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.
So, after 35 years of absurd exaggeration, or very often deliberate, barefaced lies, I would welcome someone being held to account for all their hubristic, damaging nonsense.
Can we hope that, say, Jolly Jim Hansen will be asked publically to account for his dodgy models, his scaremongering, his utter waste of taxpayer’s and energy user’s money?
I think Richard Feynman said something about science progressing one death at a time, referring to the seniors who block new ideas.
Max Planck, apparently.
Those early Quantum theorists had a nice sense of cynicism.
The person more spectacularly wrong was the Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich who predicted mass starvation by 2000 due to our inability to grow enough food. He’s alive and still receiving awards.
There is money and prestige in promoting fear.
Here, after all this time i understand. the New York Times, in their hurry to create a new hobgoblin, got it wrong. Shabecoff came before a Senate Committee (recall that Twain observed that God Made and idiot for practice and then He created the Committee) on JUNE 24th and announced “Summer warming has begun” and the New York Times Reporter rushed out to the phone bank to call in his story that the Globe was warming and to hold the press because Chicken Little was giving his report to Congress next.
One expects that Ehrlich is eating well, still, at this late date in his apocalypse.
The thermostat in the Hearing Room was turned up the night before so the Hearing Room was hot and muggy……call him Sneaky Hansen. Ask Sneaky if he likes breathing O2 which comes to us via CO2? I love O2 and its provider, CO2.
John Kerry is being called out for barefaced lies on 15 million annual deaths being due to climate change.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy-environment/john-kerry-ethics-complaint-climate-death-toll-claims
How pathetic. But it shows how far these people think they can go with their lies. The encouraging thing is that the time may be ripe for massive pushbacks in the case of crazed predictions, instead of just waiting to first see if it pans out as they say.
So carbon dioxide is an ‘artificial gas’ is it? Who knew? These days, of course, it is even described by these shameless charlatans as a ‘pollutant’. Very sad to see that even NASA is prostituting itself for Government money, devoting part of its website to explaining how the earth’s cyclical climate really isn’t affected all that much by Milankovitch cycles. So much for scientific integrity.
What is NASA’s mission?
Depends on who’s in the White House
In the words of Mandy Rice-Davies
Well they would, wouldn’t they?
Maybe scientific integrity is just aspirational. Biden’s policy is pretty though.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/01-2023-Framework-for-Federal-Scientific-Integrity-Policy-and-Practice.pdf
”carbon dioxide and other artificial gases”
Lol.
It’s the plastic flowers….
Is this what happens when people with arts, economics and politics degrees are allowed to have their hands on the reins of power, particularly the media?
“Allowed”? They were handed the reins by idiots who support communistic political parties. Its way past time to take the reins back.
Well of course they would claim to have meant ‘carbon dioxide and other gases that do not exist naturally, chiefly Freon’ but it’s a good example of how they lie by ambiguity.
Hansen and his ilk are what I consider to be the best examples of “artificial intelligence.”
Hey.??
Artificial.. yes
Intelligence.. nope.. nothing there. !
At least it’s not “organic”.
”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”
Lol.
They still can’t show a relationship between CO2 and observed warming.
Hansen thought the warming was going to continue beyond 1998, when temperatures reached the highest level since the Early Twentieth Century, but then the temperatures started cooling, contrary to their CO2 theory, so that’s when Hansen started with his effort to demote 1934, the warmest year in U.S. history, to an also-ran, showing 1934 as being much warmer (0.5C) than 1998, but when the temperatures started cooling, Hansen started saying 1934 was not as warm as 1998, and the bastardization of the satellite-era temperature record began in earnest with the creation of the “hottest year evah!” meme, where the temperature data mannipulators claimed that year after year into the new century were the “hottest year ever!”.
Take a look at the UAH satellite chart below. Going by the UAH chart, one could not make the claim that any year between 1998 and 2016 was the “hottest year ever!”. But Hansen and the other bastardizers of the surface temperature records managed to manipulate their data to show “hotter and hotter”, which was of course, their aim.
And they are still lying about the climate, claiming the last eight years have been the hottest on record. Not if you go by the UAH satellite chart. None of the last eight years are warmer than 1998 (1998 and 2016 being in a statistical tie for the warmest in the satellite era).
https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/past-eight-years-confirmed-be-eight-warmest-record
The medieval warming erasure attempts began around then also.
Yes, Tom, it’s possible still that the observed warming is essentially all natural. And yes, there’s a lot of evidence of deceit aimed at dismissing that possibility.
We’ve argued this point before, and we disagree. It is not a strategic error to concede the possibility that Svante Arrhenius was correct, that our fossil fuel burning could bring an additional blessing of mild warming on top of all the other great benefits.
On the contrary, if we concede that possibility, reasonable people who are reasonably convinced that there is a significant enhancement of the natural greenhouse effect due to our emissions, are much more likely to be persuaded that the effect is minor, likely net-beneficial, and above all not a climate emergency.
If we cling to an unjustified certainty that there is no enhanced GHE or no GHE at all (even natural), that seems to me a recipe for being marginalized and ignored. We might be dead right, but we’ll still be dead.
It is vital at this juncture to be politically EFFECTIVE. Being exactly correct in the scientific sense is far less important. If any alarmism is justified, it is the alarm that we are on a high-speed train to serfdom.
