James Hansen: We Have a Little More Time After All (Whew!)
By Robert Bradley Jr.
“Contrary to the impression favored by governments, the corner has not been turned toward declining emissions and GHG amounts…. Negative CO2 emissions, i. e., extraction of CO2 from the air, is now required.”
– James Hansen, “Young People’s Burden.” October 4, 2016.
“The ponderous response of the climate system also means that we don’t need to instantaneously reduce GHG amounts.”
– James Hansen, “We Hold Truths to be Self-Evident“ December 2, 2016.
What a difference a few months make!
Just in time for holiday season, and for the Trump Administration, the father of the climate alarm, formerly a climate scientist with NASA/GISS, and now a full-time scientist/activist, has ameliorated his grand climate alarm. The 10-year ultimatum announced in 2006, made more dire in 2009 and since, is now moderated.
This October, we were told that the net emissions of of man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere must go negative. Now, “we don’t need to instantaneously reduce GHG amounts.”
A climate scientist might want to see Dr. Hansen’s math and model simulation to understand the revision in the last sixty days.
Maybe the climate can survive Donald Trump after all!
Here is the history:
Old View (July 2006):
“We have at most ten years—not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions” he wrote in his July 2006 review of Al Gore’s book/movie, An Inconvenient Truth. “We have reached a critical tipping point,” he assured readers, adding “it will soon be impossible to avoid climate change with far-ranging undesirable consequences.”
Revised View–Worse Than Thought (2009)
Several years later, with the publication of his 2009 manifesto Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save the Planet, he shared “some bad news” (p. 139) with readers:
The dangerous threshold of greenhouse gases is actually lower than what we told you a few years ago. Sorry about that mistake. It does not always work that way. Sometimes our estimates are off in the other direction, and the problem is not as bad as we thought. Not this time.
“The climate system is on the verge of tipping points,” Hansen stated (p. 171). “If the world does not make a dramatic shift in energy policies over the next few years, we may well pass the point of no return.”
Also in 2009, he told the press:
We cannot afford to put off [climate policy] change any longer. We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead.
Revised View–Need to Go Emissions Negative (October 2016)
“Contrary to the impression favored by governments, the corner has not been turned toward declining emissions and GHG amounts. The world is not effectively addressing the climate matter, nor does it have any plans to do so, regardless of how much government bureaucrats clap each other on the back.…. Negative CO2 emissions, i.e., extraction of CO2 from the air, is now required.”
New View (December 2016):
“Stopping human-made climate change is inherently difficult, because of the nature of the climate system: it is massive, so it responds only slowly to forcings; and, unfortunately, the feedbacks in the climate system are predominately amplifying on time scales of decades-centuries.
The upshot is that there is already much more climate change “in the pipeline” without any further increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs). That does not mean the problem is unsolvable, but it does mean that we will need to decrease the amount of GHGs in the relatively near future.
The ponderous response of the climate system also means that we don’t need to instantaneously reduce GHG amounts. However, despite uncertainties about some climate processes, we know enough to say that the time scale on which we must begin to reduce atmospheric GHG amounts is measured in decades, not centuries. Given the fact that the fastest time scale to replace energy systems is decades, that means that we must get the political processes moving now. And that won’t happen until the public has understanding of what is actually needed and demands it.
Previous posts on the climate science and climate policy views of James Hansen can be found here.
Anything to keep the gravy train rolling.
Mmmm….Gravy, with thinly sliced Roast Beef, Roast Potatoes, Yorkshire Pudding and a glass of Red Wine. Just so happens this is what I am making tonight for dinner now in honor of Hansen. Cheers!
Yorkshire Pudding . . . . yum.
Basically, the guy’s a big opportunistic bullshitter. No surprises here. LOL. These people have the face of brass.
I often think they deserve a face of punching but that would make me a meanyhead.
where does that nonsense come from? Hansen was formerly a full-time scientist/activist with NASA/GISS, and now a full-time activist,
When the global warming “gravy train” final reaches it’s last stop (none too soon for me) I wonder what train all these environmental folks are going to jump onto next? Hmmm….
Anything they can damage or destroy while they profess to protect it.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/dec/1/dakota-access-protesters-accused-of-destroying-env
I think Hansen’s getting ready to do a yo-yo: dropping a few rungs on the alarmism ladder in order to go up again later.
This just in: Global warming causes goalposts to move.
Fear not. It will shortly be revealed that CO2 is still bad, but that it is causing AGC (Anthropogenic Global Cooling). The only fix will be to reduce CO2 emissions, or at least transfer money from developed nations to dictatorships and warlords. Someone merely put too many negative operators into the models by accident. That problem has been fixed. The threat still exists, and tornadoes, hurricanes, extremes of cold (and hot) will still occur, as will the incidence of earthquakes and meteor strikes.
Diesel !! Banning all cars from towns and cities. That will shut economies faster than carbon tax.
They started if france 4 yrs ago
jump UNDER would be useful
hansens trying to CYA in regard to sucking more govvy paid “advising” i reckon
Mr. Hansen also seems to be part of a kickstarter documentary project that will promote 4. generation nuclear. Interesting times indeed.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2142897175/the-new-fire
Exactly! To claim that it is already too late would stop the money flow.. Therefore, it is not too late, but is more critical and requires lots more money.
^^^ THIS ^^^
“Uncertainties about some climate processes”? So, not settled science then, after all.
So the father of global warming tells us we’ve been lied to all along…
….the science is still not settled
When they can tell me what happened when CO2 levels were in the thousands….
Lat, why should we listen to him? He couldn’t even measure temperature correctly and Gavin Schmidt is having to re-adjust all Hansen’s numbers year after year after year.
About time Hansen went outside and realized just how wrong the models are. I’ve gotten really tired of hearing about how “sensitive” our climate is to GHGs when it is nothing of the kind!
PMK
Dr. Hansen has wisely concluded that climate is much less sensitive to carbon dioxide after November 8th 2016.
Climate sensitivity to CO2 will, for unexplainable science reasons, dramactically increase again after Jan 20, 2021. (the earliest date a Demo-rat liar can retake the WH.)
Either that or he is plea-bargaining.
Me too. I Simply refuse to let the climate liars get a pass while they destroy science as a noble endeavor with their deceit.
This really is quite galling. One minute he is inciting a riot and the next he is chanting “…give peace a chance….”.
nankerphelge — well expressed — Eugene WR Gallun
+1000
James Hansen and his fellow CAGW travellers must still be held responsible for the mayhem they caused.
If not – then they should be consigned to the dustbin of history as fraudsters and conmen
History, other than that “revealed” in socialist societies, always uncovers the real villains. Now, those reading history tend to interpret it in a manner that best reflects on themselves. Evidence Castro, anyone?
Paul H.: As much as I would like to believe in Cosmic Justice, I think we must just make do with what we can get. Whether tomorrow or in 10 years, the AGW mime will disappear, and so will all those True Believers, who will never, ever admit to having been believers….
They will laugh at cagw scenarios and mindlessly start a new alarm to redistribute wealth.
Greg, I think most of them will just quietly fade away without ever admitting that they were wrong. But I think it will be sooner than ten years. Two or three cold winters in a row over North America and Europe, eliminate the funding in America, and that will be the end of it. The end that is except for all the residual damage like the lost jobs in the coal mines, the money wasted on wind mills and electric cars, the research grants for junk science that could have been spent on useful research, etc.
Its the money that keeps it alive.
Agreed. After Hansen discredited everybody who did not agree with his and Gore’s predictions, and caused billions of dollars waste in research grants and renewable energy projects when neither could produce a measurable difference to CO2 generation, he is now backpedaling as if nothing bad has happened as a result of his stubbornness and stupidity. Not just taxpayers’ money wasted but also a generation of people brainwashed.
Does history remember the names of Ptolemaic mathematicians of the early 17th Century who created ever more elaborate equations to describe the Geocentric movements of the planets and stars?
History remembers Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Brahe. To be sure not all of these got it exactly right until mathematicians could employ Newton’s Mathematica Principae. But still they threw off the wrong paradigm to embrace a new one, and history remembers them.
History (long history of centuries) will not remember Hansen, Mann, Jones, Trenberth, Santer, etc, except in appendix chapters on the corruption and downfall of late 20th-early 21st Century atmospheric science.
But, it will remember Anthony Watts and WUWT, the “little engine that could.”
November 17, 2006
“So does anybody have any gee-whiz questions?”
Well, isn’t that interesting -just had a recent debate with a warmist tool er, troll, on another site,
who quoted Hanson chapter and verse….
I’m bookmarking this for his inevitable return to this particular site…
@ tgm, please oh please can you show the conversation? I need a laugh after reading the disgusting about face from hansen. His ilk make me sick. I hope the new administration throws him in the ditch but I guess with hansen being retired he can now spout anything he wants without losing anything. Like your pension hansen? SCUM!, (sorry about the rant I am just sick of these sycophants)
And here’s me believing “the science is settled” /sarc…
A desperate attempt by a discredited has-been to regain relevance.
Once a researcher/scientist stops doing careful well-documented and reproducible work and starts carrying protest signs, that person should no longer expect to be listened to.
That’s the way I see it too. If he were to stick to his initial ten years to armageddon prediction, then at this point we all might as well say the heck with it, we’re cooked no matter what we do.
I see the whole thing as entirely pathetic.
Not the signs, but the BS on them.
we know enough to say that the time scale on which we must begin to reduce atmospheric GHG amounts is measured in decades, not centuries
Oh. So all those papers claiming current climate disasters are complete bullsh*t then? After all, if the father of climate insanity himself is now admitting that the disasters he has been predicting are decades to centuries away, then he is at the same time discrediting any claim that current matters (real or imagined) can be blamed on CO2 emissions.
