This came out some days ago, but I never got around to posting it, this corrects my oversight. The description of the TED video reads:
Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the “Sixth Sense” wearable tech, and “Lost” producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate
The video is below:
He looks like an Amish Climate Worrier, is his horse cart parked outside ?
Looks more and more like Homer Simpson.
REPLY: This comparison may explain the recent move towards wearing a hat in public, but be fair, watch the video – Anthony
Hasen is a climate scientist? Since when?
Willie Nelson’s let himself go.
Do you think the hat is to show he’s a rugged, no-nonsense field scientist – someone you can trust…
or is he just going bald?
The hat reminds me of the story about Tom Wolf author of ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’.
His agent once said to someone, “Poor Tom, other authors can go about their business without being hassled, but in that white suit everyone recognises him.”
No solution I can think of to that problem.
But he can see into the future!
Hansen’s 1988 prediction was wrong
‘On June 23, 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen testified before the House of Representatives that there was a strong “cause and effect relationship” between observed temperatures and human emissions into the atmosphere. At that time, Hansen also produced a model of the future behavior of the globe’s temperature, which he had turned into a video movie that was heavily shopped in Congress. That model predicted that global temperature between 1988 and 1997 would rise by 0.45°C (Figure 1). Ground-based temperatures from the IPCC show a rise of 0.11°C, or more than four times less than Hansen predicted. The forecast made in 1988 was an astounding failure, and IPCC’s 1990 statement about the realistic nature of these projections was simply wrong.’ (Pat Michaels)
Ok at ~1m 30s into the video completely abolishes his arguement about co2 in the air on Earth when he talks of Venus! Yeah Hansen, I know what you don’t want to know.
I see he has the Mannien Beard going on LOL
If he is so worried about Global Warming, why does he continue to cool the past? That only exacerbates it! In recent times the cooling of the past contributes MORE to the warming trend than CO2, so maybe instead of fighting CO2 emissions we could first stop cooling the past. That’s low-hanging fruit in the fight against Global Warming.
Kidding aside, maybe he’s wearing the hat because he’s cold.
Sorry but I just can’t get through it. He’s not a good speaker.
That looks like a long 17 minutes and 52 seconds. Is there a payoff?
Honest, I tried to watch it, but I got sick almost immediately.
TED has some great videos, but this isn’t among them.
Considering how much grant money he’s received beyond his guvmint salary you would think he could dress better
Why does he wear a hat? To hide the decline, of course.
Hey W.T.F is the hat for? Old hat too. Is this supposed to show something? Well what? I mean he has it on inside, no sun there, ohhh I know its a global warming hat, its to keep out the heat, even at night; inside, right? Also the hat is to show he is an old hippy, well I am an old hippy and I do not wear a hat at night. Look at his clothes, yes an old hippy. Did he have a few cones before his speech? I think he did listen how he talks. I could not bring myself to listen to the whole dribble, sorry Anthony but I always find B.S extremely boring. But at least he seems to believe his cone induced dribbling; top marks for that one!
I watched, and what I saw was a typical emoting infant incapable of detached thought, the type which litter our universities. People who have never spent day one in the real world mainly due to the fact that they are useless and unwanted. I almost expected him to stamp his feet until he got people to agree that he was right.
Multiple dishonesties in his speech; just one of them: comparing his “carbon fee” plan for the US to “our governments forcing the citicens worldwide to subsidize fossil fuels with 400 to 500 bn”. Notice that Iran, part of these “our governments”, who subsidices gasoline for its citizens, is as of yet not a part of US legislature. I expect Hansen to lobby the supreme being of Iran presto.
13:18: “We can say, with a high degree of confidence, that the severe Texas and Moscow heat waves were not natural; they were caused by Global Warming.”
Really?
His political activism has so contaminated his research that no reasonable observer could take his “findings” at face value. Should he find evidence that contradicts his belief in climate change, can anyone really think that he would renounce his views, or would he more likely “adjust” his way out of the problem? Not to say he doesn’t believe what he says. I’m sure he does. But “believers” shouldn’t be doing research. Its too easy to find what you want to find.
But like Sherri Quammen in an earlier thread, he is unprepared to defend himself against factual challenges from his detractors. He seems perfectly comfortable bloviating authoritatively about his cause to anyone who will listen, but discuss the matter in an appropriate academic setting . . . nah.
Is it a compulsory or can I get the course credit from cleaning up vomit in a gastro enteritis clinic, or laundering baby nappies? Something easier than watching this.
Hansen said about Venus, “…and it was kept hot by a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere.”
I think the key word here is “THICK”.
Mars has a THIN carbon dioxide atmosphere and is NOT kept hot.
I suspect Venus would be almost just as hot with a thick nitrogen atmosphere.
CO2 as the primary cause of the warming and heat is incorrect.
It is the thickness… like some people’s skulls…
so thick nothing gets through.
The whole talk was him explaining his opinions, conjecture and speculation and delivered in such a manner to sound like immutable truth. I thought he was a nut job before. I’m pretty sure of it now.
With that hat on he is living proof of the saying by Mark Twain:
“Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”
He is repeating falsehood after falsehood ever more shrilly; failed forecast after failed forecast. But it is necessary for him to keep on repeating the same mantra at least until the end of this year.
Why is Hansen worried about the future? His future is assured, with the enormous amounts of cash he’s been raking in form his alarmist blatherings.
It’s okay, just as long as you’re sincere.
With people like that in control of the world we will never acquire the wealth and the technology to achieve voluntary population limitation and a truly sustainable future.
Instead, it will be a global clone of the now defunct Soviet Union or possibly, at worst, a global repeat of the Cambodian ‘Year Zero’ experiment.
God, Jehova, Mohammed etc. please deliver us from this ignorance.
Okay, I watched the video. Seems he assumed from the get-go that human CO2 emmissions from fossil fuels were going to cause catastrophe even before the science was in. Ever since the beggining he has been only looking for evidence to support his initial bias and discarding all evidence to the contrary. He is still doing that today, even thou sea rise isn’t accelerating (in fact ts seems to be slowing if not starting to go negative), the ice sheets aren’t melting, the hot spot is missing, the increasing heat content of the ocean has stalled, air temp have flatlined (or are slightly decreasing over the past 14 years) and are currently below even his “type C” temperature vs CO2 scenario . In contrast to the actual data, what Hansen has done is continually make numerous “corrections” to the data to try and keep his disproved CAGW religion alive.
” I suspect Venus would be almost just as hot with a thick nitrogen atmosphere.”
Quite right, but don’t tell Willis Eschenbach or he’ll go cowboy on you 🙂
From WIKI an unreliable source comes a short bio of a reliable AGW advocate. Model it then adjust the history to match the model.
James E. Hansen (born March 29, 1941) heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, a part of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He has held this position since 1981. He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University.
After graduate school, Hansen continued his work with radiative transfer models, attempting to understand the Venusian atmosphere. Later he applied and refined these models to understand the Earth’s atmosphere, in particular, the effects that aerosols and trace gases have on Earth’s climate. Hansen’s development and use of global climate models has contributed to the further understanding of the Earth’s climate.
Hansen is best known for his research in the field of climatology, his testimony on climate change to congressional committees in 1988 that helped raise broad awareness of global warming, and his advocacy of action to avoid dangerous climate change. In recent years, Hansen has become an activist for action to mitigate the effects of climate change, which on a few occasions has led to his arrest.
In 2009 his first book, Storms of My Grandchildren, was published.[1]
I will note he still heads the GISS under the Obama administration. Lisa Jackson still heads the EPA. Chu heads DOE.. We should expect nothing less from the green agenda.
Wonder how those who live in 2112 will do if they watch this video? Did people really believe in this? That man with the goofy hat, who believed he would end up at Venus?
TED is turning into a circus for pseudo intellectuals promote.
It is insane for anyone to believe that governments can collect taxes, such as CO2 fees as suggested by Hansen, and distribute 100% of these back to the people to offsett increased energy costs for most. This is the old “free lunch” argument.
Sorry, there is no free lunch.
And there are no tipping points as far as CO2 is concerned, at least not on earth for 4 billion years. I doubt Hansen’s sincerity. I assume that he is happy to carry on for this cause which allows him to earn $million while still employed by NASA. His grand children will be provided for.
Hansen: I was really lucky to go to the University of Iowa wher I could study under Professor James van Allen who built instruments for the first U.S. satellites. Professor James van Allen told me about observations of Venus, that there was intense microwave radiation. Did it mean that Venus had an ionosphere or was venus extremely hot. The right answer, confirmed by the Soviet Vanera[?] spacecraft was that Venus was very hot. 900 degrees Farenheit. And it was kept hot by a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere. I was fortunate to join NASA and successfully propose an experiment to fly to Venus. Our instrument took this image of the veil of Venus which turned out to be a smog of sulphuric acid. But while our instrument was being built. I became involved in calculations of the greenhouse effect here on earth, because we realized that our atmospheric composition was changing. … The greenhouse effect had been well understood for more than a century. … Gases such as CO2 absorbed heat thus acting like a blanket warming Earth’s surface.
Eh…I don’t think so James. This is the paper that got your job at NASA.
