Head slap: Deniers feign "shock" at James Hansen. It's just @wattsupwiththat using denier tricks

There are several points to note in this rather silly WUWT article (archived here), written by someone called Robert Bradley Jr. (who I'm guessing is this one-man show - of fossil fuel advocates). The article provides a good illustration of common denier tricks - as well as the usual misrepresentation of climate science:

• The headline is completely wrong. It is a "fake news" article typical of WUWT.
• Robert has applied the Serengeti strategy - attacking a single scientist, Dr James Hansen, hoping to isolate him and bring him down (as if!).
• It resorts to quote mining and quote splicing to fake that Dr Hansen said something different to what he actually said.
• It illustrates that the author doesn't understand much of anything about greenhouse gases - or pretends he doesn't and assumes WUWT readers don't.
• It is trying to persuade readers that Dr Hansen is saying there's no rush to cut CO2 emissions - when he isn't.

Robert's WUWT article is a quote mine of things Dr James Hansen has written over the years. Problem is that Robert is either incapable of understanding what he copies and pastes, or believes that WUWT readers are incapable.

Robert Bradley Jr. seems to think that all it takes to reduce atmospheric GHG amounts is to reduce GHG emissions.  In fact, from what I can tell, Robert doesn't know the difference between atmospheric greenhouse gases and human emissions of greenhouse gases.

A good answer by James Hansen to a poorly formed question from an ideological denier, Dave Begley

Anthony Watts has copied and pasted an article (archived here) from some dumb denier blog called Powerline. The article was written by a bloke called Dave Begley, who confesses he's a science denier on ideological grounds. Dave went to a talk by Dr James Hansen at Creighton University, which was held in advance of a shareholder meeting of Berkshire Hathaway.

Dave thought that he was "not only the only conservative, I was also the only person who was thinking clearly and critically". I'll let you decide whether he has the ability to think clearly and critically on the subject of climate change. Dave claimed:

I have never heard such nonsense in my life. He gave a rambling and incoherent presentation for nearly two hours. Three times he forgot the question or lost his train of thought. Since the Jesuits taught me logic, I could easily identity his use of the context, bulls-eye, omission and appeal to authority fallacies.

Dave Begley doesn't give any examples of what he regarded as "use of the context, bulls-eye, omission and appeal to authority fallacies". His own article was one long fallacy of personal incredulity, mixed in with some inaccurate reporting.

It's unacceptable: Forty two years after Kellog and Schneider with Tim Ball at WUWT

Way back in 1974, William Kellog and Stephen Schneider wrote these closing words to an article they had published in Science:

While it is essential to work out international mechanisms to guarantee that any new knowledge of our climate system will have only constructive uses, the price in human suffering of continued ignorance of the causes of climate change may already have become unacceptably high. 

In that paper there was a photo of a glacier in France, which the authors compared with an engraving of the same glacier from about 100 years earlier, which was on the front cover of that December 1974 issue of Science. Below are the two images. You can guess which one is the earlier one. I added an arrow to the 1970s photo showing how far the glacier retreated:

Top: Engraving of the Argentierre Glacier (French Alps) made about 1850-1860 showing its front still close to the plain and the village. See page 1163. [From Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine, Copyright © and published by Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1971. Translated by Barbara Bary] Bottom: Photograph of the town of Argentierre in the French Alps, taken in the mid-1960's. Source: Science 27 December 1974

Judith Curry plays (nuclear) politics

Judith Curry is of the view that science deniers like herself are the only people permitted to "play politics with science".  On her climate conspiracy blog today she wrote about an article in the Guardian by Naomi Oreskes. Professor Oreskes was writing about the push from some quarters into what she called "wholesale expansion of nuclear power". Her article came after a previous Guardian article by Professors James Hansen, Kerry Emanuel, Ken Caldeira and Tom Wigley.

More of David Siegel's climate lies and conspiracy theories

Okay - now it's out there. I don't know why David Siegel tells lies. Whether it's because he's stupid and isn't capable of doing his own research, or whether he does it for reward (either tangible or for ideological purposes). But he does tell lies and, unless he falls into the stupid category, he must know it.