Excellent points! Additionally, I would say that if he really believes that there is a long follow on effect from increased CO2, he should be desperate to reduce emissions now, due to the long term effects. What kind of idiot logic is this guy operating from?
It’s a lot like a Messiah Complex. But if so, it looks like he may be getting over it.
So, all those “tipping points” were really, what? Bumps in the road?
chimp — No, they were pratfalls — Eugene WR Gallun
That’s it. Falls on their fat, trough-feeding faces.
“decades to centuries away”
No, he said the time was decades, not centuries. And that is the time to reduce amounts>, not emissions.
“No, he said the time was decades, not centuries.”
But it will be centuries before CO2 emissions even start a downward trend.
Live with it. 🙂
Why would anyone want to reduce CO2 emissions? Don’t you want to eat?
Present levels are a good start, but 800 ppm would be better and 1200 ppm, as in a real greenhouse, best of all. But we probably can’t even make it to 600 ppm in the next hundred years, if ever.
Nick Stokes December 3, 2016 at 4:02 pm
Hi, hope you’re well.
You are correct to a point. Decades mean a minimum of two and a maximum of 10. That not centuries part. It is a plural. So a single century falls within the time reference.
Look, he wrote it, not me or you. You can see it as 20 years, someone else 50, and so on.
As a result, it is a meaningless reference.
Okay Hansen shared those observation this month. Who knows whar next. The truth is, Nick, he has left people like you with your butt’s hanging in the breeze.
No matter what is said by the AGW side, Hansen’s remarks are going to be a club used to smack you across the head. Even if he recants, it won’t help. Instead of a responsible scientist to be taken seriously, he will take on the atributes of the straw man in Wizard of Oz.
Unless Lew & Cooky quietly take him off to a padded cell …
“The ponderous response of the climate system also means that we don’t need to instantaneously reduce GHG amounts. However, despite uncertainties about some climate processes, we know enough to say that the time scale on which we must begin to reduce atmospheric GHG amounts is measured in decades, not centuries.”
michael
What he said in October, 2016
“Negative CO2 emissions, i.e., extraction of CO2 from the air, is now required.”
“What he said in October, 2016”
What he actually said, properly quoted, was:
B. “Negative CO2 emissions,” i.e., extraction of CO2 from the air is now required, if climate is to be stabilized on the century time scale, as a result of past failure to reduce emissions.
on the century time scale – similar to the decade scale to reduce actual amount.
Mike
“The truth is, Nick, he has left people like you with your butt’s hanging in the breeze.
No matter what is said by the AGW side, Hansen’s remarks are going to be a club used to smack you across the head. “
Mixed metaphor there. But there is nothing in what is quoted here that is any different to before. Just elementary stuff like distinguishing between emissions and amounts. Most people would be very happy if we can get the amount down within a century
Nick Stokes December 3, 2016 at 5:22 pm
Thanks for responding.
“Most people would be very happy if we can get the amount down within a century”
Yes yesterday. Tomorrow? When what has been said hits the public that may change.
All the logic chains are now suspect .
Hansen admitted “our” estimates are off. Not his. He just grabbed you and dragged you down into the mud with him.
Credibility is a fragile thing Hansen and by his association has included all of those involved.
Nick there are people in Ontario Canada that are trying decide, do I, pay a electric bill, or buy food. A electric bill which has grown to such unmanagable preportions due to failed assumtions by climate scientists who believe in AGW, and the politicans who believed them. There is no excuse for this. Not in Ontario or anywhere else.
Take a look at the Hansen statement. Do you really think people are going to care about getting the amount of of CO2 down after being deceived?
It is going to get rnteresting.
“The dangerous threshold of greenhouse gases is actually lower than what we told you a few years ago. Sorry about that mistake. It does not always work that way. Sometimes our estimates are off in the other direction, and the problem is not as bad as we thought. Not this time.”
michael
Oh and you do a good job of defending the side you are on.
Good point. He wants only to kill 30% of world population by zeroing CO2 emissions, and wants to leave the rest to the then impoverished future generations as a home work.
“The dangerous threshold of greenhouse gases is actually lower than what we told you a few years ago.”
How on earth do you read that into it? That’s not what he is saying at all.
Trump has a site where one can cast one’s pearls in his direction: https://apply.ptt.gov/yourstory/ Here’s what I posted there two days ago:
Advocating a debate while remaining neutral Is the best route. Nice idea!
Nasty ideas.
After 25 years of Jim Hansen’s “death trains,” and ‘we have only 2 years to save the climate,’ and climate models that show an immediate air temperature rise with [CO2], we suddenly now have a “ponderous” climate system and decades to act.
This is Jim Hansen stepping back because air temperature has done nothing for 20 years.
Switching to a slowly responding climate is just his tactic to save his incompetent ideas from an empirical disproof.
Expect no public examination of his self-contradiction; just an uncritical acceptance of his new gospel as though it were his old gospel.
It’s nice how he managed to include a criticism of the West into his argument. “Democracies played an outsize role in creating the climate problem…” That’ll play well with his progressive demographic.
“Democracies played an outsize role in creating the climate problem” because they are places of freedom where incompetent demagogues such as Jim Hansen are free to mount a bully pulpit and incite political odium. The real “climate problem” is one of scientific incompetence buttressed by lies and supported by prejudice.
Obviously major sources CO2, volcanoes and bush fires, are “democracies”. Hansen would be better off trying to connect GHG/CO2 with El Nino and La Nina events. This would open up a completely new field of rent seeking. Give big government and the banks something to hope for Jim. They may throw you some “printed” crumbs. If you can’t come up with another globe blowing disaster based on need to live off others efforts, your time is over.
Clearly, he must see that “the gig is up” and that he has to find a new way of spinning himself into relevance and renew his funding. The GOOD NEWS for us is that this is very clear evidence that the cracks in the whole crumbling edifice of AGW theory, practice, politics and funding are so fast appearing that die-hards like the egregious Hansen are looking for new relevance. Sorry, buddy, go tote sandwich-boards to earn a crust … you are irredemably tainted with the label: ‘Snake-Oil Salesman’.
Ross King, MBA, P.Eng. (ret’d) 1453 Beddis Road, SaltSpring Island, B.C., V8K2E2, Canada (250) 537-0666
“The older I get, the better I was….”
On 3 December 2016 at 14:24, Watts Up With That? wrote:
> Geoff commented: “Obviously major sources CO2, volcanoes and bush fires, > are “democracies”. Hansen would be better off trying to connect GHG/CO2 > with El Nino and La Nina events. This would open up a completely new field > of rent seeking. Give big government and the banks” >
Pat
One is left wondering how old a new CO2 molecule needs to be before it can absorb infrared radiation. Do they get better at it as they age? Do they get tired and run out of absorption capability in old age? This too needs to be studied more.
CO2 is a solvent. You need a lot of it before it becomes effective, see Venus.
They don’t run out of absorption capability, but they do deplete the IR radiation that can be absorbed
That could be the answer, DMA. CO2 is now 25 years old, and no longer energetic enough to quickly warm the air. 🙂
Alinsky’s rules:
RULE 7: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Don’t become old news. (Even radical activists get bored. So to keep them excited and involved, organizers are constantly coming up with new tactics.)
Add measurement error bars of +/-0.1 based on reading the foundation papers for satellite microwave brightness temperature. That’s a range of error of at least 0.2, on this y-scale it appears that current global temps are no different from 1980. Try plotting the same data with a y-scale of +/- 3 degrees and a 6 month running average to eliminate the high frequency noise. I don’t think the real world temperature twitches by 0.2 degrees every month.
Say that to a warmist at heights.
BTW, it’s freaking cold here. You didn’t talk about error bars when it was anomalously warm here.
Regards, 60°N
I wondered what Hansen would do when his disaster scenario failed again. He seems to be oblivious to his failure–maybe he is still in shock over the US election.
He has simultaneously moved the goal posts into the distant future while pretending that he is still credible. He is playing his believers for morons.
Not difficult.
One should always remember that 50% of the earths population is below average intelligence.
Those are not the problem!
No, but half ARE below median intelligence.
Yes, perfectly expressed! Pretty slick way to hit the reset button. “Okay folks, the new countdown to disaster starts…………..now!”
It is interesting that with calamity-cults the norm is to give a date in the accessible future and when the prophecy fails, they make a new one.
With the climate-calamity-cult it is different: they say that from now the calamity will occur in X or Y decades. They can never be proven wrong if they call a long game. The surprise is that for a ‘calamity’ to happen, they need a vaguely believable ‘trend’. The Pause is an absolute killer. We never get anywhere near the ‘decades’ of disaster and they re-call the game. This is a sure sign the prophets of doom haven’t a clue what they are talking about. Narry a whit.
Has-been Hansen, I christen thee the Jim Jones of climate. Gather your nutters around you in some jungle hideout. I’ll send Koolaid. The real stuff. I want you to live there happily in the company of friends.
I will continue my work of bringing warmth and cooking to these living in energy poverty. Deal?
As long as you promise it’s organic grapes with chinese herb extracts…They’ll be fine with that koolaide.
Crispin in Waterloo December 3, 2016 at 6:32 pm
“but really in”..
“I will continue my work of bringing warmth and cooking to these living in energy poverty.”
For at least myself you are a mystery. Now more so. But it appears a good one.
michael
To Mike the Morlock
I rarely say what actually do for a living because ‘it is a bit complicated’. In a single week, the last one, I attended two sessions on introducing smoke reducing coal stoves for farmers in Hebei Province, attended a conference in Beijing on the latest testing protocol for cooking stoves and a NYSERDA conference in Albany NY on improving the performance of space heating wood stoves in NY State. While in Albany I offered to introduce to the Four Corners native Americans burning coal from Peabody a new stove technology that can burn coal without any smoke at all.
