UPDATE: 9:55 AM PDT 8/8/12 A graph of Palmer Drought Severity Index -vs- GISTEMP data has been added from Dr. Michaels. Looks like another “GISS miss”.
There’s a lot of blowback against James Hansen’s recent (non tested) PNAS paper, trying to link weather and climate, covered here on WUWT. Even NOAA scientist Dr. Martin Hoerling is panning it. This from The NYT:
Dr. Hoerling contended that Dr. Hansen’s new paper confuses drought, caused primarily by a lack of rainfall, with heat waves.
“This isn’t a serious science paper,” Dr. Hoerling said. “It’s mainly about perception, as indicated by the paper’s title. Perception is not a science.”
Here’s a short editorial by Dr. Pat Michaels, former Virginia State Climatologist:
Hansen is simply wrong.
Hansen claims that global warming is associated with increased drought in the US. This is a testable hypothesis which he chose not to test, and, because PNAS isn’t truly peer-reviewed for Members like him, no one tested it for him.
I have [examined] drought data [that] are from NCDC, and the temperature record is Hansen’s own. His hypothesis is a complete and abject failure.
[UPDATE: Graph added 9:55AM PDT 8/8/12:]
It is hard for me to believe that Hansen did not know this, and yet he went ahead with his paper. This must be true because Hansen has published papers on the Palmer Drought Index and future warming. Administrator Bolden is obligated to investigate the ethics of publishing a paper that the Director of the GISS laboratory knew could not pass the most simple test of hypothesis.
The following excerpt from his PNAS paper tells you everything you need to know about James Hansen’s paper:
“Although we were motivated in this research by an objective to expose effects of human-made global warming as soon as possible…”
– Dr. Patrick Michaels, via email
=============================================================
On the same day of one of NASA’s proudest achievements, the landing of the rover Curiosity on Mars, Dr. James Hansen and PNAS went on a media blitz to push a paper that is so technically flawed, that if it were a spacecraft, it would surely have burned up in the atmosphere due to a faulty understanding of that atmosphere. Unfortunately, as Dr. Michaels points out, it was never tested and Dr. Hoerling points out that it “isn’t science, but perception”. NASA used to deal in facts and testing, because if they didn’t, people died. Now NASA’s image has been tarnished on the day of one of its greatest triumphs by a rogue scientist with unsupportable ideas and a global media megaphone.
I have in the past, called for Dr. Hansen’s firing after his arrest episodes where he acts as an activist and protestor. I repeat that call today and will continue to do so. NASA administrator Bolden, fire Dr. James Hansen. He is an embarrassment to NASA, and an embarrassment to science. Show him the door.
Many of your greatest engineers, scientists, and astronauts agree that Dr. Hansen has overstepped his bounds with his advocacy, as I repost below. – Anthony
=============================================================
From this WUWT story:
Joint letter to NASA Administrator blasts agency’s policy of ignoring empirical evidence
HOUSTON, TX – April 10, 2012.
49 former NASA scientists and astronauts sent a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden last week admonishing the agency for it’s role in advocating a high degree of certainty that man-made CO2 is a major cause of climate change while neglecting empirical evidence that calls the theory into question.
The group, which includes seven Apollo astronauts and two former directors of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, are dismayed over the failure of NASA, and specifically the Goddard Institute For Space Studies (GISS), to make an objective assessment of all available scientific data on climate change. They charge that NASA is relying too heavily on complex climate models that have proven scientifically inadequate in predicting climate only one or two decades in advance.
H. Leighton Steward, chairman of the non-profit Plants Need CO2, noted that many of the former NASA scientists harbored doubts about the significance of the C02-climate change theory and have concerns over NASA’s advocacy on the issue. While making presentations in late 2011 to many of the signatories of the letter, Steward realized that the NASA scientists should make their concerns known to NASA and the GISS.
“These American heroes – the astronauts that took to space and the scientists and engineers that put them there – are simply stating their concern over NASA’s extreme advocacy for an unproven theory,” said Leighton Steward. “There’s a concern that if it turns out that CO2 is not a major cause of climate change, NASA will have put the reputation of NASA, NASA’s current and former employees, and even the very reputation of science itself at risk of public ridicule and distrust.”
Select excerpts from the letter:
- “The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.”
- “We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated.”
- “We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject.”
The full text of the letter:
March 28, 2012
The Honorable Charles Bolden, Jr.