Backtrack: A few days ago I wrote about a science denier called David Siegel, who used WUWT to promote a screed he put up somewhere on the internet. That "somewhere" is, as Greg Laden described it: "big giant blog that anybody can go and blog their big giant thoughts on: like tumblr, but more bloggy".

I pretty much dismissed David Siegel's article as the sort of denier tripe that's a dime a dozen in the dark outer reaches of cyberspace. It was nothing more than a mosaic of WUWT or any other climate conspiracy blog. Still, having it all in one place was a good enough reason to write an article. So a few of us got together and that's just what we did. We posted it on the same website that the original article appeared on.

We were gentle with David Siegel in our Medium.com article. We were more interested in presenting the science than in portraying David Siegel as the utter nutter that he is. Here at HotWhopper there are no kid gloves. David Siegel's article was nothing more than a 9,000 word Gish gallop of denier memes. To address every single one in a blog post would have resulted in an article more like 80,000 words rather than the 8,000 or so that we wrote.

Anthony Watts has lost the plot: WUWT outright rejects the greenhouse effect!

In the most blatant rejection of the greenhouse effect I've yet seen in a WUWT article, Anthony Watts has posted a "guest opinion" from sky dragon slayer, Tim Ball. Tim was the author of Chapter One of "Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory", a book that rejects the greenhouse effect, and which Anthony Watts promoted at the time (without endorsing it).  He mentioned that some people thought that silliest of books might derail the Cancun climate conference.  As if! Perhaps he's hoping to derail the Paris conference with WUWT's startling revelation that the greenhouse effect isn't real and 200 years of climate science is all wrong. What a nutter!

I looked for a debunk of the "slayer" book, but it was obviously too, too silly for anyone to bother doing it. (Judith Curry got mocked by all and sundry for entertaining three articles about it and oodles of comments supporting the book. At one point she wiped the articles, but her denier "free speech" audience got upset over censorship, so she put them back.)

Anthony Watts used to ban commenters who plagued WUWT with weird comments disputing the greenhouse effect, but he's always pandered to Tim Ball. I don't know why. What compensates him for promoting Tim's sleazy conspiracy theories? What does Anthony get out of it, except for the contempt of any normal person who comes across Tim's sordid fantasies. I suppose his reward is page hits from other conspiracy theorists of the One World Guvmint, Agenda 21 kind. Anything to pay the bills.

New Hansen discussion paper is online

In case you missed it, there's a new paper by James Hansen and lots of other people which is generating quite a bit of interest. It's not been reviewed - it's in the "for discussion" category at EGU's inter-active open access journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. That is, it's not had the final peer review. (See comment from Xavier Onassis below.) That's an interesting model for scientific publication in itself. There are not many journals that do this.

I haven't read the paper yet, and even if I had, the paper is quite long at 32 pages not including references and figures (61 pages in total). My articles are long enough as it is. Plus I'd like to wait and see what comments it attracts in the journal itself. Maybe over time I'll write about some aspects of it as shorter articles, rather than attempting to give a view of the whole. From what I've heard, it's a paper that will challenge people - scientists and policy makers and the general public, with lots of food for thought.

Anthony Watts got the Quadrella with an outdated clichéd caricature of a climate science denier

Deniers must be in an out and out panic for some reason.  I don't know why that is.  Yesterday I wrote about how Anthony got the trifecta, putting up articles in quick succession on the much caricatured denier memes of:

1. Climategate
2. Greenland and
3. Al Gore is fat.

Now he's added another one to make the quadrella! (Archived here.) Anthony's posted the most stereotypical clichéd conspiracy theorising slimy article from the grubby Tim Ball. Replete with resurrecting ancient attacks on some of the world's leading scientists - which are sick and twisted and false and would be laughable if they weren't such ugly smear attacks:

