Posted on 01/17/2013 12:07:52 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
James Hansen puts an interesting spin on reports of the ninth warmest year on record
2012 was a kind of glass-half full, glass half-empty year in terms of global temperature.
I. Climate Chief: Don't Worry, We're Still Doomed
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) in-depth analysis of satellite and other forms of climate data ruled the year was the ninth warmest on record. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) independent analysis of ground and sea-based climate stations reported that the year was the tenth warmest on record.
The NASA report states that the average global temperature was 58.3 degrees Fahrenheit (14.6 Celsius), which is 1.0 F (0.6 C) warmer than the mid-20th century baseline, or 1.4 F (0.6 C) warmer than the earliest comprehensive observations from the 1880s.
Still, the year marks the fifth year of a relative flatline in global temperatures after a decade in which the record was regularly broken.
Global warming proponents like James Hansen, director of NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies, blame this deviation from their "doomsday" calculations on a specialized cooling phenomenon called "La Nina", which lowers temperatures in the Eastern Pacific.
Despite flat-lining surface temperatures over the last five years, some climate researchers insist we're headed to doomsday warming and should keep our fingers on the panic button.
[Image Source: GISS]
The climate official claims that aerosols, which reflect solar radiation, also had a cooling affect on temperatures.
Mr. Hansen argues that the public shouldn't just look at the numbers, but look at more nebulous and abstract observations, which he sees as supporting his beliefs of runaway warming. He writes, "The observant person who is willing to look at the past over several seasons and several years, should notice that the frequency of unusual warm anomalies has increased and the extreme anomalies."
He and other global warming advocates have pointed to the summer's drought in central North America and high temperatures in the Rocky Mountains as such "extreme anomalies".
II. A Hot Year for the U.S., Arctic, but a Cool One Elsewhere
2012, according to a separate NOAA report, was the hottest year on record for the U.S. The year did mark a new low for summer Arctic sea ice, according to NASA. However, that could bring some benefits for mankind, such as opening up oil resources.
Parts of the globe cooled, others warmed in 2012. [Image Source: NOAA]
And temperatures for the year were actually cooler than average in several regions -- Alaska, far western Canada, central Asia, parts of the eastern and equatorial Pacific and parts of the Southern Ocean.
California meteorologist Anthony Watts, a known critic of doomsday predictions from folks like James Hansen, casts the U.S.'s record year in a different light, commenting, "If anything, U.S. temperatures are warming at a slower rate in recent decades compared to the early warming period, even with all of that lovely warm weather last year."
He points out that the recent increase (1980-2012) in U.S. surface temperatures was dwarfed by a sharp rise between 1919-1934, which was followed by a period of cooling.
In a follow-up piece, he argues the overall flatline may indicate that natural forces (including in a cooling direction) have a greater impact on global temperatures than human ones, based on his independent analysis over the last half decade.
Sources: NASA, NOAA, Jame Hansen [note]
fyi
Just a NASA attempt to get more funding to do whatever they do...help muslims be proud of their science from 1000 years ago or just fart around to see how man made methane affects the climate!
Sorry. “It’s warming because I say it is” doesn’t feed the bulldog with me.
Quote of the week Hansen concedes the age of flatness
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Quote of the week Hansen concedes the age of flatness
Dr. James Hansen and Reto Ruedy of NASA GISS have written a paper (non peer reviewed) with a remarkable admission in it. It is titled Global Temperature Update Through 2012.
Here is the money quote, which pretty much ends the caterwauling from naysayers about global temperature being stalled for the last decade.
The five-year mean global temperature has been flat for the last decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slow down in the growth rate of net climate forcing.
Gosh, I thought Hansen had claimed that climate forcings had overwhelmed natural variability?
In 2003 Hansen wrote a widely distributed (but not peer reviewed) paper called Can We Defuse the Global Warming Time Bomb? in which he argues that human-caused forcings on the climate are now greater than the natural ones, and that this, over a long time period, can cause large climate changes.
As we shall see, the small forces that drove millennial climate changes are now overwhelmed by human forcings.
According to Hansens latest essay, apparently not. So much for da bomb.
