The Temperature of Science (PDF available here)
James Hansen
My experience with global temperature data over 30 years provides insight about how the science and its public perception have changed. In the late 1970s I became curious about well known analyses of global temperature change published by climatologist J. Murray Mitchell: why were his estimates for large-scale temperature change restricted to northern latitudes? As a planetary scientist, it seemed to me there were enough data points in the Southern Hemisphere to allow useful estimates both for that hemisphere and for the global average. So I requested a tape of meteorological station data from Roy Jenne of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who obtained the data from records of the World Meteorological Organization, and I made my own analysis.
Fast forward to December 2009, when I gave a talk at the Progressive Forum in Houston Texas. The organizers there felt it necessary that I have a police escort between my hotel and the forum where I spoke. Days earlier bloggers reported that I was probably the hacker who broke into East Anglia computers and stole e-mails. Their rationale: I was not implicated in any of the pirated e-mails, so I must have eliminated incriminating messages before releasing the hacked emails.
The next day another popular blog concluded that I deserved capital punishment. Web chatter on this topic, including indignation that I was coming to Texas, led to a police escort.
How did we devolve to this state? Any useful lessons? Is there still interesting science in analyses of surface temperature change? Why spend time on it, if other groups are also doing it? First I describe the current monthly updates of global surface temperature at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Then I show graphs illustrating scientific inferences and issues. Finally I respond to questions in the above paragraph.
Current Updates
Each month we receive, electronically, data from three sources: weather data for several thousand meteorological stations, satellite observations of sea surface temperature, and Antarctic research station measurements. These three data sets are the input for a program that produces a global map of temperature anomalies relative to the mean for that month during the period of climatology, 1951-1980.
The analysis method has been described fully in a series of refereed papers (Hansen et al., 1981, 1987, 1999, 2001, 2006). Successive papers updated the data and in some cases made minor improvements to the analysis, for example, in adjustments to minimize urban effects. The analysis method works in terms of temperature anomalies, rather than absolute temperature, because anomalies present a smoother geographical field than temperature itself. For example, when New York City has an unusually cold winter, it is likely that Philadelphia is also colder than normal. The distance over which temperature anomalies are highly correlated is of the order of 1000 kilometers at middle and high latitudes, as we illustrated in our 1987 paper.
Although the three input data streams that we use are publicly available from the
organizations that produce them, we began preserving the complete input data sets each month in April 2008. These data sets, which cover the full period of our analysis, 1880-present, are available to parties interested in performing their own analysis or checking our analysis. The computer program that performs our analysis is published on the GISS web site.
Responsibilities for our updates are as follows. Ken Lo runs programs to add in the new data and reruns the analysis with the expanded data. Reto Ruedy maintains the computer program that does the analysis and handles most technical inquiries about the analysis. Makiko Sato updates graphs and posts them on the web. I examine the temperature data monthly and write occasional discussions about global temperature change.
Scientific Inferences and Issues
Temperature data – example of early inferences. Figure 1 shows the current GISS
analysis of global annual-mean and 5-year running-mean temperature change (left) and the hemispheric temperature changes (right). These graphs are based on the data now available, including ship and satellite data for ocean regions.
Figure 1 illustrates, with a longer record, a principal conclusion of our first analysis of temperature change (Hansen et al., 1981). That analysis, based on data records through December 1978, concluded that data coverage was sufficient to estimate global temperature change. We also concluded that temperature change was qualitatively different in the two hemispheres. The Southern Hemisphere had more steady warming through the century while the Northern Hemisphere had distinct cooling between 1940 and 1975.
It required more than a year to publish the 1981 paper, which was submitted several times to Science and Nature. At issue were both the global significance of the data and the length of the paper. Later, in our 1987 paper, we proved quantitatively that the station coverage was sufficient for our conclusions – the proof being obtained by sampling (at the station locations) a 100-year data set of a global climate model that had realistic spatial-temporal variability. The different hemispheric records in the mid-twentieth century have never been convincingly explained. The most likely explanation is atmospheric aerosols, fine particles in the air, produced by fossil fuel burning. Aerosol atmospheric lifetime is only several days, so fossil fuel aerosols were confined mainly to the Northern Hemisphere, where most fossil fuels were burned. Aerosols have a cooling effect that still today is estimated to counteract about half of the warming effect of human-made greenhouse gases. For the few decades after World War II, until the oil embargo in the 1970s, fossil fuel use expanded exponentially at more than 4%/year, likely causing the growth of aerosol climate forcing to exceed that of greenhouse gases
Flaws in temperature analysis. Figure 2 illustrates an error that developed in the GISS analysis when we introduced, in our 2001 paper, an improvement in the United States temperature record. The change consisted of using the newest USHCN (United States Historical Climatology Network) analysis for those U.S. stations that are part of the USHCN network. This improvement, developed by NOAA researchers, adjusted station records that included station moves or other discontinuities. Unfortunately, I made an error by failing to recognize that the station records we obtained electronically from NOAA each month, for these same stations, did not contain the adjustments. Thus there was a discontinuity in 2000 in the records of those stations, as the prior years contained the adjustment while later years did not. The error was readily corrected, once it was recognized. Figure 2 shows the global and U.S. temperatures with and without the error. The error averaged 0.15°C over the contiguous 48 states, but these states cover only 1½ percent of the globe, making the global error negligible.
However, the story was embellished and distributed to news outlets throughout the country. Resulting headline: NASA had cooked the temperature books – and once the error was corrected 1998 was no longer the warmest year in the record, instead being supplanted by 1934.
This was nonsense, of course. The small error in global temperature had no effect on the ranking of different years. The warmest year in our global temperature analysis was still 2005.
Conceivably confusion between global and U.S. temperatures in these stories was inadvertent. But the estimate for the warmest year in the U.S. had not changed either. 1934 and 1998 were tied as the warmest year (Figure 2b) with any difference (~0.01°C) at least an order of magnitude smaller than the uncertainty in comparing temperatures in the 1930s with those in the 1990s.
The obvious misinformation in these stories, and the absence of any effort to correct the stories after we pointed out the misinformation, suggests that the aim may have been to create distrust or confusion in the minds of the public, rather than to transmit accurate information. That, of course, is a matter of opinion. I expressed my opinion in two e-mails that are on my Columbia University web site
Click to access 20070810_LightUpstairs.pdf
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2007/20070816_realdeal.pdf.
We thought we had learned the necessary lessons from this experience. We put our
analysis program on the web. Everybody was free to check the program, if they were concerned that any data “cooking” may be occurring.
Unfortunately, another data problem occurred in 2008. In one of the three incoming data streams, the one for meteorological stations, the November 2008 data for many Russian stations was a repeat of October 2008 data. It was not our data record, but we properly had to accept the blame for the error, because the data was included in our analysis. Occasional flaws in input data are normal in any analysis, and the flaws are eventually noticed and corrected if they are
substantial. Indeed, we have an effective working relationship with NOAA – when we spot data that appears questionable we inform the appropriate people at the National Climate Data Center – a relationship that has been scientifically productive.
This specific data flaw was a case in point. The quality control program that NOAA runs on the data from global meteorological stations includes a check for repetition of data: if two consecutive months have identical data the data is compared with that at the nearest stations. If it appears that the repetition is likely to be an error, the data is eliminated until the original data source has verified the data. The problem in 2008 escaped this quality check because a change in their program had temporarily, inadvertently, omitted that quality check.
The lesson learned here was that even a transient data error, however quickly corrected provides fodder for people who are interested in a public relations campaign, rather than science.
That means we cannot put the new data each month on our web site and check it at our leisure, because, however briefly a flaw is displayed, it will be used to disinform the public. Indeed, in this specific case there was another round of “fraud” accusations on talk shows and other media all around the nation.
Another lesson learned. Subsequently, to minimize the chance of a bad data point
slipping through in one of the data streams and temporarily affecting a publicly available data product, we now put the analyzed data up first on a site that is not visible to the public. This allows Reto, Makiko, Ken and me to examine maps and graphs of the data before the analysis is put on our web site – if anything seems questionable, we report it back to the data providers for them to resolve. Such checking is always done before publishing a paper, but now it seems to be necessary even for routine transitory data updates. This process can delay availability of our data analysis to users for up to several days, but that is a price that must be paid to minimize disinformation.
Is it possible to totally eliminate data flaws and disinformation? Of course not. The fact that the absence of incriminating statements in pirated e-mails is taken as evidence of wrongdoing provides a measure of what would be required to quell all criticism. I believe that the steps that we now take to assure data integrity are as much as is reasonable from the standpoint of the use of our time and resources.
Strong correlation of global SST with the Nino index is obvious. Global land-ocean
temperature is noisier than the SST, but correlation with the Nino index is also apparent for global temperature. On average, global temperature lags the Nino index by about 3 months.
During 2008 and 2009 I received many messages, sometimes several per day informing me that the Earth is headed into its next ice age. Some messages include graphs extrapolating cooling trends into the future. Some messages use foul language and demand my resignation. Of the messages that include any science, almost invariably the claim is made that the sun controls Earth’s climate, the sun is entering a long period of diminishing energy output, and the sun is the cause of the cooling trend.
Indeed, it is likely that the sun is an important factor in climate variability. Figure 4 shows data on solar irradiance for the period of satellite measurements. We are presently in the deepest most prolonged solar minimum in the period of satellite data. It is uncertain whether the solar irradiance will rebound soon into a more-or-less normal solar cycle – or whether it might remain at a low level for decades, analogous to the Maunder Minimum, a period of few sunspots that may have been a principal cause of the Little Ice Age.
The direct climate forcing due to measured solar variability, about 0.2 W/m2, is
comparable to the increase in carbon dioxide forcing that occurs in about seven years, using recent CO2 growth rates. Although there is a possibility that the solar forcing could be amplified by indirect effects, such as changes of atmospheric ozone, present understanding suggests only a small amplification, as discussed elsewhere (Hansen 2009). The global temperature record (Figure 1) has positive correlation with solar irradiance, with the amplitude of temperature variation being approximately consistent with the direct solar forcing. This topic will become clearer as the records become longer, but for that purpose it is important that the temperature record be as precise as possible.
Frequently heard fallacies are that “global warming stopped in 1998” or “the world has been getting cooler over the past decade”. These statements appear to be wishful thinking – it would be nice if true, but that is not what the data show. True, the 1998 global temperature jumped far above the previous warmest year in the instrumental record, largely because 1998 was affected by the strongest El Nino of the century. Thus for the following several years the global temperature was lower than in 1998, as expected.
However, the 5-year and 11-year running mean global temperatures (Figure 3b) have continued to increase at nearly the same rate as in the past three decades. There is a slight downward tick at the end of the record, but even that may disappear if 2010 is a warm year.
Indeed, given the continued growth of greenhouse gases and the underlying global warming trend (Figure 3b) there is a high likelihood, I would say greater than 50 percent, that 2010 will be the warmest year in the period of instrumental data. This prediction depends in part upon the continuation of the present moderate El Nino for at least several months, but that is likely.
Furthermore, the assertion that 1998 was the warmest year is based on the East Anglia – British Met Office temperature analysis. As shown in Figure 1, the GISS analysis has 2005 as the warmest year. As discussed by Hansen et al. (2006) the main difference between these analyses is probably due to the fact that British analysis excludes large areas in the Arctic and Antarctic where observations are sparse. The GISS analysis, which extrapolates temperature anomalies as far as 1200 km, has more complete coverage of the polar areas. The extrapolation introduces uncertainty, but there is independent information, including satellite infrared measurements and reduced Arctic sea ice cover, which supports the existence of substantial positive temperature anomalies in those regions.
In any case, issues such as these differences between our analyses provide a reason for having more than one global analysis. When the complete data sets are compared for the different analyses it should be possible to isolate the exact locations of differences and likely gain further insights.
Summary
The nature of messages that I receive from the public, and the fact that NASA
Headquarters received more than 2500 inquiries in the past week about our possible “manipulation” of global temperature data, suggest that the concerns are more political than scientific. Perhaps the messages are intended as intimidation, expected to have a chilling effect on researchers in climate change.
The recent “success” of climate contrarians in using the pirated East Anglia e-mails to cast doubt on the reality of global warming* seems to have energized other deniers. I am now inundated with broad FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests for my correspondence, with substantial impact on my time and on others in my office. I believe these to be fishing expeditions, aimed at finding some statement(s), likely to be taken out of context, which they would attempt to use to discredit climate science.
There are lessons from our experience about care that must be taken with data before it is made publicly available. But there is too much interesting science to be done to allow intimidation tactics to reduce our scientific drive and output. We can take a lesson from my 5- year-old grandson who boldly says “I don’t quit, because I have never-give-up fighting spirit!”
Click to access 20091130_FightingSpirit.pdf
There are other researchers who work more extensively on global temperature analyses than we do – our main work concerns global satellite observations and global modeling – but there are differences in perspectives, which, I suggest, make it useful to have more than one analysis. Besides, it is useful to combine experience working with observed temperature together with our work on satellite data and climate models. This combination of interests is likely to help provide some insights into what is happening with global climate and information on the data that are needed to understand what is happening. So we will be keeping at it.
*By “success” I refer to their successful character assassination and swift-boating. My interpretation of the e-mails is that some scientists probably became exasperated and frustrated by contrarians – which may have contributed to some questionable judgment. The way science works, we must make readily available the input data that we use, so that others can verify our analyses. Also, in my opinion, it is a mistake to be too concerned about contrarian publications – some bad papers will slip through the peer-review process, but overall assessments by the National Academies, the IPCC, and scientific organizations sort the wheat from the chaff.
The important point is that nothing was found in the East Anglia e-mails altering the reality and magnitude of global warming in the instrumental record. The input data for global temperature analyses are widely available, on our web site and elsewhere. If those input data could be made to yield a significantly different global temperature change, contrarians would certainly have done that – but they have not.
References
Frölich, C. 2006: Solar irradiance variability since 1978. Space Science Rev., 248, 672-673.
Hansen, J., D. Johnson, A. Lacis, S. Lebedeff, P. Lee, D. Rind, and G. Russell, 1981: Climate
impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Science, 213, 957-966.
Hansen, J.E., and S. Lebedeff, 1987: Global trends of measured surface air temperature. J.
Geophys. Res., 92, 13345-13372.
Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, J. Glascoe, and Mki. Sato, 1999: GISS analysis of surface temperature change. J. Geophys. Res., 104, 30997-31022.
Hansen, J.E., R. Ruedy, Mki. Sato, M. Imhoff, W. Lawrence, D. Easterling, T. Peterson, and T. Karl, 2001: A closer look at United States and global surface temperature change. J. Geophys. Res., 106, 23947-23963.
Hansen, J., Mki. Sato, R. Ruedy, K. Lo, D.W. Lea, and M. Medina-Elizade, 2006: Global
temperature change. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 103, 14288-14293.
Hansen, J. 2009: “Storms of My Grandchildren.” Bloomsbury USA, New York. (304 pp.)
For the record, the “capital punishment” remark referred to by Dr. Hansen was from Brietbart on Twitter:
http://twittorati.com/andrewbreitbart/statuses/6173170765
Hansen conveniently forgets that much of the data from surface stations are out of spec. So how does he obtain accurate data when ~70% of the stations don’t meet NOAA spec???
Looks like a self-serving distancing from the Team to me. One point though Jim, about three years back we were told that TSI couldn’t possibly explain the warming, but now it explains the cooling. Is it assymetric?
I long ago realized this man was not worth reading or listening to. Since this was posted here I thought maybe there was something different. My mistake.
I like the Hansen trick where 5 or 8 year averages hide the recent decline. Also a nice trick is to show global temperatures over a 120 year period and then compare it to sun spot cycles over just the past 30 years. The 2 different graphs not hide the recent declines in both temps and solar activity. The carefully chosen time scales also hide a previous graph produced by NOAA showing solar and SST are highly correlated.
http://www.oar.noaa.gov/spotlite/archive/images/sunclimate_3b.gif
The price of infamy. My heart bleeds.
Let’s see the data and GCM codes and compare with real world observations..
I noticed that Hansen does not address the March of The Thermometers problem, as identified by E.M.Smith at chiefio.wordpress.com.
Of course GISS will show a warming trend, given how the measuring stations have been changed, added, and deleted over time.
He also does not address the computer code with the blatant bias added and subtracted.
Funny, both that.
Ok I am confused. I dont have a lot of experience checking references to a “paper”, but I do have two questions. Why is it that the most recent cited reference is his own book, otherwise they start at 4 years and through to 22 years.
In terms of saying he has been around a while, I can get that, but what do studies of temperatures done years ago help with this article when the point I believed when I started reading it was to be reasonably current? For that matter I am certain there was more involved in the issues with land temperatures that have spawned several papers since 2006.
It also seems that the entire paper focuses on only the references he wants, disregarding any other literature that disagrees, throws in his own estimations that appear off the cuff, insults sceptics then lathers it into a “I have experience therefore I am right” envelope. This sounds awefully familiar.
To the layperson like me this seems very plausible indeed.
Is it really or is it not?
I’d welcome any help gauging this because I have been very sceptical because of the data being unreliable and the cooling of the last decade but he says not so!
Who is telling the truth?
Well, its disgraceful that he is being subjected to threats and requires a police escort to ensure his personal safety. There is no excuse for this.
The problem is that the AGW movement has become a religio-political movement, with one main article of faith: a belief in CO2 caused catastrophic warming. It then becomes an article of faith that this warming is happening and visible now. It is then argued that informed good faith dissent is impossible, and we get calls for the punishment of dissenters, they are called deniers and a lot of other silly names, and compared to mass murderers, because the consequences of voicing their opinions will allegedly be to postpone essential and urgent action. This then gradually migrates into Professor Hansen’s calls for civil disobedience.
The whole debate has now become so acrimonious and politicized that we arrive at a situation in which a scientist employed by the US Government cannot walk to a speaking venu unescorted. That is absolutely unacceptable. What we need to do is lower the temperature. The expression ‘denialist’ and similar terms need to vanish from usage by the movement. It needs to publicly accept that informed good faith people dissent from the movement’s tenets, and that they need to be argued with from a basis of fact, not abused.
It needs to be admitted that large scale improper manipulation of the surface temperature record have occurred and are still occurring. The proxy record does not show what it was alleged to show. Funding of the movement is a real source of concern about its impartiality. Government scientists need to stop being political activists.
We need to thoroughly revise our whole approach to this topic, and its not just sceptics, and its not just believers who need to do that. We all need to lower the temperature. Believers perhaps more than sceptics, but both do.
Believers need to understand that sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. The end point of accusing everyone who disagrees with you of being a corrupt denialist is going to be that you cannot walk from you taxi to a speaking venue without a police escort. It will also be true for sceptics if this carries on – we will have more cases of crowds of warmist idiots attacking police as they did in Copenhagen.
The end result will be something no-one on either side of the debate wants, a general conviction among the ruling class that something must be done, a lot of very expensive efforts to get it done, and a total failure to enact and implement anything that would be effective even if the theory were true. We will have more Copenhagens, more pointless riots, and no meaningful action. What we need is a rational, scientific non-hysterical approach to this thing. We are not getting it.
Prof Hansen, unfortunately, in his role as activist, is a contributor to this problem. He needs to get back to science and away from activism. That would be a start. He needs to think of it as giving up that 4 x 4. A personal sacrifice, but for the sake of the planet….
