Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach [See Update At End]
Well, Dr. James Hansen, the man who invented the global warming scam and our favorite failed serial doomcaster, recently addressed the cratering of a 30-year prediction he made in 1988.
Back then, he said the globe would warm up by one full degree by 2018 under the “business as usual” rubric … not. Here’s the story as written up in “Spin” magazine in 1988.
Since then we’ve had a continued expansion of fossil fuel use, as in his most alarmist scenario. Given that amount of CO2 emissions, his prediction was that by now, temperatures would have gone up by 1°C (note that the Spin article, as pointed out by Mosh and Tamino among others, is in error).
Obviously, nothing like that has happened. Despite the fact that millions of folks believed his prediction in 1988 and continue to listen to him today, the UAH MSU satellite data says that since 1988 it’s warmed by … well … about a third of a degree. Not one degree. A third of a degree. He was wrong by a factor of 3. So obviously, he needs an excuse for this failure.
Here’s the back story to Hansen’s excuse, published last week under the headline “Climate Scientists Move Global Meltdown from 2018 to 2168” …
And just last week [Hansen] addressed the prospect of further temperature increases during an interview with New York magazine. Keep in mind that Hansen predicted in a greenhouse model that there would be “an increase of from two to five degrees Fahrenheit” in global temperatures by 2018, as quoted from December 1988 edition of Spin magazine.
“I don’t think we’re going to get four or five degrees this century, because we get a cooling effect from the melting ice,” he said last week. “But the biggest effect will be that melting ice. In my opinion that’s the big thing – sea-level rise – because we have such a large fraction of people on coastlines, more than half of the large cities in the world are on coastlines.” [Hansen]
Amazing. He’s kicked the old threat of global warming under the bus. Now, it’s morphed into “Global warming won’t cause increased temperature because it just melts the ice but then the sea levels will rise and WE’RE ALL STILL DOOMED!” Once an alarmist, always an alarmist, I guess.
Now, that claim about ice melting had my numeric legend detector ringing like a fire alarm in a cheap whorehouse. It didn’t make any sense that melting that amount of ice would cool us that much, the amount seemed far too small. So I decided to see if that made sense. Sea ice is basically unchanged, so how much land ice is melting? The analysis of GRACE satellite puts it at 500 billion (500e+9) tonnes of ice per year.
Let me go through the calculations, so y’all can identify any mistakes I’ve made. I’m working in the computer language “R”, don’t worry about that, it will all be explained. Things following a hashmark (#) are comments. Lines that start with [1] are the computer output from that instruction above it. A semicolon separates two different instructions on one line.
In the first line below, I’ve created a variable called “latent” and set it to the latent heat of melting for water at zero salinity and zero pressure:. As the comment notes, this is in units of “J/kg”, which is joules per kilogram. Note that the second instruction, the one after the semicolon, “latent” by itself, just prints out the value of the variable “latent”.
> latent = gsw_latentheat_melting(0,0) ; latent # J/kg
[1] 333427
Next, I also create a variable named “ice_mass” and set it to the 500 billion tonnes of ice melted per year.
> ice_mass = 500e9 ; ice_mass # tonnes/year
[1] 5e+11
Then I start the actual calculations. The variable “heat_required” is the calculated number of joules required to melt 500 billion tonnes of ice in one year. As the comment notes, a factor of 1000 is needed to go from J/kg in “latent” to J/tonne to match the ice_mass.
> heat_required = ice_mass * latent * 1e3 ; heat_required # J/yr. “1e3” is to convert kg to tonnes
[1] 1.67e+20
Then I calculate the total joules in one year from a constant flux of one watt per square metre. Since a watt is one joule per second, this is the same as the number of seconds in a year. I use this value a lot so I already have a variable set to this, called “secsperyear”. If I didn’t, it’s just 365.24 days * 24 hrs/day * 60 mins/hr * 60 secs/min
> onewattperm2=secsperyear ; onewattperm2 #joules/m2/year. “secsperyear” is seconds per year
[1] 31556952
Next, I’ve converted joules per square meter per year into total global joules per year by multiplying by 5.11e14, the number of square metres of the earth’s surface.
> onewattglob=surfaream*onewattperm2 ; onewattglob #joules/yr/W. “surfaream” is global surface in square metres
[1] 1.61e+22
And finally, I am able to calculate the number of watts per square metre needed to melt 500 billion tonnes of ice per year … which turns out to be a flux of about one hundredth of a watt per square metre.
> watts_needed=heat_required/onewattglob ; watts_needed #W/m2
[1] 0.0103
Now, bear in mind that as a 24/7 global average, there is about half a kilowatt of total downwelling radiation at the surface (500 W/m2, made up of about 170 W/m2 of solar radiation plus about 330 W/m2 of longwave infrared radiation).
So the 0.01 W/m2 from the melting of the ice is equivalent to a 0.002% change in downwelling radiation. TWO THOUSANDTH OF ONE PERCENT CHANGE!
So what James Hansen is saying to excuse his laughable prediction is that reducing the 500 W/m2 of downwelling radiation to 499.99 W/m2 has reduced the earth’s temperature by two thirds of degrees in thirty years …
Say what? That’s so far off it’s not even wrong!
And even if the GRACE satellite ice-melt estimate is out by a factor of ten, the result is the same. The amount of cooling from even ten times that amount of ice per year would only give us a cooling of a tenth of a W/m2, so instead of 500 W/m2 at the surface, we’d have 499.9 W/m2 … be still, my beating heart …
So as my bad number detector indicated, Jame Hansen is just running his usual con job on the unscientific public. Make a bold prediction for thirty years out, wait twenty-nine years, wave your hands and prevaricate to explain the fact that the prediction has totally cratered … and then make a new prediction, that it’s still gonna happen … but not for a hundred and fifty years.
Hanson has learned something about making predictions, though … he won’t ever have to explain the probable cratering of his new prediction, no worries about that.
By the time that prediction is testable … he’ll be dead.
Maybe that’s some of the dying that Bill Nye the Skeevy Science Guy has been saying is needed to move climate science forwards …
Sometimes I think there will come a time when Jim Hansen runs out of excuses for his plethora of piss-poor predictions … but then I consider the distance from here to the nearest star, and the size of my gorgeous ex-fiancee’s heart, and the number of grains of sand on the beach, and I realize that there is no reason to think that the source of his excuses is any less limitless than those things …
Best of life to each of you,
w.
NOTE: As ever, I request that when you comment you QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS you are discussing, so we can all be clear on your subject.
[Update] As a number of folks pointed out, the Spin article was 100% wrong. Hansen’s model didn’t predict 3° warming by now … it predicted one degree warming. I’ve changed the post to reflect this.