THE ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL, Vol, 150, December 1967
THE ATMOSPHERE AND SURFACE TEMPERATURE OF VENUS
A DUST INSULATION MODEL
JAMES E. HANSENt AND SATOSHI MATSUSHIMA
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa
Received March 13, 1967; revised May 6, 1967
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1967/1967_Hansen_Matsushima.pdf
Abstract
A dust insulation model for the atmosphere of Venus is proposed in which the high surface temperature results primarily from a shielding of energy escaping from the planetary interior. The insulation is provided by micron-sized dust particles which may he kept airborne by mild turbulence. For an outflow of planetary heat of the same order as that on Earth, the required infrared opacity of the dusty atmosphere is ~10^5 and the same atmospheric structure accounts for the observed microwave spectrum, The dust insulation model predicts a systematic variation of radar reflectivity with wavelength and the observations are in good agreement. The otherwise anomalously low value of the differential polarization measured at 10 6 cm is expected in this model due to atmospheric absorption. The results indicate that the microwave phase effect is primarily an atmospheric phenomenon and hence the conclusions which have been drawn from it on the assumption that it is a subsurface effect are in doubt, If the cloud particle properties observed in the visual region (high particle albedo and strong anisotropy of scattering)exist throughout the atmosphere then it is possible for the incident solar energy to cause a small surface temperature variation despite the huge optical thickness of the atmosphere.
Dust, the stuff that cools planets, not CO2 was your culprit.
And scientists at NASA (and elsewhere) were predicting a new ice age at the time
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/09/19/nasa-scientists-predicted-new-ice-age-1971
I’m saving this post! Excellant!
‘the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, ‘
Well that’s me needed another ‘irony’ meter , despite the last one being graded as industrial strength and rated to 10^10 its still was not enough to deal with this idea.
Glad to see the reference to Indiana Jones. I’ve long thought that is exactly who Hansen believes himself to be. A hero saving the world. Typical narcissistic fantasy. I believe a better description is “delusions of grandeur”.
kbray in california says:
March 25, 2012 at 9:18 am
I suspect Venus would be almost just as hot with a thick nitrogen atmosphere.
No, it does take GHGs to create the lapse rate and warm the surface above the solar provided temperature. However, the temperature of Venus is exactly what it should be given the thickness of the atmosphere. No runaway greenhouse effect.
enough of the ad hominem comments…ya sound like children.
I forced myself to watch the whole thing. It’s very healthy to hear the “best” of what the opposing side has to offer to avoid blinding yourself to truth.
All I can say is: I am thoroughly unimpressed. It’s almost as if every sentence he says includes an unspoken “take my word for it, folks!”
Very thin on actual science. Very heavy on paternalistic statements of overcertainty and condescending self-aggrandizement. He essentially charges himself with noble cause corruption, then prosecutes and convicts himself (effectively) for the remainder of the talk.
Richard M wrote: “Glad to see the reference to Indiana Jones. I’ve long thought that is exactly who Hansen believes himself to be. A hero saving the world. Typical narcissistic fantasy. I believe a better description is “delusions of grandeur”.”
The hat -he’s only trying to make the sculptor’s job easier, for the statue in Saviour Square at the end of Hansen Avenue.
I’d like to see his sources. RC and SkS don’t count.
Dante is happily waiting for this man, if you have faith in such things.
I find it very sad that all this nonsense with reference to the planet Venus. Listening to Hansen is like listening to a sermon in church.
Do not accept what you are told on the subject of Venus. Do the sums yourself.
Just imagine that you are asked by your physics tutor to calculate the average temperature of the Earth using a simple first order model if it was moved into the orbit of the planet Venus.
We would not last very long being moved to within 0.73 AU of the Sun.
Describing Venus as a Sister or Twin is quite a effective smoke screen.
Crazy hat? He’s a reincarnation of this guy:
“TED has some great videos, but this isn’t among them.”
When I first discovered TED I was tremendously impressed and recommended it to folks who have trouble visualizing science.
But now I realized that what drives TED is what drives MSNBC (including the politics) only with much better success and marketing.
I’m sorry, but I’m not going to subject myself to that charlatan again to satisfy some twisted notion of “fair”.
He has never said anything worth jearing (beyond the “know your enemy” values), he is not worth my time now.
Anthony, or anyone with a good physics grounding. Is it not the case that gases absorb more radiation the higher the pressure?
Wow. Shrinking Antarctica ice sheets. Down right lie.
Desert, drought and flood area growing because of warming, another lie.
Geologic time scale graphs of co2, sealevel, and temp, dishonest. They a scale of change that imply isn’t plausible during an interglacial and with GHG concentrations already high.
I attended a lecture by James Hansen this past week (3/20) @ Willamette Univ. in Salem, OR. He came in carrying his hat and wearing a suit and tie, but delivered his sleep inducing talk sans chapeau. I will give him a little slack because the remote control for the LCD projector was somewhat balky, but I got the distinct impression that he has grown bored with telling his lies, over, and over, and over again.
Or, he could just be a terrible public speaker…
At any rate, his big deal now is something called “Fee and Dividend.” He freely admits that the rising energy prices caused by clamping down on CO2 emissions will hurt consumers, so the solution is for the government to confiscate (my words) the profits of oil, gas, and coal companies, and redistribute the money back to American consumers, thereby providing them with the money to pay for higher energy costs.
This never has been about climate. It is about government tyranny, and the redistribution of wealth.
The best thing I can say about James Hansen is that he’s not being disingenuous… he sincerely believes that global warming is a problem, and has made it his mission to fight it any way he can.
His problem, as I see it, is that he’s been trapped in a confirmation bias loop since the 1980s.
Crazed dictators with nuclear weapons are of no concern. We must focus on the dangers of CO2. Quick, remove those cat converters from all automobiles since they convert hydrocarbons to the much more dangerous CO2 gas. 6 Billion people exhaling 40,000ppm CO2, what to do??? /sarc
Hansen has said all the oceans and water would vanish. Where will all the water go?
There seems to be general agreement (dare I say a consensus) that CO2 lags temperature by approximately 800 years. should we not be looking at the CO2 level 800 years ago in order to calculate its influence on our current climate. The current level of CO2 will only be relevant to climate in another 800 years.
Or, am I missing something.
OK at least we here have in a nutshell what Hansen considers his strongest arguments. It would be very useful if someone knowledgeable could provide a point-by-point rebuttal. For example, how does his claim of heat accumulation in the oceans mesh with the observed flat temperature trend of the ARGO buoys?
treegyn1 says:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/25/indiana-jim-hansen-on-why-i-must-speak-out-about-climate-change/#comment-934599
True. His latest paper (about some missing 0.5W/m2) did not even include a submission of the change in earth’s albedo (since 2007)
The guy is a fraud. I cannot believe that he mastered so much influence in all of the world….
It’s Indiana Hansen…staring in The Science of Doom
You would think, if these guys were smart enough to do climate science….
…they would know that we’re just one of ~200 countries
Campaign to Repeal the Climate Change Act Prof Richard S. Lindzen Seminar Held at the UK House of Commons on the 22nd February 2012
I’m not a concern troll but this thread is going to be remembered for the juvenile comments about Hansen’s hat, assuming anyone remembers it at all. As a group we skeptics are in intellectual decline if this and other recent threads are any indication.
I’m lost, what’s the topic of this post? is it that guy’s hat? /jk
“Anthony, or anyone with a good physics grounding. Is it not the case that gases absorb more radiation the higher the pressure?”
Absolutely, but going by previous threads Anthony and Willis Eschenbach would tell you otherwise.
“No, it does take GHGs to create the lapse rate and warm the surface above the solar provided temperature.”
Incorrect. Simple mass and conduction is sufficient.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate
“the concept can be extended to any gravitationally supported ball of gas.”
and:
“the atmosphere is warmed by conduction from Earth’s surface, this lapse or reduction in temperature is normal with increasing distance from the conductive source.”
OK, I spent the 18 minutes and have some observations:
1. He is not the author of the speech.
It was written by a ghost writer, judging by pace, clarity, rhetorical skill, and other criteria. He has hired a ghost writer previously for Op-Eds. Here’s one such: http://bit.ly/9lUfbz written by this guy: http://andrewfrank.ca/publications/
2. He was dressed by a stylist specifically for the event, who chose the beard, the shirt, and the hat for the symbolic communication of hot weather/summer combined with back-to-the-land values.
3. Although he has been studying climate science for his entire career, he was unable to speak about it for 18 minutes without sticking to a script (again, prepared for him by someone else).
4. His lack of ownership of the remarks is underscored by his walking away from the podium before the dutiful applause even begins.
5. The most important thing from the performance that was really his: the sweat on his upper lip.
His carbon tax that is fully and evenly redustributed isnt a bad idea though. Give some credit.
Hanson doesn’t believe a word he’s saying. If he really thought the science were true he’d have never risked his case by adjusting the thermometer.
Don’t touch that hat! You’ll release the Missing Heat.
“His carbon tax that is fully and evenly redustributed isnt a bad idea though. Give some credit.”
It’s a horrific idea, but it does give away what his real motivation is.
aaron says:
March 25, 2012 at 10:43 am
“His carbon tax that is fully and evenly redustributed isnt a bad idea though. Give some credit.”
Seriously?
Did you forget the /sarc tag?
With specificity, under what constitutional authority would the federal government operate to confiscate the profits of a legal business, and redistribute to those who did not earn those profits?
Do you honestly think that, under such a confiscatory scheme, those companies affected would not change their behavior to avoid the stealing of their profits?
John S says:
March 25, 2012 at 9:11 am
13:18: “We can say, with a high degree of confidence, that the severe Texas and Moscow heat waves were not natural; they were caused by Global Warming.”
Really?
====================================================
He knows, that a lot of people are a little bit stupid, no, I am sorry, I meant “do not think critically”, so he has every reason to expect them to buy it.
‘Why I must speak out about climate change’
Because you’re so far in now that admitting you were wrong is pretty much impossible without also admitting to defrauding the US Government and lying to Congress.
