Bishop Hill Hansen at the LSE
May 21, 2013 Climate: Sceptics Climate: other Reader Danny Weston sends this report of James Hansen's lecture at the LSE last week.
On Friday the 17th James Hansen came to speak at the London School of Economics (LSE), on “Itinerant farming to White House arrests: A scientist’s view of the climate crisis”.
The venue was completely packed and I wasn’t sure initially if I would even get in. There were hundreds of people, already buzzing with excitement before Hansen began his talk.
As expected, Hansen put the frighteners on, emphasising that immediate action was required to stymie anthropogenic CO2’s allegedly noxious effect on our environment. His presentation was littered with continual emotive references to, and pictures of, his numerous grandchildren, showing them gradually growing up. This was important because Hansen is now pushing the line that whilst climate catastrophe is not imminent, it is “in the pipeline” and the victims will, apparently, be our grandchildren. The reason we’re not seeing imminent catastrophe now is because of “climate inertia” and we should be worried because there are further “tipping points” to come after which “we could lose control”. I’m sure all of this sounds familiar.
Furthermore, he was also playing the victim card, detailing his interactions with the Bush administration and presenting himself as a hard pressed and isolated scientist working against the grain. He claimed that the 30% reduction in the NASA climate budget during this period was a result of him having gone to the New York Times claiming that NASA had censored him [1].
He went through all of the standard alarmist memes with almost no qualification or caveats to speak of. Regular readers of BH and other sceptical blogs will be familiar with all of them – TSI not being a factor in affecting the climate, “unprecedented melt” in Greenland (for which he showed this [2] image, with no mention of these [3] issues), both Arctic and Antarctic “death spirals” (showing a graph for each, with a single curve sloping precipitously downward at an ever faster rate), ocean acidification, coral bleaching and so on.
“Extreme weather” of course had a central place in the presentation. He claimed that there were now “more extreme forest fires” and of course highlighted Hurricane Sandy. He said that droughts were also getting worse and tried to illustrate this anecdotally by claiming to have noticed changes in the migratory behaviour of the monarch butterfly in North America (also giving him another opportunity to reference his grandchildren).
He then moved onto more political aspects of his views, leading with a slide quoting himself thus:
“Our parents did not know that their actions could harm future generations. We will only be able to pretend that we did not know.”
This led into a discussion of “intergenerational justice”. During which he made a number of bizarre claims and statements. These included:
- Extolling the virtues of France’s dash to nuclear power (no mention of the issue of nuclear waste whatsoever, nor the fact that both the UK and Germany regularly rely on French nuclear power).
- Answering a questioner who raised the issue of national debts as possibly being more important than “green” spending, he claimed that attacking the deficit rewards the government, helping them to grow bigger.
- Praising Bill McKibben for “getting the Sierra Club to join him” and “thousands of people” to surround the Whitehouse for the anti-Keystone pipeline demonstration. This is bizaare because Hansen was there himself – with all 50 attendees [4]
- Then of course there was the boilerplate “there is a well funded [fossil fuel] effort to prevent the public from understanding the issue”.
During the Q and A session as I listened to one questioner after another identify whichever activist group or green lobbying special interest group they were from, I truly felt like I was alone in enemy territory. I almost backed out and let my fear get the better of me. But I kept putting my hand up regardless – I felt Hansen’s scaremongering could not go unanswered and if it wasn’t by way of putting points and questions to him then it was going to have to be heckles.
Shortly before the mike came to me, one of the activists in the audience pointed out that he [Hansen] was only preaching to the choir, saying that it was important to get people from ‘outside the choir’ to attend such events and asking how.
That was my in. Hansen responded to her that it was very important to get people from ‘outside the choir’ in to such talks but didn’t know how.
The mike came to me and I stood up and laid into him. I said that he was high on the hyperbole and hysteria and low on the facts. Most of the people there would unfortunately take him at his word and not look any further so I said I felt obliged to point out that most of his claims were highly controversial and some were flat out wrong and that I’d be happy to go through them with him there and then and debate him.
The crowd then turned on me, exploding in incredulity.
I stated that my question to him was that if he truly wanted people from ‘outside the choir’ to get involved then what on earth did he expect to happen when he continually pushed the line that there was an enormous well funded “denial” campaign, painting anyone who dared express a sceptical thought as being in bed with the fossil fuel industry.