NASA Administrator
NASA Headquarters
Washington, D.C. 20546-0001
Dear Charlie,
We, the undersigned, respectfully request that NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites. We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data. With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from the GISS leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled.
The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.
As former NASA employees, we feel that NASA’s advocacy of an extreme position, prior to a thorough study of the possible overwhelming impact of natural climate drivers is inappropriate. We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject. At risk is damage to the exemplary reputation of NASA, NASA’s current or former scientists and employees, and even the reputation of science itself.
For additional information regarding the science behind our concern, we recommend that you contact Harrison Schmitt or Walter Cunningham, or others they can recommend to you.
Thank you for considering this request.
Sincerely,
(Attached signatures)
CC: Mr. John Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator for Science
CC: Ass Mr. Chris Scolese, Director, Goddard Space Flight Center
Ref: Letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, dated 3-26-12, regarding a request for NASA to refrain from making unsubstantiated claims that human produced CO2 is having a catastrophic impact on climate change.
/s/ Jack Barneburg, Jack – JSC, Space Shuttle Structures, Engineering Directorate, 34 years
/s/ Larry Bell – JSC, Mgr. Crew Systems Div., Engineering Directorate, 32 years
/s/ Dr. Donald Bogard – JSC, Principal Investigator, Science Directorate, 41 years
/s/ Jerry C. Bostick – JSC, Principal Investigator, Science Directorate, 23 years
/s/ Dr. Phillip K. Chapman – JSC, Scientist – astronaut, 5 years
/s/ Michael F. Collins, JSC, Chief, Flight Design and Dynamics Division, MOD, 41 years
/s/ Dr. Kenneth Cox – JSC, Chief Flight Dynamics Div., Engr. Directorate, 40 years
/s/ Walter Cunningham – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 7, 8 years
/s/ Dr. Donald M. Curry – JSC, Mgr. Shuttle Leading Edge, Thermal Protection Sys., Engr. Dir., 44 years
/s/ Leroy Day – Hdq. Deputy Director, Space Shuttle Program, 19 years
/s/ Dr. Henry P. Decell, Jr. – JSC, Chief, Theory & Analysis Office, 5 years
/s/Charles F. Deiterich – JSC, Mgr., Flight Operations Integration, MOD, 30 years
/s/ Dr. Harold Doiron – JSC, Chairman, Shuttle Pogo Prevention Panel, 16 years
/s/ Charles Duke – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 16, 10 years
/s/ Anita Gale
/s/ Grace Germany – JSC, Program Analyst, 35 years
/s/ Ed Gibson – JSC, Astronaut Skylab 4, 14 years
/s/ Richard Gordon – JSC, Astronaut, Gemini Xi, Apollo 12, 9 years
/s/ Gerald C. Griffin – JSC, Apollo Flight Director, and Director of Johnson Space Center, 22 years
/s/ Thomas M. Grubbs – JSC, Chief, Aircraft Maintenance and Engineering Branch, 31 years
/s/ Thomas J. Harmon
/s/ David W. Heath – JSC, Reentry Specialist, MOD, 30 years
/s/ Miguel A. Hernandez, Jr. – JSC, Flight crew training and operations, 3 years
/s/ James R. Roundtree – JSC Branch Chief, 26 years
/s/ Enoch Jones – JSC, Mgr. SE&I, Shuttle Program Office, 26 years
/s/ Dr. Joseph Kerwin – JSC, Astronaut, Skylab 2, Director of Space and Life Sciences, 22 years
/s/ Jack Knight – JSC, Chief, Advanced Operations and Development Division, MOD, 40 years
/s/ Dr. Christopher C. Kraft – JSC, Apollo Flight Director and Director of Johnson Space Center, 24 years
/s/ Paul C. Kramer – JSC, Ass.t for Planning Aeroscience and Flight Mechanics Div., Egr. Dir., 34 years
/s/ Alex (Skip) Larsen
/s/ Dr. Lubert Leger – JSC, Ass’t. Chief Materials Division, Engr. Directorate, 30 years
/s/ Dr. Humbolt C. Mandell – JSC, Mgr. Shuttle Program Control and Advance Programs, 40 years
/s/ Donald K. McCutchen – JSC, Project Engineer – Space Shuttle and ISS Program Offices, 33 years
/s/ Thomas L. (Tom) Moser – Hdq. Dep. Assoc. Admin. & Director, Space Station Program, 28 years
/s/ Dr. George Mueller – Hdq., Assoc. Adm., Office of Space Flight, 6 years
/s/ Tom Ohesorge
/s/ James Peacock – JSC, Apollo and Shuttle Program Office, 21 years
/s/ Richard McFarland – JSC, Mgr. Motion Simulators, 28 years