The argument is this: hundreds of millions of people live in permanent energy poverty, defined as spending more than 10% or their income on energy. A great many of them burn coal, primarily. It is fantasy to suggest that this demographic be called upon to ‘reduce their energy consumption’ or their ‘CO2 emissions’. What cheek!
There is a small cadre of people working on technically advanced solutions for people who are dependent on coal and who live in energy poverty. This field of endeavour is delivering some of the most advanced technologies and theoretical work ever done on the combustion of coal.
The target populations live ‘outside the bubble’ of the enviro movements who not only condemn them to perpetual energy poverty but demand they ‘reduce their carbon footprint’ on the basis they use coal. In fact they use very little energy. My general goal is to make their lives healthier and to reduce drudgery. I am very fortunate in being able to to make contributions to this field.
“He is playing his believers for morons.”
He is not playing.. he knows the truth.
The American public (especially the smart phone generation) has the attention span of a gnat, so no matter what he said or did in the past, what he says and does currently is what he will be known for. That’s just the way it is and he knows it.
Jimmy probably thought that he was going to be right in the long-term, so it was worth telling a few porkies in the short term. He forgot the medium term.
But he still has a great hat.
What a twat.
Janice what is the bottom pic , I don’t recognize it , thanks. And how the heck are you? (Let me know.)
lol, Sybot (a) (smiling) — the thing in the bottom pic is HANSEN UNDER ARREST. Oh. You knew that, huh? Here is a WUWT story (different photo, same event, if I’m not mistaken):
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/29/nasas-james-hansen-arrested-yet-again/ .
***********************************
And,
Hi,
Thank you for asking, I am fine. Davy dog and I are still where we were (parents’ garage) at the end of September. It’s warm, well-lit with hydropower, and I have plenty to eat.
No “news.” Trusting God. Something good is ahead for me!
… “Gonna be!” … 🙂
I hope you and Mrs. Sybot are doing very well.
Keep warm up there!
Janice
Janice Moore — right on! — Eugene WR Gallun
Thanks, Mr. Gallun! (we are eagerly awaiting your next limerick or poem, you know 🙂 )
P.S. Mr. Gallun. Ahem. I need to clarify my statement a bit. “… eagerly awaiting your next non-obscene limerick or poem….” 🙂
Jim is just following the Alarmist crowd by moving the goal post when the previous prediction in this case 2006 becomes self evidently wrong (again).
Just like the Arctic Ocean was going to be ice free 6-years ago (made at the AGU Fall Meeting in 2007)!
Ha ha
He had to do something. After all, in one month 2016 is over.
Actually I feel Hansen sold his soul to the devil, and now all his good times are over, and he senses he has got to pay the devil his due. Not a very comfortable position to find oneself in, I surmise. He has less of a chance than a cornered rat, for even a cornered rat has a fighting chance. All Hansen can do, I fear, is flip flop like a fish on dry land.
Can we at least haul him before the bar of justice for fraud and take back his pension?
I have been saying for years that he (and Gavin Schmidt) should stand trial for “falsifying public records”, for their “adjustments.” After all, every man deserves his day in court, and the right to prove his innocence.
There might be some interesting “fallout” from such a trial. It might turn out Hansen was “following orders” from higher up. He might plea-bargain, and finger a politician or two or ten. Once things started to unravel things might get very interesting.
I don’t think it is a crime to be an activist. Falsifying Public Records, on the other hand, is illegal. Likely a lawyer could find irregularities in how funding was handled, as well.
I just wish Bill Gray was still alive to see all this, but perhaps he is smiling down on us from heaven.
IMO grant trough feeders like Mann could also be prosecuted. The chilling effect on real science has to be weighed against the trillions in treasure and millions of lives these criminals have cost.
Jones is probably beyond the reach of US law, but his compatriot Schmidt isn’t, nor his fellow British Commonwealth citizen Trenberth, nor Hansen nor Mann and a host of other miscreants.
I first felt wrath towards Hansen when McIntyre’s careful examination of “adjustments” forced Hansen to retreat back in 2007.
https://climateaudit.org/2007/08/08/a-new-leaderboard-at-the-us-open/
I was so vehement that Hansen should be hung out to dry back then that my comment got snipped. (I learned a lot about good manners and patience from McIntyre). But I learned a lot about persistence as well, and about holding Hansen’s feet to the fire at this site, and Tony Heller has been a sort of pit bull in terms of tenacity, over at Realclimatescience.
But it has been over a decade. Can you believe the knaves held on so long?
Some of the conspiracy ringleaders must be held accountable. Many younger academics and government workers had to go along to get along.
McIntyre opposes, or used to, prosecution. But IMO their crimes stink to high heaven and need to be given a public airing. Let judges and juries decide the hoaxing hucksters’ fate.
And claw back any and all grant money from “scientists” who don’t archive their publicly-funded data. The academic, green industrial swamp needs to be drained along with the Washington-Wall Street axis swamp. Sorry for the worse than mixed metaphor.
Caleb,
In normal times a man is innocent until proven guilty. The burden of prof on the accuser.
In these post-trut times of fake news from the MSM, men like Roger pielke Jr are ajudged guilty until proven innocent. Thus your observation, “everyman deserves his day in court and the right to prove his innonence.”
Individual rights are meaningless before an all powerful state.
We live in Orwellian times after 8 years of The Worst President Ever.
This change of mind by James Hansen is another of the early benefits of the Trump-Effect. We can look forward to many more as Trump assumes power. Warmistas are heading for the exit door.
full-time scientist/activist
****************************
would have saved you time by just typing
full-time activist
Picking the land only data is interesting but not useful in considering global warming. The latest UAH data from November continues to be in the +0.4 range, well above the level before the latest El Nino. As J. Curry mentioned a few days ago, it will take some months to perhaps 5 years before we can judge whether or not the latest El Nino may be followed by a step change as may have occurred in the last (1997-89) El Nino).
The surface responds more promptly to forcings because surficial materials have a heat capacity about 1/4 of water. That is, water temperature is going to lag land surface temperature changes. If you want some insight on what is happening now, instead of waiting, it is best to look at land temperatures rather than sea surface temperatures or a combination that is buffered by the water temperatures.
The problem is noise. Any fast response component will show noise effects on the output much more prominently than a lagged, heavily damped component.
Yes, but the cooling reaction to the end of El Nino is likely to show up in the land data first, given the basic sluggishness/dampening due to the size of the ocean heat sync. If the effect works as expected, the Land+Sea data should ultimately decline as well, it’ll just take longer to see it. I think that’s the situation to which Dr. Curry refers.
This is my assumption, please challenge if you have more information on this idea.
“Ocean heat sink” not “sync” – sorry about that autocorrect
The deep seas (the ocean heat capacity) is all that really matters in this climate system state. The air component is a 2nd degree component. But as land dwelling creatures then that fast component, 2nd degree response, is important to us to as weather. The rest is climate arising from what is happening ing with OHC and those ocean cycles.
A current theory, gaining much momentum, is that we now live in a “Post-Truth Society”. As ‘Old-School’, I want to stop the World and get off. We’re all headed backwards to oblivion fast if there’s no-one’s word we can rely on — excpet as viewed though a lens of “follow the money”.
Back to the Four Estates … there used to be a separation of powers, and those independent powers were the foundations & corner-pillars of our society. Not any more, … and in my lifetime!
Independent scientific thought has been hi-jacked by the political Pay-Masters: “You only say what we say you can say … or else!” to which there is a flip-side: toady-up to the Pay-Masters for a living. And so we have an unholy alliance between political opportunists and Snake-Oil Salesmen prepared to do anything, say anything for financial benefit. Truth, as in any war, against the people is the first casualty. George Orwell’s Big Brother would be proud of the way we are being strung-along by this cozy, mutually beneficial scam on the taxpayer which has little to do with scientfic probity & intellectual honesty.
Bill Clinton (and his sidekick The Algore) started us down the slippery slope of Post-truth. It accelerated some under GWB, Jr. Who did nothing to stop the climate alarmism lies.
Then It took off wholecloth into The realm of whole Untruths with Obama.
Would someone please advise our Prime Minister that his Carbon Tax is not needed yet. I sent e-mails in the past but I’m not a scientist so he does not listen to me. He oft repeated during his election campaign that his decisions would be guided by accepted science. Please, climatologists out there, help us!
Eh?
Accepted science in Canadian Liberal speak, is that which transfers the wealth from your effort,into their pockets.
You have to read in Liberaleeze, accepted by the Party.
Or any other government action that forces money from taxpayers and enriches the chosen friends and family.
Where else has kleptocracy ruled for so long?
Canada a success.
For fools and bandits.
Kleptocracy at its best, Canada’s Back!
Andre, just add a few letters after your name, like CEO ( you run the family right?), CFD, ( and earn the salary?) Your partner would be HRD ( Human resources Director), HSD ( Homeland Security Director) and so on .
You’d get in in a heartbeat
Just Baffle them with BS, they seem to be used to it.
+1
André, You don’t have to do a thing. Just watch Junior trying to square the circle, one minute talking up a carbon tax to discourage the use of fossil fuels, the next, approving the construction of 2 out of 3 crude oil pipelines to encourage their use, as we Canadians “transition” to a carbon-fee world. Yes, transition indeed! As if any company would invest billions in a project that will need decades to generate a payback while we “transition” off that product. We’ll be “transitioning” for a very, very long time. Wake me up when somebody discovers a renewable that has the energy density, reliability, storeability and transportability of fossil fuels.
Premier Mom is getting smacked real hard over electricity prices. Once it starts costing real money I expect the population will quit being apathetic about climate change. The Conservatives have to quit paying lip service to climate change and take advantage of the situation.
When people across the country start paying much more for energy because of Trudeau Jr’s carbon tax, we have to make sure he gets the blame, not the provinces.
