I was stunned by Dr. James Hansen’s response in this article in the Virgina Informer
Excerpt:
“For this fall,” the organizer wrote in his e-mail to Mr. Hansen, “we are hoping to host a debate on global climate change and its implications. Patrick Michaels has agreed to come, and my organization would like you to come and debate Dr. Michaels in Williamsburg. The date is very flexible, and we can tailor the day of the debate completely to your schedule. We will be able to pay for your travel expenses and offer you an honorarium for your time. Please let me know if you would be interested.”
Mr. Hansen’s response was, simply, “not interested.”
His reply — devoid of any salutation, punctuation, capitalization or signature — came an hour after Mr. Katz sent his original e-mail.
I suppose for Dr. Hansen, debating and defending your work is “futile“?
In my opinion, demonstrating arrogance in correspondence and ignoring reasonable debate doesn’t do much to bolster confidence in the man’s work.
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When an honest man has it pointed out to him that he is wrong about something, he has a choice to make:
He can continue to be an honest man
or
He can continue to be wrong.
Doctor Sigmund Freud explains:
hummmmm
I love…………… http://www.surfacestations.org project
Regards; Mr Anthony Joule ( energy pure)
because he knows there’s no point in holding a debate when everyone in the room has already made up their mind.
Seems to me there are a LOT of “undecideds” and these debates can change a LOT of minds.
Sorry. The AGW side had a great spring training and on that basis is trying to claim the pennant.
No.
Now the real season begins.
Seriously, is that the best you got?
Heh, heh. Stick around.
John McLondon: “In any case, if Hansen accepts every invitation from informal student organizations for debates (if that is what this is), he will not have any time to do anything else.”
Irrelevant. His response was extremely unprofessional. That’s the bottom line. He doesn’t want to debate, that’s fine. As a representative of NASA, is that how you answer a request from a college or college student?
@Brendan H
Hansen is not trained as a Climate Scientist. He is an astronomer according to his CV posted earlier.
On the other hand, I was trained in Atmospheric Sciences, I don’t engage in revenge fantasies and have proudly been a global warming skeptic since 1997.
Appeals to Authority mean nothing. What counts is ground truths. And the ground truths against man-influence global climate change are piling up faster and faster.
I am frequently disappointed that many of the people passionate about climate change are not equally passionate about knowing all the data involved.
Best of Luck to you Brendan. I hope you expand your horizons from tricks of logic to winning your debates to a wider understanding of the science behind climate change.
I am sure that if you spell out why you believe in man-made climate change, any number of people here will point you to the current science so that you can directly make up your own mind rather than be molded from predigested propaganda.
If you are not a scientist, I recommend you start with http://junkscience.com/Greenhouse/What_Watt.html
Yes he did produce some codes after waiting several weeks to make them more “readable to the public” 😉 So far they have been unreplicable.
Read: Binary dump. Digital caltrops.
“The appropriate forum to debate science is the peer-reviewed literature”
Peer review won’t do. Independent review is urgently required.
Has anyone heard of a guy called Lyndon LaRouche?
Unfortunately. (Let’s just say, “not mainstream”.)
Perhaps science should be debated primarily in journals and conferences, but climate science has unquestionably been dragged into the public/political/policy realm.
Too late. As you say, it’s down to public policy now. Who decides? YOU do.
Joel Shore: “The appropriate forum to debate science is the peer-reviewed literature. Usually it is the losing side in the debate in this venue that then asks for debates in the public sphere instead.”
This is nonsense. Many scientists, politicians, journalists etc. are arguing that policy should be made based upon their assertions of what the “science” tells us, and significant policy at that. To suggest that there is no place for public debate about the certainty of that science, outside of published, peer reviewed articles is just an astoundingly silly thing to assert. By this logic, debate over tax and economic policy should be limted to peer reviewed economic journals; debate over the wisdom of subsidies for medical research/drugs should only be discussed in medical journals. Need I go on?
For that matter, I am not aware of a climate change “debate” taking place in peer reviewed literature, as such. The debate takes place outside of the literature, e.g. Hansen publishing data on calculations of heat content in oceans, but saving his “smoking gun” comments for reporters. To follow that example, see if you can find anything approximating the phrase “smoking gun” in the article itself. If scientists like Hansen can publicly characterize the certainty of published research in stronger terms than the papers that present that research, if the IPCC can “review” the research so as to attach 90% confidence intervals to AGW, even though (to my knowledge anyway) no published peer reviewed paper says anything so bold, what kind of arrogance does it take to criticize people for giving their own assesments of the certainty of the science behind AGW, simply because it isn’t in a peer-reviewed journal?
