From NASA Goddard/GISS: same-o, same-o
Paleoclimate Record Points Toward Potential Rapid Climate Changes
New research into the Earth’s paleoclimate history by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies director James E. Hansen suggests the potential for rapid climate changes this century, including multiple meters of sea level rise, if global warming is not abated.
By looking at how the Earth’s climate responded to past natural changes, Hansen sought insight into a fundamental question raised by ongoing human-caused climate change: “What is the dangerous level of global warming?” Some international leaders have suggested a goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times in order to avert catastrophic change. But Hansen said at a press briefing at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco on Tues, Dec. 6, that warming of 2 degrees Celsius would lead to drastic changes, such as significant ice sheet loss in Greenland and Antarctica.
Based on Hansen’s temperature analysis work at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the Earth’s average global surface temperature has already risen .8 degrees Celsius since 1880, and is now warming at a rate of more than .1 degree Celsius every decade. This warming is largely driven by increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, particularly carbon dioxide, emitted by the burning of fossil fuels at power plants, in cars and in industry. At the current rate of fossil fuel burning, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will have doubled from pre-industrial times by the middle of this century. A doubling of carbon dioxide would cause an eventual warming of several degrees, Hansen said.
In recent research, Hansen and co-author Makiko Sato, also of Goddard Institute for Space Studies, compared the climate of today, the Holocene, with previous similar “interglacial” epochs – periods when polar ice caps existed but the world was not dominated by glaciers. In studying cores drilled from both ice sheets and deep ocean sediments, Hansen found that global mean temperatures during the Eemian period, which began about 130,000 years ago and lasted about 15,000 years, were less than 1 degree Celsius warmer than today. If temperatures were to rise 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times, global mean temperature would far exceed that of the Eemian, when sea level was four to six meters higher than today, Hansen said.
“The paleoclimate record reveals a more sensitive climate than thought, even as of a few years ago. Limiting human-caused warming to 2 degrees is not sufficient,” Hansen said. “It would be a prescription for disaster.”
Hansen focused much of his new work on how the polar regions and in particular the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland will react to a warming world.
Two degrees Celsius of warming would make Earth much warmer than during the Eemian, and would move Earth closer to Pliocene-like conditions, when sea level was in the range of 25 meters higher than today, Hansen said. In using Earth’s climate history to learn more about the level of sensitivity that governs our planet’s response to warming today, Hansen said the paleoclimate record suggests that every degree Celsius of global temperature rise will ultimately equate to 20 meters of sea level rise. However, that sea level increase due to ice sheet loss would be expected to occur over centuries, and large uncertainties remain in predicting how that ice loss would unfold.
Hansen notes that ice sheet disintegration will not be a linear process. This non-linear deterioration has already been seen in vulnerable places such as Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica, where the rate of ice mass loss has continued accelerating over the past decade. Data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite is already consistent with a rate of ice sheet mass loss in Greenland and West Antarctica that doubles every ten years. The GRACE record is too short to confirm this with great certainty; however, the trend in the past few years does not rule it out, Hansen said. This continued rate of ice loss could cause multiple meters of sea level rise by 2100, Hansen said.
Ice and ocean sediment cores from the polar regions indicate that temperatures at the poles during previous epochs – when sea level was tens of meters higher – is not too far removed from the temperatures Earth could reach this century on a “business as usual” trajectory.
“We don’t have a substantial cushion between today’s climate and dangerous warming,” Hansen said. “Earth is poised to experience strong amplifying feedbacks in response to moderate additional global warming.”
Detailed considerations of a new warming target and how to get there are beyond the scope of this research, Hansen said. But this research is consistent with Hansen’s earlier findings that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would need to be rolled back from about 390 parts per million in the atmosphere today to 350 parts per million in order to stabilize the climate in the long term. While leaders continue to discuss a framework for reducing emissions, global carbon dioxide emissions have remained stable or increased in recent years.
Hansen and others noted that while the paleoclimate evidence paints a clear picture of what Earth’s earlier climate looked like, but that using it to predict precisely how the climate might change on much smaller timescales in response to human-induced rather than natural climate change remains difficult. But, Hansen noted, the Earth system is already showing signs of responding, even in the cases of “slow feedbacks” such as ice sheet changes.
The human-caused release of increased carbon dioxide into the atmosphere also presents climate scientists with something they’ve never seen in the 65 million year record of carbon dioxide levels – a drastic rate of increase that makes it difficult to predict how rapidly the Earth will respond. In periods when carbon dioxide has increased due to natural causes, the rate of increase averaged about .0001 parts per million per year – in other words, one hundred parts per million every million years. Fossil fuel burning is now causing carbon dioxide concentrations to increase at two parts per million per year.
“Humans have overwhelmed the natural, slow changes that occur on geologic timescales,” Hansen said.
Patrick Lynch
NASA’s Earth Science News Team
My favorite line was:
These guys can’t even tell a believable lie. It hasn’t warmed a tenth of a degree in the last decade, that’s nonsense.
w.
Getting a bit shrill, aren’t they?
This isn’t science; it’s speculation.
Even a madman can speculate.
There is the possibility here of a new bootstrap event. According to this post Real Science (http://www.real-science.com/understanding-man-global-warming) ‘In the year 2000, Hansen and his buddies decided to give underachieving global warming a boost – by adding 0.6 degrees on to the disappointing US data set.’ So perhaps the above claim of a rise of 0.8C thanks to his work at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies is a bit of an exaggeration. In either case, the bootstrap event whereby an observer gets extremely distressed by the data he has just created is worthy of further study.
The man is utterly shameless..
Excuse me while I go and puke
Wherever paleo-climate studies have looked – on a regional basis – Antarctica, Greenland, Tibet – you find 2-3 degree Celsius changes with a beat-frequency of about 1000 years – some of these rises are very steep (Greenland) – within decades – and this is quite normal throughout ice-ages and interglacials. This probably translates to a global 0.5-1 degree shift.
The current warm period is expected on this frequency and not at all unusual in rate of change or amplitude – despite the presence of higher levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Hansen has consistently misinterpreted the natural signal – as confirmation of his models and calculations of ‘sensitivity’ to carbon dioxide. If, as many of us calculate from the real world evidence of radiation flux measurements, CO2 can account for no more than 20-25% of the warming, then future temperatures will be determined by the natural cycle – and many paleo-climate experts think this will turn downward (see Liu’s work on Tibet featured in an earlier thread).
What is so annoying is the way that the left-liberal-green press only ever report Hansen’s opinions thus inflating the carbon currency bubble.
“Humans have overwhelmed the natural, slow changes that occur on geologic timescales,” Hansen said.
But “natural variability” has overwhelmed the alleged AGW during the last 15 years, according to other CAGW proponents; I would suggest that the CAGW movement now splinters into warring factions.
“Hansen and others noted that while the paleoclimate evidence paints a clear picture of what Earth’s earlier climate looked like…” Utter rubbish. We have no idea what the past climate was truly like. We are merely guessing.
We know as fact that the Vikings settled in Greenland and some of their settlements are just becoming apparent as glaciers recede. Those glaciers need to recede far more before the land will become farmable with primative equipment such that was possessed by the Vikings . May be Greenland needs to become several degrees (some speculate more than 4 degrees) hotter than today before it will be akin to the conditions that the VIkings enjoyed. What were the sea levels in the Northern Hemisphere at that time? That would be a good starting point since at least it would be grounded upon some basis of fact.
‘Hansen said. In using Earth’s climate history to learn more about the level of sensitivity that governs our planet’s response to warming today, Hansen said the paleoclimate record suggests that every degree Celsius of global temperature rise will ultimately equate to 20 meters of sea level rise. However, that sea level increase due to ice sheet loss would be expected to occur over centuries, and large uncertainties remain in predicting how that ice loss would unfold.’
Says a lot doesn’t he. If you give me a million quid I’ll make you 20 but I cannot promise how it will unfold.
The last interglacial was 3-4degC warmer than present.
http://alsystems.algroup.co.uk/warming/CO2_temp.gif
This interglacial is steadily cooling.
http://www.climatedata.info/resources/Proxies/Ice-Cores/07-Temperature—Vostok-and-GISP2.gif
Oceans entered another 30-years long cooling period.
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/5-no-hem.png
Per BEST own words, global records follows AMO/North Atlantic and the “human effect might be somehow overstated”. There is nothing unusual on period 1975-2005, it is equal to that of 1910-1940. AMO/NA SST are heading down again.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/ihadsst2_280-360E_0-70N_n.png
Fail on every level. Can I have some grants now?
can some one over there take this man to dinner and fix his head?
Complete unsubstantianted alarmist nonsense from a greedy crank, conflicted up to his ying yang – no alarmist stories, then no justification for his outrageous salary, therefore no job.
The CAGW faithful in Durban must love this alarmist stuff: “We don’t have a substantial cushion between today’s climate and dangerous warming,” Hansen said. “Earth is poised to experience strong amplifying feedbacks in response to moderate additional global warming.” So show us the proof in the geological record – the only problem is: it doesn’t exist!
Natural climate cycles are a complete heresy to the CAGW high priests – most of recent warming is due to them. Another heresy is to make the observation that global temperatures have been static/falling slightly over the past 10-12 years, likewise so is the fact that the rate of sea level rise has remained constant over the past two centuries.
The Eemian period was generally much warmer than Hansen states – unless, of course, he is right and everyone else is wrong – for instance this paper:
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=eemian%20interglacial%20mean%20temperatures&source=web&cd=5&sqi=2&ved=0CEMQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mad.zmaw.de%2Ffileadmin%2Fextern%2FPublications%2Fmodel_data.pdf&ei=BuHhTqWdM4LN4QSPs9mKBQ&usg=AFQjCNG_Zv9J8AVLV1rryJcKWnr20WeAzQ&cad=rja
I think the Chinese tree ring record of Liu Y, Cai Q F, Song H M, et al., “Amplitudes, rates, periodicities and causes of temperature variations in the past 2485 years and future trends over the central-eastern Tibetan Plateau” (Chinese Sci Bull, 2011, 56: 29862994, doi: 10.1007/s11434-011-4713-7) deserves more attention. The nearly 2500 year record is far longer that Hansen’s, and shows a FLAT trend, The current ‘unprecedented’ warming was exceeded by 4 precedents from 400 to 1000.
In the first Fourier analysis I have seen of temperature data the power spectrum reveals eight(!) periodic influences at 99+% CL, with periods from 2.0 years to 1324 years. Four of these cycles are longer that Hansen’s entire ‘record.’