Chretien and Martin cut back payments to the provinces. The provinces made cutbacks that hurt the population and got the blame. The provincial governments made some questionable decisions but the blame really belonged to Chretien and Martin, and they got off scot-free on that issue. Trudeau shouldn’t be able to take advantage of that kind of thing.
Jr. isn’t nearly as smart as his Dad. Folks forget that Sr. was involved with The Club of Rome. SK and MB are now “conservative”, Notley has about a 10% approval rating, so AB will go back to the right soon. Ontario is a mess, so could easily swing back. Hopefully Jr. is a one-term comedy act! He already has created a lot of damage. We are down to ~8 hrs. of low-angle sun so solar won’t be of much value. Snow is piling on top of the Panels. The windmills don’t function very well at low temp. The folly should be obvious before long. Suzuki – Canada’s answer to Hansen- isn’t have the same effect he once had.
And the back-pedaling already in progress steadily, even frantically increases. They see the writing on the wall. And it spells T R U M P.
It spells the end of their gravy train.
Does Hansen’s change have anything to do with Trump’s impending Presidency?
Hmm…
There is no change. Instantaneous reduction was never an option. What he has been saying is:
“Given the fact that the fastest time scale to replace energy systems is decades, that means that we must get the political processes moving now. “
And, implied in that statement, Mr. Stokes, is the premise: decades are not too short a time scale.
That is, Mr. Stokes, as MANY on this thread have pointed out, Hansen simply moved the goal posts to keep the game, going.
Well, Hansen didn’t get the memo:
CO2 UP. WARMING STOPPED.
Game over.
This is probably pointless, but, dear mod, if you would please be so kind, please close my italics attempt after the words, “time scale.” Thanks!
IT has always been his view that we urgently need to reduce emissions. It will be decades before that reduces GHG amounts.
“IT has always been his view that we urgently need to reduce emissions”
Seems like he’s changed his mind, doesn’t it?
It’s amazing how a regime change can focus the mind, wouldn’t you agree?
Mr. Stokes, the record (please read that back, court reporter…..) says otherwise:
You’ll be wondering where I found that. It was in the above article.
“It will be decades before that reduces GHG amounts.”
With China, India, Turkey, Indonesia, Japan, Germany, soon the USA and also many other countries, totally disregarding the anti-CO2 scam, and continuing to build coal and gas fired power stations, it will be CENTURIES, not decades before global CO2 emissions even start a negative trend.
And won’t the world’s plant life LOVE IT !!
I don’t see any dialback on Hanson’s part at all. What I see is, “Just because my previously published deadline(s) has(have) passed, don’t stop throwing money down this rathole. You MUST still expend billions on useless renewables and other Climate Change nonsense.” That’s what I read.
“ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions”
I agree with Cyrus. Whether you like what he’s saying or not, it hasn’t changed. Reducing emissions is urgent, in order to reduce the amount of CO2 in air within decades, and stabilize climate on a century scale.
Nick,
Nine years ago, Hansen figured we had a decade to act. In 2007, https://thinkprogress.org/hansen-stands-by-coal-train-death-train-analogy-61dc43e8906a said:
See the link for various stronger statements.
You are correct Ric. Nick Stokes is trying to sugar coat the atrocious actions, comments, and assertions by these people. Why skeptics are the same as war criminals, remember Nick ? Remember the wanted posters at the Paris Scam a Thon? Remember the language used to silence skeptics or actions taken by state attorney generals ? The threat was never some decades out. No price was too large to pay for saving the planet. Destroying the west’s economies, political systems and way of life was a given. Action had to be taken immediately, tipping points and run a way greenhouse conditions would turn the earth into a hellish cauldron within 10 years. The science was settled for all the deiners of gravity, evolution, mentally sick ( articles have been published), problem with authority, don’t understand science, and my favorite, ” you’re not a climate scientist ” , what papers have you published ? ” ….. I remember very clearly the last 20 years Nick. And like most here, have volumes of saved pdf ‘s stating such things.
Ric,
I’m not sure why people think it is so important to parse Hansen’s statements so obsessively. But at least if it needs doing, they should be read. Hansen has always wanted urgent action to limit emissions. That is what is needed to get GHG amount down. But as he says in this statement as always, that won’t happen immediately – it would take decades. And, again as he says in the latest, if action on emissions is delayed, then more drastic action later will be needed.
That’s Hansen’s view. It may well be that people won’t do it. That isn’t his fault. He tried.
Nick Stokes
December 3, 2016 at 5:32 pm
Why do you want to reduce emissions of CO2? Actual pollution, yes, but emissions of an essential trace gas? Are you nuts?
CO2 going from 300 to 400 ppm has been a great boon to the world. Continuing to 500 and 600 would be better still.
There is no correlation between the growth in CO2 since WWII and global temperature. From 1945 to 1977, CO2 increased monotonously, while earth cooled dramatically. Then for about 20 years, the planet warmed slightly, accidentally coinciding with a continued rise in CO2 at about the same rate. After 1998, temperatures were about flat, again despite the same monotonous increase in CO2. So climbing CO2 has coincided with 32 years of pronounced cooling, 21 years of slight warming and 18 years of no trend.
So, no worries. But if continued CO2 gains does eventually barely warm the planet, that’s good, too. What catastrophic consequences do you imagine would befall the world at 500 ppm, for instance? Would have to be pretty bad to offset all the good done by greener planet enjoying more plant food in its air.
Don’t shoot … let ’em burn !
So I take it coal trains are no longer “trains of death” then? Whew! Dodged that bullet.
Hansen’s New and Used
LAST CHANCE SALE — HURRY! SUPPLIES ARE LIMITED!!
http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/2165ef757d634359b2ccbe7ec8b767b3/closing-sale-ad-b324ee.jpg
“Last Day ?” lol
+ ^^^^
🙂
I imagine a lot of warmistas are twitching uncontrollably and quite possibly looking for a change of undies after reading Hansen’s latest
A technical point, if anyone can help. I’m confused about the actual level of increase in CO2 since 1988. From the chart showing Hansen’s predictions we have this sentence:
I don’t believe I’m nitpicking, as that doesn’t seem like an actual complete sentence. It’s a fragment. The word “is” is missing.
Is 2.5% the actual CO2 increase? And is that 2.5% per annum? Because I thought it was a lot more in total.
Human CO2 Emissions
http://climatechangeconnection.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Global_carbon_emissions_by_fuel_source_1751-2007.jpg
(eyeballing it, it looks like a, ~ 60% increase since “Hansen’s Big Day” (1988))
2010-2011 % Increase — CO2 Emissions
(net: 12.8%)
Looks like human CO2 was on a trajectory that flew off the end of Hansen’s chart many years ago….
(sure is good he wasn’t assigned to Flight Command)
CO2 UP. WARMING STOPPED.
But, but, but…….the CHILDREN!!! Oh, the HUMANITY!!!
(8300-6000)/6000 = 0.38 = 38% increase total CO2 since ~1988
Thanks Janice.
So I’ll assume we’ve had MORE than the 1.5% increase in total yearly emissions that Hansen said would correspond to the blue line (temperatures going way up). And that 2.5% is the roughly correct figure. With that, according to Hansen, by now temperatures should have already went through the roof. The oceans should be almost boiling. But we got … nothing. Zero. Nada. No noticeable change in temperature or climate, at all.
Thank you, Clyde Spencer. Do you have the graph that shows your ~38% figure? My find (graph above) makes it look like CO2 c. 1988 was around 5,000. Thanks! (and, I believe you, that your figures are correct, just would like to have a better graph for the record, here)
You’re welcome, Eric. Good to see you back. Well, lol, I guess all that heat went to San Diego (where someone we know said it was, “Hot as HE{CK}!” lololol a couple years ago) — that comment stuck with me, just hit the funny bone that day. Thanks for a smile.
🙂
Thanks again Janice. I should be back every once in a while. I was kind of concentrating my attention on the general election instead of climate change. Now we finally got a real skeptic as president! (And GWB and GHWB were NOT skeptics!)
Eric Simpson December 3, 2016 at 3:55 pm
Thanks Janice.
So I’ll assume we’ve had MORE than the 1.5% increase in total yearly emissions that Hansen said would correspond to the blue line (temperatures going way up).
That assumption is incorrect, Hansen’s projection for Scenario B was CO2 level of 400.5ppm.
Phil “That assumption is incorrect, Hansen’s projection for Scenario B was CO2 level of 400.5ppm.”
Then why does the caption on the graph on this page say that the reality is the increase in CO2 emissions is 2.5%, which “would correspond to the scenario ABOVE the blue curve.” ?
Phil
In other words, no matter what we do, even if we increase CO2 emissions through the roof, it would never go above 600ppm.
The 600ppm level of CO2 does not seem like anything to be alarmed about. Indeed, it would seem to be a positive.
I meant the last comment (about 600ppm) to be for Chimp, below. My bad.
Eric,
Yes, it’s hard at best to cook up any fossil fuel use scenario over the next century that gets us to 600 ppm. We’re unlikely to keep gaining two to three ppm per year, as gas replaces coal and oil in more and more applications. But even at two ppm per year, it would obviously take 100 years to reach 600 ppm.
Salubrious as 600 ppm would be, 800 would be better, getting us into the zone that most pleases most plants, to include all trees and the majority of crops. As noted elsewhere, 1000-1300 ppm, as in greenhouses, would be best of all.
Chimp
If our CO2 emissions are going to naturally nosedive I hope we can do something to keep those emissions up so we can reap the benefits of the ppm reaching at least 600ppm if not the higher levels that you would prefer. I’m usually against govt subsidies, but maybe, as people switch to natural gas and other energy sources, we should provide big subsidies for burning coal and oil to keep that CO2 level rising.
And btw, keep in mind that the 1300ppm that you mention would be ideal is just over 1 part CO2 per 1000.
