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.
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Hansen’s intent is obvious. He and others spent the last several years stirring the left into a froth of panic over the climate. Now with Trump’s election, they are in total meltdown. The climate is done, there will be federal immigration agents kicking down doors and jailing people indiscriminately, and the Supreme Court was the only thing keeping Trump from re-instituting Prima Nocta using his pen and phone.
Now that Hansen and his ilk have pushed so many to the edge of the irrational cliff, he wants to talk them back down so they fall back in ranks and will be ready for the next battle. The last thing they want is for people to break ranks and start accepting that they can’t force their agenda onto the world, so they will have to “wait and see” what the climate does next. That’s game over for the hysterics pushing the global warming scam.
Hansen quote:
“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.”
If this is true, and I personally think that it is, then how is it possible for scientists to have already reliably quantified the degree to which this massive, slow-reacting climate system responds to our forcings, faster than the climate system has had a chance to actually respond to them?
Anthony I disagree with your conclusion. I don’t think he had a change of heart or suddenly thinks that climate sensitivity is lower. I think it’s much simpler and more obvious than that: if he continues to claim we’re doomed and past the point of no return (actually past the tipping point) then there would be little justification for reducing emissions as it would be too late. Therefore he must reframe his argument to convince people and governments that there is still a need to reduce emissions and still time to save the planet.
It’s that simple. Either it’s too late and the ballyhooed tipping point has been exceeded or it’s not. If it’s too late then any investment should be made adapting to future warming not trying to prevent it.
The huge amount of discussion about whether Dr Hansen flouted either or bothDC laws or fashion rules overlooks a more significant point
Given he has now argued we have decades
to act on emissions or the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere this should be made clear to the msm and climate activists everywhere whst their guru now thinks
No doubt he will cop further abuse from radicals like Naomi Klein as having “sold out”
Second his now position seems to underpin
the position of Bjorn Lomborg who has been arguing along similar lines for over a decade ie we should hasten slowly as there is no imminent emergency and we should invest in R and D to bring down the cost of renewables before rushing into them
Now I am not defending Lomborg but am making the point even his essentially similar views that GHG are a problem for the climate are not close enough to the orthodoxy rampant in certain academic circles
Accordingly Lomborg’s more cautious approach now remarkably similar to guru Hansen has resulted in him bring scorned and excluded from universities by the dominant orthodoxy that we must act now and radically so.These academic theories of climate crisis now dominate left of centre political parties policy positions
Eg in my home state of Victoria Australia
which has had for decades a reliable brown coal fired electricity system supporting locsl
manufacturing the local greens have set a target of 90% renewables (read wind and solar) by 2030 which is only 14 years away while the centre left governing ALP seeks 40% renewables by 2025 in even less time.
My guess is Hansen’s revisionary stance will be just ignored or hushed over by the climate activists and their supporting msm such as the Fairfax press and the Guardian
Follow the money: he wants his side to not miss the surge in traditional energy stocks.
He probably already got in before Trump made it to be president-elect. Al Gore too.
These guys have no shame. It is and was all about the money.
Hansen should be tarred & feathered & ridden out of many towns all over America on many asses & always facing aft. He’s a laughing stock & deserves such punishment until nature take its toll.
Seems like the end of the gravy train loomed into sight and had the be pushed just over the horizon where it belongs, so more fear , uncertainty and doubt about the future can be sown among the populace
Slightly OT
Snow on Mauna Loa – interesting how that might affect the measurement of CO2 there.
https://iceagenow.info/hawaii-now-expected-get-3-feet-snow/
Even more unusual than widespread snow in Hawaii – the BBC reports it! A whiff of Trump fear in the MSM perchance?
Seems he’s realized that his dire predictions of imminent disaster are not going to happen, so he has to do what a lot of people do in that situation …. start a new dialogue and pretend they never made any of the dire predictions. That is a favorite tactic of most prophets of doom.
Enough monkeys hitting random keys, one of which will predict the future. Or the complete works of Shakespeare.
Global Warming left the US after Trump was elected.
https://weather.com/sports-recreation/ski/news/record-early-snow-south-carolina-first-flakes-appalachians-new-england
HANSEN: Deer frozen in the headlights of approaching Trump Train.
Complex political issues rendered into simple sentences.
5 cents, please.
I think it is simply that JImbo is getting older and wants to retire to Florida where he can live nice and warm. That would seem contradictory to his position to want to cool the planet for most of his entire grant seeking career.
Crony climatism, fabricated temperature records and wild claims of catastrophic climate disaster have pushed CAGW and AGW past the tipping point of any shred of believability. Hansen’s slight moderation in tone is designed to postpone total destruction–and that’s all it “might” accomplish.
“Crony climatism, fabricated temperature records and wild claims of catastrophic climate disaster have pushed CAGW and AGW past the tipping point of any shred of believability. ”
Beautifully stated …….
Look at the graph presented above. It starts at 1975 but it could as well have started at 1945 because we all know that temperatures fell between 1945-1975. So the total temperature change for the 70 years from 1945-2015 is at most 0.3C. That’s it folks. 105 PPM of co2 pumped into the atmosphere. All tgis alarm alarm alarm over 0.3C.
He says that the climate system has “momentum”. That there is heat built in. Where? Where is the evidence of that? There is none. If co2 is having some small effect on temperature it will require pumping in vastly more co2 to get any additional al increase. There is no “built in” momentum. There is no evidence of any momentum.