How about conceding the certainty that Svante Arrhenius had no physical theory of climate on which to base his surmise.
Following from that, how about going on to concede that absent any valid physical theory Svante Arrhenius could not have known what he was talking about.
And neither does any climate catastrophist know today, and for the identical reason.
Your concessions are unjustified, and themselves yield the ground to the very villains who are driving the high-speed train to serfdom.
Pat, with respect you are mistaken. The urgent issue is not scientific. It is political. We need to win support of over 50% of voters. “No climate emergency” is a big tent. Everyone who agrees that there is no reason to dismantle our society must be embraced as an ally. We can’t afford to alienate any allies over unnecessary controversies.
We are talking about beliefs and emotions far more than facts and data. I do not say that the questions you raise are unimportant but they are less critical than the question do we need to destroy our society because of a climate emergency.
One doesn’t defeat a movement by aggreeing with the premise.
The premise is what needs to be challenged.
We need prominent politician challenging all the premises of the alarmist climate scientists. They don’t hold up to scrutiny.
That’s basically the same position as a pro-life person who rejects a ban on partial-birth abortion because it doesn’t ban all abortion.
You seriously cannot see that it is more important to convince a majority that we don’t have an emergency by saying that even IF the the unproven theory were true, it doesn’t imply an emergency?
Your position, Rich, is equivalent to saying that even IF abortion is bad, we should convince people that there’s no abortion crisis.
When you concede the ground, the debate descends into competing proof-texts. There’s no resolution to that argument.
The best way forward is to discredit the whole movement by showing the so-called scientists are incompetent clowns. Analytical discredit followed by deserved ridicule.
Pat,
At the risk of going down a rabbit hole into abortion politics, your counter-analogy doesn’t make sense.
No climate emergency therefore climate alarmists’ call for dismantling western civilization through net zero policies is unjustified.
Expressed abstractly: No X emergency therefore opponents’ call for Y predicated on an X emergency is unjustified.
I said that your rejection of that logic was like a pro-life person rejecting a ban on the most extreme type of abortion (which politically could easily be banned since supermajorities oppose it). That rejection being based on an opposition to conceding any legitimacy to abortion whatsoever.
So to connect the dots…
You reject banning the net zero destruction of our economy and the loss of freedom by appealing to those who agree that said destruction and loss is undesirable but who disagree (however mistakenly) with your view that there is no validity to the enhanced greenhouse effect.
Your justification for rejecting the achievable political compromise that allows us to retain our freedoms and a viable economy is that it is not as good as the politically-unachievable approach that explicitly states that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are irrelevant to recent observed warming.
In the abortion analogy, that position implies that the pro-life person rejects the politically-achievable approach that bans a murderer from shoving scissors into the base of a partially born, fully viable child’s head, and suctioning out his or her brains in order to kill that child before fully removing the corpse from the birth canal. The reason for taking that position being that even though such a ban is realistically achievable, we’re better off tolerating that murder than to say something like we oppose all abortion and consider every abortion to be murder but if we can agree that this procedure is banned then at least let’s ban it. Also, we can’t stand with people who would ban this grisly murder because they hold a wrong view on earlier-term abortions.
Your counter-analogy was:
“Even if abortion is bad we should convince people that there is no abortion crisis.”
This only makes any sense at all if you are a pro-abortion advocate who equates access to abortion with access to fossil fuels.
In an environment where politically most people reject both extreme positions, you want to convince those who agree with you that the loss of access to early-term abortions would be a horrible outcome that despite their qualms about infanticide, there is no baby slaughter emergency, so don’t ban all abortions. You can’t abide that compromise because it doesn’t validate every abortion as morally pure.
Even in that twisted scenario, my logic still holds. If the pro-death anti-life advocate is in a place like Mississippi, they should accept restrictions on abortion to avoid a total ban.
There is NO ground conceded. You can fully maintain your views on the enhanced greenhouse effect. You just would need to mute your focus on that to become politically effective after decades of failing.
The tactic I propose is to shift the battlefield away from ground that is unfavorable to us where we have been palpably ineffective and repeatedly defeated to a place where we command the high ground. Only the craziest of crazies hope for a destruction of our modern way of life.
Turning to the rest of that comment
Your fundamental disconnect with my view is that there is an intellectual debate where a verdict is going to be decided based on reason and facts.
I say that there is a political campaign being waged on a mostly emotional front. Negative emotions of fear, envy, greed, but also positive ones such as compassion, piety are in play.
The enemy deploys fear of sea level rise, unbearable heat waves, deadly storms, forest fires, starvation from severe drought, among others. None of these can be substantiated with facts and indeed they have been effective even though sea level rise has not accelerated, heat waves are no worse than in the 1930s, deadly storms have declined, forest fires are down 90%, and agricultural output continues to hit new records. You have not conceded anything an the facts are with you. Why have you failed to persuade?
The enemy deploys envy of profitable oil and gas companies making a profit. The enemy deploys greed co-opting commercial enterprises by dangling easy government money.
The enemy deploys their weapon of manipulating positive emotions as well. Maybe you live well above sea level but these destitute fisher people are at risk of having their island homes vanish beneath the waves. Are you heartless, or is it just that they are dark skinned?
Don’t you want to protect the planet? Your sacrifice can help save the world so sort your recycle and be self-righteous.
