Are Recent Extreme Weather Events Caused By Global Warming? NASA Scientist Says Yes

Hogwash! What do scientists know? Especially those socialists over at NASA! They've all been indoctrinated into the liberal elitist cabal due to the years they spent at those stupid places called college. They all act like they are rocket scientists or something! PSH! So what if they have decades of experience and insanely high IQs, that doesn't make them credible experts! Remember that one email that one time?? Clear proof that this article is just a liberal propaganda piece to help reelect Obama and line the pockets of his eco buddies. I say you can never trust a government employee! If you want to know the truth about global warming, ask your closest republican congressman, he'll be sure to give you the straight dope! His honest to god answer will be completely driven by (hatred for Obama, corporate greed, pandering his ignorant constituents, uninformed mindset) FREEDOM!

/s

intrepidDesign,
First, decafinate yourself sir. Second, you are entitled to your opinion, but for your sake I suggest supportive links to your opinions, other wise I read you comments as just ranting. Take care. ;)

RiHo08

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html

NOAA temperature data 1895 to 2012 with mean and trend: 0.12 F (0.6 C) per decade. Looks like we are just chugging along out of the Little Ice Age some 200+ years ago. All vary "natural", that is, natural variability in climate science jargon.

A funny thing happened on the way to this Extreme Weather Event catastrophe hysterics, the noted NASA climate scientist James Hansen forgot to bring along the science; that is, the evidence for his allegations. By NOAA's data, not much to see here. Maybe NOAA should whisper where there is observational data into NASA's climate modeler's ear.

If earth again reaches the elevated surface temperatures of the period of the Climate Optimum some 8 or so thousand years ago, I guess we shall see an explosion of bio-diversity. Maybe even the return of the three toed horse that roamed the North American Continent. Who knows?

Uhmmm intredipDesing was being sarcastic. It is a joke.

I totally support James E. Hansen in his actions. It should be getting pretty obvious by now. As expected, we're being slowed down like science has been during the Middle Ages.

Good God, we're all going to die! When is someone going to do something beside talk about it ?!?

RiHo08,

You have the data but you're not using the correct stat for the argument you're making. The trendline shows what the avg increase was, yes, but it doesn't indicate that the increase per year was steady. For example, if the trend for the period of 1895-2012 is 0.12 degrees F/year and that's an accurate indicator then reducing the range should yield very similar results, right? For example the trend for the range of 1895-1980 is 0.05 degrees F/year. An end date of 1970 yields 0.04 degrees F/yr. Do you see what this means? The later the end date indicated the more rapidly the entire trendline adjusts even though each decade or year added represents a smaller percentage of the entire range evaluated. The very data you provided to refute the earth is warming more rapidly actually supports that it is.

Hmmm, its like the Mayan culture and the aliens that taught them their calendars saw this coming.

RiHo08

dieselmonkey

Of course you are right about initial and end dates effecting the trend.

I would have done as you have suggested, move the end date closer to the 1980s to show an even smaller trend. That is what James Hansen did using 1951 to 1980 to show that starting in a cool time and comparing to a warm time, catastrophe is here.

On other threads Hansen has also disregarded the current lowest number to tornadoes, and the extreme lack of hurricanes. But Hansen abandoned science two decades ago. He helped kill climate science with all his Congressional shenanigans, adjustment/deletion of inconvenient NASA data, twisting the peer review process, etc. He now publishes by press release, which this NYT article is.

Getting back to your point, I am not really concerned about warming for the near future: i.e., 100 to 200 years or so, I think the global trends will fluctuate many times in that interval. Hence, I am not trying to manipulate people by showing a lesser temperature trend. I'll leave that to Hansen, Schmitz, Mann, Trenberth, etc. The 75 Consensus Climate Cadre.

My position on all this is that cost effective adaptation within democratic institutions, and by rule of law will provide for cheap and abundant energy for all the people of our planet whether it is 9 billion or 12 billion. I believe a free market system is better able to develop small scale modular nuclear power where local needs are met and the large transmission line losses and the infrastructure costs are eliminated.

