Here’s a blast from the past. Dr. James Hansen’s view in 1989 seemed a lot more temperate than it does today. Back then, he’s ready to accede to a study that says something counter to what his theory predicts, saying “I have no quarrel with it”. Today, he uses labels like “deniers” (see here) when such contradictory essays and facts are made public. What a difference 20 years makes.
And even back then, with no firm evidence in hand, Gore was pushing to cede White House environmental policy to “world policy”.
U.S. Data Since 1895 Fail To Show Warming Trend
WASHINGTON, Jan. 25—
After examining climate data extending back nearly 100 years, a team of Government scientists has concluded that there has been no significant change in average temperatures or rainfall in the United States over that entire period.While the nation’s weather in individual years or even for periods of years has been hotter or cooler and drier or wetter than in other periods, the new study shows that over the last century there has been no trend in one direction or another.
The study, made by scientists for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was published in the current issue of Geophysical Research Letters. It is based on temperature and precipitation readings taken at weather stations around the country from 1895 to 1987.
Dr. Kirby Hanson, the meteorologist who led the study, said in a telephone interview that the findings concerning the United States do not necessarily ”cast doubt” on previous findings of a worldwide trend toward warmer temperatures, nor do they have a bearing one way or another on the theory that a buildup of pollutants is acting like a greenhouse and causing global warming. He said that the United States occupies only a small percentage of Earth’s surface and that the new findings may be the result of regional variations.
Readings taken by other scientists have suggested a significant warming worldwide over the last 100 years. Dr. James E. Hansen, director of National Aeronautic and Space Administration’s Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, has reported that average global temperatures have risen by nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit in this century and that the average temperatures in the 1980’s are the highest on record.
Dr. Hansen and other scientists have said that that there is a high degree of probability that this warming trend is associated with the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide and other industrial gases that absorb and retain radiation.
But other scientists, while agreeing with this basic theory of a greenhouse effect, say there is no convincing evidence that a pollution-induced warming has already begun.
Dr. Michael E. Schlesinger, an atmospheric scientist at Oregon State University who studies climate models, said there is no inconsistency between the data presented by the NOAA team and the greenhouse theory. But he said he regarded the new data as inconsistent with assumptions that such an effect is already detectable. More Droughts Predicted
Many of the computer models that predict global warming also predict that certain areas, including the Midwest in the United States, would suffer more frequent droughts.
Dr. Hanson of NOAA said today that the new study does not in any way contradict the findings reported by the NASA scientists and others. He said that his study, in which he was joined by George A. Maul and Thomas A. Karl, also of NOAA, looked at only the 48 contiguous states.
Dr. Hanson said that global warming caused by the greenhouse effect might have been countered by some cooling phenomenon that has not yet been identified and that the readings in his study recorded the net effect.
”We have to be careful about interpreting things like this,” he said. What About Urbanization? One aspect of the study that Dr. Hanson said was interesting was the finding that the urbanization of the United States has apparently not had a statistically significant effect on average temperature readings. A number of scientists have theorized that the replacement of forests and pastures by asphalt streets and concrete buildings, which retain heat, is an important cause of rising temperatures.
Dr. Hansen of NASA said today that he had ”no quarrel” with the findings in the new study. He noted that the United States covered only 1.5 percent of Earth. ”If you have only one degree warming on a global average, how much do you get at random” when taking measurements in such a relatively small area, he asked rhetorically.
”We are just arguing now about whether the global warming effect is large enough to see,” he added. ”It is not suprising we are not seeing it in a region that covers only 1.5 percent of the globe.”
Dr. Hansen said there were several ways to look at the temperature readings for the United States, including as a ”statistical fluke.”
Possibililty of Countereffects
Another possibility, he said, was that there were special conditions in the United States that would tend to offset a warming trend. For example, industrial activity produces dust and other solid particles that help form liquid droplets in the atmosphere. These droplets reflect radiation away from Earth and thus have a cooling influence.
Dr. Hansen suggested that at some point there could be a jump in temperature readings in the United States if the measurements in the new study were a statistical aberration or the result of atmospheric pollutants reflecting heat away from Earth. He noted that anti-pollution efforts are reducing the amount of these particles and thus reducing the reflection of heat.
