“The Oceans will begin to boil…” – yes he actually said that, along with some other silly things. Watch this video:
One wonders, if Dr. Hansen realizes that no scientist has yet presented any credible evidence that the “oceans boiled” millions of years ago when atmospheric CO2 values far exceeded the 390 ppm we have now. Of course, given that this is a “Climate Progress World” production, such inconvenient facts don’t matter, as its all about the scare.
Hansen apparently has Venus on the brain. Even normally alarmist Wikipedia doesn’t embrace Hansen’s “runaway greenhouse effect” on Earth.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect
The situation on Earth is very different from that which existed on Venus, as any terrestrial runaway effect is not irreversible on geological timescales. Potential runaway greenhouse effects on Earth may involve the carbon cycle, but unlike Venus will not involve boiling of the oceans. Earth’s climate has swung repeatedly between warm periods and ice ages during its history. In the current climate the gain of the positive feedback effect from evaporating water is well below that which is required to boil away the oceans. Climate scientist John Houghton has written that “[there] is no possibility of [Venus’s] runaway greenhouse conditions occurring on the Earth”.
h/t to WUWT reader “coldlynx”
Don’t you mean James Hansen of the Doomsday Clock and the Atomic Chickens?
He shouldn’t handle boiling acid so recklessly.
===============
Absolutely barking.
Hansen has completely lost it- bring on the men in white coats with a straightjacket.
Oh Puh-lease!
Something has gone unstable alright!
Is this what we get from NASA? Disband them!
I’m still waiting for NYC to go under water like he promised….
I’ll keep this in mind while I’m putting my plants in the garage tonight and covering up the outside faucets because of the freeze warning we have here.
Does ones brains go away with hair loss? If so,boy,am I in trouble.!!
That is the only thing I can think of to account for his nonsensical rubbish!
Maybe James ,and I will meet up in a sanitorium somewhere,someday,and opine on the loss of our senses[and hair],if not completely gone by then!
Awwwww, it would be nice to be able to just reach in and pull out a lobster, already cooked.
However, at least he’s honestly consistent. If you truly believe in a catastrophic tipping point, well, there is no well-understood upper bound on positive climate feedback, is there?
I wish he could read my remarks on nuclear bombs igniting the Earth and black holes created by the LHC swallowing the Earth. That might help him understand why his conclusions are truly laughable. He might look at the relative albedo for a completely cloud-enshrouded Earth and the Earth as it stands now, as well, and explain how the Earth is going to get all hot when 70% of the incident sunlight is reflected away by clouds. Or does he not believe in any sort of thermal instability that will carry all that extra water vapor up to where it hits e_s and clouds form?
Probably not. If he understood this, he’d understand why the feedback from water vapor isn’t, in fact, runaway solution positive, but is rather self-limiting.
On the good side, this sort of thing is precisely what we need to see from Hansen. The greater the level of hyperbole, the more the bullshit detectors of most living humans will start to sound the alarm. If he and Al Gore could only get together, perhaps with Michael Mann — well, one wouldn’t even need to satirize it, would one?
rgb
He reminds me of Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, and Ralph Nader. They make a good living from getting the suckers to pay them lots of money to listen to garbage about what bad people they are. Personally, this guy should be just fired from NASA with prejudice.
Does he mean this about the Cayman vents are world’s hottest? You may have mentioned it, but I just saw it and decided to look through your blog.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16493787
And this is the guy that the History Channel, Discovery Channel, and the Weather Channel go to as an expert?
Hansen has definitely crossed the line from way out there to manically disturbed. To make the comments that he has show he has lost a grip on reality. The people in Congress need to see this video. It may act as a wakeup call on his credibility.
The Earth is now suffering from a run-away Jim Hansen effect.
That’s James Hanrahan to you-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Said_Hanrahan
Oceans boil at about 2:10 into his spiel. What a kook. It is hard to believe he is employed by the US Gubmint; but then so are Holdren and Chu.
The more I see and hear from this environmental wacko, the more he reminds me of Max Headroom.
He lost me at 01:35 when he started talking about it being unrealistic to transport life from our planet to another one. This guy may work at NASA/GSFC but he seems to have no concept of spaceflight and its future potential!
Captain Queeg comes to mind – strawberries anyone?
And AGW proponents people wonder why people find it hard to take Hansens’ views as being scientifically valid . The sad part is that thanks to his ‘management’ one of the worlds most important climate databases is now virtual worthless thanks to ‘adjustments ‘ so that it can support Hansens’ political goals .
He should stick to making muppets and quit trying to scare the children.
The oceans will boil over eventually. It will not be due to CO2 or human activity. It will be caused by the Sun in 4 or 5 billion years when it becomes a red giant and probably cooks the entire planet to a crisp. Or so they say!
After seeing the link, it’s too easy to mock Hansen, so I wont do it.
but I do have a message to NASA. ‘You guys should really pay attention here. Your reputation is at stake’
I watched the whole clip and tried hard not to laugh. This man is a complete idiot. He loves himself and his climate-pron so much, that he would sell his soul to swim in a boiling ocean.
I thought the thick sulfuric acid clouds were the main greenhouse driver on Venus. A real blanket that causes it to receive even less sunlight than Earth.
The Earth never experienced or will never experience a runaway greenhouse effect. For that the planet has to move closer to the sun.
The story about the melting of methane clathrates is still scientific speculation. There is no proof that this actually happened in order to explain the temperature rise.
Snowball Earth! Nobody really knows what caused the Earth to freeze over and it is still speculation if CO2 only melted it.
Hansen is becoming a believer of his own little fantasy world. Trapped inside his own beliefs. Some are right here: He should get fired from NASA. This is not a scientist speaking. He is a disgrace to himself.
this it truly sad…
….and even more sad that it’s contagious
Will he buy me a new bullshit detector?
Mine’s permanently knackered now, the needle bent around the endstop!
Note to self…
Must get one of those new digital ones complete with overload protection.
DaveE.
James Hansen: the Crazy Cat Lady of climate science
NASA, I’m disappointed in you.
Are only nutters left in the Alarmist camp?
Wentz et al in SCIENCE for July 7, 2007 in a Peer reviewed paper: “How much more Rain will Global Warming bring ?” OBSERVED that a one deg C rise in the global mean surface Temperature resulted in a 7% increase in each of the variables: Total global evaporation (of H2O), Total Atmospheric water content, and Total global precipitation (of H2O).. They also reported that the GCMs also predict the same 7% increase in Total global evaporation and total global precipitation. Everybody understands that total global precipitation and total global evaporation must balance, or the oceans would end up over our heads. The first (evaporation) is simply a consequence of the Clausius-Clapeyron equation.
But the GCMs only predicted; excuse me, that’s projected, a 1% to 3% increase in Total atmospheric water content. That 3:1 fudge factor ratio is obligatory in climate “science”, and of course the GCMs are somewhat more dependable than actual observed measured data.
Not reported by Wentz et all, but also self evident, is that precipitation is often accompanied by (precipitable) clouds, so a 7% increase in precipitation likely means a 7% increase in precipitable clouds, which could be, more cloud area, optically denser clouds, longer cloud peristence times, or cloud movement to higher moisture locations.
So it is reasonable to conjecture that this pattern would repeat for some increases in Temperature.
But, it is also self evident, that ANY increase in atmospheric water content, including clouds, MUST result in LESS solar energy reaching the earth surface, since H2O absorbs significant parts of the solar near and IR spectrum.
So how is the earth’s ocean going to boil in the face of ever diminishing surface solar energy ?
He should be fired for being either incompetent or a liar.
He says:
All the species will be gone from global warming.
The oceans will end up in the atmosphere.
The ice sheets will be gone in a century.
Just add the “warming” from methane, water vapor and carbon dioxide together to get an accurate picture. Their absorption bands don’t overlap or anything right?
I’m shocked that anyone with a basic education in climatology would make these statements.
Starburst at the top (end?) of skyrocket trajectory
I had a conversation with a retired left-wing professor the other night at the campus bar. He agreed that CO2 wasn’t a problem. But he figured that ocean acidification would get us instead. I don’t think he realized the implication of what he was saying. You can’t simply make a multi-trillion dollar mistake, say “so sorry”, and then expect the public to roll over for your next great idea.
The true believers will continue to believe in one form of apocalypse or another, but if their CO2 arguments collapse it will be fifty years before the general public will again listen to them.
Wow! Dr. Hansen is completely insane!
This video was produced by bt.com (Big Think), but after this drivel, they should certainly consider changing it to bs.com.
The Cause is certainly getting desperate following Climategate 2.0, the Durban Debacle and no warming since 1998, falling: AMO, PDO, ENSO sea temps and falling ocean levels and what looks to be a weak solar cycle 24.
If NASA had any integrity, they should fire Dr. Hansen immediately, but with BHO as president, this will never happen.
Well, Dr. Hansen is on record now, and this video will come back to haunt him….
Disgusting!
The reference to strengthening storms eventually causing something analogous to what happened in New Orleans, suggests that strong storm Katrina was the cause of all the flooding. My understanding is that the cause of all the flooding in N.O. was the ineptitude and failure of Big Gov’t; local, state, and last – federal, but mostly local and state. Primarily the mismanagement of levees and marshes.
