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.
This is what Hansen predicted: http://www.realclimate.org/images/Hansen06_fig2.jpg
found here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/comment-page-2/
..
Looks like “Spin” is just spin.
Here are Hansen’s actual numbers. Anybody who wants to debate Hansen’s 1988 predictions should bookmark and/or save these pages.
Temperature predictions (1951 to 1980 baseline, actual observations cut-off as of 1984 so 1985-on is predicted).
http://www.realclimate.org/data/scen_ABC_temp.data
Effective forcings (even Scenario B was +2.47 W/m2 increase from 1958, ridiculous in that he must have calculated it wrong going by the GHG assumptions, ie. climate scientists are always bad at math as in they moved into climate science from other disciplines because their math grades were so bad).
http://www.realclimate.org/data/H88_scenarios_eff.dat
GHG assumptions (Scenario A is actually very close to the actual observations but CH4 is a little high in that Scenario)
http://www.realclimate.org/data/H88_scenarios.dat
PPM in 2015 for each scenario in the 1988 paper:
A: 410 ppm
B: 406 ppm
C: 367 ppm
That would suggest obs should lie between scenarios B and C, closer to B.
Steve McIntyre has a slightly different take, recommending using scenario B.
To the extent that “somewhere between A and B” represents Hansen’s GHG forecast, in that GHG increases appear to have been closer to B than “somewhere between A and B”, it is more reasonable to use B to assess the model performance.
https://climateaudit.org/2008/01/24/hansen-1988-details-of-forcing-projections/
Another factor to consider is that Hansen’s model has a climate sensitivity of 4.2 per doubling CO2 – a bit higher than the mean estimate since 1990.
The exact trajectory of the ‘forcings’ in the model (including CH4, aerosols etc) could not be predicted past 1988, so a direct comparison with what actually happened is quite tricky.
The realclimate figures for Hansen 1988 scenarios are different from the ones I found:
2015 CO2 concentration:
A: 403 ppm
B: 399 ppm
C: 368 ppm
Observed 2015 CO2 concentration is 399.4 ppm.
This dovetails with McIntyre’s take.
Probably worth noting, too, that el Ninos bump up CO2 levels, so 2016 observed level is probably not a good reflection of the 88 model scenarios. 2015 may also be bumped up slightly, as el Nino developed early in that year and persisted throughout, peaking at the end of the year (temp data has a lag of a few months to el Nino).
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
In Hansens’s paper you can see that their three scenarios were not for three different levels of CO2 to be reached by some target date. They were three different emission scenarios.
Their “worst” (business-as-usual) “scenario A” assumed 1.5% annual growth rate of emissions, and calculated the CO2 level which they thought would result from that.
1.5% growth for 26 years (1988 to 2014) = 47% growth.
In fact, carbon emissions have increased by 66% over that time, an average annual emission growth rate of 1.97%, which is well above Hansen’s Scenario A “worst case.”
The reason CO2 levels have not risen as he predicted is that he didn’t anticipate the extent to which negative feedbacks have curbed the growth in CO2 levels.
His paper predicted that his Scenario A would cause 0.5 °C warming per decade, or 1.5 °C in thirty years.. (Note that the Spin magazine article apparently got it wrong: 5 °F = 2.78 °C, which is nearly twice what his paper actually predicted.)
The actual increase was about 0.6 °C according to the WoodForTrees temperature index:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/plot/wti/trend
Or about 0.5 °C according to the satellites:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/plot/uah6/trend/offset:0.6/plot/uah6/offset:0.6/plot/rss/trend
Or 1.0 °C to 1.3 °C according to GISS:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/plot/gistemp-dts/trend/offset:0.6/plot/gistemp-dts/offset:0.6/plot/gistemp/trend
Or about 0.8 °C according to the HADCRUT:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/plot/hadcrut3vgl/trend/offset:0.6/plot/hadcrut3vgl/offset:0.6/plot/hadcrut4gl/trend
Perhaps Spin Magazine got it right, but gave the figure in Fahrenheit rather than degrees C?
In fact, carbon emissions have increased by 66% over that time
Atmospheric CO2 increase is about half that of emissions, so not directly comparable. Proper comparison is with concentration increase.
Yes, they are scenarios for a range of emissions – alluded to in my first post. CO2 is the easiest data to get hold of, and what many people are talking about here in relation to the paper.
Re CO2 – the scenario begins with 1981 (not 1988) CO2 data and then increases by 1.5% growth of the annual increment thereafter. From Appendix B on trace gas scenarios from the paper;
” Specifically in scenario A CO2 increases as observed by Keeling for the interval 1958 to 1981, and subsequently with 1.5% growth of the annual increment.”
Dunno what the initial increment is, though.
Barry, I think your take is incorrect; ( Barry says “Proper comparison is with concentration increase”)
The reason it is incorrect is Hansen clearly underestimate ( by a wide margin) the ability of earth’s system to uptake CO2. This underestimation had a greatly impacted the alarmist perspective regarding CAGW, and so should not be ignored. The entire equation is important, and Hansen was simply wrong.
“The reason it is incorrect is Hansen clearly underestimate ( by a wide margin) the ability of earth’s system to uptake CO2”
Hansen wasn’t estimating the ability to uptake at all. It wasn’t part of his study or the operation of the model. No data on measured emissions is cited, for the good reason that in 1988 there wasn’t much. In particular, CO2 emission due to land use change was really not documented globally until Houghton in 1995. Hansen’s measure of emission was the observed increment in gas concentration. For CH4 etc, which he also describes as emissions, that is still the only actual measure.
I showed above (it’s here) the section in Appendix B where he is actually setting out how he calculated his emissions. Barry quotes from it. Steve McIntyre paraphrases it in this post thus:
The same CA post links to the numerical data posted at CA.
Nick Stokes wrote, “Hansen wasn’t estimating the ability to uptake at all. It wasn’t part of his study or the operation of the model..”
Oh, but he/they most definitely were. It was built-into their assumption, that if emissions went up 1.5% per year, then CO2 levels would also go up 1.5% per year. That assumption was completely wrong.
NIck continued, “Hansen’s measure of emission was the observed increment in gas concentration.”
Which was a huge error.
Note that without the erroneous assumption that CO2 concentration would rise as much as emissions rise, the case for curbing CO2 emissions is damaged. Very obviously, if increased emissions cause CO2 levels to increase much less than he thought, then the value or importance of reducing those emissions must necessarily also be much less than he thought.
Huge error? Scenario B, which Hansen said in the paper was most plausible, has a very close match to CO2 concentrations of the last few years.
