By Robert Bradley Jr.
Ed. Note: This article on the front page of the New York Times by noted environmental reporter Philip Shabecoff, (June 24, 1988) marked the beginning of the media-driven climate scare. Particularly important is the estimated anthropogenic warming and sea level rise: 3-9 degrees F and 1-4 feet between 2025 and 2050. Today, 35 years later, the recorded increase is 1F and 4 inches.
The earth has been warmer in the first five months of this year than in any comparable period since measurements began 130 years ago, and the higher temperatures can now be attributed to a long-expected global warming trend linked to pollution, a space agency scientist reported today.
Until now, scientists have been cautious about attributing rising global temperatures of recent years to the predicted global warming caused by pollutants in the atmosphere, known as the ”greenhouse effect.” But today Dr. James E. Hansen of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration told a Congressional committee that it was 99 percent certain that the warming trend was not a natural variation but was caused by a buildup of carbon dioxide and other artificial gases in the atmosphere.
Dr. Hansen, a leading expert on climate change, said in an interview that there was no ”magic number” that showed when the greenhouse effect was actually starting to cause changes in climate and weather. But he added, ”It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.”
An Impact Lasting Centuries
If Dr. Hansen and other scientists are correct, then humans, by burning of fossil fuels and other activities, have altered the global climate in a manner that will affect life on earth for centuries to come.
Dr. Hansen, director of NASA’s Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, testifed before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
He and other scientists testifying before the Senate panel today said that projections of the climate change that is now apparently occurring mean that the Southeastern and Midwestern sections of the United States will be subject to frequent episodes of very high temperatures and drought in the next decade and beyond. But they cautioned that it was not possible to attribute a specific heat wave to the greenhouse effect, given the still limited state of knowledge on the subject.
Some Dispute Link
Some scientists still argue that warmer temperatures in recent years may be a result of natural fluctuations rather than human-induced changes.
Several Senators on the Committee joined witnesses in calling for action now on a broad national and international program to slow the pace of global warming.
Senator Timothy E. Wirth, the Colorado Democrat who presided at hearing today, said: ”As I read it, the scientific evidence is compelling: the global climate is changing as the earth’s atmosphere gets warmer. Now, the Congress must begin to consider how we are going to slow or halt that warming trend and how we are going to cope with the changes that may already be inevitable.”
Trapping of Solar Radiation
Mathematical models have predicted for some years now that a buildup of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil and other gases emitted by human activities into the atmosphere would cause the earth’s surface to warm by trapping infrared radiation from the sun, turning the entire earth into a kind of greenhouse.
If the current pace of the buildup of these gases continues, the effect is likely to be a warming of 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit from the year 2025 to 2050, according to these projections. This rise in temperature is not expected to be uniform around the globe but to be greater in the higher latitudes, reaching as much as 20 degrees, and lower at the Equator.
The rise in global temperature is predicted to cause a thermal expansion of the oceans and to melt glaciers and polar ice, thus causing sea levels to rise by one to four feet by the middle of the next century. Scientists have already detected a slight rise in sea levels. At the same time, heat would cause inland waters to evaporate more rapidly, thus lowering the level of bodies of water such as the Great Lakes.
Dr. Hansen, who records temperatures from readings at monitoring stations around the world, had previously reported that four of the hottest years on record occurred in the 1980’s. Compared with a 30-year base period from 1950 to 1980, when the global temperature averaged 59 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature was one-third of a degree higher last year. In the entire century before 1880, global temperature had risen by half a degree, rising in the late 1800’s and early 20th century, then roughly stabilizing for unknown reasons for several decades in the middle of the century.
Warmest Year Expected
In the first five months of this year, the temperature averaged about four-tenths of a degree above the base period, Dr. Hansen reported today. ”The first five months of 1988 are so warm globally that we conclude that 1988 will be the warmest year on record unless there is a remarkable, improbable cooling in the remainder of the year,” he told the Senate committee.
He also said that current climate patterns were consistent with the projections of the greenhouse effect in several respects in addition to the rise in temperature. For example, he said, the rise in temperature is greater in high latitudes than in low, is greater over continents than oceans, and there is cooling in the upper atmosphere as the lower atmosphere warms up.
”Global warming has reached a level such that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming,” Dr. Hansen said at the hearing today, adding, ”It is already happening now.”
Dr. Syukuro Manabe of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration testified today that a number of factors, including an earlier snowmelt each year because of higher temperatures and a rain belt that moves farther north in the summer means that ”it is likely that severe mid-continental summer dryness will occur more frequently with increasing atmsopheric temperature.”
A Taste of the Future
While natural climate variability is the most likely chief cause of the current drought, Dr. Manabe said, the global warming trend is probably ”aggravating the current dry condition.” He added that the current drought was a foretaste of what the country would be facing in the years ahead.
Dr. George Woodwell, director of the Woods Hole Research Center in Woods Hole, Mass., said that while a slow warming trend would give human society time to respond, the rate of warming is uncertain. One factor that could speed up global warming is the widescale destruction of forests that are unable to adjust rapidly enough to rising temperatures. The dying forests would release the carbon dioxide they store in their organic matter, and thus greatly speed up the greenhouse effect. Sharp Cut in Fuel Use Urged
Dr. Woodwell, and other members of the panel, said that planning must begin now for a sharp reduction in the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels that release carbon dioxide. Because trees absorb and store carbon dioxide, he also proposed an end to the current rapid clearing of forests in many parts of the world and ”a vigorous program of reforestation.”