….’Also, in my opinion, it is a mistake to be too concerned about contrarian publications – some bad papers will slip through the peer-review process…’
Ahh, righto Jim.
Now I see.
Should’ve seen it before.
‘Tis only contrarians that write ‘bad papers’.
Never yourself.
Interesting train of thoughts. First it shows how little we know; second it shows how politicized the”debate” is ( e.g. the word climate contrarians). Finally it shows that rather naive scientists are taken for a political ride by very smart people.
I have been reading many of the web sites, including this one discussing the current climate warming issue. In many ways I am disgusted with both of the extreme viewpoints. On this site we see an almost lynch mob, drown the witch mentality. Not looking for the scientific realtiy, but *GLOATING* in finding some minor fault in somebody elses analysis.
In many cases, ad hominem attacks are made, and comments carried on without any justifcation in science or analysis. I want to see both sides settle down and show SCIENTIFICALLY that their side has merit.
To my mind (I am a trained chemist and computer scientist) I see a mentality of a bunch of school yard children running around and trying to prove they are the best.
Here we find a good analysis from the side of those worried about global warming, and the effects it has on the future of our world. I expect the usual crap from the usual commentators here who in no way try to really analyze the data or results.
It saddens me to see the politization of science, but this is not new, just ask Galileo.
EVEN if humans are not responsible for global warming, how are we to minimize the effects of the REAL TRUE WARMING we are currently seeing? Even if CO2 is not the main culprit, could reducing the emiision reduce the overall warming going on?
PLEASE sit back and think a bit instead of behaving like a religious revival.
Richard Goodley (23:32:54) : “To the layperson like me this seems very plausible indeed. Is it really or is it not?
I’d welcome any help gauging this because I have been very sceptical because of the data being unreliable and the cooling of the last decade but he says not so!
Who is telling the truth?”
I have no doubt whatsoever that James Hansen believes he is telling the truth.
The Temperature of Science?
i wonder what the science anomaly is right now, do we expect science to increase or decrease in temperature in the future? what was the past temperature of science?
All good questions i feel 😛
The word I’d use to describe Hansen’s arguments is “sophistry”
Richard deSousa:
Climate monitoring is not the same as weather monitoring: What you need are temperature differences, not absolute temperature.
While the problems with the NOAA surface stations are real, they likely won’t affect GISTEMP nearly as much as they affect surface temperature field reconstructions. That’s the advantage of subtracting the local average from each station (if the instantaneous station value and its mean are both offset by 1°C, that doesn’t affect the temperature difference of course).
Also, if the sites had no systematic errors, then one would only need a 1000-km spacing, as Dr. Hansen points out. One could use just the 30% good sites and still get very good reconstructions.
Don’t you just just love the Quality Management System they have:
“The problem in 2008 escaped this quality check because a change in their program had temporarily, inadvertently, omitted that quality check.”
Sounds like their quality system allows them to make unchecked changes. That is just unbelievable! ISO-9001 anyone?
“The GISS analysis, which extrapolates temperature anomalies as far as 1200 km, has more complete coverage of the polar areas.”
So, more extrapolation means, wider coverage. And here is this old high school drop out who for seventy some years had thought that more extrapolation meant move the error bars with a broomstick.
There is no explanation here as to why CRU could only bring their figures into line with G.I.S.S. with the help of young Harry Readme. If a simpleton like me can understand Harry’s code, then no doubt at all so can the eminent Mr. Hansen.
Wow…nothing like an essay from a manic, narcissistic, yet publicly-funded scientist-turned-activist…fresh from the press!
Would you trust him with your climate science???
I would not trust him as far as I could throw him…no doubt.
This….THIS individual is controlling the GISS???
And he is still employed….being paid by my tax dollar??
I don’t think so.
A true climate-science-despot.
James Hansen….you just keep on continuing to sulk about your self-important gains and utopian goals…why the public is APPLYING THE HEAT!!
You deserve the heat….and rest assured…it is only beginning.
I will ask you plainly: Stick to astronomy. [We need to be worried about asteroids or preparing for another 1859].
Stick to astronomy.
Stop galavanting across the world on the public dollar as a anti-coal activist.
Oh you can galavant all you want…but not on the national dole.
Stick to astronomy….or STAND DOWN. That’s an order.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
What cowardice!
Dr. Hansen, that has got to be the most unrepentant and intellectually dishonest piece of drivel that I have ever read. If it were in my authority to strip you of every degree earned within the scientific profession, inclusive of awards, I would do so without hesitancy. I find your unprofessional conduct and complete inability to grasp where you have gone wrong not only troubling but a poor reflection of your lack of moral courage, ethics and fundamental values not only as a scientist but as a human being. You have now proven to me, without doubt, that you are nothing more than an absolute disgrace to your profession and should be utterly ashamed of yourself.
Hansen:
“The important point is that nothing was found in the East Anglia e-mails altering the reality and magnitude of global warming in the instrumental record. The input data for global temperature analyses are widely available, on our web site and elsewhere. If those input data could be made to yield a significantly different global temperature change, contrarians would certainly have done that – but they have not.”
Isn’t the “trick” rather that whatever data you input, you get the same result?
You’re asking me to waste 20 minutes of my time.
Maybe during the X-mas break in the rare event I find myself bored.
“The input data for global temperature analyses are widely available, on our web site and elsewhere.”
Is Hansen saying raw data is available or is he saying ‘massaged’ data which is useless? It seems to me in order to replicate you need at least the data and the methods. Did he say what the methods were and is the code available from his site since it’s the code that implements the method(s)?
I read a lot of wah wah … all those skeptics are big bad meanies. How about Hansen be a little bit professional for once and stick to the science? Would that be too much of a stretch? We have a friggin right to be perturbed when trillions of dollars of world GDP are at stake… harden the bleep up or change jobs.
Personally I would be interested to see exactly how sensitive the GISS data set is to small tweakings of the data used to interpolate the polar regions. As he says the readings are sparse and they cover a large land mass. To my mind (with somewhat of a stats background) alarms bells immediately start going off.
I assume Darwin is part of the GISS set? If that is par for the course for the kind of info they are basing their graphs on we may as well throw the whole lot out. I can see no possible justification for the regular stair step adjustments that were made at Darwin. If there are many other stations like that then the whole GISS data set is merely the product of GIGO … surely.
How can you trust someone with an agenda and a political taste for drama?
I don’t.
James Hansen encourages criminal activity via public disobedience, destruction of property, trespassing and has been accused of violating the Hatch Act in the past. It is my opinion that he is more activist than scientist and unworthy of being in his position at the GISS. Much of the politicization of the science can be laid at his feet.
nanuuq (23:38:36) is right. A sobering is required. Discuss science, with scientific arguments.
Emissions of nonsens from both sides just contributes to the madhouse effect.
You would think that a scientific endeavor would be to add thermometers, not delete them. I guess GISS isn’t interested in accuracy, just advocacy. Anyway, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to Anthony, mods and friends.
I suggest we start by asking more questions, and finding additional answers to compare, to give us a greater gathering of knowledge, to evaluate the global warming hypothesis skeptically, considering all of the cyclic patterns driving the weather, while figuring out better questions, to ask for the next set of trials.
If we start with the studies of what works in climate forecasting, the Milankovitch cycles, and expand on what has turned out to be true about solar cycles according to Theodor Landscheidt, ( the only one to correctly forecast the long solar minimum we are passing through). The evidence points to the natural variability factors as being the effects of the rotation or the galaxy and the swirl imparted to the local area of the spiral arm we seem to reside in (Milankovitch), and by the inertial dampening of the planets effects on the barycenter of the solar system, moves the sun’s center of mass around as it tries to stay magnetically and gravitationally centered in the swirling magnetic fields, plasma, and dust clouds, and other stars joining us in this dance to the celestial music as it were.
(Landscheidt) Found the driving forces of the Inertial dampening of the system and defined it to the point of predictability, it only seems that that the next steps would be to analyze the effects of the interactions of the Inner planets, which have a rhythmic pattern to their orbital relationships, and their relations to the weather patterns they share. Most good discoveries come from the individuals who seek the truth with out consideration for the limited vision of the thundering herd mentality.
I have quietly undertaken the study of the relationships between the interactions of the Sun’s magnetic fields borne on the solar wind, and it’s interactions with the Earth’s weather patterns to the point I have found the cyclic patterns of the shorter decade long durations, that show up as the natural background variances in the climate RAW data sets. Starting with the history of research into planetary motions and the Lunar declination,(the Earth / Moon system’s response to the rotation of the magnetic poles of the sun. In order to find a natural analog to the patterns in the weather there were several things I had to consider.
The results of the analog cyclic pattern I discovered repeat with in a complex pattern of Inner planet harmonics, and outer planet longer term interferences that come round to the 172 year pattern Landscheidt discovered, so this is the shorter period set of variables, that further define the limits, of the natural variables needed to be considered, along side the CO2 hypothesis, as the longer term/period parents (Milankovitch and Landscheidt cycles) of these driving forces are valid. It would be in error if they were not considered and calculated into the filtering of the swings in the climate data, for forecasting longer terms into the future.
A sample of the cyclic pattern found in the meteorological database is presented as a composite of the past three cycles composited together and plotted onto maps for a 5 year period starting in 2008, and running to January of 2014, on a rough draft website I use to further define the shifts in the pattern from the past three to the current cycle, to continue learning about the details of the interactions.
http://www.aerology.com/national.aspx
The magnetic impulses in the solar wind has driven the Moon / Earth into the declinational dance that creates the tides in phase in the atmosphere, because of the pendulum type movement the Moon hangs at the extremes of declination almost three days with in a couple of degrees then makes a fast sweep across the equator at up to 7 to 9 degrees per day. At these culminations of declination movement the polarity of the solar wind peaks and reverses, causing a surge in the reversal of the ion flux generated as a result. Because of the combination of both peak of Meridian flow surge in the atmosphere, and reversal of ion charge gradient globally occurs at the same time like clock work most severe weather occurs at these times.
Because of the semi boundary conditions caused by mountain ranges, the Rockies, Andes, Urals, Alps, Himalayas, that resulted in topographical forcing into a four fold pattern of types of Jet stream patterns, I had to use not a 27.325 day period but a 109.3 day period to synchronize the lunar declinational patterns into the data to get clearer repeatability than the same data set filtered by Lunar phase alone.
There is a pattern of 6554 days where in the inner planets, Mars, Earth, Venus, and Mercury, make an even number of orbital revolutions, and return to almost the same relative position to the star field.
By adding 4 days to this period I get 6558 days the time it takes the Moon to have 240 declinational cycles of 27.325 days, so that by using 6558 days as a synchronization period I get the lunar Declination angle, lunar phase, perigee / apogee cycle, and the relative positions of the inner planets to align from the past three (6558 day) long cycles well enough that the average of the temperatures, and the totals of the precipitations give a picture of the repeating pattern, from the last three to forecast the next almost 18 year long string of weather related events.
To filter your own data by this method start by compiling all station records (for today’s forecast) from 6992 days ago, 13550 days ago, and 20108 days ago. Then just progress through the subsequent three dates for each cycle for the number of days you want to forecast out from to day, make CVS files of the (composite of three cycles averaged together data) grid and make a contour map for each day along the progression.
This is what I have done at http://www.aerology.com/national.aspx in an effort to find the best natural analog forecast from the past cycles. I think that if you were to look at the trends by evaluating the trends in the cyclic data against the Julian date normals for the 60 year period, they come from. It will give you a set of background anomalies, consistent with the influences felt upon the weather by the inner planets and the whole set of Lunar tidal forcings still synchronized together, what you have left from the “actual weather for the day forecast” will be the CO2 and Solar components.
Given that you have a good handle on the solar input it should be easy to see the rest as CO2 input. I am willing to bet that the filter will give you a much increased signal to noise ratio, that makes the job easy.
Hansen’s comments, now and in the past have shown that he is the antithesis of the disinterested scientist. He’s a committed left wing political activist who resides at the center of the AGW funding/detection/analysis mechanism. It’s not surprising that such “scholars” do not engender confidence with their results.
He and his fellow travelers should be reclused from any AGW input which leads to effects on the global economy. In addition, a regimen of total transparency from data to actual computer programs should be implemented in all government funded climate studies which impact future decisions and a panel of truly unbiased experts should validate any and all such studies and publically publish their results.
Mr Hansen wishes the debate wouldn’t be politicised. Let him find other sources of funds for his research, then : he works for government. Government is politicians.
James Hansen: “I am now inundated with broad FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests for my correspondence, with substantial impact on my time and on others in my office. I believe these to be fishing expeditions, aimed at finding some statement(s), likely to be taken out of context, which they would attempt to use to discredit climate science.”
Expect that “inundation” to rise like your models predict the levels of the sea!
HAHAHAHA (sorry I can not help but get a chuckle at the fact that he is admitting the heat is being applied).
Sick ’em!!
PS….Note how he quotes himself OFTEN in his essay:
“Refer to Hansen et al.”
Not et al……more like ad nauseum.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Dr Hansen
There is a very simple way to disarm the ‘skeptics’, since you are clearly 100% right on everything.
1. Release the raw data used for your calculations and publications.
2. Release the computer code which ‘transforms’ data.
3. When you have received a clean bill of health from the skeptics, go get your Nobel Prize.
It really IS that simple.
If this is so important, so right and so dangerous to the human species, keeping it in your safe at NASA won’t do.
That’s the bottom line and it’s the cold, sober, realistic position of every critical person who retains an open mind about whether the earth is warming and what, if it is warming, is causing it.
It’s not PR. It’s a requirement for rigorous confirmation from the trained skeptics who have stated publicly that what the answer is doesn’t matter to them. They exist and they must take this very serious responsibility seriously.
IF you and your friends at CRU deign to let them.
James Hansen: “I believe these to be fishing expeditions, aimed at finding some statement(s), likely to be taken out of context, which they would attempt to use to discredit climate science.”
NO.
Your religious zealot form of “climate science”…discredits itself.
Just keep speaking. Very telling.
[This is fun, ya’ll.]
Hey James…it is YOU who are being discredited, you CROOK!!!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
I notice Jim prefers Frohlich and Lean’s solar TSI analysis to that of the ACRIM team, who originated the data before it got ‘adjusted’ by Claus Frohlich’s model.
They have complained vociferously that the ‘ajustments’ Frohlich applied to the TSI data used satellite guiding algorithms they developed but for a different time frame. This is still an ongoing controversy as far as I know.
Given the way TSI dropped, I think they may have a point.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod
It looks like Frohlich hasn’t publicly updated the PMOD series since May this year. There are also some sensor issues involved which might explain that.
Ahh a longing for the good ol days when an artificially heated room was sufficient to hoodwink the fools.
In the context of his credibility since that press conference 20 years or so ago there is a saying “you can’t polish a turd”
Cheers
Michael
“I believe that the steps that we now take to assure data integrity are as much as is reasonable from the standpoint of the use of our time and resources.”
That appears to be true – Gavin Schmidt wrote on Realclimate a while ago, that the budget for maintaining the code is approx. a whopping 0.25 man years.
A sobering? The heads of the Church of Climatology are proven to have started with what they wanted for a result and tweaked the data set to fix this as the only outcome and those here are being nonsensical? I certainly hope you have posted likewise at real climate but I understand completely if you have not.
nanuuq (23:38:36)
Philip T. Downman,
Basic principles of process control show that manipulating CO2 cannot effect any change in the earth’s temperature.
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/chemical-engineer-takes-on-global.html
I think Dr. Hansen’s article is, ummm, pretty self-serving. Hasn’t he said a few things about skeptics that are as extreme as anything said about him? Haven’t his followers? And no, death threats are not acceptable, period. Assuming he actually received any.
nanuuq (23:38:36) :
“EVEN if humans are not responsible for global warming, how are we to minimize the effects of the REAL TRUE WARMING we are currently seeing? Even if CO2 is not the main culprit, could reducing the emission reduce the overall warming going on?”
1) Why would we want to minimize the warming since it’s cooling that is dangerous? Please explain and show your work. Historical records seem to show that the warming periods of the last few thousand years have been clearly “a good thing” for humans, critters, and plants. Polar bears and the rest of the world’s critters have survived prior warming and “low/zero ice” just fine.
2) While elimination soot and carcinogens from emissions is clearly a good idea, targeting CO2 isn’t, especially given the data the shows the very significant upswing in the world’s greenery from the current CO2 increase. Seems to me that if you want a more vibrant ecosystem that you want more CO2 since plants are the base of the entire food chain.
Reducing dangerous emissions is far easier (and far less expensive) than trying to reduce CO2.
You want to reduce overpopulation? Give those people cheap power and a means to lift themselves up to the point where they don’t need large families.
Now where was that page that showed global warming as last among the two dozen or so issues that effect humanity… ?
Slightly OT, but still very relevant to the question of the temperature record: does anyone know what was the result of the Peter & dad investigation into UHI in the US record (urban vs rural)? (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/09/picking-out-the-uhi-in-global-temperature-records-so-easy-a-6th-grader-can-do-it/)
Relevant because their very simple analysis suggested flaws in the US temperature record. However they (Peter & dad) had very different results from those of JohnV, who tried to replicate their calculations in that thread.
There were some suggestions on that thread that the temperature record dataset had changed. Certainly they cast doubt on the nature of the corrections applied in the record, and therefore the integrity of the whole temperature record. However that whole thread has gone completely quiet, and I’m not sure why.
Some consequences of Climategate is that people have seen what climate scientists are prepared to do to defend their positions, and that Steve McIntyre & others were not making it up, when they complained about obstruction.
The next stage (I assume) is that people, no longer trusting the scientists, will be far more prepared to countenance the idea that the temperature record is flawed. Which brings me back to the Peter and dad UHI “investigation”. It would be nice to know what conclusions were reached on that.
[snip – over the top]
Who refereed his papers?
nanuuq (23:38:36) :
Nanuuk, why on earth would you find this to be a “good analysis”? He says nothing about a host of problems with the way that the GISS analysis is done. He says nothing about the effect of GISS ascribing temperatures to gridcells which don’t contain a single temperature station. He says nothing concrete about the effect of UHI and the curious way that GISS adjusts for it. He says nothing about how the “gridcell” averaging method distorts the results. He says nothing about the effects of the huge decrease in stations in the last twenty years, coincidentally the time of a large increase in trends. What makes you think this a “good analysis”? Didn’t you ever see “The Wizard of Oz”?
In fact, this is not an analysis at all. It is a political statement in defence of his work, which ignores a host of real issues so that he can pat us on the head and tell us that all is well … which seems to be sufficient for you. You are a chemist and a computer programmer, but you seem to have lost the skepticism that is a crucial part of any scientist’s world view.
Speaking as someone who does really analyze the data and the results, I find his words to be a childish polemic which does not even touch the real issues, much less deal with them. It is a sop to calm the masses, and from your posting, it appears to be working.
I agree with you that threats and name calling and ad hominem attacks are vile and have no place in a scientific discussion. However, as someone who doubts the “consensus” view, I have endured this kind of abuse for years. People who didn’t sign on for Jim’s sleigh ride have lost their jobs and gotten a variety of threats and abuse … but Jim never said a single word about that. Not one.
