After I heard a claim that our nation's top climate scientist "once warned of Ice Age" -- I (and no doubt many others) emailed Hansen and said he should reply to the rapidly morphing and spreading myth. He has here (PDF).
I will reprint what he has to say below (you can also go to that link for an interesting commentary, "Please talk to your grandfather"):
In 1976, with four colleagues, I wrote my first paper on climate (Science, 194, 685-690, 1976). Based on the suggestion of Yuk Yung, one of the co-authors, we examined, for the first time, whether several human-made trace gases might have an important greenhouse effect (until then, only carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons had been considered). We found that methane and nitrous oxide were likely to be important, though measurements of how these gases might be changing were not yet available. Starting then I became interested, very interested, in the Earth's climate; indeed, two years later I resigned as Principal Investigator of an experiment on its way to Venus so that I could devote full time to studies of the Earth's climate.
So it was a bit of a surprise when I began to be inundated a few days ago with reports that I had issued proclamations five years earlier, in 1971, that the Earth was headed into an ice age.
Here is how this swift-boating works. First on 19 September 2007 a Washington Times article by John McCaslin reported that a 9 July 1971 article by Victor Cohn in the Washington Post had been discovered with the title "U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming". The scientist, S.I. Rasool, is reported as saying that the world "could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age".
This is an old story: Rasool and (Steve) Schneider published a paper in Science on that day noting that if human-made aerosols (small particles in the air) increased by a factor of four, other things being equal, they could cause massive global cooling. At Steve's 60th birthday celebration I argued that the Rasool and Schneider paper was a useful scientific paper, an example of hypothesis testing, in the spirit of good science. But what is the news today? Mr. McCaslin reported that Rasool and Hansen were colleagues at NASA and "Mr. Rasool came to his chilling conclusions by resorting in part to a new computer program developed by Mr. Hansen that studied clouds above Venus."
What was that program? It was a 'Mie scattering' code I had written to calculate light scattering by spherical particles. Indeed, it was useful for Venus studies, as it helped determine the size and refractive index of the particles in the clouds that veil the surface of Venus. I was glad to let Rasool and Schneider use that program to calculate scattering by aerosols. But Mie scattering functions, although more complex, are like sine and cosine mathematical functions, simply a useful tool for many problems. Allowing this scattering function to be used by other people does not in any way make me responsible for a climate theory.
Yet as this story passes from one swift boater to another it gets juicier and juicier, e.g.:
Global Warming Scientist Once Warned of 'Ice Age'
By Doug Ware -- KUTV.com
[I won't reprint the whole piece of nonsense here]
It is little wonder that I have been getting nasty e-mails the past several days.
The lesson is: don't believe everything you read in the press, especially the conservative press.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
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Comments
View as Flat
Delay And Deny Posted 5:16 pm
27 Sep 2007
Look, this guy can't go changing sides every time the wind blows.
What's next...Global Rainshowers? Oh yeah, Hansen "predicted" that too.
Sheesh...take your medicine Hansen.
John Bailo
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JMG Posted 11:46 pm
27 Sep 2007
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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roverdc Posted 12:53 am
28 Sep 2007
If I won the lottery I would buy a b***l great 4X4 specially to express my disgust at the self righteous preaching to the less fortunate that they should use even less.
You too only get one chance and remember that who preaches the message is as important as what that message is. He who is without sin and all that springs to mind.
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GreyFlcn Posted 1:44 am
28 Sep 2007
He used his program he was using to study Venus, on earth, and came up with erroneous conclusions!
The horror.
_
Frankly the Hansen bashing goes back quite a ways.
http://greyfalcon.net/lindzen2.png
_
I kinda look at it this way.
They want to discredit Michael Mann, and now they are focusing on James Hansen.
Perhaps they don't like paleoclimatologists.
Maybe thats because they have a hard time faking their own paleoclimatology studies.
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GreyFlcn Posted 1:46 am
28 Sep 2007
Or more specifically.
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gzuckier Posted 1:47 am
28 Sep 2007
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gzuckier Posted 1:52 am
28 Sep 2007
It's standard rightwing "debating" technique for a while now. If you can't argue with the facts effectively, then switch the argument so that now you're arguing about the argument about the facts; or even better, arguing about the people who are arguing with you about the facts. You might only be able to convince a few people that eliminating the spring runoff that waters our crops might be a good thing, but you can always count on a lot of people who will sign on to blind hatred of people they've never met who tell them things they don't want to hear.
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GreyFlcn Posted 1:59 am
28 Sep 2007
http://greyfalcon.net/smoking
Which incidentally, Exxons's PR firm, is the same one which Phillip Morris used.
It's also the same PR firm which hired Steve Milloy, of junkscience.com, for 20 years.
