Hansen says that CO2 is much more powerful than natural variability.
He also says that the lack of warming over the last decade as CO2 has increased, is due to natural variability masking the CO2 warming.
If you don’t understand this, then you can report for your GISS lobotomy at Hansen’s underwater (*since 2008) office in Manhattan.
Last time I read any of Hansen’s thought bubbles he attributed the lack of warming to an increase in atmospheric aerosols. It was ‘masking’ the warming. We’ve been really lucky that this mysterious increase in aerosols (which we can’t, unfortunately, accurately measure) exactly cancels the predicted warming from CO2.
(Tamino & co., blame it on natural variability. This contradicts IPCC AR4 but that’s OK. The science is evolving except when it’s settled.)
So then according to Hansen, we can heal Gaia by using more spray-on deodorant? Fixed! But, man, taxes on it will make it about $200 per can…
It would be cheaper to increase our pollution levels according to this logic.
Here we goes:
“If the aerosol forcing has thusly become more negative in the past decade, the sum of the known climate forcings has little net change in the past few decades(Fig. 6b). The increased (negative) aerosol forcing is plausible, given the increased global use of coal during this period…”
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2013/20130115_Temperature2012.pdf
Although I stand corrected. Hansen does blame the slow down on natural variability + an economic slow down and then speculates about aerosols as mentioned above.
So what he is essentially saying is that, the inevitable doom we face from the “coal trains of death” would now be upon us if it were not from the masking (cooling) from the “coal trains of death” ?? … so it seems these “coal trains of death” are canceling themselves out… “coal trains of death” don’t seem quite so scary after all 🙂
So he will be upset over this report – Solar irradiance modulation of Equator-to-Pole (Arctic) temperature gradients: Empirical evidence for climate variation on multi-decadal timescales.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136468261200288X
Things everybody over 50 knows
I imagine he would assert that CO2 would eventually overwhelm the cooling effect of burning coal in the long run.
We are well below zero emissions scenario C. Hansen has failed, and is nothing but a desperate liar at this point.
My wuwt comment just now:
There’s nothing wrong with the climate, and CO2 has nothing to do with it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK_WyvfcJyg&info=GGWarmingSwindle_CO2Lag
Ok, why do I say that? First, there’s no hockey stick. To create the h stick the MWP was squashed, the LIA was ironed out, and the moderate 20th century warming was accentuated by a host of manipulations. Without the hockey stick, there’s just nothing wrong. It’s not broke, don’t try to fix it.
And second, we’ve heard: “most scientists agree” that CO2 will raise temperatures by x amount? Funny that the IPCC claimed a causal correlation between CO2 & temperatures, until about 2004 when the ipcc was reluctantly forced to retract their claim. Yes, the ipcc has retracted their claim of a CO2 / temp causal correlation. As it stands there’s no empirical evidence of any sort that CO2 causes climate warming, and indeed now the ipcc is maintaining that CO2 is both a cause and an effect of temperature change, which, unless CO2 was only an insignificant contributor to warming, would without a doubt lead to a runaway greenhouse with boiling oceans. But we never had a runaway greenhouse, despite co2 being as high as 7000ppm in the past. No, most scientists shouldn’t agree. The evidence is that CO2 does nothing to climate temperatures.
(a) eco worriers would reply that we have extremely good theoretical evidence for CO2 contributing to warming. Not many scientists would argue that our atmosphere keeps our temperature more stable. I.e., the moon in places is rather cold.
(b) Even most of the IPCC would acknowledge that a runaway greenhouse is unlikely as different forcing kick as conditions change.
You ought to research the actual cooling rates on the moon. Remember that a point on the moon’s equator spends 357 earth hours in darkness.
From lunar noon to sunset is 177 earth hours and the temperature drops from ~390 K to ~220 K – a rate of a K per hour.
As it cools this slows down dramatically to less than 0.5 K per hour.
The moon is a heated surface radiating to vacuum space – well almost vacuum space.
Our atmosphere cools far more rapidly than this – consider deserts where the temperature can change by 20 – 30 K in a few hours.
I see no evidence our atmosphere and oceans do anything other than reduce the heating effect of the solar radiation – it is the 12 hour period of the earth that is the significant difference.
Climate science seems to think this is irrelevant yet the moon data shows just how relevant it is.
Venus has a different situation with its massive atmosphere.
Also it is obvious that the earth has large quantities of ice at the poles because the orientation of the axis means the sun never gets directly overhead and for many months never rises at all or only slightly.
My other favourite myth is the space is cold one used to scare the uninformed.
Deep space may well have little background radiation indicating immense cold but Earth is not in deep space – it is located near a moderate star whose radiation could quickly kill an unprotected human – there is no way space awash with 1367 W/sq metre could be called cold.
How cold is it on the dark side of the moon?
How cold is it on the dark side of the Earth?
Maybe heat trapping gases are doing something after all. 😉
Will, one argument is that CO2 has effectively zero effect after 200ppm. That’s consistent with the evidence.
That’s rather different from saying it has no effect, agreed?
Agreed. But, effectively, there’s no effect. In the relevant CO2 PPMs here on earth.
I don’t know why my name is doubled up.
So good a post WordPress named you twice!
What is truly alarming is that climate scientists (“charlatans” is a more apt word) like Hansen are able to hold onto their jobs and haven’t been laughed into silence by the scientific community. Every one of Hansen’s sensational predictions of doom has turned out to be a joke. There are Tarot Card readers and fortune tellers who have better track records.
Tonight I’m gonna have a few beers, read that again and see if it makes sense then, but I seriously doubt it. Hansen is a five star space cadet. He probably should be moonshot to check out Rosco’s dark side of the moon temperatures. But seriously, his father should have shot him into a handkerchief.
Wouldn’t CO2 be a part of NV? And we are not aliens. Just sayin’.