The enemy’s tactics have been and continue to be highly effective. Your tactics continue to fail utterly.
“If we cling to an unjustified certainty that there is no enhanced GHE or no GHE at all (even natural), that seems to me a recipe for being marginalized and ignored. We might be dead right, but we’ll still be dead.”
If you think that is my point, you are wrong. I have never said CO2 could not contribute to warming, however small that might be, what I say is there is NO EVIDENCE that this is the case.
There is NO definitive correlation between CO2 levels and temperatures.
If, or when,a correlation is found, I will accept it as a fact, but not before it is an established fact, and it is NOT an establshed fact as of this minute.
Our celebrated alarmist climate scientists cannot tell us whether CO2 is net warming the amosphere or net cooling the atmosphere. I don’t know which way it goes, either, and neither does anyone else. So claiming CO2 is net warming the atmosphere is not backed up by any facts. And it is not backed up by the written, historical temperauture record, either.
So that’s the state of the science today, and that’s what I point out constantly.
The IPCC clearly does not know what the climate sensitivity of CO2 actually is because they keep publishing a wide range of guesses. They routinely ignore the logic that the true climate sensitivity of CO2 is less then the range that they publish for fear of loosing their funding.
“Hansen thought the warming was going to continue beyond 1998, when temperatures reached the highest level since the Early Twentieth Century, but then the temperatures started cooling…”
According to UAH data the warming rate starting in 1998 has been a bit over 0.1°C / decade, i.e. about 0.25°C of warming. Other data sets show warming up to twice that.
In the US according to NOAA, there have been 7 years in the 21st century warmer than either 1998 or 1934.
Yawn.. Its only natural warming.
You know that CO2 doesn’t cause warming
So… STOP THE CHARADE !!!
Or go back to Hollywood. !
Believe what you want. I can’t stop you. But if people make untrue statements about what the data shows, I’ll point it out as long as I can.
So, absolutely no evidence
OF COURSE.
Just a plaintive whimpering.
Yes you really do have to stop making deliberately FALSE statements, unbacked by any actual science.
I gave you the evidence in the post you were whimninh about. Tom Abbot claims there has been no warming since 1998, I quote the actual warming rate.
I don’t care if you try to move the goal posts and want to claim all the warming was natural, it’s not what my comment was about. It makes no difference what caused the warming, it’s simply wrong to claim it doesn’t exist.
“In the US according to NOAA, there have been 7 years in the 21st century warmer than either 1998 or 1934.”
Yes, but the UAH satellite record doesn’t show any of those years as being warmer than 1998. So how do you square that? Somebody’s reality is wrong.
“but the UAH satellite record doesn’t show any of those years as being warmer than 1998.”
Again, the USA is not the same as the globe. Globally UAH shows two years as being warmer than 1998. But as far as the contiguous USA is concerned, here are the UAH top 10.
1998 wasn’t even the warmest year in the 20th century.
“Not if you go by the UAH satellite chart. None of the last eight years are warmer than 1998 (1998 and 2016 being in a statistical tie for the warmest in the satellite era).”
Warmest years according to UAH
One day you will finally figure out the effect of El Ninos.
Maybe when you grow a brain.
A lecture about the effects of El Niños from someone using 1998 as evidence of a pause in warming.
You just proved my point. None of those years are warmer than 1998, including 2016 and 2020, which are statistically tied for the warmest temperature.
So NOAA and NASA are playing with our minds when they make these “hottest year evah!” claims.
Your claim was
And you think this is proven by the fact that two recent years have been warmer than 1998?
The point I’m making is regardless of the exact rankings, or whatever you think the margin of error is, it’s clear that in 20th century terms 1998 was exceptionally warm, but in recent years we have many years that are close to, or as warm, or possibly warmer than 1998. This does not indicate the cooling you are claiming.
Then there is the traditional paleoclimate record that show that the Holocene has had many cooling and warming periods during the past 11,000 years that have nothing to do with CO2. The powers that be have gone so far as to change the paleoclimate record and to totally ignore the historical facts that there were periods during the Holocene that were warmer than today yet CO2 levels were lower than today. Retreating glaciers have uncovered the remains of forests from a warmer period. They have also been adjusting temperature records in their favor. Next thing you know will try to change all the evidence that the Eemian was warmer than our current inter glacial period yet CO2 levels were lower than today.
It was not true 35 years ago. They clearly did not have sufficient data. Today it is not reasonable to adamantly maintain that the observed warming is probably entirely natural. At this point there’s a preponderance of evidence that our CO2 emissions are beneficial and are contributing to the desirable trend of milder conditions with less drought and improved agricultural output.
What is missing both then and now is any acknowledgement on the side of the alarmists that they were then and continue now to simply assert that mild warming mostly at night, in winter, in places that remain frigid, is somehow harmful contrary to the reality that it is wholly beneficial.
