 1, 2016 at 3:28 am
“I have to fight against feeling sorry for this guy. I bet if they hooked him up to a polygraph, he’d pass. I have personal experience with delusional people, and this is how they talk, with vague associations, faulty logic, and above all, absolute rock solid certainty.”
Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter how many of us have seen the light if our political masters have been convinced otherwise. Here in Canada we have a completely sold prime minister, and his minister for the environment and climate change is equally as much a believer (as are the leaders of the majority of our provincial governments). The same is true (for the moment, anyway) of the president of the USA and any number of other Western leaders. As long as they believe (facts don’t count) we have no power.
Ian M
Wikipedia: Citizens Climate Lobby
Also operates in Canada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Climate_Lobby
Scroll down to: Special Activities Canada, # 9
James Hansen is affiliated with this organization. Follow the link on the Wikipedia page to Citizens Climate Lobby website
ENGOs operating in both Canada and the U.S. are issues that need to be taken seriously by people.
Clean burning diesel vehicles need to be maintained. On this little BC island, the VW and Volvo asthma bombs, spewing rancid cod and fries fumes and soot, as their owners close their eyes as they pass beneath power lines, are a much worse threat to us all than all the Roundup, smart meters and 2-cycle mowers in the entire province, maybe the country. And they would have ME incarcerated because I sometimes watch Fox News. It’s also that time of year when they start commiserating about the shortage of Scottish Broom pullers and gypsy moth traps. Meself? Roundup and BTK. And a gas mask.
Being that my grass is covered by snow, I can’t tell if it needs cutting.
Janus100
May 1, 2016 at 3:56 am
Please check into the facts a bit more.
Modern diesels do not have any particulate missions to speak of.
So what is the black smoke exactly?
An oil burning not well maintained diesel that needs an overhaul…..
Is it just me, or are most diesels burning biofuels these days? Because whenever I’m behind one, I feel like I’m following the fryer from the local diner.
It’s difficult to understand but the majority of those attending lectures like this crave hearing this drivel. That young woman gets satisfaction in her belief that the world is becoming uninhabitable. There is usually no amount of evidence that will alter her belief.
Hansen is no different than an end of the world preacher who preys on people like that. It’s a win, win for those two zealots.
“Roll over, Newton, tell Einstein the news.”
Nice.
When will the Earth become uninhabitable? That one’s easy: When Sol becomes a red giant 6 billion years from now.
Not to quibble Dan, but we probably only have a billion years left until earth becomes uninhabitable. While its true that in six billion years (give or take a year or two) the sun will become a red giant and the outer atmosphere of the sun will expand to earth’s orbit, in about a billion years the sun will have become hot enough to start boiling off the oceans. The sun is gradually increasing in heat and our drop dead date is one billion years from now.
(Unless we can figure out a way a put a giant window shade between the the sun and us. Or change the earth’s orbit a bit to push it further away from the sun. That might buy us another five billion years or so. )
Of course considering that all of multicellular life on earth is 545 million years old (give or take a year or two) I think we might just figure something out in a billion years.
I wonder how much Nebraskans for Peace paid him and where Nebraskans for Peace’s funding comes from.
“…..His main assertion was that the ice sheets were melting and it was causing the sea level to rise. He predicted that coastal cities would be under water. No date given. Not even a range of dates. And he never identified man as the cause of this impending disaster and that gradual warming is not just the natural evolution of the Earth over time. One young woman asked him “when Earth will be uninhabitable.” Hansen assured her that would not happen in her lifetime but it was still an emergency. Act now!
The deadline aspect of the CAGW scam is actually quite important. Doomsday is coming but no range of dates is given. If a date is given it is so far off that you will forget that the prediction was made when the date passes or you will be dead due to natural causes. But it is essential for the government to spend other people’s money now to save Mother Gaia…..”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millerism
Every time I read about the gloom-and-doom-end-of the-world predictions of the climate alarmist and environmental activists that have been made over the past four and a half decades since the first Earth Day in 1970, I keep looking back with fascination at how this parallels with the Millerite Movement back in the 1830s and 40s.
William Miller, the founder of the movement, was doing similar things back then. His source though was the Bible, not a faulty scientific theory that has morphed into a religious dogma or orthodoxy. But everything else was there back then as it is today; the predictions of gloom-and-doom, the faithful followers of the dogma, and the national attention the movement received. Miller even set specific dates for events that never came true, since known as the “Great Disapointment”.
Today’s climate alarmist MIllerite followers and believers are apparently not into the study of history as I am. I find the parallels between then and today quite fascinating to ponder….to say the least. Those who do not heed anything from the lessons of history are doomed to repeat their mistakes.