“He maketh the deep to boil like a pot…He is king over all the sons of pride.”
Had no idea Hansen was just a straightforward Old-Testament catastrophist nutbag — he’ll be hanging around on streetcorners in sandwichboards any day now, predicting the end of the world, and still collecting his NASA paycheck.
Hansen 2003:
”We have taken over control of the mechanisms that determine the climate change.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/11/science/when-will-the-next-ice-age-begin.html
Yep. James Hansen has seen the naughty yellow pixies who pull the special, magic Climat-O-Levers which control the weather (and) have been paid by evil capitalists with fat cigars in their mouth and $ signs on their pinstripe suits to make the world’s climate all horrid.(h/t Delingpole)
Obviously the guy is a kook but don’t kid yourself that the pro-AGW crowd will watch this and realize that Hansen is unbalanced. Every believer I know will eat this up like it’s cookies and ice cream.
Wow! He gets paid to make these pronouncements?
FISH SOUP, ANYBODY?
He forgot to say: the moon will turn red, there will be earthquakes in divers places, there will be wars and rumours of wars, and they will see the (insert belief of the day) coming in the heavens….
this man hansen brain is in a real mucking fuddle.
Insane sociopath or just a pathological liar?
Hansen’s giving his employer (NASA) a new meaning for the acronym.
James Hansen: Not A Scientist Anymore
“Dr. James Hansen of NASA GISS, unhinged”
When was he ever hinged?
NASA surely employs some very, very strange people. Some of them are – allegedly – real scientists.
“…you could melt the ice sheets in less than a century”—is this perhaps the easiest to debunk? We have a pretty good idea of how much energy comes in from the sun over a century (and an idea of how much leaves), and the mass of the ice sheets; there are complicating factors (not all of the energy is available to melt the ice, there’s difficultly getting the energy to the ice (the elevation of Antarctica’s ice cap surface), and other things, but it should be pretty easy to set bounds on what is possible. At 30 million cubic km of ice for Antarctica alone, that’s a lot of ice per year to melt, and an upper practical limit on how much energy enters and stays in the system.
Let the rationalizations begin!
R.Gates? a physicist? Lazy Teenager? Anyone?
We would need 4.00 x E26J for the ‘oceans’ to boil. Hansen is a loon.
carlbrannen says:
January 12, 2012 at 4:22 pm
“The true believers will continue to believe in one form of apocalypse or another, but if their CO2 arguments collapse it will be fifty years before the general public will again listen to them.”
_________________________________
Pronouncements like this one from James Hansen don’t happen in an ideological vacuum.
In light of the near- total propagandization of the populace by the warmist collaborators, one could easily assume that it will be fifty years before people stop listening to them.
Yet again reality intrudes its ugly head into Hansen`s warmist fantasies .
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/slideshow_image/images/topic/news/120106-g-6458f-355-healy-escorts-renda.jpg
Yup , boiling oceans looks to be a problem for the “Renda”
(I know I posted about this previous article but it`s such a “Human Ingenuity vs Pitiless Nature ” story I couldn`t resist )
I’ve only watched the beginning. He says warming melts the ice from Greenland and Antarctica. The melting, in turn, cools the higher latitudes north and south, thus increasing the temperature gradient between them and the equator, causing more violent storms. So we have here a case of warming that acts on high latitudes to melt the ice, and *simultaneously* COOLS those latitudes to increase the temperature gradient.
I reckon we lock Hansen, Gore, and Flannery in a room for a few weeks, see who can come with the most idiotically outrageous prediction.
ps.. Again, waiting for the local AGW apologists to rush to Hansens aid.
I would LOVE to see how they justify this moronic idiocy.
How many turned up in the Al Gore 3 yr old kiddies propaganda game thread ???
It seems Hansen has decided that the most extreme exaggeration is the way to go in order to stimulate action. He’s tried other things and it hasn’t worked so now he is going extreme extremist.
Now that is a reasonable explanation of what he just did. There is no way he actually believes all that. His purpose was to really scare people in order to get some action.
But then that means he has been doing this all along.
And he is really the grandfather of this movement. He has therefore been doing this, stepping up the exaggeration, more and more every year, since the early 1980s. In other words, all of his science has been exaggerated from the start. And he is, obviously, not the only one who feels they need to do something in order to stimulate action.
This is what this science has increasingly become since 1980.
Please don’t tarnish the memory of Jim Henson–I have no idea of his politics, but he was a genius puppeteer, and his Muppets were the best. James Hanson on the other hand, needs to check himself into the psychiatric hospital before the men in white coats come.
“…And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”
The Walrus and The Carpenter, Lewis Carroll
(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)
Hansen is the Walrus, he is the Egg Man, koo-koo ka choo
Two words: nucking futz.
There will be a group, eventually, who will see numbers and signs in his predictions and will build stone circles with sacrificial alters. His books will be computerized and analysed for the “code”. Then one day they will all gather on the sacred day and drink some kind of potion as they wait for the spaceship hiding behind the moon. Those that survive the potion will say, “My bad. We meant 2240, not 2110. On THAT day, not the other day, the Earth will cease to be and we will be caught up into Hansenland. Amen.
Hansen? Doctor of what … voodoo? Baloney processing?
Why does NASA employ this wing-nut?
love how this goes from Pounds, to Euros to Dollars to get this piece of academic propaganda across in as many currencies as possible!
11 Jan: Guardian: by Arthur Neslen for EurActiv: Airlines could net £1.6bn windfall from EU carbon trading scheme, report says
Far from damaging US airlines, the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) could deliver it a €2 billion windfall profit, according to a new report by a US Federal Aviation Administration-funded group of academics.
Bill Hemmings, the aviation spokesman for the European environmental pressure group Transport and Environment, said that it “called seriously into question” air industry claims that the ETS would leave them out of pocket.
“On the contrary, their real costs will probably be covered by being able to pass them on to passengers with minimal impact on their businesses,” Hemmings told EurActiv…
The peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Air Transport Management uses several complex modelling frameworks to calculate the effect that inclusion in the ETS’ third period – between 2013 and 2020 – would have on US airlines.
The study’s models make three key assumptions:
• A carbon price of €15 a tonne that increases by 4% a year
• A 35% increase in the airlines’ CO2 emissions between 2011 and 2020
• A full ‘pass-through’ of costs to the consumer
If all three happened, the report concludes that airlines could receive a $2.6 billion (€2.03 billion) bonanza…
However, even some staunch supporters of the ETS, questioned the methodology used in the report.
John Hanlon, the secretary-general of the European Low Fares Airline Association (ELFAA), said the central contention that allowance costs could be passed back to the consumer was a “canard” and a “fallacy”.
“I see no evidence to support that,” he told EurActiv…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/11/airlines-windfall-eu-carbon-trading?newsfeed=true
if it’s “one of the first”, who are the others, Reuters?
12 Jan: Reuters: UPDATE 2-AirAsia X pulls out of Europe, India
The airline is one of the first to cut routes after the European Union imposed a system of trading carbon emissions on airlines from the start of the year, drawing protests from China and the United States and fueling talk of a carbon trade war…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/12/airasia-idUSL3E8CC3O420120112
11 Jan: ChannelNewsAsia: EU emissions trading scheme under siege
Many carriers have criticised the rule, saying it is a new tax. Some analysts have even suggested that this could be a way for Europe to raise extra tax revenue in order to bolster the governments’ finances…
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/economicnews/view/1176188/1/.html
Earth’s oceans will boil away but it won’t be from too much carbon in the atmosphere. It will be from too much helium in the sun as it makes its transition to a red giant! Bawhahahaha!!!!!!
Francisco says:
January 12, 2012 at 5:14 pm
==============================
strange how that works, isn’t it?
warm/cold
wet/dry
drought/flood
…will never know what snow is
A question for NostraHansen – How much “train of death” coal does it take to boil an ocean? And where would we light the fire?
CAGW is full of fraudsters…some of whom are getting their comeuppance…
the one western MSM report on one of the biggest carbon fraud trials to date (u need to search out the french coverage and google translate for all the gory details):
12 Jan: Ninemsn, Australia: France convicts five on carbon tax fraud
A French court has convicted five people of a massive fraud of the EU’s
carbon trading system, sentencing them to up to five years in prison and
ordering them to pay millions of euros in damages.
The chief organiser of the fraud, Fabrice Sakoun, was on Wednesday given
five years while four accomplices were sentenced to between a year and four
years…
The case was the first of many such trials expected in France after the
discovery of a series of fraudulent carbon-trading schemes that cost the
French state up to 1.8 billion euros…
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8401692
4 Jan: BusinessGreen: BlueNext agrees €32m carbon fraud settlement
Fraudsters used front companies to sell carbon credits, before pocketing the
VAT charged on those trades and closing down the companies.
At the height of the fraud, Europol estimated that up to 90 per cent of the
whole market volume of trading was being perpetrated by fraudsters…
http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2135206/bluenext-agrees-eur32m-carbon-fraud-settlement
Sometimes Mr. Watt you let things be posted just to get us stirred up. It worked this time for me.