• "they turned off the air-conditioning in 1988 in Congress"
• falsely accusing Dr James Hansen, one of the world's living treasures and a modern day hero, of not declaring income
• Ben Santer, who is one of the most respected and trustworthy of climate scientists, "altered" the IPCC report when it was Ben Santer who ensured that the IPCC report included appropriate wording about uncertainty and ensured the report was an accurate reflection of the science of the day
• claiming 24 years ago Ben Santer was too "green" to write for the IPCC (he was 35 years old at the time and had received his doctorate three years earlier) - He was admired by his peers back then and look at how he is revered worldwide today
• Dredging up a dumb claim about the Medieval Warm Period, from arch denier David Deming of all people
• Implying there was something shonky about Michael Mann writing for the IPCC and, laughably, that there was something shonky about this triple graduate degree holder getting his doctorate

I've not seen such a gish gallop of old, disgusting ad hominem attacks on scientists since 2010.  Which in turn were in part a resurrection of the failed Fred Seitz attack from way back in 1996.  Here is the open letter of support for Ben Santer from the American Meteorological Society - from way back in 1996. And here is a more recent article by Ben Santer himself, covering these and other issues. 

Is something about to happen that I'm missing?  Why this resurrection of worn out clichéd denier disinformation?  Is Tim Ball wanting to provide more material for the court to consider at the various law suits he's got to defend? Is he trying to rope Anthony Watts into one or more of them?

And why is Anthony stuck for guest authors that he has to rely on people like the slime Tim Ball, the clown Christopher Monckton and Eric "eugenics" Worrall (can you get more obsure than Eric Worrall?).

Not only that but yesterday he dragged out a chap called Tim Tom Harris who is the "Executive Director" of the two-bit operation that grandly calls itself the "International Climate Science Coalition".  TimTom visited here and twice denied writing exact quotes I took from his article at WUWT.  One of which he'd repeated in slightly different words in a press release published on his own website - talking about "the most expensive hoax in the history of science".

Not only that, but earlier today, Anthony proclaimed to the world that the "biggest threat" to humankind is an asteroid strike.  He's made similar claims before.  He's nuts.  Even his most rabid deniers dispute him on that score.

It's as if there's something big in the wind to send Anthony Watts around the twist like this.  Utterly more Utter Nuttery than usual.

Hansen: "This is game over" and Anthony Watts tells a big fat lie!

Anthony Watts is on a roll of misrepresentation.  He's just finished misrepresenting Dr Lawrence Torcello and I see that he's also been misrepresenting Dr James Hansen.  This time a small number of his followers don't let him get away with it.

What Anthony wrote (archived here):

Even Dr. James Hansen doesn’t  believe Keystone XL itself will significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions

What James Hansen said:

This is game over if you don’t understand; that we have to leave that extremely large amount of carbon in the ground.

Looking more like Mordor than planet earth - Canadian tar sands mines larger than Greater Manchester dominate the landscape next to the Athabasca River, with no proven way to reclaim the boreal forest. Oil sands are a mixture of bitumen and sand. The province of Alberta has proven reserves of 174 billion barrels of oil, second in size only to Saudi Arabia. (WWF)

Credit: © Rezac / WWF-UK Source: WWF-UK

Here's a transcript of what James Hansen said:

I’m glad you asked me that question because my comment continues to be misinterpreted.

My first chart showed how much carbon there is in conventional oil and gas and in coal and in the unconventional fossil fuels. It has been clear that conventional oil and gas are limited. We’re probably close to peak-oil for conventional oil. So the science was clear that we cannot burn all the coal, we’re going to have to phase that out. And that’s a solvable problem because coal is used mainly for electricity production and we can generate electricity in other ways including nuclear power, which is carbon-free.

Then there is this other huge source of carbon, the unconventional fossil fuels. And my statement was that if we are going to now open up that other source: unconventional fossil fuels. That’s what tar sands are: the first big step into that unconventional fossil fuels.  But the science tells us we can’t do that. We’re screwing our children and grandchildren and all the young people in future generations if we think we can use those, that unconventional fossil fuels.

The science is crystal clear on that and the world is just ignoring the science. The scientists are saying ‘wait you can’t do that,’ and that’s what I was saying.