On this last matter, let me say one more thing. The IPCC bases their condfidence assesments in results or in the state of scientific knowlege on what is essentially a poll, i.e. the authors say “We believe that the likelihood that human CO2 emmissions caused most of the warming over the last decade is 90% or greater.” The report is clear on this – these assesments are based on “expert judgment.” The opinion of a scientist is not science. If there is no data from which these confidence measures can be calculated, then the science falls short on what is essentially the heart of the AGW debate.
Neither are scientists, per se, experts on the subjects they study, but on the procedure by which those subjects are studied. If that procedure itself can’t produce the numbers that are relevant, i.e. the likehood of “x” amount of CO2 causing at least “y” temperature increase, and the likelihood of “y” temperature increase cauzing “z” catastrophe, then there is nothing magical about being a scientist that gives a person the ability to simply divine the results anyway (or more coarsly, to pull it out of their rear end) If someone wants the public to pay any heed to their “expert judgment” they had better first demonstrate that their judgment is actually worth something.
Anthony: to avoid those annoying accidental “smileys” which appear in posts from time to time, you can un-check the auto-change box here on your WordPress dashboard:
Far right are “Settings” and “Users”
Go to: Settings /Writing/Formatting/check-box: Convert emoticons like 🙂 (etc) to graphics on display. UN-CHECK
Joel Shore (19:38:28) :
“Smokey, you say: ‘Next, for those in need of peer reviewed papers falsifying the CO2/AGW hypothesis, here is a good [and unrefuted] one to start with: click’. Wow! Talk about confirmation bias in action. There are hundreds of peer reviewed papers each year that support AGW but because you find one that doesn’t, you think this falsifies AGW?”
In a word, yes.
When one hundred eminent scientists wrote an open letter to Albert Einstein stating that his Theory of Relativity was wrong, Einstein wrote back: ”To defeat relativity one did not need the word of 100 scientists, just one fact.”
The AGW/CO2/disaster hypothesis that Hansen hides out from debating has been falsified repeatedly. Even the empirical evidence, as cited in my 19:46:55 post above, repeatedly falsifies Hansen’s computer model-based prognostications.
Climate deceivers like Hansen seem to forget that the Scientific Method requires that those putting forth a new hypothesis are the ones required to justify it. Skeptics know that the status quo is the status quo; if there is a brand new hypothesis, which claims that CO2 causes runaway global warming, then it is up to them to prove it — not the skeptics. I am not sure you understand this.
So far, the proof is entirely on the side of the empirical evidence: the Earth is cooling. There is no “runaway global warming” despite the steady rise of beneficial carbon dioxide.
As Einstein pointed out, all it takes is one fact to disprove a hypothesis. Below are more than fifty [50+] papers falsifying the failed catastrophic global warming hypothesis.
I have more when you’re finished with these. Keep in mind that only one refuting fact is necessary to discredit Hansen’s entire CO2/climate disaster scenario. So read, and learn:
Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
(Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Volume 12, Number 3, 2007)
– Arthur B. Robinson, Noah E. Robinson, Willie Soon
Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
(Climate Research, Vol. 13, Pg. 149–164, October 26 1999)
– Arthur B. Robinson, Zachary W. Robinson, Willie Soon, Sallie L. Baliunas
Are observed changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere really dangerous?
(Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geology,v. 50, no. 2, p. 297-327, June 2002)
– C. R. de Freitas
Can increasing carbon dioxide cause climate change?
(Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 94, pp. 8335-8342, August 1997)
– Richard S. Lindzen
Can we believe in high climate sensitivity?