1 part per 1000! This is what the fear-mongering Chicken Littles are squawking about!
Eric,
Dunno if we’ll ever need to subsidize fossil fuel burning. The world is in a naturally warming trend, so CO2 should stay in the 300s ppm even if humans don’t burn any wood, coal, oil or gas. But we’ll continue to engage in CH4- and CO2-producing activities even if and when most of our electrical power and transport energy comes from nuclear, hydro, “renewable” and other sources.
If wind and solar ever become economical, I hope that their dire environmental costs can be ameliorated somehow. It’s for the birds and the bats, if not the children.
Chimp,
Speaking of wind power / and birds, I know that in the mountains by Big Bear Lake CA they close off a popular trail for nearly 6 months because they are worried that some hikers may inadvertently disturb the habitat of a few nesting Bald Eagles.
But drive off the mountain into the desert below (near Barstow) and you find just hundreds of these massive & ugly windmill monsters that must be killing scores of Bald Eagles all the time. SHUT THOSE WIND MONSTERS DOWN!
Here’s is a truly disturbing video, big bird KILLED by windmill:
Eric,
It’s so hypocritical it’s sickening that windmills and solar farms are exempt from environmental and endangered species legislation.
And the production of windmills and solar panels in China would never pass environmental muster here.
Eric Simpson December 3, 2016 at 5:14 pm
Phil “That assumption is incorrect, Hansen’s projection for Scenario B was CO2 level of 400.5ppm.”
Then why does the caption on the graph on this page say that the reality is the increase in CO2 emissions is 2.5%, which “would correspond to the scenario ABOVE the blue curve.” ?
I don’t know where they got their numbers from but the Hansen data shows 400.5ppm for scenario B. Perhaps you should ask the original poster?
ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/trends/co2/co2_annmean_mlo.txt
Mauna Loa shows growth in annual mean CO2 fraction from 351.56 ppm in 1988 to 400.83 ppm in 2015, a 27-year gain of 49.27 ppm or 14.01%. Thus, the average yearly growth in CO2 concentration has been 1.82 ppm. It has ranged from 0.48 ppm in 1992 to 3.05 in 2015. This El Nino year might equal or exceed last year. CO2 jumped 2.93 ppm in the El Nino year of 1998, but just 0.93 in 1999. The lowest growth in this century was 1.56 ppm in 2004.
A Pinatubo effect might be evident in 1991, when CO2 gained only 0.99 ppm, and especially ’92. However the growth rate was already headed down, as it grew 2.29 ppm in 1987, 2.13 in 1988, 1.32 in 1989 and 1.19 ppm in 1990.
Thanks for those numbers, Chimp. There seems to be a lot of variance, but a report out (with graphic) last month suggests that the rate of CO2 growth has been flat at 2% for the 12+ years since 2002, while the rate of growth had been growing for decades before that: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3917244/Is-greenhouse-effect-slowing-CO2-atmosphere-plateaued-12-years.html
A possible explanation is that a growing biomass of plants are soaking up a lot of the CO2.
I’ve also heard it predicted (as by Art Robinson) that even with growing CO2 emissions the limit on the parts per million (PPM) that we’d see would be ~ 600ppm. I don’t know what the reasoning was, but an increase to 600ppm with it positive effects on plants (and essentially zero affect on warming at these ppm levels) has got to be considered a big benefit to the planet.
The El Nino CO2 ‘burps’ are just Henry’s Law of physical chemistry. The effective rate is just under 2ppm with a very slight acceleration. More signiticant is that ~1/3 of all CO2 increase since 1958 (Keeling curve inception) has been since 2000, a period in which except formthe now rapidly cooling 2015-16 El Nino blip there has been no atmospheric warming detected by satellite or balloon.
Every time alarmists say we have reached the point of no return or tipping point ,people lose any incentive to do anything. The proper interpretation of that observation is that it is futile to do anything as its now too late the world is doomed. We should totally spend our resources on the current generation as climate change has already gone too far to save the future. It is similar logic that caused the Australian government to sack a whole lot of workers at its chief scientific body the CSIRO who were told that because the science is 97% certain there was no need to continue to research it.
That caused serious angst and unfortunately the government backtracked and rehired many of them. If you expect people to believe in what you say then understand that the consequences of this belief may be that the money tap will be turned off.
David, you are absolutely right. There fore I am going with their worst prediction, I am going out and enjoy myself before it is too late. ( the aussies rehiring the CSIRO was a joke, but I guess the golden hand shake must have cost more than keeping them on and at least you know where they are.)
The motivation for Hansen’s switch is obviously the election of Trump. He never did believe his “doom is nigh” nonsense – he was just pressing for immediate action since he had a favorable dupe in the White House. Now that we’ve got a President who is going to show no inclination to drastically cut CO2 emissions for the next 4-8 years, Hansen needs to dial back the apocalypse. Otherwise, in 2020 or 2024 everybody is going to think it’s too late to do anything about the climate and we might as well go out enjoying ourselves.
Here’s my climate-related prediction. As soon as there is another Democrat in the White House, Hansen – if he’s still alive – will again get on his street-corner soapbox with his end-of-the-world-is-coming routine about “tipping points” and “four year deadlines.”
Kurt,
Is that a soapbox that converts into a sandwich board that says, “The end is nigh!”?
+1
(and it also converts into a little get-away car…. but, in the end, he’ll just be burning it to cook his pan of pork and beans….. getting — brrrr — colder)
🙂
the end is always nigh.
it’s nigher than we thought.
it comes as no surprise
they should have known they would be caught.
Agreed Kurt!
I am surprised, I had begun to think that Hansen was showing age related senility; but this turn around show that he is coherent and attentive to current events.
When a new leader takes the field, especially a no-nonsense impatient leader, all of the political gluteous maximus osculators, flexible fawners and climate fund parasitic sycophants; those with brains at least, immediately bow while pretending to respectfully celebrate the new leader’s words and ideas. All, while thinking Marcus Brutus thoughts. Et tu?
Griff will be along soon with his Arctic ice graph.
Griff? Where is he? I miss my daily thigh-slapper!
I hope you’re right. I’ve been wondering how the arctic ice was doing.
TA , it’s doing fine kinda cold up there though.
Ross King December 3, 2016 at 2:45 pm
“Griff? Where is he? I miss my daily thigh-slapper!”
Oh payday people, Griff is probably off to the pub thank, to our generosity. I hope he got enough for a good helping of “pub” food.
michael
Do you talk about this graph?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/nsidc-seaice-n/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/last:156/trend
13 years no decline in arctic sea ice extend
“This El Nino year is proof positive that climate sensitivity Isn’t anywhere near what he once thought it was. Right now Global temperature has fallen towards the plateau set from the 1998 Super El Nino, especially over land as seen below..
?w=640
Well no.
Global temps haven’t “fallen towards the plateau set ….”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_November_2016_v6.gif
In fact this last November was the second warmest in the UAH sat temp record.
“Combine that with the fact that even as carbon dioxide has been increasing, temperatures have not been upwardly tracking with it, but instead we’ve seen El Niño driven spikes in temperature, which have nothing to do with CO2 sensitivity. The natural variation of the system still rules the climate.”
Why would you expect “temperatures to track with it” (in a monatomic fashion) ?
There is a natural variation. On top of the AGW signal.
For the same reason that you say the EN has raised GMST’s, then the previous 18 odd years of predominantly -ve PDO/ENSO/LN regime suppressed them.
You can’t just credit the heat from the cycle and deny the cooling side.
Either both are true or neither are.
Also this is the history of the PDO regime vs GMST.
Please do notice that all varieties climb along with the temp.
http://static.skepticalscience.com/pics/JohnN-G_ENSO_trends.gif
So generally speaking we have a system that receives solar energy, stores it and then,in cycles, returns some of it to the atmosphere, and all the while (long term trend) manages to make the atmosphere warmer.
Whilst also heating the deeper ocean…..
If the sun is not powering warming (it isn’t – ask Leif), and as you imply instead ENs are, then the oceans would be cooling.
A transfer of heat from ocean to atmosphere.
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
What AGW signal?
No such thing is in evidence globally. Whatever warming has occurred since CO2 took off after WWII is well within normal bounds. Previous warming cycles since the Holocene Optimum have lasted longer and gotten hotter.
For that matter, for practically the first half of the monotonic postwar CO2 rise, earth responded by getting colder. So much so in fact that in the ’70s the scare was the coming return of the ice sheets, not global warming.
Humans have made cities and some other parts of the planet warmer, but overall, not so much, and not measurably from the GHE. So far, more CO2 has been beneficial to plants and other living things.
Dear Mr. McLeod,
(in your ear) You mistakenly posted the wrong graphs. They (##1 and 2) SUPPORT the statement you (apparently) intended to contradict:
(btw: we saw you slip that card into your sleeve — well, I thought you’d be better off knowing, you want to get hired for more gigs, don’t you? — i.e., no one was fooled by your “warmest in the UAH record” sleight of hand.)
Janice
Blatent bafflegab, or just boring BS, how to decide which?
*Blatant*, sorry.
must.stop.drinking.t’night.
why?
Toneb,
You ask, “Why would you expect “temperatures to track with it” (in a monatomic fashion) ?”
Umm, because that’s what the models show. You know, the ones that predict climate catastrophe right around the corner. No, not that corner, the next one…
By which I assume you mean “monotonic”.
But.but…haven’t we already passed the “tipping” point(s?) that Hansen and the rest of the Muppets had projected?
Yet, here we still are commenting on WUWT.
Perhaps all those “tipping points” were, what’s current the term?, “Fake News”? “Political Science”?
Toneb, that is all way to systematic and logical for the choir here. They prefer the tabloid:
“SHOCK:” nonsense; anything that confirms their ideological bias.
But hats off to you for trying.
