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.
When describing the temperature gradient of Antarctica they explain it due to H2O, not CO2.
http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/antarctica%20environment/climate_weather.php
http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap03/antarctica.html
http://discoveringantarctica.org.uk/oceans-atmosphere-landscape/atmosphere-weather-and-climate/regional-climate-variation-and-weather/
Funny how all these groups faily to mention CO2 of the cause of any temperature gradient.
I have often wondered with the UN ranting nonstop about global warming and sea level rise, why they are spending billions of dollars in renovations on the UN headquarters which is only about 100 feet from the East River and only a few feet above sea level rather than moving to higher ground. You learn more from somebody’s actions than their words.
Anthony Watts commentary: “I think Dr. Hansen has come to the conclusion that climate sensitivity is not as sensitive to carbon dioxide as it was once thought to be in his original”
Anthony, I disagree and think that he is sucking you into a false sense of relief that he is giving up his assault on science. His new narrative is not an admission by this junk science zealot that he is wrong. Rather this new narrative is a ploy to avoid accountability for the failure by his models and to push the doomsday prediction out to a future date so his models failures can no longer be checked against reality. He is still waiving his hands and saying “the sky is falling”, but like the “heat is hiding in the ocean” ploy he now has a convenient excuse for why NY is not under water and the planet is not on fire. Now he can keep making his nonsense claims and demands for carbon taxes and just point and say to his cult followers that doomsday is “in the pipeline”.
Translation: Oct. We must elect a Democrat or we are doomed.
Dec. Don’t give up and stop supporting us, after Trump we still have time.
Pathetic.
it is all to late for me as i have made a bed under my bed
Most Professions are governed by a Professional Body, usually with appropriately gleaned government remit as to establishing entrance requirements & licensing, professional standards of practice, disciplinary powers, Codes of Conduct, fiduciary duties to society at large, etc. Dentists, Doctors, Lawyers, Pharmacists, Architects, Engineers (I speak from experience — if I designed a dam which failed *I* would be on the hook as the Certifying Engineer) and a host of others, all subscribe to these principles in order to gain the acclamation of Certified Practitioner in their field of expertise.
What, pray, is the Professional Body which governs the practice of “Climate Science”? Which jurisdictions give them charter to practise? From evidence to hand, I think the answer is a stunning “NONE!!” And so these so-called “Scientists”, untramelled by any code of Professional Ethics, have run-amok for 30 years or so, ON THE PUBLIC PURSE, with every fantasy-theory in their book (to serve their ends) WITHOUT ANY ACCREDITED PROFESSIONAL CENSURE.
If *you* were to write the foundational Charter for the Professional Order of Snake-Oil Salesmen (many, many applicants!), you cdn’t do better than assess there’s no need ….. gullible governments, complicit with incendiary, sensationalist-seeking media ([wo]manned by otherwise no-hope flotsam-clutchers), and a (sadly) gullible public, 90% of whom suck this trash up as TRUTH.
My proposition is an Institution of Professional Climate Scientists: maybe 2 Chapters, representing the divisions, but facilitating the ongoing dialog by institutional rules of cross-examination in an objectively-driven, formal process, not media-hype and scare-tactics.
Whenever someone has the ignorance, audacity and naivete to tell you that we have five years to act, you can safely tell him to relax. After five years, we’ll be granted another extension. We are ALWAYS granted another extension.
We will never hear, “Well, I guess we’d better change our strategic approach from mitigation against climate change to adjusting to the global climate cycle.”
Forgotten is Claude Levi-Strauss’ greatest fear, “the poisoning of the planet,” our air quality; what were relatively uncontaminated oceans, weather systems and food chains, which is now expected no later than 2024 rather than the original of sometime after 2030.
In 1972 that process of poisoning the planet was called “Overshoot and Collapse.” A more terrifying descriptor is “Global Famine,” which seems to exceed that of “the Sixth Mass Extinction Event” for some reason.
Warming, climate change and the rest, are attributed to only one, or a few, of the 90,000 manmade chemicals floating about in our spaceship’s biosphere, our lungs, livers, lymph nodes and future life forms.
Effective detoxification of our spaceship’s various living environments – is that possible? Before the life forms upon which we’ll depend upon for our subsistence get over warmed and cease to be?
Create the “In Limbo impending doom” that is ALWAYS impending, so that in 100 years from now, we’ll have the same rinse and repeat, with the proviso that there is permanently a “little more time”
I love the paradox, incidentally
I call total BS to Hansen’s ever changing moving goal posts and data manipulation at NASA.
The global warming train’s steam temperature increased of 0.2°K in a decade. At this rate, the global warming train will reach the Andromeda galaxy in 4 billion years (anyway)
It’s just occurred to me that Hansen’s recent statement that mitigation is not immediately urgent, but can be phased in over a lengthy period, is consistent with the implementation of a “nuclear” CO2-reduction strategy. I suspect he made this statement after consulting with a member of Trump’s team, which may be planning to unveil such a plan.
Hansen is Gore’s advisor on climate-related matters. Gore’s visit to Trump is consistent with what I speculated about Hansen, namely that a “nuclear” CO2-reduction strategy is in the works.