Now that finally the shoe is on the other foot, he finds it wrong wrong wrong … but where was his oh-so-righteous indignation when the threats and name calling was all going the way he wanted? Where was his public call for calm when Tim Ball got death threats? Where was his public appeal for fairness when George Taylor lost his job for not agreeing with Hansen’s hypothesis? Hansen started this whole thing with a scam, opening the windows and turning off the air conditioning when he gave his 1988 Senate testimony so people would be sweating and hot and more likely to believe his fantasies, and now he wants to call for honesty and decency? Spare me. He has cried wolf far too often.
Sorry, but it’s too little, too late. He, not people on my side of the dispute, is the one that has publicly called for committing crimes to support his drastic world view. But when the crimes involve him, suddenly being a criminal is a terrible thing. He sowed the wind, and now that he is reaping the whirlwind he wants to whine and complain about how wrong and unfair it all is. He’s like the guy who killed his parents and now wants our sympathy because he is an orphan.
He asks “How did we devolve to this state” … grab a mirror, Jim, the answer’s not out here. Here’s a clue for you. When your side claims to have all the answers, when your side of the dispute is conniving to prevent the publication of opposing scientific views, when you and your mates besmirch the reputations of those who disagree with you, when your side prevents some scientific papers from being included in the IPCC reports and cheats to get papers you approve of included in the IPCC reports, when people get fired because they won’t sign on to your worldview, when those who agree with you call your scientific opponents vile names and attack our motives, people take it personally.
That’s how we devolved to this state, Jim, because your side tried to dominate and intimidate and denigrate and crush the other side rather than hold a scientific discussion about the issues.
So nanuuk, I fear I have little sympathy with him. He has been a con man from day one, giving thousands of interviews on my taxpayer’s dollar and then complaining about being “muzzled” … would that he were muzzled, because his con continues to this very day.
Thanks for the summary, and thanks for allowing alternate viewpoints to be published here Anthony. Maybe one of you guys can get a polite detailed post like this on RC : ).
Looking at the first graph, it has less than 1 degree per century warming, and about 1/2 a degree per century in the southern hemisphere. I think everyone here is aware there is warming, and I’ve often heard 1 degree per century something one would expect coming out of the little ice age (I believe we also had approximately that in the previous century). Yet the IPCC says 2 degrees, and the ‘spokespeople’ say even more radical numbers. I think this is where the disagreement mostly starts. There seems to be some problems with the temperature measurements (the strongest warming seems to happen in places with the least reliable data), but if we accept them as they are, we still don’t get the ‘consensus’ numbers. The numbers as they are don’t suggest an end-of-the-world problem to me.
There are some pretty wild and unscientific predictions out there about warming (20 ft sea level rise, no more ice, no more polar bears, we turn into Venus, 70 days to act, end of humanity, etc), While certainly these are not in the science, they are also not rebutted by the scientists. Yet every minor finding by the skeptics is pounced on, often in unsavory ways, as we see in the emails (they seem to spend a lot more time rebutting skeptics than fulfilling FOI requests, where apparently one would solve the other). This indicates to me that the scientists are not free to speak as they think, or worse, not impartial.
Lastly, there have been some very dubious practices with the historical temperature reconstruction. It is quite a feat for basically wipe out 100s of years of evidence for the Medial Warm Period with a single paper based on poorly understood proxies, and that has been shown to be flawed. Add to that direct evidence of wiping out the MWP being the ‘goal’ in the emails, then understandably most people are skeptical. I understand that isn’t your science or your area, but it does cast doubt on the whole science. When there is a political scandal, it hurts honest members of the same party. This is as it should be, because people assume that those members knew what was going on, and didn’t speak up.
Thanks again for posting here, hope the conversation can continue.
nanuuq, there is no proof of significant warming let alone whether it was caused by man or not. There is also no credible evidence that warming would produce the catastrophic outcomes predicted by the warmists. All we know for certain as far as I can see is that climate varies naturally and if anything significant is happening now it is nothing out of the ordinary. the planet and man will survive warming far better than it can handle significant cooling.
If the environmentalist had recommended replacing all U.S. coal powered generators with nuclear generators, most skeptics wouldn’t care what the AGW crowd said. However, the course the environmentalists have taken has already had a negative affect on the U.S. economy, and threatens to drag us back to a pre-industrial economy while decimating our civil liberty.
So, James Hansen shouldn’t expect polite discourse when he personally represents everything that our forefathers fought against for generations.
>That means we cannot put the new data each month on our web site and check it at our leisure, because, however briefly a flaw is displayed, it will be used to disinform the public. Indeed, in this specific case there was another round of “fraud” accusations on talk shows and other media all around the nation
I can’t believe that my eyes are reading here. Has Hanson not learned one bit of respect for science from this whole climate gate ordeal? So in other words in response to the questions for more transparency and openness in science, his answers to have more closed doors, and more offline hidden data on a behind the scenes server.
Hansen thus wants to analyze the data completely behind closed doors in private instead of in front of the public view? This is exactly the WRONG answer, the WRONG attitude, and exactly the worst possible excuse to come up with to say that you don’t want to do your science in front of the public anymore.
The answers not to put things behind closed doors, the answers to say here is the raw data, put a disclaimer on it. Have the raw data server with an disclaimer and state this data not been checked and we not finished analyzing it. When we believe we’ve done our job and our work, the published data and results will be placed where their official data and analysis for public consuming in such and such location as they have now.
I’m at a stunning loss as to why the above simple solution is not being offered, and yet Hansen’s solution is to do more science behind more closed doors with less public scrutiny!
I think the legal system figured this issue out about a thousand years ago. They figured out that it’s a really wonderful and good idea to allow all members of the public to attend any court proceedings in full view of the public. The reason here is because the legal system is so important for individual rights, that legal system says HELLO, here we are! Our door are open to ALL of the public. You are WELCOME to come in and watch what we’re doing in full public view. We have NOTHING to hide.
You even see even at the automobile repair shops they have a coffee shop in area with big huge bay windows in which you can look in and watch the mechanics working on your car. I can assure you that the vast majority of customers don’t know the first thing about their automobiles, yet they demand those big transparent windows.
I can assure you the average person off the street does not have the twelve years of extensive training in law and likely has a great difficulty in understanding whole lot of legal precedents, and likely even more difficulty in understanding some of the legal terms used in that court proceedings
However, all Citizens of western fair and free countries allow all members of their public to come in and watch court proceedings to occur in action in full public view.
This whole right of the public to watch the court proceedings unfold in public view is something that all honest fair and societies of the west have granted to their citizens, and this is done in the name of transparency.
It simply an issue of being transparent. Can you imagine if all court proceedings were to occur behind the scenes with closed doors? If all court proceedings occured behind closed doors in secret, the public would have VERY LITTLE trust of the legal system. In fact a good deal of the public has lost a lot of faith in the legal system, and that’s even with the public being permitted to attend courts proceedings in full view.
The concept here for science is we the public demand transparency. If you want to study some frogs in the jungle, then be my guest. On the other hand since climate data and science is going to be used for setting public policy, therefore we need the same public transparency that we have for the legal system.
And in fact with damaged trust that has occurred with climate gate, the science community needs to offer this transparency to the public, or they will contine to suffer public disdain and lack of trust.
I cannot believe that Hansen’s response is now have put things on a hidden server out of the public’s view, and do more science behind closed doors until they think they have it corrected and THEN release that data and science to the public. This is exactly more of the same scientific process that we been complaining about and the reason why we standing here are as witnesses to a complete breakdown in the peer review system.
The answer here’s not to have more science behind hidden doors on a hidden server that the public can NOT view, in fact it is the exact opposite is what the public is demanding here.
In other words, we want you to post the data with a disclaimer, and let everybody from some blogger up north who corrected your mistakes in the past (by the way, what happned to the huge mass of scientists and computers and thousands of scientists who supposedly peer review everything you have now? – how did that blogger up in Canada wind up correcting you guys? Maybe you have to hire more competent people now?).
Hanson’s call for more science to be done behind closed doors before its offered up to the public under the guise of not having to deal complaints and scandals is exactly the wrong answer here.
In other words Hansen is standing here not wanting to do his work in front of the public. Hansen seems to forget he is being paid by taxpayer dollars. In other words NASA and Hansen and his eimplyees do not pay taxes. Hansen consumes tax dollars, they don’t pay (net) tax dollars into the system at all. They do not pay income tax, they are net benefactors of the tax system.
If you don’t want to do your science in public and have public scrutiny, then I suggest you simply step down, and find someone else who’s not proposing to do their scientific work on a secret server behind closed doors.
This is exactly what we’re asking you to stop doing…
It is morally reprehensible and disgusting to stand here in front of the public community and state because of some scandal your answer is to do more science behind closed doors.
This is truly the wrong response, and shows that Hanson has not learned one thing from this whole scandal.
Why am I not surprised that Hansen is now asking for more science behind closed doors, when the public is demanding the exact opposite?
Green Turtle
The temperature may seem hot to you Mr. Hansen, seeing as the lemmings you have created are now upset with your apparent distancing of your previous positions, but your predictions have rather cooled:
And much more:
15-Year-Old Byrnes Outsmarts NASA’s Global Warming Alarmist James Hansen”:
Searching on Newsbusters and other sites not afraid to take on the AGW crowd, including this one, reveals a plethora of self condemning utterances by “Dr.” Hansen. His credibility has been utterly destroyed.
First: “The Temperature of Science”: It all depends on where you stick the thermometer…
Second: 7 references, 6 of them his. Guess that he couldn’t find any other papers that agreed with him.
Third: “The GISS analysis, which extrapolates temperature anomalies as far as 1200 km, has more complete coverage of the polar areas.”
So you can tell the temperature of an unknown region by looking at a thermometer 1200km away. That’s 745 miles.
Start with a center at Death Valley and see if it corresponds to the temps in Oregon. If you use current temps, there’s a 23 degree difference (53 in Death Valley CA, and 30 degrees in Baker City OR).
Fourth: They’re still hanging on to the “1951-1980” time period, even though the WMO suggests use of a 30 year period ending with the latest decade (in this case, 1971-2000). Of course, if they use that time period, the anomalies will appear lower.
And they can’t have that…
Hansen is running scared now. A worried Hansen is a rational Hansen to the extent that he can put together a rather convincing (to the novice observer) account of his activities. A puffed up Hansen is a raving lunatic who makes confident, near-term predictions such as monster El Ninos that do not come to pass, testifies on behalf of eco-terrorists and produces hysterical “tipping point” scenerios that have no basis in fact.
Will the real Jim Hansen please stand up?
CH
Hanson is perhaps the single most responsible individual for politicizing climate science to the point where so many have lost confidence in it. He cannot have it both ways and claim that he is the innocent scientist who is now being attacked by political “contrarians”. He “woe be me” attitude toward Freedom of Information requests sounds a bit trite.
And I agree with the previous post that the most significant element of this piece is his acknowledgment that perhaps the sun does play a role in climate change after all. That in fact may be the real purpose of this message. He may be trying to provide cover for himself as models fail to respond as planned and researchers broaden the scope of their work beyond the CO2 shackles and on to the many other realms of factors that affect climate change.
Hansen may be attempting to rise above the tempest that he created. He is a pretty clever man and will succeed at this effort unless he is challenged. It had never dawned on me before, but I suppose it is plausible that he threw the Brits under the bus to save his own scalp. I cannot imagine anyone being that self serving, but who knows? Time will tell.
Dr. Hansen doesn’t seem to learn from his mistakes. Rather he “adjusts” reality to massage his ego, and prove he wasn’t mistaken. I believe this hints at self-delusion.
I originally became skeptical because the MWP vanished. It was my hobby to read about Greenland Vikings, and to have the MWP become “local” to Greenland involved an extraordinary twisting and looping of the Gulf Stream, and jet streams, all of which seemed impossible to recreate.
However it was when McIntyre forced NASA to readjust adjusted data, and then when NASA re-readjusted the readjusted data, that my mind began to focus on the behind-the-scenes tweaking of raw data.
When Hansen states, “There are lessons from our experience about care that must be taken with data before it is made publicly available,” I imagine we glimpse his dislike of the public. Rather than conceding that scrutiny of his tweaking and “adjusting” might be a good thing, (and true peer review,) he clings to the haughty attitude that the public is ignorant, and has no business asking to see what he is up to.
In this manner he is disdainful of the idea the public has a Right To Know. He feels we are too stupid to see the truth for ourselves, and must be spoon-fed truth in an adjusted form. This not only expresses contempt for ordinary citizens; it expresses contempt for democracy itself.
All people want is the truth, Dr. Hansen. You don’t need to adjust truth for us, especially the truths we believe are self-evident.
nanuuq (23:38:36) :
Nice try at being the “voice of reason”, but the time for that has long passed.
These same people have undermined the scientific method, fabricated results, locked legitimate researchers out, and taken down at least one journal, marginalizing others. The “gloating” you see is the enjoyment of watching someone get back, in a SMALL measure, what they’ve done to hundreds of others.
Been there, done that, done with “playing nice”. It’s STILL the responsibility of the cAGW crowd to demonstrate that a problem EVEN EXISTS. They have failed.
You’re telling me that when the schoolyard bully, after years of beating the lunch money out of smaller kids, finally gets hauled away for some talking to by a teacher, you’re going to feel bad for said bully? I doubt it. Unless you’re the bully.
Unfortunately, I fear you have missed most of the point. What warming? What effects, exactly, do you feel we need to minimize? Where did anyone actually show, other than al-Gore’s fictional movie, that there are any negative effects?
We’ve seen here that an increase in CO2 is beneficial to plants, helping us feed the world. We’ve seen increases in evaporation from slight warming, providing precipitation in areas that haven’t seen it for a while. A warmer planet is LESS likely to have catastrophic hurricanes and cyclones. So where, exactly, do “we” need to spend any billions or trillions?
Again, the real bonus from Climategate is the return of DISCUSSION… the return of a DEBATE, the shattering (hopefully) of the ridiculous “science is settled” meme.
Dancing in the streets will commence when some of these system-manipulators are convicted…
Suzanne (23:56:20) : You should write your ‘me too’ again with chapter and verse else it’s just name calling to be forgotten by the time one reads the next comment. Pointless or is WUWT merely a stress relief aid for some?
A lot of people already obviously hate Jim Hansen. I don’t. I’m sure he has made huge contributions to climate science.
Personally I am skeptical of the disaster scenarios painted by the IPCC, due to their confidence in the computer models and I think climate science has become more politics than science. But that doesn’t mean everything one key figure within that movement says is tarnished.
Being a skeptic means asking questions.
I have a question – and have had for a while – hoping that someone here has a good understanding of the detail.
We’ve seen recently from the posts from Willis about North Australian temperatures that the adjustments to the raw data have a significant effect in the last 100 years temperature trend – at least in North Australia.
GISS now publish their data and their source code – hats off to them. Does this show how the *raw* data is processed and turned into the gridded temperatures or does it only show how “already adjusted” temperatures from each station are turned into the final gridded temperatures?
Thanks in advance for anyone who can explain this.
Steve
http://scienceofdoom.com – “Putting climate science in perspective”
Reply: Take a look here. And look through the other post on his site. More to come I’m sure. ~ ctm
nanuuq (23:38:36) :
“EVEN if humans are not responsible for global warming, how are we to minimize the effects of the REAL TRUE WARMING we are currently seeing? Even if CO2 is not the main culprit, could reducing the emiision reduce the overall warming going on?
PLEASE sit back and think a bit instead of behaving like a religious revival.”
One question. If the warming is entirely natural would you be concerned? And if we get natural cooling, would you be less concerned?
I believe, no, I know, that a warmer world is better for biodiversity, biomass and humans and this positive effect will be further enhanced by more CO2 since, geologically speaking, our atmosphere is CO2-impoverished. Thanks to human intervention this beautiful life giving trace gas is (unintentionally) put back into the atmosphere.
And aside from that, my take on Hansen’s little essay?
I laughed out loud.
Poor Jimmy, needing a police escort. I could name NAMES of people that Hansen et al’s actions have caused to require police escorts. How about the people that have lost careers, prestige, employment, grants, tenure? That’s from YOU and your buddies gaming the “science”, Jimmy boy.
Then again, I also got quite a laugh at Jimmy lad’s earlier whining about President Bush “muzzling” him, which was easily discredited just by counting the number of public appearances the Bush Administration did NOT stop him from making.
James appears delusional, but it’s probably just an appearance. I’ve never believed these people are stupid, but they believe everyone else is. This essay appears to be a demonstration of “if you can’t impress them with knowledge, baffle them with BS”. (bad science)
CO2 emissions from fossil fuels were relatively insignificant prior to WWII.
http://photos.mongabay.com/09/0323co2emissions_global.jpg
Dr. Hansen attributes the GISS series temperature dip c.1940-c.1980 to aerosols but he offers no explanation for the temperature rise c.1880-c.1940 which matches, in grade and magnitude, the rise 1980- 2001.
The GISS temperature series 1880-2009 is useful to the AGW hypothesis, only because the discredited ‘hockey stick’ graph has been indelibly imprinted on the public mind.
Dear Dr Hansen
Thank you for submitting your paper for consideration.
We recognise your original contribution to the measurement of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere and we thank you for it. We also recognise your personal distress at this time.
Our observations and recommendations are below, for your future reference:
1. It is unhelpful to use the word “denier” for those people who do not share your absolute conviction that increases in global temperature are solely due to carbon dioxide
2. Regarding those who may disagree with you, or who may have doubts of various kinds, it cannot be assumed that all of them are politically motivated and technically ignorant
3. It cannot be assumed that all possible bias in the published temperature record has been successfully eliminated
4. It cannot be assumed that all declines in temperature are solely due to aerosols
5. It would be helpful provide similar reconstructions of the carbon dioxide record over the same time periods
6. Differences in the published temperature record between GISS and CRU and others may indeed provide valuable insights in the future. At the present time, however, the most obvious insight is the unfortunate lack of coordination and consensus on the best data sets to use and the best methodology
7. Regarding errors found to date in the constructed temperature record, it is recognized that handling errors do occur from time to time in large scale data processing. We recommend that your team begin to consider the views of others on potential errors.
8. The paper does not address any aspect of the “settled science” in regard to the theory of AGW. Please provide observational evidence in the future.
We wish you a merry Christmas and a happier New Year.
Yours sincerely
I have worked in government for and with individuals like Hansen who master the art of power and control. One element of there approach is a near fanatical insistence on controlling the message. I would guess that this paper has been very carefully word-smithed by Hansen and his staff. The paper itself, the title, every example chosen to write about, every sentence and the wording within has been carefully crafted with an intended purpose of controlling the message beyond just information sharing.
One of the hazards of this approach is that it is most affective when people generally want to believe the message and have confidence in the author. However once this confidence is lost, these writings can backfire because oftentimes they serve as a treasure trove of information. They can serve as a guide map into the areas that the Author is concerned about and is trying to cover over through careful articulation.
So reread his piece very carefully and it may yield valuable clues.
What goes around comes around, sorry Jimmy my heart is like stone when it comes to your fate.
many typos – need coffee before I blog. My apologies.
Nanook says…
“In many ways I am disgusted with both of the extreme viewpoints…”
…followed by unvarnished bashing of this site and its denizens. Typical troll tactic, i.e. to start by claiming neutrality but never to evidence it. Nanook, why don’t you establish your credentials here by giving us an example of what you think is an “extreme viewpoint” on the alarmist side that you disagree with?