Several computer models have projected that the greenhouse effect would cause average global temperatures to rise between 3 and 8 degrees Fahrenheit in the next century. But scientists concede that reactions set off by the warming trend itself could upset these predictions and produce unanticipated changes in climate patterns.
Legislative Action Sought
Coincidentally with the new report, legislation was introduced in the Senate today prescribing actions for addressing the threat of global warming. Senator Al Gore, Democrat of Tennessee, introduced a bill that calls for creating a Council on World Environmental Policy to replace the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality. This change would emphasize the international aspects of environmental issues.
The bill would also require a ban on industrial chemicals that not only are depleting the atmosphere’s ozone layer, which blocks harmful ultraviolet radiation, but are believed to be contributing to the warming trend. It would also require stricter fuel-economy standards for automobiles to reduce the consumption of gasoline to reduce carbon dioxide.
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Gareth Phillips (01:00:09) :
I note the Arctic ice has stopped expanding, maybe to show we sceptics are objective and even handed this should be highlighted.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries
Hi, I posted this because when the seasons ice started to expand we had a dedicated section which pointed out it was up from last year. It would be interesting to have that same debate at the other end of the season.
tarpon (07:34:48) :
(…)
A show last night “Prehistoric New York” on the Discovery channel talked about the sea levels going up and down from today’s level as climate changed. They even mentioned that 22,000 years ago, during the last ice age, sea levels were 300 feet lower. (…)
Which is likely to get cited as alarmist evidence that we now have an unprecedented rise in sea levels.
Thus I would be more interested in if and by how much the sea levels were higher in the past.
It’s been awhile since college, and some theories have changed since then. Does anyone know, far back in the dim geological past, if Earth was ever a complete water-world, with absolutely no land above the surface? I have heard before that “all land was once under water” but that can refer to normal plate movements, the divergence and convergence etc, bringing up land from where it formed under the surface. Was there ever a time when there was nothing above the water (that includes above frozen water as at the polar regions)?
Ref – vigilantfish (09:04:28) :
“Over at The Resilient Earth…I found the following comment:
>Science and decision-making
>Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 03/01/2010 – 09:53.
>Dear Doug,
>I have been considering the problems of scientific vs legal proof for a number of years and I think that what you are discussing here is another example of this trend.
________________________
Sooooooo True! Thank you!
The root cause of so many modern problems in our shrinking world is the proliferation of JD’s. ‘Global Warming’ is NOT a scientific problem, it is a legal problem. The One thing that Congress and the current administration could do to solve the climate problem, the medical problem, the environmental problem, etc., etc., is to ban lawyers from practicing in the United States. This does not make the Supremes redundent; they will have much more to do once this legislation goes into effect: flipping coins and adjucating the result of ‘non-fatal’ duals, etc.. (The Supremes will be able to handle the extra workload with more speed as the current group retires and non-lawyers are appointed.)
There is a grain of truth in every joke. I really do think so many of our social problems today are the result of too many lawyers. If we can’t ban them, can we put a quota on the law schools? One per year? We really do need more doctors of medicine – especially the kind that speak the local lingo like they were born to it.
GISS did not report January as the “hottest.”
Satellites (UAH and RSS) seems to have problems with ENSO events, reporting large positive and negative anomalies which are not reflected in the surface record. It would be good to hear an explanation from Dr. Spencer.
Bruce Cobb (09:22:31) :
Not to mention the trees used to print all that drivel… alarming the world over a non-problem.
It would be helpful if you could direct me to the published scientific research that supports your assertion here.
>>Here’s a blast from the past. Dr. James Hansen’s view in 1989 seemed a lot more temperate than it does today. Back then, he’s ready to accede to a study that says something counter to what his theory predicts, saying “I have no quarrel with it”.
Something else happened in 1989 that may help explain the change in attitude. The IPCC was formed by the WMO and the UN to assess:
“the scientific, technical and socioeconomic information relevant for the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change.”
If you have the UN and governments around the world through the UNFCCC saying that human’s are responsible for climate change, the science is settled, it might make you a tad more strident in your position.
The AGW theory can hereby be declared dead. Dead and buried;
http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/cherry-picking-black-swans-and-falsifiability
@kwik “The AGW theory can hereby be declared dead.”