Human CO2 emissions are estimated to be about 4% of what nature generates. The physics of longwave radiation absorption and re-emission by CO2 indicate it has a logarithmic relationship so it takes a doubling of CO2 to increase surface warming by about 1 °C. Atmospheric CO2 levels have increased about 50% since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution when we started burning fossil fuels, suggesting warming of much less than 1 °C but global average temperature has been “measured” at about 1 °C (or more depending on who’s thumb is on the scale). Paleoclimate temperarure proxies and measured CO2 from ice cores seems to indicate that increasing atmospheric CO2 may be more of an effect of warming than a cause. We know that a cooler ocean absorbs more CO2 than a warmer one so global warming of the ocean is reducing its ability to absorb CO2. So, no, it is not certain that the relatively small amount of human CO2 emissions (~4% of natural sources) is “tipping” the global carbon balance enough that natural carbon sinks can’t absorb it, but maybe it is. It still hasn’t been proven. The depressed global activity during the COVID lockdowns doesn’t appear to have reduced atmospheric CO2 in the Mauna Loa CO2 data (or reduced the rate of increase). What is irrefutable, however, is that atmospheric CO2 levels are rising. No question about that. And it appears that recent CO2 levels are higher than any found in ice cores over the last 800,000 years (but it’s not entirely certain), suggesting that human CO2 emissions are contributing a lot to atmospheric levels, but according to physics the warming from human-generated CO2 is probably relatively small and the impact may be, for now, more beneficial than detrimental. It’s not certain that increasing CO2 over the next several hundred years will increase temperatures as much because its warming effect decreases with increasing saturation. It’s likely that human CO2 emissions will decrease as they have done in many post-industrial countries due to technological improvements, increasingly efficient use of energy and changing energy sources.
That statement totally depends on what starting point and time interval one chooses for developing a trend line.
With starting times anywhere from 140–5 million years ago and leading up to today, Earth has been in an overall trend of CO2 levels decreasing. See attached graph.
Thanks for giving us the whole picture.
The whole picture says CO2 levels were much higher in the past, yet there was no runaway greenhouse effect from this level of CO2, and today CO2 levels are just barely above the level needed to sustain life on Earth.
We should not reduce CO2 production unless a good reason is given for doing so, and so far, no good, credible reason has been given for humans to reduce their CO2 output.
“it is not reasonable to adamantly maintain that the observed warming is probably entirely natural”
Why not? During D-O events the climate warmed at 10x the present rate. And no one knows the rate of warming into the MWP.
There’s no evidence whatever that human CO₂ emissions have done anything at all, except to green up Earth and improve crop yields. No discernible effects on the climate.
“Why not?”
Yes, why not? We have written temperature records from the past that show three different periods of warming since the Little Ice Age ended, one that topped out in the 1880’s, and one that topped out in the 1930’s, and one that topped out in 1998, and one that topped out in 2016, and all of these warming periods are of the same magnitude. Two of those warming periods were when much less CO2 was in the atmosphere than there is today, yet the magnitude of the warming was the same regardless of the CO2 levels.
So there is a very good chance that current warming is coming from Mother Nature and not CO2 levels.
Here is the pertinent Phil Jones chart:
I agree with that scientifically but let me rephrase. We can’t reasonably expect to be effective in persuading the public that despite the longer-term warming trend loosely correlating with our CO2 emissions, CO2 certainly isn’t playing a role.
”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.” ”
Lol.
Yes, we should indeed laugh. Drought causes desert heat (and cold), it is not the other way around.
A general warming of the climate globally should result in more ocean evaporation and thus less drought on average. It also follows the cooler ocean surface temperatures are a cause of drought, just the opposite of the alarmist hypothesis.
Climate is very complex and there is no such thing as a global climate. Ocean currents, continental configurations, Hadley cells, inter-tropical convergence zone location, etc. If there is change it is always possible for there to be areas that benefit and areas that are hurt. On average though, less drought, more arable land, longer growing seasons—net beneficial.
We haven’t hit peak alarmism yet. They’re er, learning to cope
“”We don’t have to be overwhelmed by climate anxiety. Feel the pain, then act””
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/25/we-dont-have-to-be-overwhelmed-by-climate-anxiety-feel-the-pain-then-act
It reminds me of an old joke: how many social workers does it take to change a light bulb?
They don’t actually change the light bulb, they organise a crisis meeting on coping with darkness…
After all, if the light bulb doesn’t want to be changed, what right do we have to impose our values and preferences?
That goes to what I’ve long said about democrats. They never have a solution to solve a societal problem, they just seek to make people comfortable in their problems.
“ Sharp Cut in Fuel Use Urged” looks like a section heading
Who first coined the term fossil fuels and what real evidence is there that the deposits of coal, oil and gas are derived from fossils?
And
Isn’t it time for us to propose an alternative name for these energy reserves? God given fuels, perhaps?
“Stored solar energy” perhaps? No need to mention the circa 250 million year storage time.
There are macro and molecular fossils in coal and molecular fossils in oil. One has to use isotopic analysis of natural gas to infer origin.
As I have already commented here today, we should be focused on becoming politically effective.
Your question implies to me a religious belief in a young earth literal Biblical interpretation. If that is the case, the evidence is not in your favor, but of course God could have created what look to us to be fossils for inscrutable reasons.
We’re each entitled to our religious faith at least in some countries at some times. Maybe even for a few more years.
I would suggest to you that leading with the thesis that coal, oil, and gas were created ex nihilo by God a few thousand years ago is not going to be EFFECTIVE. We need to halt the accelerating slide toward totalitarian government. If we fail, your beliefs won’t likely be tolerated.
The key is NO CLIMATE CRISIS. Please don’t undermine that focus with other unnecessary controversies.