After several hostile exchanges with the crowd immediately around me and a bit of back and forth between myself and Hansen, he finally got around to (not) answering my question. His response was very odd. He went through the hackneyed nonsense about science being based on scepticism (the implied syllogism here being that he was a scientist, therefore also a sceptic). He then said that he had debated Richard Lindzen previously. He said (referring to Lindzen) that it was “hard to win against an articulate guy”. He also – bizzarely – claimed that Lindzen had been shown to be wrong again and again and that he [Hansen] would no longer have any kind of debates, public or otherwise, with Lindzen or others because Lindzen “like other climate contrarians” – apparently – “even when he has been shown to be wrong on so many occasions, just shifts to another point to pick on”.
Following the talk I ended up being collared multiple times outside the lecture theatre. Thankfully a few people backpatted me and saying “very brave”, and a couple whispered to me conspiratorially “I’m outside the choir too”, but plenty were wanting to argue. I was happy to oblige.
I want to say thanks here by the way to the one kind chap who sided with me and argued with the attendees outside. What was particularly depressing though was further confirmation of the general pattern of ignorance that many of the alarmist footsoldiers appear to exhibit. There genuinely is no variation in my experience and over the last seven years or so during which I’ve argued with hundreds face to face since I fell from grace and became a CAGW sceptic. It is abundantly clear that they all get their talking points from the same limited insular group. I’d be interested to know if other BH readers have had a similar experience – commonalities include ignorance of CO2’s direct effect following a logarithmic decay, the importance of climate sensitivity and strong positive feedbacks to the alarmist case and similarly, their importance to the typical sceptic’s position (they always seem to have an utterly cartoonish impression of sceptics having never having before met one in real life), not understanding that the temperature data of 1880 or before may not necessarily be comparable to that in 2013, not knowing that regular measurements of CO2 have only been taken since 1958, not knowing that Venus’s climate is driven primarily by atmospheric pressure and proximity to the sun rather than CO2 and so on.
All in all a thoroughly depressing experience.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/earth/29climate.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
[2] http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/greenland-melt.html
[3] http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/21/greenland-ice-melt-overestimated-due-to-satellite-data-algorithm-issue/
[4] http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/13/keystone-xl-nasas-james-hansen-risks-arrest-again/
Reader Comments (107)
Regarding the Hansen followers, the following quotation comes to mind:
“People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.”
― Terry Goodkind, Wizard's First Rule
Well done Danny, balls of steel!
Others have mentioned the Oklahoma tornado; now we have BBC Environment Correspondent in fact-check shocker!!!
I didn't think I'd live to see the day, but just now on the BBC1 lunch time news, David Shukman was given a slow underarm climate change pitch on the Oklahoma story:
"So are these tornadoes becoming more common?"
You'd expect him to hit it out of the park right? Something like:
"whilst you can't directly link any one incident to climate change, Scientists Say this is the sort of event that we expect to see more of as the climate warms, so in that sense, some say, it's a sign of things to come"
Not a bit of it. It went something like:
"Well you might think that as the atmosphere warms, these sort of things would become more common, but THE DATA SHOW THAT THAT'S NOT THE CASE. The damage here is due more to the location."
Is this the first recorded example of the BBC passing up an opportunity to link a weather natural disaster to climate change??!!
It's not often I say this, but well done BBC. See, you can still do journalism, rather than just cut 'n' paste activism, if you really want to.
Thank you Danny Weston. I've been trying to have the courage to go to events like this (I live in Oxford, so there's plenty lectures to choose from...) but then I always backed out last moment. Not because I couldn't be bothered, but because of the hostility of the AGW crowd...
@anguspangus: You quote Shukman as saying: "Well you might think that as the atmosphere warms, these sort of things would become more common..."
Am I right in thinking that he even got that wrong? That the incidence in tornadoes increases as the atmosphere cools?
Rick Bradford "Sounds like a gospel meeting more than anything resembling rational thought."
Unfair to gospel meetings! :-)
Danny-
Thanks for your detailed responses to my list of questions.
I left off the next sentence in the quote from David Roberts, which is an inadvertent compliment to many here at BH-
"People who reject climate science tend to know the most about it, because they're motivated to learn about it in order to reject it.”
