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:
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.