Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
There’s an old con game that has been played on the suckers for hundreds and hundreds of years. It is done in various forms, with various objects, under various names—three card monty, the shell game, Thimblerig, bottle caps, cups and ball, the game is the same in every one. The essence is, the con man puts a pea under a shell, then switches the shells around and asks which shell is hiding the pea.
Figure 1. The Conjuror, by Hieronymus Bosch, painted 1475-1480. The type of tricks the conjuror is doing are thought to be among the origins of the shell game.
I bring this up because our favorite conjuror, James Hansen, is up to his old tricks again. He has a new paper out, Paleoclimate Implications for Human-Made Climate Change, And as always, you have to figure out which shell is hiding the pea.
Here is his money graph, the one that is getting lots of play around the blogosphere. The main observation I’ve seen people making is that having been bitten by previous failed prognostications, Hansen is taking the well-tested Nostradamus route now, and is predicting sea level rise for when he’ll be 137 years old or so …
Figure 2. Hansen’s Figure 7: ORIGINAL CAPTION: “Five-meter sea level change in 21st century under assumption of linear change and exponential change (Hansen, 2007), the latter with a 10-year doubling time.”
Folks are saying that the bad news is, it looks like we won’t be able to tell until 2040 or so if Hansen’s claim is true. But that’s not the case at all. Those folks are not keeping close enough watch on the pea.
In the paper Hansen says:
Sea level change estimates for 21st century.
IPCC (2007) projected sea level rise by the end of this century of about 29 cm (midrange 20-43 cm, full range 18-59 cm). These projections did not include contributions from ice sheet dynamics, on the grounds that ice sheet physics is not understood well enough.
Rahmstorf (2007) made an important contribution to the sea level discussion by pointing out that even a linear relation between global temperature and the rate of sea level rise, calibrated with 20th century data, implies a 21st [century] sea level rise of about a meter, given expected global warming for BAU greenhouse gas emissions. …
… Hansen (2005, 2007) argues that amplifying feedbacks make ice sheet disintegration necessarily highly non-linear, and that IPCC’s BAU forcing is so huge that it is difficult to see how ice shelves would survive. As warming increases, the number of ice streams contributing to mass loss will increase, contributing to a nonlinear response that should be approximated better by an exponential than by a linear fit. Hansen (2007) suggested that a 10-year doubling time was plausible, and pointed out that such a doubling time, from a 1 mm per year ice sheet contribution to sea level in the decade 2005-2015, would lead to a cumulative 5 m sea level rise by 2095.
The short version of that is:
• The IPCC predicts sea level rise of about a foot (30 cm), but they don’t take ice into account.
• Rahmstorf says a linear projection gives about a metre (3.3 feet) of sea level rise.
• Hansen 2007 says there’s a missing exponential term in Rahmstorf’s work, because the ice will be melting faster and faster every year.
OK, so Hansen 2011 rests on the claims made in Hansen (2007), which turns out to be Scientific reticence and sea level rise. At the end of Section 4 Hansen says that Rahmstorf estimates a 1-metre sea level rise, but that a non-linear ice melting term should be added to the Rahmstorf rise.
Under BAU [“Business As Usual”] forcing in the 21st century, the sea level rise surely will be dominated by a third term: (3) ice sheet disintegration. This third term was small until the past few years, but it is has at least doubled in the past decade and is now close to 1 mm/year, based on the gravity satellite measurements discussed above. … As a quantitative example, let us say that the ice sheet contribution is 1 cm for the decade 2005–15 and that it doubles each decade until the West Antarctic ice sheet is largely depleted. That time constant yields a sea level rise of the order of 5 m this century.
So to get the final Hansen projection, we need to see what is happening in Rahmstorf, A Semi-Empirical Approach to Projecting Future Sea-Level Rise, paywalled, where we find the following graph of projected sea level rise.
Figure 3. The Rahmstorf estimate of sea level rise, to which Hansen says an exponentially growing ice term should be added.
ORIGINAL CAPTION: Past sea level and sea-level projections from 1990 to 2100 based on global mean temperature projections of the IPCC TAR. The gray uncertainty range spans the range of temperature rise of 1.4° to 5.8° C, having been combined with the best statistical fit shown in Fig. 2. The dashed gray lines show the added uncertainty due to the statistical error of the fit of Fig. 2. Colored dashed lines are the individual scenarios as shown in (1) [Ref. 1 is the IPCC TAR Bible, no page given]; the light blue line is the A1FI scenario, and the yellow line is the B1 scenario.