Some experts also believe that concern over global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels warrants a renewed effort to develop safe nuclear power. Others stress the need for more efficient use of energy through conservation and other measures to curb fuel-burning.
Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, an atmospheric physicist with the Environmental Defense Fund, a national environmental group, said a number of steps can be taken immediately around the world, including the ratification and then strengthening of the treaty to reduce use of chlorofluorocarbons, which are widely used industrial chemicals that are said to contribute to the greenhouse effect. These chemicals have also been found to destroy ozone in the upper atmosphere that protects the earth’s surface from harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun.
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The head-post picture makes Jim Hansen look like Agent Smith in The Matrix
Having examined hundreds of medium and long-term Australian weather station datasets and developed protocols for analysing them objectively using independent statistical methods, I have found no evidence that maximum temperatures (Tmax) has warmed over recent decades, or for some datasets from the 1850s. I am therefore surprised that well respected scientists continue with the warming message as though they believe there should be some warming somewhere, even though there is little to zero chance of detecting it in individual weather station data, at least in Australia.
Siting issues aside, even urban warming is almost impossible to separate as a signal distinct from effects caused by rainfall and synoptic ‘blow-in’ changes that make up normal weather. All data that I have investigated in detail, including using 3rd party evidence such as aerial photographs, aerodrome maps and plans, historic documentation etc. show datasets consist of untrending segments interrupted by step-changes that are directly related to site changes.
In Australia and probably everywhere else where they use similar homogenization methods, they adjust for documented changes that made no difference to the trajectory of the data; or, they don’t report and don’t adjust for changes that did. This is very obvious at Townsville, where the local instrument file has been lodged with the National Archives. They also make adjustments using correlated comparator stations that exhibit parallel faults to that of target station data.
At Halls Creek, in northwest Western Australia blocks or new air-conditioned houses were built immediately north of the airport from 2011. As they came closer, eventually to within 30m of the Stevenson screen an abrupt up-step occurred in the data from 2013. No surprise there. However, the site was not moved to a bare, gravelly area near the airport runway until 2015. The dataset started in 1898, and allowing for site changes and persistent changes in rainfall there were no residual trends that could be attributed to the climate.
I also used the same BomWatch protocols to analyse 23 of the comparator sites used to homogenise Halls Creek data. While the quality of some comparator datasets was highly questionable, none were homogeneous and no corrections were made to account for site change effects before they were used. (Most of the sites used to homogenise Halls Creek are shown in the accompanying map.)
The detailed report, the sixth in a series examining homogenization and which explains how the process is used to create bogus trends is here: https://www.bomwatch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/HallsCreekbackstory_FINAL-18-Mar-2023.pdf. While the report is written in more-or-less general terms, it is intended to be detailed and defendable.
While I have been derailed somewhat over the last month or so by other issues, I’m now working on the dataset for Victoria River Downs.
All the best,
Dr Bill Johnston
http://www.bomwatch.com.au
Excellent comments.
I especially like this one:
“Having examined hundreds of medium and long-term Australian weather station datasets and developed protocols for analysing them objectively using independent statistical methods, I have found no evidence that maximum temperatures (Tmax) has warmed over recent decades, or for some datasets from the 1850s.”
Bunch of crackpots.
I recall that Hansen once called for the execution of all coal company CEOs. Hansen is the one who should be wearing a blindfold with his back against a wall. Is there anyone who is called an expert who actually is one? I’ve yet to see that occur.
Hansen is a lying liar who lies.
[QUOTE FROM 1988]”Some experts also believe that concern over global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels warrants a renewed effort to develop safe nuclear power.”
Thirty-five years later, not enough people listened to “some experts” who wanted a “renewed effort to develop safe nuclear power”.
Back in 1988, it was only two years after the Chernobyl meltdown, and several years after Hanoi Jane’s “China Syndrome” movie depicting a Captain Queeg-like character mismanaging a nuclear meltdown. Not that Hanoi Jane knew any more about running a nuclear plant than she did about military strategy in Vietnam.
Now, the United States is decades behind France in nuclear power technology, since France gets about 75% of its electricity from nuclear power, and most of the rest from hydro in the Alps. After Germany has foolishly shut down its nuclear power plants, France is now selling nuclear power to the Germans, and burying some of the nuclear wastes in Germany.
Fortunately for the United States, France is considered an ally. But what other less-friendly countries are miles ahead of the USA in nuclear power technology?
Despite the fact that Hansen’s predictions were wrong too many people, organizations, and governments still believe in what he was selling. Trillions of dollars have been spent world wide trying to fight climate change yet no one is saying that there has been any improvement. Despite the lack of success, governments still want to waste more money on this. People do not seem to realize that mankind does not even know what the optimum global climate actually is let alone how to achieve it. It has all been a matter of scare tactics and political agendas. Children in schools are having to memorize AGW nonsense for tests. The educational level is so bad that one person told me that H2O cannot be the primary greenhouse gas becuase H2O is not a gas. NASA puts out these flashy articles that are all wrong. Then there is the IPCC which in terms of science is really a sham organization ruled by the politicians. More people, organizations need to learn the truth about climate change by reading “The Rational Climate e-Book” by Patrice Poyet which they can get via a free download from the author’s web site.. But for many the more than 600 pages is very difficult reading. I wish the author would create a companion volume with conclusions and key points. People need to realize that there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on our global climate and that the AGW hypothesis has been falsified by science. I believe that there are many good reasons to be conserving on the use of fossil fuels but climate change is not one of them… .