Here are some other interesting excerpts from his recent essay, Bob Tisdale take note:
An update through 2012 of our global analysis reveals 2012 as having practically the same temperature as 2011, significantly lower than the maximum reached in 2010. These short-term global fluctuations are associated principally with natural oscillations of tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures summarized in the Nino index in the lower part of the figure. 2012 is nominally the 9th warmest year, but it is indistinguishable in rank with several other years, as shown by the error estimate for comparing nearby years. Note that the 10 warmest years in the record all occurred since 1998.
The current stand-still of the 5-year running mean global temperature may be largely a consequence of the facr [sic] that the first half of the past 10 years had predominantly El Nino conditions, and the second half had predominantly La Nina conditions.
The approximate stand-still of global temperature during 1940-1975 is generally attributed to an approximate balance of aerosol cooling and greenhouse gas warming during a period of rapid growth of fossil fuel use with little control on particulate air pollution, but quantitative interpretation has been impossible because of the absence of adequate aerosol measurements.
That last part about 1940-1975 is telling, given that we now have a cleaner atmosphere, and less aerosols to reflect sunlight, it goes without saying that more sunlight now reaches the surface. Since GISS is all about the surface temperature, that suggests (to rational thinkers at least) that some portion of the surface temperature rise post 1975 is due to pollution controls being enacted.
But, hes still arguing for an imbalance, even though flatness abounds. Seems like equilibrium to me
Climate change expectations.
The continuing planetary imbalance and the rapid increase of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel assure that global warming will continue on decadal time scales. Moreover, our interpretation of the larger role of unforced variability in temperature change of the past decade suggests that global temperature will rise significantly in the next few years as the tropics moves inevitably to the next El Nino phase.
Except when natural forcings overwhelm the human component of course.
E. Pluribus Unum ~: “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”
Too True !
Nobody in Gobbernment would tamper with the evidence !
That is why Lubchenco is leaving NOAA - “agenda 21” impostion in fisheries, not submitting travel expense documents, etc...
That is why Goofey is leaving EPA ~ “ agenda 21” , killing coal fuels , illegal email correspondence
It seems that a lot of people , like Panetta and others suddenly feel “the need to spend more time with their families.”
I call it B.S. !!
Yeah , I trust what Goobberment sources tell me ... not !
Humanity has suffered and starved when it’s cold, when it’s warm we get grapes in England, Greenland has a lot of Green, growing seasons everywhere expand.
Humanity flourishes in the warm times.
So 2012 was unusually warm for North America. Will 2013 be Australia’s turn?
Who knows?
We can’t control it and if we could, shouldn’t. That would be the all time high for.....
Hubris
And the happiest part of global warming, is when the sunflowers come out. A sunflower of course being a smoking hot Russian woman who has been through another long bitter gray sky winter,,and can’t wait to get out and rock her miniskirt and heels.
And their warm season is much too short. Short as their summer skirts.
Yeahhhhh,,,
Warming can be uncomfortable. Cold just plain hurts.
The blatant BS of these global warming nuts is mind-boggling. No matter what the weather does -warm, cold, in-between, it is interpreted by them as proof that they are right. A scientific theory that is supported by the data, no matter what happens, is no theory at all. Just a political philosophy being peddled as “science”. I read a quote from one of the environut leaders about a year ago admitting that even is fossil fuels weren’t causing the climate to change, they would still want the same curbs and prohibitions on the use of fossil fuels. The global climate change propaganda just gives them something to rally around to achieve their goals.
“the earliest comprehensive observations from the 1880s.”
So,,,, on the vast beach, that comprises The Sands Of Time, we’re judging this BS by looking at 132 grains of sand?
So... the fact that the temperature is not rising is proof that it is.
OK....got it.
Don’t be confused, I’ve got a family to support and a mortrgage to pay!
This is the same James Hansen who, exactly four years ago (Jan. 17, 2009, in “The Observor”) said that Barack Obama had exactly four years to save the planet.
Four years later, no significant climate rescue from Obama (thankfully—his “rescue” would only have made things worse), but Hansen still sings the same sorry tune.
Hansen’s predictions are as believable as the death of Manti Te’o’s girlfriend.
Who are you going to believe? This guy or your lying eyes?
Verily, again and again I shall asked thee. Why is Hansen not sitting in some dingy dark cell in prison.
What is the optimum temperature? Who gets to decide and by what metrics?
see, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok_Station
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