(In passing, let me again protest the use of the entire IPCC Third Annual Report, thousands of pages, as a reference without giving us chapter and verse in the way of page numbers. My high school science teacher would have slapped my hand for that, it’s a joke.)
The upper blue line is the one that gives us about a meter of sea level rise. So I took that as Rahmstorf’s 1 metre rise. To that I added, as Hansen claims we should, an amount that starts at 0.5 cm in 2000 and doubles every ten years. This is following Hansen’s claim that the non-linear ice disintegration is a separate term that starts small but will “come to dominate” the sea level rise over the century. The result is shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Rahmstorfs predicted rise (blue), Hansen’s projected additional rise from “non-linear ice disintegration” (dark red), and total sea level rise (green) predicted in H2011. I have included the last century’s rise of 16 cm, as calculated by Rahmstorf, in the lower right corner for comparison purposes. IMAGE SOURCE
OK, so what Hansen is actually predicting is the green line. However, his real forecast is actually much worse than that. Hansen again, emphasis mine:
The eventual sea level rise due to expected global warming under BAU GHG [greenhouse gas] scenarios is several tens of meters, as discussed at the beginning of this section.
I’m going with “several tens” to mean more than two, so he’s predicting a 30 metre sea level rise!!! … I guess he figured nobody paid any attention when Al Gore threatened us with a 20 metre sea level rise, so he’d better pull out all the stops and give us a real scare, something to make us shake in our panties.
There is a bit of good news, however. Both the Rahmstorf and the Hansen projections are already way above the reality. Since 1993, when the satellites started measuring sea level, we’ve gone up about 4.6 cm (1993-2011). Rahmstorf’s projection is 6.4 cm for that time period, about 40% too high already. Hansen’s larger projection is 7.2 centimetres rise over that time, or 55% too high.
The annual rise is also entertaining. According to the satellites, the trend 1993-2011 was 3.2 mm/yr, and has been declining recently. The change 2009-2010 was under a mm, at 0.9 mm/yr. And 2010-2011 was just about flat.
In 2010-2011, Rahmstorf’s projected rise is already 4.5 mm/yr, about fifty percent larger than the actual rate of the last 18 years. And Hansen’s annual rise is even worse, at 5.3 mm per year.
So both in terms of 1993-2011 rise, as well as current annual rise, both Rahmstorf and Hansen are already way above observations. But wait, there’s more.
Hansen’s rate of sea level rise is supposed to be accelerating, as is Rahmstorf’s rate. By 2020 Hansen says it should be rising at 6.3 mm per year, and everlastingly upwards after that. But in fact we’re already way under their supposed rates of annual increase, and the observed rate of rise is declining …
How does Hansen get these nonsensical numbers? Well, he noticed something in the observations.
This third term [melting ice] was small until the past few years, but it is has at least doubled in the past decade …
My high school science teacher, Mrs. Henniger, bless her, thought extending a linear trend into the future was a crime against nature, and I would hesitate to express her opinion on Hansen blithely extending a ~ 7% annual increase for a hundred years. That kind of compound interest turns a centimeter (3/8″) into 5 metres (16 feet). If Dr. Hansen had submitted this nonsense to her, you would not have been able to read it when it came back for the red pencil scribbles.
You can’t do that, folks. You can’t just observe that something has doubled in the last decade, and then extend that exponential growth out for a century. That’s beyond wishful thinking. That’s magical thinking.
Two final points. First, the pea under the walnut shells. Note carefully what Hansen has done. He has claimed that the sea level rise will be “several tens of metres”. This is at least thirty metres, or a hundred feet, of sea level rise.
He seems to be at least somewhat supporting this claim with his Figure 7 (my figure 2). But if you look at the caption, this is not a forecast, a projection, or a scenario of any kind. Instead, this is merely an “approximation” of what a linear sea level rise might look like and what an exponential rise might look like. You know, in case you didn’t understand “linear” and “exponential”. His actual forecast is under another walnut shell somewhere. We know his “Approximation” can’t be a real projection because it shows almost no rise occurring currently, or for some years.