Well, I managed to live long enough to watch scientific inquiry turned into a team sport. How lucky can one person be?
Earth’s carbon cycle contains 46,713 Gt (E15 gr) +/- 850 Gt (+/- 1.8%) of stores and reservoirs with a couple hundred fluxes Gt/y (+/- ??) flowing among those reservoirs. Mankind’s gross contribution over 260 years was 555 Gt or 1.2%. (IPCC AR5 Fig 6.1) Mankind’s net contribution, 240 Gt or 0.53%, (dry labbed by IPCC to make the numbers work) to this bubbling, churning caldron of carbon/carbon dioxide is 4 Gt/y +/- 96%. (IPCC AR5 Table 6.1) Seems relatively trivial to me. IPCC et. al. says natural variations can’t explain the increase in CO2. With these tiny percentages and high levels of uncertainty how would anybody even know? BTW fossil fuel between 1750 and 2011 represented 0.34% of the biospheric carbon cycle.
My friends,
Back to topic, I’m afraid – Hansen.
From the east side of the pond, what I see is this. When someone with any kind of political power contradicts what they previously said, it is incumbent on them to explain the reason why.
Although I’ve lived in the US, I have no time for your political institutions (nor for any this side of the pond, neither). But didn’t Hansen testify X to congress back in 1988? If he’s now saying not-X, he has a duty to explain why. And if he fails to explain, is he not guilty of perjury? Not as serious a crime as it should be, in my opinion.
And on another tack: I’m sorry, but in my estimation those of you who see Trump as some kind of divine deliverer are in for a big shock. That’s even if he is confirmed as president.
“And on another tack: I’m sorry, but in my estimation those of you who see Trump as some kind of divine deliverer are in for a big shock. That’s even if he is confirmed as president.”
Somehow the liberals continue to drag Trump into every conversation, perhaps because they
can’t come up with any plausible arguments. “That even if he’s confirmed as President.”
This is pretty ignorant talk folks, even from a Brit. Amazing how an irrelevant candidate, fronting for Hillary and being financed by Hillary, can claim the need for a recount , and in states where illegal voting by illegal aliens was nowhere near the level achieved in corrupt California. She claims she just wants to make sure the election was honest, but avoids recounts in all those places where we KNOW the election was not honest and wants a recount that will allow those illegal immigrant votes to stand. Trump’s first order of business in legislation that will eliminate the Democrat Party’s bad habit of allowing the dead, unborn and illegal immigrants from casting ballots in Federal elections. It is long past due to bring honesty to the election booth. Many a Democratic President was elected thru fraud. Just take a look at LA and Cook County.
Oh my dear Arthur,
Don’t you know about the electoral college? Don’t you know that individual “electors” can be bribed to vote differently from the popular vote inside their states? Don’t you know that there’s a possibility (remote, I admit) that the electoral college might declare H. Clinton president rather than D. Trump?
I suspect I may know more about your country’s political system than you do.
Cheers,
Neil
Flexibility, the cornerstone of any scientific theory.
They keep moving the goal posts because if we pass their proclaimed point of no return, the gravy train might stop supporting the.
Actually, Hansen has shocked the corrupt green folks before when he insisted that renewable power like wind and solar was a stupid and ineffective way to reduce carbon emissions and strongly advised nuclear power, advice which the majority of greenies seem to continue opposing, irregardless of the immaculate safety record of nuclear power in the Western countries. But then, no one ever accused the greenie beenies of logical thought These nuclear-ignorant souls continue pointing to Chernobyl of decades ago, a reactor that would never have been allowed in any Western country, or the many advances in safety design and response capability that virtually guarantees that we will continue to experience zero fatalities as a result of operating our nuclear reactors. My big criticism of Hansen is his failure to push molten salt nuclear technology.
“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.”
Actually, I believe that it is easy to stop 97 percent of climate change in 2 steps.
1. Quit altering the data.
2. Quit lying about it.
See. Done at no cost or taxes.
“Actually, I believe that it is easy to stop 97 percent of climate change in 2 steps.
1. Quit altering the data.
2. Quit lying about it.
See. Done at no cost or taxes.”
I like your style, Gerald! Short and sweet, and to the point.
Anyone that seriously seeks the truth, this chart can explain the warming of the lower atmosphere and cooling of the stratosphere. CO2 can’t do that. Bottom line, cleaner air allowed more radiation to reach the oceans, warmer oceans produced more humidity, more humidity traps more heat. Less humidity in the stratosphere trapped less heat. CO2 is a constant 400ppm up to 80km.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NOAA%20ESRL%20AtmospericSpecificHumidity%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1948%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
Here is another chart of O3. Once again, temperatures follow H2O and O3, not CO2.
http://www.ozonedepletion.info/education/part1/Image3.gif
http://www.scienceinschool.org/sites/default/files/articleContentImages/17/ozone/issue17ozone2_l.jpg
CO2 is a constant 400ppm up to 80km. Temperature doesn’t follow CO2 in the atmosphere, it follows H20 and O3, not CO2.
http://apollo.lsc.vsc.edu/classes/met130/notes/chapter1/graphics/vert_temp.gif
Off topic – but poor Austria just voted in the Green Blob 🙁
NASA never mentions CO2 when explaining the temperature gradient for the various atmospheric levels.
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Atmosphere/troposphere_temperature.html