1:26 Hansen said that Venus was kept hot because of the CO2 atmosphere. This is not true. CO2 is one factor. Hansen is lying by omission. A honest scientist would have stated the truth that the sun made Venus hot and the among other thing CO2 helped in maintaining the heat as well as the closeness that Venus was in relation to the sun.
1:43 Hanson says that the atmosphere of Venus was a “Smog” of sulfuric acid. So what happened to the CO2 atmosphere? It only took him 17 seconds to forget that.
1:59 He says that he resigned the Venus project and he really didn’t say why. I don’t believe him. I believe there is more here.
2:30 Hansen says that gases such as CO2 absorb heat. He fails to mention water vapour. Another convenient lie by omission. Why couldn’t he acknowledge water, the biggest absorber of heat?
230:3:30 Hansen said that he predicts a host of events and implies that he alone predicted it and implies that it was solely dues to his new-found obsession CO2. A clock is correct 2 times a day. As we know and have always known, climate is always changing.
3:28 Hansen refers to the New York Times… need I say more about his self indulgence….. really the left wing heartbeat of America…the NYT is not a science authority. and the Congress was controlled by TP O’Neill a democrat. Who in the congress shepherded him to testify to congress? He didn’t say Ronald Reagan.
3:16 Open of the “fabled North-west passage. Actually, it was open during the medieval warming as record of Vikings sailing to Ellesmere Island have emerged. (Inuit-Norse contact in the Smith Sound region/Schledermann, P. McCullough, K.M.) Before the Little Ice Age, Norwegian Vikings sailed as far north and west as Ellesmere Island, Skraeling Island and Ruin Island for hunting expeditions and trading with the Inuit groups who already inhabited the region.
3:50 Increased rainfall due to warmer temperatures? How much warmer? So how much more water in the atmosphere? and will that make more rain?….No none of this is true. A solid 15 seconds of utter BS.
4::03 Global warming Hoop-lah ……. I’d say that is true.
4:03 to 5:10 a long self indulgent self portrait of Hansen’s abandonment of science and foray into activism based on his emotions, (pictures of his grand children)….Note he says that his grandchildren will say that he knew AND understood……In fact, Hansen is saying to us that he alone is all knowing. What an ass. This is getting hard to listen to.
Lie after lie after lie after lie……It is getting boring.
David Ross says: March 25, 2012 at 10:02 am
“… Is it not the case that gases absorb more radiation the higher the pressure?”
Yes. It is called “pressure broadening, and the effect is well-known.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_line#Broadening_due_to_local_effects
It was likely that 1981 article, that gave him a taste of celebrity, that drove him off the cliff. Virtually everything in that article has been demonstrated as wrong. His stunt in raising the temperature of the hearing room at a Congressional hearing demonstrates his early disingenuous.
I find it ironic that Hansen uses his hypothetical calculations to disprove that the sun can’t possibly be causing Global Warming. He says “Climate deniers try and say it’s the sun but the sun has dropped .25 w/m^2 when the energy imbalance was at the highest.”
I find this particular quote ironic and laughable, because the so called “energy imbalance” calculations Hansen has done have not even been measured in the satellite data, because they are so small, so these numbers are PURELY hypothetical!
He is using hypothetical numbers that haven’t even been validated yet to see if they are accurate, to try and somehow “disprove” that the sun is not causing Global Warming.
What a scientist.
aaron says:
March 25, 2012 at 10:43 am
Yeah, it’s called “energy prices”, “gasoline prices”, “shipping costs” etc. We already pay confiscatory tax rates just to keep our malignant behemoth alive (even though it’s outspending that by a dollar or two), paying gratuitous taxes for behaviour modification (for all those wicked things I do like buying food, or staying warm in Winter, or looking at pictures on a computer) would be just dandy.
aaron says:
March 25, 2012 at 10:43 am
“His carbon tax that is fully and evenly redustributed (sic) isnt a bad idea though. Give some credit.”
WOW! Redistributed by whom? To whom? By what criteria?
Power Corrupts . . . . How much of the “take” will be consumed by the Bureaucracy? To what purpose will the “Vig” be employed? SURELY NOT TO EXPAND THE SCOPE AND POWERS OF THE BUREAU/AGENCY/ADMINISTRATION/DEPARTMENT/DIRECTORATE . . . . .
Gullible, Gullible, Gullible, Gullible.
“Knowing what I know…”
And what would that be, Mr. Hansen? That you can manipulate the temperature record in your position and make millions of $ in the process? That you are part of a major conspiracy to control the world? What exactly do you know?
Jimbo “70 metre” Hansen clearly interprets “reticent” in a way few of us would recognise.
All the references to “hat” are surely ad hominem and have no place here. He’s speechifying – criticise what he says, analyse what he means, not what he wears, or does not wear.
The utilization of simply physics in an atmosphere over-laying a liquid and biologic earth is far different than Venus. His take-off point in 1982. Venus is not hot merely because in has CO2. It is hot because it has a 96% infra-red absorbing atmosphere 92 times thicker than that of Earth and is 30% closer to the sun. The denser atmosphere accounts for a great deal of the retained heat. The Venusian atmospheres chemical make up is such that there is no condensation, something achieved in Earth’s atmosphere, as well as other planets and moons, by multiple processes. There is also speculation that Venus’ extreme vulcanism and its slow rotation may have or do contribute to its current inhospitable atmosphere and warmth. There are a few who cling to the idea that Venus was once Earth-like, with water oceans. I suggest this is now put out as a means of ‘demonstrating’ the runaway greenhouse effect and there is no evidence whatsoever.
“… Is it not the case that gases absorb more radiation the higher the pressure?”
Yes. It is called “pressure broadening, and the effect is well-known.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_line#Broadening_due_to_local_effects
Thanks tjfolkerts.
For me that just makes the comparison with Venus all the more incredulous.
Maybe his PR guy told him, Jim, keep on the hat, so that the opponents will make jokes about your hat and then we can send in Sparks telling them that they’re juvenile. That’ll discredit them.
Hope that they continue with this tactic and have Mike Mann deliver a TED talk in a clown costume.
This is the first time I have heard someone try to explain away the historical temp-lead/CO2-lag record by claiming that the increasing CO2 “amplifies” the warming trend. The same record shows that cooling leads the decrease in CO2, i.e., the earth starts to cool while CO2 continues to increase! Oops! CO2 as a major forcing factor is a myth! How could any serious scientist, no matter his religious commitment to AGW, make such a claim?
Geat reponse! It’s just so TRAGIC that PURE SCIENCE(PHYSICS) is being DISCREDITED BY “our” MARXIST SCHOOL SYSTEM!! WOW!!!
Scrubbed from his earlier work is any mention of the role of H2SO4 in Venus’ greenhouse effect. He originally attributed a significant amount of warming to H2SO4. It’s been airbrushed out of history.
Richard M says:
>>No, it does take GHGs to create the lapse rate and warm the surface
Stephen Wilde says:
>Incorrect. Simple mass and conduction is sufficient.
No, some sort of differential heating is needed to maintain that lapse rate. The bottom of the atmosphere must be warmed (typically by conduction as you note) and the top must be cooled (typically by GHG radiation to space from the top of the atmosphere). Without the GHG cooling, the heating by conduction would eventually stop as the atmosphere came to equilibrium.
(Hmmmm … cooling by conduction nearer the poles could set up some sort of convective Hadley cells, which might maintain the lapse rate independent of the GHE. However, this would not warm the surface above the 255 K effective average temperature. So the statement “to create the lapse rate AND warm the surface “, does require the GHGs. )
Indiana James and the discovery that Bolivia was very cold indeed just recently.
http://www.real-science.com/hansen-cooling-bolivias-past-by-5c-per-century
Having watched Mr Hansen’s video podcast, I, too, must speak out!
Unless we continue to counteract the disinformation spread by the shills of the massive herpetological hydrocarbon industry, the consequences for the planet will indeed be catastrophic!
Hansen’s idea of redistribution of confiscated oil wealth was tried in Canada starting in 1980. It was a big failure, especially to Albertans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Energy_Program
MostlyHarmless says:
March 25, 2012 at 11:12 am
All the references to “hat” are surely ad hominem and have no place here. He’s speechifying – criticise what he says, analyse what he means, not what he wears, or does not wear.
==================================================
The hat’s funny…and he’s obviously wearing it inside as a costume…for effect, he’s trying to make it his trademark and image
If he was wearing a Bozo the clown costume, for effect…..no one would be expected to ignore that either
….not too many people care what he has to say any more 😉
“David Ross says:
March 25, 2012 at 10:02 am
Anthony, or anyone with a good physics grounding. Is it not the case that gases absorb more radiation the higher the pressure?”
I didn’t see an answer, much less one from somebody that actually actually knows what she is talking about, I (who does not meet any test for “knows what he is talking about” will leap in where others (apparently) were afraid to tread.
My first guess was “I don’t think so, why would it?”. My second guess was “Wait, when you compress a gas, it gets hot, which suggests that it can’t hold as much and the excess is being driven out.”
My third and final public guess is that the second guess is the one I ‘ll go with unless “absorb” is not the same as “hold” or “contain”., in which case my final answer is “I don’t know”.
I think we may be seeing Dr. Hansen’s endgame here. Happy is the man who attains the final oblivion with all his life’s delusions intact and all his sycophants in full voice. Tragic, really.
The more I observe the “Climate Change” wars, the more I am reminded of the many shades of delusion and their outworkings as masterfully portrayed in The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, Theoden, Wormtongue, Denethor, Saruman. Makes me deeply grateful for heroes such as Anthony, Lord M., the good doctors Lindzen, Choi, Baliunas, Soon, Ball, Spencer, Braswell, Michaels, Singer, and many many more, (recently and notably the awakening Luning and Vahrenholt who should be getting more attention than Gleick) who are pulling back the curtains to let in the light. My cap is doffed, my tankard raised high!