/s/ Joseph E. Rogers – JSC, Chief, Structures and Dynamics Branch, Engr. Directorate,40 years
/s/ Bernard J. Rosenbaum – JSC, Chief Engineer, Propulsion and Power Division, Engr. Dir., 48 years
/s/ Dr. Harrison (Jack) Schmitt – JSC, Astronaut Apollo 17, 10 years
/s/ Gerard C. Shows – JSC, Asst. Manager, Quality Assurance, 30 years
/s/ Kenneth Suit – JSC, Ass’t Mgr., Systems Integration, Space Shuttle, 37 years
/s/ Robert F. Thompson – JSC, Program Manager, Space Shuttle, 44 years/s/ Frank Van Renesselaer – Hdq., Mgr. Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters, 15 years
/s/ Dr. James Visentine – JSC Materials Branch, Engineering Directorate, 30 years
/s/ Manfred (Dutch) von Ehrenfried – JSC, Flight Controller; Mercury, Gemini & Apollo, MOD, 10 years
/s/ George Weisskopf – JSC, Avionics Systems Division, Engineering Dir., 40 years
/s/ Al Worden – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 15, 9 years
/s/ Thomas (Tom) Wysmuller – JSC, Meteorologist, 5 years
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Peter Miller said:
The reason Hansen is still at NASA is very simple – his bosses, rightly or wrongly, believe he is a money magnet from government.
And there in lies NASA and the analogous Penn State dilemma: Michael Mann and Penn State Football.
Crash! I will take the equivalent of an arrest, conviction and imprisonment of a child molester before NASA acts, as the public purse draws tight.
michael, Elena Ceausescu stole that work from a female Romanian graduate student, who was thereafter exiled to a remote part of the country. In 1990 Chemical and Engineering News, the house organ of the American Chemical Society, published an article about Ceausescu’s fraudulent career, in which she was granted, “credit for published material she never researched and technical degrees granted but never earned…”
Real science from a false scientist is the inverse of the AGW pattern, in which certain real scientists publish false science.
To JimB:
Unfortunately, NASA does not have a mandatory retirement age. Federal mandatory retirement age laws cover air traffic controllers, law enforcement officers, fire fighters, and nuclear materials couriers. Not climatologists who have become climate activists. Too bad, isn’t it? We may have to put up with him until he’s 95.
REP – yes, I know I was censored yet again for pointing out that a WUWT post is factually wrong.
Hansen did not say anything about droughts becoming more frequent. Read the paper yourself – it barely even mentions droughts and is almost entirely focused on temperatures. Michaels’ argument is a strawman. It is factually wrong. Am I allowed to say that here?
[REPLY: You were “censored” for being an odious little twit with a penchant for making libelous statements. Your last two statements suggest you know exactly why you were snipped. Don’t do it again. Capice? -REP]
Is Hansen’s latest an example of post-normal science in action, or an example of terrible papers that used to slide from in-basket to trash-basket without anyone noticing?
As a youngster and into my middle years, the exploits of NASA regularly gave me a ‘frisson’ of excitement. The bravery, the ingenuity, the collaboration on a massive scale that could design and engineer everything from microscopic circuitry to million pound rocket boosters simply filled me with admiration and awe. We owe NASA for much of the modernity we take for granted these days, we also owe it for the ‘blue earth’ image that let mankind see how rare and beautiful our planet is. To see reputation of this iconic ‘brand’ defiled by the plausible Mr Hansen fills me with anger.
I have a question about the paper.
I haven’t had the chance to read it, but as I understand it the authors fit a normal (or Gaussian) distribution to weather measurements from the 1950s to the 1980s, and then concluded that the current conditions in the midwest were too improbable to be natural.
Why did they assume that weather obeys a normal curve? A more heavily tailed curve such as a Student’s t distribution with 6 degrees of freedom, say, looks much like a normal curve, and yet gives very different answers as to what is probable. In other words, a slight change in their assumptions could lead to completely different conclusions.