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wendigo Posted 2:43 am
28 Sep 2007
Hansen didn't invent Mie scattering code. It is simply an algorithm that is, and has been, used to remove interference from light-scattering particles. It is also used in remote sensing, to remove atmospheric "noise" from satellite images, so that a truer picture of whatever is being studied emerges (think of it as a filter). Hansen simply took the algorithm and wrapped it in a useable computer program, which Rasool then used in his study (many scientists are not programmers, and so rely on others to implement algorithms in code).
So, basically, Hansen never "changed sides". He lent a computer program to a fellow scientist, who then used it in his own study.
Let me give you an analogy. Does the fact that most scientific papers are typed in Microsoft Word make Bill Gates complicit in all these analyses? Of course not.
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Earth Shaman Posted 2:07 pm
28 Sep 2007
Earth Shaman
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trock Posted 10:15 pm
28 Sep 2007
yah, those damm environmentalists, they use fossil fuel energy, how dare they, they just cant't. Here's what we should do. Make them pay. Tax the hell out of carbon. Show those guys, like Gore and Hansen and Romm, tax the hell out of the carbon everybody uses and then they will have to pay for the carbon they use.
While you are at it, we can reduce the other taxes we pay, like property, sales, income, social security and the like. That way these guys will have to pay more to go to all these meetings. Hit them hard, make the carbon tax high so these guys will feel it. Write your congressman. do it now.
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:07 am
29 Sep 2007
Can you point me to any peer reviewed physical science journal which uses your pet phrase "Grid Revv"?
Or any other place on the internet for that matter, besides yourself?
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:36 am
29 Sep 2007
Climate forcings in the Industrial era
James E. Hansen*, Makiko Sato, Andrew Lacis, Reto Ruedy, Ina Tegen, and Elaine Matthews
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/95/22/12753
The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change. Anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs), which are well measured, cause a strong positive (warming) forcing. But other, poorly measured, anthropogenic forcings, especially changes of atmospheric aerosols, clouds, and land-use patterns, cause a negative forcing that tends to offset greenhouse warming. One consequence of this partial balance is that the natural forcing due to solar irradiance changes may play a larger role in long-term climate change than inferred from comparison with GHGs alone.
John Bailo
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wendigo Posted 5:29 am
29 Sep 2007
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Pangolin Posted 8:53 am
29 Sep 2007
Since then climate change deniers to a man have been found to be cookie eaters. Given this evidence of a complete reversal of position despite a strongly stated preference for no cookies renders all their arguements since that time suspect whatever the evidence. Climate change deniers are flip-floppers.
Next: J. Bailo found to be fond of afternoon naps.
Attacks on James Hansens work have about as much weight as the arguement above.
Put the Carbon Back
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Billhook Posted 9:41 am
29 Sep 2007
To do so is to advance their primary goal of an interminable futile debate over long sorted issues,
as a means to draw attention, intelligence and effort away from evaluating the key requirements for achieving a swift, equitable & effective treaty of the atmospheric commons.
That distraction is the stasis of corrupt prevarication.
It is patently corrupt in that the prudence option, of reversing AGW for fear the IPCC is even partly correct, let alone understating the threat,
is studiously ignored by the prevaricationists.
Prevarication's function, and in some cases its intended purpose, is to generate an unprecedented global genocide by famine, flood and societal collapse.
David has asked me not to discuss the murder of my ideological opponents on this site.
It's my feeling that we face not mere "ideological opponents," but genocidal maniacs and their shills & dupes.
So when, if ever, will the gloves come off ?
And for how long will people here allow themselves to be distracted from the vital issues ?
Regards,
Bill
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Delay And Deny Posted 11:17 am
29 Sep 2007
Hansen makes more flops than the Texas Hold 'Em table at Muckleshoot Casino in Auburn.
First he flops on the 70's Ice Age, then he flops on aerosols.
This guy clearly will go as the crow flies and do anything to remain in power.
Sadly, the 1998 paper proving the limited nature of anthropogenic activity is a landmark, and one of his best.
John Bailo
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Delay And Deny Posted 3:28 pm
29 Sep 2007
TRUE.
That's why the nascent science of Cosmoclimatology needs time to grow and evolve. In 9 years, we'll know more about cosmic rays and cloud formation, and Hansen's seminal 1998 paper will be praised as ahead of its time. By then we'll know more about cosmological factors influence climate far more than the works of man, who is merely influenced...not the influencer of climate!
John Bailo
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Earth Shaman Posted 4:00 pm
29 Sep 2007
Earth Shaman
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:15 pm
29 Sep 2007
And you assume that "free energy" exists.
And that the answer is some term which I can't find anywhere else on the internet, besides here.
