Said the man in the ivory tower
Unless you stop wasting your power
The oceans will boil
And you’ll bake all the soil
And drought will wilt every flower.
– climate scare stories inspired by the widely admired grandfather of global warming
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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.
At 1:55 (the link goes straight there) Hansen poses the question:
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.
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Yesterday, Dr Vincent Gray sent out his Climate Truth Newsletter (no. 310). In it he adverts to an outrageous admission of common sense by James Hansen. Years ago, Hansen admitted on his GISS web page that there’s no agreement among scientists on what constitutes an acceptable surface air temperature.
Sensationally, he also said that it’s IMPOSSIBLE to obtain a scientifically meaningful surface air temperature (SAT).
Now, with Hansen’s resignation from NASA, Gavin Schmidt has rushed in to take charge of these surprising admissions. Curiously, I see that Schmidt’s description is “NASA Official,” where Hansen was the “Responsible NASA Official.” Significant, interesting or irrelevant? Speculation might be endless…
The link above to the previous version of the page at the Wayback Machine is from 15 October, 2008, but that page is marked as last updated on 12 July, 2005. There are three more words in the body text of the current version than on the old page; I conclude they’re essentially identical.
These comments asserting the impossibility of determining the SAT put a disturbing slant on Hansen’s alarmism based on the SAT during the last 20 years of the 20th Century. Continue Reading →
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I was disturbed about the comments I posted last night from a member of ‘Slick’ Hansen’s audience in Massey the previous evening. In an astonishing, unprovoked outburst, Hansen suddenly turned on the absent Dr Dick Lindzen, besmirching his character with outright lies. After trying to verify Hansen’s claim that Dr Lindzen doesn’t believe smoking causes cancer, I sent Lindzen the following email.
Dick’s reply is most thoughtfully written and I commend it for your consideration. As an outstanding example of fine thinking under personal pressure it’s a pleasure to publish it. Jim Hansen should be ashamed of himself for repeating misleading slurs and outright lies. I’m certainly ashamed of him. Continue Reading →
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I received a report about Hansen’s address at Massey last night. Don says:
I have just returned from James Hansen’s lecture at Massey. The Japan Lecture Theatre was packed; I didn’t count, but there were probably about 200 people in the audience.
At the end I got to ask a question. I was very polite, and said how grateful we all were that such a distinguished expert had come to talk to us about his beliefs, but I was concerned that his whole talk rested on the premise that the science is settled. He had said the only dissenters are those in the pay of the oil industry, and I expressed regret that they hadn’t offered any lucre to me.
His reply was polite, but condescending. He conceded there are a few scientists whose chronic skepticism blinds them to the truth. For example, he said, he knows Richard Lindzen, who is a nice guy, but doesn’t dare, when he’s with other scientists, talk the kind of nonsense he writes in his newspaper columns. Also, Lindzen has never accepted that tobacco causes cancer, so obviously his judgement can’t be trusted.
Afterwards a few members of the audience came up and thanked me for what I had said.
Thanks for that, Don. That’s an intriguing look into ‘Slick’ Hansen’s attitudes. Continue Reading →
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While on the subject of awkward, unanswered emails, let me pass on a message I recently sent to Dr James Hansen, the scientist widely famed as the “father” of global warming. I still hope he will offer some explanation.
Dear Dr Hansen,
The Climate Conversation Group and I have become interested in the very meaning of “taking the temperature”, calculating the so-called “average” temperature for a place and a region and the meaning of doing so. I have just seen your web page [The Elusive Absolute Surface Air Temperature (SAT)], discussing these and related matters. It is an interesting and informative page.
You say there is no agreed method of measuring surface air temperatures and, in fact, there are numerous practical and theoretical obstacles to ever achieving such a measurement.
There is a very obvious question raised by that discussion. We are interested to know why, if it cannot be done, do you do it?
Regards,
Richard Treadgold
Convenor
Climate Conversation Group
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Earlier this month, Bryan Walker reviewed Gareth Morgan’s global warming book Poles Apart on Hot Topic, raising the subject of “alarmists”. Subsequent comment exposed Dr James Hansen (“father” of global warming) to the charge of exaggeration. So — does he or doesn’t he exaggerate?
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