Regarding the temperature claim, there are two things to bear in mind. Firstly, the claim is being made by the journalist writing the article, not scientists, as none is directly quoted.
Secondly, if this does refer to Hansen’s 1988 projection, then it is important to note that he produced three scenarios (A, B & C); with A being the warmest as it assumed continued exponential growth of emissions (including of CFCs, which were banned shortly after the paper was published). Typically, critics of Hansen and Lebedeff (1988) and sensationalist journalists tend to report scenario A as if it was the only scenario they used, as appears to be the case here.
Scenario B assumed a continued linear growth in emissions and this is the scenario that most closely matched what actually occurred (but still included forcing by CFCs that didn’t happen). The rate of warming predicted in scenario B (1988 to 2019) was +0.28C (not F) per decade. The GISS(Ts) data set used for the projections ends in 2018, with warming 1988 to 2018 of +0.20C per decade.
Considering that the greenhouse warming influence of CFCs was greatly curtailed shortly after the projection was made and that H&L had their ECS a tad high (3.4C instead of the now more generally used 3.0C), it’s a pretty good forecast.
Nick Stokes has an excellent interactive chart where you can compare various data sets against Hansen’s prediction here.
“Nick Stokes has….”
Verifiable nitpicking skills
But don’t discount Rusty’s formidable nitpickery!
TFN whines. A lot.
James Hansen said the streets of New York would be underwater. He was making patently false claims at the time he made them.
Believing one’s own lies doesn’t make them any less a lie. He knew better than that. It was a wild fantasy scenario then and a joke today.
That seems to be a common misinterpretation which has persisted. That was apparently 40 years after a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration.
I’m being an equal opportunity curmudgeon this evening.
“Hansen also predicted that global warming would cause a drastic rise in crime in
the Big Apple, because “you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.””
Well, he got that one right although for the wrong reasons. Crime increase caused by idiotic human policies.
Yeah speaking of correlations, how about the massive increase in climate catastrophe articles in the msm following massive numbers of grant-funded agw “studies”?
Being cynical, if he hadn’t got everything wrong he would have been right.
CO2 emissions are tracking Scenario A/RCP8.5 reasonably closely, but concentrations and temperature increases are a reasonable match to Scenarios B & C / RCP4.5, RCP2.5.
There was a large underestimate of the amount of CO2 which would be removed from the biosphere.
They were a bad acid trip. He also had an increase in CH4 concentrations which couldn’t happen, but that was more likely some really good heads rather than a dodgy batch of acid.
40% high
If it wasn’t wrong it would be right. ECS is long-term, anyway, but still 15% higher than currently used, but his rate of temperature increase was 40% high.
It was back of the envelope stuff over 30 years ago, using preliminary estimates. There has been considerable subsequent progress, so fooling oneself into thinking it was any better than it was merely serves to diminish the later contributions.
No uncertainty bars. Anywhere. Hansen’s 1988 projections were physically meaningless. As are projections made today, and for the same reason.
It’s hard to know whether Hansen was lying, or just utterly incompetent.
You present a pathetic attempt to blame “the journalist” rather than Hansen and other Climate “Scientists.” Not a single “scientist” promoting the hypothesis of Global Warming stood up to refute the exaggerations. Not a single one! Every so-called scientist glomming on loads of money taken by government force from productive workers is equally guilty.
Strange is it not that many climate scientists continue to publish papers using RCP 8.5 even though the IPCC itself agrees it is the least realistic scenario?
Don’t mention the war!
(I did, but I think I got away with it).
– Basil Fawlty.
Nick Stokes has a twisted deviant idea of mathematics.
Everything he does and says based on his demented ideology, not reality.
OK James Handstand – maybe this correlates with your theory.
Or does it: “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.
People, That Is Garbage: If The Solar Energy is ‘trapped in the atmosphere‘, as stated; how can it be available to warm the surface?
Seriously Surely Shirley – How Does That Work?
i.e. The atmosphere is always a cold place relative to the surface thus it can not ‘warm the surface‘
(btw: Show some respect you tedious muppet- it is Earth, not earth)
You know me, “Show me pictures or it didn’t happen” – here’s My Picture
It’s created from the outputs of twin (Lascar ‘Easylog’ temploggers) from in my garden near Newark.
One was in a home-made screen, suspended from/under a small (20ft tall) tree in my garden.
The other half of the twin was in a waterproof plastic container placed in the ‘inspection hole’ where the stopcock for my home water-supply arrived. About 15″ underground and obviously, recording the temp of the underground water supply pipe as it came all the way from wherever the waterworks were/are. It averaged a lot of the local area/ground.
This covers the period May 2017 through November 2022
Nothing with regard the dataloggers changed in all that time. Maybe the tree grew a bit but notta lot and nowhere near as much as it should have – and I do know why.
Glyphosate.
Anyway: We see that ‘air temps’ are rising gradually, barely perceptibly and soil temps are falling at a similar barely perceptible rate.
Don’t that stack up with ‘some energy’ remaining in the atmosphere and that ‘same energy’ thus not being in the ground?
But just look at the difference of Soil minus Air – it’s falling off a cliff.
How many times: Have I said that “a warming atmosphere is a cooling Earth/earth’ and there it is.
Take this to Hawaii and the famous carbon curve graph – look closely and you see The Growing Season for plants (the May/June/July time when CO₂ levels are dropping) is getting progressively shorter and shorter. The guy where I found that asserted by about 4 days per year.