And I was also 100% wrong, to believe a contemporary article rather than go back to the original paper. Mea maxima culpa, my thanks to Mosh, Tamino, and others who pointed it out.
However, this makes no difference to my point. His claims about melting ice are a wild exaggeration. The amount of cooling from the melting of ice is far, far too small to have the effect, whether by now or by the end of the century.
[Update II]
I note that Tamino has a post over at his website responding to my post here, entitled “Does Willis Eschenbach Have Any Honor”.
The answer from my perspective is obviously “Yes” … however, the oh-so-honorable Tamino banned me from his website about a decade ago, which means that he is mounting a cowardly attack on me in a place where I have no way to respond.
Here at WUWT, I made a mistake, which was picked up by Tamino. I corrected the mistake, and thanked him. And obviously, Tamino is free to comment on that here.
In response, Tammy has published a pusillanimous attack on me in a place where he has censored my voice entirely and I am unable to defend myself in even the slightest manner.
I leave it to the reader to determine which of us is honorable.
w.
Math is only to be used to reinforce the green blob narrative, Willis. Bad boy!
Such as 2018 moved to 2168 is actually 150 years NOT 50 years.
But even that is in keeping with the standard fudge factor of three that applies to ALL climate prognostications.
But as usual, misteaks always lead to new questions, as to which of the fake news stories is the actual real fake news.
So please enlighten us Willis; which is the correct fake news, the 50 year number or the 2168 Date.
I’ve even been known to cast errata in concrete myself.
G & g
Fake like those “misteaks” … ? Georgie must have been hungry dreaming of steaks for dinner!
‘the 30,000 years of history since our species emerged’ – ummm I think we have been around a bit longer than that and that was well known in 1988. Just last week it was confirmed humans had been in Australia for some 65,000 years.
Then again, this sort of ‘error’ is par for the course for the Hansonite fringe dwellers. Maybe its only the last 30,000 years isnce they emerged and invented shamanism and monsters from the black lagoon and evil spirits in the sky etc. and all the ‘fringe benefits’ that proponents of such crap could extract.
Yeah KK,
Is it ironic that the 65,000 year date is from a dig almost within sight of the very large and important Jabiluka uranium deposit, whose discovery I witnessed on site. It started up and shut down again some 20 years ago.
Pressure from local original Australians was part of the reason, if not most. My then employer worked the Ranger mine a few km to the South and I pushed hard for our Board to take over Jabiluka pre-production, which they did. After I left, it changed hands as the employer was taken over.
It is possible that some more detailed work will be needed to date artefacts confidently to that 65,000 years, but that is a science matter, not a social one.
Geoff.
“this sort of ‘error’ is par for the course for the Hansonite fringe dwellers”
It’s “Spin” magazine talking. That’s Willis’ choice of source. Not much to do with Hansen.
History is written by man. How long has man been writing history?
The date remains to be confidently verified, but is surely possible.
Anatomically modern humans have been around for about 300,000 years, and left Africa at times in the past 100,000 years.
The above was a reply to Kuma re. Australia.
South River Independent July 23, 2017 at 12:17 pm
In the strict sense of written documents, human “history” is around 5000 years old. But in terms of archaeology, paleontology, geology and biology, our subspecies is, as noted, around 300,000 years old. Our genus, as currently classified, is some 2.7 million years old, but generic status is fairly arbitrary. If you combine the genera Homo and Australopithecus, then the human genus is more than five million years old.
It’s possible to speak of the history of the universe and of earth, so using the term in this sense is entirely justified. The science of geology is the history of the earth written in rocks.
I heard that Algebra is racist.
At least it is according to chancellor for the California Community Colleges, Eloy Ortiz Oakley.
Who knew ?
Lotsa stuff is racist.
Hosing feces off of sidewalks…racist.
Trying to keep terrorists from murdering your family…racist.
Wanting to be able to keep drug smugglers from waltzing across the border unchecked…racist.
Being white…racist.
And being a cis-gendered, hetero-normative, white male nationalist climageddon-denying free-market-loving job-having anti-delusionalist not-stoned-out-at-all-times Trump voter?
I think you oughta be able to guess…you are and always have been a responsible-for-every-single-bad-thing-ever-invented transhomoislamophobic RACIST!
I don’t know if the maths is right, but it misses the point.
This is a shift away from “extreme weather” because that didn’t really work out, and that was a shift from “it’s going to get really, really hot” because that didn’t work out very well either.
And sea-level scare stories are much, much better because who can tell whether they are true or not? We can all tell whether it’s much hotter much more often that it used to be and we call tell whether it keeps flooding or droughting (should be a word!), but how can I tell if the sea is rising ever so slightly? I can’t so I have to rely on the scientists to tell me.
Between “it’s going to get really, really hot” and “extreme weather”, didn’t we have the Polar Bear scam for a number of years and then we had asthma with the chill’un.
Don’t forget the bee scams. Must not forget the demise of the bees. No pollination, oh, oh, we all starve.
but how can I tell if the sea is rising ever so slightly?
======================
Sea levels are not rising, they are oscillating as can been seen from nautical charts 2-3 hundred years ago. Rocks awash at low tide are still awash 2-3 hundred years later. If seas were rising, these rocks would now be covered at low tide.
Get a British Admiralty chart for your area.($40 new). A rock awash can be recognized as a “:+:” symbol. It was probably last surveyed 200+ years ago. Check the rocks awash at the sea shore in your area at low, low tide (“0” tide). They will still be awash today. The change is so small as to be unnoticeable. If you don’t have a local sea shore to check, why are you even concerned?
Intergovernmental Manuals and Guides 14
Oceanographic
Commission
MANUAL ON SEA LEVEL
MEASUREMENT AND INTERPRETATION
Volume I – Basic Procedures
2.7 LONG-TERM TRENDS
The combination of sea level changes measured by different techniques shows a relatively
rapid rise of sea level from 20,000 years ago, gradually slowing down 8,000 years ago when levels were some 15 metres below those of today. The increase then proceeded more
gradually until present levels were reached some 4,000 years ago. Since that time the
changes have consisted of oscillations of small amplitude.
http://www.psmsl.org/train_and_info/training/manuals/ioc_14i.pdf
No one measures sea level to the millimeter. They take two numbers with an error of several inches 20 years apart, then get the difference and divide by 20. However, the error is still several inches, and thus, there is zero detectable sea level rise in the past 20 years. If you have a tide gauge, the latency response and float weight is dampening the signal, and as such is not sea level. Sea level has no actual meaning. There are tides, waves, chop, swell, and foam. Sea level is a concept that a probabilistic thing is an actual high precision thing. Light pointing to the position of an electron in orbit in an atom.
Donald Kasper July 22, 2017 at 12:50 pm
Thanks, Donald, but man, you couldn’t possibly be more wrong.