"Modular" as one sees in railway diesel electric locomotives. Add modules together depending on the load and grade (demand) encountered.

Ha ha ha! James Hansen indeed. Before you buy his view of the climate, it might be good to know that he is second only to Al Gore in ridiculous and unsubstantiated pronouncements of doom. Here's a sample:

"Over centuries we could actually get a runaway greenhouse effect, and then that's it for all the species on this planet."

"So you can get to a situation where the oceans will begin to boil...and that happened to Venus."

"With continued rapid increase in greenhouse gases you could melt (all) the ice sheets in less than a century."

See wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/12/quote-of-the-week-dr-james-hansen-of-nasa-giss-unhinged/

There's lots more. Hansen is the chief spokesmen of the global warming alarmists who actually is a scientist (he works at NASA). But does that make him credible? You decide.

Hansen's views are shaped by his work with computer models of--guess what?--the atmosphere of Venus which is 96% CO2. He got his imagination fired up about Earth (0.038% CO2) becoming like greenhouse Venus. Along the way he ignored the fact that Earth has a magnetosphere and Venus doesn't. The lack of a magnetosphere on Venus means solar radiation is evaporating the atmosphere, primarily hydrogen and oxygen, contributing to the thick clouds of sulphuric acid which trap heat (467°C!) on the surface.

See "Dynamic Earth" for more at youtube.com/watch?v=ujBi9Ba8hqs

In other words, there is no likelihood of Earth becoming the next Venus unless our magnetosphere suddenly disappears, which has nothing to do with atmospheric CO2, methane, water vapor, or any other so-called greenhouse gases.

Hansen's computer models of what might happen to Earth, with their arbitrary forcings and feedbacks, are laughably inaccurate at predicting anything close to what's actually happening with Earth's climate. Yet he persists in making dire pronouncements like:

-In 2007 he suggested that we could see up to a 5 meter (16 feet) rise in sea levels by 2095 due to accelerated ice sheet melting.

-In a recent paper, he says that temperatures will rise by 3 to 6 C by 2100 and "we assert that multi-meter sea level rise on the century time scale are not only possible, but almost dead certain."

FYI, the IPCC predicts 0.18 to 0.59 meters (7 to 23 inches), and 1.8 to 4.0 C by 2100.

Hansen bases his alarming predictions on runaway, accelerated melting of ice sheets; something no one has seen yet.

As for the paper mentioned in this article, there are problems with it as Anthony Watts points out:

wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/06/nasas-james-hansens-big-cherry-pick/

Thanks to Dr. Hansen for more comedy masquerading as science.

For those that want a nice, 30minute demonstration of the evidence against this frenzy over climate change (namely, lack of statistical significance, lack of reliable climate data, and lack of negative feedback in these "expert climate models" that have yet to actually predict the climate since 1970 when they were created.

Hey, if Global Warming is really going to kill us all, what do you have to lose by learning how we skeptic idiots rationalize plugging our ears to our looming demise? Maybe it'll help you prove us wrong better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOLkze-9GcI&feature=channel

@RiHo08

I think you'll like this. Burt Rutan (Scaled Composites founder... Spaceship1 & 2 etc...) went ahead and ran an engineering analysis on the presented data by climate scientists. Covers the 5 major tenets of Anthropogenic Global Warming I think you'll greatly enjoy going through it.

http://rps3.com/Pages/Burt_Rutan_on_Climate_Change.htm
(use 2nd or 3rd link on page, PowerPoint is best due to some notes on some slides)