I do think that this video will be widely viewed and will do damage among those many who are lacking the data and background to see through it. Is there any way a well-constructed skeptical response could be made and widely publicized? Heartland?
Meanwhile, next up on Ted: Fidel Castro on “How I Saved Cuba”, followed by Mr. Fox speaking on his lifetime of work in henhouse security.
@ mostlyharmless, with ref to your ad hatinem sqeamishness.
I applaud your desire to stick to the facts when discussing climate science, but in this case I think its fair to comment on The Hat, because it is a clue that Hansen’s talk is more theater than science. And he does look a bit of a fool in it, you must admit–detracting, or perhaps distracting, from his logical arguments, or lack of them. Certainly it would have been nice if he had shown the global T data since 2005 relative to his 1986 projected temperature trends, and discussed possible reasons for the embarrassing divergence, but that would have just confused all the true believers…can’t have that! Wheel out the chubby-cheeked grandchildren…better theater. Actually, to stray into snipland, I am really glad I watched this video (several weeks ago) because before I did I thought Hansen was a serious scientist. Now, what with the hat, the grandchildren, and the nuclear bomb, I think he has become a bit of a nut case…almost as bad as the sainted Mann. Possibly adulation corrupts, and absolute adulation corrupts absolutely.
Do reticent mid-western scientists describe themselves as such? – in front of Longbeach audiences – as they talk about how they’ve been arrested in front of the White House. (Once with that other famous, reticent, mid-western, scientist, Daryl Hannah.) Such unwarranted self-seriousness.
aaron says:
March 25, 2012 at 10:43 am
His carbon tax that is fully and evenly redustributed isnt a bad idea though.
It redistributes wealth from suburban/rural dwellers to Urban dwellers. It also redistributes wealth from regions with relatively high heating/cooling requirements to regions with moderate heating/cooling requirement.
I would personally be better off with such a plan. I live in an area with moderate heating and cooling requirements.
But whether I like it or not there are 25 US States with population density’s of less the 100/sq mile.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population_density
So the math in the US Senate is not going to work out. The US House of representatives is generally quite favorable to plans that benefit Urban Dwellers…but in the US Senate the Senators from ‘rural’ states have just as much clout as the Senators from ‘urban’ States.
This is one of the problems with scientists becoming ‘political activists’. They struggle with ‘electoral’ mathematics.
in re: DirkH 9:58 AM Thanks for that video link.
in re: treegyn1 10:04 AM I recall that the US, and other,
governments make way more money through taxes than
the oil companies make profit. California’s state government
loves higher pump prices because sales taxes rise.
Remember the 6th of November.
Hansen said that 20th century solar cycles couldn’t explain the rise in global temps, however, this isnt true.
According to Solenki et al (Nature Oct 2004) solar cycles 18-22 exhibited the greatest 65-year string of sunspot activity in the past 11,400 years.
Now that the Svensmark Effect seems to have been verified, it seems that much or even most of 20th century warming could be explained by decreased cloud cover caused by strong solar winds from record-breaking sunspots blocking cosmic rays from creating cloud seeds.
Now that SC23 had low sunspot activity and SC24 is turning out to be the lowest cycle since the Dalton Minimum (temps have been flat for 14 years) and SC25 is projected to be the lowest since the Maunder Minimum, CAGW theory may well be invalidated.
Why is Hansen so obsessed with Venus, CO2, and Runaway Greenhouse Effect on Earth ?
I can imagine Hansen as a child, looking at Venus in a telescope saying, “When I grow up I want to go in a spaceship and visit Venus.” This could have been a childhood dream for him.
When he was told that the surface temperature of Venus was over 900 degrees Fahrenheit, it killed that dream. He blames CO2 and has demonized it as “that evil gas”, the destroyer of planets ever since.
Now he is worried about the dreams of his grandchildren being destroyed by the same evil CO2 gas that is also present on Earth. This is the very same gas that destroyed the livability of our “sister” planet Venus and his plans to visit it. Ignore Mars and its CO2 atmosphere. Blindness works for that.
His theory has morphed into a delusion and a fantasy quest. The hat, the beard, the attire, all fit the mindset. He has also discovered the “golden ring” that will save us. This magic ring is fashioned from the gold out of our pockets. In reality, it is a carbon ring of thieves.
Clear rational critical thinking is left wanting in his presentation.
He had so much potential, and created so much a mess.
May sanity eventually prevail.
Disapointing tone of discussion, not really worthy of this site; with a few honourable exceptions including – alcheson, michael palmer,dp,mostly harmless and pat. Hanson gave a calm exposition of his beliefs, and deserves calm point-by-point refutation if it’s available.
[SNIP: Enough of the unproductive remarks. Please engage substantively. -REP]
Here’s TED Talks on climate change, and who are the speakers? Apart from objective paragon James Hansen, I mean: Al Gore, thrice, James Balog a photographer dedicated to documenting green alarm, David Keith, Prof. of Applied Physics at Harvard, an AGW believer whose research offers carbon capture and geoengineering to ameliorate the impending catastrophe, and who also just happens to be, “President of Carbon Engineering a start-up company developing industrial scale technologies for capture of CO2 from ambient air,” and Andy Hobsbawm, an internet entrepreneur and green activist, among others.
The only person of known skeptical credentials was Bjorn Lomborg, who believes “global warming is real and man-made. It will have a serious impact on humans and the environment toward the end of this century“, but who takes a commendably rational approach to dealing with it.
So there we have the TED vision of informing the public. Did TED approach John Christy, or Richard Lindzen, or Pat Michaels, or Ross McKitrick, or Steve McIntyre, or Chris Essex, or anyone else of known high ability to give, known able to give a TED audience, and has already publicly given, a thoroughly science-based description of the skeptical position? Someone well able to completely embarrass the AGW position on purely scientific grounds.
None of that. TED is evidently prejudicial and partisan on AGW. It seems TED is afraid of inviting, and has avoided inviting, any of the above-named scientists to speak. And that, of course, makes TED a lie.
Joanna says:
March 25, 2012 at 12:00 pm
I am really glad I watched this video (several weeks ago) because before I did I thought Hansen was a serious scientist.
=================================================
You did until several weeks ago? You should have read this: http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1987/1987_Hansen_Lebedeff.pdf . The key manipulation the guys are doing there has no basis in science.
I just caught the replay of John Stossel’s great show in illegal jobs. He ended it up with Dr. Spencer, who blasphemed that more co2 could have benefits and a warmer Earth could be a good thing. I imagine the alarmists are writing a letter as we speak.
Stephen Wilde says:
March 25, 2012 at 10:37 am
If it were true that the atmosphere cools the surface rather than the other way around, we would expect the denser atmosphere of lower altitudes to lead to cooler surfaces than at higher elevations, which is clearly not the case. Both the air and surface temperatures of the Tibetan Plateua and the Andean Altiplano are much lower than the Sahara’s or the Dead Sea Valley’s. If we allow minor conduction at the ground/air interface, we must allow all the more radiation to earth from the thicker atmosphere at lower elevation. Clearly the atmosphere heats the earth. –AGF
It appears Hansen has been too busy protesting to keep up with the science.
There are cycles of warming and cooling in the paleoclimatic record that correlate with cosmogenic isotope changes. The cosmogenic isotope changes are caused by solar magnetic cycle changes.
It was quite difficult to push the catastrophic global warming when there was no warming. It will be interesting to hear how the same crowd tries to push that agenda if the planet cools.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.0784v1
Long-term Evolution of Sunspot Magnetic Fields
Independent of the normal solar cycle, a decrease in the sunspot magnetic field strength has been observed using the Zeeman-split 1564.8nm Fe I spectral line at the NSO Kitt Peak McMath-Pierce telescope. Corresponding changes in sunspot brightness and the strength of molecular absorption lines were also seen. This trend was seen to continue in observations of the first sunspots of the new solar Cycle 24, and extrapolating a linear fit to this trend would lead to only half the number of spots in Cycle 24 compared to Cycle 23, and imply virtually no sunspots in Cycle 25.
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/amet/aip/543146.pdf
Solar activity and Svalbard temperatures
The long temperature series at Svalbard (Longyearbyen) show large variations and a positive trend since its start in 1912. During this period solar activity has increased, as indicated by shorter solar cycles. The temperature at Svalbard is negatively correlated with the length of the solar cycle. The strongest negative correlation is found with lags 10–12 years. The relations between the length of a solar cycle and the mean temperature in the following cycle are used to model Svalbard annual mean temperature and seasonal temperature variations.