Jim Steele (23:30:34) :
I like the Hansen trick where 5 or 8 year averages hide the recent decline. Also a nice trick is to show global temperatures over a 120 year period and then compare it to sun spot cycles over just the past 30 years. The 2 different graphs not hide the recent declines in both temps and solar activity. The carefully chosen time scales also hide a previous graph produced by NOAA showing solar and SST are highly correlated.
http://www.oar.noaa.gov/spotlite/archive/images/sunclimate_3b.gif
Thank Jim; very revealing.
JH:
“There is a slight downward tick at the end of the record, but even that may disappear if 2010 is a warm year.”
Without actually knowing the final result for December, but seeing reports of blizzards everywhere, 2010 shouldn’t be a warm year and the “slight downward tick” should become less slight. And maybe James Hansen too could finally admit that the world is cooling?
–Ahrvid
This is like the boy who kiled both his parents and then asked for mercy because he is an orphan.
Excuse me but wasn’t this man the one who was calling for imprisonment or the death penalty for ‘deniers’? Anyone got the reference for this?
First of all, I truly appreciate and respect Dr. Hansen’s dedication and commitment to science as I do with scientists who disagree (unlike Al Gore who calls them deniers and flat-earthers).
But I have a question: I’m relatively new to this – and I’m not a scientist – but does any of what he wrote explain why ocean temperatures haven’t increased, why sea ice has been relatively steady for the past 100 years, why there hasn’t been an increase in hurricanes that we were warned about (by Hansen himself, if I’m not mistaken), and why neighboring planets have shown warming?
Or am I deluded?
Notice in the above report/graphs on ‘global warming’ temperatures. http://bit.ly/4OrrwW It is talking about 0.5 tenths of a degree C increase from the mid-70’s to the present but does NOT link that to CO2 as opposed to solar or galactic gravitational shifts as the controlling variables for the slight temperature increase.
I’ll say it right now, it is my belief that it is gravitational influences that the Sun is going through as it orbits the center of the Milky Way Galaxy and approaches the stronger gravity on the Milky Way’s elliptical plane that is affecting the Sun and primarily causing the climate changes being seen on Earth and on other planets in our solar system. These influences will continue to increase beyond Man’s control to greatest intensity in 2012 and weaken back to the norm by 2026. CO2, taxing carbon, and the UN will make ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE in this.
savethesharks (23:55:19) :
“Wow…nothing like an essay from a manic, narcissistic, yet publicly-funded scientist-turned-activist…fresh from the press!”
You missed out paranoid!
So jim makes the appeal to authority argument – the authority being himself?
And either the paper is cut off to soon or he forgot to add “and I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids!”
Conspiracy theory time. There was something strange about how the climate gate e-mails were first sent to Real Climate about a month before they were released? If this is true, it needs to be vigorously pursued. Did RC get the same files as that were ultimately released? Were certain documents, e-mails purged prior to the release? Why and how did RC get an advance copy and what did they do with it subsequently ? Who did they share it with? There is fire in this smoke I bet.
nanuuq (23:38:36) :
Let’s put it this way. We’re sick and tired of being belittled, talked down to, accused of being in the pay of oil companies, of being scientifically illiterate, locked out of commenting on warmist sites, and generally pissed on.
We’re tired of respected scientists being confined to shadowy corners of the internet because a few arrogant scientists who exert control over the peer review process as well as the IPCC will brook no dissent and accept no data or analysis which contradicts their own views.
And what do you know, look what has dropped into our laps. Proof that this CRU crew and cohorts, among other things, have perverted the scientific method and taken control of the peer review process thus showing the world what we’ve known for a very long time–the debate is NOT over, it has merely been squelched.
We’ve been proven right and you have the nerve to say we are gloating?
I’m sorry you’re saddened to see the politization of science. We all are. I suggest you ask al Gore about that! The moment he claimed ‘the debate is over’ the activists took over and the science no longer mattered.
I understand why you’d publish rubbish like this here; it’s important that we understand all sides (something of which the other side has never understood.)
But why no context, preamble, or warning. If I smoke cigarettes, I get a warning, and this tripe is possibly worse for the earth than cancer.
Hansen wrote, “The GISS analysis, which extrapolates temperature anomalies as far as 1200 km, has more complete coverage of the polar areas. The extrapolation introduces uncertainty, but there is independent information, including satellite infrared measurements and reduced Arctic sea ice cover, which supports the existence of substantial positive temperature anomalies in those regions.”
If one compares UAH MSU TLT anomalies over continental land mass with the GISTEMP land surface temperature anomalies, the GISS 1200km smoothing can introduce a significant upward bias in areas where there are few temperature measurements, such as Africa, Asia, and South America. This was discussed and illustrated in a June 26 2009 post “Part 2 of Comparison of GISTEMP and UAH MSU TLT Anomalies”:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/06/part-2-of-comparison-of-gistemp-and-uah.html
Hansen wrote, “However, the 5-year and 11-year running mean global temperatures (Figure 3b) have continued to increase at nearly the same rate as in the past three decades. There is a slight downward tick at the end of the record, but even that may disappear if 2010 is a warm year.”
But Hansen, like many others, fails to acknowledge that strong El Nino events can have multiyear aftereffects that are responsible for much of the additional rise in global temperatures following the 1997/98 El Nino. This was discussed in numerous of my guest posts here at WUWT over the past year. My most recent post on the subject “Climate Studies Misrepresent The Effects of El Nino and La Nina Events”…
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/12/climate-studies-misrepresent-effects-of.html
…includes links to many of the WUWT posts. It also includes a two-part video posted on YouTube. A Link to the first part of the video:
Jim it’s dead (AGW), go back to solar science.
Mr Hansen, the clock has struck thirteen, and neither its past nor its future pronouncements can be trusted. The best you can do is get some much-needed rest, dry your tears and try to get used to the fact that it’s over.
Hansen says:
****
Unfortunately, I made an error by failing to recognize that the station records we obtained electronically from NOAA each month, for these same stations, did not contain the adjustments. Thus there was a discontinuity in 2000 in the records of those stations, as the prior years contained the adjustment while later years did not. The error was readily corrected, once it was recognized.
****
I wonder what made him track down this error? ;-(
Conspiracy theory time (part 2)
Lets just say you get a hold of a batch of documents that incriminate you and many of your colleagues.
You are aware that these documents are soon to become public information under the Freedom of Information Act.
In order to deflect attention away from yourself, you remove any documents that you wrote or that references you and you find a way to early release the rest of the incriminating documents to the public. Thus you are not a part of the initial firestorm and you have time to work on survival strategies.
I have found over the years that 95% of conspiracy theories are bogus. Never the less, this one should be checked out.
I thought this was going to be a science-based discussion from the James Hansen. Then I read his tripe about “intimidation”. What the hell does he think sceptical scientists have had to put up with for years? Doesn’t like a taste of that particular medicine? Tough – he and his acolytes have been caught out lying and defrauding the public and the public got angry. Best thing to do is for those with dirty hands to slide out of the public eye and let clean hands take over.
Mr Hansen claims his data shows AGW. Big deal. We know global temps will show warming and we know it will show AGW. Its called “urban heat island effect” and it is indeed man-made, so all those claims are true. It has little to do with CO2 in the atmosphere. Hansen’s data does not demonstrate any causality – only increased human activity results in increased measured temperature, increased UHI and increased CO2. We just can’t tell what causes which and even if we could we have absolutely no way of telling from this data if it really matters. So far the temperatures since WWII have been rising in the record – but where is the ACTUAL damage done to planet earth over those years? Looks much the same to me.
nanuuq (23:38:36) :
Here we find a good analysis from the side of those worried about global warming, and the effects it has on the future of our world. I expect the usual crap from the usual commentators here who in no way try to really analyze the data or results.
It is not a good analysis. It is an analysis with faults. The crucial faults are painfully gathered in the data of the http://www.surfacestations.org/of the host of this blog.
Only a small percentage of US temperature records are really within the norms quoted by the analysis of Hansen ( at some obscure reference), the US has the best records, and if they are so faulty one cannot take world records in grids of thousands of kilometers on trust, to get global values as the analysis does. He just ignores the errors.
EVEN if humans are not responsible for global warming, how are we to minimize the effects of the REAL TRUE WARMING we are currently seeing? Even if CO2 is not the main culprit, could reducing the emiision reduce the overall warming going on?
Please tell me how much has the west suffered from this tiny increase of temperatures over the last hundred years and the increase of CO2? By larger productivity? More livable conditions?
Look what is happening in the US and particularly Europe with this sudden cold influx to see how much more one suffers from a bit of cold than a bit of heat.
Why should we minimize a bit of warming? If it keeps on at this 2 degrees per century and if some low lying regions have problems there is a lot of time to solve them without destroying the western economic fabric.
I would like you to study the following http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/noaa_gisp2_icecore_anim_hi-def3.gif
fully documented series of global temperatures and come back and tell me if in the grand scheme of things we should be wary of heat, ( the tiny red line in the last figure) or of cold.
I return your comment to you:
PLEASE sit back and think a bit instead of behaving like a religious revival.
Alleagra 01:20:28
Me too!!
Nice to see Suzanne voice an honest opinion. I am amazed by Hansen’s admission, only two errors were made by this wonderful team of dilligent and much maligned saints. The nasty people who discovered these errors splashed them all over the main stream media and bathed in the blood of the faithfull. I trust he is regurgitating a media managed spin and does not actually believe this missive.
Me too!
for Willis and the scientists sacrificed for Hansen’s beliefs
Our Gav says at UnReal Climate:-
Response: People are free to clutter up all manner of bulletin boards and forums and threads elsewhere with repetitive, oft-debunked random talking points. Just not here. If you want to have a dialog about science then we’re good, but if you want to insult scientists, insinuate wrong-doing or post random links to the same, then that isn’t going to work. Feel free to try again. – gavin”
Modest you are Gav to a fault. Now Gav you mustn’t get upset no one is trying to rubbish scientists only self named climate scientists who:-
1 Conspire to prevent publication of other scientists work.
2 Conspire to pervert the democratic process.
3 Distort and delete data to arrive at an answer they want to suit their political ends.
4 Destroy public property
Give my love to your mates, naughty little boys see.
I think he has been copying Professor Hansens syntax.
The disturbing thing about Hansen is that when NASA tried to shut him up, the forces behind him were stronger than both NASA and the US government. I assume it was Soros and Gore. Soros is arguably the most successful criminal in human history and Gore the luckiest.
The problem with scientists getting involved in politics is that they are more often than not (seriously) stupid, childish and ill mannered. Realclimate is like a a reality TV version of ‘The Lord of the Flies’ novel by William Golding.
Hansen has made a lot of apocalyptic statements, all of which he knows to be lies. He appeared in a UK court case comparing coal trains to Auschwitz. Even although that displays an incredibly immature mind, it is difficult to have any sympathy with his complaints of intimidation and harassment. His use of the ‘swift boating’ phrase puts him right in the firing line, like a kid shouting at a bear.
He is Gavin Schmidt’s boss at NASA GISS and is therefore l;ikely to have been the real driving force behind Realclimate and climategate. His name being protected for political reasons.
“There is a slight downward tick at the end of the record, but even that may disappear if 2010 is a warm year.”
“there is a high likelihood, I would say greater than 50 percent, that 2010 will be the warmest year in the period of instrumental data.”
Promises, promises.
Time to take the thermometer out of your …..
nanuuuq: You wrote, “EVEN if humans are not responsible for global warming, how are we to minimize the effects of the REAL TRUE WARMING we are currently seeing?”
Sorry to answer a question with a question, but why would you want to minimize the effects of “the REAL TRUE WARMING we are currently seeing?”
@nanuuq
As you’ve characterised the mentality of others, please could you put your cards on the table and describe your own views?
You’ve mentioned worry about global warming. Do you also worry about:
– poverty in the third world?
– resource depletion?
– nuclear proliferation?
– greed?
– consumerism?
– nationalism?
– tribal genocide?
– resurgence of tribalism in the first world?
– the clash of civilisations?
– other science gone bad, like genetic modification?
– overpopulation?
– underpopulation?
– AIDS? and would you advocate mandatory testing of everyone to establish whom has AIDS, to protect the general population from its silent spread?
Do you think that consumerism is leading to disaster and we need a moral revival along the lines of Zen Buddhist selflessness, letting go of attachment to material desires, and dissolution of the normal identity with self, family, and nation?
Would you advocate that nation states be abolished (“imagine there’s no countries”) and that every human on Earth have equal access to the same education, materials, and open information?
You’ll forgive me asking all this, but whilst we’re on the topic of “mentality”, I agree with you that there is a big problem with people’s mentality and that is what is driving a great deal of the controversy. But, and this is the big but, we all have a mentality, we all have a mental point of view, a perspective, a belief in values and principles, and it is the clash of those values and principles that is what is underneath the seeming clash between “sceptics” and “environmentalists”.
You might find many of the items I listed objectionable, or perhaps you like some of them. I dunno. I have my opinions, you have yours. But please say something about your mentality, your point of view, your politics and principles and in short, what you think is “healthy”. See, different people have a lot of ideas about what is “healthy”, many people disagree profoundly on their definitions of “healthy” (“aggressive” vs. “compassionate”, for example) and so I proposed that list above, to start to explore specifics.
Personally I’m quite worried about resurgence of tribalism in the first world, as that would really destroy the environment. I’m also all for Zen Buddhism spreading as people need to learn some detachment from their egocentric and nationalistic viewpoints, and their belief that “rationality” is the best way even when practiced without self-questioning (I’m sure Hitler thought he was right). And I’m all for eating meat as the best diet, until someone can find a better alternative that doesn’t involve covering the globe with unhealthy grain crops. I could go on, but I think perhaps you could say something about your view of the world. I’m trying to be playful here. 🙂
Read his press releases.
Poor Jim. He has called for people to be jailed. He has whipped up hysteria.
GISS is his responsibility. He has had the clout for decades, to make sure his measuring stations were measuring ambient ie land based temperatures.
He is at best guilty of incompetence.
We need the code, and we need answers why the USA (Ignoring Alaksa and Hawaii) is a global hotspot.
Those are his stations, are they not.
Not urban heating.
Somewhere the world’s smallest violin is playing a sorrowful tune.
Hansen can go suck eggs. NOBODY who pushes or pushed the hockey stick will ever have any credibility or sympathy from me. That thing was so obviously corrupt that only a knave or fool would promote it. Mr Hansen has convinced me that he has enough education to not have been fooled by it. That leaves him a knave.
I don’t care what anyone says about him, false or true. Prosper by the lie, see your career die by the lie.
Faster, please.
Hansen says the perceived cooling is due to the exceptional 1998 El Niño.
But what would have been the global temperature if this El Niño had not occurred ?
From 1988 to 1998, the global temperature was pretty stable !
Thought this was interesting:-
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll after “climategate.” Scientists “significantly” losing credibility with the public:
“Scientists themselves also come in for more negative assessments in the poll, with four in 10 Americans now saying that they place little or no trust in what scientists have to say about the environment. That’s up significantly in recent years. About 58 percent of Republicans now put little or no faith in scientists on the subject, double the number saying so in April 2007. Over this time frame, distrust among independents bumped up from 24 to 40 percent, while Democrats changed only marginally.
So its not just Republicans that don’t believe AGW anymore. Floating voters have thrown in the towel too. Only Democrats seem totally unmoved by the daily controversy. You get the impression that even the beginning of the next ice-age wouldn’t shift a Democrats opinion on the matter. At least both the Republicans and the floating voaters have shown themselves to be open-minded to a degree. The CRU emails have blown the consensus nonsense out the water and all but the Democrats have responded to the new reality.
Jim Hansen :How did we devolve to this state? ( of angry personal threats )
Answer : Because in 1988-89 you were expounding AGW alarminist statements such as
“The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water in 2008. ”
$ Billions have been diverted to your false alarm, money that should have been spent, amongst many other essentials, on health care. It is a terrible dis-service to the people you are paid to serve.
It’s a case of the old childrens moral story – ‘the boy shepard who cried wolf’.
Now your pretending you don’t know why the people are angry?
You are a ruthless evil man.
Nanuuq has an interesting approach. Seems to run like this:
For decency’s sake, let’s cut the schoolyard bullying, settle down, open our hearts and minds and look long and hard at the science. Loooong and haaaard…
Okay, your five seconds are up!
Dear Dr. Hansen:
Catastrophists have always been popular. Now they produce fake documentaries (which, although exagerating by far the “consensus” IPCC figures, are not discredited by scientifics like you) and receive the Nobel prize.
How can you think we should take you seriously? How can we take seriously Dr. Pachauri when he pretends to expel skeptics out of the planet?
Please, stop stealing money from American taxpayers and leave the rest of mankind alone.
There once was a shepherd boy (who worked for NASA GISS) who was bored as he sat on the hillside watching the village sheep. To amuse himself he took a great breath and sang out, “Wolf! Wolf! The Wolf is chasing the sheep! A new ice age is coming.”
The villagers came running up the hill to help the boy drive the wolf away. But when they arrived at the top of the hill, they found no wolf. The boy laughed at the sight of their angry faces.
“Don’t cry ‘wolf’, shepherd boy,” said the villagers, “when there’s no wolf!” They went grumbling back down the hill.
Later, the boy sang out again, “Wolf! Wolf! The wolf is chasing the sheep! The planet is heating catastrophically and we will all die.” To his naughty delight, he watched the villagers run up the hill to help him drive the wolf away.
When the villagers saw no wolf they sternly said, “Save your frightened song for when there is really something wrong! Don’t cry ‘wolf’ when there is NO wolf!”
But the boy just grinned and watched them go grumbling down the hill once more.
Later, he saw a REAL wolf prowling about his flock and giant asteroid which was hurtling towards the Earth. Alarmed, he leaped to his feet and sang out as loudly as he could, “Wolf! Wolf!”
But the villagers thought he was trying to fool them again, and so they didn’t come.
At sunset, everyone wondered why the shepherd boy hadn’t returned to the village with their sheep. They went up the hill to find the boy. They found him weeping.
“There really was a wolf here! The flock has scattered! I cried out, “Wolf!” Why didn’t you come? The asteroid is but moments away.”
An old man tried to comfort the boy as they walked back to the village.
“We’ll help you look for the lost sheep and the asteroid in the morning,” he said, putting his arm around the youth, “Nobody believe….”
Anthony,
I’m sorry. I try to never post more than a couple lines at a time. Please trim, snip, or edit as you fell necessary.
I take it that Mr. Hansen’s “refereed papers” were actually “peer reviewed”. Saying “peer reviewed” gets you a horse laugh right now… so I guess we’ll go with his terminology.
For years Jim Hansen has screamed at the top of his NASA-sponsored lungs that floods, famine, drought, deglaciation, etc., were just around the corner. These very vocal pronouncements were based on his “adjusted” and projected warmer temperature reports. Now he’s astounded that people previously excited by his exhortations, might momentarily believe he had something to do with the leaked East Anglia CRU e-mails:
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/index.php
and react in a negative fashion. Does he really feel his lack of inclusion in the CRU e-mail release sheds suspicion of him as the source? If such fanatical true believers yell at him behind police lines or express their chagrin by e-mail, such is life in the real political world. If one can’t handle the results of your own political activities, why whine about it and slip in backhanded blame non-believers or rumormongers for the panic ?
Unless the material was “snipped”, I don’t recall anyone making a serious connection between Jim Hansen and the release of the CRU data and e-mails on this blog. Perhaps he’s just embarrassed by not being in “the Team’s” loop.