The model was based on concentration, not emissions. Have you understood that yet?
If not, I’d be curious to know how you interpret this sentence from the trace gas scenarios, appendix B.
“Specifically in scenario A CO2 increases as observed by Keeling for the interval 1958 to 1981, and subsequently with 1.5% growth of the annual increment.”
Assuming you’re familiar with Keeling’s data (atmospheric concentration CO2), how do you interpret this to mean emissions?
daveburton
“It was built-into their assumption, that if emissions went up 1.5% per year, then CO2 levels would also go up 1.5% per year.”
There was no such assumption. There was no quantification of CO2 emissions at all in the study, other than via concentration. No assumption is needed, and none was available, due to lack of information. You couldn’t just look up CDIAC on the web in 1988. The situation of CO2 was the same as CH4 (or N2O) now; there is no direct measure of emissions, only concentration. It’s hard to even identify the sources of CH4 or N2O, let alone quantify. But we can measure the increases in concentration, then and now. Yet when Hansen speaks of a 1.5% increase, he is talking about all trace gases.
“Note that without the erroneous assumption that CO2 concentration would rise as much as emissions rise”
Again, there was no error. As Barry noted, scenario B was very close to observed CO2 concentration till now. The question of linking CO2 emission rate to CO2 concentration is a separate one, to be resolved separately. A GCM works from a concentrations scenario.
How Barry and Nick keep bypassing Hansen’s clear emissions assumptions is astounding. He did BOTH emmision estimates and GHG ppm estimates. You cannot get to an future estimated PPM number sans emmission estimates, and actual emmisions were, as daveburton quoted from Hansen, considerably higher then Hansen stated in his worst case senario.
“He did BOTH emmision estimates and GHG ppm estimates.”
Where? Quote them please. He cited absolutely no data on emissions, other than concentration. As Barry says, his scenario in terms of concentration is quite clear. Here it is again, just for Scen A:
Note that there he does use manufacture rates for CFCs, and quotes his source. He also gives a figure for lifetime, as you have to do to relate emission flux rate to concentration. For CO2 (and CH4) he makes no assumption about flux or lifetime. He simply assumes 1.5% increase in concentration increment, using Keeling (concentration) data. That is all he needs, and Steve Mc has the numbers.
He did BOTH emmision estimates and GHG ppm estimates
The confusion is understandable. The term “emissions” appears quite a few times. You’re not the first to take that literally.
Emission estimates are usually done in gigatonnes (Gt). There’s nothing like that in the paper. There is not one single numerical value for the then current or past emissions, while there are numerical values for CO2 in ppm, past and present (in 1988).
Where scenarios are expressed in percentage growth rate “emissions” in the main body of the paper, these are exactly the concentration growth rate values used in the appendix specifying the model scenarios. If Hansen et al were talking about actual emissions scenarios, those values would not be equivalent (concentration growth rate is a fraction of emissions growth rate), and you’d expect to see discussion on the relationship between the two.
Basically, the use of the term ’emissions’ in this 30 year-old paper is equivalent to growth in atmospheric concentration. 30 years later it’s confusing, unfortunately, but not indecipherable.
Steve McIntyre understands it well:
CO2 Projections
One idiosyncrasy that you have to watch in Hansen’s descriptions is that he typically talks about growth rates for the increment , rather than growth rates expressed in terms of the quantity. Thus a 1.5% growth rate in the CO2 increment yields a much lower growth rate than a 1.5% growth rate (as an unwary reader might interpret). For CO2, he uses Keeling values to 1981, then:
A: 1.5% growth of annual increment after 1981. Figure B2 shows 15.6 ppmv in 1980s and opening increment set at 1.56 ppmv accordingly.
B: 1.5% increment growth rate to 1990;1% to 2000, 0.5% to 2010 and 0 after 2010. Thus constant 1.9 ppmv increase after 2010.
C: equals A, B through 1985, then 1.5 ppmv increase through 2000; then fixed at 368
“Keeling values” – all model scenario estimates are about concentration.
Finally, all future trace gas values in the paper are related to modeled ‘forcing.’ That is a function of atmospheric content. They couldn’t possibly have done a forcing estimate from emissions (apart from that being a poor metric), because, as Nick points out, they didn’t have emissions estimates at that time.
Hansen’s predictions were for what would happen to both CO2 levels and temperature if we behaved as described in his three scenarios, where A represented his highest emission scenario, and C was his lowest emission scenario.
Hansen’s predictions were way off. CO2 emissions have soared, above even his scenario A. Yet CO2 levels are slightly below his scenario A (closer to B than A, though CO2 levels in his A & B scenarios are about the same for 2017), and actual temperature increases have been nowhere near the eye-popping 0.5 °C/decade that he predicted for his scenario A.
Hansen has made a career of being spectacularly wrong. Remember when he predicted that global warming would warm higher latitude oceans less than lower latitudes (because he thought cold meltwater would keep the higher latitudes cool), and the increased temperature difference between high and low latitudes would cause stronger storms? He went on Letterman and said “the increasing temperature gradient [between high and low latitudes] is going to drive stronger storms” as lower latitudes warm faster than higher latitudes. In 2009 he even wrote a book entitled, “Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity.”
“The Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity” — what a title! Yet climate catastrophists still object the the “C” (for “catastrophe”) in “CAGW.”
When we criticize Al Gore for saying things that ridiculous, the climate campaigners demur, saying, “well, Gore’s not a scientist.”
So what’s their excuse for Hansen?
I think his title makes a good survey question for evaluating the “consensus” of scientists on climate change: “Do you think this is our last chance to save humanity from the existential threat of catastrophic climate change?”
What level of agreement do you think Doran would find if he surveyed scientists and asked them that question? What percentage of scientific papers do you think John Cook could find which endorse that position on climate change?
Now, about those terrible storms which Hansen predicted due to the “increasing temperature gradient” [between high and low latitudes: I hope everyone here realizes that’s wrong. Hurricanes and tropical cyclones seem to be declining slightly, and pretty much everyone now agrees that AGW warms high latitudes more than low latitudes.
In fact, even in 2004, half a decade before Hansen’s appearance on Letterman, the Arctic Impact Climate Assessment already discussed “amplification” of global warming in the Arctic, and reported that, “Arctic average temperature has risen at almost twice the rate as the rest of the world in the past few decades.”
Nick & barry, do you at least acknowledge that if increased CO2 emissions cause CO2 levels to increase much less than Hanson expected, then the value or importance of reducing those emissions must also be much less than he thought?