Isn’t this a big news?
The NASA/GISS temp anomaly has plummeted to ZERO degC from Nov to Dec 2011:
http://junksciencearchive.com/MSU_Temps/MSUvsGISTEMP.html
‘Barking’ is being kind to him.
Let’s check another of this head tilter’s infamous predictions; the Manhattan perimeter highway.
Back in about 1980, Hansen pompously proclaimed to assembled journalists in his NYC office that the roadway below would no longer be there by 2010. Gasps of, “Why?”. “Because it will be underwater by then – the rising sea level, courtesy of GW”.
No measurable sea level rise has been recorded.
I guess this sad little fellow feels more important if he feels he can frighten the rattle-brains.
henrythethird says: January 12, 2012 at 4:51 pm
Hansen’s giving his employer (NASA) a new meaning for the acronym.
James Hansen: Not A Scientist Anymore
I think the last “A” in NASA refers to a fundamental orifice.
Dr. Peter Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, “biblical”?
Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly.
Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes…
Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
Mayor: All right, all right! I get the point!
Starzmom
Yeah…this guy IS a muppet.
I first learned of greenhouse warming in a seminar at our physics department at Bozeman in 1974, probably, because it was my senior year. The speaker, from one of the Idaho schools I think, made the claim that 5C temperature rise would result in all water on Earth being locked-up as vapor in the atmosphere. Crazy stuff. I’d taken some historical geology and knew that claim to be suspicious. My suspicion continues.
Bah. Boiling, evaporating, sublimating, it’s all the same in Climate Science™!! Water has become vapor when it shouldn’t, and it’s All The Fault of Anthropogenic Climate Change!!
Accept your guilt, vile humanity, repent and turn away from the false god of Fossil Fuels BEFORE ALL IS LOST!!
Okay, now we’ll sit back and wait for the next Hansen rant, or next arrest, whatever shows up. Then we’ll quickly go back to ignoring him again.
Although if the “next thing” was Hansen committing seppuku on the steps of the US Capitol with a dagger made of anthracite coal, as a final act of defiance and call to activism… Might be worth the Top Post position for a day, maybe two.
Dr. Hansen didn’t seem terribly “unhinged” to me. Not that I agree with everything he’s saying in the video, or in general, but he’s hardly unhinged.
The Oceans will cool, great storms will arise, we couldnt transport Monarch butterflies to Mars to carry on our species, they will perish, the oceans will boil.. a snowball Earth is just cool ,,, but a warmer Earth … that aint cool man….
I stopped my car at the gate and walked home.
Boiling oceans could run steam turbines for cheap electricity to run air conditioners.
There is always a silver lining in these things if you look for one.
At 00.29 in Hansen says “It’s in my book”.
What he really meant was “The profit is in my book, so my following comments will help you decide to buy it.”
What he didn’t mean to convey was “I have got to organise some cash flow now that my CAGW game is up.”
John-X says:
January 12, 2012 at 5:26 pm
Lewis Carroll could have written the script and there are overtones of both Looking Glass and Wonderland! (Hansen as Alice?) But I suspect The Hunting of the Snark fits even better. In this scenario Hansen plays the Bellman, whose “rule-of-three” is: “What I tell you three times is true”!
Surely his employer or immediate boss checks to see if Hanson’s work is, you know, rigorous? What does he do at work day to day? Obviously not look at actual data or do any calculations based on actual data. He’s so far removed from common sense its just not funny anymore.
How on earth can a guy like this make such stupid statements, attached to the name NASA, and not get hauled over the coals from his employer? There must be a serious disconnect within the halls of NASA to allow Hanson to continue his diatribe.
This is outrageous.
Remember he is still working at GISS and has the full support of the President and the head of the EPA Lisa Jackson.
Let’s introduce some science into our mocking of Hansen.
Remember the ice age? In order for the waters to form glaciers on the land, the oceans first must be vaporized. How much heat would it take you ask? A lot. Enough to melt the continents. When I first heard that I had to do the math myself.
What climatologists lack is any sort of explanation for any of the mechanisms involved. They can’t say why the oceans wouldn’t simply freeze in place if it was getting colder, where the heat came from to melt the oceans, why it didn’t fall as rain, or snow, but rather gathered at the poles to push South (except where they didn’t). They don’t offer any explanation for why it was getting colder with all this heat.
Try to find a rational explanation anywhere. I double dog dare you.
Velikovsky offered one a half century ago, but I don’t think his ideas would be too well received by the alarmist bunch. Regarding the basic mechanics of the ice age, climatologists have no idea. But they supposedly understand else enough for us to spend trillions of dollars.
“melt the oceans” should be “vaporize the oceans.”
Now you know what’s holding up my Nobel Prize.
Robert Brown says:
January 12, 2012 at 3:28 pm
===============
OMG, do not get drawn into such silliness, there may be no escape.
tokyoboy says:
January 12, 2012 at 6:16 pm
Looks like just a case of missing data to me. Check it next update.
Apocalypse Now, projections from ‘The Team’;
First the glacial retreat,
Then polar bears die of heat,
Next we run out of oil,
Soon the oceans will boil.
Finis.
Wow !!! Please tell me where he gets his coolaid from! It has got to be way better than LSD.
/ikh
wtf?
Did I miss something? Are there people out there seriously suggesting that we can relocate to another planet to escape “runaway” green house effect? Good thing somebody set us straight that it isn’t realistic.
Jimmie “Death Trains” has finally blown a gasket.
Ric Werme says: January 12, 2012 at 7:27 pm
“Looks like just a case of missing data to me. Check it next update.”
Thanks. I too suspected this was due to some trouble.
If not, and if Jan 2012 data is still low, this may not be a small issue.
R. Gates says:
January 12, 2012 at 6:45 pm
Of course, R. One unhinged wouldn’t recognized another unhinged.
• UNHINGED (adjective)
Sense 1 unhinged [BACK TO TOP]
Meaning:
Affected with madness or insanity
Synonyms:
brainsick; crazy; demented; distracted; unhinged; mad; unbalanced; sick; disturbed
Context example:
a man who had gone mad
Similar:
insane (afflicted with or characteristic of mental derangement)
http://www.audioenglish.net/dictionary/unhinged.htm
No more needs to be said.
“Greg Cavanagh says:
January 12, 2012 at 7:06 pm
How on earth can a guy like this make such stupid statements, attached to the name NASA, and not get hauled over the coals from his employer? There must be a serious disconnect within the halls of NASA to allow Hanson to continue his diatribe.
This is outrageous”.
There is no disconnect. Skeptics would have seen signs of it by now. No, No, totally connected. James is the point man for several & combined administrations concerns about America’s disconnect with fossil fuel supply chains.
Saying, “The East will ransom our future” was never going to wash politically, internationally or domestically, hence the beautiful correlation between NASA’s reputation, and few scientific activist stalwarts like Hansen, along with the IPCC and bingo, consensus for Policy.
It is a finite world, but they should have given some thought about the believability of their climate change hypothesis over time.
Outrage indeed.
Melt the ice sheets in a century?
I guess we can rest assured that the physics he uses in his other work is equally sound.
Thank goodness for that. Wow.
I’m afraid that the joke is on US. We, the taxpayers of the U.S.A., pay this guy’s six figure salary + benefits…
Barking mad? Perhaps, but let us not forget that Crazy Jim has been spouting the boiling oceans nonsense for a decade or more, and it (Jim’s insane prediction) is (still today) taken as gospel truth by the Thermogeddonistas (including our sitting President and his most likely challenger).
Time for a “Scenario C” t-shirt and mug to be sent to the “unhinged” Nostradamus, as a gentle reminder.
A bit drastic from our friend Jimmy Hansen. AR4 says:
IPCC-XXXI/INF. 3
Thresholds of type II might be those that are linked directly to the key intrinsic processes of the climate system itself (often non-linear) and might be related to maintaining stability of those processes or some of the elements of the climate system discussed earlier. Some thresholds that all would consider dangerous have no support in the literature as having a non-negligible chance of occurring. For instance, a “runaway greenhouse effect”—analogous to Venus–
appears to have virtually no chance of being induced by anthropogenic activities. So our focus will be on those events that the literature suggests have a non-negligible chance of being induced by anthropogenic activities.
Oh fine. An authorative source! We can now say that CAGW does mean that positive water vapor feedback will lead to boiling oceans ACCORDING TO A LEADING CAGW THEORIST. As this is now a prediction of the theory, I propose commencing with the experiments, to TEST the theory’s prediction; and should the HANSEN EFFECT be validated, the construction of a water vapor turbine driven by the CAGW runaway effect. Subsidies should not be necessary as this could finally be the limitless energy source humanity has been waiting for.
I like how he tries to use the “runaway global cooling effect” to scare people into (also) believing in a “runaway global warming effect”. Which one is it, dude?
I kinda like him, too.
From “Centuries”;
From the pine of yamal,
a stick shall be wrought,
and Hansler joined in,
the same hymn for all.
No apologies to Nostradamus. He should of seen it coming, ……
“have” seen it coming.
