Aren’t you at all suspicious that as temperatures remain in stasis - and we are told to expect them to stay there until 2015 - the disaster CO2 ppm number keeps getting lower.

In the authoritative IPCC a doubling to 560 likely meant a 1.5 - 4.5C with above 1C or so dependent on forcings and feedbacks. It has gone down to 500, then 450 and 400. And finally we are at 350. Horrible enough that we are already past 350; 350 is, in fact, the tipping point!

450 ppm gets us an ice free planet is not based on current science. Arctic ice melt, according to two separate NASA studies and two Swedish studies, is predominantly caused by decadal ocean oscillation and fine black soot, not AGW. Fortuitous wind patterns also play a major role.

I am assuming that climateprogress does not support Dr. Hansen’s Tax and Dividend proposal.

Temperatures are not in stasis — I’m sorry you have bought into that nonsense and ignored everything that has been posted here about that. Nor are they going to stay flat for the next seven years, as I have repeatedly explained.

Your understanding of the history of climate science, nor the current state, is not strong. You would do well to read some of Hansen’s writing.

As much as I respect his scientific work, this doesn’t help the political side.

That said, those who are financing the disinformation campaign — and those who are taking the money and spreading disinformation — are committing one of the great moral crimes against humanity in all of human history. Such people deserve the strongest condemnation.

Just for the record.

After 20 years of patiently waiting for policy makers to act on his scientific findings, Dr. Hansen shows remarkable restraint in his criticism of others.

Under the circumstances, I admire Dr. Hansen for having the courage to be heard.

He shouldn’t say high crimes against humanity?

What is it if it isn’t that?

yearly deltaT*20 years = 0.38 C

[JR: Harold — this absurd slander of the nation’s top climate scientist and one of the most brilliant people I have ever met is pushing you close to the edge of being banned entirely.]

The key is that the EAIS partly maintains its own regional climate due to its height and albedo. So an ice-free world at 450ppm is different to a modern partially iced world at 450ppm, because the albedo, southern polar winds and regional precipitation patterns are different.

That said, its hard to draw any simple palaeo-analogies. Current tipping elements and carbon-cycle feedbacks (e.g. Siberian methane) may be different, or more vulnerable now compared to the mid-Miocene - or indeed less so. As Wally Broecker said, all we can be sure of is that there will be surprises in the greenhouse.

He was, after all correct in 1988 when he predicted massive devastating drought in the Midwest, well except for 1993 and this year, but those were merely unpredictable anomalies.

Kinda like this statement

[JR: Harold — this absurd slander of the nation’s top climate scientist and one of the most brilliant people I have ever met is pushing you close to the edge of being banned entirely.]

To the Hague with you, denier!

Joe, you are sounding like Hansen, unhinged.

In the early 1940’s, there was alot of work on an atomic bomb to end World War II. Many of the Scientists who had worked on the bomb had decided that they should write a letter to the President of the United States about the use of that bomb and the ethical and destructive nature of that bomb. Who else would have more moral standing than those people who actually did the research, designs and building the atomic bomb?

What if they had remained completely silent? Wouldn’t that have sent the message that it’s just about the technology, that even the builders of terrible devices have some need to speak out.

The same is true with Scientists and the study of the climate and the possible changes that we as a society are doing to the climate. Who better to speak out about this than those who know the science the most.

And if these Scientists only speak so that nobodies feelings get hurt, they haven’t told us how very important this really is. It is to bad that the only thing that gets press is name calling and the prosecution of people on moral and ethical grounds for destroying this planet, but that is what needs to be done however distasteful it may be.

Or could it be that the media and political world between 1988 and 2004 would have laughed him off into some obscure academic post without the credentials to be noticed again if he had repeated the “science” of his findings again in a national forum? I’m still waiting for him to present evidence that actually shows that a change of carbon dioxide from 0.035% of a gas sample to 0.045% produces any significant temperature change in the sample when exposed to sunlight. Can we at least get some empirical, reproducible evidence to go with our computer models, please?

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob.htm

lead to the Keeling curve of additional CO2 in the air:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/ gmd/ ccgg/ trends/ co2_data_mlo.html

and as CO2 is a global warming (so-called greenhouse) gas, this leads to the climate warming. Here are the decadal averages from the HadCRUTv3 global temperature product:

http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/10yave.jpg

You can read about this and much more in “The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer Weart:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html

Review of above:

http://query.nytimes.com/ gst/ fullpage.html?res=9F04E7DF153DF936A35753C1A9659C8B63

[JR: Why would I call you a heretic when you are a denier of the facts? Try to learn the difference between weather and climate — it actually matters to the future health and well-being of the next 50 generations. Nothing is so sad as the cockiness of the no-nothings blindly leading us to our self-destruction. But fret not — you deniers pretty much have the upper hand with the conservative movement, which should be enough to block serious action — and my guess is you will live to see just how tragically wrong you are. When your children and/or your nieces and nephews wonder who helped ruin the planet’s livability for them, do tell them you helped!]

It’s even more impolite of Mother Earth to have cooled off over 0.35 degrees (same source) in the 20 years since he first spoke. This at a time when CO2 concentrations have been going up.

May ice coverage at both poles is about 30% greater than the same month in 1980.

Speaking out about a warming danger when all the current signs are pointing in the other direction just doesn’t get people too fired up. Hopefully the planet will start cooperating again soon. Maybe solar cycle 24 can get started here pretty soon and get us warmed back up.