This is game over if you don’t understand; that we have to leave that extremely large amount of carbon in the ground. 

The odd thing is that Anthony Watts posted the video and the transcript of what James Hansen said, and yet Anthony wrote that James Hansen said something completely different.  Here is the video:

Anthony then wrote the complete opposite of what Dr Hansen said, followed by a quote from Senator Menendez, who disagreed with James Hansen:

So not even James Hansen, the very person Keystone XL opponents quote incessantly, believes that Keystone XL itself will significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions.

But that’s not all.  Senator Menendez followed up on Hansen’s clarification, offering yet another blow to Keystone XL opponents.  As he explained,

“So I now have the greater definition.  I just personally don’t think that the approval or disapproval of the pipeline is a decline in global leadership, nor do I believe that the specific approval or disapproval is necessarily game over. I understand what you’re saying, there is a broader context which is whether you have access to this fuel and you start down that road. I just wanted to refine this as it relates to the question before the committee, which is the question of approval of the pipeline.”

Is Anthony just a bit slow, brain dead from protesting climate science? Or perhaps he thinks his readers are brain dead and will believe him rather than read what James Hansen actually said.

From the WUWT comments

Many of the WUWT-ers weren't buying what Anthony wrote this time around.


davidmhoffer says:

March 13, 2014 at 3:33 pm
We’re screwing our children and our grandchildren and all the young people in future generations if we think we can use those unconventional fossil fuels.
I’m not certain how that differs from “game over”?

parisparamus says:

March 13, 2014 at 3:58 pm
Am I stupid, or is there no money quote in that video or this post. What does “game over” mean per the global moroning crowd? And what did Hansen say to upset that? Can someone verify my stupidity (or disprove it), please?

By the way, the global moroning folk want “game over” to mean that if KXL would represent 0.33% of oil pipelines in North America, so I don’t understand how this cuts big either way.

Some of the WUWT-ers are almost brain dead, and are trying hard to accommodate Anthony's misrepresentation with what James Hansen said:

Grant A. Brown says:

March 13, 2014 at 3:42 pm
The point here seems to be that Keystone itself does not spell “game over,” but rather tapping into all of the unconventional oil and gas in the world would spell game over, and Keystone is the first step down that path.

While others are as brain dead as Anthony Watts. Col Mosby says:

March 13, 2014 at 5:01 pm
Let’s see now…. Hansen and colleagues first demand that nuclear power be used in place of “useless” renewables, and now no longer opposes the pipeline. I wonder how long before the greenie weenies come to the realization that Hansen is a “denier” and traitor to the cause?
When he demands that Obama , rather than himself, be handcuffed at the White House, they
may finally see the light. At last. Then Greenpeace will immediately make him a non-person. etc. etc. 

There were also the usual mish-mash, with some people boasting about how selfish they are and others showing that "all scientists look alike".


fhhaynie says he'll happily trade the future of the human race for burning fossil fuels now:

March 13, 2014 at 4:07 pm
When it comes to deciding between protecting our grandchildren from a possible degree rise in global temperature some time in the distant future and meeting our present day energy needs, most of us favor the latter. Smart politicians recognize that and will vote accordingly. “Game over”.

clark can't tell a Mann from a Hansen and says:

March 13, 2014 at 4:04 pm
So if I understand this correctly, Mann said it was game over if this oil came out of the ground and his opposition was to keep that from happening. But, it has become clear over the past few years that the oil will be put on the market no matter what. I think that is Obama’s way out of this. He says, “If not building the pipeline would keep the oil in the ground, I would oppose it, but since there is nothing we can do to stop it, I believe it should be delivered Americans in as safe and economically as possible”.

albertalad argues over terminology "tar sands" vs "oil sands" vs "bituminous sands" and says:

March 13, 2014 at 4:29 pm
tally says:
Man – there is no such thing as tar sands. Tar is a man made product. We do NOT mine tar. Never have.

