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.)
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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.