These models can be applied as forecasting models. We predict an annual mean temperature decrease for Svalbard of 3.5 to 2C from solar cycle 23 to solar cycle 24 (2009–‐20) and a decrease in the winter temperature of ≈6C.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2000PA000571.shtml
On the 1470-year pacing of Dansgaard-Oeschger warm events
The oxygen isotope record from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) ice core was reanalyzed in the frequency and time domains. The prominent 1470-year spectral peak, which has been associated with the occurrence of Dansgaard-Oeschger interstadial events, is solely caused by Dansgaard-Oeschger events 5, 6, and 7. This result emphasizes the nonstationary character of the oxygen isotope time series. Nevertheless, a fundamental pacing period of ∼1470 years seems to control the timing of the onset of the Dansgaard-Oeschger events. A trapezoidal time series model is introduced which provides a template for the pacing of the Dansgaard-Oeschger events. Statistical analysis indicates only a ≤3% probability that the number of matches between observed and template-derived onsets of Dansgaard-Oeschger events between 13 and 46 kyr B.P. resulted by chance. During this interval the spacing of the Dansgaard-Oeschger onsets varied by ±20% around the fundamental 1470-year period and multiples thereof. The pacing seems unaffected by variations in the strength of North Atlantic Deep Water formation, suggesting that the thermohaline circulation was not the primary controlling factor of the pacing period.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2003GL017115.shtml
Timing of abrupt climate change: A precise clock by Stefan Rahmstorf
Many paleoclimatic data reveal a approx. 1,500 year cyclicity of unknown origin. A crucial question is how stable and regular this cycle is. An analysis of the GISP2 ice core record from Greenland reveals that abrupt climate events appear to be paced by a 1,470-year cycle with a period that is probably stable to within a few percent; with 95% confidence the period is maintained to better than 12% over at least 23 cycles. This highly precise clock points to an origin outside the Earth system; oscillatory modes within the Earth system can be expected to be far more irregular in period.
Oh dear!
He sounds like a bad actor reading a prepared script that means nothing to him. And he puts ‘commas’ in his delivery in very Gleickian places. This is very very poor.
Entirely unconvincing that this is a man who actually understands his stuff.
SPreserv says:
He looks like an Amish Climate Worrier, is his horse cart parked outside ?
———————-
If Hansen and other Climate Worriers went Amish, I’d be at least slightly more likely to respect them. It would at least show that they believe their own nonsense.
@larry
‘When you compress a gas it gets hot’
Umm
I think that you need to put in work to compress a gas, and it is the work you put in that heats the gas.
Or you can think of it as a lot of particles jiggling about more closely together when compressed. More jiggling = same amount of energy but in a smaller space = hotter (inside the smaller space) but colder outside (where once the jigglig was going on but isn’t any more)
Well; against my gut feeling I watched the video…
all I can say is that there was nothing in that presentation that convinced me it was based on any real science or prompted me to have doubts about my denialist attitude – and was promoted in such a fashion as to be wholly alarmist.
I came, I saw and I call BS.
pesadia says: March 25, 2012 at 10:10 am
POSSIBLY A VERY GOOD POINT, BUT NEEDS MINOR CORRECTIONS – IN CAPS BELOW
“There seems to be general agreement (dare I say a consensus) that CO2 lags temperature by approximately 600-800 years. should we not be looking at the TEMPERATURE level 600-800 years ago in order to calculate its influence on our current ATMOSPHERIC CO2 CONCENTRATIONS.”
_______________________
Not coincidentally, 600-800 years ago was approx. the time of the Medieval Warm Period.
Not coincidentally, CO2 also lags temperature in the modern data record by ~ 9 months on a shorter temperature-time cycle.
Are there other such CO2-after-temperature lags related to other temperature-time cycles? We don’t know.
Some are arguing that references to Hansen’s hat are ad hom attacks. Well, it surely isn’t the most important issue here, but it does give some sort of insight into the man’s vanity and preening self-importance.
Anyway, if your going to put such a dumb thing on your bonce, you’ve made yourself fair game, I say.
The reason Hansen wears a hat. He’s just a public servant doing his duty. And don’t make fun of him!☺
Satire, Humor, Ridiculousness follow:
—————————————-
Wow, I was so wrong about there being no life on Venus….
I found this:
http://www.world-famous.com/Alternate-Venus/Alien-Life-On-Venus-2.html
This Venusian Christina should meet with Dr. Indiana H..
I guess the 900 degree F heat isn’t all that bad…
it must be a “dry” heat.
Aside from the buffoon wearing a hat indoors, Hansen makes the claim that a modest warming resulting from the earth’s orbital (Milankovich) variations leads to the release of carbon dioxide which greatly amplifies the initial warming over a period of several centuries. Putting some numbers to this extraordinary claim suggests that the periodic 60 ppm variation in carbon dioxide seen in the ice-core record over a period of many hundred thousand years is amplified to a slightly delayed 6 degrees Celsius temperature change.
So, how can he resist the conclusion that the 120 ppm increase in carbon dioxide seen since the industrial revolution must have already locked in a 12 degrees Celsius temperature increase.
“I think that you need to put in work to compress a gas, and it is the work you put in that heats the gas. ”
It is the incoming solar irradiation that heats the gas, not the initial act of compression. No solar input no heating because no ongoing compression.
Once compression has occurred the fact that there are more molecules per unit volume nearest the surface means that there will be more interactions with the solar incoming at the surface thus more heat generated and in the case of non GHGs the heat is conducted from the surface first.
Hansen doesn’t seem to know any of that.
The Hat…
I posted a detailed comment earlier dealing with the substance of what Hansen has stated in the video. Now for the “Feel”.
Hats… why does a person wear a hat?
Hats are important. The Pope has a hat. It is a big white and gold miter. It is a symbol of his office, that he is the leader of an organization of 1.1 billion people. The Queen has a hat. She wears the crown of several nations, and she is the monarch over 100’s of millions of people. When you become a Bachelor in academia….you get a hat… then a different one when you become a Master or PhD. Cops have hats. So do native American chiefs. Military leaders have hats too. Usually with shiny metal insignia. They betray the soldiers rank etc.
The bigger the hat, the more important the office. (I recall a Carlin skit like this so credit to Carlin if appropriate but I am not sure.)
So what is Hansen saying with his hat?
My dad taught me to remove my hat should I be wearing one in the presence of a lady, at a meal, upon entering a building and in a place of worship. etc.
Nowadays, people are less aware of the role of the hat and how to behave when wearing one. Etiquette is for another discussion. . But subconsciously, we pay attention to the guy with the biggest hat.
Hansen knows about hats. He also needs an office befitting his ego and a hat.
But he no longer holds an office so he had to create a hat of office and an office. His hat is a sloppy one. One that appeals to his new office. The green office of the king of the earth worshipers…. a soft hat… an imprecise hat.. a noncommittal gooey hat.
Notice the style of his chosen hat… You often see academics wearing it, or archeologists… or hikers….It is a sloppy hat implying non-conformity. Opposite of the Queen’s crown, and the complete opposite of the Pope hat!!! Hew would NEVER were a military hat, for then he would look like a mindless robot Nazi. But he still needs a hat. With a hat you have a crown and therefore you are king… of something.
So he picked a sloppy hat of the earthy left and crowned himself the king of the greens.
His hat is important to him, especially when he is holding court amongst the greens like at a TED talk.
Don’t underestimate the hat. it is a device of power. Hansen is telling us that he is powerful.
Without his hat he is just a guy telling lies. With his hat, he is a king!
[My bold emphasis]
Whatever happened to global warming? I thought there was no debate. There is a consensus.
Climate change is certainly happening as always. These people are just weasle word using con men pure and simple. Keep your eyes, as always, on global mean temps as well as the increased use of ‘climate change’ and ‘extreme weather’ events.
Allan MacRae says:
March 25, 2012 at 1:21 pm
“Not coincidentally, 600-800 years ago was approx. the time of the Medieval Warm Period.”
And we have a warm period about every 1,000 years… Minoan Warm period, Roman Warm Period, MWP, now… could be a resonance within the system, maybe synchronized by Solar cycles.
“So the statement “to create the lapse rate AND warm the surface “, does require the GHGs”
Not so.
The surface of Earth is warmed by solar incoming, the entire mass of the atmosphere becomes involved and greater pressure at the surface leads to greater acquisition of heat by conduction from the surface because the higher pressure packs more air molecules closer together at the surface.
If there are no GHGs then circulation is set up between poles and equator and between nightside and dayside with a purely conductive exchange between atmosphere and surface.That leads to a lapse rate.
Hot air on the dayside or at the equator would rapidly rise and take heat away from the surface but on the night side and at the poles it would descend and return heat conductively to the fast radiating surface. There would be intense winds and atmospheric turbulence.
If the conductive exchange failed to bring the system to equilibrium then heat would accumulate until the atmosphere is boiled off to space.
GHGs help in radiative energy loss to space thus assisting the energy exchange and making it less likely that the atmosphere will be boiled off.
It is the thickness and total mass of the atmosphere that leads to a heating effect. GHGs only help in redistribution of energy horizontally and in faster radiation out to space than would be achieved from the surface in their absence.
Downward IR has no effect on surface temperature because the atmosphere simply expands instead which reduces density (but not pressure) at the surface to reduce the heating at the surface proportionately to the extra energy retained by the GHGs in the air.
All established science 30 years ago but forgotten or never learned by Hansen and his cohorts.
Paul Westhaver says:
March 25, 2012 at 2:02 pm
The Hat…
———————————————-
Green Hats should be made from palm fronds, pine cones, or recycled truck tires.
David Ross says:
March 25, 2012 at 10:02 am
Anthony, or anyone with a good physics grounding. Is it not the case that gases absorb more radiation the higher the pressure?
_________________________________
There were a couple of WUWT threads on that and Venus.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/06/hyperventilating-on-venus/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/08/venus-envy/
Now we know his motive. It’s for the children, specifically his grands.
Twice he framed their images in the cutest possible, heart-tugging poses.
He, as all crusading liberals, is driven by his emotions, not by the reality of the evidence.
He is insufferable.
Please, no more hat comments! Anyway, Hansen certainly stands up for what he believes in, and I must take off my hat to him for that…oops. Start over.
Now, some of you may think he’s talking through his hat, but….oops.
Just because he may have a Messiah Complex, doesn’t mean he’s mad as a hatter….oops.
Anyway, I think it’s time he had his hat handed to him.
aaron says:
March 25, 2012 at 10:43 am
His carbon tax that is fully and evenly redustributed isnt a bad idea though. Give some credit.