@ R.Gates
“Dr. Hansen didn’t seem terribly “unhinged” to me”
and that is the best defence you can offer for the grandfarter of the AGW cult !!! wow !!
I think he has reached, or gone well beyond, the tipping point.
This tends to happen when deluded people are confronted with reality, and when their enablers start to withdraw support for their delusions.
Sad for him but otherwise great. The more he talks like this the more people will realize what a genuinely mad ‘scientist’ this dishonest and deceptive fanatic is. And that can only lead to more recognition about the validity of his ’cause.’
Just watched it again.
The sickest part is the way he sort of smiles when he mentions some of his doomsday scenarios, as though he looks forward to them.
This boy is genuinely deranged. He should run away to some facility.
Robert Brown says:
January 12, 2012 at 3:28 pm
However, at least he’s honestly consistent. If you truly believe in a catastrophic tipping point, well, there is no well-understood upper bound on positive climate feedback, is there?
Well Dr. Hansen honestly and consistently just doesn’t seem to believe the sun affects our climate. That just might be his problem with bounds.
Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist, Dr. John S. Theon, the former supervisor of James Hansen called Hansen an “embarrassment”. No more to add really apart from the fact Hansen has bad taste in the hat he parades around in!
“R. Gates says:
January 12, 2012 at 6:45 pm
Dr. Hansen didn’t seem terribly “unhinged” to me. Not that I agree with everything he’s saying in the video, or in general, but he’s hardly unhinged”.
R. Gates is new.
Worldly and wise is the man who questions the most rational of beings. Monsters keep a straight face during their executions, as is Hansen.
Will delusional suffice as a deescription, or do you lean towards something else like deliberate fraud? You don’t really think Hansen is a rational fraud doing it for the money, rather than a self-deluded person acting irrationally, or do you have a rational third option in mind? What else can explain such irratoinal beliefs and irrational behavior?
Before you are tempted to assert Hansen is not behaving irrationally, be kind enough to explain why his prediction for the submergence of the New York City highways should not be regarded as clear evidence of an irrational prediction, and explain how the Earth did not experience a tipping point in atmospheric carbon dioxide during the most recent hundreds of millions of years in which such levels ranged from more than 999,000 parts per million and one hundred times more massive to more than 1,000 parts per million.and current mass in the previous era.
If the oceans are going to boil, is there any point in us worrying about sealevel rise? Or the inundation of NYC?
Latimer Alder says:
January 12, 2012 at 11:05 pm
If the oceans are going to boil, is there any point in us worrying about sealevel rise? Or the inundation of NYC?
Geez, I would hope not. But then again I would think that if the oceans are boiling over that it would be impossible for the oceans to also be rising..but then again this is the same lunatic who as our famous RGates tells us is “not unhinged” is predicting the future with two predictions which can not both be correct.
That is what lunatics do you see…but no, the man is not crazy at all!
Of course, with global warming every prediction has always been about warmcold and every contradiction we can come up with. More snow in April and May in areas that never see snow that late in the year? Record cold snaps ? Global warming of course.
Why, I mean what else could cause those kind of cold snaps? It must be global warming because only global warming could cause global coooooooling. As I like to say, par from the course from the lunatic corner. And yes, I might be looking at a certain poster right this second who seems to think a certain Hansen is “not unhinged”. bahahahahahaha.
I can’t stop thinking about the man’s disdainful facial expressions while answering these questions. I’m sorry but that is barely-disguised contempt. Hansen seems incapable of disguising it, which suggests that he’s not trying to. It’s astounding that he can sit there and pretend to predict the future! What gives climate science the idea that it can do this??
was he on the white house guest list for the tea party?
Reblogged this on Basil Wheel.
Well it’s really really nice to see that both Gore and Hansen have gone florid, plus we’ve now had visits from Dana (Skeptical Science) and Wm Connolley (Wikipedia).
I still wait to see Hansen dismissed from NASA however.
George E. Smith; says:
January 12, 2012 at 4:16 pm
Wentz et al in SCIENCE for July 7, 2007 in a Peer reviewed paper: “How much more Rain will Global Warming bring ?” OBSERVED that a one deg C rise in the global mean surface Temperature resulted in a 7% increase in each of the variables: Total global evaporation (of H2O), Total Atmospheric water content, and Total global precipitation (of H2O)..
——————————————-
George, this increase in water vapor, clouds, and perciptation wouild also, I presume, include an increase in convection and heat transport. Non linear effects are one of the limitations of feedbacks and it appears that this is a prime example of that. As T increases, for whatever reason, then an EVER GREATER percentage of increased W/m2 energy goes towards the H2o water cycle, as opposed to manifesting as additional T, especially if the increased energy is LWIR (as opposeed to SWR) which is all absorbed in a very thin layer of the top surface of the ocean. Have you ever heard of a chart which shows how the percentage of enrgy going into evaporation and latent heat conduction of energy increases as T rises? I presume these factors are a large part of why temperature in the tropics is now thought of as limited, but has this been quantified? Does the often discussed logarithmic decrease in the warming potential of CO2 include this, or is that based strictly on radiative principles and the ever increasing energy required for the water cycle would be a negative feed back to that?
Also, as you point out, H2O, in any form and phase while in the atmosphere, reduces the amount of solar energy which reaches the suface, (clear sky water vapor by about 20% if I remember correctly) How well is this surface reduction of solor insolation taken into account when CAGW proponents quantify the effect of GHG on upwelling LWIR? Thanks in advance as your cogent comments help this layman understand the science articulated here at WUWT.
There! Venus had run-away greenhouse effect. We have it straight from the horses mouth! Hence we no longer see any Venusians in their flying saucers. They got it wrong, failed to disamantle their polluting power stations and their flying saucer production facilities, and just look at what happened to them! A timely lesson for us all.
Geoff Alder
R Gates said
“Dr. Hansen didn’t seem terribly “unhinged” to me. Not that I agree with everything he’s saying in the video, or in general, but he’s hardly unhinged”.
Just what does a proponent of AGW have to do to be pronounced “unhinged”?
If I said I think AGW was caused purely and simply by the hot air produced by Jeremiah James,
would that make me unhinged?
R. Shearer says:
January 12, 2012 at 4:51 pm
Insane sociopath or just a pathological liar?
———————————————————————–
I was at scripps aquarium about eight years ago I saw a man outside the entrance in conversation with another man about CAGW. He was very animated, worried, and bitterly complaing about the sceptics who were incomprehensible to him. His compaion was trying to sooth him as a mother would a child. I was just starting my search concerning CAGW and was very surprised a few days later when I saw an article about Jim Hansen and recognised him as the very animated and upset man I had seen as Scripps. The man is sincere, therfore insane sociopath gets my vote.
That graph is the wrong way round. Time moves to the right so youngest on the right.
Apart from that as a geologist I question the modeled historic CO2 levels. The rapid growth and development of vegetation during the Carboniferous would probably require a very high atmospheric CO2 content especially when you think of all that sequestered CO2 in coal.
I got to the boiling oceans and switched Hansen off. He has become near certifiable.
Did you see his lying eyes ?
Hansen doesn’t believe any of this. He is there only to disseminate “The Message”, given to him by his Lords and Masters. He receives those messages late at night whilst “staring into the abyss”. Murmuring incantations which would make the Roman Emperor Caligula seem lucid, and wearing ancient Babylonian garb, he reaches for the instrument of doom, and turning on the mechanism he then at last speaks…… The results can be viewed in the above video.
If only it were just lunacy such as described, but sadly this is part of a plan, to panic the gullible public to pour ever more funding into these fraudulent scams, so that Hansen and his mates will not only be enriched, but avoid incarceration for the multiple frauds they may have already committed.
It’s so sad to see NASA reach such low depths as this. Will they ever recover?
On the other hand I’ve never had such a good laugh for ages, thanks Dr Hansen.
He says that volcanoes were ersponsible for helping the earth out of the ice age. If that is the case, then how did the ice get there in the first place? or is he suggesting that volcanoes only started erupting after the earth became cocooned in ice
“R. Gates says:
January 12, 2012 at 6:45 pm
Dr. Hansen didn’t seem terribly “unhinged” to me.”
Ah, so just somewhat unhinged then? Perhaps slightly unhinged? Or maybe quite, hardly, narrowly, after a fashion, in a manner of speaking, just a little bit, a whit, a jot, nearly, on the brink of, at the very least or even virtually unhinged?
To paraphrase Barbara Skolaut above, I like my scientists hinged!
Hansen in his abundant stupidity has given Obama two good reasons for cutting the NASA budget first they employ Hansen and second with absolute honesty Hansen says that there is not a snowball in hells chance of us escaping to another planet. If that is the case – and it is – then why precisely should we continue funding NASA so that a bunch of over educated juveniles can live out their childhood fantasy dreams of Star Trek and Star Wars the stuff of Hollywood that most Americans would love to believe is the future. Hansen should have worked in Hollywood where his bizarre notions of the future could take form but of course its already been done without him so he really should be taken away very quietly in one of those all embracing white overcoats with elongated straps, buckles and chains and when the Chinese eventually decide to put a man on the moon volunteer Hansen as an experiment to see how early onset alzheimers reacts in a cold Co2 free environment and if it works then we how to resolve the climate issue for all time, lock all of the lunatics in a cold store at minus 30C saying that in there they will all be safe from the coming thermogeddon, they might well be daft enough to believe it, Excellent!!