Pat Frank tries to be "sciency", talking about "kinetic energy" and "sensible heat" and says:

March 13, 2014 at 5:24 pm
Hansen: “We’re screwing our children and our grandchildren [if we] use those unconventional fossil fuels. The science is crystal clear on that…”

This is the crux of his thinking, but the science is no better than murky on that. Consensus greenhouse thinking is that all the extra kinetic energy produced by industrial CO2 ends up as sensible heat in the atmosphere and the oceans, as though the climate had no other channels of response. It is an utterly half-cocked idea.

Greg White goes through various mental contortions (distortions?) and says:

March 13, 2014 at 5:50 pm
Honest question; if Hansen is advocating nuclear energy as a solution to “global warming” this tells me that he is not a “no growth, lower energy, regressive” environmentalist. Is there a chance he fully understands the non-science of CAGW, but is using it as a tool to promote nuclear to the die-hard 60/70′s generation environmentalists? I feel that is what “Pandora’s Promise” is doing.

And a couple of comments after Greg has pointed out that Dr Hansen is favouring nuclear energy, David L. Hagen says:

March 13, 2014 at 6:01 pm
Hansen makes a perceptive comment: . We’re probably close to peak-oil for conventional oil. . . .we have to leave that extremely large amount of carbon in the ground.”

And yet no solution to provide replacement fuel in time. Consequently he appears seeking to shut down our economy.

In among the utter nutters there is one person whose brain still functions.  Fred Blackstone says:

March 13, 2014 at 6:13 pm
Only the WUWT lemmings could interpret Hansen’s position as pro pipeline

Making a meal of Pat 'n Chip on WUWT ...or...Don't shoot the messenger

Anthony Watts and Patrick J. Michaels had a miss on WUWT yesterday, so they are trying again.  This time with the help from Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger.  Once again it's tactic of appealing to the fear factor that by all accounts is one of the main causes of disability of science deniers.

By way of introduction, research suggests that the fear factor prevents some people from rational thought. There is a strong association between this impediment and conservatism.  Fear causes cognitive dissonance which is only allayed by allaying the fear.  That becomes the priority.  When threatening facts can't be refuted then anyone who misrepresents the facts and lowers the fear becomes the new messiah.  It doesn't matter how wrong they are.  The fact they've reduced the fear is sufficient for the professional disinformer to be hailed as a hero.

Strike One: Unveiling The Strawman

First the build up.  Pat and Chip lead in with this, referring to Dr James E Hansen:

Specifically, he believes global average sea level will rise some 15 to 20 feet by 2095.

The question is, does Dr Hansen really believe this as a foregone conclusion?  Pat and Chip refer their readers to this book chapter by Hansen and Sato¹.  Even a cursory read shows that the authors are not at all categorical.  What the authors maintain can be read in the abstract (my bold):

Gravity satellite data, although too brief to be conclusive, are consistent with a doubling time of 10 years or less, implying the possibility of multi-meter sea level rise this century

He believes vs implying the possibility of.  What Pat and Chip have carelessly done is build a strawman.

That's easy to do for the WUWT crowd who thrive on their disdain of climate science and especially of climate scientists and most especially of three or four climate scientists in particular.  James Hansen and Michael Mann are at the top of their list.  But the strawman really wasn't necessary.

Indeed the entire article wasn't necessary.  One word would have sufficed.

Pat and Chip - all you have to do is write the single word "Hansen" and the deniers go rigid with rage, their faces twisted into a slathering snarl, the words on the screen melt together in a blur and their hands are clenched so tightly they can barely unbend their fingers to type in the WUWT comment box.  The relief after clicking "Post Comment" is profound, and surges through their body. They take a deep breath and wait avidly for someone, anyone to acknowledge their intense feelings expressed variously as - "only in it for the money", "activist", "gravy train", "CAGW", "hoax" and "scam". (Yes, a bit of a let-down, isn't it :))

Don't believe me?  I wrote the above in advance of any responses to the article - now go check the comments.

