This really is abuse of Hansen’s position at NASA, what next? Meanwhile China keeps building coal plants, where’s your letter to them Jim? Of course China would tell Hansen to go suck rocks, and Hansen knows it, so he doesn’t try. – Anthony
Guest post by Kirtland Griffin
James Hansen, Director of the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, copied me on a letter to the President of Slovenia and their National Assembly. Don’t ask, it’s a long story. But suffice it to say, I got copied.
Seems the Assembly and the President are deciding whether to build a lignite powered electrical generation plant. The actual discussion is financial support. Yes, I mean ONE PLANT. To read this letter, you’d think the destiny of the planet depended upon this one plant. News flash! …. IT DOESN’T!
So how does a US private citizen tell a foreign government not to build a power plant? We are to believe Dr. Hansen is writing as a private citizen and not as a NASA Director. Otherwise it would not be within government policy. Got it?
The most outrageous piece from a quick glance has to be the global tempereature chart going from 1880 to 2012. It is an anomaly chart based on the average of a 40-year period just after the Little Ice Age was beginning to wane. You could not get a more biased chart. Think of measuring the amount of solar radiation received in a particular location as the Sun rose and then compare that to the solar radiation at noon. That should give you some idea.
One interesting piece is this:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (1, 2) summarized broad-based assessments with a “burning embers” diagram, which indicated that major problems begin with global warming of 2-3°C. A probabilistic analysis (3), still partly subjective, found a median “dangerous” threshold of 2.8°C, with 95% confidence that the dangerous threshold was 1.5°C or higher.
OK, the beginning of the problem is 2 to 3°C, being partly subjective (fantasy?) So much for evidence.
Then he talks about Greenland and Antarctic ice loss that is accelerating. If he means it is accelerating in the growth direction, he may have something. That is not where he is going.
The facts that Antarctica and Greenland are losing mass at an accelerating rate (5, 6) and sea level is rising at a rate (+3m/millennium) much higher than during the past several thousand years provide strong evidence that the temperature in the past decade (+0.75°C relative to 1880-1920) exceeded the prior Holocene maximum.
Yes, he thows in rising sea levels which aren’t, and somehow this disputes all the evidence that the Holocene Maximum was warmer than now. Peter Pan has nothing on this story.
He then goes on a dissertation about the causes of radical changes in the distant past, which of course have nothing to do with the Sun and its variations. No, it’s all about CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Rule #1: Never admit the Sun changes anything.
Then he goes over the edge with a long discussion of CO2 and it’s predicted effects based on climate models which Phil Jones, Head of the Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia, UK says, “none of them work”.
Go ahead and read the rest of the letter and keep in mind that all predictions are the result of models that do not work. When he talks about current temperatures and other climate data, go look on the Internet to see what is happening. Go to original sources, not what someone else says. The links in this article may help you get started. You will begin to wonder where this fellow gets his information.
As for Slovenia, go ahead and build your power plant. China is building more than one a week. Your contribution is a drop in the bucket, but a very important bucket for Slovenia. If your people need power, give it to them.
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From globalcooler on April 4, 2012 at 4:57 am:
Please tell me you’re not a machinist. I have never met any competent machinist who’d make such a claim, and neither would just about all of the borderline or incompetent ones. Sure, you can take many measurements and improve the precision, figure the real reading is at the center of the distribution, average all the measurements together.
But when I put your scale (ruler) on the comparator and show you the marks you’re using are about 0.0078″ (1/128th) off, you’ll know that all you did was get a highly-precise inaccurate measurement. Precise to 0.0003″ but still blowing a +/- 0.005 tolerance? Do you think machinists use all those pricey measuring tools instead of tape measures to avoid taking a lot of repeat measurements and doing the math?
Perhaps you should review the differences between accuracy and precision. You need enough precision to figure out the accuracy, if the measurements are all over the place then you can’t really tell much of anything. But precision does not yield accuracy.
If you feel this is incorrect and the method you used did improve accuracy, please post that method for review. I’d find it most interesting.
“Think of measuring the amount of solar radiation received in a particular location…”
Or the way I put it to people, Imagine you got a new thermometer for your birthday in January (NH). You record the temperature every day, and notice a trend… By the end of July you have convinced yourself the oceans will be boiling before another year passes, ending all life on the planet.