_________________________________________
It is a very bad idea. All any redistribution scheme does is make sure some well paid bureaucrats (related to the politicians) get big fat pay checks and pensions. Currently 21% of the US budget is PENSIONS the third largest single expense. <a href="http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_spending_by_state.php?units=p"<(Salaries & Wages)
So after salaries, pensions and office expenses how much money do you think actually manages to trickle down to the “Great Unwashed”? In today’s governments “social welfare schemes” are con-jobs devised by the Regulating Class to rip off the soft hearted.
It is a redistribution scheme alright. It redistributes the wealth to the bureaucrats. Remember bureaucrats are not wealth producers they are wealth destroyers.
@ dp, johnh and other purists
I think you are missing a point here. The thing is that, however regrettably, Hansen’s talk is ~20% science and 80% opera (buffa). In opera it is permissable to critique the production as well as the music–hence the instinct to jeer at the hat. You may be trying to have a rigorous scientific debate, but people like Hansen and Mann have moved on…they are not giving serious scientific presentations, but have become “communicators”, mostly of emotionally weighted propaganda (those grandchildren). So for something like this it may be more appropriate to lighten up, throw an egg, and save the heavy intellectual artillary for a serious target. Having said that, I did enjoy reading the more factual comments and the link Greg House kindly posted…thanks.
Stephen Wilde says:
March 25, 2012 at 2:23 pm
Interesting. But there’s the other problem that the surface of the moon at noon gets very hot (123C), which makes me wonder how the tropical altiplano surface stays cool. Cooler air for sure (but why?), and I suppose greater convection–I think whirlwinds are more common at higher elevations. Can you enlighten me?
For what it’s worth, the average lunar T is colder than the earth’s (as I’m sure you know). –AGF
Stephen Wilde says:
March 25, 2012 at 2:23 pm
Downward IR has no effect on surface temperature…
=================================================
Yes, it has, the sun delivers IR too. But the crucial question is, whether the downward IR radiation coming from the “greenhouse gasses” can cause a significant increase of surface temperature. The scientific answer was given long ago in 1909 and it was “no”.
What a lot of people do not know is, that the theory of “greenhouse gasses” and climate sensitivity of CO2 is very old and was debunked by a well known physicist professor R.W.Wood: http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/wood_rw.1909.html .
The reading is easy, but can be very frustrating for both radical and moderate/sceptical warmists.
About R.W.Wood: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Wood
I don’t see the point in making energy more expensive and then giving the higher costs back to us.
In addition, higher energy costs are a drag on the economy and could lead to a recession as many have been saying the last month or so.
For the life of me, I can’t understand the economic reasoning behind the claims that if we switch to even higher (and intermittent) priced green energy, we’ll be in green economic bliss…
I really wasted 18 minutes watching this mendacious Hanson video. I think that he does not believe, any more, a word he is saying.
If he believed ‘The Science’ were true he would not have had to adjust the historic thermometer record of the World as he has. He believes in re-writing history only.
Hansen again blames individual meteorological events, like heat waves, to CAGW. That’s not science, flat out… it’s not climate.
And if Greenland is losing ice mass at such a rate, why aren’t the oceans rising quickly? I thought the Grace satellite has yet to prove itself accurate at precise mass detection?
I was willing to listen but stopped when I got to the part where he says: “Climate change deniers…”. There is no such thing, the phrase is disingenuous propaganda and he knows it. By intentionally using this phrase his talk becomes apocalyptic ‘entertainment’ akin to the War of the Worlds radio broadcast on Sunday, October 30, 1938, when fake news broadcasts during a music show caused panic by announcing the invasion of the earth by aliens from Mars.
jorgekafkazar says:
March 25, 2012 at 2:56 pm
Great “hat” comments. You did one better[4] than a hat trick.
@aaron chmielewski says:
March 25, 2012 at 10:43 am : Allowing any government to come into possession of funds brought into existence by people who earned them by producing a useful product is always a bad idea, especially when the word “confiscation” is used. Believing that any government would equitably redistribute such funds is not logical.
Dr. Rasool and Dr. Shneider partly relied on Dr. James Hansen’s Venus programme to predict a coming ice age in 1971. What will climate scientists they think of next?
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/173/3992/138
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/09/19/nasa-scientists-predicted-new-ice-age-1971
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ra00600k.html
May as well get this over with, as I have been wanting to since this thread began:
hansen is old hat. ‘Nuff said.
Here’s one from Mark Twain [I think}
“You take the lies out of him, and he’ll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he’ll disappear”
David Corcoran says:
March 25, 2012 at 3:48 pm
And if Greenland is losing ice mass at such a rate, why aren’t the oceans rising quickly?
===============================
That’s a good question, I have another one: about meltwater. They say, over 200 Gt ice from the ice sheet of Greenland has melted away 2010. Now, dealing with the warmists it is not enough just to think scientifically, no, you have to adopt a criminal investigation approach. If there is a possible murder, a criminal investigator asks first about the dead body, where is it? Exactly like that we should ask a simple question: how was this enormous amount of meltwater gone and nobody saw it? No videos, no photos, nothing. They would have definitely shown us the rivers of meltwater as an evidence of climate change, if there had been any. Which leads to the conclusion, that no significant ice loss in Greenland could have possibly happened and we are dealing with a scientific fraud here.
So Hansen is still claiming that a claim that prior to 1981 a warming of 0.4 C “of past century” was caused by CO2.
Why can’t he just admit he was wrong and go home?
Does Hansen disagree that retreating glaciers indicate “global warming”, does he disagree with the record of when global glacier started to retreat global. Does he imagine such a retreat began due to human emission of CO2? Does he not realize that during Little Ice Age it was cool period during the current interglacial period, and that the slowdown of glacier advance during this period, was when human population was far less than today, people used horses for transportation and killed whales to provide oil to to provide light. A world population of less than 2 billion, no cars, no electricity, sailing boat hauled freight, and not a world in which billions travelers fly per year?
No one, now agrees with his assessment in 1981. Everyone can see future predict he presented to Congress was wrong.
‘Imagine a giant asteroid on collision course with earth…that is the scale of the catastrophe we are facing now….’
I think that says it all.
Love the A-bomb references and the graphics. Fear mongering at its very best!
The sight of Hansen makes me puke!
Abysmally depressing, too long, but gave me insights into the mind of the “environmentalist.” It truly is Not about the science. They truly hate mankind.
.
Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6599
“…..[positions] have led the greens down a dark, litter-strewn, dead-end street where the rubbish bins overflow, the light bulbs have blown, and the stray dogs are very hungry indeed.”
Big hat, no cattle.
It’s interesting to compare Hansen’s “performance” when he’s in a situation that precludes any challenging of his opinions with a situation in which he must deal with those whose minds are more open, far quicker and more perspicacious than his.
For example, readers might want to check out Hansen’s “contributions” to the recent AAAS meeting webcast “When science is not enough”:
http://www.aaas.org/meetings/2012/program/plenaries/panel.shtml
This is an abbreviated version of the webcast – and I haven’t yet had an opportunity to watch it again to see what might have been left on the cutting room floor. But my impression at the time was that Hansen was a very uncomfortable fish out of water – and that his performance was far outshone by the other two panelists, Hans Rosling and Olivia Judson.
Graphite says:
March 25, 2012 at 7:06 pm
Big hat, no cattle.
=============================================
The cattle is the world population.
Big hat, just prattle.
Green Hats should be made from palm fronds, pine cones, or recycled truck tires.
here:
http://estrip.org/content/users/jenks/0507/IMG11540506.jpg
here:
http://beadcollector.net/openforum/uploads/PineConeHat_016.jpg
and here:
http://www.oddee.com/_media/imgs/contrib/c4473.jpg
I can really see him at the podium in that tire hat…
He forgot a bit of his own history –
The New Ice-age
“U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming,” blares the headline of the July 9, 1971, article, which cautions readers that the world “could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age, a leading atmospheric scientist predicts.”
The scientist was S.I.Rasool, a colleague of Mr. Hansen’s at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The article goes on to say that Mr. Rasool came to his chilling conclusions by resorting in part to a new computer program developed by Mr. Hansen that studied clouds above Venus.
As reported
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/sep/19/inside-the-beltway-69748548/
Mr. Hansen seems to hang heavily on his reading of Ocean Heat Content, and NODC numbers charted by Bob Tisdale in a WUWT post seem quite at odds with that. He seems unready to deal with any serious questions, and ready to assert things on his authority instead. That may work with the TED audience, but it doesn’t with me and judging by the comments, it doesn’t impress a lot of WUWT readers either.
Why does this guy still have a job?? Does he have photos of somebody important hidden away someplace?
Richard Lindzen gave a colloquium speech at Fermilab a few years ago & nearly blew a gasket when he started analyzing the contradictions of Hansen’s positions! Prof. Lindzen went into a bit of detail about the chemical differences between the atmosphere of earth and Venus, where the huge clouds of sulfuric acid amplify the heating.
It was a great speech, but the DOE scientists of Fermilab were not very receptive. Not as many of those folks left at Fermilab after the recent layoffs.
Mostly painful. Like the worst sermon one could imagine…..hours of agony compressed into a bad video. The problem is he has a reputation of bad science…so…where can he go? (answer not necessary). 🙂
I have argued for some time that when a scientist is speaking to the public honesty is of the utmost importance; a lay audience has no way of judging the validity of the facts. One example was the pair of graphs Hansen showed on ice loss according to the GRACE satellite. The ice losses of 200 Giga tons a year for Greenland and 130 Giga tons for the Antarctic seem impressive until you realise that at this rate Greeland’s ice wll last for another 13,500 years and the Antarctic’s for 200,000 years.