Strike Two: Geography Fail

After that little diversion, back to what Pat and Chip did.  The straw man is built, now they try to knock it down.   I won't bore you with details of "another scientist said something therefore Hansen is wrong about everything", which is the basis of their argument.  I will point out that they are not crash hot at geography or logic.  Here is how I know.  Pat and Chip quote this passage from the Hansen and Sato chapter (with a couple of words changes for some reason):

However, the primary flaw with the kinematic constraint concept is the geology of Antarctica, where large portions of the ice sheet are buttressed by ice shelves that will not survive BAU climate scenarios. West Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier (PIG) illustrates nonlinear processes coming into play. The floating ice shelf at PIG's terminus has been thinning in the past two decades as the ocean around Antarctica warms Shepherd et al., 2004). Thus the grounding line of the glacier has moved inland by 30 km into deeper water, allowing potentially unstable ice sheet retreat. PIG's rate of mass loss has accelerated almost continuously for the past decade (Wingham et al., 2009) and may account for about half of the mass loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which is of the order of 100 km3 per year(Sasgen et al., 2010).

Okay.  This paragraph follows from a discussion of Greenland.  Hansen and Sato are pointing out that West Antarctica is very different to Greenland.  (These are the two locations of greatest concern in the near future in regard to near term sea level rises.  That is, of the order of decades to centuries.)

Pat and Chip write the silliest thing.  They say:

While West Antarctica may be losing ice mass, East Antarctica appears to be gaining, as higher sea surface temperatures lead to more moisture in the atmosphere which leads to greater snowfall there.

Even if they were correct about East Antarctica gaining some, what the heck has snowfall in East Antarctica to do with the potential risks of glaciers melting in West Antarctica?  That's like saying people in San Fransisco don't need to be concerned about earthquakes because there's not much risk of a major earthquake in Boston.  Look for yourself.  Note the scale at the bottom and the mountain range separating east from west. (Click to enlarge):

Source: NASA via Wikipedia

If Pat and Chip make such a big deal about the Pine Island Glacier not being a problem because it's pretty darn cold in the middle of the high mountains in East Antarctica, then what else are they so wrong about?

Strike Three: And They are Out

Next Pat and Chip try to tell you that sea levels weren't higher in the Pliocene after all.  Their evidence?  This is what they write (by the way, prefaced with an "oops" -  implying that Hansen and Sato should have read a paper published just two weeks ago, before writing their chapter two years ago):

Oops. Wrong again. Breaking scientific research just published online from the journal Science (Rowley et al., 2013) conclude that the apparent 25 ± 10 meter sea level rise during the Pliocene was probably due to vertical land motions during the intervening 3 million years rather than an actual sea level rise from more water in the oceans from melting ice (Hansen’s mechanism).

Is that what the paper actually said?  By all accounts, no.  You can read the abstract here in Science Express, and the full article if you're a subscriber.  The abstract doesn't say that sea level rise wasn't as high as thought, it says that you can't determine the sea level from that stretch of land because it shifted as a result of mantle flow.  In other words, what is thought of as a "passive" shoreline was subject to movement.  Let's see what the press release has to say:

"The highlight is that mantle flow is a major component in distorting the Earth's surface over geologic time, even in so-called 'passive' continental margins," Simmons said. "Reconstructing long-term global sea-level change based on stratigraphic relations must account for this effect. In other words, did the water level change or did the ground move? This could have implications on understanding very long-term climate change."

This work may change estimates of sea level in the Pliocene or it may not.  It depends on what other evidence suggests.  But it seems to me that it doesn't necessarily negate higher sea levels.  Nor does it tell us about sea levels in other eras when the earth was as warm as we're heading towards.  I would have a lot less certainty than Pat and Chip that sea level rise will be benign - and I live 200 km from the coastline.

Where does that leave us?

What Hansen is concerned about is that people will allow themselves to be lulled into a false sense of security, thinking that sea levels will rise only gradually and by 'only' a half metre or so this century.  But glaciers in particular are slippery things - they can slide into the ocean, huge chunks can break off and there could be a sudden larger rise.  Heck, imagine if instead of a twenty cm rise in a century there was a half meter rise in a decade.  Imagine a storm surge or a cyclone.  It's not going to be much comfort to inhabitants of coastal cities to say, sorry - we knew it was possible but we didn't think it was likely so we kept on burning fossil fuels.