David, A: “He did BOTH emmision estimates and GHG ppm estimates.”
Nick Stokes: Where? Quote them please.
Possibly David will quote the 1.5% growth rate with the word emissions next to it. But that’s not an estimate because there is no estimate of observed emissions in the paper (whereas there are observationally based estimates of CO2 ppmv concentration for given years).
David, can you quote any CO2 emissions estimate in Gt (gigatonnes) or equivalent? An actual numerical value for the then (1988) present or past emissions?
What, for example, was Hansen’s estimate of annual CO2 emissions for 1979 or 1987…?
I’m a home brewer: beer, mead, cheese. One of the frustrating parts of the process is cooling the 212 F wort so you can pitch your yeast and not kill it. Just like Mr. Hansen, I have noticed if I throw 6 ice cubes into my 5 gallons of liquid, the level rises 3 inches and cools 30 degrees F!
Given that amount of CO2 emissions, his prediction was that by now, temperatures would have gone up by five degrees Fahrenheit, or about 3°C.
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 three degrees. A third of a degree. He was wrong by an order of magnitude. So obviously, he desperately needs an excuse for this colossal failure.
Not true, I suggest you check his paper referred to in that excerpt:
The paper referred to predicted nothing like what’s in that excerpt. Hansen’s published predictions were actually pretty good (see David Middleton’s post: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/22/autopsy-of-an-excuse/#comment-2558670)
His predictions ranged from 0.6-1.4ºC by now relative to the 1950-1981 mean, not since 1988. (See Fig. 3)
There’s no Fig. 3 in your link. You lost me there, Phil.
Also nothing to support Hansen’s predictions were “pretty good”. Where does this come from?
And since when does the Scientific Method says “pretty good” results mean anything scientifically, or support a theory?
So, the past 30 years did not see a “continued expansion of fossil fuel use”? If that’s the case, what’s all the fuss about. We have already solved the problem.
Using an understanding of English grammar, “…continued expansion of fossil fuel use…” would lead one to surmise that Hansen did intend to predict a 5 F. increase.
Reg Nelson July 22, 2017 at 4:28 pm
There’s no Fig. 3 in your link. You lost me there, Phil.
Sorry the figure in David’s post is based on fig 3 in Hansen’s 1988 paper, I hadn’t realized he’d omitted the caption.
That figure also shows the ‘pretty good’ prediction, beats the original false claim of an ‘order of magnitude’ error based on a completely bogus report.
Strange the lack of response to this article from Nick Stokes, Griff, Seaice et al. You would think that they’d be rushing to the defence of one of the high priests of their religion.
Tamino pretty much demolishes it.
A good skeptic considers multiple sources.
The best source here is hansens own paper. go read it.
Demolish what, Steven?
“This article”
“Strange the lack of response to this article from Nick Stokes”
I don’t have much to add to what Nic Lewis and David Middleton had to say. It’s unlikely that Hansen was talking about the latent heat of melting of ice when he spoke of its cooling effect. And David M showed the original plot. The rise to 2018 was nowhere near the 3 degrees first quoted in the post, and Hansen was not out by a factor of ten. I see that despite the rather crude rejection of a request for retraction, the original claim has now been modified by a factor of three.
Of course, the other part of that <i”He was wrong by a factor of 3. So obviously, he desperately needs an excuse for this colossal failure.” is the usual con here of comparing surface predictions with troposphere results. Hansen was not predicting troposphere temperatures as measured by UAH V6.0. He was not even predicting troposphere as measured by UAH V5.6 or RSS V4. He was predicting surface temperatures. And as David Middleton showed, he got it pretty much right.
Hansen of Borg could also be called two of Twenty. HuffPost featured him second in a list of “20 Champions Of Climate Change.” If Hansen, Gore, or any of the other champions of climate change have never gotten a prediction right, why should we put any stock in their new and improved predictions?
Notice the date, 1988. Reagan was still president and his administration regarded Hansen a lunatic alarmist, which continued through the Bush administration. It was also the year that the IPCC was formed and Hansen’s predictions were fundamental to justifying the existence of the IPCC. Hansen is also the one who first botched the applifcation of Bode’s linear feedback amplifier analysis to the climate a few years earlier which was presented as the theoretical foundation for massive amplification by positive feedback in AR1.
The mistake made by Reagan was not to fire this guy for incompetence back in the early 80’s, instead he ended up being put in charge of GISS. I’m not sure it it was the peter principle at work and Reagan put him in charge or if it was a bonehead move by the Carter administration on their way out. Either way, science has suffered horribly since.
Hansen is also the criminal who claims that if a government computer is nitrogen cooled till it’s fast enough, it can calculate the temperature of our compressible phase matter gaseous atmosphere, using only the Stefan-Boltzmann portion of the math needed to solve temperatures of gases. This fake ‘calculation’ gives up a 33 degree shortfall in ‘ ‘ solving ‘ ‘ for global atmospheric temperature: when anyone who has any education in solving for temperatures of gases knows – you must solve for the density of gases, and all the compressible phase fluids in forms of vapors, gas, this sorta thing.
The part of the math deliberately left out of proper calculation of atmospheric temperature is called the ‘hydrostatic equation’ and it solves, for what’s known in gases as the ”hydrostatic condition.” In other words the density.
This is another mark of the empty suits claiming to ”understand climate math” and ”understand climate science.” As soon as you delve into their ignorant fraud, the glaring errors of utter error explode the so-called ‘work’ they’ve done and – this is what drives the insane, insulting, snide, low-life thugs of the CO2 warming church to act like the crackpot criminopaths they are, deep down. Once shown, it’s obviously so simply fraud, that only those who have some truly criminal need for the fraud to continue, – making money, making themselves famous on the back of a giant chemistry scam – will even dream of further endorsement of it.
It’s hideously transparent fraud at a level that a middle schooler can disrupt the world’ most pre-eminent so-called ‘scientist.’ *It’s the fraud that destroyed peoples’ trust of all science anywhere – globally. People are appalled at the level of obviously – obviously willful misrepresentation of everything from the nature of sunlight itself to the basic mathematics of ‘what happens to the temperature of a light warmed rock, less light warms?’
High Octane,
The macroscopic behavior of the climate system can be completely quantified by the SB LAW and you don’t need a supercomputer cooled to absolute zero in order to figure this out. A simple calculator is sufficient.
If we start from an ideal BB like the Moon, given the solar profile, heat capacity of the surface and the SB equation, we can calculate the time varying temperature of any part of the Moon’s surface with a high degree of accuracy, limited only the accuracy of the heat capacity and reflectivity of the surface. NASA did these calculations prior to the Moon landings so they could understand the thermal limits they needed to design for.
