Dr. James Hansen and Reto Ruedy of NASA GISS have written a paper (non peer reviewed) with a remarkable admission in it. It is titled Global Temperature Update Through 2012.
Here is the money quote, which pretty much ends the caterwauling from naysayers about global temperature being stalled for the last decade.
The five-year mean global temperature has been flat for the last decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slow down in the growth rate of net climate forcing.
Gosh, I thought Hansen had claimed that “climate forcings” had overwhelmed natural variability?
In 2003 Hansen wrote a widely distributed (but not peer reviewed) paper called Can We Defuse the Global Warming Time Bomb? in which he argues that human-caused forcings on the climate are now greater than the natural ones, and that this, over a long time period, can cause large climate changes.
As we shall see, the small forces that drove millennial climate changes are now overwhelmed by human forcings.
According to Hansen’s latest essay, apparently not. So much for “da bomb”.
Here are some other interesting excerpts from his recent essay, Bob Tisdale take note:
An update through 2012 of our global analysis reveals 2012 as having practically the same temperature as 2011, significantly lower than the maximum reached in 2010. These short-term global fluctuations are associated principally with natural oscillations of tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures summarized in the Nino index in the lower part of the figure. 2012 is nominally the 9th warmest year, but it is indistinguishable in rank with several other years, as shown by the error estimate for comparing nearby years. Note that the 10 warmest years in the record all occurred since 1998.
The current stand-still of the 5-year running mean global temperature may be largely a consequence of the facr [sic] that the first half of the past 10 years had predominantly El Nino conditions, and the second half had predominantly La Nina conditions.
The approximate stand-still of global temperature during 1940-1975 is generally attributed to an approximate balance of aerosol cooling and greenhouse gas warming during a period of rapid growth of fossil fuel use with little control on particulate air pollution, but quantitative interpretation has been impossible because of the absence of adequate aerosol measurements.
That last part about 1940-1975 is telling, given that we now have a cleaner atmosphere, and less aerosols to reflect sunlight, it goes without saying that more sunlight now reaches the surface. Since GISS is all about the surface temperature, that suggests (to rational thinkers at least) that some portion of the surface temperature rise post 1975 is due to pollution controls being enacted.
But, he’s still arguing for an imbalance, even though flatness abounds. Seems like equilibrium to me…
Climate change expectations.
The continuing planetary imbalance and the rapid increase of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel assure that global warming will continue on decadal time scales. Moreover, our interpretation of the larger role of unforced variability in temperature change of the past decade suggests that global temperature will rise significantly in the next few years as the tropics moves inevitably to the next El Nino phase.
Except when natural forcings overwhelm the human component of course.
pat says:
“The only ones who believe in The Weather Clown ….”
Thanks Pat, I love this! The “Weather Bimbo”, Heidi Cullen is joined by the “Weather Clown”, James Hansen. Perfect titles! (Shame on me for enjoying such name calling!)
Well, I know I am not the first person to think of this, but strangely I have never seen it discussed. Since it is well-known that the energy emitted by a black body is directly proportional to the fourth power of the black body’s temperature, isn’t that all the negative feedback that one would ever need to keep the temperature of the Earth from rising? A small increase in temperature leads to a large increase in IR radiation. You’d think temperature squared would be more than a sufficient brake…. but this is temperature to the FOURTH power. Could some of you scientists on here enlighten me as to why this is never brought up. Is there some obvious that I am overlooking?
vukcevic says:
January 16, 2013 at 12:50 pm
traction with people in England, experiencing some of the coolest and wettest summers or coldest winters or all of the above.
Weather is not climate and is not alarming.
JC says:
January 16, 2013 at 12:51 pm
is it your contention that solar forcing was insignificant in the temperature rise since ’75? If so, what do you predict the impact of the coming lull to be, if any?
I don’t think solar forcing was important, and don’t think it will be in the near future, either. “No ice age cometh”.
richardscourtney says: (at 9:10 am)
”live friends are more useful than dead enemies”
Truly wise words indeed, however, I don’t think I could ever trust him enough to consider him “friendly”; like the scorpion in the fable, he does what he does without (from my POV) any regard for consequences. IMHO his tarnished reputation is best kept tarnished, if we start working with him towards restoring his reputation we’ll only find ourselves needing to undo that work after the next time he jumps to a conclusion and sends the public on a crusade, and he will jump to another conclusion, that’s what he does.