(arXiv:physics/0612094v1, Dec 11 2006)
– J. D. Annan, J. C. Hargreaves
Climate change: Conflict of observational science, theory, and politics
(AAPG Bulletin, Vol. 88, no9, pp. 1211-1220, 2004)
– Lee C. Gerhard
– Climate change: Conflict of observational science, theory, and politics: Reply
(AAPG Bulletin, v. 90, no. 3, p. 409-412, March 2006)
– Lee C. Gerhard
Climate change in the Arctic and its empirical diagnostics
(Energy & Environment, Volume 10, Number 5, pp. 469-482, September 1999)
– V.V. Adamenko, K.Y. Kondratyev, C.A. Varotsos
Climate Change Re-examined
(Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 723–749, 2007)
– Joel M. Kauffman
CO2-induced global warming: a skeptic’s view of potential climate change
(Climate Research, Vol. 10: 69–82, 199
– Sherwood B. Idso
Crystal balls, virtual realities and ’storylines’
(Energy & Environment, Volume 12, Number 4, pp. 343-349, July 2001)
– R.S. Courtney
Dangerous global warming remains unproven
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Number 1, pp. 167-169, January 2007)
– R.M. Carter
Does CO2 really drive global warming?
(Energy & Environment, Volume 12, Number 4, pp. 351-355, July 2001)
– R.H. Essenhigh
Does human activity widen the tropics?
(arXiv:0803.1959v1, Mar 13 200
– Katya Georgieva, Boian Kirov
Earth’s rising atmospheric CO2 concentration: Impacts on the biosphere
(Energy & Environment, Volume 12, Number 4, pp. 287-310, July 2001)
– C.D. Idso
Evidence for “publication Bias” Concerning Global Warming in Science and Nature
(Energy & Environment, Volume 19, Number 2, pp. 287-301, March 200
– Patrick J. Michaels
Global Warming
(Progress in Physical Geography, 27, 448-455, 2003)
– W. Soon, S. L. Baliunas
Global Warming: The Social Construction of A Quasi-Reality?
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Number 6, pp. 805-813, November 2007)
– Dennis Ambler
Global warming and the mining of oceanic methane hydrate
(Topics in Catalysis, Volume 32, Numbers 3-4, pp. 95-99, March 2005)
– Chung-Chieng Lai, David Dietrich, Malcolm Bowman
Global Warming: Forecasts by Scientists Versus Scientific Forecasts
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 997-1021, December 2007)
– Keston C. Green, J. Scott Armstrong
Global Warming: Myth or Reality? The Actual Evolution of the Weather Dynamics
(Energy & Environment, Volume 14, Numbers 2-3, pp. 297-322, May 2003)
– M. Leroux
Global Warming: the Sacrificial Temptation
(arXiv:0803.1239v1, Mar 10 200
– Serge Galam
Global warming: What does the data tell us?
(arXiv:physics/0210095v1, Oct 23 2002)
– E. X. Alban, B. Hoeneisen
Human Contribution to Climate Change Remains Questionable
(Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union, Volume 80, Issue 16, p. 183-183, April 20, 1999)
– S. Fred Singer
Industrial CO2 emissions as a proxy for anthropogenic influence on lower tropospheric temperature trends
(Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 31, L05204, 2004)
– A. T. J. de Laat, A. N. Maurellis
Implications of the Secondary Role of Carbon Dioxide and Methane Forcing in Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future
(Physical Geography, Volume 28, Number 2, pp. 97-125(29), March 2007)
– Soon, Willie
Is a Richer-but-warmer World Better than Poorer-but-cooler Worlds?
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 1023-1048, December 2007)
– Indur M. Goklany
Methodology and Results of Calculating Central California Surface Temperature Trends: Evidence of Human-Induced Climate Change?
(Journal of Climate, Volume: 19 Issue: 4, February 2006)
– Christy, J.R., W.B. Norris, K. Redmond, K. Gallo
Modeling climatic effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions: unknowns and uncertainties
(Climate Research, Vol. 18: 259–275, 2001)
– Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas, Sherwood B. Idso, Kirill Ya. Kondratyev, Eric S. Posmentier
– Modeling climatic effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions: unknowns and uncertainties. Reply to Risbey (2002)
(Climate Research, Vol. 22: 187–188, 2002)
– Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas, Sherwood B. Idso, Kirill Ya. Kondratyev, Eric S. Posmentier
– Modeling climatic effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions: unknowns and uncertainties. Reply to Karoly et al.
(Climate Research, Vol. 24: 93–94, 2003)
– Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas, Sherwood B. Idso, Kirill Ya. Kondratyev, Eric S. Posmentier
On global forces of nature driving the Earth’s climate. Are humans involved?