The modern SEAFRAME tidal measuring stations, in place in the South Pacific for over twenty years now, use a “stilling well” and an acoustic sounder to measure the actual sea level every six minutes to an accuracy of ± one mm.
Like I said … you’re not just wrong. You are on another planet.
Please do a google search before you post. It will save you much grief.
w.
if donald had said global sea level he would have been correct.
Willis, does a sea level measurement every six minutes consider tides?
OK, Willis, I’ll bite. How many such stations are in use around the world, and what percentage of global sea surface do they cover?
IIRC Willy Soon has a long youtube video pointing out the many difficulties in determining *global* sea level rise.
Should Donald Kasper’s “No one” be amended to “almost no one” or “not enough stations to be statistically significant”?
Are you comfortable with the claim that levels can be measured to the millimeter? If so, why?
That last line should read, “Are you comfortable with the claim that levels can be measured *globally* to the millimeter? If so, why?
Here’s a schematic of an (old-fashioned) tide gauge:
http://www.sealevel.info/tide_gauge_schematic.html
The stilling well averages out the waves, but not the tides. There are no waves, chop, swell or foam in a stilling well.
As long as you don’t let the pipe fill up with mud, or let the hole near the bottom get plugged, and as long as you keep the instrument running which measures the water level in the pipe, there’s not much that can go wrong. Tide gauges are simple, elegant, precise, and reliable.
19th century gauges used a tide stick, with a human observer reading it on a schedule. That actually worked quite well, because the exact time of high, low & mean tide can be worked out in advance. So we have 150-year-old and even 200-year-old .measurement records which are quite precise and perfectly reliable.
Note that even in the 19th century they had strong incentives to not botch or fudge their readings, because the measurement sites were usually near channels and harbors, and if they didn’t know the correct water levels and accurately predict the tides, ships might run aground!
I trust 19th century tide gauge measurements, done by hand with a tide stick, more than I trust 21st century satellite altimetry, for sea-level measurement.
In the early 20th century they got strip-chart recorders connected to floats, as shown in that diagram, so observers didn’t have to go out in the rain at oh-dark-thirty with a lantern, to read the tide gauges.
Modern gauges use better instrumentation, but the basic operating principle is the same: they just measure the water level in a stilling well.
It really doesn’t matter very much whether you have a human being reading a tide stick on a schedule synchronized with the tides, or a float attached to a stripchart recorder, or an acoustical sounder phoning home its readings 10x per hour. You get pretty much the same numbers for MSL, HWL, LWL, etc. It is very easy to tell that the system for reading the water level doesn’t bias the data: just keep an old-fashioned tide stick in the well, and check it against your stripchart recorder or acoustic sounder readings, for consistency.
One other detail is worth mentioning: The tide gauge locations — and, most importantly, their elevations — are precisely referenced via surveying techniques to nearby geodetic markers. So if your tide gauge gets blown away in a storm, or even if it has been gone for years, in most cases when a new gauge is installed you can still have confidence that its measurements are consistent with the old instrument.
The contrasts with temperature measurements and satellite altimetry are pretty obvious:
With temperatures you never know when the minimum and maximum will be reached, so even if you used a min-max thermometer your time-of-observation (“TOBS“) could introduce a bias (“correction” of which is an opportunity for introducing other biases). That’s not a problem for sea-level measurement with tide gauges.
With temperatures, the surroundings can greatly influence the readings. That’s generally not a problem for sea-level measurement with tide gauges (though channel silting and dredging can sometimes have an effect on some locations, especially on tidal range).
With temperature measurements, changes in instrumentation, or even in the paint used on the Stevenson Screen, can change your readings. Analogous issues affect satellite altimeters, too, as is obvious by the differences between the measurements from different satellites. But it’s not a significant problem for sea-level measurement with tide gauges.
Also, unlike tide gauges, which are referenced to stable benchmarks, there’s no trustworthy reference frame in space, to determine the locations of the satellites with precision. NASA is aware of this problem. In 2011 NASA proposed (and re-proposed in 2014 / 2015) a new mission called the Geodetic Reference Antenna in SPace (GRASP). The proposal is discussed here, and its implications for measuring sea-level are discussed here. But, so far, the mission has not flown.
Satellite measurements are affected/distorted by mid-ocean sea surface temperature changes, and consequent local steric changes, which don’t affect the coasts.
The longest tide-gauge measurement records are about 200 years long (with a few gaps)! The longest satellite measurement records are about ten years, and the combined record from all satellites is less than 25 years, and the measurements are often inconsistent from one satellite to another:
http://sealevel.info/MSL_Serie_ALL_Global_IB_RWT_NoGIA_Adjust_2016-05-24.png
With temperatures, researchers often go back and “homogenize” (revise) the old data, to “correct” biases that they believe might have distorted the readings. The same thing happens with satellite altimetry data. But it doesn’t happen with sea-level measurement by a tide gauge.
Unlike tide-gauge measurements (but very much like temperature indices), satellite altimetry measurements are subject to sometimes-drastic error and revision, in the post-processing of their data (h/t Steve Case):
http://www.sealevel.info/U_CO_SLR_rel2_vs_rel1p2_SteveCase.png
http://www.sealevel.info/2061wtl.jpg
Those are graphs of the same satellite altimetry data, processed differently. Do you see how much the changes in processing changed the reported trend? In the case of Envisat (the last graph), revisions/corrections which were made up to a decade later tripled the reported trend.
Oops, left out the image link, for the tide gauge “schematic” — sorry!
http://www.sealevel.info/tide_gauge_diagram_01.jpg
Curious George July 22, 2017 at 3:56 pm
It measures whatever the sea height is at that moment. The removal of the tidal components is essential for determining the underlying sea level, but it is done mathematically afterwards. This is why we need fifty years or so of data to get an accurate answer.
w.
Someone said there was sea level rise but that tectonic rebound was negating the effect. Sounds good to me. And the shore at the north end of Lake Michigan is rebounding at a rate of 1 inch per century. Rebound from glaciers. My head hurts!
effinayright July 22, 2017 at 4:55 pm
Thanks for biting, Effing. SEAFRAME stations are in place across the Pacific, in something like twenty sites. However, they are very important sites, as they have a co-located GPS. So they can give extremely accurate data.
Around the world, the accuracy is less … but still generally good.
Indeed, there are many.
Nope. He was clueless. These SEAFRAME stations have contributed greatly to our understanding of sea levels in the Pacific … which is a BIG part of the planet.
In addition, the newer NOAA stations use the same technology to take mm-accurate measurements every six minutes. There’s a good discussion of these issues here here.
Finally, remember, Donald’s claim was that to get mm accuracy “They take two numbers with an error of several inches 20 years apart, then get the difference and divide by 20.” … NOT.