Then of course there was the boilerplate “there is a well funded effort to prevent the public from understanding the issue”.
Quite correct. Headed by Hansen et al, funded by government.
You've got guts, my friend.
"Hansen responded to her that it was very important to get people from ‘outside the choir’ in to such talks"
As long as they keep quiet, presumably! Very well done, Danny - I'd love to have seen Hansen's face, when he had effectively just invited the criticism! Worthy of a cartoon in the style of Bateman's 'The man who..'
Is it only me? Or does anyone else think that who those that fervently believe - like Hansen appears to do - that humans are killing the planet shouldn't be having any children or grandchildren at all?
How much climate alarmism comes from actual or threatened cuts to meteorological research. The Met Office was largely set up to predict weather for shipping. Two World Wars ( D- D landings,Arnhem ) showed that Armed Forces needed to predict the weather. Post Collapse of communism how much weather forecasting do the armed services of the Western World need? Now NASA is no longer flying to the Moon, what is it's purpose- obtain funds for climate research?
Our understanding of weather is pretty good and prediction over a few days is also good. Do we need to know any more about the weather and increase prediction capability for any future wars? If not , why not cut back money spent on weather prediction as part of the post Cold War peace dividend?
When it comes to Geography departments how many do we need? We have satellites to map and monitor the earth's surface and sending out expeditions on land is expensive. We probably need 1or 2 oceanographic departments for studying the physics, chemistry, biology and geology of oceans. When it comes to Physical Geography , Climate Science and Oceanography we could reduce departments to BAS/ Geography at Cambridge, Oceanography at Southampton and few others.
Part of the problem appears to be too many small research projects covering too small an area,over too short a time and collecting too few samples/measurements which produce confusing results. A few large research projects, covering large areas, over years or decades collecting, vast amounts of data would probably enable clear cut conclusions to be arrived at. After all Darwin spent decades and obtained a vast amount of data in order to arrive at the theory of evolution.
As the Sun has 11 year cycles, do we need at least 33 years of data to be sure of anything( 3 cycles)?
Well done, Danny, very courageous to face-off the likes of Hansen, one of the high-priests of the CAGW meme. We could do with an army of Dannies to stand up at these meetings with the proverbial 'Emperor has no clothes' type facts.
@Snotrocket
Even according to AR4, there is no trend in tornado activity:
"There is insufficient evidence to determine whether trends exist ...... in small-scale phenomena such as tornadoes"
I can't see that any specific projection was made for tornado activity: probably Shukman was simply referencing (and then - SHOCK! - debunking) the unscientific "extreme weather" meme: that if the weather's "extreme", it's global warming wot dunnit.
Yes, Jimmy Haigh.
The last resort of a climate-scoundrel is usually an appeal to "think of the grandchildren". Were it not for an industrial revolution driven by cheap fossil fuel energy, most of the worlds grandparents would have died in childhood, if they were born at all.
Bish, the title is wrong should read:-
Weston at the LSE
RE: Charlie "Oceanography at Southampton".
Ahem. I beg to differ. Oceanography at the School of Ocean Sciences, Bangor, Uinviersity of Wales, please.
(Ok, I have to declare an interest as an alumni...)
Kudos Danny
Brave and extraordinarily well done Danny. I had hoped to be there, but couldn't - my loss.
A point I've made on other sites, e.g. at http://www.climateofsophistry.com, is that the current generation has been brainwashed into believing the CAGW hogwash. The younger are more susceptible to this, and in some cases, e.g. Bill McKibben's college divestment campaign, are deliberately targeting the younger generation as they know they will fool more of them - they are less wise, haven't developed natural scepticism, and have already been primed by relentless indoctrination, from primary school all the way up. It seems as though the audience was testament to that assessment.
Earlier in this thread someone suggested it would only be a matter of time before a prominent person connected the violent Oklahoma tornado with 'climate change'.
Ta-da! take a bow, none other than D-Calif Sen Barbara Boxer.