There are several non-mutually exclusive theories involving solar output, sun-earth magnetic fields, orbital mechanics, cosmic ray level variations causing changes in cloud formation, and greenhouse gas emissions explaining in whole or in part, fluctuations in regional and global air, land, and sea surface temperatures.
Mr. Hansen appears to equate some of those individuals advocating greater scientific weight be given solar output theories with rude, foul or threatening language. This observation appears to be a strange aside within a referenced report like this one. His observation does not strengthen or weaken the validity of the evolving alternative propositions.
When discussing using reporting stations 1,000 miles apart I’m not sure why Mr. Hansen’s example involves New Your City and Philadelphia. The distance between these two cities is about 94 miles. Des Moines, Iowa, is about 1,000 miles west of New York City. Sadly Mr. Hansen’s logic was used not only at the poles to calculate anomalies but for Australia, with those results used to extrapolate many of the temps for the southern hemisphere. Mr. Hansen’s method of research covered a similar situation for large swatches of land in the Soviet Union (until 1991) when it all fell apart. Those anomalous calculations continued despite mass confusion in the steppes and gulags.
He opines that “Care must be taken” to control the data, raw, half-baked or well done, and not let it out into the public domain before… what? These folks are supposed to the THE experts, but they can’t be relied upon to get their reports right the first time? If you catch their mistake, they may just ignore you. If you have an audience you are excoriated for your audacity in questioning their methods and reports.
Mr Hansen complaints about FOI and passing along copies of the data he might be currently working. Providing such information does not deprive the researchers of any measure or bit of the information.
By U.S. law, if you work for the government, or are in a program directly funded by the government, ANYONE can make a Freedom of Information (FOI) request for your data, copies of your e-mails, programs, meta-data, and land-based correspondence. It is our RIGHT to ask for general or specific information, and by accepting your government job, you automatically agreed to play by the rules of engagement.
I agree with Mr. Hansen that nothing in the “E-MAILS” (emphasis added) can be seen as “altering the reality and magnitude of global warming in the INSTRUMENTAL (emphasis added) record.” Bad sensors, decaying orbits, rotten station citings, inexplicable adjustments to temperature reports, improper underestimation of the persistent effect of urban heat islands on instrument readings, etc. aren’t directly reported in the e-mails. That the results of such accidental or intentional defects are glossed over by both CRU and GISS personnel is there for everyone to see.
But wait.. what about all that DATA and the PROGRAMS that escaped with the leaked e-mails? Uh, well, uh, umm.
How much whale drek can Mr. Hansen float together to say, “It’s not my fault.” ?
I am interested in the rhetorical techniques used by the AGW. With the appearance of Hansen’s apologia, we then see posts following-up with pre-prepared statements designed to appeal to the ‘middle-ground’ … aka those who wish for the certainities of the status-quo-ante.
And one of the techniques we must expect to see more of , after the spectacular collapse of Copenhagen, is the Hegelian equalisation of AGW zealotry with the those who are engaged on the serious scientific work of critical examinations of the evidence. This paves the way for a new ‘synthesis’ which will have at it’s heart the idea of universal control. In this way, we see the crab-wise progress of the totalitarians.
Nanuuk’s post is an example of the pre-prepared post, and the ‘plague on both your houses’ argument. Triangulation at work?
I predict the use of a fascinating rhetorical technique where AGW apologists ‘called to account’ by the MSM will start by accusing Skeptics of the same failings that they themselves are accused of. A species of ‘turning the cat in the pan’ , it is designed to confuse.
Caleb (01:15:26)
” I originally became skeptical because the MWP vanished.”
Me too. And what gets my goat about that is when they suddenly removed the Roman and Mediaeval Warm Periods and called the recent warming “unprecedented” they denied all the painstaking work of thousands of archaeologists and historians who, between them, gave us a picture of those times. They deny the results of sediment studies, of records of grain yields, wool yields, grape harvests, studies of Andean crop-growing: thousands of pieces of information that lead inescapably to the conclusion that the Roman and Mediaeval periods were at least as warm as today. And then they have the unmitigated gall to call us the “deniers”.
To be scientific, why not change “That means we cannot put the new data each month on our web site and check it at our leisure, because, however briefly a flaw is displayed, it will be used to disinform the public”?
A better read would be “We make our data available to all who request it as soon as possible because the past has shown that errors can be detected quickly and usefully by interested parties”.
@GaryPearse
Here is one reference to prosecution of oil executives:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/23/fossilfuels.climatechange
“James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.”
and “In an interview with the Guardian he said: ‘When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that’s a crime.'”
Merry Christmas to all and have a Happy New Year!!
And, what a difference a year makes. Hansen has long sense joined the political ranks should one forget his support of vandals and vasrious gigs he’s done with a loudspeaker. For the political naive he’s learned it’s best to paint yourself a victim first and then proclaim all that disagree as the source of his victumhood. He’s still a bit of an amateur but I did notice one of the posters used the key racist word “lynch”. So, those of you that take issue with anything Hansen says or does is simply a racist bigoted mob running around in the streets with tar, feathers and a rope. Next he “explains” how the mob wouldn’t recongnize real science if they ran into it while out torching the countryside. He needs to spend more time with the White House since he still, imho, comes across as a bit of an amateur.
He does remind me of a person that started out doing some good but evolved into a form of derangement. Someone mentioned Hitler who would be a reasonable example of someone that started out doing “good” but then grew more and more “evil”. Hitler was awarded two Iron Crosses for bravery in WWI. The last half of his live was an entirely different story. Hansen is much the same. The first half of his life, by all accounts, did result in some good and he would have deserved a footnote in the history of science as so many do.
Like so many scientists his creative period ended somewhere during his Venus atmospheric work. Everything he’s done since then, imho, is simply to force the Earth to be like Venus and thus prove his greenhouse work regarding Venus. For example, Einstein (and a raft of others) did his truly creative work in the first half of his life then set about applying it during the remainder. If one is really generous and kind, one would simply say that Hansen’s theory of the “Venusian greenhouse effect” as applied to the Earth is simply wrong. How he devolved into the Prophet of Doom I leave to others,.
ONe thing I have learned from this exercise is one should have just about zero regard for any of the reconstruction of temperatures including the “instrumented” ones since the invention of the thermometer. The instrumented ones are far too short of duration to bit much more than a blip in geologic time. Most of the charts and graphs could just as easily be produced with an Etch-A-Sketch and are about as reliable. Ask your kids to do one for you and send it to the IPCC. Might get a grant to pay for college.
The only thing the lay person should walk away from the climate debate is “When we start growing tomatoes in Greenland and growing grapes is it time to think about buying some real estate there?”
So, in the final footnote in history for Hansen, he and Michael Mann will be placed right up there with Charles Dawson. And yes, I do think Hansen is “evil” in the sense that he has intentionally tried to steer moral support and action when he should have long ago known that Venus is simply not Earth. The amount of global misery he would have caused is simply beyond belief. He would have effected billions to their detriment, a feat not even the worst of the worst were able to do in the last century.
Carrick (23:45:05) :
Interesting comment. If you have a link to an expanded explanation
I would like to read it. I have absolutely no idea of how an average
global climate temperature is derived, but I am willing to try and learn.
How did society get to the stage where James hansen get threatened he asks.
Could it be something to do with him saying that sceptics in industry should be arrested & tried as the equivalent of war criminals ?
WHAT HANSEN REALLY MEANS:
“Each month we receive, electronically, data from three sources: weather data for several thousand meteorological stations, satellite observations of sea surface temperature, and Antarctic research station measurements.”
THEN WE REPLACE IT WITH THE SATELLITE DATA AND ADD ON A FEW DEGREES.
“This allows Reto, Makiko, Ken and me to examine maps and graphs of the data before the analysis is put on our web site – if anything seems questionable, we report it back to the data providers for them to resolve”
GIVES ME TIME TO TELL THEM TO FIDDLE IT
“The GISS analysis, which extrapolates temperature anomalies as far as 1200 km, has more complete coverage of the polar areas.”
WE GUESS MORE
“The analysis method has been described fully in a series of refereed papers (Hansen et al., 1981, 1987, 1999, 2001, 2006).
BY MY MATES
Successive papers updated the data and in some cases made minor improvements to the analysis, for example, in adjustments to minimize urban effects.”
WE IGNORE IT
“Frequently heard fallacies are that “global warming stopped in 1998” or “the world has been getting cooler over the past decade”. These statements appear to be wishful thinking – it would be nice if true, but that is not what the data show.”
IT’S WHAT MY DATA SHOWS
“Unfortunately, I made an error by failing to recognize that the station records we obtained electronically from NOAA each month, for these same stations, did not contain the adjustments.”
ONLY JOKING, NEARLY GOT AWAY WITH IT BUT THAT NASTY MR MCINTYRE SPOTTED IT
“in my opinion, it is a mistake to be too concerned about contrarian publications – some bad papers will slip through the peer-review process, but overall assessments by the National Academies, the IPCC, and scientific
organizations sort the wheat from the chaff.”
NO WAY ARE THOSE PAPERS GETTING PUBLISHED
Let’s take an example from Finland concerning temp trend 1940-2005. According to GISS unhomogenized station data Helsinki trend is 0.59. The Finnish Meteorologial Organization ensures this and the trend is quite exactly same throughout the entire country.
But after GISTEMP analysis most of the country is ranked to trend between 1…2 degrees:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2009&month_last=11&sat=4&sst=0&type=trends&mean_gen=0112&year1=1940&year2=2005&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
This is because UHI effect from Russian cities is spread also over Finland with homogenization process. Jim Hansen, what is so difficult with these temperatures? Why do you include cities at all, because their measurements are not reliable? This is amazingly stupid. You certainly can not reduce all those disturbing effects away, because there are too many of them. Each city is its own case with its history around the measurement station.
There are enough rural stations to form global data set. Just do it, Hansen! Somebody else will do it sooner or later anyway…
@nanuuq: “Even if CO2 is not the main culprit, could reducing the emiision reduce the overall warming going on?”
You mean: even if those held prisoners at Guantanamo are not the culprits, keeping them in custody sends out a strong signal to help reduce terrorism?
Haven’t we elected our nation leaders to take the most effective actions based on the most accurate facts?
The final agreement they reached at Copenhagen is clearly not about CO2 reduction, it is about recycling our money to fight “against the effects of global warming” in underdeveloped countries. That fact is, even without global warming:
– every 5 seconds, a child dies from malnutrition
– every 15 seconds, a child dies from lack of clean water
– every 30 seconds, a child dies from malaria
Aren’t we already paying millions of dollars every year to the WHO; FAO, WFP, UNICEF just for that? Where does this money go? Look no further than their annual reports – some 40% of the money goes into administration and travel expenses.
Putting the blame on CO2 is just a lame excuse for collecting more money. Not one cent of this money will reduce CO2 emission.
References:
Hansen
Hansen
Hansen
Hansen
Hansen
Article wrote by:
Hansen
In my house I write and song my text and my music, and anyone can’t opponent to me… This method is to science as Father Christmas is to Easter. If I issue a paper in my university only with my references, I come kicking…
Christopher Hanley (above): “Dr. Hansen attributes the GISS series temperature dip c.1940-c.1980 to aerosols but he offers no explanation for the temperature rise c.1880-c.1940 which matches, in grade and magnitude, the rise 1980- 2001.”
In fact Hansen is being much more cautious? “The different hemispheric records in the mid-twentieth century have never been convincingly explained. The most likely explanation is atmospheric aerosols…However, there are no aerosol measurements to confirm that interpretation. If there were adequate understanding of the relation between fossil fuel burning and aerosol properties it would be possible to infer the aerosol properties in the past century. But such understanding requires global measurements of aerosols with sufficient detail to define their properties and their effect on clouds, a task that remains elusive” (The last part seems to have been run into a graph caption when the PDF was converted to a blog post!).
Contrast this with Ben Goldacre’s faux certainty about what he calls “zombie arguments” (He’s the author of the Bad Science column in the UK Guardian):
“…what about the cooling in the 1940s?” says your party bore. “Well,” you reply, “since the last time you raised this, I checked, and there were loads of sulphites in the air in the 1940s to block out the sun, made from the slightly different kind of industrial pollution we had then, and the odd volcano, so that’s been answered already, ages ago.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/12/bad-science-goldacre-climate-change
I do hope someone sends all the comments in this thread to the politicians that are responsible for his employment, and to the universities councils that support his programmes, better still buy a full page in the NYT and publish the lot.
Some of the posts are really telling !!
Playing politics can be a very dirty game & if you play expect to collect a lot of dirt yourself , and when you screw up bigtime look for a large hole to jump into.
This man really has no shame. He states that “in the 70’s ……..I made my own analysis” and hits the fast forward button to December ’09 without mentioning that he first concluded that we were heading for an ice age. I have to get one those fast forward buttons for my life, too. How convenient.
In an incredible display of hubris the man who defended people trying to destroy a power plant in the name of “green” then decries the politics surrounding his work. Hansen’s intellectual dishonesty is very disturbing.
Hansen references himself in his long paper.
nanuuq (23:38:36) is right. A sobering is required. Discuss science, with scientific arguments.
Emissions of nonsens from both sides just contributes to the madhouse effect.
RIGHT? A criminal should be discussed in criminal terms, not scientific terms. When Hansen obeys Freedom of Information requests, then we can finally get to the science.
Until then, he’s just a criminal (defined as someone who rebuffs FOI requests, which by law he is obliged to obey).
And I’ll give you an idea how far the perversion has gone: “nanuuq” in a prior post requested that we sit back and think. Well, I have done considerable thinking and this is my current opinion:
1) That global warming is good, not bad.
2) That increases in CO2 are beneficial; I have yet to see substantive evidence of any threat. (Models based on cooked data and assumptions give you cooked projections.)
3) That the earth is becoming more productive in terms of food supply and ecosystems.
These ideas are a huge departure from the AGWers and even many who are contrarians. I say let the earth warm up; let the deserts bloom as the rose and the jungles re-establish themselves. It simply makes for a more hospitable earth and a far better future than Al Gore would ever admit.
But these are my conclusions.
I get the impression that no one loves James Hansen as much as James Hansen.
Any personal threat to Hansen is to be condemned out of hand, we are sceptics of the AGW science pure and simple and must never condone such disgraceful behaviour. Nevertheless, Hansen has shown himself to be somewhat inconsistent regarding this threat. As others have said, who was it that talked about the death trains and called for CEOs of major energy companies to be tried for crimes against humanity? Who was it who called for civil disobedience and who supported the GreenPeace activists when they damaged our Kingsnorth power station? Dr James Hansen, and he did most of this with US taxpayer’s money. As a UK citizen and retired civil service scientist I can assure you that he would not get away with his political behaviour in my country. Dr Hansen, I fully support those US citizens who are demanding your dismissal or at least asking for your extramural activities to be curtailed.
But as to the science. I put my trust in Willis Eschenbach’s comments. I have looked at his work and admire him for it. Though I have to admit such painstaing data analysis is well outside any of my specialities. It seems clear that only the release of raw data from every surface station taken in conjunction with satellite data is acceptble. Then there must be a completely independent analysis carried out with scientifically robust methods that will satisfy the climate neutral or sceptical scientific community.
This would certainly take considerable time even if it were to be acceptable to the funding authorities, that would have to be national governments. Consequently any international policy decisions would need to be held up until the truth of a real worrying warming period was confirmed or proved wrong.
Unfortunately we all know that this just will not happen. Thanks to scientists like James Hansen and politicians like Al Gore, the die is cast. We saw this at CO15. As far as the delegates at this ridiculous gathering were concerned ‘Climategate’ just did not figure. There is no doubt, according to the vast majority of political policy makers, that the IPCC doctrine is the only one that matters. Emails, what emails? Just tittle tattle between a group of dirty fingered nailed scientists. The science is settled, okay. Harry? Just meaningless notes of a junior computer programmer.
Here in the UK there is a consensus between Labour, Conservative and LibDem hierarchies that AGW is real and carbon emission reduction and trading is the only way forward. We are actually legally bound to reduce CO2 emissions via an Act agreed between all parties! We have a few dissenters in all major parties but they are looked upon as mavericks. No one really wants to even consider that the sceptics might just have a point. Even the stupidly inaccurate forecasts of out Met Office are not questioned. Only a few years ago our one time Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett said that climate change ‘deniers’ should be treated as terrorists and denied air time. Lovely lady. No doubt she was a fervent admirer of James Hansen.
One thing is absolutely certain, no politician here is considering the possibility of a protracted cooling period, so I hope we do not suffer from one. Looking at the uncommonly early snow and the fact that it took my wife six hours to cover a twenty minute journey only yesterday; I have to admit I am not sanguine about the matter.
Anthony, Willis and all of you who have the skill and dedication to question the data analysis of the AGW authorities, please carry on the good work.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.
“My experience with global temperature data over 30 years provides insight” in how to make it do what I want.
You can make the temperature data say anything you want it to when you’re in charge of it. A little algorithm change here, dropping of stations there, voilà, you’re hypothesis suddenly is right.
I suggest a read of “Without Concience” by Bob Hare.
I find it bizarre that most scientists on the warm and fuzzy side feel the media is stacked up against them, pouncing on every tidbit. You have to have a certain disconnect from reality to believe that.
I’m pretty sure any threats he is getting regarding ‘releasing the emails’ aren’t coming from around here — Mr. Hansen, if you did do it, then thank you.
I have a feeling Hansen will be spending alot of time with the Police in the coming years, do the crime, do the time.
Anthony – the last line of JH’s .pdf:
“The input data for global temperature analyses are widely available, on our web site and elsewhere. If those input data could be made to yield a significantly different global temperature change, contrarians would certainly have done that – but they have not.”
reads to me as an opportunity to respond with your findings from the SurfaceStations project. Do you have any news on this? I saw your mid term census report a little while ago and wonder how things are going on the next phase?
As a layman I found Hansen’s apologia very plausible. But, as at least one of your correspondents has already written, what is he analysing? Raw data or adjusted data? As a trained statistician there are other points which puzzle me:
(i) Why does he show his cumulative means, in figs 1 and 2, at the centre of the period over which he is cumulating rather than, as is more usual, at the end of those periods? In figure 3b he shows his five-year running mean in about 2008 (ie at the end of the period) whereas he shows his 11-year running mean at about 2004 which is neither the end nor the centre. I suspect that the blue line should be shifted about four years to the right which might give a more balanced picture.
(ii) In fig.1a his 95% confidence bar becomes distinctly shorter with age. Is this because there are more sites providing temperature readings or because he is basing his standard deviations on all readings to the point at which he calculates his confidence limits? There are flaws with both approaches.
(iii) “Occasional flaws in input data are normal in any analysis, and the flaws are eventually noticed and corrected if they are substantial. Indeed, we have an effective working relationship with NOAA – when we spot data that appears questionable we inform the appropriate people at the National Climate Data Center”. There is something radically wrong with a program that is unable to weed out “occasional flaws” before these get into the system. Just think of what could happen the next time you use a “fly by wire” aircraft if aviation engineers were as casual. In this case it would appear that the NOAA programs are not robust. Perhaps they should invite M. and M. to improve them.
I saw all I needed in that article when I looked at the references, only one reference that does not have his own name on it. Either there is so little written on global warming (but then how can it be settled) or the researchers are so deluded with their own grandeur that they can’t see past the end of their own noses.