The equations governing this are simple.
Psun (1-a) = Po + dE/dt
E = k*T
Po = eoT^4
where Psun is solar flux, T is the temperature of the surface, Po is the emissions by the surface, E is the solar energy stored by the surface, a is the albedo, k is related to the heat capacity of the surface and e is the emissivity of the surface which is approximately 1. Note the lack of assumptions and arbitrary knobs and dials, even when expanded out to comprise a gridded analysis. The average sensitivity of the Moon to changes in forcing (solar input after reflection) is when Psun(1-a) is exactly equal to Po and dE/dt (the forcing term) is zero. This can be calculated EXACTLY as 1/(4eoT^3), where T is the average surface temperature, e is the effective emissivity and o is the SB constant.
If Earth had an atmosphere containing only N2 and O2, the average temperature and sensitivity would be the same as for the Moon since O2 and N2 are transparent to both incoming solar energy and outgoing LWIR. The only difference would be that both the cold and hot extremes would move a little closer to the average for 2 reasons. First is the faster rotation of the Earth and second is the smoothing effect of convection by atmospheric gas molecules.
When we add GHG’s and clouds, the only thing we need to do to the Moon equations to make them fit the data is reduce the emissivity from 1.0 to about 0.62 in which case the deterministic average sensitivity becomes 1/(4eoT^3), where e is 0.62, o is the SB constant and T is the average temperature of 288K. The result is an average sensitivity of 0.3C per W/m^2 which is below the IPCC’s lower limit of 0.4C per W/m^2.
The fact that SB predicts a sensitivity below the level needed to support catastrophic consequences and the need for an organization like the IPCC is why the alarmists deny this kind of analysis as being relevant.
co2isnotevil July 23, 2017 at 9:15 am
In a post called “The Cold Equations” I pointed out the problem with your equation 2, E = k * T. That equation states that heat storage in the ocean is a function of surface air temperature.
I see absolutely no reason to believe this without evidence. Oceanic heat storage depends on two things: how fast the heat goes in, and how fast it comes out. Neither of these is a simple function of temperature, far from it.
For example: when it gets warmer, more ice melts. More icewater runs into the ocean, it cools down … so in this case, the equation totally reverses, becoming something on the order of E = – k * T.
And this is only one of a number of phenomena that affect the heat balance of the ocean. Here’s another. Let’s say that we have some given amount of downwelling radiation. For some reason that doesn’t concern us, let’s say solar goes down and downwelling goes up.
Now, the two kinds of radiation affect the ocean very differently. Sunlight penetrates deeply into the ocean, while IR is almost all absorbed in the first mm. This means that the shift affects the heat balance of the ocean differently, despite the fact that the total downwelling radiation is unchanged.
Here’s another. When heat builds up in the Eastern Pacific, it kickstarts the El Nino / La Nina pump. This pumps a huge amount of warm water from the surface to the poles, where it can radiate much more freely to space. So the heat content of the Pacific is greatly reduced … but the immediate affect on T, which is the air temperature, is to warm it up. Air T warming … heat content E going down … I’m sure you can see the problem.
So no … you cannot simply use those equations. They are lovely, they are alluring, lots of scientists have been seduced by them, but they simply are not true.
Regards,
w.
Reagan was still president and his administration regarded Hansen a lunatic alarmist, which continued through the Bush administration.
I thought climate scientists were government lackeys?
Climate scientists are only government lackeys if the administration aligns with their personal politics.
You might want to think that through.
“Notice the date, 1988. Reagan was still president and his administration regarded Hansen a lunatic alarmist, which continued through the Bush administration. It was also the year that the IPCC was formed and Hansen’s predictions were fundamental”
Far from it. From the National Security Archive
The US supported UN resolution 43/53 which established the IPCC. Bush went on to support the formation of the UNFCCC in 1992. He submitted it to the Senate for ratification, where it passed without the need for a roll-call vote.
Nick,
And as I have pointed out, Hansen and his incredibly sloppy science was the driver of this insanity.
If you want to debate the broken science, I’d be happy to engage, but I’m pretty sure you’ll have trouble keeping up and will completely fail to address the many ways I can falsify the absurdly high sensitivity claimed by the IPCC nor will you be able to come up with a coherent argument against my repeatable, testable and highly tested proof of a low sensitivity.
Nick Stokes July 23, 2017 at 1:05 am
Nick, I don’t understant this. co2isnotevil said that the IPCC began in 1988. You say the same, although it’s not clear because you left out the first sentence. With it, the para reads:
What’s the problem? According to you both, the IPCC started getting formed in 1988. What am I missing here? Is it your point that the final IPCC documents weren’t formalized for several years? So what?
Regards,
w.
I think Nick is rebutting the notion that Reagan and Bush Snr thought Hansen was a lunatic, but rather were on board with concern about AGW.
Yes. The “far from it” refers to the assertion that “1988. Reagan was still president and his administration regarded Hansen a lunatic alarmist, which continued through the Bush administration.”
In fact, there is no evidence of that. Reagan’s Admin supported the formation of the IPCC, and Bush signed the US up to the UNFCCC, with Senate ratification. I don’t know who thought what about Hansen personally, but their actions were consistent with his advice.
Nick Stokes July 23, 2017 at 2:46 am
Thanks, Nick, that is exactly what I was missing. I thought you were referring to the year, not the president.
w.
… yet I am fairly confidence neither Bush or certainly Regan, knew the IPCC would degenerate into the corrupt political organization using alarmist non-peer reviewed sources literature (WWF and Greenpeace) and cherry picked alarmist pal reviewed literature, (see the Wegman report) while ignoring extensive skeptical peer reviewed literature. (See NIPCC)
All of the above has happened post 1988.
And GISS hasn’t been the same since. 😎
I thought it interesting that the author of the SPIN article claimed
“well beyond the 30,000 years of history since our species emerged.”
This “30,000” is about the time of the invention of harpoons and saws, twisted rope, ovens, and rock paintings.
Maybe the writer left out a zero.
An interesting “spin” in SPIN magazine.
Ignoring the utter lack of skepticism in such a source, I’m really curious how this 1988 climate change related article from a record industry magazine came to the attention of Willis.
” The variable “heat_required” is the calculated number of joules required to melt 500 billion tonnes of ice in one year.”