Second, even this doesn’t begin to unravel the errors, deceptions, alarmism, and con games in Hansen’s work. Do you see the guy in the dark vest and the white pants and shirt at the left of Hieronymus’s painting at the top? See what he has in his hand while he’s looking all innocent at the sky? See who it’s chained to? Hansen’s not really the shell game conjurer, that guy’s a piker, he’s not making much money on the game.
Hansen’s the guy in the dark vest with his hand on your pocketbook …
w.
[UPDATE]
Joel Shore observed correctly that Hansen was basing his estimate of a huge sea level rise on paleoclimate date. Joel is right that Hansen claimed the paleoclimate data shows a rise of 20 metres for every 1°C temperature rise. Because of this, Hansen says that a 2°C future temperature rise will give a 40 metre sea level rise.
Let’s take a bit calmer look at what we know. We know that when there is an ice age, a lot of the water in the ocean behaves badly. It goes up on the land as mainly northern hemisphere ice and snow and glaciers. As a result, the sea level drops by a hundred metres or so. The glaciers stay there until the ice age ends, at which point they melt, and the sea level rises again. Since we’re in an interglacial, right now the glaciers are mostly melted.
So I would certainly not expect further warming to have much effect on melting or sea level. The easy ice is all melted, the giant miles-thick Northern Hemisphere glaciers are almost all melted back into the ocean. The rest are hiding mostly on north slopes in northern climes. So where is the meltwater going to come from?
And curiously, what I found out from Joel’s question is that if you know where to look, we can see that the graphs in Hansen’s own paper bear me out. They say the oceans won’t rise. I don’t particularly believe Hansen’s results, but presuming that they are correct for the sake of discussion, then let’s look at his graphs.
Look first at the sea level during the past four interglacial periods. I stuck a ruler on it so you can see what I mean.
As you can see, at the level of detail of their graph the sea level has never been higher than it than it is now.
Now look at their temperature observations and reconstruction:
According to Hansen, temperatures have been as much as 2.5°C higher than at present … but the sea level hasn’t ever been higher than at present.
If Hansen’s claim were true, that a 1°C temperature rise leads to a 20 m sea level rise, we should see sea levels forty metres or more above present levels in Hansen’s graph (b). Look at the scale on the left of graph (b), that’s off the top of the chart.
Instead, we see nothing of the sort. We see much warmer periods in the past, but the sea levels are indistinguishable from present levels. Hansen’s own graphs show that he is wrong. So it appears that Hansen is doing the same thing, he’s extrapolating a linear trend out well beyond the end.
He’s noticed that when warming temperatures were melting the huge glaciers over Chicago, the sea level rose quickly. Unfortunately, he has then extended that trend well past the time when there are no glaciers in Chicago left to melt …
w.
John F. Hultquist says:
January 29, 2012 at 7:33 pm
There is still ice, although not much, in Olympic National Park and on top of Mount Rainier. once climbed by Algore, who invented the Internet.
Stark, thank you for your post.
The quoted BEST temperature of 0.4°C comes straight from the “hockey stick” of Figure 1 of the BEST web site’s Decadal Variations in the Global Atmospheric Land Temperatures (which WUWT readers are encouraged to check for themselves).
Rational skepticism is all about the objective comparison of predictions to data. And by rational skeptical standards, the 1981 “hockey stick” predictions of Hansen and colleagues are looking pretty darn good nowadays.
The last interglacial stage (often referred to as Marine Isotope Stage 5, the Sangamonian or the Eemian) was considerably warmer than the current interglacial stage and sea level was only 3-6 meters higher than modern time. The Sangamonian was particularly warmer in the Arctic (~5°C warmer). Oxygen isotope ratios from the NGRIP ice core indicate that the Arctic was significantly warmer at the peak of the last interglacial (~135,000 years ago).
The current interglacial stage (AKA the Holocene) has also experienced far warmer conditions within the last 10,000 years. It was significantly warmer in the Arctic during the Holocene Climatic Optimum (~7,000 years ago) than modern times. The Chukchi Sea was routinely ice-free during summer for most of the Holocene up until about 1,000 years ago. McKay et al., 2008 demonstrated that the modern Arctic sea ice cover is anomalously high and the Arctic summer sea surface temperature is anomalously low relative to the rest of the Holocene…
There is also compelling evidence that current ice and temperature conditions in the Greenland Sea region are not anomalous relative to the Holocene.