An animate thingy is just that, animate not alive. AGW has never been alive so it can’t be dead. That a certain shizo-like-behavior has kept the irrational panic stricken anxiety of the possible maybe-but-what-ifs alive is just a symptom of the sickness itself.
@jbrodhead
Don’t let that article scare you. Few would disagree that earth is probably warmer than it was during the “Little Ice Age”. What people disagree with is the slimy way that computerized models have been used (and fudged measurements, too) to “prove” that human output of carbon dioxide is the primary cause of said warming.
Also, people disagree about the “catastrophic” part–why is it that people in the Northeast move to Florida and Arizona when they can afford to leave their jobs? Because it is warmer.
Finally, we disagree with the overemphasis on restricting carbon dioxide emissions because it takes the focus off of the things we really should be doing to protect our planet. I’m in California, where incandescent bulbs will soon be banned, but all it took was increase electricity bills to convince me to swap out the old bulbs for energy-conserving compact fluorescents. All it will take to get people out of their SUVs is a prolonged increase in the cost of motor fuels. All it will take to convince people to insulate their homes is for their wallets to be affected. All it will take to convince people to live near work and work near home is–you guessed it–their wallets to be affected.
We don’t need “green police”, we don’t need “cap-and-trade” schemes. We need clear and accurate pricing signals, unmanipulated by government or large corporations. We need widely available solar / wind generation for homes and small businesses instead of or in addition to the larger generation facilities that have proven themselves not to be cost-effective.
I wish Mr. Gore had put his millions into outfits that would insulate homes (to R100+) and install those generation systems at prices that made it difficult to refuse. I wish the enviro groups were focusing on ways to adapt human society to work with the world we live in (and minimize our impact on the other creatures here). I wish that “climate scientists” and the mainstream press were concentrating on getting honest and detailed raw data, and making that data available along with any processing steps and code they use in producing those scary graphs, instead of labeling anyone who wants to see proof as a “denier”. We could be a heck of a lot further along than we are now,
Let your friend know these things.
Obviously Hansen will say anything.
Just 6 months prior to this article the IPCC was setup, and Hansen was testifying on Capital Hill before a Gore Committee and saying he was 99% sure of warming but made no real connection to CO2. After the hearing he said it was CO2 induced and now in this article he says there’s only a “high probability” of a connection: “Dr. Hansen and other scientists have said that that there is a high degree of probability that this warming trend is associated with the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide and other industrial gases that absorb and retain radiation.”
Here’s the entry from the ClimateGate timeline on this:
http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming/climategate-30-year-timeline/
Jun 1988
HANSEN: STOP WAFFLING; OTHER SCIENTISTS REBUKE HANSEN
“The present hysteria formally began in the summer of 1988, although preparations had been put in place at least three years earlier…. James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in testimony before Sen. Al Gore’s Committee on Science, Technology and Space, said, in effect, that he was 99 percent certain that temperature had increased and that there was some greenhouse warming. He made no statement concerning the relation between the two.” [151] Afterwards, HANSEN tells journalists that it is time to “stop waffling, and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.” [4] [5]
The media leap onto CO2 induced global warming, and the number of American newspaper articles about it rise tenfold in just one year. [4]
“The interest Hansen generated in the media was also well-timed with regard to a major conference held in Toronto at the end of June 1988 [the World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere] organised by scientists involved with the Villach and Bellagio workshops of 1987. This conference brought together 341 delegates, including 20 politicians and ambassadors, 118 policy and legal advisers and senior government officials, 73 physical scientists, 50 industry representatives and energy specialists, 30 social scientists and 50 environmental activists from 46 countries.” [5] According to Franz, the conference’s challenge to reduce CO2 emissions by about 20 percent of 1988 levels by 2004 had minimal scientific support. [5]
“Many scientists were critical of the approach taken by Hansen and others for damaging the integrity of science. According to [climate historian Spencer] Weart, ‘respected scientists publicly rebuked Hansen, saying he had gone far beyond what scientific evidence justified.'” [5] See also [151].
January 26, 1989 …. a team of Government scientists has concluded that there has been no significant change in average temperatures….
–
–
Curious date.