I’m certainly not a climate alarmist and enjoy reading this site, but wouldn’t the energy needed to melt ice depend on the initial temperature of the ice? Warming ice from -50 to -40 could also be considered “melting”, even if it will still take a while for the actual phase change.
Another Ian July 22, 2017 at 3:05 pm
Curiously, Lincoln actually stated the corollary in the same speech, just before the part you quoted.
However, for me the best quote on this subject is from Megan McCardle:
Regards,
w.
Willis
Thanks. I’ll save Megan’s version
“my numeric legend detector ringing like a fire alarm in a cheap whorehouse.”
Wait…what?
Hansen’s theory of global warming being caused by increases in CO2 has been totally disproved by Prof. Don Easterbrook and numerous world leading scientists who have been able to produce the real evidence of ice cores which clearly show that increases in CO2 in the atmosphere always follow major movements in global warming including the twentieth century warm period (from about 1932 to 1998) which was actually caused by
a massive increase in sunspot activity just as were some of the previous global warm periods
Measurements of Antarctic ice mass can’t tell if its losing or gaining mass. They have to fiddle with the data because physics does not support ice melting when the ave. temperature in the interior of Antarctica is -57 C and in the coast -10 C. You can melt the ice submerged in the sea and it doesn’t add to sea level. No wonder 65% of tide gauges worldwide don’t show significant sea level rise
.
http://notrickszone.com/2017/06/05/sea-levels-are-stable-to-falling-at-about-half-of-the-worlds-tide-gauges/#sthash.I17jTXzu.dpbs
Melting ice? The problem here is how to keep my glass of water liquid
Whisky on the rocks is the only civilized way to melt ice.
Understanding,, as I do,. why you don’t get facts from “spin” and you don’t get truth from this site, I am not surprised to see this here.
You, and Antony Watts, owe the world an apology. You owe James Hansen an apology and you owe NOAA an apology.
We won’t get it. Liars are after all, prospering from their lies but that will not last long either.
Not from anything we do, but when Mother Nature herself stuffs this nonsense down your throats.
Stop looking to “Spin” for your facts, go to the paper itself. It really isn’t that hard to find.
Hansen’s “bulldog” is having a go at you. Not man enough to discuss it here though.
Willis basically forgot to go and read Hansen’s actual words in his actual paper.
quoting Spin is worse than quoting wikipedia.
Steven Mosher:
You say
But these words from you are merely another example of your usual practice when confronted with truth you cannot dispute; i.e. you lie and insult.
As Willis explained above
Mosher, your visits to here don’t improve[snip].
Richard
richardscourtney,
In Willis’ own words.
And I was also 100% wrong, to believe a contemporary article rather than go back to the original paper. Mea maxima culpa
He may have read the Hansen paper more recently than 11 years ago, but he relied on Spin Mag for this article, hence the error.
For which he’s apologized. ‘Nuff said.
No Barry, not “nuff said” at all. In fact is willfully disingenuous of you to make such a statement and not put Willis statement in context. You left 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.”
Willis simply made a mistake in not digging a bit deeper. Your post is a clear example of bias.
Bugger,! Just when I had decided to accept my fate and surrender to the inevitability of my death on New Years Eve I find out the science wasn’t settled afterall. Now I have to make new plans for my annual leave.
Isn’t this whole essay based upon a false assumption that the prediction was for 2-5 degrees of increase, when the actual prediction was for much less?
petwir wrote, “Isn’t this whole essay based upon a false assumption that the prediction was for 2-5 degrees of increase, when the actual prediction was for much less?”
No. Didn’t you even read Willis’s article? His focus was on this statement by Hansen, from an article a few days ago:
As Willis showed, Hansen obviously didn’t bother (or perhaps didn’t even know how?!?) to do the simple arithmetic to see whether his proposed cooling mechanism was even possible.
What’s more, the three temperature prediction graphs in Hansen’s 1988 paper were based on three emission scenarios, all of which were much too low. Actual CO2 emissions have been far above Hansen’s hottest “Scenario A,” which predicted 1.5 °C of warming in 30 years.
Hansen’s business-as-usual Scenario A, as stated in his 1988 paper, was:
In fact, the world did not follow a course between scenarios A and B, it followed a course of emissions even far above scenario A. Under his scenario A, emissions would have increased by 47% in 26 years. Actually, they increased by 66% in 26 years.
So, if Hansen had been right, and if climate sensitivity to CO2 had really been as high as Hansen thought, temperatures would have gone up about 2 °C by now.
How much temperatures actually rose depends on who you believe, but nobody claims anything close to 2 °C.
The actual increase was about 0.6 °C according to the WoodForTrees temperature index:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/plot/wti/trend
Or about 0.5 °C according to the satellites:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/plot/uah6/trend/offset:0.6/plot/uah6/offset:0.6/plot/rss/trend
Or 1.0 °C to 1.3 °C according to GISS:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/plot/gistemp-dts/trend/offset:0.6/plot/gistemp-dts/offset:0.6/plot/gistemp/trend
Or about 0.8 °C according to HADCRUT:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/plot/hadcrut3vgl/trend/offset:0.6/plot/hadcrut3vgl/offset:0.6/plot/hadcrut4gl/trend
Hansen’s prediction was about 3x too large, based on emissions.
Hansen also got the resultant CO2 levels wildly wrong, because he didn’t understand the powerful negative feedbacks which have curbed the growth in CO2 levels levels. His apologists paint that failure as a virtue, by comparing his temperature projections to his CO2 level projections, rather than to the emission scenarios, but that’s just spin.
Sorry about the botched </i> tag.
Exact same reaction, Willis. As a power plant design engineer looking for ways to mitigate the absolutely brutal effect the summer heat of 1998 had on cooling lakes we looked at adding cooling towers, adding more surface, longer transit time, and very breifly harvesting winter ice to add back into the cooling canal in future summers. In less than 5 minutes we could see that the latent heat of melting ice is no match for a couple of 1200 MWe nukes. It would have been absolutely futile on any practical scale. So I guess Hansen, while practiced in scare tactics, would make a terrible engineer if not scientist.
I have it all straight now…except for the part about fire alarms in cheap whorehouses.
Do the high priced whorehouses not have any fire alarms?
Is this a Texas joke?
Stumped…
From rumors, cheap whorehouses have thin walls …
w.
Media creates super humans and super demons, not based on their credentials but simply wants to create them to serve certain vested interests.
You can see the recent case of Malala — with media hype she got noble prize. Same way in the past, Mother Theresa got noble prize and as well several other awards/orders. When a BBC reporter asked her in an interview, how you are accepting donations from drug lords? She shot back saying, on the money is it written that this is drug money?