The Thule migration, near the end of the Medieval Warm Period, is now thought to have occurred in as little as 2 years. The Inuit hunted and fished their way across the Canadian Arctic Archipelago in kayaks in as little as 2 years. That’s a pretty clear indication that the Northwest Passage was open during the Medieval Warm Period… Particularly since sediment cores also indicate its openness throughout most of the Holocene.
shocklingly bad misuse of paleodata for alarmist angenda – no one could be that stupid to interpret the paleo data they way hansen claims – it must be deliberate to cause alarm?
you cannot compare hansen 1981 projection of global warming with BEST observations of LAND ONLY
well you can, but you’d be misleading at best
Corporate message, I am happy to oblige. When it comes to Arctic voyaging, a verifiable source is SkS’ Northwest passage has been navigated in the past.
Conversely, an unverifiable source is (for example) Glenn Beck interviews Arthur Robinson.
Hansen’s 1988 model was a total failure. The actual temperature (GISTEMP) has tracked scenario C while CO2 tracked scenraio A.
A physicist says:
January 30, 2012 at 5:15 am
Thanks, “A”, for your citation.
(1) He says about the Northwest Passage:
Three predictions there. Please note that NOT ONE OF THEM IS FALSIFIABLE, and as such, your claim cannot be verified. There is no date on the predictions. There are no numbers on the predictions. As a result, there is absolutely no way to either confirm or falsify them.
Has there been “erosion” on the Antarctic ice cap? What does “erosion” mean? Have “drought-prone zones” been created? How would we tell? Is the Northwest Passage “open” when on a good year a boat can sneak through? Two boats? Five? He bases his claim on the NW passage on things like this:
So he’s claiming that the NW passage will open because “all the sea ice may melt in summer” … perhaps you could point out how that prediction is working out, “A” …
In other words, those are not predictions in any sense of the word because they are neither falsifiable nor verifiable. They are just throwaway unfalsifiable statements that he put in the Abstract to fool the rubes, which are not only not supported but hardly mentioned in the paper. If you consider those to be verifiable predictions supporting Hansen’s prognosticative abilities, turn in your PhD now.
(2) The “hockey-stick” you see in Figure 6 is the usual nonsense. LOOK AT YOUR DANG CITATION, “A”. It shows a quarter of a degree rise from 2000 to 2010, and you are sitting there with a straight face claiming his forecast came true? You’ve lost the plot entirely, my friend. There has been no temperature rise over that period at all.
In other words, to the extent that any of his nonsense came true, he didn’t predict it, and to the extent he predicted it, it didn’t come true.
Most of his stuff is just the typical AGW hysteria about how bad the future will be—but as usual with no dates, no number, no deadlines, neither falsifiable nor verifiable.
And for the one prediction that was verifiable, with a date and a number attached to it … well, it didn’t come true at all. We haven’t seen a quarter degree rise since 2000 as Hansen’s “hockey stick” claims, and it’s getting worse every year because his projection goes straight up.
Look, “A”, Hansen, like everyone else on the planet including you and me, totally failed to predict the past fifteen years of no significant warming. Claiming otherwise just makes you look way out of touch, and you’ve already had to turn in your PhD for thinking that an offhand claim with no date, no numbers, and no details is a falsifiable forecast.
My advice? Quit while you’re behind, it won’t get any better. Set aside your claim that Hansen is the Nostradamus of the North. He is a failed serial doomcaster, and a shabby one at that, I’ve just shown that his much-hyped and feard “20 m sea rise per degree of warming” is completely contradicted by his own data, and you think he’s great? You just look dumb when you support things like that.
w.
PS—I truly haven’t a clue why BEST is even in the mix. They haven’t even released their original data yet, “A”, nor their codes used to transform it into the final dataset, nor have they released their final dataset as far as I know. To date, Mueller has come up with nothing but smoke and mirrors … oh, and traducing his friends, he’s good at that.
So we haven’t any idea what their results say or whether they are valid. You’ve been suckered by Richard Mueller, “A”, you obviously bought into his BS … you need to be more cautious about what you believe, my friend, and read the fine print a bit more carefully.
PPS—One last warming, “A”. Under no circumstances should you get between Hansen and a microphone, that is the most dangerous location in the room. Just a word to the wise …
Please let me say, David, that your fact-driven post is (IMHO) outstanding. More posts like it, please!