If it comes in my remaining lifetime, I patiently await the climate alarmist “Great Disappointment”.
Another famous doomsday was The Church of the Subgenius’ “X-Day.” It was the day when the saucers would land from Planet X would land on the planet Earth and destroy the world of “normals”, “pinks”, and “glorps,” while the members of the Church of the SubGenius would be rescued by the aliens and taken away into space.
It was predicted to occur on July 5, 1998, and thousands gathered at the Brushwood Folklore Center in Sherman, NY to await the arrival. When nothing took place many theories were put forth to explain the nonevent. Rev. Ivan Stang, the main spokesman for the church, then suggested that perhaps he had been reading the date upside down, and that it wouldn’t occur until 8651, whereupon he was immediately thrown into a nearby lake.
JAMES HANSEN — Death Train Hansen
Always Good For A Laugh
More holy than thou
He warns you of Venus
The only thing now
That hardens his penis
he rants at the crowds
A coot with the hypers
His mind in the clouds
A load in his diapers
He quotes from the Greens —
We work for the many
(But really that means
They’re after the money)
He quotes from the Reds —
Consensus is dictum
(Good socialist heads
Are all up one rectum)
A Fascist he cries
This Goebbels of weather
The truth is in lies
The bigger the better
So just like a skunk
His sight is alarming
His science is junk
There’s no global warming
Eugene WR Gallun
You owe me a keyboard!!!!!!!! Best. EVAH!!!
“as certain at the law of gravity.”
=============
the law of gravity is well known. Even still, we can only calculate the future orbits of 2 objects. As soon as you add a third, the ability to predict the future breaks down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem
This is the basis of chaos and the Lorenz butterfly.
http://scienceblogs.com/greengabbro/wp-content/blogs.dir/265/files/2012/04/i-d600c0b7a24e0b239cc42c86d4f0fe1c-lorenz-attractor.jpg
So, knowing the Law of Gravity, we still cannot predict the future, except in the simplest case. Climate is considerably more complex, it represents the n-body problem, which is inherently why it cannot be predicted reliably.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem
Talking about gravity the n-body problem
Another comet second within a week (last 25/04/16) has dived into sun. At this rate solar system is going to run out of comets (but good news is) before there is a chance of one hitting the Earth.
In the Nasa’s soho image it can be clearly seen how its tail grows longer as it approaches its demise.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c3.mp4
Hansen’s story about energy accumulation in the oceans because of an imbalance caused by CO2 in the atmosphere is delivered with such a doctoral tone that everyone is supposed to believe it without any proof. This is called climate catechesis.
The author of this post states “He asserted that his predictions were not based upon models but “observable evidence.” False. He dodged, stalled and avoided. He threw out some numbers and put up a slide depicting the Hiroshima bomb explosion. His answer was non-responsive.”
I watched the video and I completely disagree. Hansen did an excellent job of stating the empirical evidence supporting the contention that the earth (in particular the oceans) are warming as a result of the human caused increase in CO2. It is time to stop denying the evidence and start contributing to the discussion on how to solve the most pressing environmental issue humans have ever faced.
Hansen did an excellent job of stating the empirical evidence supporting the contention that the earth (in particular the oceans) are warming as a result of the human caused increase in CO2
That’s kinda interesting since Hansen’s theory is that
a) CO2 in the atmosphere absorbs LW radiation which;
b) warms the atmosphere, which;
c) warms the oceans and the land, but;
d) the land warms faster than the oceans
With none of a,b,c and d happening, Hansen (and you) wants to hang onto this theory, and we are to believe that:
e) in particular the oceans is occurring without a,b,c and d.
This is the equivalent of claiming that apples fall up into the sky, and when directed to apples laying on the ground underneath the tree, exclaiming see! I told you so!
The apples on the ground are merely resting.
Nebraskan’s for Peace?! Holy crap, does this nonsense NEVER go away? I was living in Omaha in 1984. They were stupid enough to try to bring a RUSSIAN Air Force general into town to give a talk on why Korean Air flight deserved to be shot down as it was a “spy” flight. Evidently it was to be a closed talk, but someone got hold of the “internal” advertisement and it “got out”. Of course the talk never came to happen (some doubt if it really was a personal appearance or just a VCR video or recording) but the true driving force of the “Nebraskans for Peace” was suddenly brought to light. Now back in the ’80’s it was all the “Nuclear Freeze” and “anti-nuclear” power. Amazing how these groups never go away, they just morph into the next generation of crazy.