At this point in the warming hoax it brings no virtue or righteousness to science to point out errors. No one cares because global warming stopped being about science a long time ago. It’s all about politics and being a skeptic is the last service an honest man can do for science. All we can do now is correct the politics and even that gives little comfort because academia has lost all pretenses to scholarship.
I would ask Romney (and Obama) – they are going to have a debate aren’t they?
1. Would you fire Hansen of NASA?
2. Is CO2 a pollutant?
3. Are you going to subsidize wind, solar and bio-fuels?
4. Etc…?
Another good question:
Is all of Alaska a National Park or just a state like Texas?
the fools that give hansen the grants are the ones that should be sacked.
When did Hansen seem to go off the deep end (mid 1990’s?) Why?
Read about Madrid 1995 “The last day of Climate Science” . This is a must read. Part one.
http://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/2012/08/07/madrid-1995-the-last-day-of-climate-science/#more-820
Who gave marching orders to the State Department at that time ( Madrid 1995)?
Who was in the White House at that time (1992 thru 2000)? Could it have been Clinton/Gore? You better believe it was. Could anyone trust Gore? How about a Gore with power/influence?
I hope that Hansen is just marching the orders he was given at a previous point in time from a previous administration simply to make a point not in the interest of those who issued the orders. Could he have been forced to play the fool so decided to make a mockery of it? He is doing a good job of it if that is his point. Will he issue interesting memoirs with his passing? I guess this last paragraph is just hoping. 😉
ob says:
August 8, 2012 at 11:38 am
could you clarify what’s in the scatter plot. temp vs pdsi isn’t really informative. that is: time-scales? and pdsi over which area of the US? link to pdsi data would help
When I first saw the scatter plot in the 9:55 PDT update, I thought “This really is the coup de grace for Hansen’s paper.” Then I read ob’s comment, and thought I ought to know more about the PDSI. It took awhile. NOAA does not make it easy to find average U.S. PDSI yearly numerical values. I finally found I could get a plot of them at:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/time-series/
After plotting the U.S average PDSI for Feb to January (annual choice closest to calendar year) for all available data (1896 to 2012 ) I was convinced that the data for the scatter plot did exist (all 116 years of it).
After looking at the scatter plot, not only was there no tread, the quadrant “warmer & drier” had the fewest data of all (20); “warmer & wetter” had the most (32); the driest year had a negative temp anomaly, and the wettest year a positive temp anomaly.
My conclusion: I was right to begin with, the scatter plot is the coup de grace to Hansen’s paper. He should withdrawn it.
Rather than editorialise and make silly remarks , perhaps some of you would like to read the paper.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/07/30/1205276109.full.pdf
Remember this about human nature: people can be shamed and opinions re-shaped even as they double up on defensive. The comments here would be more than enough to shame not only Hansen, but his superiors, his followers, and all of the useful idiots promoting CAGW, would that they be read. Very impressive thread.
If I could add this: fire Hansen, yes. But fire his superiors too. And their superiors. Clean. House.
Entropic man says:
August 8, 2012 at 5:07 pm
“Rather than editorialize and make silly remarks , perhaps some of you would like to read the paper.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/07/30/1205276109.full.pdf”
I may have made some silly remarks, but do you think that the 49 former NASA scientists were making silly remarks?
I’m afraid that I must agree with those that are arguing that the Hansen paper has little to nothing to do with droughts. His analysis is focused and based on temperature. The new graph (temperature vs.PDSI), though very interesting, appears to be off the topic of the paper.
I’m still waiting to see the killer argument against the paper as written. I started digging up the data to determine the effects of different starting points for the base case, but ran out of time. The US data alone might suggest something about starting conditions, but Hansen’s analysis is global.and only for “summer” temperatures.
I’m waiting several days to see what other arguments are brought forward, but as of now, the drought discussion is not in play.
At the article top, the link to the NYT takes browser to a log in page, is it possible to get a link to the article ?
sorry, link is from the NYT.
http://drtimball.com/2012/nasa-scientist-out-of-control/
and listen tonight – http://www.truthnews.com.au/
In 2009, the research of Sir Richard Gregory, let me to write a few papers on correlation of sunspot activity to Accumulated Cyclone Energy, etc and the coming droughts and colder winters. About a year ago, the comments of a doctor on this blog kind of pulled it together. When the earth cools ( I stated solar minimum) there is less humidity, a green house gas. Then there is drought and then there is dust and then there are down pours on hard ground not ready for this and the flooding takes place.