Isn’t 1989 the year James Hansen started dropping temperature stations used in GIStemp that were located in rural and mountain areas and kept only those near heat sources, i.e., those effected by UHI?
Gareth Phillips (01:00:09) : “I note the Arctic ice has stopped expanding, maybe to show we sceptics are objective and even handed this should be highlighted.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png”
It always stops expanding about this time of year, and, even after pumping record gigatons of cold air down to the rest of the NH for three months, the ice is about the same as 2005, so what’s the big deal?
Paul Coppin (07:46:47) :
“It clearly shows that the a priori premise is that “global warming cause by greenhouse effect” is indisputable – that they are only arguing over what might mask it, not what causes it.”
Its the force. Its Obi wan Kenobi.
@W^L+ Thank you for writing in response to my comment. Though you believed I was concerned by the article (link) I embedded in my comment, I only posted it because of the similarities to the article, which heads this thread. I will certainly copy your comment to my friend.
I have been following WUWT, since the climategate news broke. AGW is not of even a tiny concern to me. The Progressive political forces, which hijacked and politicized AGW theory, turning it into a global scare tactic to implement their attempted global coup, are in my sights.
WattsUpWithThat has been a wonder; a bright spot, to which I can escape my political ‘battles’.
I am no scientist, but a generalist (electronics, programming, mechanical, etc…) who sees the consistancy of physical systems through the filter of my Christian beliefs. I do not see this existance on planet earth as an accident of chaos and therefore see the systems of the earth are designed to survive the relative stupidity of humanity – a system which will dynamically compensate over time. It is similar to the PID control loops I use in motor and temperature control. Now if we look at any one control parameter only (P xor I xor D), it will scare us. That is the tactic of the AGW scheme.
Sorry, I am writing and listening to the CATO institute broadcast on the Constitution… I hope this was a sensible response. 🙂
Regards,
Jeff
Herman L – your wish is my command. Just for starters:
500 Peer-Reviewed Papers Debunking Global Warming
Gore begins subtle shift to resource depletion arguments, cherry picks flaws in IPCC docs to respond to in Op-Ed appearing in Sun. Feb. 28th NYT’s at http://nyti.ms/a0ucIY
Interesting to see the early political machinations that developed into the Eco Fascism which is environmental policy today….. These “progressives”(socialists), are deliberate in their desire to usurp our freedom and replace it with their ideology.
To: rbateman
You wrote:
“Great, let’s assign weight to those 2 datasets.
What % of the Global Data Set is the US data set from 1995 to 2010?
What % of the Global Data Set is the US data set from 1890 to 1989?”
Why ask? You should know that the land area of the U.S.A.’s lower 48 states amounts to only 3,119,885 square miles, while the total land area of the world is 35,705,170 square miles. This is 8.7% of the land data set, but of course there is a great deal more ocean than land, so the CONUS is 2.55% of the world’s total surface area. Assuming equal coverage, this would be the naive weight given in the 1995-2010 dataset.
However, I was simply trying to get people to stop making completely silly assertions, as for example, “Jeff Kooistra” at 05:03, “johnnythelowery” at 05:15, or “Don Shaw” at 06:40 did.
The good doctor said…
Yep. Then again it might have been countered by flocks of geese migrating over the US, or maybe fewer Bison farting or maybe or might be or could be. He should know, he is a doctor afterall.
By the way, did I tell you there is a giant asteroid going to smash us to bits in 73.4 years? We can’t see it just yet, it’s view might be blocked by an unknown phenomena, we need more research.
Chris R. (17:38:42) :
Why ask? Because I was referring to the # of stations used to represent the USA vs the # of stations used to represent the Globe.
Weighting. Whether the oceans are included or not.
It’s always Marcia, Marcia (13:12:18) : Curious date.
Isn’t 1989 the year James Hansen started dropping temperature stations used in GIStemp that were located in rural and mountain areas and kept only those near heat sources, i.e., those effected by UHI?
Good observation. See: http://i27.tinypic.com/14b6tqo.jpg
O/T but has anyoneseen this?
Greenman(Gavin Schmidt) used the caitlin expedition from last year(that was a failure) as proof that 2009 was the lowest summer mass on record.
http://drought.unl.edu/DM/MONITOR.html
US drought monitor: check out for yourself if there is a drought in the Mid-West