With respect to RiHo08's typical New World Order invocation of the "Little Ice Age", the way RiHo08 presents the issue only demonstrates how deficient of facts and understanding RiHo08 is. Characteristic for a NWO shill.
RiHo08 seems to feel all they have to do is introduce "just enough" uncertainty, at least for the unquestioning dullards who make up the NWO target audience. But there are crucial points RiHo08 doesn't seem to know, since that's not among the parroted doggerel the NWO wants its quislings to idsseminate.
Among other things, with respect to leaving the Little Ice Age, temperatures reached the average level before the Little Ice Age around 1930! They should have leveled off there! They didn't and, instead, continued to rise unbroken!
Also, so many deniers rely on saying "temperatures were warmer many times in the past". But what proved that? Among other things, supposedly dendroclimatology, namely, the use of tree ring thickness and other characteristics to determine temperatures at times or under other conditions where thermometers are not available. As proxies.
But around the '70's, the fit between tree ring characteristics and local temperature diverged. This was played down by climatologists, then, as an indicator of climate change, but deniers seized on it and said that tree ring characteristics proved the earth was actually 10 or more degrees cooler than was being recorded by thermometers, and that, therefore, the thermometers directly measuring temperature, had to be wrong and that climatologists were lying. This was the basis of the rash of accusations by deniers only a few years ago.
But, if tree ring characteristics can't be trusted, or if they're reading the opposite of what was supposed, how can the previous statements that past temperatures were higher be trusted?
Another point. In a number of websites, I asked deniers of man made climate change what would they accept as proof that that change was taking place. I asked what conditions or developments they would accept as proving man is creating global warming. None of them responded. They answered, with doggerel, but none responded. They don't intend ever to accept climate change.

RiHo08

JULIANPENROD

Thank you for your lucid interpretation of my thoughts. I must say, I am taken aback by your clairvoyance.

I did include a link to NOAA temperature data from 1895 to 2012. I have based my comments with the assumption that those referring to what I have written have read the link. I seem to be in error with regards to yourself.

A link not hard to find: Wikipedia, you can look for yourself at the Holocene Climate Optimum period; warmer than now 4 to 8 thousand years before now.

I'll take a stab at your challenge: what will it take to change my mind?

1) CO2 signal in the surface temperature data.
2) Mid Tropospheric Hot spot in the equatorial region.
3) Cooling of the Stratosphere
4) Surface temperatures rising lead by CO2 Atmospheric concentrations.
5) Demonstrate in observational data that the water cycle amplifies the CO2 signal.
6) Observational data confirming GCM predictions.
7) GCM's validated and verified.
8) Explanation of abrupt climate change events: try 1970's for a start, Younger Dryus for another.
9) Mathematical treatment of non-linear dynamical changes.

These are a few. Probably less sophisticated than can be developed by others. But, this is a start.

Next question?

RiHo08 tries to pretend I don't know what I am talking about, but the way they go about it only deomnstrates how little they know what is happening anywhere.
If someone is acting in an unimaginative, lock step manner, a lot of what passes for their "thinking" you can tell as a clairvoyant. RiHoi08 invokes the hoary idea of "warming from the Little Ice Age", but carefully ignores that the temperatures now have not leveled to what they were before! They are marekedly warmer! Even in their rejoinder, RiHi08 fails to acknowledge that. Just as RiHi09 does not take on the issue of dendroclimatological measuremens, claimed by the deniers to be discredited, which, nonetheless, was used to purportedly ascertain the warm periods so long ago.
And consider the genuinely humiliating list of provisions RiHo08 gives as what they will accept as proof of man made climate change.
"CO2 signal in the surface temperature data." There already is a signal! At least the graph of the regular yearly oscillation of carbon dioxide through the seasons. If RiHo08 is looking for a different signal, what specifically are they looking for? They don't specify. Because there is no such signal.
"Mid Troposphere Hot spot in the equitorial region." Equatorial air is all hot. But, how big will this hot spot have to be? How much hotter than the surroundings will it have to be? How long will it have to persist, one season, two, all year? RiHo08 doesn't specify because this may be something the NWO specifies to give as a sign, but RiHo08 apparently doesn't klnow what it means.
"Cooling of the Stratosphere." Cooling by how much? Over how long a span? Permanently? How swiflty must the cooling take place?
"Surface temperatures rising lead [sic] by CO2 Atmospheric concentrations." It is demonstrated that CO2 levels climb constantly, and, among other things, remember the unprecedented hundred degree heat waves across northern Europe, apparently even unknown in the wamer periods before the Little Ice Age, only a few years ago.
If only from the distribution of initial capital letters dissimilar to RiHo08's practice in earlier comments, this list looks copied, verbatim, from somewhere else. No independent input. The vagueness of the references only demonstrates that RiHo08 doesn't even know what they are invoking. They may, now, copy more information to pretend they know what each of these items means, but their nebulousness here indicates they don't really know what each relates to, they are only dutifully repeating what they are told to repeat.