(Environmental Geology, Volume 50, Number 6, August 2006)
– L. F. Khilyuk and G. V. Chilingar
On a possibility of estimating the feedback sign of the Earth climate system
(Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences: Engineering. Vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 260-268. Sept. 2007)
– Olavi Kamer
Phanerozoic Climatic Zones and Paleogeography with a Consideration of Atmospheric CO2 Levels
(Paleontological Journal, 2: 3-11, 2003)
– A. J. Boucot, Chen Xu, C. R. Scotese
Quantifying the influence of anthropogenic surface processes and inhomogeneities on gridded global climate data
(Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 112, D24S09, 2007)
– Ross R. McKitrick, Patrick J. Michaels
Quantitative implications of the secondary role of carbon dioxide climate forcing in the past glacial-interglacial cycles for the likely future climatic impacts of anthropogenic greenhouse-gas forcings
(arXiv:0707.1276, July 2007)
– Soon, Willie
Scientific Consensus on Climate Change?
(Energy & Environment, Volume 19, Number 2, pp. 281-286, March 200
– Klaus-Martin Schulte
Some Coolness Concerning Global Warming
(Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Volume 71, Issue 3, pp. 288–299, March 1990)
– Richard S. Lindzen
Some examples of negative feedback in the Earth climate system
(Central European Journal of Physics, Volume 3, Number 2, June 2005)
– Olavi Kärner
Statistical analysis does not support a human influence on climate
(Energy & Environment, Volume 13, Number 3, pp. 329-331, July 2002)
– S. Fred Singer
Taking GreenHouse Warming Seriously
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 937-950, December 2007)
– Richard S. Lindzen
Temperature trends in the lower atmosphere
(Energy & Environment, Volume 17, Number 5, pp. 707-714, September 2006)
– Vincent Gray
Temporal Variability in Local Air Temperature Series Shows Negative Feedback
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 1059-1072, December 2007)
– Olavi Kärner
The Carbon dioxide thermometer and the cause of global warming
(Energy & Environment, Volume 10, Number 1, pp. 1-18, January 1999)
– N. Calder
The Cause of Global Warming
(Energy & Environment, Volume 11, Number 6, pp. 613-629, November 1, 2000)
– Vincent Gray
The Fraud Allegation Against Some Climatic Research of Wei-Chyung Wang
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 985-995, December 2007)
– Douglas J. Keenan
The continuing search for an anthropogenic climate change signal: Limitations of correlation-based approaches
(Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 24, No. 18, Pages 2319–2322, 1997)
– David R. Legates, Robert E. Davis
The “Greenhouse Effect” as a Function of Atmospheric Mass
(Energy & Environment, Volume 14, Numbers 2-3, pp. 351-356, 1 May 2003)
– H. Jelbring
The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle
(Energy & Environment, Volume 16, Number 2, pp. 217-238, March 2005)
– A. Rörsch, R. Courtney, D. Thoenes
The IPCC future projections: are they plausible?
(Climate Research, Vol. 10: 155–162, August 199
– Vincent Gray
The IPCC: Structure, Processes and Politics Climate Change – the Failure of Science
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 1073-1078, December 2007)
– William J.R. Alexander
The UN IPCC’s Artful Bias: Summary of Findings: Glaring Omissions, False Confidence and Misleading Statistics in the Summary for Policymakers
(Energy & Environment, Volume 13, Number 3, pp. 311-328, July 2002)
– Wojick D. E.
“The Wernerian syndrome”; aspects of global climate change; an analysis of assumptions, data, and conclusions
(Environmental Geosciences, v. 3, no. 4, p. 204-210, December 1996)
– Lee C. Gerhard
Uncertainties in assessing global warming during the 20th century: disagreement between key data sources
(Energy & Environment, Volume 17, Number 5, pp. 685-706, September 2006)
– Maxim Ogurtsov, Markus Lindholm
Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics (Physics, arXiv:0707.1161)
– Gerhard Gerlich, Ralf D. Tscheuschner
Gavin is apparently not interested either. I was engaged in a discussion over at RC the last couple of days, and was asked by other writers some very specific questions today about the Arctic and global warming in general. I responded with several messages about different topics, all of which Gavin completely censored.
It is very difficult to have a debate with someone who is insecure about their position and won’t let the other side speak.
For the record, this is what Gavin chose to censor –
# Steven Goddard Says:
11 July 2008 at 18:45
Ray, thanks for the questions.