Straight off, dare we suggest that CO₂ is rising not because of ’emissions but because of ‘lack of absorptions‘
And there is it in my picture – the soil is getting cold relative to the air.
Look at it, a one Celsius drop in just 5 years
Contrary to Popular Opinion concerning CO₂ and Greening, it is primarily the soil and the bacteria within it that feed plants – and bacteria are intensely temperature sensitive little things…..(Also to things called ‘antibiotics’ as it happens)
If the bacteria are cold, they are not feeding the plants.
Yes: Deserts have high temeperures but they are Cold Places and so you see in my Newark garden, a desert being created.
Not my exact garden, all around it the industrial cultivation of barley, maize (for biofuel/digesters) and potatoes. Sometimes also carrots.
(I know that, my now deceased uncle was the Farm Manager orchestrating it all.
RIP 30 years ago this year – his son took over)
Why is that: What I said about my Laburnum tree not growing very well compared many of it peers around the country, also what the local farmer is grumbling about = what he calls ‘Poor Soil’
i.e. Glyphosate. An antibiotic. That’s how/why it was invented.
Even crazier, you will assert I’ve lost it this time, but Ammonium Nitrate does the exact same thing.
By an entirely different mechanism admittedly yes, but the net/end result is just the same:
High air temps & cold soils= Deserts
Spring planting was delayed in many places this year, primarily due to cold temps.
From the article: “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.”
That scientist being James Hansen. It’s really disengenuous of James Hansen to claim that 1988 was warmer than in any comparable period since measurements began 130 years ago, yet James Hansen still claimed at the time of that congressional hearing, that 1934 was the hottest year in recorded history in the United States, not 1988.
So when James Hansen made that claim he should have added the disclaimer “Except in the United States”, because neither 1988 or any year since that time has been as warm as 1934.
James Hansen, you are a liar. A liar who has caused tremendous damage to humanity with your lies and distortions about CO2 and human-caused climate change.
We can attribute our current Nut Zero suffering to unscrupulous people like James Hansen.
Here’s James Hansen’s United States temperature chart (Hansen 1999). Look at it and compared it to Hansen’s rhetoric. Obviously, 1988 is not as warm as 1934 or any of the years in the 1930’s.
And for you guys who want to complain that Hansen 1999 only covers the United States, there are numerous unmodified, written regional temperaure records from around the world that show the same temperature profile as the U.S. where it is no warmer today than it was in the Early Twentieth Century.
And, of course, James Hansen was aware of all this when he gave his disengenuous testimony before Congress. He’s a liar and a distorter of the Earth’s temperature record. He is pushing a false CO2 narrative. A narrative that is detrimental to all of us.
“It’s really disengenuous of James Hansen to claim that 1988 was warmer than in any comparable period since measurements began 130 years ago, yet James Hansen still claimed at the time of that congressional hearing, that 1934 was the hottest year in recorded history in the United States, not 1988.”
Or maybe he understood the difference between the United States and the Globe.
The so-called “global surface temperatures are manifestly TAINTED.
With sites that are totally unfit for climate purposes,
With ideology-based adjustments.
They are totally meaningless and are not representative of any sort of reality.
Many places, pre-maladjustment, shows the 1930,40s were warmer.
And certainly most of the last 10,000 years have been significantly warmer than now.
But you KNOW that, don’t you.
Keep up the cult- based spin and mantra”.. it all you have.
“The so-called “global surface temperatures are manifestly TAINTED.”
Yet you claim you know the globe was warmer in 1934 than any other year?
You poor ignorant petal
Absolutely ZERO UNDERSTANDING of urban heat effects.
Hint, as populations grow, urban areas get warmer.
Think really hard… you may eventually get there. !
Or Not !
“Yet you claim you know the globe was warmer in 1934 than any other year?”
The written temperature records show the 1930’s as being as warm or warmer than today (in the case of the U.S.). Here are a couple of charts, the U.S. chart, and one from the opposite side of the world, Australia, which both show it was just as warm in the Early Twentieth Century as it is today. All the unmodified written temperature records show the same benign temperature profile. There is no unprecedented warming today. You have been mesmerized by the bogus Hockey Stick chart.
I keep trying to explain why those graphs are not showing the same thing you are arguing about. They do not show annual average temperatures, they are showing maximum monthly temperatures for a single month in summer.
And they both stop in 2012.
And the Australian one does not show anything like the US one.
The US graph shows a clear increase in summer maximum temperatures during the 1930’s regardless of individual years. But the Australian one only shows one unusually warm year in 1932 (Possibly 1931, difficult to tell on those line graphs). Purely from eyeballing it I would estimate the 1930s overall where cooler than the 1980’s and beyond.
Also, the usual question, why do you accept this data from BEST despite the fact it’s the same data as their global data, which you claim is bogus and manipulated? It seems you have no problem with “manipulation” if it gives you the results you like.
“Or maybe he understood the difference between the United States and the Globe.”
I contend that Hansen did not see any differences between the U.S. temperatures and the other written temperature records from around the world because there are no differences, because all those records show what the U.S. records shows, which is that it was just as warm in the Early Twentieth Century as it is today.