I like the bit where he says the temps went up some 6+ degrees after the ice earth..so?
if they rose then, and seemed to have stopped..and we have plants people and animals still,
where/why? does he “ass ume” that if it happened again it also wouldnt reach a stable zone once again?
and 700mil years back, seems from what I’ve read we had some big icy times since then?
NASA has no cred while they continue to employ and allow this idiocy to be promulgated.
Hmm -this is from NASA? I thought their job was to better public relations with the Muslim world -to be proud of their past achievements. Would that be because 1.000 years ago they didn’t burn – or sell – any of their oil, and they should go back to that, pronto?
On the other hand: if that is what you get from NASA: spin, bluster, ignorance, lies and damned lies – does anyone wonder why there are people out there who don’t believe they could have put a man on the moon, and just resorted to fakery?
Robert Brown says:
January 12, 2012 at 3:28 pm
Before discounting a runaway greenhouse one needs to consider internal heat in a different light. You probably know enough earth science to know that the earth’s core is molten. The sun isn’t responsible for that. The excellent insulating properties of rocks are the culprit. Now consider what happens if you have a cloud layer so thick that it insulates the rocks on the surface to such a great extent that the puny 100mW/m2 of internal heat that leaks out of the crust can’t escape so easily. Sufficient insulation can raise the surface temperature enough to boil water or melt lead. This what is actually happening on Venus with its 80 bar of CO2 and impenetrable cloud layer. Contrary to scientific legend it isn’t solar energy that’s being trapped at the Venusian surface it’s heat of formation and radiactive decay that is being trapped at the surface. The atmosphere changes the temperature gradient between the core and the surface. Calling that a greenhouse is rather inapt but the term is abused into meaninglessness already anyhow. I’m not saying it’s possible on the earth with its greater remove from the sun to build up an atmosphere similar to Venus anytime soon (it will happen in another few billion years sol’s progression along the main sequence however) but it shouldn’t be discounted out of hand either.
Cmon now. I watched Hansen’s video. He is saying we have to preserve the earth’s precious bodily fluids. Is that so strange? It’s just a type of love. Of the precious bodily fluids of earth.
tokyoboy says: January 12, 2012 at 7:47 pm
Ric Werme says: January 12, 2012 at 7:27 pm
“Looks like just a case of missing data to me. Check it next update.”
They moved the data for some reason in November. JunkScience may not have realised. It’s now shown on:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/_graphs3/Fig.C.txt
“Howling Mad” Hansen didn’t get his name for nothing.
Reminds me of “The Secret Policeman’s Ball”. That started about 1980 too.
And will this wind…?
A Lovell says:
January 13, 2012 at 3:22 am
“R. Gates says:
January 12, 2012 at 6:45 pm
Dr. Hansen didn’t seem terribly “unhinged” to me.”
Ah, so just somewhat unhinged then? Perhaps slightly unhinged? Or maybe quite, hardly, narrowly, after a fashion, in a manner of speaking, just a little bit, a whit, a jot, nearly, on the brink of, at the very least or even virtually unhinged?
Unhingedness in the eye of the beholder.
or
Unhingedness is as unhingedness does.
So, essentially, people will have cooked fish a plenty in the future and since they cook at different temperatures there will be plenty of cooked fishes for years to come. The starving people goes huzzah, the ageing crazed climate communist hippie collective goes: Nooo!
Warmer now means colder http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SciTech/20120113/climate-cold-winters-weather-climate-change-20120113/
This despite no significant warming and no significant change in global temps for 10-15 years now?
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_December_2011.png
I suspect a very large drop in global temps January – March 2012 judging from COLA
http://wxmaps.org/pix/clim.html every continent SH and NH + Poles showing intense cooling + La nina mein gott!
David says:
January 13, 2012 at 2:08 am
“Does the often discussed logarithmic decrease in the warming potential of CO2 include this, or is that based strictly on radiative principles and the ever increasing energy required for the water cycle would be a negative feed back to that?”
The logarithmic response of CO2 or other IR-absorbing gases is based on radiative principles alone. Any negative feedback from the water cycle or the likes would be another limiting or counteracting factor.
Venus is 40 million kms closer to the sun than earth, I think if we placed our beloved earth in Venus’ orbit our oceans would boil too.
I think he is genuinely insane. Were he a rational fraudster, he would suppress the more outrageous blunders to avoid being canned. I don’t think NASA still has the capability or will to differentiate between sane and insane warmist scientists, but a rational fraudster would try to err on the side of caution, and be more like Rahmstorf or Schellnhuber in his predictions – he’s too over the top for a rational fraudster.
Hansen is the leader of climate science. He is the main spokesman, a recipient of countless awards, a highly respected peer, author of numerous peer reviewed climate papers, leader of a major government climate research group, respected by Presidents and Vice Presidents, author of best sellers on the climate, and has never been asked publicly by his peers to change one word he says.
James Hansen is the face of climate science.
He may be crazy, he may be absolutely flat-out wrong, he may be a fear monger and deceptive manipulator of the public square, but he is not some outlier of climate science. He is their guy. He is their spokesman. He is the main reason climate science has grown to the successful and lucrative enterprise it is.
Think about the implications of that.
I paraphrase. “There has been times when methyl hydrates melted and pushed global temps up 9 or 10 degrees” Yet the earth didn’t experience run a way global warming and boiling oceans. How is this guy not laughed out of media existence?
Things that make you go hmmmm?
“R. Gates says:
January 12, 2012 at 6:45 pm
Dr. Hansen didn’t seem terribly “unhinged” to me.”
Mr Gates, would you go with pixilated perhaps?
Has anyone ever seen James Hansen and Sacha Baron Cohen together in the same room at the same time?
Just asking…
NASA:
Needs Another Stupid Administrator
Boiled whales, fish and giant squid, eh? Can we fill a containership with marinara and tartar sause so we will be ready?
His assertion that storms will be made worse by melting ice because of the temperature differential surprised me. Don’t hurricanes always lose strength when they move over cooler waters?
I think I’ve squared Hansen’s “the seas will rise” and “the seas will boil” circle. See, the seas will rise to an extreme altitude — a mile above current levels — and the higher altitude will mean a lower boiling point. So we’ll get both!
Or the guy thinks the rest of the world is populated by the stupid and the gullible.
Hansen is certifiably insane. The more he escalates his rhetoric the less believable he becomes.
“How is this guy not laughed out of media existence?”
The press NEVER abandons a colorful doomsayer who is politically useful. Note that Hansen has made ludicrous predictions in the past and the predictions failed, but they keep going back to him and treating him as a serious person, while the preacher who predicted a couple dates last year for the Rapture was subjected to endless ridicule. Hansen’s mania supports totalitarian government; the preacher’s does not. Thus Hansen’s latest predictions will be treated seriously and his past failures buried, and the preacher will be turned into a joke.
We took Hansen for an authority. Turns out his dart missed the dartboard completely. New game!
“Minor” differences between Venus and Earth:
Venus is closer to the Sun (.72 AU vs 1 AU for Earth) If my math is right, Venus gets almost double the insolation Earth gets
Venus’s atmosphere is 96.5% CO2 vs 0.04% for Earth
Venus’s atmosphere is more massive than Earth’s, resulting in higher pressure at the surface (~91 atm), and almost twice as thick (scale height 15.9km vs 8.5 km for Earth)
Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes…
The dead rising from the grave!
Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
R. Gates.
Wow, really?
You will deny him three times before the cock crows.
Why the oceans won’t boil away… http://www.john-daly.com/deepsea.htm
I just listened to the “oceans will begin to boil” part…he first said “…the oceans will begin to evaporate…” then said “…the oceans will begin to boil…” followed by “the oceans will end up in the atmosphere…”.
I really don’t know if the adjective “unhinged” is adequate here…does he understand anything about atmospheric heat transfer or thermodynamics??
The claim that a greenhouse earth would be permanent is absurd. If that was the case, and CO2 could trigger it, then it would have happened already and we would not be here. But then, real climate history never tempered his ramblings before, so why now.
Meanwhile Obama wants to downsize the Dept. of Commerce. This will probably result in more support for biased science and keep the Lisa Jackson train going. The farm sector was right to get farm dust protected from EPA ahead of the hit list agenda.
At least he admits that water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas. ;->
@ hunter “he is not some outlier of climate science. He is their guy. He is their spokesman. He is the main reason climate science has grown to the successful and lucrative enterprise it is.
Think about the implications of that.”
Yes, you have hit the nail on the head. Hansen is a spokesman because he is saying (whether he sincerely believes it or not) exactly what some very influential people in government, business and media wish him to say, and are willing to pay him in money, in publicity and in honors. 95% of the people who read this are probably sceptics on climate and will agree with the previous sentence. Remember that the same people who would willingly lie to us about CAGW are the same people who inform us about foreign policy, about which nations threaten us or support us, about what economic actions will benefit us, about what is needed to keep our nation free and prosperous.