BOXER RINGS THE BELL ON CLIMATE CHANGE: Sen. Barbara Boxer took to the Senate floor and invoked the Oklahoma tornadoes in her speech on global warming. “This is climate change,” she said. “This is climate change. We were warned about extreme weather. Not just hot weather. But extreme weather. When I had my hearings, when I had the gavel years ago. —It’s been a while — the scientists all agreed that what we’d start to see was extreme weather. And people looked at one another and said ‘what do you mean? It’s gonna get hot?’ Yeah, it’s gonna get hot. But you’re also going to see snow in the summer in some places. You’re gonna have terrible storms. You’re going to have tornados and all the rest. We need to protect our people. That’s our number one obligation and we have to deal with this threat that is upon us and that is gonna get worse and worse though the years.” She also plugged her own bill, cosponsored with Sen. Bernie Sanders that would put a tax on carbon. “Carbon could cost us the planet,” she said. “The least we could do is put a little charge on it so people move to clean energy.” BOXER RINGS THE BELL ON CLIMATE CHANGE: Sen. Barbara Boxer took to the Senate floor and invoked the Oklahoma tornadoes in her speech on global warming. “This is climate change,” she said. “This is climate change. We were warned about extreme weather. Not just hot weather. But extreme weather. When I had my hearings, when I had the gavel years ago. —It’s been a while — the scientists all agreed that what we’d start to see was extreme weather. And people looked at one another and said ‘what do you mean? It’s gonna get hot?’ Yeah, it’s gonna get hot. But you’re also going to see snow in the summer in some places. You’re gonna have terrible storms. You’re going to have tornados and all the rest. We need to protect our people. That’s our number one obligation and we have to deal with this threat that is upon us and that is gonna get worse and worse though the years.” She also plugged her own bill, cosponsored with Sen. Bernie Sanders that would put a tax on carbon. “Carbon could cost us the planet,” she said. “The least we could do is put a little charge on it so people move to clean energy.”BOXER RINGS THE BELL ON CLIMATE CHANGE: Sen. Barbara Boxer took to the Senate floor and invoked the Oklahoma tornadoes in her speech on global warming. “This is climate change,” she said. “This is climate change. We were warned about extreme weather. Not just hot weather. But extreme weather. When I had my hearings, when I had the gavel years ago. —It’s been a while — the scientists all agreed that what we’d start to see was extreme weather. And people looked at one another and said ‘what do you mean? It’s gonna get hot?’ Yeah, it’s gonna get hot. But you’re also going to see snow in the summer in some places. You’re gonna have terrible storms. You’re going to have tornados and all the rest. We need to protect our people. That’s our number one obligation and we have to deal with this threat that is upon us and that is gonna get worse and worse though the years.” She also plugged her own bill, cosponsored with Sen. Bernie Sanders that would put a tax on carbon. “Carbon could cost us the planet,” she said. “The least we could do is put a little charge on it so people move to clean energy.”
http://www.politico.com/morningenergy/
H/T Climate Depot
http://www.climatedepot.com/2013/05/21/dem-sen-boxer-blames-tornadoes-on-global-warming-plugs-her-carbon-tax-bill-to-fix-bad-weather-this-is-climate-change-we-were-warned-about-extreme-weather-we-need-to-protect-our/
"...James Hansen is like a madman in an asylum shouting that he is sane really, shouting louder as the world realises how insane he is." --ConfusedPhoton
A bit over-the-top, really, though you might find the definition of "Messiah Complex" interesting. Besides, anybody who believes in nuclear power can't be all bad.
Danny, you deserve a medal.
confused asks: "I'm on a countdown for the first appearance in the 'meja' of the cause of the disaster in Oklahoma to be ascribed to 'global warming'... any sightings yet ?"
I can only offer a tease:
Last night on Piers Morgan's CNN show (he's from the UK, judging by his accent!), he announced he'd be talking with "Science educator Bill Nye."
Sadly, I then went out for a jog and missed the rest of the program, but I'd wager my lunch money that The Science Guy made some sort of link to global warming.
Regardless, the scenes of the devastation are pretty heartbreaking. Think I'll send a donation somewhere.
Ratted out in Hades
Forced to return
To Rockville
With nothing but a rucksack
Hard lesson learned
Foul council of leeches
Want silence and bedlam
Take refuge
And a dagger to the bite
Then suck out the venom
---------------------DAN YOU RE THE MAN---RESPECT.-----------------
Shame i wasn't there. Security would have had to drag me out kicking and screaming.