I hope so for Mr. Hansens sake.

…I remember the “scientific community” warning of a coming Ice Age back in the 70’s.”

Interestingly, Jim Hansen was one of those wonderful prognosticators as is detailed at the following web site:

http://www.investors.com/ editorial/ editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=275267681833290

Maybe he decided to invest in air conditioners instead of fur coats. Great pitch man there, Jim!

Four of the top 10 hottest years were in the 1930’s and only 3 of the hottest 10 years are in the last decade.

How many do overs should Mr. Hansen get.

[JR: Your repetition of global warming denier talking points is quickly getting tedious. The data is clear that no year in the 1930s had a global temperature close to the temperatures of the last several years. See “Must read from Hansen: Stop the madness about the tiny revision in NASA’s temperature data!” I am not going to keep printing your disinformation. How many do overs should you get?]

Joe, do we have to read this sort of drivel here?

This nonsense has been debunked here:

http://www.realclimate.org/ index.php/ archives/ 2008/ 03/ the-global-cooling-mole/

If he posts such drivel again, I will ban him.

As far as your proposed experiment, it is flawed in its design. Tyndall did do experiments around 1859 to show that CO2 blocks heat. The theory that the temperature of the Earth depends upon greenhouse gases goes back to Joseph Fourier in 1824. One needs primarily 19th century physics to understand the basics of global warming.

I’ve studied 19th century physics, and understand about absorption spectra, and realize EVERY molecule in our atmosphere has the ability to absorb energy along certain wavelengths of electromagnetic energy from photons of light. This is not rocket science. It is the basis of modern color photography.

As I said, the primary greenhouse gas is water, actually represented by a significant fraction of the atmospheric content. This fact has been documented for well over 30 years. If you want, from my experiment you can even leave it out. Base the gas sample upon nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide, but only 0.035% and 0.045% concentrations of carbon dioxide. Let the experiment last a full year, two giant sealed glass containers with thermocouples to monitor the heat inside each, sitting in the middle of a giant field with a color consistent background around each. The glass might trap some heat, but it will be similar in each. You should be able to track the heat build up in each enclosed environment with ease, and be able to have statistical proof whether there is any significant difference in the temperature of each container. If there is a significant difference, you will have proved your point, and in a relatively inexpensive manner.

One thing I’ve learned as a resident skeptic at climateprogress is not to rely on agenda driven websites for info. It’s pretty well established that Dr. Hansen was not part of the 70’s ice age crowd. He did provide much of the computer modeling they used.”

Sorry, Paul, something about that does not jive completely with me. If his computer models could be used then to predict cooling, then it calls into question the validity of using them to predict warming now. Either his models are shown to be subject to the whims and desires of the people programming them, or his models originally supported this view and he was willing to have them show this. Either way, it makes his current credibility suspect.

As many as Hansen has gotten, per chance? If they are needing to revise the data sets he is using to make predictions, then we have the right to draw attention to the fact.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ earth/ main.jhtml?xml=/ earth/ 2007/ 08/ 16/ eaclimate116.xml

[JR: NASA has made one teeny revision in the temperature data. Please identify any others, else your comment is simply disinformation. My comment was not about mentioning the data revision, it was about spreading the disinformation about global temperatures.]

But JR, isn’t having to retract and revise data set that you have published and touted as definitive an admission that you have spread disinformation?

–noun

false information, as about a country’s military strength or plans, publicly announced or planted in the news media, esp. of other countries.

[JR: In short, no. That is the kind of comparison only a global warming denier. Making tiny adjustments to one’s work is the very essence of science. NASA shared its data! Now Christy and Spencer, they kept their data and their flawed analysis to themselves — creating the myth for a decade that the satellite data did not agree with the surface data. THat comes pretty close to scientific disinformation and that’s why I ignore everything they do now.

Someday you will understand science, when even you see the reality of the suffering and misery that you deniers will have helped put billions of people through. Until then, find another place to comment.]

1. Deliberately misleading information announced publicly or leaked by a government or especially by an intelligence agency in order to influence public opinion or the government in another nation
2.Dissemination of such misleading information

Has Hansen ever retracted his state to the effect that the 1990’s was the warmest decade after the revised data indicated that the 1930’s were warmer? If not, then as a government employee, he meets this definition of of disinformation provided here.

[JR: This statement gets you banned. The 1990s were the warmest decade the world has seen in the historical record. So the only retraction needed is the retraction of your disinformation. I am painstakingly nonpartisan here politically. You, however, are not.]

[JR: Def guy — I don’t care whether the discourse is civil or not. Why would I allow “civil” disinformation to be placed on my blog, especially long-debunked disinformation, that forces me or my readers to waste time that could be put to better use. I find that deniers aren’t interested in “open discourse” since they never bother spending any time learning the basics of the scientific method or climate science. They just want to spread their disinformation. Of course AGW denier sites allow “disputing opinions” [otherwise known as real science] — they want to make it look like there is a genuine debate. YOU are the active partisan advocate of global warming, since you apparently like global warming and want more of it. I am a nonpartisan advocate of science. It gets quite tedious when you misuse the English language like this — the word “partisan” in the context of this blog clearly means politically nonpartisan. And that I most certainly am. Governor Schwarzenegger is doing a terrific job in California on the climate issue, and I’m happy to say so. I thought the Boxer bill was lacking, and said so.]