Al Gore and IPCC got noble prize but just after that they both withdrew important conclusions, part of noble prize. Later they didn’t returned their noble prize. Norman Borlogue received noble prize for chemical inputs agriculture technology. The noble Prize awarding committee did not looked into its negative impacts on the environment but now we are facing this — the loss is several times to that of gains. Even another scientist received a noble prize and just after that he withdrew the paper published in a journal [though it is not part of noble prize].
So also the case of global warming leaders like Hansen, Mann, etc. In fact even before 1988 and after 1988 we published reports relating to climate change even published in Ph.D. Theses, but not body questioned or stopped publishing our scientific papers in reputed journals.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
That seems like a rather inaccurate indictment of Norman Borlaug, who has saved countless millions from starvation. What losses?
Sorry Sir, the losses include air, water, soil and food pollution. Cost of production increased as well government subsidies. You can see the Gulf of Mexico the large dead zone from the agriculture fields runoff through Mississippi River.
Norman Borlouge sent a letter to a friend in Hyderabad who was advocating for GM seed — in my state Bt-cotton was introduced illegally by producing seed and I along with others filed a PIL in High Court at that time –. The Indian counterpart sent that paper to a daily news paper in which I used to contribute on agriculture report. They published that and also my counter to that also published. In four states where Bt-cotton is growrn, the suicides are the highest with high input costs.
Erlier to chemical inputs technology we used to eat nutrient food with animal husbandry forming part of farming system. This provided food, nutrient and economic security to farmers.
India received Mexican wheat under PL480 in 70s and came with it a weed “perhenium” which is spread all over India with no cure. This is part of the new technology.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Ah ok, fantasy Vandana Shiva made up stories.
No not yet all, Sir. See my book “Green” Green Revolution: Agriculture in the perspective of Climate Change”, 2011. FAO report says around 30% of the food produced is going as waste. In India, my estimate is around 40-50%. Finance Minister in his budget presentation also spoke on this — 40%. The Hon’ble Supreme Court also said the same. That means, we are not only producing in excess and wasting the natural resources to produce that amount of excess production.
The chemical input technology reached a plateau in production in around 1984-85 and Bt-Cotton in 13 years, for the past five years the production is flat.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Shame on this post for trivializing the lifelong humanitarian work of Norman Borlaug. I’m not sure the misspelling of his name adds credibility to the sentiment. Attributing all manner of adverse recent consequences to the work performed in the 1950s through 1970s is somewhat akin to blaming the refinery when an avaricious husband douses his second wife with kerosene and sets her ablaze in order to have a chance at a third dowry.
Who should feel “shame”, people supporting profit driven multinational companies or people talking on protecting environment and human health of people?
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
My thanks to those who noted my error. I’ve added the following update to the article:
Thank you Willis – you show considerable humility by admitting the above.
Now…
richardscourtney says….
In his usual hypocritical manner…..
“”Willis basically forgot to go and read Hansen’s actual words in his actual paper.
quoting Spin is worse than quoting wikipedia”. (Mosher)
But these words from you are merely another example of your usual practice when confronted with truth you cannot dispute; i.e. you lie and insult.
Mosher, your visits to here don’t improve so you may wish to consider staying in your slime instead of coming here.
Richard”
Classy Courtney, very classy – and as the below shows …..
The “Update” from Willis:
“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.”
Now a decent human being would apologise.
But not holding my breath.
And I might add that his many ad homs to those that hold a contrary view pass straight through moderation here.
Now if this is the sort of “Contributor” that WUWT wishes to give cart blanche to, then fine.
You get the ones you deserve.
In short the reason I no longer post here.
I have no wish to “converse” with the likes of richardscourtney.
Or even glance at his nastiness in a thread.
I have “history” of him BTW.
However Willis, on reading further up-thread I come across this….
“hypergeometric July 22, 2017 at 5:03 pm
Um, Mr Eschenbach, why don’t you actually look at the original paper, its graphs, and then at actual data before you blather away criticizing it. Your criticism is rather like a thirteen-year-old marking up a poster with crayons.
I think a retraction is in order, as do others. Of course Anthony Watts doesn’t ever retract either, apparently.”
“Willis Eschenbach July 22, 2017 at 7:44 pm
However, you’d do well to retract and apologize for your baseless nastiness, your pathetic lack of research, and your puerile assumptions … or not. Your reputation, your choice. Sadly, however, I often find that those hiding behind an alias are happy to attack but rarely apologize … they just pick another alias and move on to their next nastiness.
Not a good look Willis, and perhaps an apology from you?
As I said above – this site has the contributors it deserves.
Toneb, thanks for your comments.
In that instance, despite my having written an entire previous post on the Hansen paper, I was accused in a very nasty way by hypergeometric of never having read it. He didn’t give any specifics, he didn’t mention what I was supposed to have gotten wrong. Just that I’d never read the paper.
And since I had read it and I had written about it in the past, I was upset about being misrepresented.
Now, should I have been more circumspect in my reply? Sure. But I will not stand idly by and be someone’s punching bag for imagined transgressions.
Look, I’m willing to take the heat for my mistakes. But I don’t put up with people making ugly misrepresentations about me, regardless of whether I mistakenly claimed Hansen was off by a factor of ten when he was actually off by a factor of three …
So you are partly correct. I apologize sincerely to hypergeometric for my OTT style … but not for the substance.
Regards,
w.
jorgekafkazar July 22, 2017 at 8:37 pm
>The real question is, “Why write a computer program to do a simple back-of-envelope calculation?”
To err is human, to really foul things up requires a computer.
– Unknown
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943
iron brian
Hansen himself is a wild exaggeration. Why don’t we all just ignore him?
In case you missed the update and the many comments in the thread above, it was in fact Willis who made the “wild exaggeration”, misstating Hansen’s original forecast based on a ropey magazine article rather than on the paper itself.
As several posters have pointed out above, Hansen’s so-called “exaggeration” in terms of the temperature forecast made in his 1988 paper turns out to have been very close to what has been observed (red line).
Nonsense, DWR54. Willis made the mistake of trusting an erroneous statement claim in an alarmist article, but that was on a peripheral point. Willis’s main point, about Hansen’s ridiculous claim about melting ice offsetting greenhouse warming, was exactly correct.
What’s more, Hansen’s temperature projections were, indeed, very wildly exaggerated. He predicted 1.5 °C warming for his emission Scenario A, and actual emissions ended up being far above his Scenario A, yet the actual temperature increase was far below it.
