“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”
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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.