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.)
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.