James Hansen on the Warmest Year Brouhaha

Jamie writes "In response to earlier reports, Dr. James Hansen, top climate scientist with NASA, has issued a statement on the recent global warming data correction. He points out 'the effect on global temperature was of order one-thousandth of a degree, so the corrected and uncorrected curves are indistinguishable.' In a second email he shows maps of U.S. temperatures relative to the world in 1934 and 1998, explains why the error occurred (it was not, as reported, a 'Y2K bug') and, in response to errors by 'Fox, Washington Times, and their like,' attacks the 'deceit' of those who 'are not stupid [but] seek to create a brouhaha and muddy the waters in the climate change story.'"

Comments

Re:Business as usual

[faloi]

I know it's hip to hate Fox News... But the actual article describes the people denying global warming is man made as a "fringe group" and includes quotes from British researchers pointing out that it really doesn't matter on a global scale.

Re:The bigger issue

[morgan_greywolf]

The bigger issue is the cloak of secrecy around the data and the algorithms used to generate the outputs. I do not understand why all data wouldn't be publicly available. Is there one place to go to see the data used to make the dire predictions I hear all over the place? I generally accept global warming as a fact, but when I see the amount of contortions one person had to go through to figure out there was a problem in the first place, I start to get suspicious. Yes. Check out the Publications section of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s Web site.

According to this article in Scientific American ($), they've come to the conclusion with 80% certainty that global climate change is not only real, but is caused by human activities. They're new 2007 assessment report isn't on the website yet, but it is discussed in SciAm, so it should be there shortly, I believe. Methodologies are discussed pretty well in the SciAm piece.

Re:The bigger issue

[morgan_greywolf]

Oops.

Link to the SciAm piece.

Re:Then will someone explain to me...

[marx]

The temperature in the US has little effect on the global mean value of the temperature (the US is only 2% of the area of the Earth). But the US is one of the top (or the top) polluter of greenhouse gases. That's why there's criticism, the US's share of the pollution is a lot larger than its share of land area or population.

Usufruct

[necro81]

Ok, I admit, I had to look this one up:

Usufruct is the legal right to derive profit or benefit from the property of others. It comes from the latin roots for "use" and "fruits," in the sense that you are using the fruits of someone else's labor.

Wikipedia
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary
a legal Dictionary

In the case of Hansen's second email, he is, I think, using it to describe how captains of industry are benefitting from the global warming nay-sayers' spin on this correction. He also uses it in the sense that successive generations have a right and claim to the enjoy the Earth, so we'd better take care of it, even as we benefit from it.

Re:Usufruct

[djmurdoch]

Usufruct is the legal right to derive profit or benefit from the property of others.

You left out the most important part: "as long as the property is not damaged." He's saying we have a right to use the Earth, but we don't have a right to damage it.

Re:Yes, credibility is the issue

[jamie]

In fact, Media Matters has never received funding from progressive philanthropist George Soros.

See how easy that was?

typical mud-slinging

[br00tus]

I have not paid much attention to the story, the reporting I heard kept mentioning the warmest year was 1934 and what we've been hearing from the people with the "global warming agenda" (whatever that is, everyone has to wear Birkenstocks?) was false. Of course they somehow neglected to mention that only the figures for the US were off, and only for the past seven years.

More understandably, they neglected to mention that May 1934 was some of the worst weather to hit the US for a long time, and it wiped out the agriculture of many states, it was called the "Dust Bowl". And it was caused by agriculture concerns that had no concern whatsoever for the environment. So they are pointing back to an earlier environmental disaster.

Re:The bigger issue

[Coryoth]

The bigger issue is the cloak of secrecy around the data and the algorithms used to generate the outputs. I do not understand why all data wouldn't be publicly available. Well for startes the data is available. Full gridded data can be found here, along with appropriate fortran code to extract individual months of years. Gridded data for individual years can be found here. Original source data for individual stations can be accessed from here. Detailed accounts of the adjustments for urban heat island effects and compilation procedures used can be found in the papers listed in the references here. Most of those papers (i.e. those by GISS staff) are freely available in the GISS publications database. You did actually look to see if the data and detailed accounts of the methods were available, right?

Re:.001 degree?

[squiretalen]

Of course he is trying to save face, but what he said was accurate. The hottest year in the US changed to 1934, from 1998, and the Global Temperature changed only 0.001 (C).

Re:The bigger issue

[Intron]

Did you look at the graph? The error wasn't in anybody's favor. It was negligable.

The overall shape of the graph is the same - a 0.8 degree rise in average temperature over the last century with increasing slope.

I was in the Bahamas last year measuring water temperature, beach erosion and doing population counts to provide data on why coral is dying off all over the world. Its a complex topic but one of the leading culprits is ocean warming. Coral is adapted to a narrow range. Once the coral reefs are gone, which will be soon, say goodbye to fish diversity and sandy beaches.

I live in New England, the recent scare is over West Nile virus. According to the CDC, over 15,000 people in the U.S. have tested positive for WNV infection since 1999 and over 500 have died.

Don't make the mistake of assuming that a small change in temperature won't have a significant effect.

Re:The bigger issue

[Coryoth]

I think it is their duty to fully disclose the raw data and the methods used to arrive at the final result. The raw data, and the papers giving detailed descriptions of methods used to arrive at the final result. Have fun.