Repackaged BS. Now sold as clean manure available at your local home and garden center.
@Hansen
Chill out, dude. Everyone else will during the next glaciation. Beat the rush.
Two points: 1. temps are not unusual (no h. stick), and 2. CO2 is not a cause of warming: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK_WyvfcJyg
Funny. I & others say that the trace gas CO2 is OVERWHELMED by stronger climate factors, that vary, such as the sun ocean etc etc. That $swindler & top bs artist Hansen has co-opted our language. There may be a theoretical basis for the trace gas CO2 having a warming effect, but there is NO EVIDENCE that it effects climate level temps… at all. If you have evidence, give it. I be waiting.
The map is completely misleading. The surface of the earth isn’ t a rectangle and that red band at the top is infilled from the hottest stations the can find 2,500 miles away. Made up data is exaggerated by the shape of the map.
heavyweight hansen and others…
8 Dec: Oregon Live: OSU faculty, students prominent at one of the world’s leading scientific conferences
By Todd Simmons, Oregon State University
SAN FRANCISCO – Researchers from around the world gathered here this week … for the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, and Oregon State University faculty and graduate students were prominent in the conference’s vast program.
While the United Nations’ climate change conference was generating plenty of headlines … the more than 22,000 attendees at AGU were making news of their own on issues ranging from global warming to new policy governing key federal research.
NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, a faculty member on leave from OSU, delivered a plenary lecture on the federal government’s management of extreme weather events. NOAA is tracking a record 12 such events, each with damages in excess of $1 billion, this year alone – droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards and wildfire…
Lubchenco also unveiled a new scientific integrity policy for NOAA – the first for the venerable science agency, which is perhaps a more notable development than it might seem: NOAA is America’s first science agency, with roots that reach back to the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. Among other things, the policy encourages transparency in research and frees researchers to discuss findings publicly on NOAA-funded research without prior approval.
The policy change earned immediate praise for Lubchenco and NOAA, with the Union of Concerned Scientists going so far as to pass out lapel stickers for AGU attendees reading, “You’re swell, Dr. L! Thanks for moving forward on scientific integrity.”…
But current OSU faculty were just as notable at the science summit, none more so than Associate Professor Andreas Schmittner, who over the past two weeks made headlines for a recently published study in Science magazine.
He and collaborators from Princeton, Cornell, Woods Hole and elsewhere developed new climate models that show the likelihood of global warming causing temperature increases of as much as 10 degrees Celsius are extremely unlikely. An increase in the 2.4-degree range would be more consistent with the new models, and Schmittner was quoted in news accounts as saying increases of 4.7 degrees or more would be “virtually impossible.”
Climate change heavyweight James Hansen of NASA and colleagues took issue with that at a Tuesday news conference at AGU, pointing to other models showing increases of 8.6 degrees or more…
http://blog.oregonlive.com/higher-education/2011/12/osu_faculty_students_prominent.html
Wow, I must be a lot more powerful than I think, I am now rated alongside a geological timescale, megga!
Why does my left knee still ache when its cold?
“Two degrees Celsius of warming would make Earth much warmer than during the Eemian, and would move Earth closer to Pliocene-like conditions, when sea level was in the range of 25 meters higher than today”
Alternatively, 0.0000001 degrees of warming would move Eartgh closer to the temperature of the Sun, where any known form of life would be impossible.
Piece of piss this alarmism business, can I have a grant?
Let us have the evidence for these claims please Dr. Hansen. No evidence-claim a lie, simple as that.
Hi Willis,
Could you yet me know what the Earth’s average global surface temperature anomaly was for the periods 2000 – 2010 and 1990 – 2000.
Just eyeballing this graph would suggest that it has warmed more than a tenth of a degree between those two time periods. I’ve probably got a different graph to you though.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.gif
Willis is, of course, correct. The GISS LOTI linear trend for the past 120 months is basically flat.
http://i39.tinypic.com/o8t8qg.jpg
This Hansen chap is probably preparing the base for an “Eemian Hockey stick” or some other kind of stick with a stunted blade
My favourite line was:
“Two degrees Celsius of warming would make Earth much warmer than during the Eemian”.
That’s the same Eemian that saw Hippopotamus and Water Buffalo in Germany then?
Here’s another lie.
“”Two degrees Celsius of warming would make Earth much warmer than during the Eemian, and would move Earth closer to Pliocene-like conditions, when sea level was in the range of 25 meters higher than today, Hansen said. In using Earth’s climate history to learn more about the level of sensitivity that governs our planet’s response to warming today, Hansen said the paleoclimate record suggests that every degree Celsius of global temperature rise will ultimately equate to 20 meters of sea level rise. However, that sea level increase due to ice sheet loss would be expected to occur over centuries, and large uncertainties remain in predicting how that ice loss would unfold.””Based on Hansen’s temperature analysis work at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the Earth’s average global surface temperature has already risen .8 degrees Celsius since 1880,””
If we have warmed .8 degress since 1880 how come the sea level out the back of my place hasn’t risen 16 meters since just before federation in Australia. Have a look a any seaside picture anywhere in the world from 1880 and then tell me how far the sea level has risen. CO2 Climate warmists need to get outside a bit more. And if anything, ice melt rate has slowed since LIA.
“Hansen found that global mean temperatures during the Eemian period, which began about 130,000 years ago and lasted about 15,000 years, were less than 1 degree Celsius warmer than today.”
They cannot even get the temperatures right with modern instruments today but they can guage the temp. back then within a degree?. Ha ha ha bshit.
Eschenbach:
You are right. It hasn’t warmed a tenth of a degree in the last decade. The mean of the latest 10 years is 0.17 degrees warmer than the last 10 years for hadcrut. Mean of NCDC and gistemp: 0.19 – 0.20 warmer.
In studying cores drilled from both ice sheets and deep ocean sediments, Hansen found that global mean temperatures during the Eemian period, which began about 130,000 years ago and lasted about 15,000 years, were less than 1 degree Celsius warmer than today.
And there was me thinking that Hansen said current temperatures were unprecedented.
“when sea level was tens of meters higher – is not too far removed from the temperatures Earth could reach this century on a “business as usual” trajectory.”
We all know how well his ’88 projection of BAU turned out. (Spot on according to Mann)
Dismal to anyone not invested in CAGW.
If 2C warming is now tragic then the next IPCC report must be going to estimate warming from 2XCO2 @ ~2C. Soon enough (IPCC report after next) they’ll have to proclaim that 1C warming is dangerous in order to keep up with the steadily falling sensitivity estimate.
Every time I hear of Hansen he reminds me more and more of Jim Jones…and his Monkey.
Jim Hansen… isn’t he the guy who worked with the muppets ?
Here’s another lie;
“”global carbon dioxide emissions have remained stable or increased in recent years.””
With a third of the population bursting thru 10% growth, a ever expanding annual consumption from the coal bowls of the world, and the current T trend they slip one in about recent stability of CO2, when they know very well all the recent measurements of increasing Co2 and the T trend down.
Dr. Hansen,
Could you please provide actual, empirical, evidence that Man’s CO2 is the cause of your observed climate changes?
Thanks
JK
I smell desperation. It is like saying the earth is going to be struck by a large meteor. It has happened before and there is no reason to believe it will not happen again. He is simply saying that when the ice caps melt we are in trouble. Yep, I agree. The question is when and through what mechanism.
1988: ‘That bridge will be under water in 20 years.’ (ten-foot rise required).
2011, 23 years later~ ‘I said 40 years, not 20! You (the reporter) got it wrong!’ (actual sea-level rise… unnoticeable).
Is hansen young enough that we can see what he claims in 2028?
OT: Climate Realists post an analysis of the truly nutso document being prepared at Durban. Its worse than we thought!
Ø A new International Climate Court will have the power to compel Western nations to pay ever-larger sums to third-world countries in the name of making reparation for supposed “climate debt”. The Court will have no power over third-world countries. Here and throughout the draft, the West is the sole target. “The process” is now irredeemably anti-Western.
Ø “Rights of Mother Earth”: The draft, which seems to have been written by feeble-minded green activists and environmental extremists, talks of “The recognition and defence of the rights of Mother Earth to ensure harmony between humanity and nature”. Also, “there will be no commodification [whatever that may be: it is not in the dictionary and does not deserve to be] of the functions of nature, therefore no carbon market will be developed with that purpose”.
Ø “Right to survive”: The draft childishly asserts that “The rights of some Parties to survive are threatened by the adverse impacts of climate change, including sea level rise.” At 2 inches per century, according to eight years’ data from the Envisat satellite? Oh, come off it! The Jason 2 satellite, the new kid on the block, shows that sea-level has actually dropped over the past three years.
Ø War and the maintenance of defence forces and equipment are to cease – just like that – because they contribute to climate change. There are other reasons why war ought to cease, but the draft does not mention them.
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=8807
@Willis,
Not only that, even if you assume .* degree, it is in 130 years. My grade school math cannot make it a rate of more than .1 degree per decade, need Hansenian PhD
There has been no statistically significant warming for the last decade. I can’t believe my taxes are paying this guy’s salary.
I have a horrid feeling that Hansen et al. got the answer then discovered the results to suit. Or am I being too cynical?
Irresponsible ‘communication’. Jimmy Boy, nobody’s listening any more. You’ve painted yourself into a corner. Wait for it to dry and surrender your brush.
The change of tone is interesting. Wasn’t the original argument that anything above 2C would be ‘dangerous’ to the planet? Now that the long term trend is closer to 1C per 100 years, this amount of warming must therefore be dangerous. But it’s already warmed by almost 1C and nothing bad has happened – in fact things have got a little better.
“Hansen said the paleoclimate record suggests that every degree Celsius of global temperature rise will ultimately equate to 20 meters of sea level rise.”
OK, we’ve had .8C in 100 or so years. When is the 16 meters of sea level rise supposed to happen? Is it still “in the pipeline” ?
Hansen has alwas been, let’s say, Imaginative, when it comes to previous interglacial. As a matter of fact it is rather difficult to find any place on Earth where the Eemian wasn’t more than one degree warmer than the present.
The Greenland and Antarctic icecores which are otherrwise treated with the utmost reverence by Hansen shows that the temperatures were about 5 degrees warmer than at present, but ice losses were moderate.