Scarey realization, but the same people who lie to us about climate will lie to us about anything.
I posted this storey on a local blog I participate in. When I challenged an alarmist to show anyone who agreed with Hansen he said this.
“Feel free to show any credible climate scientist who argues that humans should continue to rapidly increase our greenhouse emissions, and also hope for huge releases of methane from thawing permafrost, etc sources in the future.”
I thought since it’s Friday, everyone could use a laugh.
Ask him to show you how it is even possible for humans to prevent nature from releasing the methane all on its own as it has done so when no humans were aroung to influence it.
According to James Hansen it will be too late at the end of this year, unless dramatic action is taken on greenhouse gases.
And it was Rasool and S. H. Schneider who used James Hansen’s models in 1971 to predict an impending ice age. Why should we trust his models now?
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/09/19/nasa-scientists-predicted-new-ice-age-1971
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/173/3992/138
By my count in the entire 5 minutes plus of babbling he only said two things that weren’t complete nonsense.
1) Water is a much more powerful influence on the climate than CO2.
2) There is no chance of transferring life off the planet in any foreseeable future
The rest of it is farcical manure. Boiling oceans, the Antarctic icecap disappearing within a century even though he seems to think it is 2 miles thick, unlike the entire rest of the world, which AFAIK has always had the number at 1 mile+/-, and the majority of the continent doesn’t come within a Tebow miracle touchdown pass of the melting point of ice even as a summer maximum.
Re: R. Gates:
Definition of UNHINGED: upset, unglued
Related to UNHINGED
Synonyms: balmy, barmy [chiefly British], bats, batty, bedlam, bonkers, brainsick, bughouse [slang], certifiable, crackbrained, cracked, crackers, crackpot, cranky [dialect], crazed, crazy, cuckoo, daffy, daft, demented, deranged, fruity [slang], gaga, haywire, kooky (also kookie), loco [slang], loony (also looney), loony tunes (or looney tunes), lunatic, mad, maniacal (also maniac), mental, meshuga (or meshugge also meshugah or meshuggah), moonstruck, non compos mentis, nuts, nutty, psycho, psychotic, scatty [chiefly British], screwy, unbalanced, insane, unsound, wacko (also whacko), wacky (also whacky), wud [chiefly Scottish]
Although I wouldn’t go so far as to declare that he is psychotic or insane the definition and the rest of the extensive list of synonyms seem completely appropriate.
What makes me increasingly angry and resentful is that, despite this clown’s continual spouting of similarly reasoned doom mongering, I enjoy the privilege of equally continual declarations by this dolt and his numerous sycophants that, because I don’t find his blatherings completely convincing, I’m the one who must of necessity be a mouth breathing, knuckle dragging moron or alternately the functional equivalent of all the worst Bond movie villains all wrapped up in one.
“”Jason Calley says:
January 13, 2012 at 12:13 pm
Remember that the same people who would willingly lie to us about CAGW are the same people who inform us about foreign policy, about which nations threaten us or support us, about what economic actions will benefit us, about what is needed to keep our nation free and prosperous.
Scarey realization, but the same people who lie to us about climate will lie to us about anything””.
Another scarey realisation, the same people who lie to us about climate will lie to us about different reasons for it, when their original reasons are proved false. The big methane push is already on. Check Realclimate out the last few days, check the evolving MSM climate news. NASA is proving to be thick and furious in the mix.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/fourteen-steps-to-reduce-global-warming-20120113-1py4o.html
LOL, Lucey Skywalker reminded me of my favorite Spaceballs quote.
Appologies to Spaceballs:
Barf: [Dr. Hansen roars by them, in a plaid colouration of speed] Aah!
Barf: What the hell was that?
Lonestar: Dr. Hansen
Barf: He’s gone to plaid!
DCA says:
January 13, 2012 at 12:25 pm
I posted this storey on a local blog I participate in. When I challenged an alarmist to show anyone who agreed with Hansen he said this.
“Feel free to show any credible climate scientist who argues that humans should continue to rapidly increase our greenhouse emissions, and also hope for huge releases of methane from thawing permafrost, etc sources in the future.”
I thought since it’s Friday, everyone could use a laugh.
————————————————-
I would respond that I know of at least 31,000 plus scientist with over 9,000 PHD’s who consider that the release of CO2 into the atmosphere not harmful, and most likely beneficial, and then link the Oregon petition.
Where’s his cool “Raiders of the Lost Arc” hat? Did a violent, climate-induced tornado blow it away?
http://a57.foxnews.com/static/managed/img/Scitech/396/223/James%20Hansen%20Arrested.jpg
@ Marcus “Another scarey realisation, the same people who lie to us about climate will lie to us about different reasons for it, when their original reasons are proved false. ”
Very true! And a LOT (though probably not all) of the CAGW enthusiasts will accept it, and say, “Well, sure, we were a little confused about the CO2 thing, but THIS time we are certain and only a father-raping-mother-stabber could disagree!”
Well, that explains why we don’t have any Venusian butterflies.
Number 2 is also complete nonsense. Human life was transferred off the planet to Luna/the Moon a number of times already in brief visits 42 years ago and less. Life has been transferred off this planet for longer periods of time to temporary habitats in NEO (Near earth orbit) for similar periods of time.
The United States canceled the space program manned missions to Mars being planned in the 1960s to 1970s and scheduled to occur by 1987. The ability existed, but the political will was lacking.
Human colonization of the asteroids in the outer Solar System has the potential to support more human civilization and larger economies than currently exist on the Earth. Mining of just Ceres alone can create a habitat with more arable land and more fresh water than currently exist on the Earth’s continents at present.
Human life is destined sooner than later to become extinct on the Earth. Human civilization in the outer Solar System has no inevitable time for extinction, unlike such himan civilizations on the Earth.
Humanity has a very clearcut choice. Humanity can either do whatever is necessary to establish viable and permanent colonies in the outer Solar System before catastrophes destroy the current civilization and its capacity for space travel, or humanity can choose to confine itself only to the Earth and become extinct as catastrophes, natural and/or unnatural, destroy the Earth’s human-friendly environment by large impact events and other natural occurrences.
If humanity chooses adapatation and survival among the asteroids and other habitats in the outer Solar System, humanity will then have the capability for interstellar colonization among the hundreds of billions of planets and far more asteroids in this galaxxy alone, even if the only mode of travel is by multi-generation transits by permanent aasteroidal colonies.
The permanent habitation of the first asteroid as a scientific outpost is feasible with current technologies, and it can be accomplihsed within one or more decades. The first viable and permanent human colony in an asteroid is quite feasible in the next half century. Once a small manufacturing facility with self-sustaining food and energy production is well established in the outer Solar System, the whole human presence in the outer Solar System can mushroom in size in a very short time. It is far more costly to transport raw material and finished goods out of and into a gravity well than it is between non-planetary locations in the Solar System. Consequently, you avoid gravity wells and planets until and unless you can take advantage of their gravity ofr course corrections and gravity acceleration in hyperbolic trajectories. The largest problem facing human space travel is traveling in and out of the gravity wells, which demand tremendous energy resources. Human civilizatons who live outside those gravity wells need not pay the exporbitant costs for transport of mass out of those gravity wells.
Although the costs and difficulties associated with establishing extraterrestrial colonies are not to be underestimated given the unprecedented scope of the challenges involved, neither is the true capability of humanity to do so to be irrationally denied.
NASA = “Not About Space Anymore”
D. Patterson says:
January 13, 2012 at 4:19 pm
The United States canceled the space program manned missions to Mars being planned in the 1960s to 1970s and scheduled to occur by 1987.
The money was siphoned off to pay for “near earth” studies, which have formed the basis for the alarm over GHG.
markus says:
January 13, 2012 at 1:11 pm
Check Realclimate out the last few days,
The cult of RC has Hansen as its godhead with Gavin at His right hand.
Maverick says:
January 12, 2012 at 5:44 pm
A question for NostraHansen – How much “train of death” coal does it take to boil an ocean?
Having gotten prosperous off an industrialized west built on coal, NostraHansen would now deny those sames benefits to the rest of the world to protect his grandchildren. Selfish does not begin to describe the crime against humanity perpetrated in the name of CO2.
I have a pretty good ‘people reader’ and a very good ‘BS detector’. I wouldn’t by a car from this guy…
IMHO, he has a ‘tell’. Just before he tells a ‘whopper’ there is a little ‘microexpression’ of a smirk. Mostly on the lips as a slight smile, but a bit in the eyes too. (Contrast it with the placid that comes on as he does the math for F / C conversion…) It just causes my BS-O-Meter to peg…
A couple of things I noticed. Hansen mentioned that a differential in temperatures (polar to tropics) is required to create major storm activity. So he *has* been listening to sceptics who have pointed out that warming at the poles will reduce the temperature differential. Of course, his cause for polar cooling is ice melting. So warming will generate melting which will cause cooling. All right then … I got that Jimmy. :-0!