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear if he was a self-googler as well.
Jim.
I respect your obvious wish to distance yourself from the disgraceful “science” and “peer review” and the intellectual dishonesty that has dotted its history. Also, for standing up to the carpetbaggers who are trying to milk this issue through carbon trades etc – aka bloodsuckers by not going to Copenhagen. I am opposed to the people who would harm you for no other reason than that you are on suspicion of being truthful.
I ask you now please, to demonstrate your integrity, throw open the data sets and the rationale and the assumptions (all of them) behind them the wider (truly) scientific community for open review.
Either that, or stop calling yourself a scientist.
It takes courage to do so, and I applaud you in advance. You are 68 years old. Will your enduring heritage and that of your children be that a con artist and a family of liars, respectively? Over to you.
obruinsma (23:38:35) :
“it [Hansen’s piece] shows how politicized the”debate” is ( e.g. the word climate contrarians).”
Contrarians is a fairly neutral word–it means dissenters from the consensus. It’s miles better than deniers, although it hints at wilful perversity or factionalism for its own sake. “Critics” or “dissenters” would be even more neutral, but “climate critics” and “climate dissenters” have an absurd face-value meaning, which “climate contrarians” does not, because it somehow connotes “about” before “climate.”
Caleb (01:15:26) :
“Dr. Hansen doesn’t seem to learn from his mistakes. Rather he “adjusts” reality to massage his ego, and prove he wasn’t mistaken. I believe this hints at self-delusion.”
Narcissism. (Read books on the topic to see the feature-match.)
imapopulist (01:46:04) :
“I have worked in government for and with individuals like Hansen who master the art of power and control. One element of there approach is a near fanatical insistence on controlling the message.”
Narcissism again.
Incidentally, just to come back on topic, another view of mine is that the greens are correct—people of the world don’t want to acknowledge global warming (as portrayed in Hansen Warming) because they are too selfish to share or reduce consumption—and therefore, the world, 99% of its people, will approach any global warming problem from a position of selfishness—world peoples will be looking to exploit it—governments will be using it to further their own interests—because people are selfish—and this is a basic human selfishness that has been around since wars began, for thousands of years, and will continue for centuries to come. Progress is certainly accelerating (at some environmental cost), but human spiritual progress—that will take a while longer.
In principle I disagree with AGW activists because they are right.
I am extremely disappointed that from Anthony Watts’ initial comment down – there was only one condemnation of the death threats against Dr. Hansen.
As a left critic of AGW – there is much that I find unappealing on this website, especially in the comments. But if you cannot find it in yourself to condemn terroristic threats – simply because the person threatened has views different than your own – then you don’t deserve the time of day.
You may or may not support abortion rights, but abortion remains a legal procedure in the United States. Last year, George Tiller, an abortion provider, was murdered in the aisles of his church. Is this what you want debate to devolve into?
The violence runs both ways. Last week someone attacked Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi, breaking his nose. The attacker’s justification? – “that man is ruining Italy. I don’t agree with anything he says”. Thirty years ago, Italian premier Also Moro was kidnapped and murdered.
Until and unless the proprietor of this website states unequivocally that the threats against Dr. Hansen are utterly unacceptable – states so first before any other discussion is begun – then it is a self-indictment.
PS – And I disagree with much of what Hansen has done.
REPLY: I was ready to condemn the threats in the initial comment, but I decided to check first for any reference on the web, Googling “Jim Hansen police escort Houston” and variations yielded nothing other that references from his PDF file (based on the date they appeared and/or links). Googling again this morning yields a few more, mostly based on this article that have now been added. Since it would seem that supporters of Dr. Hansen would make a big deal out of this in social media, I found it puzzling that there was no reference to it. There was a Dec 1st interview conducted here: http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2009/12/james_hansen_the_interview_in_its_entirety.html by the Houston Chronicle “Sci Guy” and there was no mention of it. This seems very odd to me.
At that point Hansen having a police escort is unsubstantiated and remains so this morning. Given that there was no mention of it anywhere that I can find until JH’s Dec 17th essay, it may not have occurred, but only have been a suggestion, or simply dramatic license. If there is confirmation somewhere that somebody can point out, I’ll gladly retract that statement and issue a condemnation of such threats. I agree violence has no place in the debate. The violence and vandalism seen in Copenhagen is an example. However I’ll point out that Dr. Hansen has been prone to making some exaggerations and some outlandish statements in the past such as “death trains” and “crimes against humanity by energy executives”, so I’m taking his comment with a grain of salt. – Anthony Watts
Hansen:
“There is a slight downward tick at the end of the record, but even that may disappear if 2010 is a warm year.”
“there is a high likelihood, I would say greater than 50 percent, that 2010 will be the warmest year in the period of instrumental data.”
Intrade.com will let you bet (after you’ve registered, etc.) on whether 2010 will be the hottest year on record. Click on:
Markets –>
Climate & Weather –>
Global Temperature –>
Will Global Average Temperatures for 2009-2011 be THE warmest on record? –>
Trade (in the 2010.GLOBALTEMP.WARMEST box) →
Buy (if you think 2010 will be the warmest on record),
OR Sell (if you don’t).
PS: Intrade uses the GIS data.
Politics as usual.
There must be established a neat difference between the so called science methods which only observe the observer own´s navel and those of experimental science with eyes opened to the world and testable results. The first is psychologically onanism, the other reasoning.
One plays with child´s computer games or gropes in the dark proclaiming shadows as realities, the second one grown up men and women investigate laws of nature, describe them, calculate them, so any of us can check its universal validity.
Just tell me if just one of those computer games describe, if only nearly, natural phenomena, if only by chance.
Just tell me if just one of solar science´s “new age” forecasts has fulfilled, if only by chance.
Of course, we can imagine a lot of things, kids imagine more, however, where is it the experimental positive science?
Petty theories of selfindulging and overpaid individuals?
Well I’m convinced, fire all the government paid AGW hacks like Hansen and the AGW ‘problem’ will simply disappear on its own. Problem solved.
nanuuq
You write: “EVEN if humans are not responsible for global warming, how are we to minimize the effects of the REAL TRUE WARMING we are currently seeing?”
As far as I can tell the real true warming is a net benefit. Longer growing seasons, more arable land, higher crop yields due to higher CO2, warming taking place predominantly in higher latitudes right where it does the most good. Compare this to the demonstrable downside of an ocean that will rise a foot in the next century as it did in the past century. A one foot rise was easily coped with in the past century so it doesn’t seem like it should be any more difficult in the next century. World hunger is still a big problem despite large advances in agricultural productivity due both to the improving climate and technological advances.
So tell me again what’s the best temperature for the earth and why. If you can convince me there’s a best temperature and that the earth is moving away from it instead of towards it then I’ll get, as Obama puts it, all wee wee’d up about it.
TO: Hans Verbeek (02:39:30) :
“There is a slight downward tick at the end of the record, but even that may disappear if 2010 is a warm year.”
“there is a high likelihood, I would say greater than 50 percent, that 2010 will be the warmest year in the period of instrumental data.”
Hans,
You miss the point. Hansen is telling us in advance that according to the “instrument data” 2010 will be warmest. GISS controls the data FROM ‘instruments’ and adjusts and “extrapolates” the temp record. Hansen is telling us he will make damned sure that 2010 comes out warmest, because GISS will rig the result. Outrageous.
I agree with all of the other commentators here that Hansen is owed no sympathy. He has been a political activist for his agenda for 30 years. he is no dispassionate scientist.
This website is to be respected. It is great to allow Hansen to speak.
Hansen needs to step up and comply with freedom of information requests.
You have been a bad boy Jim and reluctant to do so. We are tax payers and you work for us and not yourself. I see your employee Gavin Schmidt reports to you and you give him time to blog his heart out all day long on Real climate instead of working. This is cheating us. Contrary to the socialist model, you work for the people and we do not work for the government.
John Egan (05:00:34) :
“I am extremely disappointed that from Anthony Watts’ initial comment down – there was only one condemnation of the death threats against Dr. Hansen”
I absolutely condemn any death threats against Dr Hansen. I would also condemn threats by a ‘reputable’ scientist to ‘beat the c**p out of Pat Michaels.
“there is a high likelihood, I would say greater than 50 percent, that 2010 will be the warmest year in the period of instrumental data.”
We wait and see. That’s a nice hostage to have.
I liked this para from Hulme of East Anglia:
“But this episode might signify something more in the unfolding story of climate change. This event might signal a crack that allows for processes of re-structuring scientific knowledge about climate change. It is possible that some areas of climate science has become sclerotic. It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science.”
Swift-boating? Sorry?
And this from Jones, can he not see a question being begged, indeed, implored?
“In the frenzy of the past few days, the most vital issue is being overshadowed: we face enormous challenges ahead if we are to continue to live on this planet.”
I thought you were a temperature record expert? How can that line POSSIBLY be the first line of your response to the hacking?
I am nearly speechless. Nearly.
As a concerned layman, trying to understand the respective claims of “warmists” and “deniers” (I hope I’m not being too technical in employing these scientific terms), I would greatly appreciate a companion article that systematically considers Dr. Hansen’s claims and provides a refutation, where warranted (geared to a layman, like myself). Subsequently, I would appreciate it if Dr. Hansen would offer his rejoinder. If an issue does not seem sorted out through the above evolution, then I recommend that further iterations of the dialectic be engaged. Both the science of climate change and the public policy ramifications of that science are of incredible importance–may I boldly suggest that those with a genuine competency in climate science have something of a good-citizen duty to thrash out relevant controversies in a public forum like this blog and in a way that can be understood (if possible) by a concerned layman, like myself. It is obvious that there are strong feelings at play in climate science, but, please, could I ask that those be put aside in favor of dispassionate, compact, and systematic review of Dr. Hansen’s article?
Mr. Hansen-
On the one hand you say,
“The nature of messages that I receive from the public, and the fact that NASA Headquarters received more than 2500 inquiries in the past week about our possible “manipulation” of global temperature data, suggest that the concerns are more political than scientific”
And on the other you participate in civil disobedience and state that coal fired power plants are death factories:
http://solveclimate.com/blog/20090219/james-hansen-issues-video-call-action-stop-coal
Why on earth would I trust your scientific credibility?
Do the emails disprove your AGW theory? No. But do they cast doubt on the scientists, the techniques used, how the data is presented (or hidden)? You bet your a$$. Do they show that there is a bias against scientists, journals, editors, and/or reviewers who don’t toe the line? You bet your a$$. Do they indicate that there is more uncertainty and error in your field than you care to admit? You bet your a$$. Does it convince us that many top climate scientists are politically motivated? You bet your a$$. Do they show that these same scientists try to block the replication of their work, to the point of avoiding FOI requests? You bet your a$$. Are these emails damaging to your movement? You bet your a$$. Do they deserve to be? You bet your a$$.
If you want to attempt to maintain credibility, don’t tell us to blind our eyes to this while you demand we break our backs changing our very economy, energy, and political structures.
The arrogance of climate scientists is ASTOUNDING.
That anyone should need a police escort is truly sad.
“How did we devolve to this state?”
Some AGW people turned AGW into a pseudo religion by heavily politicizing the science, with religious underpinnings, thus creating the either or view of the world, just like the socialists did in the 1930’s.
“Any useful lessons?”
Put science back into focus, or rather into scientist. And keep a healthy skeptic distant to all overly politicized organizations that want your money, or the world will go mental.
“The distance over which temperature anomalies are highly correlated is of the order of 1000 kilometers at middle and high latitudes,”
Doesn’t this only holds true if the whole area, 1000 km, is either about equally cloudy or about equally free of clouds and are within the same weather systems, and of course being of the same elevation and situated about the same relative to the coast? For instance the temperatures between the beaches of LA don’t necessarily correlates with the temperatures 1000 km to the north east.
“The error averaged 0.15°C over the contiguous 48 states, but these states cover only 1½ percent of the globe, making the global error negligible.”
Certainly if those 1.5% land coverage only contain 1.5% of the total amount of data coverage. Otherwise it gets a bit sloppy doesn’t it?
“The quality control program that NOAA runs on the data from global meteorological stations includes a check for repetition of data:”
It also scraps data that are above or below the set min and max, i.e. excluding improbable natural phenomenon. However the filters used seem to allow for the inclusion of faulty reading as long as those reading are within the bounds of the filtered area. To me it seems that they rather heavily trust their QA filter to check the integrity of readings, rather then properly checking the equipment rightly before and rightly after taking a reading to make sure the reading was done with sound equipment, like there isn’t much of QA for the actual equipment. On top of this there doesn’t seem to be any QA for the actual “QA-filter” itself, i.e. its algorithms and code. Part of the QA for the “QA-filter” is actually a functional peer-review process.
Roger, I accept that contrarians is an ok word. But this sentence surely equates contrarian with plain wrong?
“Also, in my opinion, it is a mistake to be too concerned about contrarian publications – some bad papers will slip through the peer-review process, but overall assessments by the National Academies, the IPCC, and scientific organizations sort the wheat from the chaff.”
It’s just completely amazing, the whole piece. I write as someone with no idea about the science, but i do speak English.
I am not vindictive. I am a scientist/engineer (physicist and electrical/electronics/radio/tellecomms). Why do I say this? Because for years I have known that the science of AGW was crap. Itried speakingn with the wassocks at the MetOff, RC etc. What I got was insults.
For the sake of all science Hansen et al must go to prison. All of them. There has to be a punishment so severe that we can be reasonably certain that this will never happen again. So pack your bags Jimmy boy; toothbrush as well.
Next in line is the UN. I seem to recall a past US President who told the UN to clean up its act or loss the US contributions. That needs to happen again. Unfortunely, It can’t with Oh Barmy in charge. BUT I can wait.
Man’s earliest and so-far unique achievement over other animals is the control of fire. Now our ‘leaders’ tell us heat and smoke is bad. Its time for us rednecks to revolt against the ignorance of the educated.
1. Kudos to Anthony Watts for giving Dr. Hansen the opportunity to use WattsUpWithThat to state his case.
2. I agree with comments above that Hansen appears to have skimmed past some issues regarding the manner in which temperature records are prepared. But it is still a substantive presentation worth a careful respectful reading.
3. I think it is unlikely that there is any overt “cooking the books” so much as an institutional bias such that that small errors, tweaks and methodological choices will all break in the same direction. When we take about projections over a century, very small fractions of a degree in the short term do matter.
4. Dr. Hansen cannot expect a broad public presumption of professional detachment on his part when he has been such an open advocate of policies whose only justification is an extreme outcome that the science does not currently support.
Gotta love it.
Hansen cites the solar estimates, which bounces around 1366,
but his models assume a constant 1 W/m^2 greater held constant forever:
“This Model assumes the constant orbital parameters of 2000 AD, and that the solar constant is fixed at 1367 W/m².”
http://aom.giss.nasa.gov/solar4x3.html
while ignoring the longer term proxies:
http://aom.giss.nasa.gov/srsun.html
I can’t leave it alone. Surely this is the same sentence?
“…. some contrarian papers will slip through the peer-review process…..”
Exactly. Some will get through the Team.
Jimbo sez:
“Fast forward to December 2009, when I gave a talk at the Progressive Forum…”
Nothing more need be said. It is clear where his political interests are these days. It is also clear from his essay that he is unrepentant and will NEVER admit to any of the myriad problems with the GISS data products.
Jimbo also sez:
“There are lessons from our experience about care that must be taken with data before it is made publicly available.”
Translated – “Despite your FOIA requests, we still ain’t gonna you deniers any stinkin’ data!”
Jim Hansen has reached the end of his career at NASA (he’s in his late sixties, I believe). It makes no sense for him to remain as head of GISS, given that his true interests lie in the politics of global warming. He should retire and take all the George Soros / Al Gore money he can, write a book, go on tour, etc. – he would certainly have more free time to do those things.
Nanuuq:
“PLEASE sit back and think a bit instead of behaving like a religious revival.”
I, for one, would love a rational, reasoned debate on AGW. However, as the Copenhagen conference has shown (and as reflected in Hansen’s essay), one side wants to have NO debate. They simply want to impose economically crippling taxes, corrupt carbon trading schemes, and draconian rules on carbon emissions which will affect everyone – and they want to do it NOW! This is why skeptics are speaking up – they are seeing their freedoms and liberties eroded, all because some eco-zealots think they can control the earth’s climate.
And to those who think they can control the earth’s climate through “science” – I have an ozone hole I’d like to sell them – an ozone hole that we “fixed” after the world banned CFCs…
http://www.theozonehole.com/ozone2009.htm
“In 2009, the ozone hole reached its 10th largest measured size since careful measurements began in 1979.”
Twenty years ago Hansen predicted that the West Side Highway in Manhattan would be underwater today.
‘Nuff said.
Readers should examine the variability of the GISS analysis.
The large smoothing radius gives a spatial exaggeration
for areas with adjacent extremes – notably the Arctic and interior Africa.
This is probably why the GISS is the high outlier amongst global data sets
(CRU & Hadley SST before they were shutdown, UAH and RSS LT and MT)
It is also probably why the GISS was the low outlier during the early
twentieth century.
Look at all the independent data sets before taking Hansen’s word.
>>How did we devolve to this state?
You’re a scientist, yes? Then collect the data which includes years of you and yours calling anyone who questioned your findings liars, idiots, corporate stooges, etc. and caused severe damage to the reputations of scientists who didn’t agree with you, mix in the billions of dollars your absurdly twisted “science” has cost us taxpayers, factor in the attempt to wreck our economy based on what you knew to be bogus information and don’t forget the addition of years of scaring the hell out of the populous to increase your personal standing. Then build a computer model complete with tricks, fudge factors and don’t forget to hide the decline.
Let me know what your results look like.
Dr Hanson has demonstrated that he is clearly incapable of understanding the difference between politics and science. It is ironic that he complains that it is others that are confusing the two. Pot meet kettle. The courts use a method to determine the veracity of a persons statements. If someone can be shown to be lying about one thing, then it can be assumed that they are lying about everything else and their entire testimony can be disregarded. I am satisfied that Dr Hanson has been deceptive in more than a few of his statements. I no longer believe anything James Hanson has to say.
Roger Knights (05:12:42) :
Hansen:
“There is a slight downward tick at the end of the record, but even that may disappear if 2010 is a warm year.”
“there is a high likelihood, I would say greater than 50 percent, that 2010 will be the warmest year in the period of instrumental data.”
Why is it that climate “scientists” excoriate skeptics for confusing “weather” with “climate”, and yet willingly extrapolate the average weather over ONE year as some proof of global warming?
Cry me a river
Hansen became an activist and put himself in this position.
Now complains because he’s having to act accordingly.
But still won’t release the information people need to replicate his work.
smoke and mirrors
nanuuq (23:38:36) :
I have been reading many of the web sites, including this one discussing the current climate warming issue. In many ways I am disgusted with both of the extreme viewpoints. On this site we see an almost lynch mob, drown the witch mentality. Not looking for the scientific realtiy, but *GLOATING* in finding some minor fault in somebody elses analysis.
You’ve obviously mistaken the commenters here for the alarmist ones in Texas that triggered Hansen’s police escort.
In many cases, ad hominem attacks are made, and comments carried on without any justifcation in science or analysis. I want to see both sides settle down and show SCIENTIFICALLY that their side has merit.