Think about it, do you think that a 1 degree higher temperature would be enough for:
– hippopotamus in Yorkshire
– water buffaloes on the Rhine
– monkeys in Bavaria
– capybaras in Florida
– forests on the arctic coast of Siberia
all of which happened during the last interglacial
The only source seems to be to quote Hansen. Talk about a circular argument. The skilled amateurs that post on this website do much more rigorous analysis than anything that has been done here. It must be the models telling Hansen there is a problem because I am not seeing any observational data being offered for review or cross-examination.
One can show that Hansen is right.
All one has to do is throw out all the historical climate data and then make-up some new ones that show 4.2C per doubling of CO2. While that might not appear to be appropriate at first glance, it is done in the field all the time and is, thus, acceptable for publication / presentation at conferences.
GISS show Africa as one of the fastest warming places, yet have virtually no reliable thermometers to tell them. Yet satellites show warming there is much lower.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/giss-temperatures-in-africa-bear-no-resemblance-to-reality/
I’ll put my tin hat on for when the sky falls.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7RIgs3eygo&feature=related
I suppose It depends on where you look and how the data is interpreted. Thats why I believe the science is a long way from being settled. Here’s some CET average data since 1970 showing variance. Although it’s only 40 odd years some of the records show pretty marked increases, one possibly equals tenth per decade, most don’t. But only one at present shows a fall., Maybe Mr.Hansen has data which show a more dramatic rise?
’71-’00 average N-W tracker
January 4.2C 4.15°C
February 4.2C 6.97°C
March 6.3C 7.2°C
April 8.1C 12.42°C
May 11.3C 12.91°C
June 14.1C 14.76°C
July 16.5C 16.03°C
August 16.2C 16.12°C
September 13.7C 15.71°C
October 10.4C 13.02°C
November 6.9C 9.94°C
December 5.1C 6.2°C
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Most probable: Humans at GISS will lose their jobs when this agency goes underwater. 🙂
But would the rise of one degree celsius ’til 2100 cause anything at all?
It’s all about believing in fairy tales or not. I do not!
The overal temperature of the troposhere and stratosphere (TTS) has increased from 1987 to date at -0.0001 K/decade. /sarc
‘is not too far removed from the temperatures Earth could reach this century on a “business as usual” trajectory.’
Firstly I am not sure the term ‘far removed from’ actual means it has no scientific value , while I thought Dr Dooms ‘trajectories’ had already proved to be nonsense in reality.
But its models all the way as usual , powered of course by the religions fever of the high priest of AGW , at least he seems to have learnt one thing , don’t make your ‘deadlines of doom’ to close becasue when it does not happen you end up looking like a dam scaremonger fool. Or in this case like a bigger dam scaremonger fool.
“It hasn’t warmed a tenth of a degree in the last decade, that’s nonsense.”
That’s clear. Yet, another nonense but also probably a true assertion.
The nonsense : “…the Earth’s average global surface temperature has already risen .8 degrees Celsius since 1880…”
The probably true assertion : “…warming of 2 degrees Celsius would lead to drastic changes…”.
I’m surprised that skeptics are not more interested in this aspect. According to CRUTEM3, many parts of the earth are supposed to have warmed by 2 ° C since 1880. This would correspond for instance to an elevation of isotherms of about 400 m. This is in complete contradiction with all observations.
Humans have overwhelmed the natural, slow changes that occur on geologic timescales
Here humans have dismally failed to overwhelm the natural – solar cycle.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSN-T.htm
How much of the 4-6 metres sea level rise was due to glacioisostatic effects? In Australia interglacial sea levels were only 2m.AMSL..
willis
“These guys can’t even tell a believable lie. It hasn’t warmed a tenth of a degree in the last decade, that’s nonsense.”
============
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/mean:12/plot/uah/trend/plot/uah/from:2003/trend/plot/uah/from:1997.5/trend/plot/uah/from:2001/trend
over 30 years >0.1K/decade
over cherry picked last 10 years perhaps half that
Since we aren’t driving the temps up as fast as he previously predicted, he must now lower the temperature at which catastrophy will be unavoidable. Disprove one statement and another is waved about to prove that it is “Worse Than We Thought!” We are in the age of Yeah, but…
Peter Taylor says:
December 9, 2011 at 2:30 am
What is so annoying is the way that the left-liberal-green press only ever report Hansen’s opinions thus inflating the carbon currency bubble.
I think the carbon cred bubble burst a year ago. The theory is dead, but hasn’t stopped moving yet. That’s what chicken littles do with their head cut off…
I did not expect Hansen to say anything else.
However, 7 billion people will have an effect on the planet, that is unavoidable. Whether the effect of 7 billion people will be a disaster, is quite another matter.
From 1880 to 2009 is 130 years, 13 decades.
0.8°C / 13 decades = 0.06°C/decade
So after 130 years at an average rate of only 0.06°C/decade, from here on out, with no changes in carbon emission trends, the rate is now nearly doubled to “more than .1 degree Celsius every decade.” Wow, quite a change.
Let’s look at the NOAA-NCDC Annual Global (land and ocean combined) Anomalies (°C):
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/annual.land_ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat
I’ll do a quick figuring of decade-based rates of change. Ex: Sum of anomalies 1890-9 minus sum for 1880-9, divide by 10 years, result °C/decade.
1890's-1880's -0.09
1900's-1890's -0.05
1910's-1900's +0.01
1920's-1910's +0.12
1930's-1920's +0.15
1940's-1930's +0.09
1950's-1940's -0.07
1960's-1950's +0.05
1970's-1960's +0.02
1980's-1970's +0.17
1990's-1980's +0.16
2000's-1990's +0.17
Average rate, 0.06°C/decade.
So three values of cooling to no great increase, three values of warming where 0.1°C/decade was broken twice and almost reached once, then three values of cooling to no great increase, followed by three values of warming significantly greater than 0.1°C/decade.
So Hansen’s “catastrophic” rate of warming has been broken before the late 20th century “great anthropogenic warming.” And if one can justify seeing cyclic trends in those rates, the next three will be cooling to no great increase.
Of course we’ve now suddenly achieved the Brave New World of Unprecedented Anthropogenic Influence, so who really knows what will happen. After all, if we all work together very very hard, we can bend an entire planet’s climate to our will. Heck, according the Hansen we’ve done it without even trying.
The alarmists are getting more and more alarmed about the lack of real reasons for anyone to be alarmed.
Not often I find two comments posted together with completely different points of view, but here they are:
Now if you compare the graphs from the two links you’ll see strong evidence in the first that there’s warming, but did you notice the source?
I’d stick with the second graph ’cause I’ve got a strong hunch the first has been “adjusted” to meet political expediency.
Really? A drastic increase? Perhaps if one ignored available data. Ignoring the fact that the resolution of CO2 determination before the start of actual measurement (by Pettenkofer, etc) is very poor and that the proxies used to provide estimates inherently average out peaks and troughs. There is no decadal resolution in CO2 data before the 1800’s.
It’s way too late to send Hansen a copy of this.
Maybe others will take note.
Willis Eschenbach says:
December 9, 2011 at 2:01 am
“My favorite line was:
Based on Hansen’s temperature analysis work at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the Earth’s average global surface temperature has already risen .8 degrees Celsius since 1880, and is now warming at a rate of more than .1 degree Celsius every decade.
These guys can’t even tell a believable lie. It hasn’t warmed a tenth of a degree in the last decade, that’s nonsense.
w.”
Stawman, Hansen doesn’t claim that it has warmed a tenth of a degree in the last decade, a decadal rate of change refers to the mean and that is not required to be met in every decade to be true (see here, many of the decades fail to meet the 0.1°C yet the decadal rate of warming over the entire period is undoubtably 0.1°C).
Peter Dunford says:
December 9, 2011 at 2:48 am
“The map is completely misleading.”
Of course it is…and intentionally so. All part of the corruption that is GISS climate “science”.
As for Hansen [sigh]…just the same old same old. I predict he retires next year after the progressives/liberals are soundly defeated in the U.S. elections.
I’ve found an stunning correlation between Hansen and this:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/09/nasa_loses_its_moon_rocks/
hmmm. Back in the Pliocene era conditions changed rather dramatically from warm and wet land surrounded by sloppy oceans to cold and dry land surrounded by shrinking oceans. Animals changed from a majority of methane producing animals devouring all that vegitation to omnivores and meat eaters devouring all those herbavores. What did it take to change conditions back then? Was Mother Earth overly sensitive to all that methane? Nope. Wasn’t even bothered by the smell. Continents crashed together, changing oceanic circulation, building ice at the poles, lowering sea levels and exposing land bridges, causing even more isolated oceaning conditions leading to even more ice formations. Sensitive Earth? Not much.
I tell you what. Wake me up when CO2 causes continents to crash together.
…or pull apart, opening back up that good ol’ warm water to meander about as it wishes.
James Hansen, PhD = Piled Higher & Deeper – Somebody open a window, it’s beginning to smell in here.
@Willis – “It hasn’t warmed a tenth of a degree in the last decade, that’s nonsense.”
I would suggest that neither you, nor I, not Dr Hansen know whether the temperature has risen 0.1°C. Do we really have measurements to that accuracy?
The Eemian is the most interesting paleo-period and worth a look closer: From 128 BP to 117 BP there were 5 temperature cycles, 2200 years each (1100 years temp rising, followed by 1100 years falling temps) with an amazing global temp amplitude (warming,cooling) of more than 6 C !!
This would give Hansen the opportunity to demonstrate how the CO2-content correlates and drives global warming/global cooling….!
Please some Warmist should present the CO2-contents for the Eemian and prove the Warmist CO2 assumption…..!
Hanson completely omits CO2 as driver…..why? Only talk of sea levels, ice melting and temps without details of this amazing climate see saw and how the CO2 content is involved….
….and while he does not even mention a CO2 see saw (what are the values? Anybody knows?) and the CO2 content -to temp relation (how is it?)…. we should be compelled to reduce CO2 emissions…..
In order to understand Hansen’s opposition to 2-deg warming, it is first necessary to understand this: The amount of warming acceptable to him is not based on his estimate of the (predicted) consequences of that warming. It is based on what will justify his agenda. Warming of any quantity will not do it. It is the predicted apocalyptic events that provide the required justification. In order to justify his agenda, it is necessary to predict that those events will result from whatever quantity of warming is generally accepted as likely.
Peter Taylor says at 9 dec 11 2:30 am
The same media does the same to most reports or just doesn’t report them. The lack of media attention on “fast and Furious” is a good example.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2001/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/plot/gistemp/from:2001/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/trend
So here is that 0.1deg C per decade of man-made warming..