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:20 pm
29 Sep 2007
Yeah, that pretty much explains how most climate scientists see things.
The sun plays the largest role in geologically "long-term" climate cycles. Primarily through changes in earth's orbit, and changes in the sun's irradiance levels.
Now, over short time frames, like say 100 years.
Thats where the other factors play a bigger role.
http://greyfalcon.net/forcing3.png
http://greyfalcon.net/lean2005.png
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Delay And Deny Posted 2:30 am
30 Sep 2007
Yes, solar irradiance changes are "long term".
But as Hansen notes, clouds can be primary drivers.
Just like the venetian blinds on a sunny day.
What Svensmark does is put two and two together.
If, in the short term, changes in cosmic ray activity affect cloud formation, then the number of "blinds" are reduced and climate can heat up radically as it is now.
John Bailo
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:46 am
30 Sep 2007
True, but thats a pretty big "if".
And so far this is Svensmark's third time trying to force the data to fit that conclusion.
Pretty much he's trying to say that cosmic rays are the dominant way "airborne dust" is formed in the lower ocean air.
Despite the fact that there's already plenty of "dust" there from ocean salt spray.
_
To boil down Svensmark's argument:
When there's more sun, it gets hot
When there's less sun, it gets cold
When there's more sun, there's less cosmic rays
When there's less sun, there's more cosmic rays
THEREFORE, it must be cosmic rays causing things to get cold.
No, it's just because there's less sun.
Cosmic rays don't even factor in.
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trock Posted 10:42 am
30 Sep 2007
Your scientist guys are the liars.
No, Your science guys are the liars.
No, it's your. . .
More is being discussed here than the science.
It's the politics, economics, worldview, pride and a whole bunch of other things going on.
At the risk of looking pretty stupid thinking I could sort any of it out here, let me proceed to look stupid.
The science is discussed at much higher levels at other places than here. It might be helpful for simple questions to be answered here, but maybe even these should be sent to the better web sites and books on the subject.
much of how we look at the world is our epistemology, or knowledge or belief. When this pertains to global warming, its to much to discuss here. How do we decide about anything in the world. Some are Christians, Muslems, Jews, Hindu or other religion. Some are Creationists and more Evolutionists. Some think John F. Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy and others by the lone gunman. Some think, landing on the moon was faked. Some think 9/11 was a United States government inside job. Oh boy. How hard can global warming be?
What I can discuss about global warming is this. I am influenced by 2 things.
That places where they do debate these things, like the IPCC, Intergovernmental panel on climate change, they have come up with the conclusion that climate change from greenhouse gases will cause tempertures to rise more than we would like and once that happens we might not be able to stop it.
That there are 2 kinds of fear mongering going on.
One first kind is that global warming will get worse by our putting alot more carbon and other greenhouse gases into the atmoshere and it will eventually change the earths climate.
The second is that if we try to limit the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we will be doing great and horrible harm to our economy.
I think those who think that limiting the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, we will do harm to our economy are the worse fear mongerers.
That is, the deniers and delayers are the farthest from reality. It is much less risky to our economy to reduce greenhouse gases that we release into the atmosphere than it is to keep with the status quo with our greenhouse gas release.
We can fill our lands with Wind turbines, Concentrated Solar Power Plants and Nuclear power plants to reduce fossil fuel use to generate electricity. We can increase our use of energy efficiency by attaching a carbon tax on fossil fuel usage and reduce other taxes at the same time. We can change farming and other land use to capture some of that carbon. and every other of the good ideas.
The deniers and the delayers fear mongering is what the problem is. We shouldn't let our thinking get off the important things because of pissing matches.
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Delay And Deny Posted 2:34 pm
30 Sep 2007
The second is that if we try to limit the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we will be doing great and horrible harm to our economy.
This is why the Warmers such as you are so slimy...you set up a dialectic...Good/Bad and then you call people who disagree with you names.
There is a third "kind" -- those who think that the Warming is beneficial and that absolutely nothing needs to be done except to enjoy it.
John Bailo
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Delay And Deny Posted 2:37 pm
30 Sep 2007
To boil down Svensmark's argument:
Here's the process.
Cosmic ray activity affects low level cloud formation.
Clouds regulate the amount of sunlight falling on the planet.
More low level clouds: colder.
Fewer low level clouds: warmer.
John Bailo
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Earth Shaman Posted 3:50 pm
30 Sep 2007
Earth Shaman
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cce Posted 12:39 am
01 Oct 2007
The "Climate Forcings in the Industrial Era" paper that was quoted (but not read) was emphasizing the need for multiple scenarios since the forcings are not known precisely. Hansen has done this since day one and he was criticizing the tendency (then) to stake everything on a single "business as usual" scenario.
