Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
The 2 deg C global warming limit, above pre-industrial temperatures, is back in the news. That limit was first proposed in the 1970s by an economist, not a climate scientist, according to the article Two degrees: The history of climate change’s ‘speed limit’ at TheCarbonBrief. Authors Mat Hope & Rosamund Pearce note:
Perhaps surprisingly, the idea that temperature could be used to guide society’s response to climate change was first proposed by an economist.
In the 1970s, Yale professor William Nordhaus alluded to the danger of passing a threshold of two degrees in a pair of now famous papers, suggesting that warming of more than two degrees would push the climate beyond the limits humans were familiar with:
“According to most sources the range of variation between between distinct climatic regimes is on the order of ±5°C, and at present time the global climate is at the high end of this range. If there were global temperatures more than 2° of [sic] 3° above the current average temperature, this would take the climate outside of the range of observations which have been made over the last several hundred thousand years.”
Back in February 2015, The Guardian revealed “EU climate chief and UN’s top climate official both play down expectations that international climate talk pledges will help hit 2C target” in its article Paris climate summit: missing global warming target ‘would not be failure’. It provided the quotes:
“2C is an objective,” Miguel Arias Canete, the EU climate chief, said. “If we have an ongoing process you can not say it is a failure if the mitigration [sic] commitments do not reach 2C.”
And:
In Brussels, meanwhile, the UN top climate official, Christiana Figueres, was similarly downplaying expectations, telling reporters the pledges made in the run-up to the Paris meeting later this year will “not get us onto the 2C pathway”.
WITH UN AND EU OFFICIALS DOWNPLAYING EXPECTATIONS FOR THE PARIS CLIMATE SUMMIT, THE CO2-OBSESSED HAVE TURNED TO THE GODFATHER OF CLIMATE ALARMISM
Of course I’m talking about James Hansen, retired former head of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS). Expectedly, global warming enthusiasts have turned once again to him for sound bites.
Hansen was recently quoted in the article Paris 2015: Two degrees warming a ‘prescription for disaster’ says top climate scientist James Hansen at The Age. The article by Peter Hannam begins:
The aim to limit global warming to two degrees of pre-industrial levels is “crazy” and “a prescription for disaster”, according to a long-time NASA climate scientist.
The paleo-climate record shows sea-levels were six to eight metres higher than current levels when global temperatures were less than two degrees warmer than they are now, Professor James Hansen, formerly head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and now at Columbia University in New York, said.
“It’s crazy to think that 2 degrees celsius is a safe limit,” Professor Hansen told RN Breakfast on ABC Radio on Tuesday, adding that this would lock in several metres of sea-level rise by the middle of the century,
Someday, probably not soon, alarmists like James Hansen will realize they’re undermining their arguments when they make statements like the “paleo-climate record shows sea-levels were six to eight metres higher than current levels when global temperatures were less than two degrees warmer than they are now.”
Those claims confirm a sad reality. If sea levels were higher in the past than they are now, then solar panels and wind generators will not stop the oceans from invading our coastal towns, villages and cities. Global temperatures have been above the threshold needed to melt glaciers and ice sheets since the end of the last ice age. Sea levels will not stop rising until global surface temperatures drop and we head back toward another ice age.
Figure Intro-6 from my upcoming book…hopefully available early in 2016
For additional recent quotes from James Hansen, see the full article Paris 2015: Two degrees warming a ‘prescription for disaster’ says top climate scientist James Hansen at The Age.
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You’ve been Grubbered again.
But, he told me…
Hansen’s easy comparison of ‘this temperature leads to this much sea level rise’- actually leaves out a very significant point.
Several decades ago I heard it claimed that the ocean floor is sinking at the rate of a millimetre a year due to the extra weight of all the water that had been ice that melted at the end of the last ice age. The rate was said to be slow and ongoing because of the fact the plasticity of the mantle is slight, with solid rock being pressed down into molten rock because of the weight of this water.