If I am not mistaken, CO2 was much greater (more than 2x) than now in those previous warmer periods. This indicates much less sensitivity of climate to CO2 than speculated by Hansen and IPCC. It is amazing that he calls attention to previous warmer eras, which occurred in the virtual absence of human influence, and still claims current warming is unprecedented. Finally, if temperature has increased 0.8 degrees since 1890 and 1 degree = 4-6 Meters of increase in sea level, shouldn’t we have seen more than we have by now? Of course, he has learned to give himself some latitude by saying it may take centuries for this to occur. I doubt there is any observational basis for this, it just makes predictions convenient, because they cannot be disproved within the predictor’s lifetime.
I’m surprised that no one else pointed this out:
Notice the cherry-picked baseline period, 1950-1980, which was the cool cycle of the mid-1900s. This sort of cherry-picking was epidemic in warmist literature up until the skeptics called them on it. I haven’t seen such blatant cherry-picking of a baseline in probably five years. Formerly it was starting a graph in either 1900 or 1970, at or near the low points of the last two cooling periods.
Perhaps that is because Hansen has been relatively quiet.
And perhaps this is a reaction to Climategate 2.0 and all application of the PR-spin advice the Team got after Climategate 1.0.
Of course, we skeptics could use the 1910-1940 warming period as a baseline and show the 1950-1980 period as “proving” that CO2 doesn’t have any effect whatsoever. That is, IF we had a governmental agency at our disposal for press releases.
So, essentially, even a minute geological disturbance could catastrophically change the climate. Like for instance a ginormous, to human standards, earth quake that change the rotational speed of the planet, or its axis, or say land rise, shifting oceans, and all those other natural stuff that happens beneath the crust of a living planet.
But this time a around it has to be the present of man, not his statistical models. O.o
As science fiction humour goes, it’s not a patch on Robert Sheckley or Douglas Adams. Don’t give up your day job, Dr. Hansen.
Oh, wait …
Hansen says that we had 0.8C warming from 1880 until now. If I look at the graphs, such as http://i39.tinypic.com/o8t8qg.jpg that Bob Tisdale posted, I see that the “average” temperature was 0.2C below our baseline in 1880 (with HUGE error bars), and by 1940 or so the temperature had risen to 0.2C above the baseline. This is a time when we were emitting little CO2 compared to today.
If 0.4C of the warming was pre-1940, and therefore probably not all CO2 related (if any) then maybe we can only consider the rest of the warming from 1940 to 2012 to be CO2 caused? What’s average temperature today? I believe it’s somewhere between 0.4C and 0.6C, if you use the range indicated by the graph, with an average being around 0.5C. This is if you trust the temperatures presented by GISS, which include the ironic adjustments that actually raise temperatures. I personally feel the GISS temperatures are high, but let’s use them anyway.
From 1940 or so at 0.2C through this year’s 0.5C is three tenths of a degree of warming in only 72 years. That’s a whopping 0.042C warming per decade. Everybody panic!
If we consider a shorter time period, say 1962 though this year, we still have just 0.1C per decade of warming. The only way we EVER get an alarming rate of warming that is correlated with high CO2 emissions is if we consider very short timescales and make sure to include the 1979 to 1998 time period. If we compare 1880 to 1940 we have a high rate of warming with a low rate of CO2 rise, if we compare 1940 to 1980 we have a very low rate of warming with a higher rate of CO2 rise, and if we look at the 12 years of highest rate of CO2 emissions ever recorded, we find no rise in temperature.
Yes, it’s true that in the decade post 2000 the temperatures were higher than the decade pre-2000, but what does that really mean? In this case, it just means that all of the temperature rise was in the decade pre-2000 and the temperatures have not fallen back. So many people are saying “the decade after is higher than the decade before” as if that indicates that it’s still going up. Bullshit, it doesn’t work that way.
If a child grows until his 19th birthday, then stops growing, someone cannot come back when he’s 27 and claim he’s still growing at an alarming rate because “his average height in his twenties was higher than his average height in his teens.”
Sorry, long post. To sum up, more than half of the “warming” was pre-1940, when manmade CO2 was 80% less than it is today. If CO2 does contribute to warming, it’s only responsible for a small portion of the 0.4C of that early rise. If we are responsible for ALL of the post 1940 rise (which I doubt), then all of our CO2 since 1940 is only responsible for 0.3C of warming. This give a lie to Hansen’s entire line for reasoning.
They, including Hansen, continue to make predictions that don’t come true. Then, they follow these with more shrill predictions that don’t come true.
They remind me of the religious loons who, based on some new interpretation of the Bible, keep predicting a date when the world will end. It never does, but they keep trying.
Could someone please tell me what planet Earth Hansen lives on? It most certainly not the same one I’m on! Short of all out nuclear war, Man’s overall impact is negligible. Looking at something that recently occurred on a relatively small scale, the Northwest recovered fairly quickly after Mount St. Helens. On a larger scale, the Earth seems to have recovered fairly well after whatever it was that occurred about 65 million years ago. Those are two examples of how resilient planet Earth is. To this planet, we really don’t count.
Will said: “These guys can’t even tell a believable lie. It hasn’t warmed a tenth of a degree in the last decade, that’s nonsense.”
Well Willis, it hasn’t but everywhere Hansen doesn’t have any data his models say temps are going through the roof. Not a believable lie, except it gives cover to lame brain journalists and politicians. And he can measure global temps to within .1 degree to demonstrate that the last decade was the hottest ever recorded……well at least warmer than the decades that Hansen adjusted the temps down for. But anyway saving the planet requires that the ends justify the means.
Hansen is wrong
Until the 1990’s, it was thought that climate changed slowly, over the course of centuries.
When ice cores were studied, the shock came that climate changed dramatically over very short time periods: within 10 years.
tty says:
December 9, 2011 at 4:07 am
Think about it, do you think that a 1 degree higher temperature would be enough for:
– hippopotamus in Yorkshire
– water buffaloes on the Rhine
– monkeys in Bavaria
– capybaras in Florida
– forests on the arctic coast of Siberia
all of which happened during the last interglacial
Not forgetting the contents of the stomachs and gullets of the flash frozen Mammoths in northern Siberia that belong to this interglacial, just prior to the Younger Dryas…
Kevin MacDonald says:
“Stawman, Hansen doesn’t claim that it has warmed a tenth of a degree in the last decade, a decadal rate of change refers to the mean and that is not required to be met in every decade to be true.
So, “now” doesn’t have to include the last and current decade? How many decades of a different rate does it take for the decadal rate to be in question? How many years of divergence is required before the entire CO2 driven global average temperature hypothesis is declared worthless?
IMO, it is inherently dishonest to claim an average rate over a long time span is happening “now” as opposed to happened even if it were not stalled, to say it’s happening is a statement of faith not science, and zohnerism.
This Geologist is embarrassed by such foolishness. This is not science and shows no true understanding of geologic time either. The ancients called it Metaphysics, the moderns call it Cosmology. You can call it anything you can get away with except science.
If temperatures have risen so much, please explain why for the past 10 years we have had the best skiing in the past 50 years in the pacific northwest. The only poor year was the 2008, when it rained solid for 2 months Jan-Feb which warmed things up. 50 years ago we got rained out much more often than now.
It seems much more likely that temperatures have risen where thermometers are located, which seems likely as they tend to located where people are using energy, land and water, which cannot help but have some effect.
As far as the changes being unusual, there is no way for Hansen to demonstrate this is true. There are no proxies as sensitive as thermometers which we can compare to thermometers. It is an apples to oranges comparison.
We do know from the paleo records than temperature swings greater than 2C have occurred over periods that may be as short as a few decades, but it is hard to know this with confidence. The paleo temperature proxies simply don’t have that sort of time resolution.
“same-o, same-o”
I think you mean “same old”, as in “same old stuff, nothing new”.
Anthony,
After reading the 9 December 2011 post, I was struck by the similarity to Harold Camping’s prediction and response. I thought, what if this James E. Hansen is really a smart guy, and a good guy, but feels his impending mortality so strongly that he is projecting it into his work. So I asked “my friend” google about “doomsday prediction mortality psychology”. Among the responses was “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_cult”.
Social scientists have found that while some group members will leave after the date for a doomsday prediction by the leader has passed uneventfully, others actually feel their belief and commitment to the group strengthened.[27] Often when a group’s doomsday prophesies or predictions fail to come true, the group leader will simply set a new date for impending doom, or predict a different type of catastrophe on a different date.[27] Niederhoffer and Kenner attribute this motivation of the charismatic leader to maintain a consistent belief structure as due to a desire to save sunk cost: “When you have gone far out on a limb and so many people have followed you, and there is much “sunk cost,” as economists would say, it is difficult to admit you have been wrong.”[28] In Experiments With People: Revelations from Social Psychology, Abelson, Frey and Gregg explain this further: “..continuing to proselytize on behalf of a doomsday cult whose prophecies have been disconfirmed, although it makes little logical sense, makes plenty of psychological sense if people have already spent months proselytizing on the cult’s behalf. Persevering allows them to avoid the embarrassment of how wrong they were in the first place.”[29] The common-held belief in a catastrophic event occurring on a future date can have the effect of ingraining followers with a sense of uniqueness and purpose.[27][30] In addition, after a failed prophesy members may attempt to explain the outcome through rationalization and dissonance reduction.[21][31][32] Explanations may include stating that the group members had misinterpreted the leader’s original plan, that the cataclysmic event itself had been postponed to a later date by the leader, or that the activities of the group itself had forestalled disaster.[21] In the case of the Festinger study, when the prophecy of a cataclysmic flood was proved false, the members pronounced that their faith in God had prevented the event.[24] They then proceeded to attempt to convert new members with renewed strength.[24]
Notice any similarities? Maybe one of your readers can shed some more light on the subject, however it seems to me that the discussion may have moved from hard science to the ephemeral stuff of belief. Perhaps John Lofland at UC Davis can explain what may be happening?
1. Temperature in central Greenland
Column 1: Age (thousand years before present)
Column 2: Temperature in central Greenland (degrees C)
Age Temperature (C)
0.0951409 -31.5913
7.74695 -29.1532
Last reading about 100 years ago? So now about 30.5913.
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt
“P Wilson says:
December 9, 2011 at 7:23 am
Hansen is wrong. Until the 1990′s, it was thought that climate changed slowly, over the course of centuries. When ice cores were studied, the shock came that climate changed dramatically over very short time periods: within 10 years.”