I thought you might like to add the quote of the day (2006) to your quote of the week!
http://www.famousdaily.com/january16.html
Famous Quote Said On January 16
The enhanced role of money in the re-election process has produced an atmosphere conducive to pervasive institutionalized corruption.
Al Gore, 2006
Rosco-on academia. Yesterday the National Academy of Sciences put out a report called “The Mathematical Sciences in 2025” urging the NSF (that funded the egregious curricula of the math wars) to spend more to change the nature of college and graduate math instruction away from the lecture exam format. That format is an impediment to certain students gaining the credentials for science or research or healthcare career. They also do not want any distinction between core mathematics and mathematical applications. All are now to be grouped as “mathematical sciences.
Lots of attention to modelling. But the nature of the academic coursework must be changed using federal tax dollars or future debt to reflect the weaknesses of the students attending college.
So not only is federal spending out of control, but when it is not going to cronies or to create new bureaucracies, it is being spent to corrupt what can go on in any classroom, K-12 or higher ed and increasingly private K-12 as well.
We really are looking at only those kids whose parents pay attention and remediate and supplement having accurate factual knowledge or even logical minds experienced with abstract thinking.
And that is the intent, not a side effect.
richardscourtney says:
January 16, 2013 at 9:10 am
Friends:
The writing has been on the wall for the AGW-scare since the failure of the FCCC conference at Copenhagen in 2009. The present priorities are
(a) to hasten the demise of the AGW-scare,
(b) to resist introduction of laws and institutions based on the GW-scare, and
(c) to inhibit introduction of whatever is the next false scare.
Hansen is merely one of the rodents seeking a way to leave the sinkingship.
I agree with Jeff L who says at January 16, 2013 at 8:37 am
We shouldn’t be too hard on Hansen – he is taking a step in the right direction & we should be applauding that, which will hopefully encourage him & other like minded people to do the same going forward. As they say “you catch more bees with a drop of honey than you will with a gallon of vinegar”. Recognition of what the data is actually saying by the CAGW supporters will solve the true problem, which is the potential economic damage done in trying to solve the “CAGW problem” – the sooner it is generally realized that this is not a catastrophic problem, the better for society.
Or, to put that into the same terms that Machiavelli explained it to the Prince:
Enemies are a problem and they need to be utterly destroyed. But before you destroy them do all you can to turn them into friends because live friends are more useful than dead enemies.
Richard
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I hope you’re right. But if I left my wallet out and someone stole it, returned it and apologized, I might forgive him but he’d have to show I could trust him before I’d leave my wallet out again.
He may just be positioning himself to make another projection but from a new starting point now that it’s obvious even to him (hopefully) that his original projection was so wrong.
I’ll let the rat abandon ship as long as he don’t jump on a new one.
mpainter says:
January 16, 2013 at 11:42 am
Gail Combs. says: January 16, 2013 at 11:30 am
Obama got his buddies one more year of the Wind/solar power boondoggle so they can exit and leave the chumps holding the bankrupt companies. If you have any money invested in ‘Green’ get it out NOW!
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mpainter: Goodness, gracious, such cynicism! You must have been a stockbroker at one time.
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I think Gail has just had her eyes open and paid attention to what she’s seen.
The scientists are beginning to recognise the facts, the politicians are the main remaining stumbling block to rational progress, as their numbers are largely drawn from obtuse unobservant lawyers.
Dr Norman Page says:
January 16, 2013 at 12:48 pm
Additional comment – most of the records you show in your links show higher counts for 23/24 than 21/22.
A very small increase for some would be expected because the 23/24 minimum was so low, but the differences are so small that they are insignificant [not as you say: clear and significant].
In the present state of our knowledge it is not a safe assumption that only the high energy cosmic rays are of significance to climate.
The people who claim that GCRs control the climate say [for good reason] that they need high-energy particles to penetrate low enough to influence cloud formation. Low energy ones don’t. In fact, In the present state of our knowledge it is not a safe assumption that cosmic rays of any energy are of significance to climate.
more soylent green! January 16, 2013 at 8:47 am wrote:
Do we really know what the worldwide temperature is supposed to be? Do we know what the worldwide temperature is?