Ummmm — I’m guessing this was your first visit here, and you haven’t had time to do anything other than scan some random comments in this thread.
This is what Hansen wrote in 1980 (a book review).
“One is left with the impression that the procedure for
more in-depth analysis of planetary atmospheres requires
only use of “sufficiently large computers.” In
fact, although computers are a useful tool, they often
do more harm than good; progress is impeded by hasty
publication of numerical results which leave us with a
swollen literature and conclusions which are difficult to
check and often undeserving of our confidence …”
Then the following year, 1981, he writes this (which set many of the parametres still used today in global warming theory – another in 1984 was also as influential – he is the grandfather for how the theory turned out; he pushed other positions out during the 1980s – this paper was also the first production of GISTemp global page 961 – note how the temperature charts look different then).
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/rapidpdf/213/4511/957.pdf?ijkey=aAXr.Ejbb0ces&keytype=ref&siteid=sci
Hansen comes out of the climategate scandal relatively unscathed since he is in only a few of the emails. One of the reasons was that Hansen and Jones have had a mini-rivalry for several years. I’m sure when individuals were cc:ing Gavin Schmidt in the emails, they assumed it was going to Hansen as well. If they weren’t, then Gavin has some explaining to do to his boss.
John Egan,
Are you aware that Hansen himself called for oil executives who deny global warming to be put on trial for crimes against humanity?
Are you also aware that Brietbart TV published the audio interview of Hansen where he said that?
Are you also aware that Anthony Watts already identified the source of the “threat” as Mr. Breitbart himself?
Are you aware that Mr. Breitbart called for Hansen to be treated as Hansen called for oil executive deniers be treated?
Hansen is no innocent. He’s getting back exactly what he gave out. That’s poetic justice. If Dr. Hansen can’t take the heat he should get out of the kitchen.
Sorry, the link to the Science paper by Hansen in 1981 did not work. Here is another.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1981/1981_Hansen_etal.pdf
“If Dr. Hansen can’t take the heat he should get out of the kitchen.”
You mean get out of the Earth. LOL.
But if Hansen were the CRUgate hacker why would any sceptic want to kill him? This makes no sense at all. Death threats? Links please! I wanna know which camp wanted to get him.
I see that Herr Dr Professor Hansen has brought his entourage along for the ride.
Extrapolations are useful only in very limited cases because the error varies exponentially with the distance from the starting point. 1200 km? I don’t think so.
Any university associated with any team member should have their accreditation removed.
In the UK we had a sadly departed comedic character called Stanley Unwin, who was famous for his creation of a kind of science babble language called Unwinese.
I wonder how he would describe Hansen’s work?…
“We taken the globally stationy, jangleybob and did an overstuffy in the tumloader, finisht the job with a ladleho of brandy butter, and a ‘twisty and corruptit of the basic numberyows.”
Hansen states that after all of this, routine data will have to be checked before it is released – “but that is a price that must be paid to minimize disinformation”.
So Hansen admits they have not been providing accurate information, have not been checking it before releasing it, and has the nerve to call it “disinformation” when they get caught doing that.
In my opinion, this is the sickest statement Hansen makes:
“Also, in my opinion, it is a mistake to be too concerned about contrarian publications – some bad papers will slip through the peer-review process, but overall assessments by the National Academies, the IPCC, and scientific organizations sort the wheat from the chaff.”
Since when did science change to “Papers with opposing views” are contrarian?
And since when are opposing views “bad” before they are even presented?
and sorted out?
The science is settled……..
The Gospel according to Saint James.
The “Faithful” will be relieved.
I think the new gambit is to introduce adjusted data as raw data, since the raw is admittedly lost.
In that way, the warming becomes ‘real’.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/ushcn/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_urb-raw_pg.gif
If you take raw data, add this to it, and lose the raw data, you are all set. In fact, if you call the adjusted data ‘raw’, you can adjust it again!
Open question; if somebody went to microfiche archives of local newspapers and began extracting published daily highs and lows, could that rise to the level of scientific data, or is it’s provenance immediately suspect? Not that I have a lot of time, but I least I have experience in this type of ‘research’. If it was gone about in the same manner as surfacestations.org project, could it produce a useful temperature record?
There may be better sources than local newspapers, but in my opinion anything related to an academic source has been under the control of people who’s agenda is very much in question. At least with local newspapers, it would be very difficult for anyone person or organization to have had widespread influence. Just some random thoughts from a laymen in Iowa.
1DandyTroll
wrote:
““The distance over which temperature anomalies are highly correlated is of the order of 1000 kilometers at middle and high latitudes,”
Doesn’t this only holds true if the whole area, 1000 km, is either about equally cloudy or about equally free of clouds and are within the same weather systems, and of course being of the same elevation and situated about the same relative to the coast? For instance the temperatures between the beaches of LA don’t necessarily correlates with the temperatures 1000 km to the north east.”
If you had read what Dr. Hansen actually wrote, you would have noticed that he was talking about temperature ANOMALIES, not temperatures. So you missed the whole point.
It seems to me inconsistent that warming due to increased CO2 would be amplified by more water vapor due to the added warmth while warming due to increased solar output would not. From the paper: “present understanding suggests only a small amplification.” Why would additional warmth from the Sun not evaporate more water and thereby cause what they call a “feedback” also??
The “death train” quote is in this article.
The irony of a person who repeatedly calls for civil disobedience to fight AGW and who has testified on behalf of environmentalist vandals now needing a police escort to speak in public is sweet.
Link
I haven’t read through all of the comments, but the tone of the ones I have read is no better than those from RealClimate. Mr. Hansen stated they received data from three sources, presumably one is from the CRU. If the data has been cooked before it gets to GISS, then even a honest scientist would come up with “alarmist” numbers. It’s known there are siting problems, and probably some other countries metreological organizations have cooked the books, creating doubt. There is an old computer adage: “Garbage in, garbage out.”
Mr. Hansen may be a honest scientist, or not. If the CRU emails are any indication, then he and GISS weren’t involved in cooking the data. If GISS got garbage from CRU, then the analysis will be garbage, even if done correctly and without any bias. For the time being, I’d be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s entirely possible he and GISS got caught in CRU’s web of lies, as I believe he and GISS would accept the data from CRU as being honestly presented rather than cooked as it seems to have been.
Well Mr. Hansen, it is easy to show your work is trash. Long term temperature records from old stations are needed to estimate the climate trend. But there has been a steady monotonically increasing population and increase in the Urban Heat Island effect over the average of all stations. This has resulted in a bias toward increasing temperatures. This is recognized by everybody. Therefore the average of all “adjustments” to the temperature record must be a reduction in any upward trend in the raw data. If you do have this, if you have not checked this, if you cannot demonstrate this, you are a self deluded fool.
In stead of insuring that your work is correct, you have become a political activist talking about death trains, imprisoning energy executives, and encouraging the stopping of power plants that I need to live. Your incompetence is a threat to my life.
One more thing…it is a failing of a lot of people today to accept what comes out of a computer as being correct. This may be because of time constraints or the quantity of data dumped by the computer. I have found the output needs to be at the very least spot checked, and the question asked “Is the output reasonable?” This is something that seems to be missing in a lot of cases today.
It is interesting to me that the Trillions of dollars these guys are after is disappearing quicker than the snows on Kilimanjaro. Obama and his ilk around the world will reduce the level of GDP so much that the spoils of their efforts will disintegrate. So we’ll probably end up in a now completely socialist and cooling world with less infrastructure or ability to build it back. In the paraphrased words of Dean Wormer (at least as credible an expert on Global Warming as many!) “Cold, poor and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”
Dear Mr. Hansen,
Have you ever done a seed plot experiment? Let me express how you might do this. You take 20 or so seed plots, plant seed, and provide different treatments under controlled conditions. Through the experiment, you take data from the 20 or so seed plots. Then, for some reason, 50% of the plots disappear, and someone brings in the BBQ inside the greenhouse and sets it up next to a remaining plot, or WHATEVER. Instead of throwing the whole thing out and starting again, you continue to take data from fewer and fewer seed plots, including the plot of seed that now experiences the extra warmth of the BBQ, filling in the blanks where the now gone plots used to be with data from the still there plots. That appears to be the way you would do this experiment, but please correct me if I’m wrong.
Were I to send this data to a statistician working for an agriculture company and say, “Try to get something out of this so we can sell seed”, I would be barred from ever bringing in a set of data again and would be demoted to sweeping the company sidewalks leading up to the greenhouses. Yet you are telling us that your data is just fine, never mind the station drop out or the BBQ’s, and you are selling your product regardless, along with a dog and pony show that makes it look good.
If you were a seed developer and this was the degree of research you applied to your product, I would not be buying your seed. Neither do I buy your temperature analysis.
Re: the whining in your post. Weren’t you arrested for something? And here you are complaining about other people’s boorish behavior.
Oh sorry found it above:
http://twittorati.com/andrewbreitbart/statuses/6173170765
Thank you Willis Eschenbach (00:57:36) for saving me a load of typing.
Hansen seems to have no clue about the impact of his own actions over the last couple of decades. This whiny article is nothing more than an attempted cover up of those agenda driven actions.
If he thinks it’s bad now, just wait a few more months. Once the true believers start to see the reality of this massive snow job, they will get very, very angry. Their reaction will be FAR worse than the reactions of skeptics.
All those words based on GISS surface temps.
Not just a complete waste, but outright misleading.
Hansen wrote: “However, the 5-year and 11-year running mean global temperatures (Figure 3b) have continued to increase at nearly the same rate as in the past three decades. There is a slight downward tick at the end of the record, but even that may disappear if 2010 is a warm year.”
That is the activist Hansen speaking / writing from the life form which the scientist Hansen vacated many, many years ago.
Here is the global temperature anomalies in proper perspective for 50 years (1940 – 1990) of the last century up to just past where Hansen started his activism.
http://penoflight.com/climatebuzz/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/tempranges2.png
Willis, you’re the man.
“He asks “How did we devolve to this state” … grab a mirror, Jim, the answer’s not out here. Here’s a clue for you. When your side claims to have all the answers, when your side of the dispute is conniving to prevent the publication of opposing scientific views, when you and your mates besmirch the reputations of those who disagree with you, when your side prevents some scientific papers from being included in the IPCC reports and cheats to get papers you approve of included in the IPCC reports, when people get fired because they won’t sign on to your worldview, when those who agree with you call your scientific opponents vile names and attack our motives, people take it personally.
That’s how we devolved to this state, Jim, because your side tried to dominate and intimidate and denigrate and crush the other side rather than hold a scientific discussion about the issues.”
Two plain realities:
1) Hansen is one of the high priests. He’s going down with the ship. Why argue? Why waste your breath?
2) Constructing a global temperature (or temperature difference) parameter from thousands of (mostly volunteer) error prone weather stations inadequately (wild understatement) distributed across both time and space and over which you have virtually no control is a fools errand.
Jim Steele (23:30:34) :
The carefully chosen time scales also hide a previous graph produced by NOAA showing solar and SST are highly correlated.
And your carefully chosen cutoff-point hides that any such correlation no longer holds.
Dr. Hansen continues his long inability to consider the posibility that any hypothesis he has might be wrong.
To put it simply, the errors in his data are larger than the signal, are non random and we have strong reason to believe they have an overwelming
warming bias. The actual data does not support any abnormal warming even though he and I both think it should. So called “corrections” made to the data set to account for site and UHI issues are so far from reasonable that they may in fact account for all of the warming of the last century and a half. While I don’t think they do. There is no way to be sure.
I think Dr. Hansen would be a happier man if he could force himself to honestly answer a couple of questions.
1.) What does the paleo record suggest about warm vs cold periods?
2.) In what way is warmer worse than colder? Seriously, not the increased drought and flood in the same sentence silliness we always see.
If he needs some quiet time to consider he is welcome to come and visit me. We haven’t seen a significant warm stretch in years, so bring your hat and coat.
Hansen is very good at referencing himself.
I have figured out why Hansen was against COP 15. Now that it failed he has 5 more years to run around like Chicken Little saying “we got to act, ……and give me more funding”. If it passed his funders could say “good job Dr Hansen you saved the world, we don’t need you anymore, here is your gold watch, good bye.”
Hansen wrote: “there is a high likelihood, I would say greater than 50 percent, that 2010 will be the warmest year in the period of instrumental data. This prediction depends in part upon the continuation of the present moderate El Nino for at least several months, but that is likely.”
Okay, it’s a coin flip. Not much insight there from the top guy, but let’s imagine that the El Niño (“likely”) continues for several months and it is not the warmest year in the instrumental data. I’m watching and waiting to see what he says should that happen.
Hansen certainly was the instigator when it comes to talk of crimes — didn’t he suggest that the executives of fossil fuel companies be put in trial for “crimes against humanity and nature”?
Bill Illis (06:14:33) :
“Hansen comes out of the climategate scandal relatively unscathed since he is in only a few of the emails”
With all due respect, you make it sound like the scandal is over, and that Hanson “comes out of the climategate scandal relatively unscathed”. I would paraphrase Winston Churchill here, by saying that this is only “the end of the beginning”! I am hoping Nasa/Giss will be compelled to adhere to the many FOI request pending; which I’m certain will open up an entirely new can of worms. This scandal is nowhere near over yet!
Cheers!
[snip – OTT -we aren’t in the medical diagnostic business here]
He spoke at the Communist … er … sorry, I meant, Progressive, forum.
PS:
So you don’t have to waste time following the link on the NPD, I “quote” the symptoms:
A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
4. requires excessive admiration
5. has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
6. is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
7. lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
8. is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her
9. shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
Global warming is man-caused.
Or caused by several men (and possibly women).
One of the causers of Global warming is Dr. James Hansen.
Even an amateur (Iowahawk) can do the analysis, if provided with the data.
The available temperature data is:
1) inaccurate (problems with sites, Stevenson screens);
2) incomplete (records have not been kept in many places);
3) corrupted by the heat island effect;
4) subject to internal modifications (e.g. Darwin 0);
5) falsified by homogenization (the production of imaginary temperature records);
6) no certification and validation rule in effect for climate measurement;
7) unavailable for review;
8) not consistent with available proxies (ice cores, tree ring data, and so on).
When the total uncertainties are considered, the errors in measurement (of all types) vastly outweigh the determination of any trend line whatever. The sober truth is that we don’t know.
Hansen at least put forward a data based argument in this article. It’s a substantive explanation of why he believes he is right. He deserves credit for this. Most of the responses in these comments are non-substantive, basically assaults on his character and his supposed lack of qualifications in the area. Does this sound familiar? It’s exactly what we skeptics (yes–I am a skeptic) have complained about Mann et. all doing for years.
Here’s an idea: If you don’t have something substantive to say that is at least mildly original, remain quiet.
Some of my posts seem to have gotten stuck somewhere. They aren’t showing up. Not that it matters in relation to far more serious concerns people should be addressing. Just wondered if there was something wrong. I am typing from my home computer at the ranch in the far NE corner of Oregon, not from the city I live in during the work week. Is that why?
1. In the past anytime a newspaper published a denier article dozens to 100’s of terrible threating emails were received.
2. I believe Hansen is a GW believer and not in it for the Cap&Trade money
3. None of his charts show the cooling in the 70’s which prompter mass media Global Cooling scares.
4. check what Hansen did to his former boss who had the nerve to say he was a bit of a skeptic. Former NASA supervisor and senior atmospheric scientist Dr. John S. Theon:
“That model predicted that global temperature between 1988 and 1997 would rise by 0.45°C (Figure 1). Figure 2 compares this to the observed temperature changes from three independent sources. Ground-based temperatures from the IPCC show a rise of 0.11°C, or more than four times less than Hansen predicted. ”
No, three times less. The actual rise was 1/4th of that predicted. The other 3/4 represent the difference. 1/4th is one-third of 3/4ths.
A car that costs 40,000 dollars does not cost four times MORE than a car that costs 10,000 dollars, but four times AS MUCH, or three times (30,000 dollars) more (10,000 + 30,000 = 40,000). To cost for times (40,000) more than the 10,000 car, it would have to cost 50,000 dollars (10,000 + 40,000 = 50,000). A car that costs 10,000 dollars is not four times LESS expensive than a car that costs 40,000 dollars, but 1/4th AS expensive, or three times (30,000 dollars) less expensive (40,000 – 30,000 = 10,000).
Hansen says:
“Days earlier bloggers reported that I was probably the hacker who broke into East Anglia computers and stole e-mails. Their rationale: I was not implicated in any of the pirated e-mails, so I must have eliminated incriminating messages before releasing the hacked emails.”
This is the first I’ve heard of that report. If I had written Hansen’s response, and if I was not the person who leaked the emails [to realclimate first], I would make it clear that I was not the guilty party.
Instead, Hansen speculates: “…so I must have eliminated incriminating messages before releasing the hacked emails.” He doesn’t add: “But I did not leak the emails.” I would like to see Mr Hansen make an unequivocal statement that he had nothing whatever to do with the collecting and/or release of the emails and code.
More Hansen misdirection: there is no proof whatever that, as Hansen states, the emails were “stolen” or “hacked.” I am not saying that Hansen is the leaker. I don’t know. But his baseless claim that the emails were hacked is ridiculous to anyone with minimal common sense. Hackers gain access. If the system had been hacked, much more information would have been dumped online. But these emails were carefully selected to show what goes on in HadCRU land. Nor were they ‘stolen’, since they were simply copies of taxpayer-paid emails. Who lost anything? The original emails are still there, if they haven’t been deleted.
Next, the labels used by Hansen for anyone who doesn’t agree with the AGW purveyors are wrong, such as “deniers” and “contrarians,” because they are inaccurate. Scientists don’t want to be inaccurate, so they should use the proper terminology: scientific skeptics. That term refers to those who ask questions and replicate results of tests, code, etc.
Rather than answer skeptics’ questions, Mr Hansen and his ilk hide out and try to demonize the questioners by likening them to Nazi sympathizers – holocaust deniers.
The scientific method requires scientists to be skeptics; the only honest kind of scientist is a skeptic [and as we have seen, not all scientists are honest].
Any hypothesis that can’t withstand skeptical questions is a failed hypothesis. The refusal to answer questions, and the refusal to provide all the data and methodologies requested regarding AGW makes it a failed hypothesis. I suspect that is the reason the AGW clique avoids using the term skeptics when referring to those who question their AGW conjecture. ‘Skeptic’ is an honorable term. ‘Denier’ is a deliberate insult.
Finally, there are a number of others who are just as culpable as Hansen, and recently they have been in the news even more than Hansen. Yet Hansen implies that he receives multiple death threats. Again, misdirection. Has Hansen filed police reports? I don’t know. But writing that the “organizers there felt it necessary that I have a police escort,” and “indignation that I was coming to Texas, led to a police escort” implies that someone threatened to do violence to Hansen. But if so, being the whiny crybaby that he is, why wouldn’t he just come out and spell out the putative threats?
James Hansen is so contrary to the public’s idea of what a real scientist is that he is doing more harm than good to his crusade demonizing “carbon”, accusing the directors of publicly held companies of crimes against humanity, and condoning lawbreaking by those he agrees with.
Okay here is the problem, according to the way Hansen presents the data here he is correct. The problem here is that the point skeptics try to make over and over again, that this is by no means remarkable. Now if we had risen 4 degrees Celsius in this amount of time it would have been remarkable… but the paltry extent that the temperatures have risen in 30 years is nothing.