Another small point relates to his rhetorical questions “what kind of sea level rise can we look forward to?”. It was as if, deep down, he was welcoming a large sea level rise as confirmation of his prophesies rather than as a disaster to be feared.
defective link above:
http://www.oddee.com/_media/imgs/contrib/c4473.jpg
it works when pasted in as a url address.
odd.
I have failed to figure out the thought processes of this man but I have worked out why he wears the hat. It covers the five layer foil and insulation faraday cage beenie he wears under it.
The behavior of the well educated people makes “wrong”, to being “right”. Hansen hat! No need to write irresponsible disrespectful comments. Comparing Hansen words with some of the comments here, Hansen is “right”. Because I lost the problem, Hansen Hat was the problem or what he was saying in video.
Hansen said:
“Climate change deniers argue that the sun is the main cause of the global warming…but the measured energy imbalanced during the deepest solar minimum in the record when the sun energy reaching the earth was least..”
So the reality:
Here come two ideas, because there must be somebody as RESPONSIBLE, or something as REASON:
1. Hansen says global warming is because of man activity (mainly fossil fuels)
2. The Deniers say the sun ( the nature) is the cause (WUWT had a post in this regard)
Apparently there are no differences between the two parties; CO2 is not the main battle field. THE CAUSE HUMAN or THE SUN is the problem. To reduce CO2, changing in any HUMAN activities means there would be extensive economics impacts, and for the SUN it’s easy, nobody is responsible for that and here apparently the cyclic solar activities is referred to as “natural”. The Deniers also say, recently trend to cold climate conditions is a fact, while the man activity never stopped but the SUN activities were reduced. The Deniers say the solar activities performance in global warming is %90; therefore the remained %10 as human activities does not make any sense, finally, MAN can go on using fossil fuels. This means no change in CO2 economy would be necessary, life goes on and SUN activities more likely to be considered as a DISASTER same as EARTHQUAKE, we cannot do anything.
The real quantity and performance of HUMAN/SUN in climate change, is the question. As long as this is not solved the PLANET would remain at high risk.
Please don’t disparage the Amish so! (Some of my ancestors are Amish…)
He could not be Amish anyway. First off, he has buttons. While some ‘new order’ folks accept them, they are generally held to be prideful and a sin. Then there is the hat. Way too “stylish” and it’s not black. Not acceptable. His pants are BLUE, fer crying out loud. Talk about prideful and showing off. Then there is the watch. Sorry, not acceptable. Not only is it using tech not found in the Bible, but I’d bet its electric. Oh, and as jewelry, it’s right out.
Then, last but certainly not least: He has NO Beard! Just Shameful…
No, that man is “English” through and through. Not to be trusted…
😉
(But Grandma was Amish…)
Now if you were to say he looked like an old hippy that got busted and they shaved him in jail…
Ron Manley says:
March 26, 2012 at 12:21 am
“……….One example was the pair of graphs Hansen showed on ice loss according to the GRACE satellite. The ice losses of 200 Giga tons a year for Greenland and 130 Giga tons for the Antarctic seem impressive until you realise that at this rate Greeland’s ice wll last for another 13,500 years and the Antarctic’s for 200,000 years.”
The best way to fix things in science is to put a clear true end on the views where it’s possible. Hansen didn’t say anything about your point of view, but you made his said things clear in the shortest words as you could. Nothing aggressive found in your words, therefore it is understandable, acceptable and constructive even if there may be some incorrect figures (just as an example) then someone else may make it clear. This is the progressive way that science can make things solved.
The objection is not over the discussions, it is because of the way that we talk together.
It would be pity despite WUWT policies some people don’t do well in their comments. Talking about Hansen hat doesn’t bring us anything except someone gets permission not to respect WUWT.
Naming a scientist as “Indiana James” by WUWT doesn’t comply with its policies. WUWT is well respected public place that we know.
following my comment:
http://www.aaas.org/meetings/2012/program/plenaries/panel.shtml
http://media.aaas-science.org/services/player/bcpid1458464871001?bckey=AQ~~,AAAADFlexpk~,loqkjB2yVJywiA_cgyh5AbZd-77wtpAo&bclid=1455225669001&bctid=1461624707001
Of course there’s the risk that govenment won’t actually redistribute the money effectively.
There would be a small deadweight loss in admistering the policy.
But, the reality is that regulatory policy, tax policy, and economies of scale give the wealthy and high income people an advatange over the lower-middle and middle-middle class in saving and investing. Though this isn’t affected much the policy since the incentives apply to everyone, it does help a small bit since these expenses make up a much smaller part of higher income earners’ spending so the tax is unlikely to affect their decisions on personal consumption.
Business costs get passed on to the consumer, but the redistribution of the tax would cover almost all of that. What happens is an incentive to try to use less relative to others to make profit on the tax rebate.
The size of the tax is what matters, whether is affect true externalities. I do find is questionable that externalities are negetive, except in areas with high particulate matter in the air or lots of congestion.
The size of the tax is what matters, whether it reflects true externalities. I do find is questionable that externalities are negetive, except in areas with high particulate matter in the air or lots of road congestion.
Gail, excellent point on the pensions.
acckkii says:
March 26, 2012 at 6:21 am
====================================
acckkii,
If you don’t like hat tricks, go comment on this thread…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/21/scafettas-new-paper-attempts-to-link-climate-cycles-to-planetary-motion/
Try to follow the brilliant minds on that one with close to 500 comments so far…
You’ll get your respect back.
I tip my hat to those guys and their cerebral discussion.
It is interesting that Hansen chose 50 years ago for his extreme event and drought comparison. That was during the mid-century pause or cooling. Why not 75 years ago during the dust bowl?
kbray in california says:
March 26, 2012 at 7:47 am
_________________________
Thanks I’ll read it carefully.
Harold Ambler says:
March 25, 2012 at 10:43 am
Thanks for the heads up–that’s a game changer. That Hansen would allow such reverse plagiarism speaks volumes. This “pseudepigraphical” writing (and speaking?) nicely illustrates the extent to which evangelical climatology has evolved into a religion: authority based dogma is now based on pseudo-authority. And of course one cannot expect him to get his personal history straight if he is not the true author of it. –AGF
He wears the hat because he is part of “The Adjustment Bureau”, if he takes the hat off, the early 20’th century would get remarkably warmer and the trend to date considerably flatter.
acckkii says:
March 26, 2012 at 8:36 am
kbray in california says:
March 26, 2012 at 7:47 am
_________________________
Thanks I’ll read it carefully.
________________________________________________________
I read it kbray in california and still would follow it.
Let me convey just simple part of that from Scafetta:
“Nicola Scafetta says:
March 21, 2012 at 11:50 am
Leif Svalgaard says: March 21, 2012 11:42 am
“There are things not worth discussing. All has already been said about this subject.”
_____
“Not really, Leif. The discussion just started.””
and from Willis Eschenbach:
“I find this to be parameter fitting on steroids, cyclomania taken to the extreme. It is nothing but using free parameters, which are justified as being kinda sorta close to astronomical cycles, to make the elephant wiggle his trunk.
In support of this, please note that Dr. Scafetta first got a reasonable fit to the earth’s temperature using just 20 and 60 year cycles. Then he got a reasonable fit using 9.1, “10-11″, 20 and 60 year cycles. Now he shows a reasonable fit using 9.98, 10.9, and 11.86 cycles … so … why should we think any of them are more than playing with parameters?
I leave you to draw your own conclusion as to whether this is just trivial curve fitting. As for me, I see absolutely no scientific value in this at all. w.”
Really we are at the beginning as Scafetta said.
The issue I am tying to understand still is “global warming” reason if it’s the Sun. Dr. Hansen said the amount of solar activity per day is something about 400k atomic bombs to the scale of Hiroshima and 365 days a year. So both parties let’s say Hansen and Deniers, do agree with the energy receiving to Earth by the Sun. I’m sorry i don’t like to say Deniers, because they also strongly believe that the Sun is the main factor for global warming not human activity and Scafetta or the post you addressed me to follow, mainly is trying to find a cycle time for Sun behaviour. No prediction is possible due to uncertainty over the calculations through the discussion based on Scafetta, we are trying to guess something. Scafetta says it takes him at least 200 years to have the right data to somehow formulate the case for thousand years! The global warming is our today’s problem and we must make decisions now.
Historical events and the history itself do not show any serious climate changes, I’m not talking about Ice Ages just about regular years after all ages just like the age that we are living now , at least from 6000 years ago we don’t have any story about “global warming” like what we are talking about. What has changed by now? The Sun has been the Sun with all its components and events. The cyclic and all cosmic interactions still are the same. Newton’s attraction law is working. The only factor that did not exist in the past is human activity to the recent scales. I’m not going to argue on this position, but when we want to refer to hostorical events and even we discuss about Mammut and Ice Ages, how do we refer to what historical facts? We don’t have formula for that, we just have “stories based on existing facts”. Scafetta has not said anything yet, he has just started a discussion, still to come. Sometimes we forget that we are not at the start point of the planet in the year of 0000.
acckkii says:
March 26, 2012 at 7:01 pm
Do you speak any other languages in addition to english?
На здоровье ?
acckkii says:
March 26, 2012 at 7:01 pm
“The issue I am tying to understand still is “global warming” reason if it’s the Sun. ”
===========================================
You can watch this:
Difficult questions can be directed to those individuals on the other thread.
Have fun.
kbray in california says:
March 26, 2012 at 10:36 pm
здоровье ?
yes I’m learning English, just a beginner.
kbray in california says:
March 26, 2012 at 11:27 pm
Thanks, I did it kbray in Ca. I enjoyed the background music too. I played it several times with my piano!