RiHo08

julianpenrod

Referring to me as "they" makes me feel a little paranoid, down right schizoid if you want to know the truth. Which by the way, the truth that is, I am unaware of the Great Climate Consensus Cadre as having claimed to have found a CO2 signal. If you have, and I have missed it, please provide a reference. Its not like Jim Hansen would hide such a finding, or maybe he would, like "hide the decline" and all that stuff. Maybe he was confused as to what to hide and what to advertise. It happens.

julianpenrod you are right, science demands specifics, and just as important, testable hypotheses; that is, making predictions that can be validated by observable, measurable outcomes.

I predict that a doubling of CO2 will raise global mean temperatures in the year 2100 by 0.8 C (+0.2/ -0.4). There, I have said it and you can hold me to it!.

Now would you please read the link I gave at 8/7/12 2:02 PM?

This study didn't look at the normal factors such CO2, solar radiation, etc that most climate studies do. All they looked at was the statistics. Essentially getting the probability of extremes assuming a stable climate, and then comparing that to the actual seen values. Simple statistics that any stat major can do.

@julian
Oh, and to your point on the failure of heating to level off after recovering from the mini-ice age, I will be happy to address it.

It's called the Urban Heating effect. This is where the temperature stations distributed all across America specifically, as well as the rest of the world, systematically increase in temperature as their urban environment grows around them. By that I don't mean increase in population and human by-products; I simply mean blacktops, or buildings, or air conditioning exhaust from he buildings, or... god forbid.. chimneys. These structures built around the weather station leads to a higher than actual reading of temperature.

So, climate scientists being scientists decided in order to unskew the data, they would tract down temperature stations that have remained relatively isolated from the urban heating effect. No structures or anything built around it that increase the local ambient temperature. They concluded that the heating was still in fact real and of relatively similar magnitude of increase.

Unfortunately, climate scientists being climate scientists, these results are fraudulent. They cited some 90 weather stations that were deemed uncontaminated. An indipendent group tracked them down and found that 84 of them were in fact, contaminated. They were now next to a BBQ on a blacktop, or near AC exhaust vents.

And here is my evidence that you so crave. While this fraudulent Urban Heating Effect data has been known for some 5 years, there was luckily a recent press release showing such info.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2/
Namely, not only are the non-compliant stations warming twice as much as compliant stations, but the hand picked NOAA stations were 3 times as big. Cherry picked Fraud.

Also, on the point of your C02 signal, we mean where CO2 LEADS the change in temperature, instead of reacting, and does so in a feasible way. CO2 increases at their current level have a pathetic effect due to a logarithmic slope of ppm to temperature change. CO2 increases are still believed to be significant though, because small temperature increases could lead to more water vapor; a much more potent greenhouse gas, and the positive feedback could lead to significant warming.

Unfortunately these models don't account for the NEGATIVE feedback systems that accompany these positive ones, such as increased water vapor producing a cooling Iris effect, where extra water vapor leads to less icy cirrus clouds reflecting back IR radiation, and more lower altitude clouds that insulate the earth from solar radiation.
So by a CO2 signal, and empirical proof of water vapor, we mean show us a way that CO2 could lead to the magnitude of warming you suggest, and then SHOW IT HAPPENING. You've done spectacularly at the former, and pathetically at the later, because your modality fails to include all of the feedback systems, many of which are negative and therefore a stabilizing effect.