That’s a slight amount, but after a millennium it equals a metre. After ten millennia, it’s ten metres; greater than the sea level rise Hansen reports and forecasts. Now since the warmest part of an interglacial is typically early on in the period, there has been the potential of several thousand years sea floor sinking, adding up to several meters fall of the ocean floor and therefore sea level, at our late stage in this Interglacial, compared to whatever period Hansen is alluding to.
Thus we get same temperature, same amount of melted ice, but different sea level heights; more benign in our era than in Hansen’s precursor example. Of course it’s more complicated than that; I don’t expect the rate to be invariant, and I don’t know when the period Hansen is referring to actually occurred compared to the end of it’s ice age. Included in the complexity is that Hansen and I are both treating the average amount of water on Earth as a constant, when we actually lose more by photo-dissection each year than we gain from space. There’s more, but that’s enough.
tl;dr Hansen is comparing apples with 10,000 year old oranges.
This is how it works in the alt universe of climate predictions. If you’re wrong you still get to keep your supplemented retirement cash pile and expensive rooftop solar install on your otherwise enlarged estate. Where is the Green Guilt to go with the gilt?
From a 16th century Hansen?
For seven days and seven nights
Man will watch this awesome sight.
The tides will rise beyond their ken
To bite away the shores and then
A fiery dragon will cross the sky
Six times before this earth shall die
Mankind will tremble and frightened be
for the sixth heralds in this prophecy.
The great star will burn for seven days,
The cloud will cause two suns to appear:
The big mastiff will howl all night
When the great pontiff will change country.
Michel Nostradamus
Oooooh! A nearby supernova. I’ll grab my tinfoil hat!
@ur momisugly Tim
I’ve considered Nostradamus to be debunked since I heard about his prophecy “Three brothers will hold the highest office in the land, and the third will be the greatest of them all”, but Trevor Chappell turned out to be a dud.
For Australians and much of the world that’s the whole of the joke, but the cricket challenged might need to know. Trevor’s brothers Greg and Ian were each in their time captain of Australia’s International cricket team.
Damn, *I* know this is a joke; if he ever read the words *he’d* know it was a joke, but my conscience compels me to acknowledge that on my best day I was never as good as him on his worst day.(Trevor, not Nostradamus.) Damn consciences.
Sorry,
Nostradamus was referring to Matty, Filipe, and Jesus Alou.
manny moe and jack of Pep boys fame?
Me, myself, and I?
Isn’t the modern world weird? Here we’ve gone from an average life expectancy of about 45 years in 1900 to about 75-80 years today. A whole number of diseases that terrified our ancestors tend to be fairly easily cured or prevented today: pneumonia, malaria, polio, leprosy [also referred to as Hansen’s disease (I couldn’t resist)], tuberculosis, and so on. (True, something will always kill us, but then something always will, and at least it takes a lot longer these days.) Our forebears, who, if they left for new horizons knew they’d never see their loved ones again, would marvel at the ease, speed, and safety with which we can return to visit. And, on those occasions when schedules do not permit these travels we can hear our loved ones voices and converse in real time rather than waiting weeks for a letter. Preindustrial serfs rarely traveled more than 3-5 miles from their homes, if they traveled at all, and then it was an all day undertaking. Today, we simply get in our cars and are afforded the free choices, opportunities, and new vistas that automobility provides us. And that travel, protected from exposure to heat or sub freezing temperatures, protected from highway robbers (although photo traffic enforcement has reintroduced that phenomenon), protected from mishaps, is far safer then previous forms despite the truly small, and oftentimes avoidable, risks imposed. We can sleep in cool comfort during periods of sweltering heat. We can sleep in warmth during bitter cold. In the Western world true epidemics (not the false kind) are largely forgotten. Famines simply do not exist; nobody starves. And these successes over the capriciousness of nature have allowed us to extend rights to formerly persecuted minorities. Merit, not raw strength, becomes a determining factor. Compassion is no longer an unaffordable luxury. We can even extend that compassion to the animals: to all creatures big and small.
Yeah, James Hansen, let’s throw that all away. Let’s throw it away for the discoveries you’ve made (NOT), for the new treatments you’ve developed (NOT), for the inventions you’ve produced (NOT), for the insights you’ve provided that will make life richer, larger, healthier, happier, and more humane (NOT). Yeah, let’s throw it all away for your banal fears.