– 1)Do you dispute that CO2 is a greenhouse gas?
No
– 2)Do you dispute that it’s responsible for about 20-25% of the greenhouse effect?
Yes. That number is probably too large. Water vapor is about 10X as common as CO2 and absorbs a wider spectrum of IR.
– 3)Do you dispute that human activities have been responsible for increasing CO2 from roughly 280 ppmv ot 385 ppmv?
No
– 4)Do you dispute that the climate is warming?
No. it has been warming for at least 15,000 years and has warmed considerably over the last 300 years.
Here is a cdc animation showing persistent cold in central and southern portions of the Greenland ice sheet this summer.
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/fnl/sfctmpmer_01a_30frames.fnl.anim.html
Obviously the thickness of the ice at the North Pole various from year to year, depending largely on Trans-Polar drift. In 1987 the ice was very thin, as seen in this picture taken very early in the season.
http://www.john-daly.com/NP1987.jpg
# Steven Goddard Says:
11 July 2008 at 18:56
More from Hansen-Nazarenko
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2004/2004_Hansen_Nazarenko.pdf
“The climate forcing due to snow/ice albedo change is of the order of 1W/m2 at middle- and high-latitude land areas in the Northern Hemisphere …. This compares with a global mean forcing by present anthropogenic CO2 (compared to preindustrial times) of 1.5W/m2, which is relatively uniform over the globe.”
then
“Soot snow/ice albedo climate forcing is not included in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change evaluations. This forcing is unusually effective, causing twice as much global warming as a CO2 forcing of the same magnitude.”
The 2X greater efficacy makes the temperature effect of soot greater than CO2 in the Arctic, as can also be seen in figure 1 and figure 3. Most of the overall rise in Arctic temperature seen in figure 3 is accounted for by soot as seen in figure 1.
Ya know, the interesting part of this debate has some historical analogies. The Titanic, Challenger, and Discovery among others. In each case, a major death event was sparked by people working in a vacuum who thought they knew more than anyone else. Titanic was designed essentially by one man, who designed the rudder too small for the ship. It handled like a pig. The Discovery was launched despite cries to the contrary, by people looking at the “political” fall out. (cold, “O” rings, and burn through were known at the time). The Discovery was downed by someone with a flawed computer model “proved” that the hole wasn’t important if there was one.
The cause of these, and other examples was a failure to face facts. I think the AGW crowd and Hanson are in that mode now. I just hope my taxes don’t go up too much before the truth is known.
There are some good things going on though. Some of the solar, wind and biological technologies are getting dollars to improve. That can’t be all bad. We have to start somewhere for alternative energy because fossel fuels are finite and will run out sometime.
Just thought a blast of sunshine (pun intended) would help the debate….
Jeff Alberts: “Irrelevant. His response was extremely unprofessional. That’s the bottom line. He doesn’t want to debate, that’s fine. As a representative of NASA, is that how you answer a request from a college or college student?”
Don’t know. Sometimes busy colleagues use very short communications like this. His answer was to the point – he is not interested. He could have chosen to ignore the email, without giving any response.
Please note that an invitation for such a one on one debate, or invitation for a seminar, is usually made through a phone call, not by an email. Also, I find it rather strange for a student go public with an email reply he received, to somehow show that either Hansen has the obligation to accept the invitation or the answer is not polite enough. Seems too silly to me.
Is there a bit of el nino developing?
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.7.10.2008.gif
but temps still going down… I thought AGW’s maintained current drop due to La Nina?
Joel: These comments are most welcome from an AGW believer and is the type of debate that backs up your position Schwartz paper etc. I wish more of the AGW would engage in the debate in that way. (ie am 100% skeptical BTW)
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.7.10.2008.gif
Do we have El Nino developing?
@Brendan H
BTW, one might consider calling for the jailing of oil execs a revenge fantasy.
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/06/22/jim-hansen-calls-for-energy-company-execs-to-be-jailed/
As Steven Goddard (22:26:20) makes clear, the climate deceivers are extremely insecure. They understand that their hypothesis will not stand up to scientific scrutiny, as Gavin Schmidt makes very clear every day on his RealClimate blog.
A few days ago I attempted to make my very first post on the NY Times’ website, responding to a global warming article. The very same thing occurred; I simply stated that according to these four agencies, the globe was cooling, not warming. I was unfailingly polite, suspecting that they would use any excuse to delete my post.