What Hansen and the other temperature data mannipulators did was to ignore the land temperature trends and make up a bogus “hotter and hotter” temperature trend using bogus sea surface temperature data, most of which was made up out of thin air.
The written historical temperature records from around the world, do not support Hansen’s contension that it is hotter now than in the past.
You’ve seen all these regional charts. Why do you think it is hotter today than it was then, when these regional charts do not show that? There’s no evidence for unprecedented warming other than the bogus, bastardized, “hotter and hotter” Hockey Stick chart, which is made up out of whole cloth. Is that what you are hanging your hat on?
“I contend that Hansen did not see any differences between the U.S. temperatures and the other written temperature records from around the world because there are no differences,”
And yet he produced two graphs, one for the US one for the globe.
“…because all those records show what the U.S. records shows, which is that it was just as warm in the Early Twentieth Century as it is today.”
They do not. Not even the US temperatures show that. You cannot point to a few unusually warm years and claim that shows what “Early Twentieth Century” temperatures were like.
“What Hansen and the other temperature data mannipulators did was to ignore the land temperature trends and make up a bogus “hotter and hotter” temperature trend using bogus sea surface temperature data, most of which was made up out of thin air.”
Citation required. I thought early temperature records were land only. It would be odd to include SST in order to make the graphs steeper when SST warms at a slower rate.
“You’ve seen all these regional charts.”
I see the highly selective charts you keep showing, which never show the actual average temperatures, and still don;t show what you claim. Regional temperatures are different to global. You can always find one place that at one point of time was unusually warm, but that does not mean the entire globe was unusually warm at that same point in time.
“There’s no evidence for unprecedented warming other than the bogus, bastardized, “hotter and hotter” Hockey Stick chart, which is made up out of whole cloth.”
Translation: There’s no evidence as long as you can dismiss all the evidence as bogus.
From the article: “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.”
That describes the temperature record pretty good. Since the end of the Little Ice Age, there were temperature highpoints in the 1880’s, and the 1930’s, and both periods were just as warm as today.
And there wasn’t any “stabilzation”. The temperatures cooled by 2.0C after the hot 1930’s, down through the 1970’s (see Hansen 1999 chart above), to the point that some were claiming another Ice Age was in the offing. But then, the temperatures started warming again in the 1980’s and Hansen took advantage of this warming to claim it is caused by CO2, when none of the other warmings in the past were caused by CO2, and those past warmings were of the very same magnitude as current warming. The very same.
This means there is no unprecedented warming today, which means CO2 has had little effect on temperatures over the decades.
This also means that James Hansen is a bold-faced liar who has done great damage to the Western world. Are you worried about the mental health of children who worry themselves sick over climate change? James Hansen is one that put that unwarranted fear of CO2 in their minds.
I personally think Hansen ought to be put in jail for his lies along with a couple of dozen of his fellow colleagues/liars. Anyone who was involved with the bastardization of the Earth’s temperature record. They have done GREAT harm to all of us, with their lies and distortions about CO2.
Thanks for this excellent summary of the actual temperature record and its lack of relationship to man made atmospheric CO2. This is an easy to understand argument. Maybe the NY Times will post it on their front page sometime soon?
I won’t hold my breath waiting. 🙂
I agree with you, Tom. Pace Rich Davis, but to my mind we need to be juridically effective.
File charges of criminal negligence and malfeasance against the narrative purveyors for the evident harms they have caused with their global warming pseudo-science.
Just a suggestion. If you don’t agree with any of the current temperature data sets – rather than trying to ban them and throw people into jail, why not first try producing your own data sets, using your own methods showing what you think is the correct history. Then we can compare the various methods.
On it’s way, Bellman. It won’t be what you expect. Or like.
I look forward to it. And I’ll try not to get you arrested if I don’t like it.
Pat Frank won’t unnecessarily scare the children and drive them insane, so there is no reason to arrest Pat.
Hansen, on the other hand. . .
With any luck, Tom, it’ll scare Hansen and reveal his insanity. And the widespread incompetence that rules the field.
The law is dependent on politics. Unfortunate, but true.
With the events of the past month, who can seriously question that?
Judges are dependent on politics, But I know what you mean, Rich. There are still honest judges and honest police.
I’ve always thought that the courts were the last redoubt of American freedom. If they go, the Tree of Liberty is likely to get a watering.
Short story… Models versus reality, models lose.
“Dr. Hansen, who records temperatures from readings at monitoring stations around the world”…
Wow, “monitoring stations around the world”, makes it sound REALLY scientific. I’ll bet they are official NASA monitoring stations, no?
“Today, 35 years later, the recorded increase is 1F and 4 inches.”
And that’s assuming the world wide temperature measurements are accurate. Maybe, but it’s a big planet.
No real man would admit to 4 inches.
The Model expected 1 foot but the actual observation was …
Very interesting thread ,Hansen is a piece of work.
1988 was very hot and dry here in the Northern Rockies, I vaguely recall Hansen’s
testimony but what sticks in my mind was the wildfires.
In early August the Warm Springs Creek Fire
started by a hot exhaust on a Jeep that went off the road into some tall grass. It took off
and blew up into something I had never seen before. 200-300 ft high flames that we watched
from 20 miles away at night when it went into the Casey Peak area. They brought in a
bunch of C130’s from California with a10K gallon bladders on board. They flew nonstop
for nearly a month then transferred to the Yellowstone Park fire.