Secondly, with all the extra water vapour in the air we get runaway warming. I can’t find the reference but a I recall one scientist (wrote a paper?) suggesting that C02 warming leading to evaporation leads to additional clouds (tropical and temperate) which leads to sudden cooling leading to invoking an ice age. Thus *his* reasoning for controlling C02 output. He and Jimmy could go all gladiatorial to debate it :).
E.M.Smith says:
January 13, 2012 at 9:22 pm
I have a pretty good ‘people reader’ and a very good ‘BS detector’. I wouldn’t by a car from this guy…
IMHO, he has a ‘tell’. Just before he tells a ‘whopper’ there is a little ‘microexpression’ of a smirk. Mostly on the lips as a slight smile, but a bit in the eyes too. (Contrast it with the placid that comes on as he does the math for F / C conversion…) It just causes my BS-O-Meter to peg…
Amazing, isn’t it. Where R. Gates sees no unhinging, i.e. nothing “out of the ordinary”, I see complete and utter unreality propelled by smirky arrogance…let’s just say “phoney”. I bet if you showed this to young children, they would cry, or at least wonder why “that man” is so “sneaky”. Their ability to detect emotional turmoil is enhanced due to an absence of cynicism. I find Hansen quite simply unconvincing: because, if he were telling a credible tale, he would do so in the absence of all the facial contortions.
What Hansen has said thus far has been eerily accurate- its all in the Paleo climate record.
The climatic inertia is like a ‘Faustian Bargain’ but once the warmth really kicks in- it will be impossible to stop.
I’m very glad you shared this video with your readers, Anthony.
First, anyone who sees it, will no longer be able to say he or she wasn’t warned.
Second, the video clearly smashes the following prepostorous strawman arguments regularly put forward or implied by climate deniers:
– climate scientists deny/ignore/hide the fact that the Earth’s climate has always changed,
“The Earth has had a runaway snowball Earth situation […] the Earth froze all the way to the equator.”
– climate scientists deny/ignore/hide the fact that volcanoes have an influence on climate,
“Volcanoes put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and it builds up more and more until there’s enough to melt the ice”
– climate scientists deny/ignore/hide the fact that water vapour is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2.
“water vapour is a very strong greenhouse gas, even more powerful than carbon dioxide”
Or to be more precise, these strawmen don’t apply to James Hansen.
Third, I’d like to share with your readers my mirror video with Spanish subtitles for this video and an extended video with warnings from Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, also in Spanish.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGQCZJWWhH8
REPLY: And yet, you somehow managed to ignore the insanity put forth by Dr. Hansen that the “oceans will boil”.
Since you used the insulting phrase, turnabout is fair play. Who’s the “denier” now,? Earth is not Venus, chump. -Anthony
Peter Mizla says:
January 14, 2012 at 3:31 am
You forgot to put the sarc tag on your post.
There will be no “runaway warming”. The geologic record shows the earth has maintained a reasonably average temperature over it’s 4.5 billion years, despite huge fluctuations in so-called greenhouse gases, huge impacts and volcanic activity. Mankind”s input regarding so-called greenhouse gases is within the error bars of our ability to measure. A trifling input that has yet to be shown as having ANY effect whatsoever. Are you hoping all humans will perish? What kind of mind thinks this way with so little evidence?
and then comes the ” it’s different this time” crowd.
Yes, the audience will be warmed about the irrationality of Hansen and his acolytes by witnessing their behavior..
Like so many things in life, the projection of a person’s own faults upon someone else comes back to haunt them when the listener understands the speaker is really illustrating the speaker’s own faults.
Your make accusations of strawman arguments being used in the discussions, and then you proceed to make your own strawman arguments. The argument has never been that Hansen and his ilk have denied the existence of a changing climate. The argument is that they acknowledge the natural climate change and then disregard what they just acknowledged as they insist that atmospheric carbon dioxide is the only available explanation for the temperatures experienced in about the latest half-century.
The argument using the snowball Earth conjecture is an example of this irrational behavior. The snowball Earth concept is still a conjecture and not a scientific theory as of yet. While many of us may agree something close to a snowball Earth may have occurred, we cannot yet treat it as a theoretical likelihood no matter how much we are in favor of the conjecture. There seems to be some evidence that the Earth did not entirely freeze over as described by the conjecture. Part of the irrationality of Hansen’s statement and your usage of his statement is the self-contradicting nature of this statement.
At the time the ice age, snowball Earth or not, occurred, the Earth’s atmosphere was significantly more massive, dense, and dominated by atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations than now. These atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide were THOUSANDS of parts per million and not the two and three hundred parts per million of the current ice age we live in now. The Sun’s luminosity was somewhat less then, but the Earth’s rotation was also more rapid by many hours per day. Hansen has yet to explain how an increase of a few tens of parts per million or one hundred parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide by natural or unnatural means in the present will inevitably result in boiling oceans in the very near future, when we already know that the approximately 400 million year long Huronian Ice Age occurred in the presence of a much more massive atmosphere composed of many THOUSANDS of parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Hansen also disregards making an explanation of how the Earth’s oceans failed to boil away in the presence of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations which began about 3,800 million years ago with an atmosphere up to 100 times more massive than today and composed of more than 996,000 parts per million of carbon dioxide and was still more massive and 1,000 to 8,000 parts per million only 100 million years ago. In other words, if atmospheric carbon dioxide had the capacity to cause the oceans to boil with runaway global warming, it appears inexplicable and irrational in the face of the fact the Earth did not experience such runaway global warming and boiling oceans when the increases in carbon dioxide concentrations were thousands and tens of thousands higher in an atmosphere far more massive than today. Instead of explanations from Hansen and his ilk for such fantastic claims for the capacity of carbon dioxide to dominate the planetary climate, we get handwaving and ad hominem attacks that disregard the irrationality of claiming a very tiny fraction of the substance which failed to cause such an effect in the past will cause the effect in the very near future. The real wonder is the question of why anyone capable of rational thinking would for one moment think such a proposition was anything but silliness or madness without some very extensive and scientific explanations to account for the apparently monumental self-contradictions of such claims.
Again, it is yourself who is making the strawman argument by misstating and misrepresenting the positions and statements of Hansen’s critics. The role of water vapor has been excluded from many of the climate models they use. Even when Hansen and others acknowledge water vapor has a role in the climate, they still insist that increases in the atmospheric carbon dioxide is the one variable dominating and causing the planetary climate to change towards runaway warming more than any other substance. It remains to be explained by Hansen and others how it is possible and rational for them to argue without the handwaving and ad hominem attacks that a weaker substance can dominate the stronger substances and natural processes to cause runaway global warming, especially when it so obviously failed to do so in the past when it was formerly dominant in its environmental presence.
[….]
Peter Mizla says:
January 14, 2012 at 3:31 am
“What Hansen has said thus far has been eerily accurate”
Manhattan has been flooded?
D. Patterson says:
January 14, 2012 at 8:06 am
Thanks for the rational and clear answers!
Arne the opposite to skeptic is gullible.
The planet has had 10 and 20 times the today’s carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere without runaway greenhouse. Venus has 2 times the solar radiation the Earth does – this is certainly playing a bigger role in the warming there.
On the other side it is important to keep in mind that the total biosphere on Earth increased with about 50% since the Little Ice Age – which is very much due to carbon dioxide. This is a very significant number. Even NASA satellites saw 10% increase in the biosphere in the last 3 decades.
I would expect the further increase with 100 ppm to add maybe another 10-15% to it.
http://www.co2science.org/index.php
He belives his own bull crap, very dangerous this man.
It is sad about his wife and kids.
They more than likely know and have to live with him and not let him know they know he is nuts.
Very very sad.
You have to ask yourself why anyone should expect a 15 percent to 100 percent increase of an already small fractional part of a normal quantity to mean much? If the normal levels are assumed to be the recent stable level of 1,000 to 2,000 parts per million or greater, then why would fluctuations between about 280 to 380 parts per million be significant? This is not to say there can never be some form of significance, but where is the evidence for significance and what is the significance, if it exists at all?
The biosphere is responsible for eating the vast majority of more than 996,000 parts per million of ~100 atmospheres of carbon dioxide and reducing it to as low as less than 300 parts per million of 1 atmosphere in the present. The ongoing Holarctic-Antarctic Ice Age has increased the ability of the hydrosphere to hold carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, until an inter-glacial cycle such as the current one releases carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. The current Holarctic-Antarctic Ice Age has also greatly reduced the biological activity which would consume and remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
On balance, the biosphere is keeping atmospheric carbon dioxide reduced to levels which impair plant growth desite the hydrosphere’s releases of carbon dioxide as the hydrosphere warmed during the inter-glacial. Given the way that the biosphere consumed nearly one hundred atmospheres of carbon dioxide while life was still very primitive and confined to the hydrosphere, a person has to wonder why the current and far more widespread and sophisticated biosphere is supposed to be incapable of easily and rapidly consuming only tens of parts per million of carbon dioxide in just one atmosphere?