Re:The bigger issue

[Coryoth]

Hmm, the evidence is pretty strong that more CO2 leads to higher tempuratures. If C02 was a symptom, please explain what you think would release more C02 as the tempurature rises. The usual cause is ocean arming leading to outgassing of CO2 (warmer water can hold less CO2). Historically this has worked with Milankovitch cycles to provide a feeback to the small orbital variations with the released CO2 causing yet more warming, and providing the strong glacial/interglacial cycle we see over the lst million years or so. Of course the GPP is wrog in claiming that CO2 is a symptom of warmer temperatures. It is both a symptom and a cause, at least in theory. In practice, in this particular case we can do isotope analysis of atmospheric CO2 and determine the source of the current increase in CO2 (burned fossil fuels have different isotope ratios). The result is that the current dramatic rise in atmospheric CO2 is anthropogenic -- it's us doing it. In the past CO2 increased and provided a powerful amplifier for changes that were initially spurred by orbital variation. Now we have CO2 increasing for other reasons, but continuing to provide the same warming effects it has historically.

Warming on other planets

[benhocking]

Compare two hypotheses: (1) Global warming is primarily caused by the sun, cosmic rays, or some other external factor. (2) Global warming is primarily caused by humans. (Yes, there are other possible hypotheses.)

If hypothesis 1 is right, you would expect most of the planets to be showing warming over any small period of time. If hypothesis 2 is right, you would expect approximately half of the other planets to be showing warming (and the other half to be showing cooling). Unfortunately, with 7 other planets, it's hard to rely on the law of large numbers to distinguish between these two hypotheses. (If you got 5 heads out of 7 coin flips, would you assume the coin was biased? The only thing you could say for certain was that heads weren't on both sides of the coin.) Of course, we don't even have data from all 7 of the other planets for a small period of time.

Global warming theories aren't based merely on the correlation between increased CO2 and increased temperature. They're based on fundamental science and complicated models. The fundamental science has been known for over 100 years - complicated models weren't necessary for that. The complicated models are necessary to determine the scope of the greenhouse gas phenomenon (feedback cycles, etc., are non-linear and hence can be very difficult to predict with detail). These models have actually done a pretty good job, and they're getting better. Some people are actually saying now, "In 20 years, this warming will be over, and then the scientists will see how wrong they are." Some people were saying that 20 years ago, too.

Re:Isn't this the expected response

[Ambitwistor]

The fact that they trumpeted the first findings and quietly released the second makes one wonder about the real reason for releasing them in the first place. Actually, Hansen is on record back in 1998 as stating that 1934 was the warmest year. Since then, 1998 and 1934 have ping-ponged back and forth in the NASA data as "warmest year" as various minor adjustments have been made, and NASA hasn't made much of it. As far as I can tell, it was NOAA, not NASA, which played up 1998 (or 2005, or whatever the record of the moment is) as the "warmest year".

Re:The bigger issue

[Ambitwistor]

It's at a minimum interesting that there were reports in the 1920s of widespread arctic ice melting, It wouldn't be surprising if there were, since there was warming in the 1920s. What is your point?

followed in the 1970s by a "Global Cooling" scare. Which was mostly media driven hype (here). Of course, there was some cooling from 1940 to 1970, but again, what is your point? Neither that nor the above contradict the reality of the global warming trend.

This recent revision of which was the warmest year in US history casts even more doubt. "The warmest year in US history" is utterly irrelevant to any warming trend and the two top years were statistically tied both before and after the revision.

Looking further back into history, there has been historical warming in Greenland that exceeds the current trend, well before human produced greenhouse gasses could have been a factor. Yes, we know that climate change has occurred in the past, and there have been large, rapid changes in Greenland temperatures associated with, for instance, the shutdown/restart of the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation. However, that doesn't change the evidence that the current warming is not largely due to such natural events.

Further, they are modeling inherently chaotic systems which we have trouble forecasting only a week into the future. Hubris, anyone? Give me a break. Yes, it's impossible to forecast the weather more than a couple weeks in the future, due to chaos. But you can forecast the climate, which is a temporal and spatial average of all possible weather events, out much farther. The ability of climate models to do this has been demonstrated in hindcasting and out-of-sample validation experiments.

Re:The bigger issue

[Intron]

1. fewer people dying of cold.

Worldwide, malaria is a leading cause of death. Freezing deaths are negligable.

2. easier/quicker ocean navigation due to new polar routes

You don't mention the accompanying sea level rise and coastal flooding which is a somewhat more serious effect.

3. less road/bridge corrosion due to less salt usage

and less need for roads and bridges with a lower population.

4. coral reefs can be planted in new areas that haven't had them before

Corals are highly adapted to conditions of nutrients, temperature and salinity so this may not work out real well.

5. New agricultural lands in Asia and N. America will open up that should be a net positive on food balance

Where? Agricultural land needs soil. Soil exists where plants have been growing for a long time. Sand and rock are not arable.

Re:The bigger issue

[piotrr]

Speed.

Corals are slow, human pollution is fast.

If climate change is slow enough, corals will die off at one end and expand at the other, essentially moving as the niche is displaced. If the change is very fast, say two degrees per 100 years or so, the coral won't be able to catch up with the displacement of its niche.