Yes, Dr Hansen says our oceans will boil

The man is dangerous

This loony scientist-turned-climate-activist is reckless with science and his unfounded claims of peril are a threat to public order. Even his followers cannot believe he really said the oceans will boil, but here is the evidence. Should you not believe my biased sceptical transcript, just read his lips.

James Hansen: The Runaway Greenhouse Effect   (video posted Jan 10, 2012)

At 1:55 (the link goes straight there) Hansen poses the question:

Dr James Hansen

What is the runaway greenhouse effect?

Which he answers concisely and unambiguously:

That means once the planet gets warmer and warmer then the oceans begin to evaporate, and water vapour is a very strong greenhouse gas, even more powerful than carbon dioxide, so you can get to a situation where it just… the oceans will begin to boil and the planet becomes so hot that the ocean ends up in the atmosphere and that happened to Venus. That’s why Venus no longer has carbon in its surface. It’s atmosphere is made up of… basically of carbon dioxide because it had a runaway greenhouse effect.

Continue Reading →

Visits: 459

Reminder: your stubborn sceptical mind will be dissected this week

UPDATE 1600, Monday 20 July: Lecture cancelled – see below
Manukau Institute of Technology

Manukau Institute of Technology, Otara. Look for the theatre. Click to enlarge.

Come along and hear all about it

This is a reminder to readers in and near Auckland about the free public lecture next Wednesday to address the problem of sceptical minds stubbornly clinging to questions about global warming. Since there can be, by our definition, no genuine scientific questions unanswered by our mainstream climate scientists, there must be something in the mind interfering with the acceptance of climate change.

Can sceptics help themselves or do we have to help them? Can they ever put their denial behind them? Victoria University has a highly-skilled psychologist who will dissect their anti-social behaviour. Continue Reading →

Visits: 282

NSW Farmers go over to dark side of climate change

Josh Gilbert, district chairman of the NSW Young Farmers (right) speaking to rural reporter Josh Becker (left). The belief that the climate is being dangerously changed by warming caused by human activities, though on careful examination unsupported by evidence, infiltrates remorselessly into all aspects of society. It will take some shifting when people wake up to it.

Climate change is back on the NSW Farmers Association agenda after a push from young farmers. Young Farmers triumphed over sceptics and complex meeting procedures to push climate change onto the agenda at the New South Wales Farmers Association annual conference. In a rejigged policy on climate, they emphasised the need to move away from fossil fuels and closer to renewables.

Source: Young farmers rewrite NSW Farmers climate change policy – ABC Rural (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Continue Reading →

Visits: 92

Climate concern misaimed

volcano under ice sheet

Volcano under modern ice sheet. Lava plays havoc with that iceman, I mean ice, man.

• Opinion •

— by Viv Forbes, Chairman of Carbon Sense

“Climate” is formally the thirty-year “average” of weather. Climate is what we expect, on average—weather is what we actually get.

It is true that atmospheric conditions (dust, smoke, smog, aerosols, aircraft contrails, clouds and trace gases) can affect Earth’s weather. But none of these minor atmospheric constituents can generate energy—they merely filter, reflect, transfer or redirect a portion of solar energy. The effects of any changes tend to be short-lived, reversed as the atmosphere clears or they often trigger negative feedbacks that largely offset the initial effect. In particular, carbon dioxide does not drive the weather. No weather forecaster notes what tomorrow’s level of CO2 is likely to be, and no farmer wonders what it will be next spring. Continue Reading →

Visits: 356

New paper suggests no warming in NZ in past 100 years

The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition today issued a press release:

New Zealand may not have warmed at all in the past 100 years, according to a peer-reviewed paper published in the international science journal, Environmental Modeling & Assessment. The paper, A Reanalysis of Long-Term Surface Air Temperature Trends in New Zealand, by New Zealand authors Chris De Freitas, Bob Dedekind and Barry Brill, covering the period 1909-2009, shows an increase of 0.28+/-0.29 °C/century, compared with the current official NIWA seven-station series (7SS) showing an increase of nearly 1 °C/century. Continue Reading →

Visits: 88

de Freitas temperature study reaches top 5% of 3.67M scientific papers

Confirms Salinger’s Trojan Horse (see below)

Altmetric ranking

Altmetric ranking for de Freitas et al in January. Current Altmetric ranking (click SCORE IN CONTEXT on SUMMARY tab then click a category for details). Click to enlarge.

I am delighted to report that A Reanalysis of Long-Term Surface Air Temperature Trends in New Zealand (de Freitas, Dedekind & Brill, 2014) is top-ranked by Altmetric.

Altmetric has tracked 20 articles from EMA, the journal our authors used, and our paper tops them all. More significantly, it ranks in the top 5% of all 3,671,975 articles ever tracked by Altmetric, and in the top 8% of 102,471 articles published around the same time. It’s an outstanding result. Continue Reading →

Visits: 114

NZ’s ‘climate change target’ 30% below 2005 levels by 2020

Wahoo! It looks really low (though it should be nil), but how much will it cost?

The government has announced a new climate change target that aims to reduce New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions to 30% below 2005 levels by 2020 and a review this year of the existing Emissions Trade Scheme as part of its policy mix to meet the new targets.

Source: Government sets climate change target to reduce CO2 emissions to 30% below 2005 levels by 2020 | The National Business Review

Visits: 49