“He predicted 1.5 °C warming for his emission Scenario A, and actual emissions ended up being far above his Scenario A”
No, they weren’t. Barry has the numbers here (more info here and at Barry’s Climate Audit link). Gas concentrations came in below Scenario B. Further, Scen A had no volcanoes; Scen B had a big one in 1995, pretty close to Pinatubo.
“Willis’s main point, about Hansen’s ridiculous claim about melting ice offsetting greenhouse warming, was exactly correct.”
No. Willis did a calc based on current rates of melting. Hansen was describing what would happen if temperatures rose 4-5°C. That would involve hugely more melting.
The chart above indicates that it is not “nonsense”. Hansen’s original plot matched to GISS Ts (met stations only), using the 1951-80 anomaly base. We might wonder then why Willis elected to compare it against the cooler of the two lower troposphere satellite data sets, but that’s what he did.
The GISS Ts data has been plotted by Nick Stokes and superimposed on Hansen’s chart:
http://oi63.tinypic.com/35leqro.jpg
Other data set comparisons can also be made using a tool at Nick’s site: https://moyhu.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/hansens-1988-predictions-js-explorer.html
daveburtons comment,
“He predicted 1.5 °C warming for his emission Scenario A, and actual EMISSIONS ended up being far above his Scenario A, yet the actual temperature increase was far below it.”
is very correct. Hansen was WRONG about the ability of earth to uptake CO2, and charts below trying to PARTIALLY save Hansen using the peak of a super El Nino as the end point are disingenuous.
In fact, per IPCC CAGW models, the troposphere as a whole, should have warmed 20 percent MORE then the surface, so the real chart (one that would show GHG as the cause of observed warming) would have been 20 percent higher warming projections shown for Hansen’s ABC projections of surface warming compared to UHA troposphere satellite observations and weather balloon data sets.
Hansen was way wrong PERIOD. Wrong on CO2 uptake, wrong on warming, wrong on SL rise.
The model is of global surface air temps, including oceans (not SSTs) Hansen recommends the best obs would be a data set falling somewhere between GISS land only and GISS land/ocean.
Nick Stokes July 23, 2017 at 4:30 am
<blockquote
daveburton July 23, 2017 at 4:11 am
No. Willis did a calc based on current rates of melting. Hansen was describing what would happen if temperatures rose 4-5°C. That would involve hugely more melting.
Nick, as I pointed out, even if the melting were ten times as large it’s still only a tenth of a W/m2.
And even if it were a hundred times as large, an insanely high rate of melt, that would be one watt per square metre … which, per modern sensitivity estimates, would bring a cooling of less than half a degree.
So yes, I’d say that my main point was exactly correct.
w.
Willis,
No, 500 Gt ice melting would cool the entire troposphere by 0.04 C. Since the long term temperature trend in the troposphere is 0.02 C/year, these 500 Gt ice per year are quite signifant, and roughly twice as large. And then we have the loss of sea ice, other glaciers around the world, etc. All this disappearing ice represents a warming 3-4 times larger than that of the troposphere..
You started this blogpost with “scam” and ” con” accusations against James Hansen. You have nothing, your critiscism is null and void, hence all your nasty accusations have bounced back in your face..
O R July 24, 2017 at 12:27 am
Thanks, OR. You say:
Willis,
And if so, it would cool the lowest 150 metres of the entire troposphere by 4°C … and it would likely warm my cup of coffee to the temperature of the surface of the sun. YIKES, WE’RE ALL DOOMED …
O R, the point I made is simple. The 500 Gt of ice melting is equivalent to a reduction in downwelling radiation of TWO THOUSANDTHS OF 1%.
Now, you can make all kinds of true and scary claims about what would happen if all of that were concentrated in the troposphere or in my cup of coffee … so what?
It’s still only a change in the global energy balance of two thousandths of 1% … and as such is far below detectability, lost in the noise
While you’d love for this to be so, the fact that James “Death Train” Hansen is a con and a scam artist has nothing to do with me.
As one example among far too many, on a hot summer’s day back in 1988, James Hansen was the man who went in secretly before the meeting and opened the windows and turned off the air conditioning in the Senate meeting room when he gave his first testimony on climate change, so that the Senators would be subconsciously more willing to believe that the globe is warming.
Those are the actions of a scammer and a con artist; he has not changed his ways since then; and it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with me.
Best regards,
w.
As one example among far too many, on a hot summer’s day back in 1988, James Hansen was the man who went in secretly before the meeting and opened the windows and turned off the air conditioning in the Senate meeting room when he gave his first testimony on climate change, so that the Senators would be subconsciously more willing to believe that the globe is warming.
Those are the actions of a scammer and a con artist
That story is disputed. Here’s a fact-checker on it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/03/30/setting-the-record-straight-the-real-story-of-a-pivotal-climate-change-hearing/
The point of bringing this up is not to defend Hansen, but to ask you to stick to the science and not editorialize (slander) based on murky or selected premises.
Anthony has in the past asked people not to slander researchers. If for no other reason, this restraint mitigates the tribal aspect of the debate, which already makes it difficult to engage in good faith. I’d thought to mention that re your article above, but didn’t want to make that the discussion. Your comment here provides the opportunity.
I understand you say it as you see it, but smears based on presumed motives, hearsay or whatever are substandard for a science discussion. As a contributor to the site, you’re a standard bearer.
I have a larger context here. I like the discussions because it makes me read up on things and tests my own opinions. It’s frustrating when a thread descends into name-calling and the technical discussion destabilizes. Disrespect is contagious, unfortunately.
O R wrote, “No, 500 Gt ice melting would cool the entire troposphere by 0.04 C. Since the long term temperature trend in the troposphere is 0.02 C/year, these 500 Gt ice per year are quite signifant, and roughly twice as large.”
That’s wrong, O R. You’re compared apples (level) to oranges (rate of change).
Your mistake is that you’ve overlooked the fact that melting 500 Gt of ice absorbs energy one time (in one year), only. But a GHG level change which causes 0.02 °C of warming continues to cause that warming every year, for as long as the GHG stays in the atmosphere.
Likewise, if melting 500 Gt of ice ice every year lowered global temperatures 0.04 °C (a climate change roughly equivalent to moving south two miles, in the United States), that would not affect the temperature trend, it would only (negligibly) affect the baseline (for as long as the melting continued unabated).