Tom J – well said.
Dr. Hansen’s as any other pseudo science (some would add including my own) was and it is still beneficial to human advance of knowledge.
If in his early pronouncement he turned against rather towards the ‘anthropogenic warming’, and let’s face it, he had ability and intellect to do it, the ‘anthropogenic warming’ would have been long forgotten. In the process lot of scientific research would never happen, and for me, I would never found that 60 year pulses come from the Earth’s interior and they are synchronised with the even numbered sunspot cycles.
It is unfortunate and regretful that on a large proportion of humanity, has been and may well be for years to come, inflicted unnecessary hardship.
Was and is the price worth paying?
Certainly not, but it is not possible to turn clock back, now and in future we have to do all we can to show that Hansen was and is wrong, hoping that the powers to be, may sooner rather than later (hopefully not when it is too late) come to their senses.
Ah yes, the 60 year pulses, here they are:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AMOa1.gif
I don’t entirely agree… Geologists have been studying climate change for over 100 years and continue to study it today. Much of the foundational work the warmists base their research on was provided by geologists – specifically petroleum geologists. And the fossil fuel industry happily promotes further research today through grants to geology programs without any expectation of what the results of the research will be.
Sea level falls – sea level rises.
Hi
Thanks for your comment. I know a geologist, who would entirely agree with your comment. My point is that the true experts in the field easily distinguish between good and bad science. Bad science is questioned and sooner or later someone will undertake the task to prove it wrong, often in the process new discoveries will emerge, moving the science another step forward.
I am an engineer and have considerable doubt about various proxies. One proxy I use more often than any other is the localised secular magnetic field variation. I believe that geologists use it too.
Good to know. I see a frequent argument elsewhere, “This planet has never had CO2 this high before and had (stable/permanent) polar ice caps” and for “proof” they throw out the “800,000 year ice core record” (although at best they just link to a single text file).
If the seas are going to keep rising regardless, which I should have realized is logical as being in an interglacial means not being a period favorable for storing water as ice on land, and we have another 20 to 30 feet to go before matching the previous interglacial, then there is clearly even less reason to worry about the CO2 atmospheric concentrations.
Although I still find interesting they’ll drone about “polar ice caps” when Antarctica could warm up before notable melting for longer than we’ve had civilization, and I don’t recall ever hearing about which previous interglacials had (stable/permanent) Arctic ice caps.
The previous interglacial period got about 2 degrees C warmer than the 1961-1990 average, or a little more than 2 degrees C warmer than the time just before the Industrial Revolution, according to:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/All_palaeotemps.svg/1040px-All_palaeotemps.svg.png
Actually, I have Hansen to thank for the many enjoyable and informative hours I have spent on this site. Dr. Spencer was on Coast to Coast, and mentioned Hansen’s work. Being a complete gentleman, as always, he simply outlined Hansen’s methods, and expressed concern that they were not entirely valid. Looking for more Spencer work, I hit Joe d’Aleo’s site, which had a linked story on WUWT. So now, when I read some new Hansen lunacy, my blood pressure only spikes about 5 points.
EdA the New Yorker, that 5-point spike, I assume, is now associated with laughter.
One of the nature’s great thermometers says 2015 spring temperatures are DOWN !
Yes DOWN, no warming, but COOLING ! Yes cooling.
English strawberry season is 10 days late.
Experts say it is to do with colder nights than normal.
I wonder if the good old English strawberries are telling us the LIA is in the way back.
Washington cherry blossoms were late as well.
Hansen ignores the fact that the last interglacials were 1C to 2C warmer than the current Holocene interglacial yet atmospheric CO2 has only 290 ppm in the past.
The CO2 forcing mechanism saturates. There are periods of millions of years in the deep paleo record when CO2 is high and the planet is cold and periods when CO2 is low and the planet is warm. The higher and lower temperatures in the past were not caused by atmospheric CO2. The paleo observations disproves CAWG. The paleo record shuts ‘THE CO2 MECHANISM SATURATES !!!’.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Vostok-ice-core-petit.png
Back in the real world. 18 years without warming. Fastest increase in sea ice in recorded history.