Cosmic rays do not explain the temperature changes we are seeing today. The theory relies on changes in cloud cover and there has been no appreciable decrease in cloud cover despite the rapid increase in temperature.
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cce Posted 12:40 am
01 Oct 2007
The "Climate Forcings in the Industrial Era" paper that was quoted (but not read) was emphasizing the need for multiple scenarios since the forcings are not known precisely. Hansen has done this since day one and he was criticizing the tendency (then) to stake everything on a single "business as usual" scenario.
Cosmic rays do not explain the temperature changes we are seeing today. The theory relies on changes in cloud cover and there has been no appreciable decrease in cloud cover despite the rapid increase in temperature.
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Delay And Deny Posted 2:26 am
01 Oct 2007
Svensmark revised his theory 2 years ago to say that it's "low level" clouds that regulate the sun's impact on temperature.
These closely correspond with temperature changes.
John Bailo
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wendigo Posted 3:16 am
01 Oct 2007
"By then we'll know more about cosmological factors influence climate far more than the works of man, who is merely influenced...not the influencer of climate!"
And:
"There is a third "kind" -- those who think that the Warming is beneficial and that absolutely nothing needs to be done except to enjoy it."
These indicate that your mind is already made up, and facts will not change it, which seems to be a pattern among most, if not all, climate-change deniers. Of course, climate-change does not require adherence to, or denial of, the science in order to happen, any more than gravity does. All we have is the best and most up-to-date science available, and we can choose to make a decision based on that science, or not.
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Andrew Dessler Posted 4:20 am
01 Oct 2007
Your wrote:Here's the process.
1. Cosmic ray activity affects low level cloud formation.
2. Clouds regulate the amount of sunlight falling on the planet.
3. Fewer low level clouds: warmer.The problem with this, of course, is that
There's no observed trend in cosmic rays over the last few decades
There's no observed trend in low-level clouds over the last few decades
Thus, this theory can be decisively rejected as an explanation for the recent warming.
Hmmmm. Maybe it's CO2 after all.
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:06 am
01 Oct 2007
Airborne Water Drops forms from water vapor condensed around "condensation nuclei"
Condensation nuclei are aerosols.
Aerosols is a fancy way of saying "airborne dust".
((( Water vapor + Dust = Clouds )))
_
Svensmark's argument is that Cosmic Rays, given certain conditions, can form Airborne Dust.
And that this extra dust is the dominant cause of cloud formation, primarily over oceans.
Catch being that there's LOTS of preexisting airborn dust there already from salt spray, and other particulates.
And adding a bunch of extra dust isn't going to cause a bunch of increase water vapor.
_
So largely all Svensmark has is a very weak theory with no strong correlations.
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Delay And Deny Posted 5:14 am
01 Oct 2007
Wow...you guys really have the patter down.
"Mind made up", "facts" -- you don't argue, you brandish your delusions like clubs.
John Bailo
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trock Posted 8:54 pm
01 Oct 2007
Not unlike Rumsfeld's school of incompetence. there are many kind's of climates that humans and the earth may eventually have, and sticking a bunch of positive feedbacks for warmer climates is a risk for bad ones. The grand experiment is going to run. Like Rumsfeld and we will be greeted as liberators, not everything turns out the way you had hoped. From what I have read, the future with the warmer climates have huge risks of being bad. Larger areas of drought and dessert, wetter areas because of increased rainfall and mountain glaciers melted with no runoff for water use. Not the good times.
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Delay And Deny Posted 2:48 am
02 Oct 2007
Support for key elements of this scenario is provided by graphs illustrating the close correspondence between global low-cloud amount and cosmic-ray counts over the period 1984-2004, as well as by the history of changes in the flux of galactic cosmic rays since 1700, which correlates well with earth's temperature history over the same time period, starting from the latter portion of the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715), when Svensmark says "sunspots were extremely scarce and the solar magnetic field was exceptionally weak," and continuing on through the 20th century, over which last hundred-year interval, as noted by Svensmark, "the sun's coronal magnetic field doubled in strength."
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/ ...
John Bailo
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Delay And Deny Posted 2:51 am
02 Oct 2007
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2007/sci_techs/3410danis ...
Against the decidedly stupefying trend of greenhouse gas studies dominating the scientific media, a report by the Danish investigator Henrik Svensmark in the February 2007 issue of the Royal Astronomical Society journal[1] shows the potential for the sorts of happy discoveries we can expect to occur more frequently, once the 40-year-long domination of science by the Green hysteria is finally lifted.
John Bailo
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wendigo Posted 3:42 am
02 Oct 2007
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_the ...
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Craig_Idso
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:02 am
02 Oct 2007
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_the ... ...
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Craig_Idso
And then you have the nutjob, that is Lyndon Larouche ;D
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/cu ...
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