Hansen got his degree before the 1990’s. He is believes what he was taught. The error must be in the new study, not in his beliefs.
Hansen has overwhelmed the natural slow changes in science that occur on a rational timescale.
================
Question from a Fine Arts Major.
Why are RSS and UAH lower trop global so different?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/mean:12/plot/rss/from:2001/trend/plot/uah/from:2001/trend
How are we doing on Hansen’s other famous prediction? Is the water over the highway outside his office? In 20+ years can anyone in NY see any difference?
Anyone can make predictions. There is no shortage of quack theories. What is the difference between AGW and Relativity? AGW on occasion can be shown to be right. Relativity has never been shown to be wrong. I have a broken watch that has on occasion been shown to be right. Does that make it any good for determining what time it is?
It isn’t the number of times a theory is shown to be right that is important. Any theory that has been shown to be wrong ONE TIME is a failed theory. Current temperatures, especially Argo and the satellites, which are largely outside of Hansen’s control, have shown AGW is not correct. The model projections completely missed the mark post 2000.
GISS temperatures are going up because Hansen expects them to and he is controlling the experiment. It is called the experimenter-expectation effect. It is well known outside of climate science. When Columbus sailed to discover a new route to India, he discovered Indians.
Steve Garcia says:
December 9, 2011 at 7:02 am
I’m surprised that no one else pointed this out:
The average global surface temperature of Earth has risen by .8 degrees Celsius since 1880, and is now increasing at a rate of about .1 degree Celsius per decade. This image shows how 2010 temperatures compare to average temperatures from a baseline period of 1951-1980, as analyzed by scientists at NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Credit: NASA GISS
Notice the cherry-picked baseline period, 1950-1980, which was the cool cycle of the mid-1900s.
—
No, this wasn’t cherry-picked. You see, the period 1950-1980 corresponds to the childhood and young adult periods of most of these climate scientists’ lives. And, as they remember those days, they were the ideal climate period for ALL of human history! Our climate CAN NOT GET ANY BETTER THAN THAT WHICH WE HAD FROM 1950 – 1980!! That is why it is considered the “norm”. Anything different is “anomalous”. And “anomalous” is BAD! Right? And humans MUST now adopt insane sacrifices* to put our climate back to the halcyon days of 1950 – 1980. That’s what Durban is all about…
* Please remember that sacrifices do NOT apply to climate scientists, particularly their research and travel budgets, modes of transportation, salaries, benefits, and other forms of income, all of which generally obtained by taxation of the commoners.
How many large grass land warm blooded aminals where on planet earth say about 40,000 years ago. How many trees, how many things in the seas. All of them giving off their fair share of CO2.
Compare and Contrast those numbers with we later day warm blooded aminals even together with the boost of fosil fuels.
Why is there not evidence of “warm blooded Billions and Billions of aminals” causeing a “WBB&BoA” global warming event in the climate records.
There CO2 grant seekers an new line to cash idea.
David Chamness says:December 9, 2011 at 7:12 am
Exactly correct. Did you work in Ft. Collins, CO in the 80s, making ICs? I knew a fellow there of the same name back then.
Regardless of what many eminent people think the peak sea-level of the `last interglacial`/MIS 5e or 5.5, ~ 124 ka is not known definitively. Insufficient attention has been paid to short and long term tectonics driven by variability in Earth`s mantle which means that the geological evidence for that sea-level may be found at different elevations above or below present sea-level
He is a coyote howling at the moon. President Obama and everyone in government should be deeply embarrassed.
From Hansen’s political perspective, he is running up a trial balloon to see who among the media will bite. If someone bites, he will begin a new howl.
The whole thing is beneath contempt.
Pamela Gray says:
December 9, 2011 at 6:26 am
And, pray tell, how does that water warm?
Would someone PLEASE put some clothes on the naked man. GK
Peter Dunford says:
December 9, 2011 at 2:48 am
The map is completely misleading. The surface of the earth isn’ t a rectangle and that red band at the top is infilled from the hottest stations the can find 2,500 miles away. Made up data is exaggerated by the shape of the map.
I completely agree.
Anthony- would it be possible to produce a map that is not based on a Mercator projection a small globe or conic projection to that the actual area of ‘claimed’ warmer than normal is shown to be as small as it is?
Kevin MacDonald says:
December 9, 2011 at 6:11 am
Stawman, Hansen doesn’t claim that it has warmed a tenth of a degree in the last decade, a decadal rate of change refers to the mean and that is not required to be met in every decade to be true (see here, many of the decades fail to meet the 0.1°C yet the decadal rate of warming over the entire period is undoubtably 0.1°C).
Well, try adding in a few more 10-year series (i.e. add in 200-2009, 2001-2010, 202-2011) and see how things look… well, who’d have believed it 🙂
He must keep the alarmist song going to keep that million dollar a year extra income going.
“At the current rate of fossil fuel burning, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will have doubled from pre-industrial times by the middle of this century.”
“Fossil fuel burning is now causing carbon dioxide concentrations to increase at two parts per million per year.”
In my opinion, the above two statements contradict each other .
At the present time, we are at 390 ppm and if it is increasing by 2 ppm each year, in order for it to double from 280 to 560, it would take another 170 ppm. At the present rate, this would be another 85 years, or to the year 2096.
I keep hoping to wake up and this insanity is just a bad dream… And to the above reference to the Muppet’s, just how many people have their hands crammed up the backside of Hanson making him talk?
Hansen’s surface global temperatures can’t be trusted at all, when they especially can’t even get the UK correct with some of the best stations around in the world going back centuries.
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/609067main1_earth-temperature226.jpg
Shows warming throughout the UK during 2010 with Hansen’s cooked data above.
Below, even using the 1961-1990 average, UK Met Office shows temperatures below the average almost everywhere for the year 2010.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/anomacts/2010/17/2010_17_MeanTemp_Anomaly_1961-1990.gif
or
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/anomacts/2010/17/2010_17_MeanTemp_Anomaly_1971-2000.gif
This below average year in the UK for 2010 is shown up even more using a closer 1971-2000 average.
The year for the UK during 2010 was a particularly cold one and the first sub 9.0c mean for the CET too in a while. Yet in the image from Hansen for 2010 looks like the UK was sweltering. There is no way data from this man can be trusted at all over recent years.
Why is GISS, Hansen’s playground, still receiving taxpayers funding for his fantasy climate predictions? The man ought to be tossed out on his butt for publishing garbage.
What has happened over the past decade?
As a retired physics teacher, let me try to explain it this way. I will define displacement and velocity in the process. Displacement is the change in position. So if you started at sea level and climbed to the top of Mount Everest, your displacement would be 29,029 feet up. Now suppose you rapidly reached the top in 1998 and then started to slowly walk down at the rate of 10 feet per year. Velocity is the rate of change of position. So in this example, the velocity is 10 feet per year down. Now if you walked down for 12 years, your velocity would be down, even though you would still be very high up during those 12 years.
It is perfectly possible to be high up (eight of the hottest years), and at the same time be going down (or possibly cooling in our analogy).
By the way, according to the HADCRUT3 record, 1998 was the warmest year and 2011 so far, to the end of October, it is the 11th warmest. See: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt
Also note that RSS shows a negative slope from March 1997.
During the last glacial maximum, Greenland had almost no ice. Apparently, it was lost during the Eemian. Almost all the current ice cap formed after the Younger Dryas. To be clear, the ice thickness increased as both the temperature and sea levels increased.
Perhaps warm oceans produce more snow.
Just in time for Durban. What do you mean you’re the only one who is allowed to make that insinuation of motive of timing?
Robert Clemenzi says:
December 9, 2011 at 10:12 am
Have no idea where you got that idea from because Greenland ice cores from different regions all go back at least 100,000’s of years. The longest recent ice core went back to around 840,000 years, so these show there was plenty of ice well before the Younger Dryas.
Bond events?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_event
Ian W says:
December 9, 2011 at 9:12 am
Peter Dunford says:
December 9, 2011 at 2:48 am
“Anthony- would it be possible to produce a map that is not based on a Mercator projection . . . “
Actually, these maps are based on a Miller-Cylindrical projection, a modified Mercator. At least I think that is the case. Anyway, the colors and map base are not Anthony’s work and they have been commented on many times. Visit the NASA GISS pages and see if they don’t offer a few others closer to your liking. Or produce your own.
Regular readers of WUWT think of these maps as bad cartoons – just as extreme as poley bears dropping out of the sky on to an urban scene or splats of bright red children exploding in a classroom.
I think I am going to hurl.
“…Hansen suggests the potential for rapid climate changes…”
I MAY be terribly concerned about the contingent possible suggested potential, IF I have nothing else to concern myself with, AND given the suggested alleged implied possiblity of MAYBE, IF trusthansen > throwhansen
Jeff Alberts says:
December 9, 2011 at 7:52 am
=====
“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.” — Theodore Roosevelt
Greg Holmes says:
December 9, 2011 at 2:49 am
“…
Why does my left knee still ache when its cold?”
no, no, no. Man Made global warming…it is getting cold because your knee hurts, your knee doesn’t hut because it is cold. What we must do is get your knee to stop hurting so it will be warm again…
Werner Brozek says:
December 9, 2011 at 9:49 am
Hansen could not do arithmetic so he took up statistics.
Paul Homewood
Dec 9, 2011 at 4:14 am
Thanks for the pointer. It might interest you to know that coastal West Africa, at least near the equator, was cooler than normal this summer. A number of people there remarked on this. It certainly didn’t seem extraordinarily hot to me.
If anyone is wondering why I was comparing 1961-1990 data with 1951-1980 is because it is easily available and there is only 0.1c difference between the periods with the CET for example. (0.04c difference between Hadley (0.26c) and GISS (0.30c)
CET 1951-1980 9.4c
CET 1961-1990 9.5c
Problem:The warming is not going as expected even with the adjustments and dirty tricks, Solution: lover the level of the safe temp.
This is strong indication that Hansen thinks global temperatures will not rise like the models have shown and expects a much lower rise like the sceptics using real life observations have proposed. Therefore the only possible solution to continue the alarm in his mind is to lower the temperature range that could be bad for humans. Clearly the science doesn’t at all support CAGW with just temperature increases less than 2c.
Hadley shows a maximum temperature range during the data set between warm periods of only 0.6c, not 0.8c claim from Hansen. Though GISS doesn’t display global temperature from a warmer earlier period like Hadley does. (was this done for the cause?)