That question is a bit more complex than it seems. Can we measure sea level from a satellite to the nearest mm? Yes, with repeated passes, but we are operating at the outer fringes of reliability. To start with, we have to measure the distance to one part per billion … and that is tough even on a good day with a following wind.
The problem, however, is generally not in the instantaneous measurements. As with the MSU satellite data, the problem is unknown slow drift of both the instruments and the satellite. This makes the trends suspect.
However, this doesn’t obviate the use of such data. For example, slow drift doesn’t affect say the comparison of how high the sea surface is at point X versus point Y today.
Regards,
w.
If sea level is global then one sea level gauge is enough.
Jimmy Haigh wrote, “If sea level is global then one sea level gauge is enough.”
Sea-level trends can be measured at various places. At at least 3/4 of those places, sea-level is rising. If you average those trends you get something which could be called something like, “globally averaged mean sea-level trend.”
Since the average is (slightly) rising, you could also call it “globally averaged mean sea-level rise.”
That’s kind of a mouthful, so it tends to get shortened to something like, “global sea-level rise,” or “GMSL rise,” or “GMSLR,” or “sea-level rise,” or even just “SLR.”
It doesn’t mean sea-level is global, it means the average is global.
It is nice to see Willis mostly agreeing with Donald Kasper.
We don’t live in a world of averages, it is a world of dynamic equilibrium.
Actual sea level measurement variation should look something like this:
If we can raise the sea level a little bit we will have a green Nile Valley again! Maybe?
We don’t have to raise sea-level for that, Steve. CO2 is especially beneficial to plants when water is in short supply, so the planet is greening, especially in arid regions:
1. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html
2. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
3. https://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2017/04/27/us-drought-record-low/100971018/
“We can all tell whether it’s much hotter much more often that it used to be ”
Er, no. You cannot tell if it is getting warmer this way because we have weather. Some of the hottest spells in my lifetime were in the late 1970s, which was the coldest of the cooling phase. Cold snaps can also occur during warm phases. It’s weather. A given summer might appear to have been hotter just because, that summer, you might have had a job that had you outside more than usual, or traveling more than usual, etc. Nope, the temperature changes of the last 70 years are not changes we can detect from overt experience.
higley7,
While I can readily agree that “the temperature changes of the last 70 years are not changes we can detect from overt experience”, I am extremely reluctant to agree that average global surface temperatures could rise something like 3C and “we” would not be able to detect it had occurred.
Willis and Phoenix44,
You’re both on to Phil. We all know that alarmists like to predict well out into the future (of course Phil screwed up in ’88 by calling out 2018). But I think Phil is going to count on another of nature’s phenomena to cover for what Phoenix44 postulates about sea level rise – Phil is going to count on subsidence to appear to be sea level rising as follows: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2616714/Forget-global-warming-groundwater-extraction-causing-megacities-SINK-beneath-sea-level.html#ixzz30SUGdrxy
– AND – http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27202192 (sorry about referencing the BBC…)
“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” Abraham Lincoln
Bottom line: you can fool a hell of a lot of people, especially when the MSM are so willing.
Clay Sanborn July 22, 2017 at 12:28 pm
Er … um … who is Phil?
In mystery,
w.
Well, there is the recently retired directer of the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia U; Phil Jones, and one suspects a conflation of prominent names in the CAGW campaign may have occurred . . perhaps because I am myself very bad with names, so to speak . .
” “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” ”
And the usually unstated corollary
If you’re caught trying to fool people then everything you’ve said previously or will say in the future is subject to scepticism
Willis,
I had a 67 Year old brain fart; I was thinking Hansen’s first name was Phil. I was talking about James Hansen. So sorry. After following WUWT since early 2007, I am familiar with the names of many alarmists and many skeptics. As JohnKnight correctly deduced, my brain cross-wired on “Phil” of Jones fame. James, Phil, Mike…they’re all one dementianal to me.
BTW – I love reading all your entries Willis. I’ve met only a few true characters in my life, and while I have not met you, I am confident you are another. That’s a compliment BTW, in the vein of Hemmingway.
Clay S.
“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” Lincoln. Pogo’s corollary: “But if you can do it just once, it lasts for four years.” My corollary: “Or, in Obama’s case, if you can do it twice, it lasts for eight years.”
Shouldn’t that be: “If you fool enough of the people then it lasts for 4 years” for Pogo’s corollary?
This is the point in State of Fear where they start manufacturing disasters …
Thanks, great book, probably the best I ever read.
I remember the scenario you mentioned and thought it was an exaggeration at the time, boy was I wrong.
5×10^21 J/K is the heat capacity of the air of the atmosphere (“specific” is used for per unit of mass).
333 J/g is required to melt ice so the equivalent amount of ice melting is 1.5×10^19 g/K.
There is about 1.5×10^24 g of ocean so an extra 1.5×10^19 g more is an increase of 10^-5 of volume. Half the volume is above 3000 m so as a rough guess, we get 3000 m x 10^-5 as the sea level rise equivalent to land ice melting instead of the atmosphere warming 1 degree C, which equals 30 cm or 10 mm per year since 1988.
Hansen could claim 1/3 of a degree off because of it but how much of that 3 mm per year was thermal expansion (and how much of it was real)?
4.13 x 10^17 joules / KM^3. What does that number represent? That is the energy it takes to convert one cubic kilometer of continental ice from -30 °C to water at 4 °C. Willis seems to have missed that Continental Ice Sheets are quite cold.
Useful information:
heat of fusion of water = 334 J/g
heat of vaporization of water = 2257 J/g
specific heat of ice = 2.09 J/g•°C
specific heat of water = 4.18 J/g•°C
Step 1: Heat required to raise the temperature of ice from -30 °C to 0 °C (for temp see average profile temp Antarctica) http://www.pnas.org/content/99/12/7844.full
Use the formula q = mcΔT Per Kg 1000 x 2.09 x 30 = 62,700 Joules
Step 2: Heat required to convert 0 °C ice to 0 °C water
q = m•ΔHf Per Kg 1000 x 334 = 334,000 Joules
Step 3: Heat required to raise the temperature of 0 °C water to 4 °C water
q = mcΔT per Kg 1000 x 4.18 x 4 = 16,720 Joules
Total -30 oC ice to +4 oC water per Kg = 413,420 Joules / KG
Where
q = heat energy
m = mass
c = specific heat
ΔT = change in temperature
ΔHf = heat of fusion
One metric tonne of water has a volume of one cubic meter (1 tonne water(1,000 KG = 1 m³)
One gigatonne of water has a volume of one billion cubic meters, or one cubic kilometer.(1 Gt water = 1 km³) Of course, one gigatonne of ice has a greater volume than one gigatonne of water. But it will still have a volume of 1 km³ when it melts.