Well done Dan big up respect.Secret of public speaking don't swear don't try to be funny ,stay calm and then just go for it.Be honest and say what you feel.
Mean while
So this latest big tornado out in the states So is Hansen doing a Sandy and fitting it up to Climate Change.
Funny thing is if you watch The Wizard of OZ with Judy Garland and play Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd on Youtube the sound and pictures actually match up.
Thing is Wizard of OZ was written in 1900 .Dorothy and her little Dog Toto and her wooden house get blown away to Neverland by a Giant Tornado.So Tornadoes must have been very big very common and very scary back then.Before the Hockey took off.
Bit insulting to the victims of natural disasters that they could have have been saved with Dim Florescent Light Bulbs and Recycling Carrier Bags .That wont stop Hurricanes will it now Jimbo.
Valiant. Thanks, Danny.
Many thanks for everyone's kind words and encouragement (and the odd correction - thanks John Marshall) and the anecdotes sharing similar experiences - it makes the grief worthwhile and gives me resolve to continue challenging these people in public!
Snotrocket: "Am I right in thinking that he even got that wrong? That the incidence in tornadoes increases as the atmosphere cools?"
One (but not the ony) prerequisite for tornadoes is temperature contrast. Tornadoes are the most common where and when they are (North American central plains in spring) because that is where and when you are likely to get the greatest temperature differences -- between warm humid air from the Gulf of Mexico and cold dry air from the northern plains. It is not a question of absolute temperature -- the tropical oceans get lots of thunderstorms, but because there is little temperature difference in the horizontal direction, you don't get tornadoes.
The unusually cold spring of 2010 in the central states produced an unusually active tornado season, one of the worst since the unusually cold spring of 1974 (when it was part of the "ice age" scare). The unusually warm spring of 2011 produced one of the least active tornado seasons on record. Now we have another cold spring -- snow in Arkansas in May! -- and we're starting to get some awful tornadoes again. I'll have to check, but this spring may have been so cold that we couldn't even get enough warming from the south until now to start getting tornadoes.
Standard AGW theory says that high latitudes should warm more than cold latitudes, reducing the temperature contrast on average. If warmists really wanted to make a scientific case for AGW, they would point to the long-term downward trend in severe tornadoes as evidence for their case.
Well done, Danny. To be a lone voice in the face of a powerful adversary takes a special kind of courage1
Fortunately the ones that matter are the ones 'outside the choir' The Green loons you were mostly faced with are irrelevant. It is important to arm the majority with enough information to understand why the only 'product' of the climate scientists have been projections of global warming that have not come true, and that any previous warming has been nothing out of the ordinary. They will then question why with hydrocarbons/methane not running out that their energy bills are going insanely high.
Well done Danny.
Watching the horrible results of the USA tornados on TV last night I turned to my wife and said it would be blamed on AGW. She just quietly responded that the Wizard of Oz is based on tornados in that area.( film 1939 based on a novel written in 1990 ) . How long has the term "Tornado Alley be around??
The AGW crowd are shameless.
FYI here are graphs showing the facts on tornados in the area
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/tornado_strikes_vultures_gather/
Danny
"resolve to continue challenging these people"
Please do! It sounds like you're already good at it.
No doubt that cheque from Big Oil will be on its way already.. :-)
Danny surely needs the hand of Josh to capture the spirit of the occasion
Bravo Danny. I know how hard it is to speak against such a hostile audience.
Hansen's remarks on TSI: he often contradicts previous claims. I'm sure a good long list of these could be drawn up.
http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/speeches/time-to-wake-up-gop-opposition-to-climate-science-
Republican Senator Sheldon Whitehouse spoke in the US Senate, addressing his own party on their attitude to climate change.
Without gravity acting to restore the thermodynamic equilibrium which is stipulated in the Second Law of Thermodynamics (which says: "An isolated system, if not already in its state of thermodynamic equilibrium, spontaneously evolves towards it. Thermodynamic equilibrium has the greatest entropy amongst the states accessible to the system") and thus, as a direct corollary of that Law, supporting (at the molecular level) an autonomous thermal gradient, then ...