P.S. What is currently happening to the sun and the planet has happened before. Big surprise, there was a physical reason for what happened in the past. Sun is changing in the same manner as it did in the past. Planet is about to abruptly cool. There will be an unbelievable increase in volcanic activity and earthquakes, in addition to scary cooling.
Oh well, enough about climate science, solar physics, and earth science.
The cult of CAGW goes on and on about warming that will not happen, ignore the money issue. What the heck is the money issue?
The public wants more money for health care, more money for parks/green space, more money for schools, more money for make work programs, more money for social security, more money for government employees, more money for early education, more money for secondary education assistance, more money for roads, more money for poverty reduction, and so on and so on (list does not end money does)
The public will not support the spending of trillions of dollars on green scams that do not work to triple their cost of electricity and reduce the money to spend on other things.
Has anyone seen the cult of CAWG’s plan? How much is it going to cost and how will it change our living standard to reduce CO2 emissions by let say 60%. Cost benefit analysis?
Why are all of the developed countries deeply in debt? Big surprise politicians get elected based on promises and silly talk. What happens when the politicians can no longer kick the can down the road? Has anyone noticed what is going on? Yup, someone has.
http://www.amazon.com/When-Money-Runs-Out-Affluence/dp/0300205236
When the Money Runs Out: The End of Western Affluence
Pensions, healthcare and social security are not dependent on “tomorrow’s resources.” They are a political decision.
The real “economic stagnation” we face is the public’s lack of understanding and education about how the federal fiscal economy really works. This is fear-mongering at its worst.
“the federal fiscal economy”
Which federal fiscal economy? The Australian one? The American one?
I think you will find that King is talking about the West as a whole, not just one country.
Hey-ya Roha. I was talking about the American one, but Great Britain, Canada, Japan, and Australia all behave basically the same. But it can’t be the West as a whole. The European countries that gave up their sovereign currencies for the Euro cannot denominate their debt in their own currencies; the Euro is a foreign currency for them. They behave like the 50 US states that are not allowed to create their own currency.
So which Western countries does King omit from his thesis?
Inflation is the elixir for national debt. If a dollar becomes equal to 1/1000th of a dollar, Whats 17 Trillion in debt? A paltry 60 billion, in today’s dollars. The US could put that amount of gold aside then de-value the currency (inflation does that) and pay off the national debt in gold.
Of course everyone”s savings are destroyed in the process.
That paltry 60 billion should, of course, be 16 Billion..
Duh 17 billion, .
That’s why you don’t rely on savings of real cash for future assets.
@RobRoy,
Here is the US Treasury’s daily checkbook statement for Thursday, May 14, 2015. Friday’s will be out at 4 PM EST today.
Please open it up. Note that it says all amounts are in “millions.”
Scroll to page 2: “TABLE III-A – Public Debt Transactions.”
The left side are issues. The right side are redemptions.
So far this year the US federal government has created, or sold, ~$44.8 trillion in treasury securities (or newly-created money) that does not have to be paid back.
So far this year the US federal government has redeemed ~$44.5 trillion in treasury securities.
The difference for the Fiscal Year To Date is $328,367,000,000. That’s what we’ve been allowed to keep so far this fiscal year. This amount is in everyone’s USD bank accounts. Otherwise known as the “National Debt.” The National Debt is the National Equity. Also known as the Public Debt. It’s what the public owns, not what it owes.
“Public Debt” is not the same as debt incurred by businesses or households. It is the accounting term used by the US Treasury to account–after the fact–for creating new currency.
The point.
But I’m of the view that the 1% has figured out what Nixon taking us off the gold-standard internationally on August 15, 1971 really meant. It should have produced untold prosperity for all Americans. Instead, they used a false scare to nab the dough for themselves and impoverish the rest. And they’re doing it by running this scam out of Geneva, out of US jurisdiction. Just check out UNEP’s “Financial Initiative.” TPP, TTIP, and the other one that involves “Services,” are the legal framework they’re trying to shove through to accomplish it.