Plus as skeptics, we know enough to question how good is the data source? If I can show even one area that has not increased in temperature then it means that temperature change is regional in nature, i.e. most likely owing to regional changes in the area vs global changes. Since we know man does have an impact on temperature ( just not CO2 emissions ) through various things we do ( irrigation, buildings, tarmacs, air conditioning units, etc ) this is not surprising to see that in general most areas have had an increase in temperature and no matter how you attempt to correct for these various ‘man made’ obstacles they are going to have an impact on your results because no matter how much you try you will be right in some areas and wrong in others.
If the GLOBE is not all heating up evenly then it cannot be global in nature. Now you can argue with me but if I can then show that stations across the world in places where there is no major change in population or construction have not been changing in temperature then again I state that this logically cannot be a ‘global’ phenomena.
Hansen is correct in the way he presents his data. All the statistics that he presents are correct. All these statistics can also be accounted for if anyone would actually listen to the skeptics point of view.
Statistics can lie as easily as anything by making them tell the story you want. By the same token using the methodology I have just spoken of I can prove there is nigh unto of global warming using statistics.
Hansen:
“I examine the temperature data monthly and write occasional discussions about global temperature change.”
So Hansen doesn’t really have a job – giving him lots of time for political crusading.
A synopsis;
“AGW wasn’t our fault; it was some other aerosols”
Smokey:
He doesn’t add: “But I did not leak the emails.” I would like to see Mr Hansen make an unequivocal statement that he had nothing whatever to do with the collecting and/or release of the emails and code.
Smokey, Hansen is an AGW zealot. He’s not going to realease emails like that. Let’s try to remain rational here, please.
Even if all the data can be trusted and the warming as presented in the graphs is 100% correct, it doesn’t follow that CO2 is the culprit. I am still waiting for the proof.
Dr. Hansen, explain to me why the warming after 1975 is largely man-made and the warming between 1910 and 1945 largely natural? That’s all we are asking: any feature in the temperature data or any other climate feature in the last 3 decades that is specific for CO2 forcing. I am willing to become a AGW believer, even an alarmist, if you could present me with a plausible answer. To make it even easier on you, it doesn’t have to be a proof, just sufficiently plausible.
Wow, Hanson has no shame. HE is the guy advising Energy company execs be tried for crimes against humanity… and he has the gall to claim skeptics are politicized?
The problem, Jim is not so much in the data adjustment, but in the alteration of the original data, which is then portrayed as the real deal.
If the original data has not been altered, it has been lost or removed.
It is substituted with FILNET.
Emails to the agency who should know where to find the missing original data reveals that the Station History list refers to a lot more data than is found in the set of Observers Reports.
Checks with archives and societys where summations of meteorologic conditions of the past are kept reveals a lot of original data is missing, but was once collected.
Checks with local newspapers reveals large discrepancies in some of the digital copies of the Observer’s Forms, which are not signed or are marked ‘late report’ and bear other signs that they have been placed there recently.
Bottom line, Jim, is that too much liberty has been taken with the records.
Data that should have been treasured was not.
The end result is that the meteorological data record proof of Anthropogenic Global Warming is based upon doctored records.
I see it. So should you.
Hansen complains of “death threats” emanating from Breitbart after he says, on June 24th of last year, “In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.” A pox on both their houses, but it seems like the pot calling the kettle black.
Until Dr Hansen PROPERLY compensates for the huge enrichment of urban sites and dropout of rural sites in the 1990s (USSR collapse), also makes a PROPER adjustment for the ongoing UHI effect, which, by the way, increases every year, and undoes the spurious adjustments done to so many site datasets, his temperature graphs will never match reality.
Failing to do so and then claiming that we are warming when rural sites consistently, around the world, show cooling, means that he, like his CRU Team friends, has an agenda.
CO2 is a trace gas, water vapor is huge negative feedback factor, and the solar irradiance is not the point – it is the periodicity and the solar wind strength. He needs to drop the “solar irradiance is the only way the Sun affects us” routine.
“Here are key excerpts from the press release posted by Marc Morano (HT Watts Up With That via Tigerhawk; bolds are mine):
NASA warming scientist James Hansen, one of former Vice-President Al Gore’s closest allies in the promotion of man-made global warming fears, is being publicly rebuked by his former supervisor at NASA.
Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist, Dr. John S. Theon, the former supervisor of James Hansen, NASA’s vocal man-made global warming fear soothsayer, has now publicly declared himself a skeptic and declared that Hansen “embarrassed NASA” with his alarming climate claims and said Hansen was “was never muzzled.” Theon joins the rapidly growing ranks of international scientists abandoning the promotion of man-made global warming fears.
“I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man made,” Theon wrote to the Minority Office at the Environment and Public Works Committee on January 15, 2009.
….. “Hansen was never muzzled even though he violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind’s effect on it). Hansen thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress,” Theon wrote.
….. Theon declared “climate models are useless.” “My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit,” Theon explained. “Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results.”
http://www.bizzyblog.com/2009/01/28/former-boss-rebukes-nasa-global-warming-alarmist-hansen-is-agw-skeptic/
Hansen’s boss says they do not forecast and why they don’t. Hansen can’t stop himself for some reason. Why would Hansen’s boss know climate models are useless? Is he referring to Hansen’s models?
Who offered a sunspot model that predicted today’s solar activity?
nanuuq (23:38:36) : “It saddens me to see the politization of science, but this is not new, just ask Galileo. PLEASE sit back and think a bit instead of behaving like a religious revival.”
One simply has to go back to those immortal words of the Rev Algore:” The science is settled”. This is where is started. The whole science has been hijacked by he and those like him for political and personal enrichment reasons. We can never sit back and allow this to happen.
What no one has addressed is the possibility that Hansen is being paid to promote global warming extremism. No scientist with an ounce of self respect would shoot off his mouth in the lunatic ways he has.
Soros is one of the top hedge fund managers on Wall Street and stands to make a large profit from the multi trillion dollar carbon trading derivative market. Which is designed to replace the dearly departed mortgage derivative market
***
The biggest lobbying group at Copenhagen was the International Emissions Trading Association which was created to promote carbon trading more than ten years ago.
Its members include :-
BP, Conoco Philips, Shell, E.ON AG (coal power stations owner, EDF (one of the largest participants in the global coal market), Gazprom (Russian oil and gas), Goldman Sachs, Barclays, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley..
http://www.ieta.org/ieta/www/pages/index.php?IdSiteTree=1249
There was a little debate of Sunspot number versus SST [anomalies].
This page has some nice rolling average graphs about sunspot numbers:
http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com/2009/02/09/sunspot-update-february-2009/
My personal feeling is the guy who said the correlation between sunspot number and SST anomaly has broken down after 1980 is wrong. Unfortunately i don’t find any newer version of that correlation… Anybody know one?
I didn’t read a word, just scanned it and immediately noticed the TSI graph has been “adjusted”.
Sound and Fury…
I saw one point raised by Dr. Hansen and others who support Hansen’s method. It was that the trend in temperature record is more important thus the urban effect is expected to be small. It is just not true. The reason is simple enough. Cities undergo huge changes in time. The energy use, the number of people who live there, the surface type change etc all have rich history. To say looking at the trend can eliminate much of the urban effect is just ridiculous.
I also encourage people to go back to Hansen 1981 and 1987 papers to study themselves what his method is really working on. Then you can criticize or support Dr. Hansen with more confident. Meanwhile, read papers by others who disagree with Hansen as well.
Hansen is a victim, so are Mann, Gavin etc… please Ladies and Gentlemen, your generosity will save you from certain oblivion by rising oceans, droughts and unprecedented storms, and green little deathsquads… show some compassion.
NK
“Hans,
You miss the point. Hansen is telling us in advance that according to the “instrument data” 2010 will be warmest. GISS controls the data FROM ‘instruments’ and adjusts and “extrapolates” the temp record. Hansen is telling us he will make damned sure that 2010 comes out warmest, because GISS will rig the result. Outrageous.”
Thank you,
That’s exactly how I read it.
Of course Theon said the climate models are useless: Thier biggest feature is a crystal ball factor based on thin air, which is then used to blow smoke up a tailpipe.
And his entire last paragraph is a bald faced lie;
If the data were available, why are they telling us it’s been lost?
I am assuming the data he refers to at GISS is the adjusted data, which is available, but somewhat dubious. Raw data and the adjustment method used counts, adjusted data does not count.
To his final point; every time a skeptic gets ahold of the data and process, the peer reviewed article is torn to shreads (as in MBH 98). That’s why they are withholding the data and code. That’s why the documents and code released in FOIA are the real gem, and a very real threat to his career. To say this hasn’t happened is just a flat out falsehood.
Hansen is certainly aware of this. That makes him a liar.
Cheers!
In an earlier post in this thread (GaryPearse (01:59:37) :
Excuse me but wasn’t this man the one who was calling for imprisonment or the death penalty … )
I recalled Hansen talking about having dissenters severly punished: here is an August 2008 article of the Heartland Institute on the subject:
“NASA astronomer James Hansen, one of the most visible and vocal proponents of alarmist global warming theory, has called for criminal trials against scientists, corporate executives, and public policy advocates who disagree with him.
Saying skeptics of global warming alarmism are guilty of “crimes against humanity”–the same charge leveled against notorious mass murderers Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, and high-ranking Nazis in the Nuremburg trials–Hansen bemoaned the “natural skepticism and debates embedded in the scientific process.”
Hansen made his remarks, quoted in the UK Register, a day before he appeared at an informal Capitol Hill briefing and addressed a media event hosted by the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental activist group……..
….At the June 23 Worldwatch Institute event commemorating the 20-year anniversary of his first appearance before Congress, Hansen made several scientifically dubious predictions he alleged were more than 99 percent certain to happen. Disagreeing with Hansen on any of these would apparently justify criminal prosecution and a potential death sentence.”
http://www.globalwarmingheartland.com/Article.cfm?artId=23544
I hope gentle folk like nanuq (various tirades against posters in this thread) will be shocked to learn of Hansen’s prescription for posters in this thread. Hansen would apparently use the police not just for self protection but to round the dissenters up and have them eliminated.
After climategate, the usual harassment squad that polluted WUWT topics was conspicuous by their absence. I see they are trickling back spouting the nonsense that it took the “fiddlers three” and others on the hockey team a month to generate after the email conspirators were outed .
Posted by Chris Schoneveld ‘Dr. Hansen, explain to me why the warming after 1975 is largely man-made and the warming between 1910 and 1945 largely natural? That’s all we are asking: any feature in the temperature data or any other climate feature in the last 3 decades that is specific for CO2 forcing. I am willing to become a AGW believer, even an alarmist, if you could present me with a plausible answer. To make it even easier on you, it doesn’t have to be a proof, just sufficiently plausible.’
I agree, the rate of increase in the temps for both warming periods looks very similar. If this increase was due to CO2 then wouldn’t the slope of the increase steepen to match the rate of increase in the CO2 in the atmosphere, much like the dreseded Hockey Stip graph.
That it doesn’t just shows there is something else causing the effect, could be man made but it isn’t CO2.
Very interesting program on UK CH4 last night, Man on Earth, it was looking at the effects of Climate change over the last 200 years and focused on 3 civilisations, Mayan, NA Indians in Colorado and Norse in Greenland. The civilisation that survived was the one that adapted eg the NA Indians, they reverted from an organised society to hunter gatherers. Also of interest was the use of Tree rings to show waterfall and no mention of temps. This was archaeologists research so they use tree ring data differently, have the Climate bods asked them for their info?
So let me get this right:
Hansen thinks that the sceptics think that he hacked and pirated the e-mails after removing any that mentioned him? Presumably in an attempt to undermine the CRU’s work.
Were the police escorting him wearing white coats?
This meandering whine of Hansen’s would have had some merit if he had honestly reviewed his own behavior some. An apology from him for calling for war crimes, and an admission that is apocalyptic clap trap, and over the top failed predictions about Manhattan flooding, etc. etc. etc. were ill advised.
Instead we get a rambling whine that is only deserving of cheap cheese.
Tom in Chilly Florida,
Do you have a link to Gore’s specific quote on that? AGW true believers are claiing he never said it. I think he did, and that his pals at google are indulging in a bit of Orwellian historical rhetoric control.
Hansen again blames global warming on CO2.
Do a simple experiment:
I think even non scientists can understand my thinking.
Experiment 1
We have a glass vessel, about 1000 liters, flushed and filled with 80% nitrogen and 20% oxygen, representing the earth and its atmosphere at the beginning.
We have a probe on the side, in the middle, connected to a thermocouple and a temperature recorder. We have a large heating element in the middle of the vessel. The vessel is closed from the outside. The outside temperature and humidity is kept constant, at all times.
A measured amount of energy is released into the vessel. The resulting increase of the temperature in the vessel is recorded until it falls back to the base line. The area below the curve is measured. The measurements are repeated until a constant result can be reported. (A)
We now double the amount of energy released into the vessel, this increase representing the doubling of energy released by human activity on earth from 3.5 billion people in 1960 to 7 billion people in 2009. The area below the curve is measured. The measurements are repeated until a constant result can be reported. (B)
In the case of this first experiment, the result is predictable i.e. if you double the amount of energy released in a vessel you should find close to a doubling of the area under your graph. This already proves that Henry’s theory rather than a 25% increase since 1960 in carbon dioxide may have some bearing on global warming. (For the time being Henry’s theory is still that global warming is caused by people releasing energy when flying, moving, cooking or just wanting to stay warm or cold)
Experiment 2
Experiment 2 is exactly the same as experiment 1, but now the vessel is filled with 80/20 N2/O2 + 350 ppm CO2. The results are C en D. What would be interesting for us to know is the difference between A and C and between B and D – in other words: if we release similar amounts of energy into the vessel, what effects, if any, does the carbon dioxide have on temperature retention inside the vessel?
From my investitagtions I have come to learn that the 350 ppm CO2 added in this experiment would aparrently be too small to have any effect on heat retention. In other words: there is no measurable difference between A and C and between B and D.
So now, from these simple thought experiments I have made the following conclusions:
a) the 70 ppms of CO2 added to the atmosphere since 1960 have had no measurable influence on heat retention (in this experiment)
b) if we add another 70 ppm’s (on top of the 350) it is doubtful that this will show any effect at all on same measurements , i.e. still no measurable heat retention in this experiment.
C) if anything, assuming the atmosphere is indeed a greenhouse, the result from experiment 1 must mean that global warming is caused by humans releasing energy in the atmosphere. That means: only that energy that we steal from nature is green (solar, wind, gravity, tidal etc.). Nuclear is not green, H2/O2 combustion (rocket fuel) is not green, fossil fuel is not green.
It seems that CO2 is just made a major culprit because it suits certain interest groups. “What else can it be?” let us have planet, add some CO2, see if the temperature goes up, it did, so that must be it.
Unfortunately, I think some decent testing would reveal that the CO2 is not to blame, at least not at current concentrations. What I found is: they used experiments with 100% CO2 and then extrapolated the results to smaller concentrations. You cannot do that. You always have to do your measurements at relevant concentrations, i.e. 0.02 – 0.05% (200-500 ppm) CO2
I have now proven to you and Mr Hansen that CO2 is not to blame. If you don’t believe me, do your own experiment (like I described), and please do report your results to me.
Wow, lots of detailed responses to such a simple article. My observations:
The paper seems only to address the validity of “his temperatures”. It didn’t seem to make the case properly but that’s just an opinion. The paper barley mentioned CO2, gave a brief reference to solar activity and summed it up by stating he doesn’t know the impact it has. He didn’t address many of the other issues (such as whether warming may have a positive or negative effect on the earth.) He admitted to several errors in his body of work, (“Another lesson learned.”) but won’t say that he may make more mistakes. In other words, this article avoids addressing his personal and professional history. It seems he wishes us to believe he is acting as a disinterested scientist, only reporting his findings. In other words, “don’t shoot the messenger.” Any one that has followed this issue for any amount of time, knows he is much more engaged than he would like us to believe. He is being disingenuous. Further, he expresses alarm as to the vitriol which surrounds this issue, and yet, he uses the words “deniers”(as if they equate to Holocaust deniers), “swift-boating”, and “character assassination” when he refers to climate skeptics. He himself has used these tactics very successfully. You have NOT made the case we should alter our energy and food sources in a dramatic, life changing manner to avert from some contrived looming disaster.
In other words, Mr. Hansen, nice try. You wrote an article that used yourself as a reference. You didn’t address any issues surrounding the topic of AGW. You only defended the temperatures you’ve “cleaned”. (All the while ignoring all the work done at WUWT as if none of it ever happened.) I’ll be waiting with baited breath for the time when you have the courage to address the concerns climate skeptics have with the “science” of AGW.
It is unfortunate if Hansen has reason to ask for police protection. However, remember the theatrics of his performance in a Congressional hearing in 1988 when they picked the hottest day and left the windows open all night to heat the room so everyone would be sweating. I would not put it past him to ask for police protection as a publicity stunt, to help them portray skeptics as a bunch of mobsters.
Perhaps Dr. Hansen needs a little chat time with his grandson to explain the difference between a “never give up attitude” and “bullheadedness” related to perceived ownership of a topic that is far bigger than even his apparent inflated opinion of his self importance regarding the matter. To employ the term swift boating would imply Dr. Hanson is feeling victimized and not properly loved and respected for his ability to procure grant funds.
Jim Hansen and his ilk have helped create this political mess. The team was perfectly content to sit quietly on the sidlines while the media and politicians hyped AGW. Where was Dr. Hansen when Al Gore released “An Inconvienent Truth”? Why wasn’t he speaking out when Al flattened the Medevil Warming Period? Now that the tide has turned against him, he is scrambling for cover. Whatever credibility he had left after claiming in the late 70’s that the globe was headed for another ice age has been shot to hell.
Dr. Hansen, your position is that CO2 is the main driver of global temperature, therfore, if we control CO2 we can control temperature correct? Also, you want us to believe that sometime during the last 100 years the globe was at it’s optimum temperature and this temperature must be maintained at all costs because any deviation is risking a catastrophic runaway scenario where the earth will fry. In order to believe this, we would have to ignore almost everything that we know about the earth’s past and current climate. You are completely ignoring any feedback mechanisms ( i.e. clouds) that would keep the temperature in check. You are simply speculating that, because CO2 concentrations are increasing and you have detected a warming pattern in YOUR data, the earth will eventually heat up and we will all sizzle. Whether you know it or not, this is your position.
DirkH,
Breibart was mocking the other side. Treason is usually a captial offense and the global warming alarmist had already proposed that “deniers” be treated as criminals.
For example:
Krugman: Republicans’ Climate Change Denial Amounts To Treason
It’s kinda funny actually. Funnier still that Hansen thought it was serious. Still funnier that the actual people he was being protected against were a mob of alarmists who thought he was the leaker.
Hansen is the jerk who supported mobs trespassing on energy plants and destroying equipment.
Hansen is bragging about smearing UHI contaminated data across 1200km.
The climate of Ullapool, Scotland is not influenced greatly by Catania, Sicily, and most people would be clever enough to recognize that.
michel (23:34:00) :
…
Prof Hansen, unfortunately, in his role as activist, is a contributor to this problem. He needs to get back to science and away from activism.
If he’s right about the science then under the circumstances the activism is justified, isn’t it? In that case he’s part of the solution, not a problem.