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/hadcrut3gl/from:1998/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1998/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1998/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/to:1998/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/to:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1934/to:1980/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1934/to:1980/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1905/to:1934/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1905/to:1934/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1880/to:1905/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1880/to:1905/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from/to:1880/plot/hadcrut3gl/from/to:1880/trend
…would someone please wake me up when Hansen is done talking? Thank you, CRS, DrPH
Back in August 2009, just before Copenhagen I wrote a letter to the Times of London about the Pine island glacier: which for a wonder they published if somewhat edited.
The old editor had been open to solid reasoned argument but the new editor was resolutely green, and has succeeded so well as to turn a once great newspaper into a comic: and behind a paywall too even if you buy the dead tree version. Unless of course you buy by subscription from them. Nobody does.
Frankly if I want a comic I would rather have the Daily Mail which does it much better, indeed sometimes remarkably so.
But then the new Greenie editor of the Economist has also turned it into a propaganda leaflet and am I going to pay for that balderdash?
Forgive me I digress.
Anyway I wrote to the London Times, something I used to do quite often but never bother nowadays, and for a wonder they published my letter albeit heavily edited but without changing the sense too much.
That supposed newspaper had then been recently full of the imagined melting of glaciers in the Antarctic peninsula even with a leader [editorial] about this saying it showed global warming.
The point I made was the Antarctic peninsula is an active volcanic region and the Pine Island glacier, so beloved of Hansen et al, sits directly above a currently erupting volcano. There is little to say about this other than ice, however thick, above such a major source of geothermal heat will tend to melt: and from underneath too so producing the observed flow of water beneath it.
The behaviour of it and its adjacent glaciers have little or nothing to do with supposed global warming and everything to do with sitting atop a chain of volcanoes.
Since we know so little about volcanic activity in the peninsula, and perhaps further inland, there is no way of predicting what might happen.
Which does not stop Hansen et al trying to do so without apparently even understanding the underlying forces involved.
Kindest Regards
The GRACE record is too short to confirm this with great certainty; however, the trend in the past few years does not rule it out, Hansen said.
Well, that’s me sold. Meanwhile in other news, my own scientifically baseless projections show me to become an eccentric multi-millionaire by the year 2020. My past salary record is too piss poor to confirm this with great certainty; however, the trend in the sales of Penny Farthings in the past few years doesn’t rule it out.
janama says:
December 9, 2011 at 2:35 am
can some one over there take this man to dinner and fix his head?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Perhaps we could get Charlie the Tuna to take him out to dinner. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_El2_enNFaI
Consider for just a moment the number of known factors of planet-wide “climate” .
Consider the unknown ones-thats much harder as theyre “unknowns”.
Then consider that these climate soothsayers tell us they can predict the climate based on a limited number of known factors.
Then finally, consider the arrogance, the sheer hubris of these carbon cowboys as they claim they can “fix” it all just by paying attention to one aspect of the climates insurmountably complex and unpredicatable “dna”.
All without any due consideration to factors that as of yet that remain unknown.
Fixing it without knowing why its broke, how its broke, In actual fact, fixing it until it IS broke!
They might as well blame it all on the fairies.
In the uk, they have a comedian/magician called Paul Daniels, whose tagline was:
“Now thats magic”.
For these lot, climate dynamics, function and operation might just as well be like one of Mr Daniels parlour tricks, because the solution totally eludes them.
@jim Karlack. “Could you please provide actual, empirical, evidence that Man’s CO2 is the cause of your observed climate changes?”
EXACTLY! In ’07 I saw that Gore & the ipcc had been mistruthing about the ice cores & the non-existent CO2 temp causal relationship. Even the bs artists had to concede on the 800 year CO2 / temp lag. Subsequently, the hogwash specialists have asserted that CO2 causes “amplification” of the non-CO2 initiated warming. This is fully without foundation (evidence!) — as far as I can tell. We need to call them on that! Further, though even skeptics like Lindzen talk of a theoretical basis for the trace gas CO2 warming the atmosphere, we need ACTUAL EVIDENCE that CO2 changes climate temps. I feel like I’m crazy — but in fact I have heard of no evidence. Nada. I say: there are two key agw debunking points: 1. temps are not unusual, and 2. trace gas CO2 is not shown to be a cause (just a result) of warming.
Hey, if any “deniers” here know of evidence that CO2 causes climate scale warming, put it forward please. Cuz I don’t want to go down this road if wrong.
Jeff Alberts said on December 9, 2011 at 7:52 am:
No no, Anthony has it right for the writing style. Rhymes with and evokes “lame-o, lame-o” which is a fitting description of Hansen’s latest opus. 😉
Ian W says:
December 9, 2011 at 9:12 am
“Anthony- would it be possible to produce a map that is not based on a Mercator projection a small globe or conic projection to that the actual area of ‘claimed’ warmer than normal is shown to be as small as it is?”
Even more important is showing how it looks like without Hansen’s infamous 1200 km smoothing to show how huge the gaps are.
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/part-1-of-comparison-of-gistemp-and-uah-msu-tlt-anomalies/
I wonder if there is some age at which mandatory retirement will kick in. I believe Hansen is 70 years old already, Surely his ability to lead a dynamic organization such as GISS is taxing him, when he wants to be out in the field (leading protests and the like). I pray the next director doesn’t get named during this election year.
Willis says
These guys can’t even tell a believable lie. It hasn’t warmed a tenth of a degree in the last decade, that’s nonsense.
————-
So Willis I take it that you want people to focus on the short term trend as a predictor of future trends rather than the more robust , (against short term noise) long term trend. Is that a valid interpretation of what you are saying?
“Humans have overwhelmed the natural, slow changes that occur on geologic timescales,” Hansen said.
Why doesn’t Hansen gather together all of his disciples of CAGW and lead them to a lemming like ‘utopia’ ? Would this not be a positive contribution to restore “the natural slow changes” ?
I find the phrases “…has risen by .8 degrees Celsius since 1880…” and “increasing at a rate of about .1 degree Celsius per decade” to be written in bad form. As an engineer, I was taught to always include the leading zero before a decimal point to prevent confusion since many people will overlook this small mark. There is significantly less chance of misreading 0.8 versus .8. Plus, it emphasizes the zero and decimal point, which makes it look far less threatening. (Probably why Hansen and crew left it out in the first place).
Bill Illis says:
December 9, at 4:10 am
“One can show that Hansen is right.
All one has to do is throw out all the historical climate data and then make-up some new ones
that show 4.2C per doubling of CO2. While that might not appear to be appropriate at first glance, it is done in the field all the time and is, thus, acceptable for publication / presentation at conferences.”
* * * T.h.a.n.k. Y.o.u. f.o.r. N.o.T. J.o.k.i.n.G. * * *
People simply can not understand all this heating as described ‘abnormal’ is
u.t.t.e.r,
UTTER,
b.u.n..k.
Another place Hansen et al, @ the time, tacked on about .3, was when the Russians’ Soviet Socialist Republic fell.
When the Soviet Union fell, payrolls and means, such as government-paid phone lines, vanished.
There was no ‘back up’ – the ‘back up’ was the good will and means of the people themselves to keep sending information in. Their entire system failed, and their SOVIET UNION, COMPRISING 5,000, OF THE COLDEST SENSOR STATIONS ON EARTH, V.A.N.I.S.H.E.D.
Hansen and other unmentionable FRAUD CO-CONSPIRATORS ADDED .5 to the WORLD’S TEMP THEN, but people screamed so loud they took off .2
At least, that’s as well as I remember; the mileage of the factual truth will be slightly different, but THEY SCAMMED ON .3 THEN as well as I remember.
* * *HAPPY INDICTMENTs and a MERRY INVESTIGATION SEASON* * *
Matt G says:
December 9, 2011 at 10:33 am
Robert Clemenzi says:
December 9, 2011 at 10:12 am
Have no idea where you got that idea from because Greenland ice cores from different regions all go back at least 100,000′s of years. The longest recent ice core went back to around 840,000 years, so these show there was plenty of ice well before the Younger Dryas.
The Greenland Dye 3 ice core clearly shows (plot) that in a 2,035 meter core, the Younger Dryas is located about 1780 meters below the surface. This means that only 241 meters were deposited during the ice age, and 1,780 meters were deposited after the planet warmed. The lowest 14 meters were deposited during the Eemian (the last interglacial).
According to GISP2/GRIP Reconstructed Ages for Disturbed Bottom Sections
The oldest ice in the basal layer of GISP2 and GRIP has an age >=237 ka.
The only 840,000 year core I know of is from Antarctica. Please let me know if there is also one from Greenland.
Okay, let me get this straight. That 0.8 deg C rise of the last 130 years has caused a sea level rise of about 8 inches. But every deg. C from now on, says Hansen, “ultimately equates” to a rise of 20 meters. Uh huh.
So, is he taking the average sea level rise per degree over the whole post-glaciation period (despite the fact that the rate has been decreasing, quite naturally) and applying it to today? If so, somebody should introduce the good Dr. to basic calculus.
Do the idiots who write these articles have perception at all, or are they in on the joke?
here is a “model” to be tested:
if c=level of confidence doing predictions 0>c>1
and vu=number of unknown variables involved 0>vu>∞
and bs=probability the prediction is bs
then bs=c(1-1/(1+vu))
applied to Hansen (conviction: close to or equal 1, number of unknown variables enormous) this would mean he is talking bs – so taking most comments here as proof he talking bs I think this model is valid
how’s that for the simplest of models in climate science? 😉
I think we need a “Digging Index”. The scores would consist of ratings by experts (us) of how hard the cAGW rockstars are each digging their holes deeper. Mann and Hansen could serve as the metric, each getting a ’10’ ranking right about now, and then others as appropriate. Weekly, with graphs.
I’m sure it would highlight some fascinating dynamics!
Then he should have said “per decade” instead of “every decade.”
November’s almost in the books and it looks to be a cold one. December ditto. Then we can crow about how the media and establishment warmists had jumped the gun and spun the message of 11th warmist year (or thereabouts) two and a half months earlier. It may turn out to be the 20th warmist.
LazyTeenager says:
December 9, 2011 at 3:46 pm
That is not a valid interpretation of what I said, not in the slightest. I did not say that. I did not imply that. It is entirely your idiosyncratic interpretation.
w.
I reiterate: FIRE HANSEN!!!!!! That should be the mantra of both of the remaining GOP candidates who have a reasonable chance at the nomination. While we’re at it, Lazy Teenager should be fired, too, from his post as a troll. Lol!