(1) The temperature at the base of the troposphere on Uranus would be nowhere near as hot as 320K because virtually no direct Solar radiation gets down there, and there is no surface at that altitude. The planet's radiating temperature is under 60K because it receives less than 3W/m^2.
(2) The temperature of the Venus surface would be nowhere near as hot as 730K (even at the poles) because it receives only about 10% as much direct Solar radiation at its surface as does Earth at its surface.
(3) Jupiter would be nowhere near as hot, even in its core, which receives extra kinetic energy which was converted by gravity from gravitational potentential energy due to the continual collapsing of this gaseous planet. This is why Jupiter emits more radiation than it receives.
(4) The core of our Moon would be nowhere near as hot as it is thought to be, probably over 1000K.
(5) Earth's surface would indeed be perhaps 20 to 40 degrees colder, and the core, mantle and crust nowhere near as hot, maybe no molten material at all.
Think about it! If you're not sure why, it's explained in Sections 4 to 9 and Section 15 here.
sherlock1
Tornadoes require warm moist air, convection to energise them and windshear to rotate them.
Climate change is expected to increase convection and reduce shear, with little net effect on tornado numbers or intensity. There has been no significant change in tornado numbers or intensity, except for a slight increasing trend in EF-0 tornado frequency which may be an arfefact of better reporting. For historical data on tornado numbers go to the NOAA at
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/severeweather/tornadoes.html#history
Now put that straw man away.
Entropic Man, re your:
You are seriously confused, but I will assume you are unfamiliar with US politics. Whitehouse is not a Republican but a Democrat, indeed among the more offensive and demagogic of his party. He was addressing "Republican colleagues" in the faux respect that US Senators pretend to even when they are foaming at the mouth. In fact, periodically Whitehouse has uttered some of the most vicious and dishonest slurs he can think of about said "Republican colleagues" so kindly do not portray him as some dissenter on the Republican side.
[fwiw I dislike both major parties in US politics but don't find a happy home anywhere in the conventional political spectrum]
update.... after posting the above comment I find that Sen. Whitehouse has apologized for his remarks, which is remarkable. Normally pols like him never apologize or back down, but he had the bad luck to utter such an intemperate diatribe just as a real F5 tornado was killing dozens in Oklahoma. I doubt that he feels embarrassed about making a non-existent linkage between "climate change" and tornadoes, but he gave the unfortunate impression of trying to benefit politically from bloody tragedy, which does not look so good with the voting public.
Entropic Man,
Please call Barbara Boxer and set her straight. The warm air you talk about, and tend to emit, needs to come into contact with the cold air for a tornado to form.
Danny,
If you caused but one "believer" in the audience to start to question their thinking then your bravery was not wasted. My bets are you did sow some seeds of doubt.
I had a similar experience at a a private conference on green energy in Aspen in the early 90's. Seeking to understand during a break out group I asked some questions on wind energy and was almost physically attacked as a none believer, bared teeth, raw emotion and foul language. That was the start of my personal road to Damascus. I also met Hansen at a function at the University of Columbia, struck me as being as mad as a hatter and irrational, certainly not a candidate for a desert island companion.
Slightly off topic , but Hansen better start saving his speech fees. The circus might becoming to close faster than he thinks. Money is starting to talk
http://notrickszone.com/2013/05/21/eu-commission-plans-fundamental-course-change-in-energy-policy-focus-away-from-climate-and-more-on-economics/
Hey Skiphil,
For climate alarmists, AGW causes hot, except when it causes cold, it causes wet, except when it causes dry, and it causes snow, except when it doesn't.
So you'll have to forgive the random guy if he thinks a Democrat is a Republican, except when he's not.
And we're still waiting for Entropic Man to tell us what he means by "Lag", but for all we know, he may think it means "Accelerate"..
"This was important because Hansen is now pushing the line that whilst climate catastrophe is not imminent, it is “in the pipeline” and the victims will, apparently, be our grandchildren."
Obviously he has changed his opinion since 2010 when he wrote "Storms of my Grandchildren". LOL
It warms the heart to see all you skeptics gathered together. :-)
Charlie asks, "How much climate alarmism comes from threats to meteorological research?" and Danny Weston "I'd be interested to know if other BH readers have had a similar experience."