“If you leave us at 450ppm for long enough it will probably melt all the ice – that’s a sea rise of 75 metres,” Hansen told the Guardian on April 7, 2008. If one assumes that Hansen is referring to the 1,000 years it will take to melt the Greenland ice cap, then that is an average sea level rise of 75 mm/year, which is more than a factor of twenty higher than currently observed.
@chris y
95 cubic miles of grounded ice = 1 mm of sea level rise. See http://www.sealevel.info/conversion_factors.html
Also read the http://www.sealevel.info homepage.
Interestingly enough, I used to live in Maine, USA, where the temperature variability from summer to winter was on the order of -35c to +35c. I now line in Arizona, USA, where the spring and fall variability of the daily temperature goes from about 20c to 40c. Somehow, since all my life I have seen as much as 70 degrees variability in temperature over a 6 month period, I find it truly difficult to be overly concerned with a 2 degree increase, and would guess that given the chance to vote on it, 99+% of all species that are mobile would probably say the same thing. When there is a lot of “for profit” research, and you can bet that the thousands of papers written in support of climate change are paid for through grants, thus for the authors, “for profit,” you can generally be certain that either the cause is already known and not disclosed, or there is no supportable cause in the first place.
” Global temperatures have been above the threshold needed to melt glaciers and ice sheets since the end of the last ice age. Sea levels will not stop rising until global surface temperatures drop and we head back toward another ice age.” THANK YOU
So we are doomed no matter what we do.
Hansen: “Godfather of Climate Alarmism”. Excellent. I’ll have to remember that. 🙂
Or the “Chicken Little of Climate Alarmism.”
I guess I’m dense. I still fail to see how a global mean temp increase of 2 degrees will melt anything where it’s below freezing.
This is one the Great Mysteries that only fully trained and initiated Climate Scientists understand. You and I think that (STP) ice only melts at 0, so if the temp. goes up from -4 to -2, ice still won’t melt. Fully trained and initiated Climate Scientists know better.
Indeed they do, same reason as salt is put on icy roads to melt ice. Sea water melts at about -2ºC.
How much of the projected 2 degrees represents the recovery from the little ice age?
None as it is not “recovering”….
A recovery requires that insolation at 65deg N be rising (Milankovitch theory). It’s not. it’s been falling since the HCO (Holocene climatic optimum).
Without man the earth would be cooling.
http://a-sceptical-mind.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Climate-Optimum.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum#Milankovitch_cycles
Toneb
It is warmer now than 200 years ago. That is recovery from the LIA. Indeed, until about ~1950 man’s emissions could not have contributed to that recovery.
You could claim that the recovery has stopped because warming stopped nearly two decades ago, but it remains to be seen if the recovery from the LIA will resume.
And wicki is not a reliable source.
Richard
But the trend is cooling since the climatic optimum with spurts of warming. This trend has not been broken.
See how AGW enthusiast disregard data if it does not agree with AGW theory. Almost every data source shows the same temperature trend for the globe from the Holocene Optimum to present as the chart you have presented Toneb , from wiki shows.
In your opinion, there are only two things that affect temperature, the Milankovitch cycle, and CO2?
Please tell how increasing CO2 caused temperatures to start rising over 100 years before it was released?
The problems regarding 2 degree C are plenty.
– Where is the proof that CO2 is the culprit of the rise of temperature with about 1 degree C since 1910? To make due predictions, it is essential to record all causes of the past rise and fall of temperature.
– Is the proposed maximum rise of 2 degrees scientifically well founded? Where are the scientific reports to prove these statements? Why is the maximum acceptable value not established at 1.5 degees or 1 degree? Why is the 2 deg C the best option among the many other elaborated possibilities?
– These 2 deg C statements are in general made by politicians. Scientists are even urged by politicians to make these theorems acceptable by the mainstream. Never in history heads of government were so indulged in “science” to reach political aims. Never in history, the scientific basis to put them in the right was so small.
– It shows a great megalomania to pretend that humans can adjust the temperature on earth. Planet earth has no human induced thermostat.