I warned the Royal Society, my Florida Governor, all State Governors, the NOAA, the NASA, 1/4th of the US Senate and numerous agencies that we ares sliding into a drought period based on Sir Gregory and Joseph D’Aleo that we will be in a drought period until 2035. The thinning of the hear started years ago.
What do we have to look forward to. One major black in the dead of winter here in the USA could kill thousands. We are already sending our cattle to slaugter. Everything I warned the governors is coming true. Everything I warned the Senators is coming true.
President Putin in 2009 told his people to get the grid fixed. Our Secretary of Defense, the EPA, The NOAA, NASA and just about all of our scientists are stuck on man-made global warming. Our governing officials are stuck on the IPCC. The Prince of Wales is stuck on the Anglican maniac.
As I look out over the empty plains of South Dakota and think many fools believe that the bad breath of a Supreme Court Justice can warm up the earth, catastrophy will loom over us all. Can we fix stupid?
The formula for disaster here in the USA is in place. Rather than build better water supplies the Congress is battling over money to pay farmers to sit it out. It is still tied to welfare, bailout mentality. Rather than trim trees, we will let the frozen power lines fall on so many lines, lives will be jeapardized. The present administration is closing coal plants for environmental dollars. There will be a price to pay in life.
We must get out out of the box, the dead sub, the burning tank to survive. Throw your carbon foot print in the fireplace and live. But encourage you congressmen to scrap Ethonol and banish plastic bags. We will need the corn and bags are a waste of oil that we need elsewhere.
Notcho, Pablo.
Most Sincerely,
Paul Pierett
Auburndale, Florida
We already have reached the point that dead and dying Old Europe reached years ago. That is when government gets to the point that it’s in it for itself, the public be damned. Only government has the power to abuse authority. That kind of power does not exist in the business world because when it does it’s not called “business” its called organized crime.
While Hansen’s article didn’t focus on droughts, his comments in the announcement and interviews made a strong association to extreme weather events and droughts. So, Hansen is the one responsible for the association. The PNAS paper still needs competent review, but the conclusions HE made in the press were definitely not supported by the content of the paper. Ergo, those commenting on the news accounts of the paper aren’t as off base as Dr. Hansen.
The overstatements on all sides should not reassurance of anything. Extreme weather always establishes extreme viewpoints in the eye of beholder. A farmer toiling on the land who is a climate sceptic then turns into a global warming believer is based first hand observational rather then ivory tower commentary on our past. It is after all the present that is most important to us all and how we live through it. It is our past that determines our actions for coping and overcoming. The Russian heat wave, Marty cites is a single paper that claims it had nothing to do with climate change, but there are other papers that purport to demonstrate that events of that magnitude are now three times more likely than before the industrial era. That debate on the present day is not settled and never can be unless the unthinkable happens. We enter a new undeniable regime of climate change that worsens our crops, damages our economies, causes mass starvation, mass migration and defence security for democratic leading nations is weakened. I’m certain of this: A 1930s dust bowl statistic won’t matter a hill of beans if and when crops ultimately fail and require government rescue.
The collision of the fledgling application of the science of extremes and the inexperience we all have in conveying what we do know about this to the public is dubious and suspect. Science is never settled on any matter through any insensitive former statistic to reassure the general public. The human psychological need to ascribe every unusual event to a cause in written in our DNA religious or otherwise. Our Puritan forebears ascribed them to sin, while in the 80’s is was fashionable to blame the unusual weather gods on El Niño. Global warming is the latest whipping boy. Those who detest the “consensus science” and those who think it is very foolish to imply some kind of conspiracy to all our freedoms. Scapegoats exist in every religion on earth. Let us not blame the science telling things we do not want to believe or like. That is an old decrepit ORCHRICH mind at work.
But even conveying our level of ignorance is hard to admit. Marty’s quotation of Harold Brooks is weak argument. To make a resounding judgement that makes it as though he is saying that the recent up tick in severe weather had nothing to do with climate change implies a settled science on the matter. Something all true sceptics hate. The truth is that we do not know whether it did or did not; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. That is real fact. Who is right. You see in any ball game we side with whom we would like to win. We are herd mentalists by nature.That does not make for a winner or loser, does it? As one famous person stated: “We will adapt”. Do you see the real issue anyone? I have my doubts as to whom is right on this one.