Around 2007 I was present at a university function on Carbon Capture, keynote speakers Lord Oxburgh and the newly-appointed head of the Science Research Council. Oxburgh said something like, "The Chinese are building a new power station every x days; we have to set an example and do the opposite" I waited for some brave person to query the wisdom of swithching off Britain's lights - I certainly didn't have the guts, and the atmosphere in the room was (how to put this?) electric, fervent, unified.
The SRC bloke (it may have been some other body, but this feller had hundreds of millions of taxpayers' money to dole out) said - and I quote - "don't come to me for a lousy couple of million". At that time I was hoping to set up a pilot plant to demonstrate that CO2 could be reacted with serpentine mineral on a scale of tonnes per week as a precursor to a full-scale engineering solution to the alleged carbon menace. Hoping to squeeze a few lousy grand out of some sponsor, loose talk about 'lousy millions' made me feel out of place. A young hotshot from a power company asked if the Uni could provide him with "An M.Sc pipeline".
Conclusion: My strong impression was that I had fallen into the company of people with a sense of entitlement. Entitlement to public funds. I may mis-remember the word "lousy"; the actual adjective may have been "trivial" or "piffling". I conclude that the Global Warming movement is a gravy train where savvy insiders take their seats with great comfort, untroubled by qualms that their narrow interests run counter to the greater good. In short, the Global Warming Industry is a sophisticated and corrupt cabal.
I do like the analogy of the man in front of the tank. The anonymous hero of Tianamen square is an icon of our times. My sincere thanks to Danny Weston, the experience may have been depressing for him, but it is invigorating for every reader. I have been a lone voice myself at a large anti-GE protest, and can only hope that the seed Danny has sown bears much fruit.
Might sound stupid.Dont build houses on the Flood Plains of Rivers.So why build them somewhere thats got the nick name.Tornado Alley.
Who actually gives out planning Permission to build wooden houses.Anyone in the states how much is Home /Contents /Tornado insurance.
The remark of Oxburgh's that Brent reports above "we have to set an example and do the opposite" is indicative of the completely deluded mind set that so many of our political elite hahaha really do have. IIt assumes 'we' are important, and 'they' will be watching & taking note of what 'we' do. Whatever the powerful in Beijing or New Delhi or wherever may or not be watching, a reasonable man would say its unlikely to include the policy decisions (and their consequences) coming out of DECC. If we're noticed at all, its with amazement and amusement at the self-regarding, self-defeating nonsense which people like Oxburgh are capable of coming out with, and with no-one seriously challenging it. Pooterish pomposity seems to be a British speciality. We should ban it. For our grandchildrens sake.
Oxburgh has history. In the mid 80s he led the committee to research into the teaching of geology. Since then he has become a a successful scientific apparatchik, always knowing which way the winds blowing.
As an academic Oxford geologist he is in profession which has not advanced much in 40 years compared say to computing, electronics, bio-medical science, physics, materials etc, etc.There are no Nobels in Geology. Therefore preferment comes from patronage of the scientific and government establishment.
My impression is that Climate Science attracts those who are not in rapidly advancing fields or who have finished their productive lives. In general, those entering geology, physical geography, environmental sciences etc, etc are not first rate mathematicians and/or scientists. Those geologists who are practical tend to work in oil and mining industries where much of the best work is kept secret due to the need for commercial advantage.
When it comes to NASA , was Hansen working in a backwater? Surely the best NASA engineers and scientists were designing rockets ?
Science is very competitive and very few make large contributions to knowledge, most is filling in the gaps between the dots.
The massive increase in scientists since the 1960s has resulted in many seeking to justify their existence . The problem is that very few have original ideas but they have to justify their existence through research. Perhaps a few large departments undertaking research with second tier just teaching meant that a few large well funded programmes obtaining data from many locations, from many decades would produce conclusive evidence.
Back in 1919 a university lecturer received four times average wage. As late as the 60s becoming a lecturer or even better a professor in universities produced an upper middle class lifestyle(a good house in affluent areas, holiday home, children educated at a good state grammar schools or affordable public schools , drinking decent French wine ,wife could do as she please, a nanny etc, etc). Since the 60s the large increase in academics has meant many salaries have relatively declined compared to other professions and they are looking for money. How much climate alarmism is just academics trying to justify their existence and an upper middle class one at that?