It seems his timeframe of 40 years for lots of sea level rise has now gone out to 112 years (1988-2100). So far the changes are insignificant. He’d do everyone a favour if he explained why things are changing very very slowly rather than coming out with an updated timeframe. Even I can say that in 10000 yrs things will be different. He just isn’t adding much.
For those interested in the last interglacial, the Eemian, which Hansen cites, here are the numbers.
Antarctica got to about +5.0C warmer than today (for a short period) and Greenland was about +4.0C warmer than today (but we can only get partway through the Eemian in the Greenland ice cores because the ice at the bottom of the cores is too distorted and cannot be calibrated for age. There was still ice at the bottom so it did not melt out, even in the southern ice cap area, but there was probably much less glacier on Greenland and Antarctica).
CO2, by contrast, hardly changed at all through the Eemian interglacial. It was basically 270 ppm to 280 ppm.
http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/6261/eemianinterglacial.png
So the Eemian was warm, +2.0C to +2.5C globally, but it wasn’t CO2 that made it warm. Most likely, more land ice melted back and sea ice was much less than today so that less of the solar energy was reflected away from the Earth back to space and this additional solar energy got incorporated into global temperatures.
“From NASA Goddard/GISS: same-o, same-o”
Too bad. According to NASA, your future is James Hansen’s mission.
Thank gods, I am not American.
“According to NASA, your future is James Hansen’s mission.”
In case this caused some bamboozlement, the NASA webpage carrying the news statement says “Your future. Our mission” in the banner.
Also, of course, I’d love to be an American, if I were filthy rich.
Robert Clemenzi says:
December 9, 2011 at 4:33 pm
http://mc-computing.com/qs/Global_Warming/Icecore_Data/Greenland-Dye3.html
The bottom layers of the glacier are lost eventually forever via icebergs and extreme pressure at the bottom forming super cooled liquid water. The data does support an increased build-up of ice after the Younger Dryas, but this doesn’t point towards that there was only 200m+ during the major ice age at the time. The current 1000m of ice at the top of the glacier with another 1000m above would have compacted about 5-10 fold. Greenland can only support so much ice because it is limited in land mass and the rest is lost especially via icebergs.
Shows the approx accumulation of ice during around the Younger Dryas
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/alley2000/alley2000.gif
Evidence shows that the most Greenland ice was still there despite only 200m+ found in the ice cores because below shows the approx sea levels at the time.
http://coastalchange.ucsd.edu/images/glacialsnewest2.jpg
If one tenth of the glacier was only around in Greenland before the Younger Dryas then sea levels after would have shown much lower rises in levels then the data shows, in fact should have shown a decline. The sea level would have to lower around 6.3m during the build up of this glacier since.
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/images/fig_hist_1.jpg
The 840,000 year core is the one based at Antarctica and the main reason why these are significantly different in size is mainly due to the limitation of land mass. Added this one to show that there was a lot of ice well before on the planet and at the time older ice would have been lost via carving or super cooled water throughout an 800,000+ year period.
My estimations to lose all old ice via icebergs and super cooled water alone are around 120,000 years for Greenland and about 855,000 years for Antarctica. This period is likely how long it takes to lose this mass taking into account no further snowfall was added and roughly the same pressure changes if there were normal extra snowfalls and temperature remained similar during these long periods.
The GAGW folks are not really concerned about co2 levels. IF they were, they would be shouting to have most of our elec coming from nuclear sources. There is enough nuclear material to substain elec production for approx 1,000 years.
Most of the GAGW folks don’t even realize that they are being duped and used a pawns in a large game of further wealth creation of the present wealthy.
Should we try to reduce co2 emissions? Of course we should. Should this come from government? Of course it shouldn’t. People can and should be responsable for their lives because of their moral fortitude.
Tiz a sad day in the world when so many are so duped by so few.
LazyTeenager says:
December 9, 2011 at 3:46 pm
Willis says
These guys can’t even tell a believable lie. It hasn’t warmed a tenth of a degree in the last decade, that’s nonsense.
————-
So Willis I take it that you want people to focus on the short term trend as a predictor of future trends rather than the more robust , (against short term noise) long term trend. Is that a valid interpretation of what you are saying?
Lazy Teenager:
Could you please tell us why we warmed from 1880 to approx 1950? There seems to be many varied ideas of why, but no definitive certainty. Maybe with your infinite knowledge you can elighten the rest of us humble folks. And then explain to us poor uneducated folks why the warming from the 1970’s to approx 2,000 is caused by co2 rather than the same force that caused the sharper level of warming from 1915-1945. I have many brain cells reserved just for your informative reply. Please don’t keep them waiting.
I love how all of the warming is at the polls just like their models predict. Of course there is no data there, just automatic estimates programmed in to show warming. We have left confirmation bias in the dust. Perhaps a new name in science for this kind of faux data. I suggest Hansenized as the term.
SteveE says:
December 9, 2011 at 3:03 am
“Could you yet me know what the Earth’s average global surface temperature anomaly was for the periods 2000 – 2010 and 1990 – 2000. ”
See the unadjusted rural data at RUTI:
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/ruti-global-land-temperatures-1880-2010-part-1-244.php
but frankly for 1990-2010 I would prefer satellite data
NASA as data provider
as a global warming reason:
HANSEN plus buddies man-made CO2 is an issue
Wattsupwiththat plus buddies man-made CO2 is not an issue
is the above scheme correct?
wermet says:
December 9, 2011 at 3:59 pm
I find the phrases “…has risen by .8 degrees Celsius since 1880…” and “increasing at a rate of about .1 degree Celsius per decade” to be written in bad form. As an engineer, I was taught to always include the leading zero before a decimal point to prevent confusion since many people will overlook this small mark. There is significantly less chance of misreading 0.8 versus .8. Plus, it emphasizes the zero and decimal point, which makes it look far less threatening. (Probably why Hansen and crew left it out in the first place).
===========
+1
Hansen makes it clear why his preferred CO2 level is 350 ppm. Paleo evidence shows that the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets cannot be self-sustaining at higher values. Their melting, even if slow or non-steady, will lead to tens of meters of extra sea-level some time in the future. The only question is how quickly this will happen.
Jim, the CO2 level during the Eemian was 270-280 ppm way under Hensens 350 ppm.
The ice sheet melted at 280 ppm producing a 100 m higher sea level,
Since before 1750 we had 280 ppm as well and the sea level increases by 3 mm per year and not more…… even went down the past 2-3 years….
You see. there is no connection between CO2ppm and the sea level or else the present 392 ppm
would have produced a strong melt which is not the case — its all pure invention of Henson and has no base…..
Joachim, yes, the Ice Ages had even more ice due to the Canadian and European glaciers that resembled Greenland today. Sea level was 120 m lower during them. If Greenland and Antarctica melt there is 70 more meters available, just like that rise out of the ice ages. It has happened before, and can happen again. These areas remained frozen during the Eemian, so Hansen’s point is that at 400 ppm they can ‘t remain frozen.
Jim, I see you are a good-will person and that you are easily impressed by clever reasoning….
But: In paleoclimates, ice melt/temp rises are always preceding (cause) and the CO2-level increase was always following secondary (effect). Please read articles on evaluations of ice core drilling, Warmist authors always scramble for detecting one single paleo-timespan, where CO2 increases FIRST and melt as consequence……and then they feel so sorry that this time they
could not do it, maybe next time, the poor guys…..
….. The statistical time lag of CO2-increase after temp/melt iscrease is between 200 and 800 years….
As you said “It happended before and it could therefore happen again” which means temps first and CO2 afterwards, no change of “cause and effect” as Henson does, a sophisticated trick of rhetorics, known since the old Greeks…. please….JS
Jim D says:
December 10, 2011 at 2:01 pm
Joachim, yes, the Ice Ages had even more ice due to the Canadian and European glaciers that resembled Greenland today. Sea level was 120 m lower during them. If Greenland and Antarctica melt there is 70 more meters available, just like that rise out of the ice ages. It has happened before, and can happen again. These areas remained frozen during the Eemian, so Hansen’s point is that at 400 ppm they can ‘t remain frozen.
It is some 50° below zero in Antarctica, it isn’t going to melt at all for a few thousand years at the rate things were going before it stopped warming. Last time I looked, Antarctica had been gaining ice since we started measuring it.
Regarding Antarctica, before 35 million years ago it did not have permanent ice, and the global CO2 level and temperature were not much higher than now. For sure the Arctic summer sea ice will go first, followed by Greenland’s glacier, but that leads the way for a warmer earth due to the albedo change that finally lets Antarctica’s glaciers go. It is a series of tipping points over a few centuries.
Shame that Hansen missed his flight on Voyager 1.
Notice they don’t mention the dirty dark secret ? Geo engineering with extremely dangerous chemicals all over the west including AUSTRALIA , these people are nuts , Barium and aluminum oxide are very dangerous to everything .
What disgusts me MOST about Hansen’s INSANE remarks…is that he is doing that on a salary paid for by the TAXPAYER.
Who the HELL does he think he is?
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Matt G says:
The bottom layers of the glacier are lost eventually forever via icebergs and extreme pressure at the bottom forming super cooled liquid water.
Greenland can only support so much ice because it is limited in land mass and the rest is lost especially via icebergs.
The Greenland cores were taken from the ice cap, not a glacier. As a result, calving into the sea is not an issue. Some of the cores are actually taken in valleys. Also, since there are longer cores in Antarctica, the argument that the pressure forms water is nonsense.
Evidence shows that the most Greenland ice was still there despite only 200m+ found in the ice cores
Actually, it was only 14 meters thick at the end of the Eemian .. in the valleys. It appears that the mountains were mostly ice free. Granted, this 14 meter layer is highly compressed today. However, it is not clear where the missing mass (thickness) went. By the way, there is another layer of ice and organic material below the Eemian layer. The weird part is that there is at least a 100,000 year discontinuity at that level (which I interpret to mean that all the previous ice was lost from melting). The organic material is not from an arctic environment and many species can not be identified.
You mention a sea level anomaly. I agree. Maybe ice was melting somewhere else as it was being added to Greenland. At any rate, in my opinion, the data does not support any of the accepted theories that I have seen.
Jim D,
Antarctica glaciated over 33.6 million years ago when CO2 was 1,400 ppm (use the real data rather than what James Hansen tries to change it to). It didn’t fall for another 2 million years after the initial glaciation. Global temperatures fell 2.0C even though CO2 did not change at all.