413420 Joules/KG x 1000 KG/t x 1,000,000,000 t/KM^3 = 4.1342E+17 Joules / KM^3
But you say ‘DD’ how does this compare to the well known ‘Hiroshima bomb’ measurement.
By today’s standards the two bombs dropped on a Japan were small — equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT in the case of the Hiroshima bomb and 20,000 tons in the case of the Nagasaki bomb. (Encyclopedia Americana. Danbury, CT: Grolier, 1995: 532.)
In international standard units (SI), one ton of TNT is equal to 4.184E+09 joule (J)
Hiroshima bomb TNT 15000 x TNT to Joules 4.18E+09 = Joules total 6.276E+13 =>
or 1 KM^3 of ice melt (4.1342E+17 / 6.276E+13) = # HiroBmb per Km^3 = 6587
That is correct. Place one Hiroshima bomb in a grid every 54 meters apart to melt the ice.
How compare to the old scare story about all that ‘Ocean Heat Content Hidden Heat’? Where Ocean heat content was increased by 2.60 X 10E23 Joules since 1970.
So 2.60 X 10E23 Joules / 4.1342 x 10E17 Joules/KM^3 = 628,930 KM^3
Well that sounds like a lot of ice, but Antarctica has between 26 and 30 million and Greenland has 2.5 million of those KM^3, so in reality it works out to 628,930 / 30,000,000 = 2.1% of the total. So did it melt the ice or heat the deep ocean?
DD More July 24, 2017 at 10:15 am
I do love how folks think they know what goes on in my mind … in fact, I left out the additional ice warming calculations deliberately and after some thought.
First, I had no information on the average temperature of the glaciers scattered around the world.
Second, while I can estimate the average temperature of the Greenland Ice Cap (about -30°C, it’s high altitude), the average temperature of the Ice Cap is NEVER above freezing any month of the year …
Third, Hansens claim was not that it was the warming and melting of the ice that would cool the planet. He said it was the melting of the ice that did it.
Fourth, it’s a difference that makes no difference. Consider: suppose somehow I could get the average temperature of the ice surface worldwide, glaciers, ice sheets, ice caps. Let’s say it’s -15°C. It’s not -30°C, only the high ice caps are that cold.
Now from above, without including ice warming, the equivalent change in downwelling radiation is 0.01 W/m2.
And if we include ice warming? It would be equivalent to a change in downwelling radiation of 0.011 W/m2 … be still my beating heart, what an enormous change you’ve made, DD …
DD, next time instead of making accusations about what I’ve missed, perhaps you might ASK ME IF I HAD CONSIDERED ICE WARMING.
Then I could have just answered that I had considered it, and discussed why I hadn’t included it, and you wouldn’t look like a jerk …
w.
I believe that most of the ice that has ‘melted’ wasn’t because of a warmer atmosphere. Rather, it was because the rate of accretion (from snow, etc) was less than the rate of ice loss through calving, followed by melting because sea water tends to be warmer than ice.
While the heat for water temperature also comes from the sun, I expect that’s a much slower process than heating the atmosphere..
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
It is unfair to introduce facts in a good story. 🙂
Everyone knows that ice cools a drink, and few can keep up with all those big numbers.
It is the same with the heat going in the oceans. If you convert it to Watt/m2 it is hardly detectable.
And since the heat to melt the floating ice comes out of that warmer ocean water (9/10 0r 10/11 underwater) the ocean water cools, and shrinks so the sea level will go down if it melts the floating ice.
How is the Greening of Greenland going these days Svend; or did they let you go back to some warmer place ?
In any case it’s good to see your shingle post here again.
George
Assimilate!! Assimilate!! Assimilate! Resistance is futile! Is it time for the Daleks to show up yet? Well, that was fun.
I think I told my mother when I was in high school (before most of you children were born) that we were heading for an ice age, after suffering through three prolonged, beastly central Midwestern winters that were so cold the car doors froze shut. Of course, that prediction by me was refuted the following winter by a warm Thanksgiving, a mild, if snowy Christmas, average snowfall in January, and a beautiful spring with lots of rain at just the right time. Bumper crops of corn, soybeans and wheat every year, too.
It’s just weather. We have to live with it. But I do like Thornton Wilder’s take on it in the first act of ‘The Skin of Our Teeth’. The mammoths are crossing the river! Break up the furniture and throw it on the fire!
I think a lot of men of science have a little bit of HG Wells in them – they love to speculate – often wild, dramatic science fiction scenarios – and most often in the not-quite distant future. This is where sci-fi pop culture comes from. But because this is coming from academia – or more properly, ‘science’ – it’s taken seriously by those who set policy.
All opportunistic agendas aside, I think this where all these repetitive, generational scares come from – or at least, this is the ‘why’ of the forms they take – the kernel of the idea that sprouts all the rest – scientists just spit-balling about the future.
Then the propaganda machine mutates that kernel into Godzilla and… well, you got AGW.
And after AGW eventually runs its course, there will be something else – it will start the same way, all the exploitive types will pick it up and run with it, and the pattern will repeat again. And every now and then, one of these cultural paranoias will metastasize to the point where acting on it actually threatens the larger society.
Every politician knows not to answer a journalist’s hypothetical question. For a good reason.
– Niels Bohr
Politicians know that. They don’t do it because as soon are your opponents can say how many wrong predictions you made, your political career is all but over. As nearly every prediction we make about the future is likely to be wrong.
Willis, thank you. I dare to predict Dr. Hansen’s reaction: What Mr. (not Dr.) Eschenbach wrote has not been peer-reviewed, and therefore it is a worthless drivel, even though factually correct.
When you realize that Hansen’s work was peer reviewed, what does that say about peer review?
That peer review if worse than drivel.
It (peer review) goes peer shaped …
This is what Phil Jones had to say about his peer reviews:
«I do many of my reviews on travel. I have a feel for whether something is wrong – call it intuition. If analyses don’t seem right, look right or feel right, I say so. Some of my reviews for CC [the Journal Climatic Change] could be called into question!» – UEA’s renowned Director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), Phil Jones
http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/2486.txt
Practically all of Hansen’s work was pal reviewed!
That the reviewers are his peers?
Willis’s work here is reviewed in two distinct ways. Firstly, thousands of visitors to this blog peer at it. And secondly, it’s reviewed by Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. This adds up to a truly peerless peer review system.
I’m always happy to be reviewed by Lord Monckton, come for the humor, stay for the divine madness. Toss Viscount Matt Ridley in with the reviewers, one of the world’s most insightful humans … but wouldn’t that make it a peerful peer review system?
w.