"... presenting himself as a hard pressed and isolated scientist working against the grain."
Which as we've recently 'learned', that grain is a 97% consensus among scientists that AGW is real (and dangerous!).
So you'll have to forgive the random guy if he thinks a Democrat is a Republican, except when he's not.
And we're still waiting for Entropic Man to tell us what he means by "Lag", but for all we know, he may think it means "Accelerate"..
May 22, 2013 at 2:21 AM | John M
Democrat or Republican, Whitehouse makes a pertinant challenge. I doubt you are a paid stooge of the finance behind the deniers, but you certainly qualify as a useful idiot. How do you answer him?
Regarding lag, read this.
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/345.htm
Once you understand the difference between transient climate response and equilibrium climate sensitivity, you will understand what I mean by lag.
Random Guy,
I'm not sure where you've honed your debating skills, but my guess is that you've seldom ventured into a discussion where people actually press you for your level of understanding.
Once again you've demonstrated that you can google and you can cut and paste a link, but somehow the issue of relevance has escaped you.
The question of lag came up because another commenter asked why temperatures weren't where the CO2 level indicated they should be according to the models.
You now link to an IPCC page that does not address "lag" in the time frame of interest, but shows the difference between transient temperature rise and equilibrium temperature rise after CO2 increases have ceased. Someone who actually understood the question and read the IPCC link would immediately see that the IPCC graph has virtually the same temperature rise for both the equilibrium case and the transient case, until the doubling is actually achieved and the increase in CO2 levels stops. This is the time frame of relevance for the question at hand. (In fact, the graph shown actually has the transient rise slightly higher than the equilibrium prior to the cessation of CO2 increase).
Once again I ask, give us a number in years for "lag" which would be responsive to the original question, not just a link that you think you cleverly found by googling.
As I recall, you had a similar response involving ocean pH, where the discussion involved accuracy of pH measurements to hundredths of a pH unit, and you googled and cut and paste something about "carbonic acid" in an 18th century ship's log.
I guess we've established that your googling and cut and paste prowess demonstrates reasonable motor skills and rudementary reading ability, but otherwise has only allowed you to show us your complete ignorance of American politics, ocean pH, and global temperature imbalances.
And in case you are tempted to try to be purposely obtuse, the issue of lag came up at the bottom of this post.
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/5/16/lewis-responds-to-nuccitelli.html#comments
BTW, how do I respond to Whitehouse?
I guess I applaud him for apolgizing for his over-the-top comments.
http://news.providencejournal.com/breaking-news/2013/05/whitehouse-issues-apology-for-oklahoma-tornadoes-comment.html
Is it true that he's President and you're First Secretary of The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight Society?
Bravo Danny!
A question from ignorance:
You said that Hansen avoided Cap and Trade, but later talked about "Fee and Dividend".
My impression was that F&E was the new terminology for charging industry for CO2 emissions and then giving (say) 2/3 back to "citizens", a sure political plus. (Which "citizens" and to whom the other third goes to is usually not specified.)
Am I off base? And if not, are his previous rants about C&T a little contradictory with current support of F&E?
John M
"lag"
I was playing with a few numbers.
I took a typical 1M^2 of the Earth as water 700M deep and calculated the warming rate at the current excess of input over output of 1W/M^2, equivalent to 31,600,000 joules per year.
This came out as 92.3 years for each 1C rise.
Assume a constant 1W/M^2 imbalance from 1880 and 280ppm to 2050 and 560ppm, ie 170 years per doubling, and that CO2 stabilises at 560ppm.
At this rate the warming would keep up with the CO2 change if ECS were no more than1.84C. There would be no delay in reaching equilibrium. In my terms, there would be no lag.
If ECS exceeds 1.84C the sea temperature would reach equilibrium after the CO2 reached 560ppm. This delay is my lag.
For an ECS of 2.0C equilibrium would be reached after 185 years in 2060, 15 years late.
For an ECS of 3.0C equilibrium would be reached after 277 years in 2157, 107 years late.
For an ECS of 4.0C equilibrium would be reached after 370 years in 2250, 270 years late.
If you can demonstrate to 95% confidence that ECS is no more than 1.84C I'll stop talking about lag.