The AGW lobby’s argument has been put forth that the anthropogenic contributions of atmospheric carbon dioxide have been so great and so fast in the last half-century as to overwhelm the environment’s ability to keep the carbon dioxide from accumulating above natural levels. Such an argument fails for a wide variety of reasons, beginning with the almost immeasurable amount of carbon dioxide which humans have contributed to the atmosphere. Instead of talking only about relative modern percentages, most of which are dubious in the claimed quantities, the argument must also be examined in absolute quantities. Look at the number of gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions by humans versus the rest of the natural environment. Compare the human emissions with an array of natural emssions. Note how many gigatons of carbon dioxide are emitted into the atmosphere in the space of only one minute by the most recent asteroid and cometary impacts upon the Earth. Note how many gigatons ofcarbon dioxide were released into the atmosphere and captured by the seas from the atmosphere during various natural events such as the evaporation and re-flooding of the Mediterranean Sea, the flooding of the Persian Gulf, the evaporation of Lake Bonneville, the draining of Lake Agassiz, the flooding of the peri-continental shelves, and so forth.
As Lucy said to Ricky, we must say to the AGW lobby, “You have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do.” Instead of relevant explanations from the AGW lobby, we’re getting handwaving, strawman arguments, ad hominem attacks, threats and intimidation against professional careers for disagreeing, censorship, and suppression of publications and free speech on the subject.
D. Patterson says:
January 14, 2012 at 12:41 pm
“then why would fluctuations between about 280 to 380 parts per million be significant?”
Sorry for any confusion created, the second part of my answer was addressed to Arne Perschel above.
To your question, if you go to the link I posted you find the “do plants like more CO2” part:
http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/dry/dry_subject.php
There are many studies which show differences for +300 ppm CO2, please have a look per letter, make yourself a picture.
I understand we humans produce about the same amount of CO2 as termites do, and about 10% of what we produce comes from breathing.
There was a study showing that the total biomass doubled after the glaciation, and increased with the same amount after the little ice age:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/21/carbon-on-the-uptake/
“The uptake of carbon by vegetation and soil, that is the terrestrial productivity during the ice age, was only about 40 petagrams of carbon per year and thus much smaller: roughly one third of present-day terrestrial productivity and roughly half of pre-industrial productivity”
I understand part of it goes to the warming and part to the increase in CO2.
See also on CO2 and plants:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB29Mfw-HcU
Apologies for not reading the nearly 200 comments left already. I know I’m missing something. This is one of the reasons why I’ve not responded to many posts here that I have wanted to respond to in the past. I’ve decided to just admit that I’m probably missing something, and apologize, and move forward. At least today.
I want to respond to the original post that says: “One wonders, if Dr. Hansen realizes that no scientist has yet presented any credible evidence that the ‘oceans boiled’ millions of years ago when atmospheric CO2 values far exceeded the 390 ppm we have now.”
One needn’t wonder. In the video of Hansen that is posted (unless it’s been altered in some way since it was posted, or since the link was posted) he says:
“…now the earth, it can go unstable either to a cold climate or to a hot climate. And the earth has had a runaway–um–snowball earth situation. This happened most recently about 700 million years ago: the earth froze all the way to the equator. So these runaway situations can occur; we’ve never had a runaway greenhouse effect…”
So, one need not wonder if he “realizes that no scientist has yet presented any credible evidence that the ‘oceans boiled’ millions of years ago”… since he says that the runaway greenhouse effect that would lead to that (and which, as far as we can tell, did happen on Venus) has not happened here. [When you say “the oceans”, I assume you mean “the Oceans of earth”. If you mean to say that no scientists have presented “credible evidence” that the oceans of other worlds have ever boiled… then I’m not so sure… I suspect that oceans of other worlds have boiled (for various reasons, including the greenhouse effect) but we’d both have to look into the scholarly literature more closely to see if my suspicion (about what the science/scholarly literature says) is correct.
Hansen goes on to say that it’s not possible to emerge from a runaway greenhouse effect, but that it is possible to escape from a runaway snowball earth effect (and that the earth has escaped from the snowball earth scenario before). He goes into some detail (which I’m sure you’ve already listened to). I’d like to be more optimistic than he is about the impossibility of emerging from a runaway greenhouse effect. But the reality of Venus today is something to consider. Despite the fact that Venus is closer to the sun, the surface of Venus receives less solar energy than the surface of the Earth (since Venus is surrounded by highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid) but the surface temperature (of Venus) is still 400-500 degrees Celsius… hotter than Mercury… (too hot for liquid water to exist on the surface, despite the crushing atmospheric pressure).
Anyway. My point (and I do have one) is that Hansen is not nearly as “alarmist” as you make him out to be. What he does say that sounds alarmist is presented as something that is a possibility, and, given what we know about the way the world (universe) works… it is a possibility.
-anon1152
He’s the chap that said 2011 would be a strong El Nino year, isn’t he?
I’m still debating if he’s a bit nutty, or, motivated by money to say these things.
He messed up at the 2 minute mark.
“Water vapor is a very strong green house gas even more powerful than carbon dioxide.”
Now there is a sound bite that should be spread around.
Thank you for posting this! We have frequent “Global Warming Updates” pun intended on Common Cents…
http://www.commoncts.blogspot.com
“Anyway. My point (and I do have one) is that Hansen is not nearly as “alarmist” as you make him out to be. What he does say that sounds alarmist is presented as something that is a possibility, and, given what we know about the way the world (universe) works… it is a possibility.
-anon1152”
I’ll tell ya what’s up with Venus.
1. Yes, very hot, hot enough for a chemical construction from it’s mantle of (you guessed it) Sulfuric Acid.
2. And that GHG would (you guessed it) boil water.
3. But only an ignorant would argue a existing, essential to life chemical, can lead to runaway anything. Some minor climate forcing as it remains atmospheric longer than moisture, yes, amplification of convection, NO.
By that reasoning Hansen would be unhinged or ignorant.
Sorry anon 1152, carbon did make something runaway, life.
“One wonders, if Dr. Hansen realizes that no scientist has yet presented any credible evidence that the “oceans boiled” millions of years ago when atmospheric CO2 values far exceeded the 390 ppm we have now.”
Hanson clearly states the Earth has never gone into a runaway greenhouse effect which warmed the planet..
And the graph that shows CO2 at 7000ppm, the Earth would not have went into a runaway greenhouse effect with the sun 30% dimmer than today.
But if CO2 reached 7000ppm today!! Let me guess, clouds are going to save the day..
[snip waaaaayyyyyyy off topic]
Nice post Ant’s. Present half the evidence so you can make Hansen’s comments seem wildly extreme, rather than just on the outer edges of scientific estimates.
“One wonders, if Dr. Hansen realizes that no scientist has yet presented any credible evidence that the “oceans boiled” millions of years ago when atmospheric CO2 values far exceeded the 390 ppm we have now.”
You don’t spell out how may millions of years. So here is a rough calculation. As we go back in time, relative to the Pre-Industrial level of CO2, every 130-150 million years, CO2 needed to double in concentration just to maintain temperature stability once we allow for the cooler Sun in the past. Lets take 140 Million years as our average and 280ppm as Pre-Industrial CO2 levels. So 560 million years ago CO2 levels needed to be around 4500 ppm just to keep things the way they are now. So the oceans didn’t boil back then even with those higher CO2 levels because the Sun was cooler.
So making statements about what past Temp & CO2 records show without also factoring in previous Solar output levels is inaccurate. I can only assume that you have never heard of the Solar component before Anthony. Is that correct? In all the years you have been running WUWT, you have never come across the question of the Feint Young Sun? That is the only reason I can see for why you would put up a post like this that was omitting such a critical aspect of the energy balance. Can I assume that you will be amending your post to reflect the impact of this additional factor?
I disagree with Hansen that boiling ocean type scenarios are a likely outcome of any conceivable warming scenario from this point forward. But they cannot absolutely be ruled out as utterly impossible. If we double or triple or quadruple CO2 levels due to our actions AND things like the burning of the Amazon Forest in a dry world adds more CO2, AND the Oceans stop absorbing CO2 and outgas it AND soils start to outgas CO2 AND Permafrost & Methane Clathrates start to outgas Methane AND the Water Vapour feedback kicks in bigtime AND Greenland/Antarctica melt away over coming centuries changing the Earths Albedo. Then a regime that could shift Temps high enough to possibly trigger an irreversible runaway feedback is conceivable. But still not that likely. But not impossible.
That will be the least of our problems however. If enough of those things happen, we will be heading back to the caves, irrespective of whether a real runaway happens.
Please pass the popcorn. And if you really want to do your bit for Climate Realism, send Hansen some Thorazine.
“One wonders, if Dr. Hansen realizes that no scientist has yet presented any credible evidence that the “oceans boiled” millions of years ago when atmospheric CO2 values far exceeded the 390 ppm we have now” is a straw man argument. Hansen *never* states that we had a runaway greenhouse effect in the past in this video. In fact he states that we did not have such an effect in the past.
He only states “over a period of several centuries it would be conceivable to have a runaway greenhouse [effect]”, and he describes what such an effect might cause. Fundamentally, Hansen and Houghton are in agreement.
When one talks about “inconvenient facts [that] don’t matter, just come the Anthony Watts Web site. All I see here is smug ignorance by Watts and the commenters. Apparently, no one wants to admit that the audio is barely audible, so they just go along to get along.