Tony, what is the maximum temperature this planet can reach because of CO2?
Water vapour, methane, CO2, etc, or just CO2?
Total atmospheric forcing usually has the planet at about 23C.
Your point?
…read down a few posts
Nice bit of bafflegraph there. You must have read “How to lie with statistics”. Three different sources, to different time scales, apparently using linear least squares on self-correlated data, one graph with multiply corrected figures, homogenization, different periods, Well Done! it’s almost believable
Measurements? Surely you jest, Mr. Gardener.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6-land/from:1998/to:2016.25/trend/plot/uah6-land/from:1998/to:2016.25
Taking peak of 1998 El Nino to peak of recent event from UAH land only shows a rise of about 0.06 deg C in 18 years.
that’s about 0.03 deg C per decade or 0.3 per century.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/from:1998/to:2016.25/trend
Looking at full global average it’s about half that : 0.015 deg C / decade.
Now watch as climate “scientists” start falling over each other to say it’s not as bad as we though please don’t defund the important work we are doing.
This the part that warmists like Toneb ignore.the PER DECADE trend. It waaaay below the IPCC minimum rate.
Glad you posted it, Greg!
Speaking of “cherry-picking” intervals, your GISTEMP graph with the meaningless linear trends completely obscures what happened before 1977 (try starting this in the late 50s, for example). And then notice that stopping somewhere around 2007 obscures how flat that period from 1997/1998 is, up to the latest El Nino.
Net, net, you took the step function that was associated with the major El Nino in 1997/1998 and used it to pretend there is some sort of pure linear trend over the last 50 years instead of the variation we’ve experienced (with a slow upward trend) over the last 100+ years. And of course, even the 0.6 degrees C you noted over the fifty year period only works out to 1.2 C/century. And CO2 has increased how much over that period? And therefore the sensitivity is what?
As usual, using the two El Nino steps to fabricate a trend.
Do you have any other monkeys handy?
Toneb…..not Tony
And guess who Troll Tone B is trying to smear (use to create confusion)?
(for those new to WUWT, “Tony B” is a fine science realist scholar’s scholar who regularly posts impeccably well-founded-in-science comments)
Thanks Janice….I got caught in that one
Someone was posting using AndyG55’s handle too
How many of the ocean buoys are present in the Arctic? Where is it that sea ice absence has allowed the oceans to cool? Oh yeah, the Arctic. Did you also forget about the paper showing upward vertical movement of energy in the oceans? Is that why you limited the data to 700 m?
This is what happens when a person doesn’t understand the data he is using. ToneB is a perfect example of why bias so easily destroys ones critical thinking ability.
Richard M,
Critical thinking is a handicap if you are a climate change believer.
The Climate Holy trinity for the Left is:
-The IPCC (the gospel-spewing savior)
-The UN (the benevolent Father)
-The Keeling Curve (the omnipresent ghost affecting all life).
i stick with Bob Tisdale’s theory: i suspect the global temp will soon show a small step up. (though this time signs are a bit contradictionary: arctic sea ice very low, but greenlands ice melting is also very low with a record whopping + 100 Gton far above any recorded gain anomaly. so not sure if it will)
if the temp will make a step up around the +0.4 anomaly mark that makes El nino driving the warming….
that gives Leif a big problem: the only driver of El nino is…. the sun. (and cloudiness)
Toneb
You nailed it for once, it is a natural warming cycle and see you didn’t even have to mention agw to explain it.
Clearly, Hansen must see that “the gig is up” and that he has to find a new way of spinning himself into some kind of new relevance and concomitant funding.
The GOOD NEWS for us is that this is very clear evidence — from no less than ***HANSEN*** that the cracks in the whole crumbling edifice of AGW theory, practice, politics and funding are so fast appearing that die-hards like him are looking for a new start.
Sorry, buddy, go tote sandwich-boards to earn a crust … you are irredeemably tainted with the label: ‘Snake-Oil Salesman’.
P.S. Hansen … live by the sword, die by the sword. No-one believes you any more.
Jim Hansen has a sweet GS retirement check every month. Courtesy of his the US tax payer. As Director of NASA/GISS, he was Senior Executive Service, which with COLA is a nice $140K year ( or more) package
I think it’s to late, the crime has already been committed. Lock him and Gore for fraud.
Guardian piece from July 31, 2008:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/aug/01/climatechange.carbonemissions
“Time is fast running out to stop irreversible climate change, a group of global warming experts warns today. We have only 100 months to avoid disaster. Andrew Simms explains why we must act now – and where to begin…….”
100 months from the end of July, 2008 was Nov. 30, 2016 (if my math is right). Terrific, so I have been getting all set for runaway climate change this year and was planning on attending Ms. Schmidt’s Good Grief therapy sessions out in Utah.
And now Hansen comes along and tells us that we’ve been given a bit of a reprieve from the Nov 30th deadline this year. I mean, what’s a body supposed to do here? End-of-the-world gloom and doomers have been persistently wrong throughout human history, but climate alarmists can’t possibly be repeating history here, can they?
Noooo, of course not. (sarc).
Hansen is just playing the long game. He wants the gravy train to last decades, not a year or two.
Exactly. Hansen wants to glean favor from the skeptics by being the idiot that finally learned the real science. If the political worm turned, it would bet a given that he would pivot back to alarmism. He is a political whore.
Rat,
+10 on the comment.
+1e+06 on the screen name.
Hansen is hedging his bets. Nothing to see here, folks, he says.
How much of our money has this man caused to be wasted on this CAGW sc@m? How many people has he driven temporarily insane with fear because of his lies? He’s got practically the whole elite world marching to his tune and now he wants to change this tune a little.
We want our money back, Hansen.
He is not changing his tune one iota. That is purely the bias you see when you look at all this through the WUWT prism.
“He is not changing his tune one iota. That is purely the bias you see when you look at all this through the WUWT prism”
Yeah, yeah, yeah…
You just go right on believing your hokey schtick, tony.
But it’s over, believe me.
AGW = It’s All Gone Wrong!
tony mcleod, “He is not changing his tune one iota.”
Jim Hansen Climate Change: On the Edge
Published on Friday, February 17, 2006, by the Independent/UK
Available here: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0217-22.htm
Original here: http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article345926.ece (truncated and requires purchase).
In 2006: “How long have we got? We have to stabilize emissions of carbon dioxide within a decade, or temperatures will warm by more than one degree. … we cannot wait for new technologies like capturing emissions from burning coal. We have to act with what we have. This decade, that means focusing on energy efficiency and renewable sources of energy that do not burn carbon. We don’t have much time left. (my bold)”
Jim Hansen, 2016: “The ponderous response of the climate system also means that we don’t need to instantaneously reduce GHG amounts. … the time scale on which we must begin to reduce atmospheric GHG amounts is measured in decades,… (my bold)”
Also in the 2006, Independent: “Once a sheet starts to disintegrate, it can reach a tipping point beyond which break-up is explosively rapid. The issue is how close we are getting to that tipping point. The summer of 2005 broke all records for melting in Greenland. So we may be on the edge. (my bold)”
Hansen’s changed his tune many iota.
Here’s probably why: catastrophe predicted within a decade of 2006. Let’s see, that’s umm … calculating … 2016! Greenland icesheet: still here. Air temperature change 2006-2016: approximately zero (El Niño apart).
2006: On the edge
2016: Ponderosity
He’s back-sliding.
Tony,
So, claiming settled science, predicting catastrophe right around the corner ans shouting that “We’re on the Venus Express, the oceans are going to boil and we’re all going to die!” isn’t one iota different from saying there is much we don’t know about climate and that there’s plenty of time. What color is the sky on your planet?
Through the prism of reality, here is what Hansen said in 2009. Compare and contrast with now:
In his book Storms of my Grandchildren, Hansen issued this dire warning: “[I]f we burn all reserves of oil, gas, and coal, there is a substantial chance we will initiate the runaway greenhouse. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale, I believe the Venus syndrome is a dead certainty.” (In fact it would take ten times as much CO2 as could be released by all the presently accessible fossil fuels to have any chance of runaway heating, even by the accounting of climate alarmists.)
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130729-runaway-greenhouse-global-warming-venus-ocean-climate-science/
He said that burning of fossil fuels leaves earth in “imminent peril”. He suggests that millions of species, and humanity itself, are threatened. The book title refers to the ferocious and stormy weather events that will occur next generation if fossil fuel use continues in the way it has.
Hansen claimed that we immediately need to cut back atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions to stabilized at 350 ppm or less, in order to avoid environmental disasters for generations to come. He advocated prompt phaseout of coal plant emissions, plus improved forestry and agricultural practices.
That was then. This is now. The urgency is gone with the wind.
Ok you got me. He’s a contrarian.In fact, wasn’t he talking about the looming ice age back in the seventies?
Tony,
I don’t know what Hansen’s opinion was about global cooling in the 1970s, but his colleagues at NASA and NOAA publicly expressed concern about the looming return of ice sheets.
Academia of course was also infected with the possibly lucrative fear. In 1974, the year after I graduated, my Stanford profs Ehrlich and Holdren (Obama’s science advisor) warned of coming icy doom. Ditto Schneider and many others who later jumped on the global warming band wagon, or should I say gravy train?
The quantitative absurdity this whole lost generation is based upon is Hansen’s claim , http://cosy.com/Science/Hansen.avi , that Venus’s surface temperature , 225% ( 400K > ) the gray body temperature in its orbit is due to some electromagnetic , ie : spectral , phenomenon . Quantitatively absurd by the most classic experimentally founded and verifiable computations . ( I’m waiting to see some brilliantly simple demonstrations of these classic quantitative laws . )
Yet the entire GHG paradigm asserts that some cascade of spectral filters trap the 33K difference from the crudely estimated radiative balanced temperature of 255K .
SHOW ME .