A key issue (obviously) is whether anthropogenic CO2 levels will be enough to melt, first the Greenland, and then the Antarctic ice-caps. Here Hansen has gone on-record in predicting “yes”, and has specifically predicted an acceleration in sea-level rise in the coming decade or two.
Fortunately, we will have excellent satellite altimetry and gravitometry records for those same two decades. So Hansen and his colleagues have made a prediction that leaves mighty little “wiggle room” for skeptic and non-skeptic alike:
Hansen’s Elevator Prediction: We’re going to see accelerating mass-loss from the ice-caps accompanied by an accelerating rise in sea-levels.
Rational skepticism has respect the simple possibility: “Hansen’s predictions may prove right.”
The other problem with H1981 is that the projected scenario in figure 7 is not, as far as I can tell, spelled out in the text with enough detail to ascertain what the heck it is.
The scenario is labeled as a slow growth scenario. SO, to really test Hansens “science”
you have to look at two things.
1. The science of predicting emissions
2. the science of predicting temperature rise from those emissions
merely pulling a curve from a 1981 paper that is tied to a specific emission scneario
( that has no details we can check) and then comparing that GLOBAL curve to observations
for the LAND (30% of the total) isnt what I would call model verification.
And I like models, so dont take this as model bashing. I’m bashing the stupidity of these types of
comparisons that take no account of the details.
There are a bunch of other claims in that paper that can also be tested, but its largely besides the point. Science will always get something wrong and something more or less correct. Scientists will always make mistakes and counting their mistakes or their successes is not the scientific method. Sheesh.
“”Henceforth I shall say: “Before the 21st century, there is precisely one record of any wooden ship ever making the Northwest passage without over-wintering.” It is sobering to reflect, that with the Northwest Passage melting wide-open every summer, these brave Arctic sea-adventures very likely can never happen again.””
Henceforth, I say to you a Mr A Physicist, you are not.
Even if I am to accept your hypothesis, it gives me somewhat displeasure that the SH has fallen of the arse end of the Earth. You are a centric thinker, and nothing more. You do not have the capacity to relevantly put a universal argument together when only looking at half the story.
I have noticed throughout many of your comments the recurring fatal error, where, feeble minds, argue from a particular circumstance to the universal application of it.
You are annoying me, and Aristotle. And you are embarrassing.
Markus Fitzhenry.
lucia says:
January 30, 2012 at 8:13 am
Very funny, my dear. For those that don’t know her, lucia is a scientist (physicist?) who runs a marvelous blog.
You are correct, lucia, my high school english teacher would have marked my writing “unclear antecedent” with his red pencil …
w.
US Govt agency research is often cited as providing major positive impacts on society with NASA as a common case in point. Plenty of arguments could be made about the efficiency of the process and the number of waste studies mingled with the good (as in the 80/20 rule). But Hansen represents the case of negative impact contribution to society offsetting the good research in various categories. This is a new level for bad public policy on research effort by government.
A physicist:
Temperatures today have recovered to approximately where they were in the 1930’s. Temperatures during the MWP were warmer than today. The resulting graph from the “unHansened” data is a “W”. Hansen has made a career of “adjusting” data to support his predictions. It’s easy to show a rising temperature trend if no one notices that you keep ‘adjusting” the baseline data. The world however, has noticed which makes Hansen and his cheerleaders look more ridiculous with each passing pronouncement.
Willis and Joel have used Hansen’s own graphs and data to prove that he (Hansen) is, at best, incompetent. Even a child can take a ruler and draw a line.
I’d like to hear how you think the two graphs, Hansen’s sea-level graph (http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/hansen_historical_sea_level_rise.jpg) and the dome_c_temperature graph (http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/dome_c_temperatures.jpg) are not damning evidence of incompetence on Hansen’s part.
‘a physicist’ is a numpty who is always going on about “rational” skepticism. Earth to ‘a physicist’s’ planet: scientific skepticism is rational. That makes it different from your True Belief, which is based entirely on the Precautionary Principle.
Scientific skepticism is the only honest kind of skepticism, which excludes you and Hansen. Now run along to Connolley’s Wikipedia, or Anti-Skeptical Pseudo-Science to collect some new talking points, so you can be a faux climate expert like numpty cartoonist John Cook.