Greenland started having significant glaciers about 8 million years ago (mainly at high altitude in the northern sector) and then did not fully glaciate over until probably about 1 million years ago.
Technically, southern Greeland is too far south to have glaciers (same latitude as Sweden). It is only because the ice cap has built up to 3 kms high in the north-central area (and was 4 kms high in the last ice age) so that it has flowed south and the thermal inertia of all that ice next to it has kept it glaciated.
If this interglacial lasts for another 2 or 3 thousand years, the glaciers in the southern third of Greenland will be gone. It just takes a long period of time to melt out all that thermal inertia.
In the long interglacial, 400,000 years ago, the southern third of Greenland melted out and small trees even grew there. That interglacial was not particularly warm, about the same as today, but it was the longest one in the last 2.5 million years and the ice eventually melted out. There is NO evidence this occurred in any other interglacial. It should be noted that the current interglacial is similar to the one at 400,000 years in that the Milankovitch Cycles take a long time to put us back into glacial conditions, they are not regular (the current interglacial may last another 50,000 years or even 130,000 years).
Bill Illis, I have seen no one claim 1400 ppm only 35 million years ago. CO2 dropped gradually from about 1000 ppm 100 million years ago to nearer 500 ppm at the time Antarctica formed its ice cap. Yes Greenland could be hard to melt, but it is only the last of the northern glaciers, and the others went quickly after the last ice age with the warming that occurred then which has helped by the albedo feedback.
Joachim, you have to look at more distant paleoclimate to see that CO2 levels were declining naturally over the last couple of hundred million years, and this led to a cooling in the global temperature which finally enabled Antarctica to form and later the ice ages to start.
Jim D says:
“…CO2 levels were declining naturally over the last couple of hundred million years, and this led to a cooling in the global temperature which finally enabled Antarctica to form and later the ice ages to start.”
That’s not even wrong, that’s just cherry-picking a spurious correlation to arrive at a false cause and effect. CO2 levels have been high going into Ice Ages, and very low during warmer periods than the natural one we’re in now.
CO2 rises and declines follow temperature rises and declines on all time scales, from months to hundreds of millennia. Whatever effect CO2 has is negligible, and can be completely disregarded for all practical purposes.
Smokey, you need to explain why CO2 was dropping over the last 100 million years. It was natural sequestration in the soil and limestones. What resulted from that drop was a cooling temperature. This is standard knowledge in paleoclimate. Yes, it goes against the mantra of temperature always leads CO2 that is often used by skeptics who don’t think it can go the other way.
Sorry, Jim, either you are a 8th grader or a troll….
Please come up with a paleoclimatic measurement graph which shows that CO2 leads in the drop and temps will drop afterwards….this is no standard climate knowledge but pure AGW fairytale or
nonsense as of Henson….prove the link or give it up and dont confuse our Smokey…..
Jim D says:
December 11, 2011 at 9:37 am
Bill Illis, I have seen no one claim 1400 ppm only 35 million years ago. CO2 dropped gradually from about 1000 ppm 100 million years ago to nearer 500 ppm at the time Antarctica formed its ice cap
——————————
Sorry, someone has misinformed you about historical CO2 levels.
Joachim, I would suggest you read about or watch the video by a leading paleoclimatologist, Richard Alley of Penn State. The idea of a rock-weathering thermostat is described, where warmer climates remove CO2 from the atmosphere, thus cooling them towards cold climates, and then volcanoes warm it up again. I recommend the video because he is an entertaining speaker.
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2009/12/21/205242/agu-richard-alley-explains-biggest-control-knob-carbon-dioxide-in-earths-climate-history/
Jim, the last try before I say its hopeless…..
By staying on the scientific level….. we must not take your suggestions of “Watching videos”
about “Ideas”….. as you say……this is only American type of entertainment….
We need a graph showing 1. CO2-content together with 2. Temps/Ice melting and then we can
see the correlation and what comes first……
This first Ice melting/temp change comes first due to “Orbital Forcing” i.e. changes in the Earth’s orbit with reduce/enlage at specific orbit sections the orbit… leading to higher/lower/changing RF…. the change in CO2-content comes afterwards with take off/slow down in the biosphere and organic content decomposition after x number of years…
Show the link of the Graph, there should be many since your convolution of cause and effect is
as you say “standard paleo knowledge…”
Jim D says:
“What resulted from that drop was a cooling temperature. This is standard knowledge in paleoclimate.” Nonsense. As Joachim says, prove it or give it up. Temperatures have been rising and declining, through Ice Ages and warming, irrespective of CO2 – which is now extremely low. The biosphere is starved of CO2, and any increase is beneficial.
As we can see from the paleo record, temperatures during the Holocene have trended downward. This has occurred while CO2 remained relatively unchanged, falsifying your unsupportable conjecture that declining temperatures are the result of declining CO2. That is demonstrable nonsense. And temperatures have not risen over the past decade and a half as CO2 has risen, showing that any putative warming due to CO2 is negligible at best.
Cooling temperatures do not result from declining CO2 as you claim; changes in CO2 follow changes in temperature, not vice-versa. Since you link to the anti-science propaganda blog thinkprogress, run by the execrable alarmist Joe Romm, it is no wonder that you have such mistaken beliefs. Search the WUWT archives for “CO2”, and get a real science education.
Smokey, you should watch Richard Alley’s talk that I linked above, which was an invited AGU science talk from 2009. This is an annual meeting of geoscientists in San Francisco and it is independent of Romm. You are just showing Greenland temperatures which are a poor substitute for global ones. Please explain where you think Alley is wrong. He is clearly an expert in this field and worth listening to rather than relying on skeptic blogs written by marine biologists and petroleum engineers. Yes, he makes fun of one skeptic letter that tried to victimize him, but you can ignore that as a cheap shot, if you want. It was an easy target for ridicule, and the audience appreciated it. Pay attention to the science and how it fits together.
Jim D says:
“Pay attention to the science and how it fits together.” Yet you ignore the evidence I provided that shows something different than your beliefs. As for Alley, I’ve followed his papers. His earlier ones are credible; his recent comments, not so much. He’d rather be petted by the clique than stick to his earlier findings.
Same for ‘just Greenland temperatures’; both hemispheres show strong simultaneous correlation in ΔT, indicating that the changes were global.
Give up on alarmist blogs, they cherry-pick and misrepresent because they have an agenda. Use the WUWT search function if you want to learn some honest climate science.
Smokey, thanks for trying, but I prefer to be guided by Alley’s experience. His charts are also more convincing than yours, and you haven’t even addressed the period before the ice ages which is where CO2 leads temperature. His long-term paleoclimate theory is just more complete.
Jim D,
Post a chart showing that CO2 leads temperature. Like this chart of the past 400,000+ years, and which clearly shows that in every change, temperature leads CO2 both up and down. Effect cannot precede cause, therefore CO2 is a function of temperature change, not a forcing.
Use the handy WUWT search function to get up to speed on this settled science.
Smokey, if you even watched what Alley said about the ice ages you would know every agrees that temperature led CO2 then because there was other forcing. He possibly even showed the same chart. In fact his prod at the skeptic’s letter was that he had made the same argument as you, which is that because sometimes temperature leads, CO2 never can. If CO2 drops or rises first, temperature has to follow. This is the point. It comes from radiation physics.
Jim D,
I understand radiative physics. What I don’t understand is your confused belief that although ΔT has always preceded ΔCO2, that ‘this time it’s different’. That is a scientifically baseless belief for which there is no testable, empirical evidence. It is simply a belief. On a scale of months to hundreds of millennia CO2 always follows temperature. But now it’s the other way around? Not really. You’re still learning – and from the wrong folks.
If you want to learn, use the WUWT archive search, and get up to speed on the real science: any effect from CO2 is so minuscule that it is unmeasurable; it’s down in the noise. You can accept that or not. But there is ample evidence for it, while there is no testable evidence, per the scientific method, showing that rises in CO2 precede and cause rises in temperature. None.
Anybody ever FOIA’d Hansen’s annual salary and pension benefits? What gives him the “right” or the authority…as a public servant…to air his opinions like this?
This is illegal at best…and treasonous…at worst.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Smokey, this time is different from the ice ages because CO2 is changing first. You can understand this by cause and effect. Man increases the CO2 due to fossil fuel injection. I don’t think you are suggesting the temperature could be changing first and causing man to use fossil fuels, so I don’t understand your argument. Maybe you are one of the people who believes the CO2 comes out of the ocean which somehow also manages to acidify at the same time. I have seen all these arguments before.
Jim D says:
December 11, 2011 at 8:33 pm
Smokey, this time is different from the ice ages because CO2 is changing first. You can understand this by cause and effect. Man increases the CO2 due to fossil fuel injection. I don’t think you are suggesting the temperature could be changing first and causing man to use fossil fuels, so I don’t understand your argument. Maybe you are one of the people who believes the CO2 comes out of the ocean which somehow also manages to acidify at the same time. I have seen all these arguments before.
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Uh huh. And we have seen all of yours as well. Perhaps too many to stomach at one time!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
savethesharks,
Jim D can’t help himself; he’s been brainwashed by BelieveProgress, Pseudo-Skeptical Pseudo-Science, RealClimatePropaganda, Tamina, and other censoring anti-science blogs.
Note that Jim avoids the numerous links I’ve helpfully provided in a fruitless attempt to educate him with verifiable, real world facts. Now he’s on the “ocean acidification” narrative, which has been thoroughly debunked here by Willis and Dave Middleton. Jim could simply search the archives and find out there is zero empirical evidence to support the “acidification” nonsense, but Jim’s mind is made up and closed tight. He just doesn’t want to learn. Jim is a True Believer in the repeatedly falsified CO2=CAGW nonsense. Poor Jim.
I agree that in the past, CO2 followed temperature rise since oceans can dissolve less CO2 at higher temperatures. But at the present time, due to man’s emissions, we have increased the CO2 from 280 ppm in 1750 to 390 ppm at the present time. After all, our emissions of CO2 over the last 260 years have to end up somewhere. For a very comprehensive discussion of CO2 levels, see:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html
But the important point is not how much the CO2 has gone up, but whether its affect is catastrophic for our temperatures. All indications are that it is nothing to worry about.
Walter;
Careful about what presumptions and assumptions you let pass. Integrate this: the tropics’ termites generate 10X more CO2/annum than humans.
Yet humans’ puny emissions have increased the atmospheric load of CO2 by (390-280)/280 x 100% = ~40%??
Fails the Reasonableness Test.
typo: Werner, not “Walter”.