Either the equations or the experiment . Some variation on Ritchie’s 1830s experiment should do . Nothing complicated — just demonstrate it in a 1 dimensional sandwich between a heat source and sink .
You can’t get the equations to balance without the terms for the other macroscopic force .
Even if, as it would seem, we live in a ‘Post-Truth’ world (thanks in large to the Mannipulators of Climate
Science), the irony is that TRUTH becomes The Gold Standard.
And the ULTIMATE TRUTH can only be determined by a return to the old-fashioned principles of rigorous
Scientific challenge, repeatability of results and vigorous debate, etc. For Heaven’s sake, Einstein is still being questioned (albeit at the margins) but *his* science has never been settled, has it? I posit that *no* science is *ever* “settled”, so who are these sinecure-seeking, Charlatan, Snake-Oil Salesmen to persuade us otherwise?
I think we ‘lost the script’ shortly before the onset of the AGW debate …. perhaps by the back-room politco/scientific spin-doctoring during the mad-cow scare. The Pay-Masters told the Scientists what to say to further their political ends. Goodbye scientific integrity.
The Scientists, not being short of brain synapses, twigged-on that it is a two-way street … and here we are with this unholy alliance between opportunistic politicians and sinecure-seeking pseudo-scientists (a pox on both of them!)
Let TRUTH be held to the highest levels of testing, not something gleaned from pseudo-scientists, politicians and — of course — their ever-sensationalist parroting friends — the media.
Agree the whole Venus/CO2 thing is totally messed up but it is the foundation of the AGW movement, damn you Carl Sagan, it’s the massive Venutian atmospheric pressure creating supercritical C02 at the surface, basically the surface of Venus is an liquidy ocean-like CO2, as any rookie scientist knows you heat a liquid up and it veerrrrrry slowly rises due to buoyancy, hardly any convection at all. But on Earth when you heat up air or vaporize water at the surface it rises very fast that’s why nearly 90% of heat transfer is due to convection. But the fake news is that is Venus is hot due to CO2 not pressure and since that is the official propaganda try to oppose it and you get banished.
Venus ~95% CO2 atmosphere, HOT! Mars, 95% CO2 atmosphere, COLD! Venus, ~90 x earth atmospheric pressure/mass. Mars ~0.6 earth atmospheric pressure/mass. Gas laws apply. CO2 insignificant to temperature.
Yes . But it still needs to be emphasized that the force which “causes” the pressure is that only other macroscopic force : gravity . That pressure , “lapse rate” , whatever , doesn’t just happen . It is due to precisely quantifiable and quantified non-optional gravitational force . It cannot be left out of the energy balance equations . And the trade-off shows itself as kinetic thermal energy . Others , eg : HockeySchtick , have worked out the equations . I’m totally focused on finding the market for my 4th.CoSy , but that does seriously include people interested in modeling planetary physics as I discussed at the Minnowbrook2013 APL Implementers Conference so I’ll wait for others to motivate work in that direction .
The bottom line , tho , is that the notion that a spectral GHG effect is responsible for the ~ 33K difference between our “radiative balance” temperature and our surface temperature is simply , classically , and experimentally provably false . It defies the Divergence Theorem . It fails undergraduate physics and Hansen should have been laughed out of the room for incompetence when he first made his claim . Instead it has become a paradigm which has retarded a generation .
The only effect changes in CO2 or other GHGs have on our temperature is the de minimis changes they may make at these already optically saturated levels in our spectrum as seen from outside . No “tipping points” around except the one at 273.15 .
Anthony
Interesting RSS plot: sort of looks like the area under the 1998 El Nino peak is about equal to area under the 2015/16 peak, which would make sense if approximately the same total energy was released.
Jane,
Compare for yourself the data on 2015/16 vs. 1998 El Ninos.
(Mucho thanks to Bob Tisdale and his blog.)
Mr Watts, this relationship is extremely easy to map-out, and should have been the starting point of any serious research. You should commission a simple article that Simply take a data set of Temperature and CO2 and add on the marginal energy absorption of atmospheric CO2. That last data is easily found using MODTRAN.
Example:
Year CO2 Temp Delta T W/M^2 Delta W/M^2
1880 285 14.1 290.89
1900 295 14.2 0.1 290.701 -0.189
1920 305 14.05 -0.15 290.544 -0.157
1940 310 14.3 0.25 290.481 -0.063
1960 315 14.2 -0.1 290.419 -0.062
1980 335 14.4 0.2 290.105 -0.314
2000 370 14.6 0.2 289.665 -0.44
2016 400 14.8 0.2 289.288 -0.377
1880 285 14.1 290.89
1910 300 13.85 -0.25 290.638 -0.252
1935 310 14.2 0.35 290.481 -0.157
1975 330 14.2 0 290.199 -0.282
2016 400 14.8 0.6 289.288 -0.911
Year Delta T/Delta W/M^2
1880
1900 -0.53
1920 0.96
1940 -3.97
1960 1.61
1980 -0.64
2000 -0.45
2016 -0.53
1880
1910 0.99
1935 -2.23
1975 0.00
2016 -0.66
The δC / δW/M^2 doesn’t make much of a case for CO2 to be the cause.
http://www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org/images09/CO2Temp.jpg
Just look at this chart. The ΔC falls between 1880 and 1910, yet the ΔW/M^2 increases. The ΔC then climbs between 1910 and 1945, and the ΔW/M^2 increases. The ΔC then falls between 1945 and 1985, and the ΔW/M^2 increases. The ΔC then climbs between 1985 and 2016, and the ΔW/M^2 increases. CO2 trapping W/M^2 can result in either falling or rising temperatures. That is a problem.
http://www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org/images09/CO2Temp.jpg
“We’ve noted previously, that it is 150% wrong.”
There is no indication where those claimed measured temperatures are from. What dataset?
In fact, Hansen was predicting surface air temperature. And his prediction has stood up very well.
@Nick Stokes, this is a very very very easy problem to solve. Simply calculate the ΔC°/ΔW/M^2. You simply can’t tie CO2 to ΔC° and CO2’s ΔW/M^2. If you can’t demonstrate that the additional energy trapped by CO2 results in higher temperatures, you can’t make your case.
How is that different from standard sensitivity, expressed as °C/(forcing in W/m2)?
Greg,
“As you well know it is the temperature record which has been adjusted to fit the earlier claims, if you are going to use GISS LOTI.”
What I very well know is that it has no dependence on adjustments, which in any case are not made by Hansen, but NOAA. I know that because I calculate global temperatures myself, using unadjusted GHCN temperatures. And it makes no difference. TempLS in green, GISS L/O in brown:
The numbers don’t add up. There is extreme variability with the Δ°C/ΔW/M^2, in fact at some times it may be (+) and at others (-). There must be other factors driving temperature, otherwise,there would be a linear relationship. There isn’t.
“Nick Stokes December 3, 2016 at 4:06 pm
How is that different from standard sensitivity, expressed as °C/(forcing in W/m2)?”
Forcing? What is being forced? Theory? And you say science is on your side? Total BS!
Nick writes
Most closely tracking scenario C which is Hansen’s prediction for rapid decline in CO2 emissions. Reality is much closer to scenario A which is increasing CO2 emissions. Scenario B is slowing rate of use. Are we doing that? No. Just ask China and India…
Although I’ll admit that the numbers Hansen used (A:410ppm, B406ppm, C~370ppm – assuming you’ve quoted them correctly at your site) would put the scenario closer to B. So basically Hansen over estimated the warming as well as over estimating the emissions. in terms of “naming” the scenarios.
“Hansen over estimated the warming as well as over estimating the emissions. in terms of “naming” the scenarios.”
The scenarios are more complex than can be covered by simple tag names. They allow for changes in CH4, CFCs, and for volcanoes (at least B and C). CH4 fell well short, for CFCs, the effects of the Montreal protocol came after 1988. Hansen’s program predicts the effects of GHG gases. It does not predict the amounts that might be put there by emission. It does not even relate emissions to concentration.
Without comparing the evolution to the actual numbers input, you can’t say that he overestimated warming.
As I said above, those gas numbers were posted here for a similar paper the following year. They don’t exactly correspond, but are close.
Nick writes
Nonsense. You can see his projection is tracking most closely to scenario C and that was based on about a 370ppm CO2 calculation. There is no way the other GHGs make up for that difference.
Hansen’s projection was a fit based on the current warming rates in his day. That’s what happened and explains his results perfectly.
Nick writes
Hansen had another program to predict the CO2 emissions. Hence why they’re output to a ridiculous 12 decimal places. I’ll warrant it was very simplistic.
Nick wrote
From Hansen’s paper
So…nope. You cant blame the effect of CFCs in his scenario B and C projections.
Oh and I see that Hansen predicted a positive feedback from stratospheric H2O. You asked who had assumed water vapour would increase in the stratosphere (in the face of it actually being a negative feedback and decreasing in reality) and now you have the answer.
TTTM,
“You cant blame the effect of CFCs in his scenario B and C projections.”
No. Here are the headings of the gas conc file I posted:
CO2_A N2O_A CH4_A CFC11_A CFC12_A CO2_B N2O_B CH4_B CFC11_B CFC12_B CO2_C N2O_C CH4_C CFC11_C CFC12_C
CFC11 and 12 were in all scenarios. Here are the actual numbers for 2015, from that 1989 file, with CFC nums from here:
CO2, N2O was scen B, the rest Scen C
Nick writes
OK, I’m willing to accept “minor chlorine and fluorine compounds” doesn’t include CFCs as a whole.
What’s going on with Hansen’s Figure 2? He appears to be implying that the CO2 forcing for lets say scenario A is about 0.8W/m2 by 2050 but when you add the other trace gasses and even add the negative impact from aerosols, the forcing is about 2.2W/m2
How does that work exactly?