I think most people don’t understand latent heat, so Hansen’s on a safe bet here. Ask 100 people what happens to water when ice melts and most will say it gets warmer (maybe I’m wrong and my estimation of humanity is too low). Offer the same 100 a G&T with ice cubes each and they’ll get it I suppose…
Ice melts when SOMETHING ELSE gives up heat. Latent heat doesn’t warm up anything. The ice can’t melt before something else supplies that latent heat to cause a phase change.
G
This is incredible. He would have flunked my physics class. Well, at least the part about heat, no telling what would have happened when we got to levers. Did he have any chemistry?
Never mind, it is obvious, he keeps the freezer door open to cool his house.
“I’ve created a variable called “latent” and set it to the latent heat of melting for water at zero salinity and zero pressure:. ”
Do you mean zero pressure(absolute) or zero pressure(Gauge)?
Ocean pressure only, not ocean plus air.
w.
A separate and similar calculation is, to hold back all that warming (which Hansen claims is what has happened), will take ‘x’ tons of ice melt per year.
This calculation will give a similarly ridiculous figure. If indeed that amount of ice has been permanently melted, then the sea level rise to go with it is easily calculated. This will provide an independent path to proof: has the SLR been equal to the amount of water he claims has to be melted to ‘hold back’ the temperature that much for 30 years?
I keep a little crib sheet of that sort of conversion factors, here:
http://www.sealevel.info/conversion_factors.html
One of the factoids there is that the addition of 362 Gt (metric gigatonnes) of meltwater to the oceans would raise sea-level by one millimeter.
At the coasts, global sea-level rise is averaging just under +1.5 mm/year. So 500 Gt/yr is at least in the ballpark. My guess is that it’s probably a bit high, but not ridiculously so.
I agree with tty. Antarctica grounded ice accumulation and loss are very, very close to being in perfect balance. Whether Antarctica is actually gaining or losing ice mass is unknown.
This NASA study reported that the Antarctic ice sheets are gaining rather than losing, mass:
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses
Based on CryoSat, McMillan (2014) found Antarctica is losing 79 to 241 Gt/yr of ice, though that was based on only 3 years of data.
Based on GRACE, Shepherd (2012) concluded that Antarctica ice mass change since 1992 has averaged -71 +/- 83 Gt/yr, which means they couldn’t tell whether it’s actually gaining or losing ice mass.
Based on ICESat, Zwally (2012) found that Antarctica is gaining ice mass: +27 to +59 Gt/yr (averaged over five years), or +70 to +170 Gt/yr (averaged over 19 years).
The range from those various studies, with error bars, is from +170 Gt/yr to -241 Gt/yr, which is equivalent to just -0.47 to +0.67 mm/yr sea-level change.
That’s less than 3 inches of sea-level change per century. In other words, although we don’t know whether Antarctica is gaining or losing ice, we do know the rate, either way, is so tiny that it’s currently having a negligible effect on sea-level and on Antarctica’s total ice sheet mass.
The IPCC’s AR4 report – Table 10.7
https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-6-5.html#table-10-7
said Antarctica is contributing negatively to sea level rise for all six scenarios.
daveburton, thank you for your comments and the link to your analysis of costal SL tide guages.
So, 1.5 mm per year SL rise and ZERO acceleration and ZERO correlation with CO2. It is all very Shakspearian; ” Much ado about Nothing”.
One of the interesting things about the Zwally study article is that it exposes the desperate desire within the observers. They found ice mass gains Antarctica, yet they keep touting non representative exceptions. Clearly if you only measure increased flows of floating ice at the bottom of the glacier, without looking at the top of the glacier, you might conclude “OMG” Antarctica is losing ice. By measuring the most variable tip of the warmest, northernmost locations of the West Antarctica peninsula, as opposed to looking at the actual entirety of the glaciers and the rest of the huge continent, you might be able to make a better case for panic.
But physics (and logic) dictates that glaciers flow faster when more snow is falling on the land based glacier, therefore providing a bigger downhill push. But we almost never hear that in the more hysterical articles about sea level rise and melting ice. In this article, you can easily detect NASA’s editorial alarmist regret about their own conclusions, and some even from Zwally himself. Here are a few examples of verbiage showing that.
Zwally leads with a statement that runs exactly contrary to his ultimate conclusion: “We’re essentially in agreement with other studies that show an increase in ice discharge in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Thwaites and Pine Island region of West Antarctica,” before stating what the study actually found: “Our main disagreement is for East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica – there, we see an ice gain that exceeds the losses in the other areas.”
Toward the end of the article, Zwally throws in several gratuitous alarmist speculations, nee predictions: But it might only take a few decades for Antarctica’s growth to reverse, according to Zwally. “If the losses of the Antarctic Peninsula and parts of West Antarctica continue to increase at the same rate they’ve been increasing for the last two decades, the losses will catch up with the long-term gain in East Antarctica in 20 or 30 years—I don’t think there will be enough snowfall increase to offset these losses.” It’s not turtles all the way down, it’s weasels. This reminds me of that very funny point in the movie Napoleon Dynamite where Uncle Rico, who’s now about 35 years old, living in his van and has been practicing his football passing skills for almost 20 additional years, laments “if only I could go back to 1985 AND the coach would put me in the game, I know I could have won the game and we could have taken state.” Not only does he want one impossible thing, he wants two. But I digress. Back to the article.
The photo of a glacier running out into what looks like an ice shelf has a caption desperately stating, (again, opposite to the headline and the actual study findings): “Still, areas of the continent, like the Antarctic Peninsula photographed above, have increased their mass loss in the last decades.”
In other words, we measured mass increases, but we want to sell you on the idea of eventual mass losses.
500 billion tonnes of ice melted per year….
but Greenland gained over 600 billion tons just this year
Not nearly that much. You also have to take calving into account you know. But it seems virtually certain that Greenland will have a net positive mass balance this year.
Yeah and presumably more icebergs in the North Atlantic, a sign of global cooling.
The very definition of innumerate.
Just because Hamson made a bad prediction 30 years ago
does not mean his new climate prediction for 30 years out is wrong.
The new prediction could be the best prediction in the history of the world.
Or the worst.
But it could only be right because it was a lucky guess.
Because no one knows exactly what controls the climate.
Even Hamson.
Make enough predictions, and eventually some will be right.
Every astrologist knows that.
Just because Hamson made a bad prediction 30 years ago
does not mean his new climate prediction for 30 years out is wrong.
==============
guesses are not like a coin toss, where each toss is independent of the other, with the same odds of landing heads of tails.
In the case of “guessing” the future, some people actually are worse than others. In large part these people are called “Experts”. When “Experts” have been found to be wrong in the past, their odds of being wrong in the future are substantially increased. That is what makes them “Experts”. You can rely upon the accuracy of their predictions to help shape your own predictions.
Correct Richard, on all counts.
What Hansen wants is misplaced concreteness attributed to his predictions on the basis of his high visibility and asserted authority.