Robert Austin’s source may well have been the great John Daly’s Top Of The World article, where he shows the N.W. Passage was opening in the 1800’s. I have also posted peer reviewed papers showing that the N.W. Passage was open 6,000 – 7,000 years ago, and as recently as the 1920’s. No doubt it has been open many times during the Holocene; an open N.W. Passage is common. But you ignore it all, based on your belief that your HE-RO, the mendacious James Hansen, has predicted something completely unprecedented.
Joel Shore says:
January 29, 2012 at 7:40 pm
“One might be able to quibble about whether it is really 20 m per 1 C…but I think the general conclusion from the paleoclimate data that the sensitivity of sea level to temperature is very strong seems to be correct. Then the question becomes how fast that sea level rise can be realized.”
Hm, don’t we have since 1850 something about 1°C warming Joel?
Where are those 20m? They must be hiding somewhere with the missing heat.
I am with tty analysis here, 30 m is beyond the range of the possibilities. This is getting ridiculous.
tty says:
January 30, 2012 at 1:30 am
“It might be of some interest to see if Hansen’s prophecies are actually physically possible.”
tokyoboy says:
January 29, 2012 at 6:50 pm
“Sorry for posting the same data repeatedly, but our sea level has repeated ups and downs for over a century”
http://www.data.kishou.go.jp/shindan/a_1/sl_trend/sl_trend.html
Thanks for the post tokyoboy, it is good to see real sea level measurements!
There have been times in the past when it was warm enough on earth that there was no ice at the poles at all. Question, how much higher was the ocean then than now? This tells us the maximum possible sea level rise. My guess, not much higher than it is now, and a lot less than 40 meters.
A physicist says:
January 29, 2012 at 7:45 pm
After all, Hansen and his colleagues have been right twice before, with his 1981prediction that the Northwest Passage would open, and that global temperatures would show a BEST-style hockey-stick.
Attn., A physicist, Hansen made his hockey stick prediction from 1981 on, at a time when GISS already showed an upward trend, making his “prediction” actually a gambler’s no-brainer. Then as the temp. data has shown, his hockey stick suddenly grew another flattened shaft over the most recent 13/30 years period of its existence , a divergence from the blade, about which BEST’s Muller stated:
http://berkeleyearth.org/faq/#disagreement
“We have both [Muller and Curry] said that the global temperature record of the last 13 years shows evidence suggesting that the warming has slowed. [Curry had actually called Muller’s previous statement potential grist for another ‘hide the decline’ event ] Our new analysis of the land-based data neither confirms nor denies this contention. If you look at our new land temperature estimates, you can see a flattening of the rise, or a continuation of the rise, depending on the statistical approach you take.”
Therefore, A physicist, your intentional move to instead tout Hansen’s prediction marksmanship as having already achieved two “bullseyes” – or three bullseyes, including his N.W. Passage prediction which ignores its previous existence – objectively amounts to no more than your own preferred personal “perception is reality” verbal confabulation.
But since you’ve repeated this delusional or intentionally deluding verbiage 4-5 times already, along with some other irrelevant anti-scientific nonsense about the WSJ 16 needing to make their own predictions instead of simply evaluating Climate Science’s CO2 = CAGW alleged “hypotheses” on their own scientific merits, the question for you is, do you think that merely stating such memes over and over will magically make them come true in the real world?
And just why do you personally need so desperately for your own favorite mantras to be seen and repeated as true? Why isn’t reality as approached by the practice of real, thoroughly sceptical science good enough as specifically applied to “mainstream” Climate Science’s “CO2 = CAGW” – a process which has already revealed that mainstream Climate Science practices an anti-scientific, completely non-sceptical method and, likewise, that it has a perfect record of relevant prediction failure?
Why do you, and mainstream Climate Science, need to construct your own preferred verbiage instead of simply adhering to the principles and practices of real science?
Lars P. says:
January 30, 2012 at 11:39 am
Let’s be fair here. I always like having Joel comment on my posts. Why? Because his science-fu is strong. In this instance, he pointed out (quite correctly) that Hansen’s claims were based on the paleo stuff. That gave me the clue to figure out that Hansen’s own data contradicted his claims. And Joel’s comment was made before showed I Hansen’s “20 metres per degree” to be contradicted by his own data.