George says:
April 3, 2012 at 10:37 pm
This is overreaction; James Hansen has the same right to send a communication to the Slovenian president as any one of us.
But like Hotspur observed in Henry IV, part 1 when Glendower claimed to be able to call forth “spirits from the vasty deep”:
Hansen is only interfering in Slovenian affairs if he claims to be representing US policy. As a private citizen he can say anything he pleases, but nobody is required to pay any attention.
“We cannot assign blame for extermination of a specific species on a specific power plant, but the numbers are such that the emissions in the 50-75 years of operation of a large new coal-fired power plant without CO2 capture would be a dagger in the heart of at least dozens of species.”
Really Jim? One power plant causes a dozen species to go extinct?
His lunacy really has to be seen to be believed. The $64,000 question is: who has the power to relieve him as head of GISS, and what abandoned well have they fallen into?
But as I pointed out earlier, he is using his NASA e-mail address as an official contact to respond to the letter. If he wants to advocate on his own behalf, he should supply his personal e-mail address. But since he supplies his NASA address, that makes it look like official correspondence from the US govt.
MikeH says:
April 4, 2012 at 9:22 am
That interpretation would depend on NASA policy (I lack knowledge there, but I tend to agree). However the simple response for Slovenia is to refer the letter to the senior resident US diplomat with a request for clarification whether James Hansen is speaking as a private citizen or a senior NASA official. There can only be one possible response, and quite possibly an internal memo from the State Department to NASA requesting Mr. Hansen comply with applicable NASA policy in the future.
In any case as I noted, Slovenia has no obligation to take any notice of what private citizen James Hansen writes, any more than spirits from the vasty deep will come when he calls them.
What I think would be really nice would be for Slovenia to host a conference on the issue of coal power plants and CO2 emissions and invite James Hansen to give a presentation. Of course he would have to agree to appear with other invited participants, say Christopher Monckton for instance. If life as we know it really hangs in the balance, Hansen really ought to be willing to put in an appearance.
Pretty much a non-issue, as Slovenes are far to intelligent to pay attention to the religious preachings of Dr Hansen.
Also, I feel the need to address the comment by vukcevic about Slovenia’s nuclear plant. The two loop Westinghouse pressurized design is one of the best in the world. That particular plant probably has at least 20 years left in its operating cycle. As for not being very safe, if he is basing that on the wikipdia comments about a leak in 2008, he is way off base. Based on the comments, the leak most likely was of a steam generator tube. All Westinghouse plants have water chemistry / metellargury issues with the iconal tubing, leading to corrosion. This is dealt with by regular inspection and, where the wall thinckness falls below minimum specs, plugging of the tube. Eventually, they have the choice of de-rating the unit or replacing the steam generator.
By the looks of their Religious and Climate Section the Islamist think they’re nuts.
It is a letter to president of parliament, who is Gregor Virant, quite nice guy. Not to our president of republic DaniloTürk, who is just smoke of gentlemen’s shit! Real power is at the hands of prime minister Janez Janša.
I think, this is just stunt of local IPCC witch!
The story of TEŠ6 (Termoelektrarna Šoštanj blok 6, see http://www.te-sostanj.si/en/), that is the name of project, is little more complicated. In short, the money is problem. To many hands in the pott.
timg56 says:
…….
Any release of radioactive effluent in the river is taken down stream and affects 5 countries (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Rumania and Bulgaria) before it reaches the Black Sea. Last reported incident was just over a year ago in March 2011.
http://www.naslovi.net/tema/259193
power to the people
… of Slovenia
Andrew30 says:
One of the pepers authors:
Fred Kruegerf, National Religious Coalition on Creation Care, Santa Rosa, CA 95407-6828
I really thought that was a joke, with a name like “Fred Krueger”. It’s not…
Gail Combs says:
>>One can achieve accuracy through precision or multiple measurements…
This can only occur when measuring the same object or quantity, such as a piece of metal. This is not the case with global average temperature, any more than it is with the average length of all automobiles. Each time you estimate average global temperature, you are measuring a totally different object : the different weather in many different locations. More locations does not increase accuracy. Errors are at least as great as the measurement error and recording accuracy +/-0.5. This immediately places errors at a MINIMUM of +/-0.5 degrees, not =/-0.05 as CRU claims.