The Today programme also interviewed James Hansen on climate sensitivity this morning (see link below). This was an extraordinary performance by any standards.
Hansen opened with the most astonishing claim about global temperatures,
In the last decade it's warmed only about a tenth of a degrees as compared to about two tenths of a degree in the preceding decade.
a claim which completely contradicts Hansen's own GISTEMP dataset (H/T Ruth Dixon).;)
There is a suggestion that he might have been referring to a land-only dataset, but this would still be grossly misleading since he says that land-only data overestimates trends.
Hansen also spoke of the climate sensitivity, making the bizarre claim that our understanding is based on paleoclimate rather than models and speaking of the excellence of the data in this area. This is mind-boggling, since these datasets contain so little information that they can barely constrain the climate sensitivity at all. The weakness of the constraint provide by paleo data was noted by the IPCC in the last assessment report, and they decided to base the "consensus" figure largely on models - precisely the opposite of what Hansen said was done.
He also tried to blame the standstill on aerosols, ignoring the fact that the IPCC's best estimate now finds that their effect is small, and he described heat going into the oceans as "a detail" and "a diversionary tactic".
Quite disgraceful.
Bishop Hill