NASA Scientist: Heat Waves Really Are From Global Warming

mdsolar writes with a tidbit from the New York Times on global warming: "The percentage of the earth's land surface covered by extreme heat in the summer has soared in recent decades, from less than 1 percent in the years before 1980 to as much as 13 percent in recent years, according to a new scientific paper. The change is so drastic, the paper says, that scientists can claim with near certainty that events like the Texas heat wave last year, the Russian heat wave of 2010 and the European heat wave of 2003 would not have happened without the planetary warming caused by the human release of greenhouse gases. Those claims, which go beyond the established scientific consensus about the role of climate change in causing weather extremes, were advanced by James E. Hansen, a prominent NASA climate scientist, and two co-authors in a scientific paper published online on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 'The main thing is just to look at the statistics and see that the change is too large to be natural,' Dr. Hansen said in an interview."

Comments

Hansen again?

[bradley13]

Hansen is a "scientist" who likes headlines and attention. Nothing to see here, move along...

Re:Hansen again?

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition to this parental and, yes, proper advice: Go read some books in stead of throwing toys.
There are good arguments for and against manmade global warming, and personally I think there is no such thing as MMGW.
Thing is; there is no way of telling just yet. It is just a way of predicting the future, and there is no such business. The models are only as good as the information (=pre-assumptions) one puts in there, and then there is a huge lag of possible parameters in all those models. ...
In short; it is a bit to much:"*staring at handpalm, gipsy-accent* There will be a dark lady in your life! And great fortune as well!". We will know what the weather will be in 20 years after 20 years have gone by. The rest of all the people who (think they) can predict the future: GO BUY LOTTO TICKETS YOU IDIOT!!!

Go do this, then this. Then do some simple math involving number of vehicles and yearly gas consumption. Now, tell us again how AGW is mystic mumbo jumbo.

Re:Hansen again?

[budgenator]

Only 3 Authors? One would think when the "Grand 'ol High Preist" of Apocalyptic Global Warming wrote a paper that the supplicants would be lined up awaiting consideration as co-authors. Maybe it's the problems, like how they completely omitted temperatures from the warmer 1930's by limiting his data to 1955-1999, or how it's only on land temperatures and then only northern hemisphere land temperatures. I do give Dr. Hansen major props for the data visualization, the animations are very slick.