Joel is valuable because he always points to the science. Now sometimes, as in this case, I’m able to show that the science is built on sand. And other times, Joel is pointing to solid science, or to actual flaws in other scientific claims. But at the base of it, under all of Joel’s stuff, is always the science. He doesn’t make ludicrous claims about impossible gravity energy sources, for example.
So Joel was 100% correct, in that if I wanted to understand Hansen’s claim, I was looking in the wrong place, I should have been looking at Hansen’s paleo stuff. So I looked at it, and as a result, Joel was key to my finding Hansen’s error.
And that’s why I like Joel’s presence and point of view. Science is adversarial by nature. It is far too easy to fool myself. An honest scientific opposition is a great thing for keeping me from foolish error, and Joel provides that.
w.
Lars P. says:
January 30, 2012 at 11:45 am
Indeed, a fascinating site. I haven’t compared their data to the PSMSL data, should be interesting.
w.
So would these dramatic sea level increases come with or without his ‘boiling oceans’ idea
Lets be honest Hansen reverts to the same approach when ever things don’t go his way , make even more dramatic claims and scream louder . The very idea that the initial claims my be wrong never enters his head .
In all of these predictions of huge sea-level rise, WHERE the water is coming from is left undetermined. Sea-level rise and the loss of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica are connected by rapid melting of ice masses for only 4, opposite, months of the year, right now, as for each area the current melting temperatures AT THE EDGES are met only 1/3 of the year. Even with a 3*C rise, there is little additional melting time and area to be found.
The surface of both ice sheets is well mapped. The surface reveals itself as a series of drainage areas that have “streams” of ice, right now, but would be flowing water if there was a warming event great enough to melt the ice. Elsewhere it is CAGW histery (not history) that the glaciers are receding. Sea ice is likewise decreasing (except Antarctica, outside their West Peninsula). Ice flow into the sea of the land is not materially increasing, and cannot do so from a moderate atmospheric temperature increase, as the basal temperature cannot have risen yet as the thermal conductivity of ice is too low.
Ice melts from increased atmospheric heat from the front and the top. If it melts, it has to flow. If you lose ice from non-flowing events, it has evaporated, which is sublimation, caused by sunshine. If you want to claim that the ice loss happened first because of atmospheric heat, and then evaporated because it is now water in a dry atmosphere, you still need the bodies if liquid water. Which have not been shown to exist. And to exist in large amounts sufficient to affect the planet.
1. Sea-level rise means melting, i.e. liquid water.
2. Location restricted to two places.
3. Location restricted to top and edges of each place.
4. Melt activity restricted to 4 months of the year in each location, at opposite ends of the calendar.
5. Activity and location of activity identifiable and recognizable by form and quantity.
6. No evidence. No new Mississippis.
CAGW predicts the sea-level rise without showing where it is supposed to come from. It is a strange phenomena that is said to be showing up, and coming from only two sources, that cannot be shown to be creating rivers of water. Anywhere.
For CAGW to be true, certain events must be happening already. If they happen “later”, with death happening in 2100, the magnitude and speed must be beyond both physics of ice behaviour and the physical principles of the warmists. If slow-but-steady is the reality, then CO2 is neither an extreme radiative forcing event, nor the historical cause.
Ponzi schemes work because many people, including governors, cannot think things through. CAGW wins minds that are Ponzi-like in their abilities to discern the reasonable from the desirable (or, in this case, undesirable).
I would like to mention about Hansen and a video made about him, it was made in 1994 I think, I have it on tape and it was about his discovery of a thing he called the “Atlantic Conveyor”.
For this he was awarded the Nobel prize, as it was a new discovery in how the oceans work but I knew about this at least 30 years earlier it was called the “Gulf Stream” so he gave something a new name and suddenly he is a respected scientist. I am no scientist but I could do that, but maybe it was more to do with who he knew and how corrupt they were, the whole thing wants checking by different people and this new Hansen report should be treated with the contempt it deserves.
Apologies if the following has been covered already, but-
isn’t it curious that Hansen releases this hyperventilating paper JUST as Messers Gore et all head down to Antarctica ( hmmm West Antarctica perhaps?) to ‘highlight’ the ravages we will expect to see from G.W. – & of course ice sheets melting – cue Antarctic Summer ice melting for the cameras!
What a pack-ice of charlatans.