Let’s see what do we have in our hands:
“The gravitational facts of other planets cause the ellipse of our orbit to slowly spin around the Sun. It takes about 112,000 years for the ellipse to revolve once relative to fix stars when considered together with two forms of perception add. And it takes about 21,000 years for the solstice to go from aphelion to aphelion. The dates of the perihelion and aphelion advanced each year on the Sun core an average of one day per 58 years.
The eccentricity of Earth orbit is a measure of how round or how oval shape is. Over thousands of years the eccentricity of orbit varies as a result of gravitational attractions among the planets primarily Jupiter and Saturn. The orbital eccentricity cycles with a period of 100,000 years.
As the eccentricity of the orbit evolves the semi major axis of orbital ellipse remains unchanged, so the length of the sidereal year remains unchanged.
As the earth travels in its orbit the duration of seasons depends on eccentricity of the orbit.
When the orbital eccentricity extreme, the seasons that occur on the far side of the orbit are substantially longer in duration. In addition the axial perception there’s the axial tilt. The angle of Earth rotational axis makes with its orbital plane. It’s currently about 23.4 degrees and is declining. This tilt varies from 22.1 degrees to 24.5 degrees. It makes one complete tilt and back every 41,000 years. This changing tilt is directly related to Ice Ages on Earth. The last max tilt occurred in 8700 BC and the next min tilt will happen in 11,800 AD. The inclination of earth’s orbit drives up/down relative to the present orbit having a period of about 70,000 years. Orbit also moves relative to the orbit of other planets as well. By calculating the plane of unchanged total angular momentum of the solar system we can define the overall plane called the invariable plane. It is approximately the orbital plane of Jupiter. The inclination of earth‘s orbit has a 100,000 year cycle relative to the invariable plane. This 100.000 years cycle closely matches the 100,000 pattern of ice ages.
A year on earth is directly determined by all the various orbital motions of the earth. So if someone tells you how many years old they are, you might ask them is that sidereal, tropical or anomalous years. ”
As we see the system time scale is thousands years. Look: “The last max tilt occurred in 8700 BC and the next min tilt will happen in 11,800 AD.” Our friends are trying to define 10 to 60 years cycle time for overheating the Earth by the Sun that is a microscopic scale comparing to thousands years. We are in the years that The Sun is doing its regular cyclic activities. Our scientists don’t deny it neither Hansen nor The Opposition. This time I’m trying to understand that is the human responsible for global warming? I didn’t get anything from the other side. At least somebody should tell us CAN WE STILL DRIVE A 5500cc LUXURY CAR? If yes It means we confirm that there are no differences between man’s activity in the 21th century and the other centuries in terms of environmental issues.
I know some of the scientists/commentators who did not accept to write anything about Scafetta ‘s prediction or projections (whatever Scafetta likes to name it). This doesn’t mean that Scafetta is right/wrong, he said “it’s just the beginning”. He has lots of works to do.
I don’t know if Hansen didn’t start his global warming stories, then what the Deniers were going to do?
acckkii says:
March 27, 2012 at 2:17 am
I do not know your personal technique for learning English…
but some people here type their native language into “google translate”.
http://translate.google.com/
Then make corrections to the English because the translation is not perfect.
It can help in learning English, because it gives you new words.
(sometimes strange or incorrect too)
It’s not easy to be a Native Speaker in several languages…
some people even have trouble with their own language…
It happened here recently as I recall… was it a singer?
The hat is to show the gullible that he is a humble earthy, person. Just like Tim Flannery.
What you see here were extracted from the video that you’ve introduced. Briefly say that the relationship between the Earth and our solar system have existed for thousands of years. This is not new. Today we have scientific language to express these relationships. Scafetta stated that we’ve just begun. If I understand him correctly, his material is about the interactions within the sun.
Scafetta ideas in the intensification of solar activity and its impact on global warming is not enough.
The important thing is that there are now both factors; the man and the sun. Hansen and his front groups are aware of how powerful the sun’s heat can be. But they do not agree about the impact of human activities on climate change and global warming. We need to resolve the issue of acceptable reasons.
Daily Mail newspaper has recently published the news. I write to you the link:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2120512/Global-warming-Earth-heated-medieval-times-human-CO2-emissions.html
But apparently this is not the end. Europe or the world? Warming has been limited to Europe. Said a group of one hand, global warming has not been confined to Europe. Another group says to the other hand. The important point is that warming already has had precedent. If it is proven that global warming has only been limited to Europe, the drought can not be ruled out. We talk of global warming. We need to prove this phenomenon by solar activity.
(for your information: there lots of differences among languages. The places of adjectives, verbs…etc are not the same in speaking and writing.
I give you a Nobel prize. my native language: a Nobel prize I give you. … google cannot do this it makes some parts shorter or longer with funny structure. That’s write your example is true too. Sorry for bothering you. The above text was made together with google and this time! I made corrections!
I thought it was Zahi Hawass, the former Minister of State for Antiquity Affairs in Egypt.
acckkii says:
March 27, 2012 at 3:18 pm
Your text was easier to follow this time. Thank you. I know languages are different. In some languages the words for: cat, the cat, cats, the cats… can be the same word, and changing the position of words can make the meaning hard to understand. Google is helpful, but every translation needs to be corrected.
acckkii, you might really enjoy interacting with Willis Eschenbach.
Currently Willis is mostly talking here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/27/ramanathan-and-almost-black-carbon/
See what he says about your questions. Be careful… he carries a knife and he uses it.
He is a better person than me to ask about your concerns. There are many very intelligent people here, and everyone’s idea is a little different. Lief is a solar expert, is you ask him directly about the sun.
I will look for your comments in this blog. The best to you.
kbray in california says:
March 27, 2012 at 11:52 pm
__________________________
I have an opportunity to associate with you. I thank you for your attention. I know Willis very well. He is a pious and important scientist. He responded with caution in Scaftta theory. I am very willing that the good reasons for global warming due to solar activity is found. If not, the global economy will be faced with problem. While I believe the lowest result of Hansen’s theory was that the other energies also be active. Please see the link below. Issues will be discussed very responsibly:
Scientists should also be encouraged to communicate with people more. The following link is very interesting. Here you see how a Swedish scientist Hans Roling has succeeded in expressing his opinion that while Hansen is faced with problems.
http://www.aaas.org/meetings/2012/program/plenaries/panel.shtml
Best Wishes.
The Latest News:
India, Russia, China and South Africa (BRICS) attended the conference in New Delhi. They will establish a bank that is supposed to compete with the World Bank. They are trying not to use dollars in transactions. Dollar in internationally is not just a currency. It is considered as a currency for energy transactions. This is not a simple incident.
Its consequences will be huge. Developing countries will participate in the establishment of this bank.
(BRICS) are involved in any way in the world energy relations. 50% of the world’s population and 25% of world trade is in their hands. (BRICS) have an important role in global warming and global climate changes.
So in the not too far future we will witness significant changes in geopolitics and energy. Until yesterday, there was still opportunity for debate on global warming phenomenon. The Renewables are still in an aura of ambiguity. And still a lot of groups do not agree with it. For the West patient economics, today what we see, is not permissible, and this skepticism does not seem possible to be continued.
China and India, both countries have particular features. They certainly will use solar energy:
http://acckkii.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/chinas-influence-on-solar-energy/
Russia alone has 25% of the world gas resources. And then, Europe without Russia is not easy to sleep. Other developing countries simply are not sanctioned by the West anymore. The recent actions of (BRICS) will be minimal results for the conference.
If developing countries that are major sources of energy, come to the conference in New Delhi, then the West will have more serious conditions.
Because of the hidden subsidies of conventional fossil fuels and uncertainty over cheap fuel supply , the West is not able to have cheap electricity in the future as well.
The power from nuke, natural gas and wind certainly would be cheaper, especially the electricity produced from natural gas to supplement the electricity from wind in peak times.
The cost of construction and installation of wind turbines is estimated by about a million $ / MWh, as well as other conventional power plants with other fossil fuels. So compared to the period of construction and operation, wind turbines are more justified. But the price of the wind turbines should be revised by the manufacturers. Because the wind turbines are a simple mechanism. Other types of power plants are complex mechanisms and they are not at all comparable with wind turbines. A new type of small gas generators cost about 0.65 million $/ MWh. (1 to 12 MWh). The wind turbines should not have cost more.The GE 1.5 MW wind turbines are well known. The company has sold 16 000 units so far. So, the trial period has elapsed and the mass production of wind turbines is possible. The result is a reduced rate of electricity generation with wind turbines.
Above classifications was due to be noted that fossil fuels supply crisis is always possible. And to deal with non-conventional prices, all of preparedness should be considered to always be provided more opportunities for bargaining. (BRICS) is a “BIG BANG”.
kbray in california says:
March 27, 2012 at 11:52 pm
_________________________
As you see , in this short time, I’ve done some works. Please rate what I did.
The Conference in New Delhi – India had important results. I wrote an article in this regard.
I went to Willis too as you recommended. There is an important issue under process that I like it very much, thank you. As usual there is so crowded.
While it is serious, but their contents finally result in specific end. Still they need to spend much time. They are really doing well.
Good thing I wasn’t there because near the end he proposes his plan to tax the CO2 polluters and distribute the money to all Americans. The government won’t get a penny, and even if our energy costs go up, the amount back will exceed the increases. Sounds like a break with the first law of economics to me (like the first law of thermodynamics, getting more energy out of an engine than in). My loud laughter would have gotten me expelled at this point. This guy has lost touch with reality.