Look through: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/globaltemp/GlobTemp.JNET.pdf
IanM
“I don’t think solar forcing was important, and don’t think it will be in the near future, either. “No ice age cometh”’
Glad I didn’t misinterpret your views. I’ve been a lurker here for a bit and from what I’d gathered by briefly skimming a few of your posts you seem quite hostile to those suggesting solar influence is a major player in recent temperature swings (positive or negative), but that leaves me with another question; If you don’t think solar forcing to be a driver and don’t view GHGs as a substantial forcing either, what do you attribute the recent uptick to? The LIA? The MWP, the RWP? In your opinion are these all just examples of internal, poorly understood natural variability? I gather that you think the CAGW movement is based on greed, profiteering, and unjust scaremongering rather than sound science, so clearly you aren’t worried about man’s impact to any great degree.
Hansen may be nervous about the data but he is still out marching with the loony-tunes:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/01/15/179955/climate-change-activists-turn.html
[h/t Tom Nelson]
I loooove the photo with that article.
Makes me want to sing ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands’
How does Hansen’s non-political NASA news conference just happen to be scheduled on the same day as the protest march, and how does he get away with the presence that he (and Gavin Schmidt) do the activism only on his own time and dollar??
Oops, that word is ‘pretence’ of course….
Dr Norman Page says:
January 16, 2013 at 12:48 pm
Additional comment – most of the records you show in your links show higher counts for 23/24 than 21/22.
Not so for 19/20… With the error bars there are no differences between 19/20, 21/22, and 23/24.
@ur momisugly Cardin Drake
I often wonder the same thing.
To increase a surface IR output starting out in the 385 W/m2 to 405 W/m2 emission range by 10 W/m2 only requires about a 1.8 K increase in temperature for surfaces between about 288 – 295 K and high emissivity.
So that’s like 0.18 °C/W/m2 or about 0.7 °C/2XCO2 IF the surface had to increase in temperature to match its exposure, which it does not unless it’s in thermodynamic isolation.
Seems to me like that would be the maximum possible surface warming rate from an increase in radiant exposure since that’s the hypothetical case where none of the heat convects or conducts away from the surface.
“The approximate stand-still of global temperature during 1940-1975 is generally attributed to an approximate balance of aerosol cooling and greenhouse gas warming during a period of rapid growth of fossil fuel use with little control on particulate air pollution, but quantitative interpretation has been impossible because of the absence of adequate aerosol measurements.”
Translated: we are all making the same claim, even though we have absolutely no idea whether it has any basis in fact.
Time Magazine concedes NOTHING:
15 Jan: Time Mag/Science: Bryan Walsh:
Going Green
Federal Forecast for Climate Change: It’s Getting Hot in Here
Spring came early to Walden Pond in 2012…
Of course, you don’t need to pore through the records at Walden Pond to know that the climate is changing…
(MORE: 2012 Was the Hottest Year in U.S. History. And Yes — It’s Climate Change)…
(MORE: Why Seeing Is Believing—Usually—When It Comes to Climate Change)…
(MORE: Climate Change and Sandy: Why We Need to Prepare for a Warmer World)…
When President Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress couldn’t push through cap and trade legislation in 2010 — see Harvard’s Theda Skocpol on the green movement’s political failures — we may have squandered the best chance in a decade to take comprehensive action against climate change. Now we can’t even agree to pay the country’s bills. It’d be nice to feel some optimism, but that’s vanishing faster than the remains of an increasingly rare snowfall in New York. Still, I suppose there’s a silver lining. Spring is just around the corner — and it’s getting closer every year.
(FIRST COMMENT BY GeraldWilhite) I could not find a clear citation to the paper on which your article is based in your article, but I assume that you were talking about “Global Temperature Update Through 2012, 15 January 2013 by J. Hansen, M. Sato, R. Ruedy”, which has not yet been peer-reviewed.
This preliminary paper is notable because it is, to my knowledge, the first time Hansen has admitted that global warming flat-lined several years ago…
http://science.time.com/2013/01/15/federal-forecast-for-climate-change-its-getting-hot-in-here/?iid=sl-main-mostpop2
I do no think we should let any of these alarmists of the hook. Lift em high, turn up the fossil fuels and poke em until they are done.
It is because of idiots like Hansen that people are and will suffer fuel poverty and needless suffering and death. The UK, because of EU CO2 limits, is shutting down its coal fired plants (just like Germany) electricity prices are increasing year on year – coal prices are not – to fund “renewable energy” . Without the Channel interconnector importing (expensive) French nuclear electricity, the UK will already have suffered the same brown outs that the idiot Germans are already experiencing. The UK is at the same latitude as Labrador but snow is apparently a rare and exciting event – unless you live in Glasgow and have to choose between feeding yourself and heating your home.