So your still debating whether it exists or not. The believers blame the questioners/ deniers for stopping something but what? What have they stopped? What solution has been put forward that they've stopped. A global carbon tax? That wouldn't solve anything in the short or long term. Other than a wealth and power grab of global proportions like that what has been proposed? Small scale adaptation, ok couldn't hurt but so what.

If the worst of the predictions are anywhere close to true then your already a dead man walking. CO2's time in the atmosphere is long. So my question to the believers have you stopped driving? Got solar panels? Started eating no meat, seafood or anything that has to be shipped long distances? Then why do you feel you are good and they are bad. You should start questioning too, not just whether it exists but the best mitigations. You are the believers why haven't you done more research on the best balance of solutions rather than just yelling how bad and ignorant others are. They haven't stopped much because much hasn't been proposed.

You want a solution your an individual think of one. If you come up with something that doesn't hurt lots of people and solves a portion of a problem then you win, hero of the world and a very wealthy person. So get started and quit being a pr1ck about it then you'll get everyone on board with your idea.

WOW! It's sure gett'n hot around here, sheesh! Naaa, with humans destroying the environment with pollution, no way we are involved in its acceleration... .....

A, we do agree humans are destroying the air, water and land with pollution right or are we in denial of this too?!

Hansen has provided tons of proof of this climate trend. He has provided even the number of PPM of greenhouse increases and a trend to where they will go based on various factors, such as countries tapping into more fossil fuel deposits. Forget about the trend hes showing here, the one major cyclical factor that remains,out of sync, is that the earth should not be warming right now. We are in the longest part of our orbit around the sun, a time when the Earth has ALWAYS cooled during its history. We are not cooling. You naysyaers can take that little piece of proof and stick it up your @$$es. You wont argue your way out of that. Hansen has also made that point. Seal level is rising, fresh water distribution is taking place. I will not provide another URL as I have provided many in the past. Very simply, if you dont believe in global warming your are completely ignorant and natural selection has a place for the stupid.

If anything, Hansen is proof that NASA does present the government view but at the same time, he wouldnt be with NASA if he were wrong. His data is not wrong he represents the precise, though rougue, standard of NASA intelligence. Unlike many others who claim to be experts, Hansen is a Climate Scientist. Not a geologist, not a weather man... a Climate Scientist. His predictions are also evidence of his correctness. Most of them are coming true.

Dont worry about arguing with me. Time will tell and those of you who dont believe will die. Peru is a great place to live for those of you looking for new vacation desitnations this year. Its 6,000 ft above sea level and will support a great deal of life even in an ice age. Cheers to the intelligent ones.

Shout out to Robot. Whoop whoop! :)

"Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth. There is no spoon."

@intrepiddesign,

Don't worry, I caught the sarcasm. :-) Loved it!

Okay . . first, we are 2.5C cooler than the hottest temps THIS CYCLE. Yes, the Medieval Warm period was way warmer than now. We are ONLY just coming out of the Little Ice Age, during which time a lot of stuff froze over and places like Greenland became uninhabitable.

Second, the climate has always been changing and we have always been adapting. Often by migrating, which we can't do anymore. Instead of whining about the current changes, how about we adapt . . as a species. How about dense mega cities in the center of the continents, away from rising (the oceans have been 16 meters higher in the past, although that was a long time ago) oceans, worsening weather and the worst of the earthquake faults. Let's use vertical farms to grow our food and make power and purify our water. Let's have residential, retail and work all be in the same buildings, making cars unnecessary. And make free mass transit so that folks can get around these cities of 30 million plus people. Not only would this lessen our footprint, it would cut back on a lot of pollution and CO2.

Third, I hope I live long enough to see all you fear mongering "scientists" have to apologize for being morons.

Ok, humans are polluting the air, land and water.

For those who declare global warming a human induce problem or do not believe it is a human induce problem, do not get side track by the pollution problem and what we humans are doing to the planet.