There also was a huge fire
in the Bob Marshall wilderness that they were allowing to burn in their “let it burn”
policy that blew up and roared out of the Bob and destroyed a large amount of
private property. There was a big change in forest policy after that year. It made the
“man made climate change” an easy sell after that year.
I was over in Helena a few
weeks ago and they were flying the VLAT’s “touch n go” getting ready for the up
and coming year. But with over 7″ of rain in the bucket so far this month we’re looking
good. I watched the VLATS up close on a fire a few years ago and they are a sight to behold. A 747 making multiple passes laying down retardant saving literally hundreds of homes on the North Hills Fire. Those pilots coming down into the smoke at low altitude,
they are brave guys.
After all these years and all the indoctrination, you will never convince enough people the “science” they believe in is wrong. The only way to correct this is to change the narrative to warmer is better. Sell that emotion.
1°F and 4 inches (0.6°C and 10 cm) are tiny compared with the daily variations anywhere on the planet. Essentially unmeasurable without the magic of averaging averages.
We need to come to terms with the fact that a large fraction, perhaps a majority of those identified as experts are not practicing science but rather self promotion and propaganda. A large majority of our leadership are either unwilling, unable or both when it comes to examining expert opinions and advice critically and judging the value of their words. The commercial media are mostly uninterested in the truth of any big issue, but only focused on what income they can gain from whatever they publish. And much of the voting population are equally unable to think critically about what the media says and the policies of elected individuals and to determine who best defends and enhances the wellbeing of society.
We need a government that will make “experts” accountable for their words – i.e. they will be rewarded for putting us on the right track and punished for willfully send us down a dead end. We need the media held accountable to do real journalism and not propaganda for whomever pays the bill. To some extent the market helps us here as we see with various big news outlets loosing market share and shedding staff because of persistent biased and dishonest coverage of major issues.
We need to invest in an education system that ensures the ability and the habit of thinking critically. Education must include an understanding of the basics of scientific investigation and thought and must ensure the ability to make critical decisions based on reality, rather than belief or emotion.
We have lots to do. We know how to do it. We will need to start with leadership that shares these goals.
Somewhere a few weeks ago is a post by Pat Frank “What I Learned about What Exxon Knew”.One of his points is that these 50 year models have huge systematic uncertainties rendering them useless as climate prediction tools. For example not considering changes in the cloudiness over time correctly.
It is important to realize that this is true for any older model generation!
Even CMIP5 models show about 25% difference for CO2 forgings to CMIP6 mainly due to a better cloud parametrization, which means the graphs from 10 years ago need to be reploted with huge error bars in order to reflect modern knowledge.
The point being is that Hansen´s testimony is based on models which we know now were not precise enough. This is really all you can say about it.
Any effort to point out what models older than CMIP6 predicted is just unscientific!
(BTW that does not mean CMIP6 models are correct, they just show that older models lacking in a systematic way)
Thank-you, morfu03. Here‘s the link.
And to the paper demonstrating that climate models have no predictive value.
And the CMIP6 models are no better.
From the above quote of the NYT article of 1988:
“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.”
Thus, Hansen, proclaiming to be a knowledgeable climate scientist, “conveniently” did not mention the start of the Holocene and the previous nine or so warming transitions from glacial to interglacial climates, none of which were the result of man-made or even natural emissions of CO2, based on paleoclimatology proxies.
“Thus, Hansen, proclaiming to be a knowledgeable climate scientist, “conveniently” did not mention the start of the Holocene and the previous nine or so warming transitions from glacial to interglacial climates, none of which were the result of man-made or even natural emissions of CO2, based on paleoclimatology proxies.”
That is exactly what Hansen did. He distorted reality and hid the facts in order to push the human-caused climate change narrative. He lied to the world, and his lies have caused tremedous damage to millions of people. He didn’t murder millions, but he drove millions insane with his lies, which is just a slower, more painful death.
James Hansen is not our friend.
I finally realized why the caricature of James Hansen, featured as the lead-in image to the above article, is so disturbing to me: there’s a very close resemblance to the main nemesis character Agent Smith (played by actor Hugo Weaving), of the The Matrix movie series. See attached image.
That Hansen would have the same apparent motive as Agent Smith, that of misleading people as to what is reality, is also striking.
Ahh, but does he have a Guy Fawkes mask?
There are no scientific measurements anywhere that show any benefit, adjustment or impact to the atmosphere resulting from the totality of all efforts to supposedly alter the climate.
Every claim of emission reductions (past, present and future) has failed to provide any means to ever know if there is any climate gain from the policy pain.
Instead, the policy pain, while always presumed to be worthwhile, is mendaciously defined as economically & societally preferable to evade guilt by providing fake justifications.
Wait while the inevitable global cooling starts, that’s when the real big problems, excess deaths etc will hit home
It would appear that the lack of the projected “Global Warming” has caused an increase in the use of the term “Climate Change”.
Nothing more than parameterised junk based on a completely wrong understanding of how Earth’s energy balance is regulated. Energy input is limited by ocean surface reaching 30C. It is temperature limited. The energy balance has nothing to do with a delicate radiative balance.
As the peak solar intensity moves northward it is resulting in more ocean surface reaching 30C. Entirely natural process that has occurred 4 times in the last 400,000 years as an interglacial terminated.
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… .