It was largely Hansen’s claim that Venus was a “runaway” , http://CoSy.com/Science/Hansen.avi , which so offended my sense of physics I got involved in understanding the physics myself . I was and continue to be appalled by the lack of any presentation of the most basic quantitative equations supporting his claim that some spectral effect can trap heat to a surface temperature 225% that of a gray ball next to Venus in orbit . I’m perhaps appalled most by the almost universal lack of curiosity about the enabling physics at this fundamental level .
In fact , of course , no such equations nor experimental demonstration exist . The GHG heat trapping explanation for the bottoms of planetary atmospheres being hotter than the gray body temperature in their orbits is simply false . And false at the level of undergraduate physics .
The people who believe it are the same ones who believe you can terraform mars without increasing its mass, resurrecting its gravitational field and supplying a moon to keep it active.
“If he is the best the Greens have, we conservatives should win this fight.” Well, we can win the science fight, but since big, big money is backing the CAGW scare, I suspect that many battles will be lost until the “war” is won.
Funny, Hansen says at the ten minute mark that we should not be subsidizing any energy forms. How about that!
I think your perfectly reasonable question was over shadowed by Hansen’s “bullshit beats brains” and unfortunately it worked very well according to the applause received when his “answer” was finished.
In other words he is very good at his game and although probably no-one in the audience followed his answer right through, (certainly didn’t), it sounded so good and authoritative that most normal people swallowed his message – that being – AGW is fact, its here, its dangerous to us all and we need to spend your money now!
Very hard to beat this guy in the forum of this meeting – of course one could make mince meat of him in a proper debate, but like all authoritative greens I have met – he will avoid a fair debate of facts like the plague.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
Homer Simpson is modelled on James Hansen.
Whose name in turn might have been inspired by the phrase, “homo simp.”
Question…..if the “climate scientists” and the IPCC are so certain of their warnings about sea level rise, etc., then why is the UN spending billions on renovating their building which is only 150 feet away from the East River in NYC? Wouldn’t you think they would be looking for higher ground?
Joey,
Good point although they could simply move up a floor or two and use boats:)
Here is the google view.
https://www.google.co.nz/maps/place/United+Nations+Headquarters/@40.7448298,-73.9686024,505a,20y,41.58t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!1m3!3m2!1s0x89c2591ce0874d11:0xc5fae28bdd3df635!2sUnited+Nations+Headquarters!3m1!1s0x89c2591ce0874d11:0xc5fae28bdd3df635
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
Hansen Big Think Interview
http://bigthink.com/videos/big-think-interview-with-james-hansen
Hansen on runaway greenhouse and melting antarctica
“Question: How long would this take to occur if we stay on this path?
James Hansen: Well, you would have to — first of all, you’d have to melt the ice sheets, and that takes a while. The Antarctic ice sheet is a couple miles thick. But with continued rapid increase in greenhouse gases, that — you could melt the ice sheets in less than a century. “
Thanks mike.
I have never in my life heard anything more stupid or ignorant than this.
He has lost his mind.
When one talks to a room full of blind believers, you can say ANYTHING and it will be swallowed hook, line and sinker. I have seen this myself on a few occasions when I was the lone sceptic/ “denier.” What was disturbing last time is that they knew there were 3 sceptics in the theatre and knew who we were.
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die..” –Max Planck
Within 20 years, the Sun will go back into its sleep phase, and the climate will respond with great cooling. I’m the meanwhile, many of the radicals who’ve been pushing this political agenda will have died of old age.
The only thing that can save this political movement then will be if they’ve been able to setup an Orwellian government that can force people to believe:
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
AND
Cold is Hot
simple physics experiment on melting ice in water. Put several ice cubes in a container of water, and carefully measure the depth of the mixture. After the ice has melted, measure the depth of the mixture. The levels are the same.
That refutation only applies to ice caps on the ocean, not ice caps on land mass, which can drain into the ocean…and which has been the cause of the ocean rise over the millenia.
Just remember the benefits of age. I am 65 years old and have had the benefit of living in the same place for the vast majority of my life. Nothing has changed. The seasons are the same. I ask: have the high tides been increasing their level? No one has that answer. Meanwhile, life goes on. What those audiences need are more old-timers who can personally testify that Hanson is an idiot, based on personal observation of the climate.
While many people do not follow every detail emerging in the back and forth of climate “science” debate, they can often spot a shifty promoter using dodgy logic to peddle bogus goods.
This guy is a unique treasure and should be encouraged to continue inflicting damage on junk science — and other junk scientists.
By all means, let the man speak! Pay him, if necessary. It’s money well spent.