His predictions may be spot on through the range of 0-100% correct. So far, his average is 0%. When his current and possible future predictions are also proven 0% correct, readers will (possibly) see a decades-long emerging pattern, clearer than a sunspot cycle, clearer than the Pears 100% soap with which we should metaphorically wash out his mouth.
Every astrologist knows that.
============
Astrological techniques are used to predict the ocean tides with great accuracy.
You cannot predict the tides using first principles as is done in climate models, because like climate the ocean tides are chaotic. Even the IPCC recognizes this, which is why climate models make projections not predictions. And projections have no predictive value.
Heck! Even their predictions have not predictive value!
Thanks for that insight ferd, I’ll follow it up.
By the way Kepler’s day job was weather astrologer, agricultural predictions had real value.
So do prognosticators.
Especially Hansen!
Just read his bio in Wikipedia. It explains a lot.
His degrees are in physics and astronomy. He did serious research on the atmosphere of Venus. Venus is the poster child for run-a-way greenhouse effect. He has tried to use his insights gained from the research to the question of Earth climate.
It is ludicrous to compare Venus and Earth climate systems. Venus does not have our weather system, receives much greater heat from the sun, has an entirely different atmosphere, and has no oceans. The latter have a profound impact on our climate, as he has just acknowledged to explain the failure of his simple climate model. That is to say, he seems to have ignored the ocean!
It is almost certain that such interplanetary comparisons, no matter how inappropriate, were done in attempts to drum up support for his Venus research years ago. I remember this meme well. We were going to get insight into Earth by studying the other planets, at great cost, of course.
How’s that working out for you?
What a joke.
“Hansen began his career studying Venus, which was once a very Earth-like planet with plenty of life-supporting water before runaway climate change rapidly transformed it into an arid and uninhabitable sphere enveloped in an unbreathable gas.” [From NY Mag Intelligencer]
He must be much older than I am. I don’t remember any of this.
Venus having been like Earth is 99.99% science fiction.
Sheri
Your wrong!
It’s round after all and circles the same sun we do.
Seems to me Hansen early in his career was studying global cooling scenarios in the early 1970s. Or at least the models he created were. Stephen Schneider involved in this glorious study…
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/05/flashback-hansens-climate-model-says.html
Venus doesn’t have too much ice, either. If he wants to talk about ice, perhaps he should study Mars. It has lots of CO2 as well, even CO2 ice!
Mars, on a numerical basis, has more molecules of CO2 than has Earth, by an order of magnitude.
Further, because of the smaller diameter of the planet, the molecules of CO2 are more closed packed such that the chances of a photon radiated by a molecule of CO2 on Mars being absorbed by another molecule of CO2 is greater on Mars than it is on Earth.
Despite that, there appears to be no measurable GHE on Mars.
richard verney July 22, 2017 at 5:45 pm
Huh … thanks, Richard, I never knew that. It may have to do with the lack of water (clouds, evaporation, etc). For those interested the NASA Mars datasheet is here.
w.
richard verney:
You say
which is true.
And you say
which is also true.
But then you add
which is mistaken.
Mars is so cold that its CO2 atmosphere freezes on its polar winter surface, Each polar region is in summer when the other is in winter. The solid CO2 sublimes to gas in Spring but then freezes to solid on the other polar region.
CO2 molecules do not behave as greenhouse gas molecules when they are part of a frozen solid mass, but they are “more closely packed” than the gaseous CO2 molecules in the Earth’s atmosphere. And the great bulk of the CO2 molecules which form most of the atmosphere of Mars exist as frozen solid CO2 at any time.
Richard
Richard Verney says: “Despite that, there appears to be no measurable GHE on Mars.”
That doesn’t seem right to me. Mars is warmer than our Moon.
The GHE also depends on the lapse rate, which is much smaller on Mars than on Earth, so it isn’t at all surprising that CO2 has a smaller effect on Mars than on Earth (if you understand how the GHE actually works)
which was once a very Earth-like planet
===============
Climate model speculation. Highly unlikely given the 90 atmosphere’s surface pressure and the resulting lapse rate.
Venus has the same pressure as earth at 50km altitude. The additional predicted surface warming due to lapse rate is thus given as:
predicted:
h*g(venus)/Cp(CO2@500K) = 50 km * (8.9 / 1.0) C/km = 445 C warmer than earth’s surface temp.
actual:
tempo earth = 15 C
temp venus = 462 C
actual diff = 447 C
Whoops. Formatting error. My comment should have read:
I am not sure about that, but Schneider was involved in a study assessing the impact of CO2 and the impacts of aerosols.
Schneider (of GISS) in 1971 published a paper in Science in which he calculated that increasing CO2 by a factor of 8 would result in less than 2 degC warming.
At the time NASA/GISS thought that Climate Sensitivity to CO2 was low. This was not surprising given that it was at that time accepted that the Northern Hemisphere had cooled by about 0.5 degC (some assessments were 0.7degc) from the highs of the 1940s.
Thus the background was that there had been significant increase in CO2 between 1940 to 1971 yet the temperatures had fallen by about 0,5degC such that Climate Sensitivity to CO2 must be low, whereas it was thought that Climate Sensitivity to aerosols (which were causing dimming) was high.
Those “500 billion tons” are definitely on the high side. It seems likely that the Greenland Ice cap is losing about 200 billion tons per year (though not this year), but the loss from Antarctica, if any, is extremely dubious.
The raw GRACE data isn’t significantly different from zero, so in practice the ice-loss from Antarctica is equal to the GIA adjustment used, which is exceedingly uncertain, but perhaps somewhere between 50 and 150 billion tons:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5111427/
The only non-GRACE measurement is from ICESAT which resulted in a positive mass balance. Radar measurements are only slightly affected byh GIA but suffers from other uncertainties, e. g. even slight inhomogenities in snow density can strongly affect the results.
Even the Greenland figure isn’t set in stone since the GIA for central Greenland can’t be checked by measurements (no exposed rocks) and the lithosphere under Greenland is known to be inhomogenous. And as I said, no ice loss this year:
If he is using Grace, he’s sunk. But we know that….
“2018-2168” ?
Just a little error?
Very good job, Willis.
Hansen doesn’t seem to bother with doing that sort of arithmetic.