CORRECTION: I wrote that 0.04°C of cooling is:
“…roughly equivalent to moving south two miles…”
That should have been:
“…roughly equivalent to moving north two miles…”
(here in the USA)
BTW, that’s based on this growing/hardiness zone chart, showing that a 50 mile change in latitude causes about 1°C (1.8°F) average temperature change. Hansen’s 1988 paper gives a slightly larger equivalence on p.9357:
50 km / 0.5°C = 62 miles / 1°C
75 km / 0.5°C = 93 miles / 1°C
Well now, barry, that was an interesting and educational read.
It’s only 5 a.m., and I’ve already learned something today. The day is off to a good start, Thank you!
Correction to my correction:
I botched the link to the growing/hardiness zone chart.
(Corrections to the corrections… hmmmm… maybe I should go to work for Microsoft!)
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!”
A fake quote worthy of Spin Magazine.
So given that errors were made but admitted and addressed, where are we now? I accept that the post was logically sound but based on faulty facts – a straw man – in fact! So here we are…Hansen was about right* and Willis was wrong! Is that correct?
If my summary is true, a retraction is in order because it would do credit to WUWT. And at the very least it would go some way towards recompense** for the horrid cat herding, goose-chase of a thread that resulted!
*Because he was predicting surface temperatures
**For the embarrassment felt by at least one loyal WUWT fan at the unjustified attack upon those who contributed rational, reasonable and sensible critique!
“Hansen was about right”
Only in his dreams. His prediction is 2 C based on higher than Scenario A CO2 increases. Actual is 0.5 C based on satellite data. Four times higher or +300% error! When I was in college, our maximum allowable error in experimental physics and chemistry is plus or minus 5%. If your error is greater, you repeat the experiment or you flunk. If Hansen were in school, he gets an F
Dr. Strangelove July 23, 2017 at 5:20 am
“Hansen was about right”
Only in his dreams. His prediction is 2 C based on higher than Scenario A CO2 increases.
Thereby indicating your ignorance, CO2 forcing in Scenario A by 2018 was expected to be slightly less than 0.5ºC, the total increase in forcing by 2018 under Scenario A was ~1ºC, the additional 0.5ºC being due to ‘Other Trace Gases’. It is those OTGs that have fallen well short of Scenario A (in fact about Scenario C).
So blindly scaling up based on your incorrect values for CO2 is wrong, perhaps you should also take into account that the sensitivity used by Hansen was higher than the currently used value? Hansen’s expectation was that Scenario B (~0.6ºC above the 1951-1980 mean) was the likely outcome and results since then have borne that out.
Actual is 0.5 C based on satellite data.
Since satellite data doesn’t exist for 1951-1980 it’s hard to see how you get there.
Four times higher or +300% error! When I was in college, our maximum allowable error in experimental physics and chemistry is plus or minus 5%. If your error is greater, you repeat the experiment or you flunk. If Hansen were in school, he gets an F
Based on your inability to read a paper and interpret graphs it’s you who gets the F.
From the modified top post.
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).
No, his prediction was that with that amount of CO2 emissions the temperature would have gone up by ~0.5ºC (see his fig 2) above the 1951-1980 average.
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.
The value in 1988 was not the same as the 1951-1980 average so you need to make allowance for that as well (according to Fig 3 1988 was already ~0.3ºC above the mean). Based on his actual projections compared with temperature measurements on the correct basis he was pretty much on the money, not close to a factor of 3 wrong!
So you’re a big fan of Hansen. His Scenario A predictions for CO2, other trace gases, temperature and sensitivity are all wrong, and you still argue he was about right. You both get an F for wrong predictions and defying logic.
BTW the temperature trend 1945-1977 is slight cooling and satellite data started 1979 so this base is lower than the 1951-1980 baseline so it’s even less than 0.5 C warming adjusted to the higher baseline. Hansen’s error is bigger.
Dr. Strangelove July 24, 2017 at 4:53 am
So you’re a big fan of Hansen. His Scenario A predictions for CO2, other trace gases, temperature and sensitivity are all wrong, and you still argue he was about right. You both get an F for wrong predictions and defying logic.
Good god can’t you read? I suggest you read the paper because everything you said above is wrong (except for the sensitivity which was the accepted value in use at that time and is a little higher than the current accepted value).
BTW the temperature trend 1945-1977 is slight cooling and satellite data started 1979 so this base is lower than the 1951-1980 baseline so it’s even less than 0.5 C warming adjusted to the higher baseline. Hansen’s error is bigger.
Look at the data, the 1988 value is higher than the 1951-1980 average, again you’re wrong.
Scott Wilmot Bennett July 23, 2017 at 3:56 am
Nope. The only result of my error was that Hansen overpredicted the warming by a factor of three instead of a factor of ten. This makes no difference to the rest of my points. If you have other reasons why you think I should retract I’m happy to hear them … but otherwise I’ll let it be.
Gosh and you were doing so well … PLEASE QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU ARE DISCUSSING!! I will not stand here and be the target of your handwaving specific-free abuse, particularly when coupled with your holier-than-thou attitude. When you do that, there is NO WAY TO RESPOND, because you have not been decent enough to tell me exactly what you think I’ve done.
w.
Firstly, I am a big fan of you and am well aware of your voice and gravitas. For your information only, I was nervous to offer an opinion but thought I had couched it enough that it was obvious.
Clearly your argument is predicated on the assumption that:
But is that in fact what he did? This is the hotly debated and contested argument in question! You are arguing for something that is not clear. Nothing is clear about Hansen’s “arguments” that allows you such absolutism.
That is all I have and that is all I meant.
Willis, I mean’t you no offence.
I stand corrected and apologise, if it is as you say, that Hansen unaquivacly argued for a warming that was out by a factor of 3.
However It would seem that, that interpretation depends on the choice of database you make, independent of Hansen’s moral scruples or otherwise!
My comment was proposed as a question, yet you chose to ignore that fact. You are a very aggressive proponent and for that reason may not have read my words:
Scott Wilmot Bennett July 23, 2017 at 9:53 am
Here are the predictions, from realclimate where Hansen was a principal contributor. I’ll let you decide.
There is very, very little in the climate question that is not open to debate and discussion. I try to provide the actual data to let folks make up their own minds.
This was puzzling to me, as I though I answered it. Hang on … OK, you’d said:
Let me say in closing that I appreciated the tone and style of your comment. Part of the problem with this thread was that instead of just pointing out where I was going wrong, people merely said I was going wrong and then surrounded that with a fistful of insults … so it is a pleasure to see a man like yourself ask questions and make strong points without the ad hominems.
All the best,
w.
No retraction for MANY reasons including… https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/22/autopsy-of-an-excuse/comment-page-1/#comment-2559829