Maybe the seas won't rise two meters this century.  Maybe it won't happen for another 120 years.  That would foist the problem onto our children's children.  What will they think of us, knowing we could have prevented a sudden rise?

And what will half a meter rise in sea level mean?  We might have only a few decades to relocate thousands of cities and billions of people to higher ground.  That's an enormous undertaking.  (Think of large infrastructure projects that can take anything from ten years to thirty years to completion.)

Here are the closing paragraphs from Hansen and Sato.  Their projections are on the high side for the Business as Usual scenario.  Does that mean we should ignore them in favour of projections that are less uncomfortable just because we prefer the latter?  Surely that would be another logical fallacy - that of personal incredulity. (My bold and italics for emphasis.)

BAU scenarios result in global warming of the order of 3-6°C. It is this scenario for which we assert that multi-meter sea level rise on the century time scale are not only possible, but almost dead certain. Such a huge rapidly increasing climate forcing dwarfs anything in the peleoclimate record. Antarctic ice shelves would disappear and the lower reaches of the Antarctic ice sheets would experience summer melt comparable to that on Greenland today.

The other extreme scenario, FFPO, does not eliminate the possibility of multi-meter sea level rise, but it leaves the time scale for ice sheet disintegration very uncertain, possibly very long. If the time scale is several centuries, then it may be possible to avoid large sea level rise by decreasing emissions fast enough to cause atmospheric greenhouse gases to decline in amount.

What about the intermediate scenario, EU2C? We have presented evidence in this paper that prior interglacial periods were less than 1°C warmer than the Holocene maximum. If we are correct in that conclusion, the EU2C scenario implies a sea level rise of many meters. It is difficult to predict a time scale for the sea level rise, but it would be dangerous and foolish to take such a global warming scenario as a goal.

The upshot is that sooner or later ice is going to melt and seas will rise.  That is certain.  The question is over what time scale.  How long do we have and will it be sudden or gradual.  Will there be sudden shifts over a few years.  Do we want to take the risk?  How lucky do you feel?  How lucky will your grandchildren be?

Whatever we do, we can't shoot the messenger.  Their message might be the most important one we'll ever get.


1. Hansen, J.E., and Mki. Sato, 2011: Paleoclimate implications for human-made climate change. In Climate Change: Inferences from Paleoclimate and Regional Aspects. A. Berger, F. Mesinger, and D. Šijači, Eds. Springer.

Dr James E Hansen: A Whopper of a Man - moving from great to greater

I've read a few articles about James Hansen since he announced his resignation from NASA. The ones that have had the most impact have been those touching on the personal.

Eli Rabett has written an article, saying quietly: Eli Appreciates Hansen.

A man of worth, who is shifting societies towards a clean future

Eli's post is well worth a read.  It includes a brief bio plus a couple of lovely anecdotes that help put the blogosphere  and we piddly bloggers in perspective.  (The blogosphere does not shape the world, it's people like James Hansen who shift societies.)

A man of science and courage

350.org has posted a photo tribute to Dr Hansen:

A climate maverick and best-known public figure in climate research

Justin Gillis has written a nuanced article in the New York Times.  He describes how Dr Hansen emerged into the public spotlight when "on a blistering June day in 1988 he was called before a Congressional committee and testified that human-induced global warming had begun."

The Gillis article also gives a thumbnail sketch of Hansen's life and career.

More about James E Hansen

For a biography, I suppose Wikipedia is a general source, but to appreciate the essence of the man, I think Eli's post and Justin Gillis' article are better.

For some of Hansen's writings, go to his personal website at Columbia University.  There is a heap of material to read there.  And if you haven't already done so, get a copy of his most well-known book:

from Amazon or Google or other source.

Thank you Dr Hansen

Thank you, Dr Hansen for your courage, science and ongoing efforts to help all of us shift to a cleaner world and give hope for a bright future to generations not yet born.