It didn’t matter. The result was exactly the same as Mr. Goddard’s. Out of literally hundreds of pro-AGW comments, mine was deleted.
They’re running scared.
. According to Abdussamatow’s projections, solar radiation will reach its minimum at about the year 2041.
7. The 200-year decline in solar intensity according to Abdussamatow will trigger a gloabl climate minimum, which because of the ocean’s thermal inertia will take effect in about 15 to 20 years.
8. According Abdussamatow’s projections, the temperatures will bottom out sometime around 2055 to 2060.
I have to say, that is a lot more concerning to me than another .5C warming. Warming I can work with. Ice and show is a different matter.
John McLondon (22:31:40) wrote: “Don’t know. Sometimes busy colleagues use very short communications like this. … Etc..
I tend to go along with your opinion here, John. Nicely balanced reason in your words.
Jeff B: “The trouble is that Galileo has been empirically shown to be right. Whereas Hansen has been empirically shown to be wrong.”
My essential point was that both Galileo and Hansen are offering a case in the affirmative, whereas their opponents are the naysayers. Of course, this doesn’t demonstrate that Hansen or AGW is correct, but it does establish an equal footing in terms of their position vis a vis the respective issues.
Smokey: “Here’s some pretty definitive scientific proof that Hansen is flat wrong…”
I know the source of the data for these graphs. But who created the graphs?
“…unless you can demonstrate that the global temperature is rising with increased atmospheric carbon dioxide. Good luck with that.”
I will repeat comments made by a couple of the official agencies.
UK Met Office: “…temperature change over the latest decade (1998-2007) alone shows a continued warming of 0.1 °C per decade.”
NASA: “Climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City have found that 2007 tied with 1998 for Earth’s second warmest year in a century…The eight warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the 14 warmest years in the record have all occurred since 1990.”
“…the empirical [real world] results directly contradict his falsified CO2 hypothesis.”
If that is the case, then pretty soon Hansen and his AGW theory will be history. But the IPCC and official climate sites say otherwise.
Dee Norris: “…current science so that you can directly make up your own mind rather than be molded from predigested propaganda.”
“Why is the information you present “current science”, and why is the information from the AGW side “propaganda”?
“BTW, one might consider calling for the jailing of oil execs a revenge fantasy.”
Perhaps. Or a threat. Hansen’s comment was very intemperate and he should be slapped down for it. In his defence, he has been called a liar and a scientific cheat, so I imagine he doesn’t view sceptics with much fondness.
Potential debate scenarios like this are ridiculous and prove little more than who’s good at debating. Furthermore, Dr. Hansen knows this and fires back the only possible sane answer, and, may I add, with the respect that it deserved.
The readership here slams the idea of consensus science and then embraces debate? The irony is palpable.
(Consensus and debate are the stuff of politics. Not science.)
This thread is making me re-examine what I think about my fellow skeptics.
@Brendan H
“UK Met Office: “…temperature change over the latest decade (1998-2007) alone shows a continued warming of 0.1 °C per decade.”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/2.html
That is typical of statements which are only partially correct.
The graph is using a smoothed curve using a 21 point binomial filter from here (top graph) http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/
but the unsmoothed version does show cooling from 1998 to 2007. This link gives a better picture http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/smoothing.html
The problem with the original “fact” is that the smoothed temperature for 1998 is about 0.2 deg C lower than the actual.
@Brendan H
Good science (and the scientists behind it) should be agnostic. The moment that science is used by a party to sway other people to that party’s point of view, it becomes propaganda.
If one seeks the truth, one needs to go beyond the science presented by one party and seek enlightenment through immersion in all the science.
Too many only know the information promoted by the party sponsoring the cause. And far too often, they only get the watered down version of the actual science stripped of any doubts or hedges that might throw an unfavorable light on the cause.
A perfect example of this is Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth. When one knows the science or double checks Gore’s ‘facts’ the nature of the movie as propaganda become clear.
I posted this in another thread but this simplistic analysis of the UAH anomaly (using a third order polynomial in Excel) is to my mind more believable given the large gaps in the GISS and Hadcrut data. This shows a very marginal increase from 1979 to now http://www.holtlane.plus.com/images/uah_anomaly.jpg