Obviously I mean delta T rather than W/m2 but it looks like he’s attributing about 2/3 of the warming to the trace gasses??
No Nick , that’s a disingenuous claim. As you well know it is the temperature record which has been adjusted to fit the earlier claims, if you are going to use GISS LOTI.
What Hansen said in 1988 was NOT based on rigging the SST record by applying NMAT “corrections” to daytime SST.
Post hoc adjustments to SST do not count in assessing how accurate his predictions were, not to mention the constant ‘warming up’ of the land based data as well.
Also your blue line “GISS Ts MET stations” ( ie the land record ) is not comparable to the “global temperatures” plotted from Hansen.
With exception of the recent spike, the closest match seems to be “scenario C” which is the drastic reduction on CO2 output starting in 1990 which just did not happen. Basically AGW is busted.
Thanks for the graph.
Greg,
Reply above
The test for scenarios is what happened. Scearios were defined in terms of forcing – GHG concentrations. In fact, what evolved was between B and C. Discussion here.
Nick StokesDecember 3, 2016 at 4:46 pm
” I calculate global temperatures myself, using unadjusted GHCN temperatures.”
GHCN temperatures are already adjusted by the time you get them to use Nick. Tell the truth for a change.
Evidence? It’s quite untrue. GHCN unadjusted means just that.
“Nick Stokes
The test for scenarios is what happened. Scearios were defined in terms of forcing – GHG concentrations.”
That’s not accurate. Hansen’s three scenarios were distinguished by different GHG emissions rates, not rates of increasing concentration in the atmosphere. Those are two different things. Global emissions rates since 1988 met or exceeded Hansen’s scenario A, in which he assumed a 1.5% annual increase in emissions from 1988. At that rate, in the 17 years from 1998 to 2015, CO2 emissions would have increased by a factor of 1.49. This article pegs actual emissions increase since 1990 at 50%: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19052016/global-co2-emissions-still-accelerating-noaa-greenhouse-gas-index.
Temperatures rose nowhere near what Hansen’s model predicted for our actual growth in emissions.
Kurt December 3, 2016 at 10:29 pm
“Nick Stokes
The test for scenarios is what happened. Scearios were defined in terms of forcing – GHG concentrations.”
That’s not accurate. Hansen’s three scenarios were distinguished by different GHG emissions rates, not rates of increasing concentration in the atmosphere. Those are two different things. Global emissions rates since 1988 met or exceeded Hansen’s scenario A,
As stated in Hansen et al 1988 scenario A assumed continuing exponential trace gas growth, B assumed a reduced linear growth of trace gases, and C assumed a rapid curtailment of trace emissions.
Hansen’s projection for scenario B was CO2 by 2016 of 400.5ppm.
Temperatures are below scenario C, if we had curtailed all co2 production years ago.
“GHCN temperatures are already adjusted by the time you get them to use Nick. “
No evidence, and easily refuted. I have written a post here setting out how BoM goes from AWS numbers posted every half hour (within minutes) to a monthly file, CLIMAT form, and so to GHCN unadjusted. You can check at every stepo. But of course, no-one is interested in that. More fun just to rant.
“Hansen’s three scenarios were distinguished by different GHG emissions rates, not rates of increasing concentration in the atmosphere. “
No. Emission ideas inspired them, but you can’t use those for computation (or not in Hansen’s day). You need concentrations, and they have been posted. Here is Hansen setting that out:
The actual numbers (gas conc) for the scenarios are given here. That’s from a paper a year later, but using the same scenarios.
“Phil:
As stated in Hansen et al 1988 scenario A assumed continuing exponential trace gas growth, B assumed a reduced linear growth of trace gases, and C assumed a rapid curtailment of trace emissions.”
You need to read the Hansen’s paper more carefully. These are the exact words on the assumptions of his scenario A: “Scenario A assumes that the growth rates of trace gas EMISSIONS typical of the 1970s and 1980s will continue indefinitely. The assumed annual growth averages about 1.5% of annual EMISSIONS.”
Nick Stokes:
“Emission ideas inspired them, but you can’t use those for computation (or not in Hansen’s day). You need concentrations.”
Emissions “ideas” didn’t “inspire” the scenarios (whatever that gibberish means). The emissions growth rates WERE the scenarios. Whatever CO2 concentrations resulted from those scenarios were, like temperatures, an output of the scenario, not an input. Otherwise, he would have included those in the paper itself. And the portions of appendix B that you don’t quote affirms again that the assumptions of the scenarios are in the growth of emissions, not atmospheric concentration.
You’re just engaging in sophistry to try to explain away the fact that his predictions of what would occur for what he testified under oath before Congress was the “business as usual scenario” was wildly inaccurate. And do you really want to be arguing argue that Hansen’s knowledge of the climate system wasn’t good enough for him to get something relatively simple right, like what atmospheric CO2 concentration would result from a given rate of growth in emissions, but that he understands the climate well enough to get the insanely hard stuff right, like what the temperature curve is going to look like for a given rise in concentration. What you see as some kind of validation for a wrong prediction is just an ex post facto correlation to try to salvage something from the failure.
Kurt December 4, 2016 at 5:06 am
“Phil:
As stated in Hansen et al 1988 scenario A assumed continuing exponential trace gas growth, B assumed a reduced linear growth of trace gases, and C assumed a rapid curtailment of trace emissions.”
You need to read the Hansen’s paper more carefully. These are the exact words on the assumptions of his scenario A: “Scenario A assumes that the growth rates of trace gas EMISSIONS typical of the 1970s and 1980s will continue indefinitely. The assumed annual growth averages about 1.5% of annual EMISSIONS.”
I have read it very carefully, many times, my statement to which you refer is accurate.
You’re just engaging in sophistry to try to explain away the fact that his predictions of what would occur for what he testified under oath before Congress was the “business as usual scenario” was wildly inaccurate.
His projections for CO2 in 2016 were:
A 405.4ppm, B 400.5ppm, C 367.8
M-L data Oct 2015 398.3ppm, Oct 2016 401.6ppm
Not bad for a estimate made 30 years ago!
As he stated at the time he expected that scenario B was “perhaps the most plausible of the three” and that scenario A “must eventually be on the high side of reality”, also that scenario A included some speculative, “crudely estimated trace gas trends” which the others did not.
His estimates for CH4 and CFCs are better matched by scenario C, although after plateauing after 2000 CH4 is now growing again. (CH4 fixed at 1916 ppb, actual 1834ppb)
“Phil
I have read it very carefully, many times, my statement to which you refer is accurate.”
No – it’s not accurate. Your statement was that Scenarios A-C related to growth of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Hansen’s scenarios were for different options for man-made emissions, not different rates of growth in ppm of CO2 in the air. Hansen was asked specifically about this when he testified before Congress, and he confirmed that scenario A predicted what would happen if GHG emissions continued on their “business as usual” exponential growth. The resulting increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere was, like temperatures, a result of the scenario, not part of what was assumed in the scenario.
“His projections for CO2 in 2016 were:
A 405.4ppm, B 400.5ppm, C 367.8
M-L data Oct 2015 398.3ppm, Oct 2016 401.6ppm
Not bad for a estimate made 30 years ago!”
No – it’s a lousy prediction. You’re illogically conflating his predictions of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere for ALL the emissions scenarios and trying to compare that entire range with what actually occurred. Read the passage of yours I just quoted more critically this time. The CO2 concentration in 2016 that actually resulted from the world continuing its exponential growth in CO2 (scenario A) was less than what Hansen thought it would be if CO2 emissions were held to linear instead of exponential growth. No reasonable analysis would call that “not bad.” If your bar for being “not a bad estimate” of actual CO2 growth is so low that hitting anywhere within the range of any of the three estimates is good enough, then what exactly was the point of differentiating CO2 concentrations for each scenario in the first place?
“As he stated at the time he expected that scenario B was “perhaps the most plausible of the three” and that scenario A “must eventually be on the high side of reality”, also that scenario A included some speculative, “crudely estimated trace gas trends” which the others did not.”
Stop taking quotes from Hansen’s paper out of context. With respect to scenario A, his only caveat was that, since it relied on continued exponential growth in CO2 emissions, it must”eventually” be on the high side of reality as we started running out of fossil fuels. Hansen’s vacillations between scenarios A and B related to the long term projections, not the short term projections. We clearly haven’t felt any limit on fossil fuel production in the last 30 years – inventories of fossil fuels are continually increasing, and again, the real world output most closely followed scenario A except for one major volcanic eruption, which even the climate alarmists admit would have only shown a transitory effect for about five years.
And even if you were to assume that Hansen’s’ statement about Scenario B being “perhaps” the most plausible (lovely weasel word, that) related not to the very long term projections but even to the short term temperature predictions, what does it matter? We now know that the actual growth in CO2 emissions – being by far the most important greenhouse gas considered by Hansen – met or exceeded what was considered by Hansen to be Scenario A. What Hansen considered to be the most likely emissions scenario in 1988, before he could have known what would happen, is not relevant to judging the accuracy of the prediction after the real world results have come in. You’re just trying to seize on this weasel language to support your revisionist history of Hansen’s predictions.
“an output of the scenario, not an input”
They may be an output of the scenario. But they are the input to the GCM, and the only forcing input suplied. Not emissions, or terms like “business as usual”. You can only assess the performance of the GCM in terms of the actual numbers it is given to work with. And they were as Phil describes.
If I’m reading the temperature annotations on this old graph correctly, are you showing that the peak of the current El Nino was 0.5 degrees C higher than the 1998 El Nino? That’s certainly not consistent with the RSS/UAH data, and seems larger than the (less accurate) land/ocean sets as well – and shows dramatic increase starting in some time around 2012 – does that make sense? I know it helps in trying to make your case, but you’re not providing needed information – for example, which “scenario” of Hansen’s actually happened?