Like politics, distracting arguments are often used to pull the public attention away from the real problem.

So then focus on the real issues of human induce pollution and how we are destroying our enviroment.

This is an ALARMING PROBLEM!

Human made pollution is bad.

RiHo08

brian144

Thanks for the Rutan essay.

After beginning reading, I realized I had read it about a year ago.

Thanx

I know that this is kind of off the wall, but can anyone explain why thermonuclear activity isn't to blame for the increasing global temperature? It seems nuclear explosions are very high energy events (similar to volcanic eruptions) and I am wondering if the release of heat and energy from these bombs over the last 50 years or so may have had an effect on global temperature. Undoubtedly the increase in greenhouse gasses would help hold this excess energy in our atmosphere. I'm just wondering....

Bear in mind that James Hansen does not represent NASA when he makes outrageous statements.

Bear in mind that UNCERTAINTY in predictions of global climate change over decades is ASTRONOMICALLY HUGE. No one in PopSci ever talks about that.

Uncertainty in modeling a system as complex as the climate of the entire planet Earth is something that is not even in its infancy, it's in its fetal development. Scientists are still working to determine what are all the inputs that change climate on a global scale. The list is very long. Human-generated greenhouse gases is just one contributor on a list that we haven't even completed yet.

To commit trillions of dollars to a scientific theory with the HUGE UNCERTAINTY that is in global warming theories is ludicrous.

For scientists to continue to blame humans for global warming without detailing the UNCERTAINTY in their climate models is UNETHICAL and borderline criminal given the insane "climate" that hovers around the religion of global warming that is supposedly caused by humans.

We are arrogant if we think we humans have driven a centuries-long shift in global climate by producing miniscule amounts of greenhouse gases.

Human greenhouse gas production today is of the order of parts per MILLION in the atmosphere. This human-caused global warming was supposed to have started 150 years ago. At that time, humans were contributing parts per BILLION.

Are we to think that kicked off the sustained century-long shift in the climate of the ENTIRE PLANET? Ha.

And the same UNCERTAIN climate models don't say ANYTHING about whether global carbon taxes would even make a DENT in the long-term trends in Earth's climate. Because they CAN'T.

They cannot say with any certainty at all if STOPPING all human carbon production would have any effect at all on the Earth's temperature. Other than mass death, suffering, and destruction of modern civilization. That's because they cannot say with CERTAINTY if humans are causing the Earth's climate to change. That's because their climate models are so full of UNCERTAINTY that we should all pay as much attention to their results as we do to anyone's prediction of the next earthquake.

Global climate models have as much credibility as global earthquake prediction models. None.

What science demands is skepticism and critical thinking. What climate model theories must stand up to is non-believing skepticism. Why? Because if the models are right, and humans are causing global warming, then the theories become stronger. If they don't stand up to criticism, then they become weaker and go away. That is how science SHOULD work.

When was the last time you read an article, in PoPSci or otherwise, that was critical of human-caused global warming?

Answer: never.

Conclusion: No one is conducting SCIENCE in this regard. Because science DEMANDS criticism and skepticism in order to maintain credibility.

Proponents of human-caused global-warming should never denigrate or make fun of skeptics. Good scientists welcome the chance to defend their theory in front of any valid argument.

Why do we continue to read articles that denigrate skeptics of anthropomorphic global warming? Science LIVES on argument and criticism. Science MUST defend itself at every instance or it isn't science. Science has NO EMOTION. Science stands above human pettiness. Where is the integrity in the debate about the causes of global warming? Where are the debates? Where are the magazine and journal articles discussing the validity of humans causing global warming? I've never seen them. The editors of magazines and newspapers don't allow them. The science community doesn't allow such debate. That tells me there is NO SCIENCE in the global warming community.

There are scientists who challenge Einstein's theories of relativity every day. Are they put-down and called names for not drinking the Einstein Kool-Aid and getting along with the program and jumping on the bandwagon of Relativity? No.