Never forget who started this BS, make them eat their words
give thanx, subsidies are being removed:
16 Jan: Bloomberg: Andrew Herndon/Christopher Martin: Private Equity Flees Clean Energy as Investment Falls
Private equity companies and venture capitalists including Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Braemar Energy Ventures reduced renewable-energy investment to the lowest since 2006 as once-promising companies failed or were sold at a loss…
The decline shows a wariness among investors who’ve been burned by losses, especially those who backed solar-panel manufacturers competing with Chinese companies. It also reflects a shrinking market as fewer entrepreneurs sought capital for clean energy startups, said Vinod Khosla, the billionaire founder of Menlo Park, California-based Khosla Ventures.
“All the fashionable VCs have gone away from it,” Khosla said in an interview. “Even the number of businesses people are starting is smaller.”
***The decline is the result of waning government incentives for renewable energy and weak performance in the stock market, which made it harder for investors to extract value, said Ethan Zindler, an analyst at New Energy Finance in Washington…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-15/private-equity-flees-clean-energy-as-investment-falls-energy.html
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JC says:
January 16, 2013 at 2:11 pm
what I’d gathered by briefly skimming a few of your posts you seem quite hostile to those suggesting solar influence is a major player in recent temperature swings
‘Hostile’ is not the right word. I point out that the evidence is weak and the theories even weaker, and they do not convince a hard skeptic like me.
In your opinion are these all just examples of internal, poorly understood natural variability?
That is what I would surmise.
I gather that you think the CAGW movement is based on greed, profiteering, and unjust scaremongering rather than sound science
In essence, yes. But there is more too it: people prefer a simple, easy theory [even if wrong] to a complicated, difficult, and poorly understood theory [even if right]. The solar aspect is part of that same syndrome.
so clearly you aren’t worried about man’s impact to any great degree.
There are more important things to worry about, than ‘saving the Earth’ from imagined disasters. But I am worried about the wide-spread acceptance of attempts to take us back centuries to prevent such.
oldfossil says:
January 16, 2013 at 8:45 am
Sorry, but that is sentimental rubbish, sir!
Hansen should be commended? What?, for helping (nay, almost single handedly organising!) to waste BILLIONS of money on unnecessary AGW schemes and research bollocks whilst all the while millions, nay billions, don’t even have enough food or clean fresh water? Commended? Hell no!
Courage? – my gawd – that’s even worse! If you had been a scientist – and had done all that he has done to promote and actively disseminate the fraud over the last 30+ years, causing almost innumerous ‘deaths’ as a result of fuel poverty, economic disruption, etc, etc, all based on dogmatic self perpetuation and self promotion – you(and I) might likely have the real courage and DECENCY to prove your sincerity and admit your mistake(s) and perhaps ‘do the honourable thing’ – Courage? – FFS, I’d reckon the Lion showed more courage than Hansen could muster in a billion years whilst travelling on his personal yellow (gold?) brick road!
Mr. Watts tries to construct a contradiction between what Hansen says today and what he had said before in the essay from 2003. There is just none. The statement in the older essay by Hansen about the dominance of anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcings applies to a longer time scale. One can even see this from the one sentence quoted by Mr. Watts. Hansen compared anthropogenic forcings to the forcings that drove millenium scale climate change. He didn’t make a comparison about what dominates the changes in a five-year running mean of the temperature over merely a decade. I do not know any statement by Hansen from the past, or by any other climate scientist, for the matter of fact, according to which anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcings supposedly overwhelmed natural unforced variability, for instance the ones related to ENSO, on any arbitrarily chosen short time scale. It has always been said that natural variability dominates the atmospheric temperature record on short time scales.
Just the usual red herring and misrepresentation regarding what climate scientists actually say.
I don’t think that the Believers didn’t believe in what they said (Hansen, Mann, Gore, etc.), so let us not act arrogantly when they are proven wrong. It is now obvious that a TREND in the sun is accompanied by a trend in the global temperature, not by direct radiative influence but by affecting the circulation. The 11-year maxima have little or no influence on the global temperature.
Well activists do need work and if the current doom mongering is falling on deaf ears then perhaps it is time for Hansen to come up with a different meme – after all there are bills to pay, awards to be won, and guest speaker conferences to attend (for a fee). I’d suggest Hansen switch to Ocean Acidification to keep the gravy train going, for example
FWIW Richard Black of x-BBC fame tweets Kudos to WUWT !
https://twitter.com/enviroblack