I’m reminded of the caption for this article about an interview with Prof. Freeman Dyson, America’s most illustrious living scientist: “Climatologists are no Einsteins, says his successor”
http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2013/04/climatologists_are_no_einstein.html
The prediction that Climate Change will cause stronger and more frequent extreme weather events is a central Tenet Of The Climate Faith. In Hansen’s 2009 book, “Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity” (how’s that for an alarmist title?), he claimed on p.250 that global warming would warm higher latitude oceans less than lower latitudes, because meltwater would keep the higher latitudes cool, and the increased temperature difference between high and low latitudes would cause stronger storms.
https://www.amazon.com/Storms-My-Grandchildren-Catastrophe-Humanity/dp/1608192008/
Page 250 is not part of the free preview on Amazon, but here’s Hansen on Letterman, plugging his book and making the same claim, starting at 7 minutes 25 seconds:
Hansen said that the “increasing temperature gradient [between high and low latitudes] is going to drive stronger storms” as lower latitudes warm faster than higher latitudes.
Now that just about everyone agrees that high latitudes will warm more than low latitudes (which the glass-half-empty crowd calls “polar amplification”), I’m waiting for Hansen to predict weaker storms.
And waiting. And waiting. How long do you think I’ll have to wait?
Traditionally, the brightest kids do mathematical physics, others do solid state physics or plasma physics, etc, and, finally, some do climatology.
“He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches. He who cannot teach, practices climatology”
“A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.”
I think if I was a bit brighter as a college student, I would have gone into solid state. There is just no money in theoretical cosmology, and what I am doing now is much more grounded.
“Traditionally, the brightest kids do mathematical physics, others do solid state physics or plasma physics, etc, and, finally, some do climatology.”
The ones who are not afraid to get their hands dirty do physical chemistry…and everything else.
That’s an awesome interview. Note, Will Happing is now the Presidential Science advisor. Maybe we will start to see some sanity.
Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, Prof. Will Happer is not the Presidential Science Advisor, at least not yet.
* * * CORRECTION * * *
I wrote, “… about everyone agrees that high latitudes will warm less than low latitudes…”
I meant exactly the opposite: “… about everyone agrees that high latitudes will warm more than low latitudes…”
Oh how I hate it when my typos invert my meaning! 🙁
Fixed, Dave. Like you, I hate typos, especially that kind.
w.
THANK YOU!
…and ” Still waiting for Greenhose”
In honor to John Daly.
I guess the predictions by Hansen in 1988 formed part of the basis for the early perspectives by IPCC as evident in this report of the second session of IPCC: Report of the second session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 28June1989.
“In welcoming the delegates to the UNEP (United Nations Environmental Program) Headquarters … The Executive Director of UNEP, hailed the fruitful alliance between WMO (World Meteorological Organization) and UNEP. The firm commitment of prof. Obasi, the Secretary-General of WMO, coupled with the determination of UNEP leadership, has resulted in a partnership which is helping to unify the scientific and policy-making communities of the world to lay the foundation for effective, realistic and equitable action on climate change.”
…
“The Executive director stated that the impacts of climate change and global warming would have serious consequences for humanity. In Egypt alone, global warming could flood much of the Nile Delta and Drown 70 centuries of civilization in less than one, and could inundate one fifth of the nations arable land.”
…
“It would be desirable for the Panel´s report to be ready by august 1990 for presentation to the Second World Climate Conference and to the United Nations General Assembly. It should be born in mind that both the governing council of UNEP and the executive Council of WMO expected the first report of IPCC to form the basis for international negotiations on a global convention on climate change. The report can also play a valuable guiding role for the large number of conferences, meetings and symposia on climate change being held all over the world. For all of these reasons, the report should be completed in good time.”
…
“The issuance of the report would only be the beginning of a far more arduous task. To tackle the problem of climate warming effectively, radical changes would be necessary in international relations, trade, technology transfer, and bilateral and multilateral strategies. The panel´s continued work would be the only guarantee of the concerted response to the global threat of climate change”
…
“In his opening remarks , Prof. Bolin said that the primary objective of IPCC, in making its first assessment, is to produce a document which could provide guidelines for the formulation of global policy and which would enable the nations of the world to contribute to this task”
…
“IPCC´s first report will contain the 20-page summaries for policy-makers to be produced by the working groups and an overall integrated summary of these placed in perspective. Professor Bolin suggested that the integrated summary be written by a drafting group consisting of the officers of IPCC and the chairmen of the Working Groups. He asked that this plan of his be enforced by the panel.”
…
“The panel invited interested UN organizations, regional or global intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations and private institutions that wish to to contribute in the matter, to collaborate with appropriate analyses. …. The panel invited the contribution from these organizations in order that its own work may be improved.”
…
We are now 1/3 into the century that was expected to drow 70 centuries of civilization in the Nile Deltain less than one. No doubt, IPCC was extremely biased from the very begining. Imagine the pressure to conform with the prejudice of the leaders. Imagine beeing the one saying: Hold on a moment, how do we know for sure that ….?
Willis,
You said, “Next, I’ve converted joules per square meter per year into total global joules per year by multiplying by 5.11e14, the number of square metres of the earth’s surface.”
Shouldn’t the area of Earth be divided by two, because at any instant only half of the surface is illuminated?
Clyde
Willis corrected for that by dividing the insolation by two.
Clyde, good question. Almost all insolation figures in climate science are given on a 24/7/365 average basis. So “1 W/m2” means a long-term average flux of one W/m2. As a result, there is no need to divide the values by 2. Sorry for the confusion.
w.
According to modern estimates, the surface area of the Earth is approximately 510 million square km (5.1 x 108 km2) or 196,900,000 square miles. Shouldnt the number of meters be 5.1 *10**11
Thanks, Ken. A square km contains 1e+6 square metres.
Your given surface area of 5.1e+8 sq km thus contains 5.1e+14 square metres …
w.
Warmed by a third of a degree. What is the margin of error for measuring the temperature of the earth? This is an important question. Never answered as far as I know.
Hansen vs GISTEMP…
Hansen’s scenarios…
Let us not forget, for many of those 29 years, Hansen himself was in charge of the group the calculated and serially adjusted that red line.
You get a similar result using HadCRU.
I turned off my freezer to see if the melting ice would cool it. Nope. Think Mr Hansen will pay for the spoiled food?
Nope. You did not prove him right.
Ever saw an ice cooler?
Where there is water or ice present on the surface (or in clouds) the surface temperature will always approach the dew point/frost point and the surface will radiate at that temperature. Water vapor (not CO2) delivered from the tropics is controlling the surface temperature of the ice covered Antarctic.
QUESTION: What happened to the catastrophic global warming that you predicted.
BETTER ANSWER: My dog ate it.
Hansen: “I don’t think we’re going to get four or five degrees this century, because we get a cooling effect from the melting ice,” he said last week. “But the biggest effect will be that melting ice.”
Humm, seems like it would have to get warmer to accelerate ice melt, but if ice melting cancels warming, it would slow melting and increase warming, which would accelerate melting which would… (head starting to hurt).
It’s hiding in the ocean depths, except for that part of the heat which is melting ice, therefore cooling the world, which I failed to include in my model, which nonetheless is correct.