– Some time ago, it was said by some scientists that it was already too late to hold the temperature between acceptable values. But now again, with full conviction, politicians argue that the 2 deg C maximum is within reach. It is not so much the statement itself which is surprising (that politicians don’t always speak the thruth is a known fact) but the way these statements are told without showing any glimpse of laughter or shame.
I hope His Holiness will not add an eleventh commandment to the religious doctrine: “Thou must believe that the current rise of temperature is caused by CO2 and mankind. A temperature rise of 2 deg C is the maximum the Earth can effort. Thou shalt take all measures to prevent the 2 deg C rise of temperature on Earth, in total humility to your governments.”
I suspect that the 2 deg C thesis is at this state of inquiry only a belief. The gradient of temperature on earth has to be investigated on a scientific way. To impose undue measures which were likely in the Middle Ages is outdated.
“And wicki is not a reliable source”
So you don’t believe Wiki is reliable re a correct explanation of the HCO and the roll of the M Theory in that and any recovery from the last IA?
Interesting…..
More intersting would be (in your eyes) what is a reliable source for same.
My apologies …. I incorrectly referred to the IA and not the LIA.
Still no “recovery” as the LIA is adequately (scientificially but not of course by “sceptics”) by low solar causing down-welling stratospheric effects (-ve winter AO) and feed-backs of regional wind/ocean current regimes, along with volcanic episodes during that period. It takes no time to recovery from a solar cycle, even of the Maunder min. type as it is barely any greater reduction in TSi than the normal ~11 yr solar cycle (~0.1%).
The test is coming now. We shall see what the global temperature trend will do from this point on. If it declines in the face of rising CO2 concentrations even as little as .1c -.2c over the most recent 30 year trend(1980-2010) ,AGW theory will be proven wrong, solar will be in play to a much greater extent.
This would take into account the PDO/AMO phase, ENSO variability and volcanic activity, all of which have been the factors that have governed the temperature trend against a backdrop of increasing CO2 concentrations and high solar activity for the past century. CO2 and Solar acting in concert on their possible effects on global temperatures up to year 2005.
From 2005 through the present and going forward CO2/SOLAR have been acting in opposition to one another and we shall see if the trend in global temperature goes down taking into account the PDO/AMO phase, ENSO and VOLCANIC ACTIVITY.
Will the trend post 2015 be .1c to .2c or greater lower then it was from the average global temperature from the period 1980-2010? If it is, then solar is going to have to be realized as a player and CO2 as a non player.
NOTE – a strong case can be made for solar /volcanic activity correlations and to a lesser degree for ENSO correlations, which is part of the case to be made for solar/climate connections.
I will add I am quite confident the global temperature trend going forward will be down. To what degree is the question.
Toney, I might add it is not total TSI that matters but rather UV light variations which act in opposition to visible light and obscure the total variability of solar activity due to small TSI changes which are due to visible light /UV light being in opposition to solar activity at least when the sun is in a 11 year rhythmic cycle.
Toneb
I refuse to swallow your red-herring about the C0nn0lly-ised wicki.
And you don’t get to provide your own definition of the Little Ice Age (LIA) then claim victory by demolishing your own ‘straw man’.
I think you may like this definition of the LIA because it is provided by the execrable Michael E. Mann.
The LIA is the most recent cool phase of the global temperature variability with apparent periodicity of ~900 years. It is warmer now than in the LIA, and that warming is recovery from the LIA. Prior to ~1950 human emissions were too small to have had any effect on that recovery.
Richard
Also quite important is the fact that mankind has been able to adapt to the somewhat changed circumstances during the LIA. Even during th IA mankind just refused to go extinct. Mankind is much more intelligent and adaptation-prone than those “We-are-all-doomed” scaremongers want to make us believe.
What this is about here is not “an industry” but periods of history.
These periods have names. One ist named “pre-industrial”. A definition of “industry” is given here:
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/industry.html
That’s what Wikipedia has to say about industrial revolution
There has never been a “pyramids industry” or a “wall industry” although the required limestones or bricks were manufactured in a sort of industrial process.
Has anyone done psych research on group responses to climate issues based on manipulating the room thermostat?