You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Home Front: Culture Wars
Hansen Testifies: It's Worse than I Thought!
2012-08-04
When I testified before the Senate in the hot summer of 1988 , I warned of the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our planet. I painted a grim picture of the consequences of steadily increasing temperatures, driven by mankind's use of fossil fuels.

But I have a confession to make: I was too optimistic.

My projections about increasing global temperature have been proved true to the faithful. But I failed to fully explore how quickly that average rise would drive an increase in extreme weather.
Not the sun, or sunspots, or El Nino, or la Nina or any of that other natural stuff. Just man-made carbon.
In a new analysis of the past six decades of global temperatures, which will be published Monday, my colleagues and I have revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present.
Why only sixty years, Doc? I see a lot of records were set in the 1930's.
This is not a climate model or a prediction but actual observations of weather events and temperatures that have happened. Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.

Such events used to be exceedingly rare. Extremely hot temperatures covered about 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent of the globe in the base period of our study, from 1951 to 1980. In the last three decades, while the average temperature has slowly risen, the extremes have soared and now cover about 10 percent of the globe.
Little Ice Age? Never heard of it. Medieval Warm Period? Nope. Fortunately for Doc Hansen, much of the younger generation has never heard of it, either.
There is still time to act and avoid a worsening climate, but we are wasting precious time. We can solve the challenge of climate change with a gradually rising fee on carbon collected from fossil-fuel companies, with 100 percent of the money rebated to all legal residents on a per capita basis. This would stimulate innovations and create a robust clean-energy economy with millions of new jobs. It is a simple, honest and effective solution.
And vote for Obama, because the other guy is only gonna make it worse!
Posted by:Bobby

#10  Trillions will die!
Posted by: European Conservative   2012-08-04 22:37  

#9  PV=NRT

Since V isn't bounded, and thus pressure is going to merely mix, and R is just a constant, then it all boils down to

T=N which makes sense as the more molecules there are the more they can hold energy which is measured as heat. Which we then measure as the increase over the black body temp.

Intercepting solar energy higher in the atmosphere will make it colder not warmer.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles   2012-08-04 17:12  

#8  If you are seeing record summer heat and record winter cold, the reason is reduced clouds, likely caused by reduced aerosols.
Posted by: phil_b   2012-08-04 15:03  

#7  Care to release the raw data? No? Fraud.
Posted by: Ptah   2012-08-04 15:03  

#6  Coldest July on record here in Perth.
Posted by: phil_b   2012-08-04 14:57  

#5  Here's an offer for Mr. Hansen. He predicts climate over the next 5 years. If he's right, we'll do whatever he says. If he's wrong, we flay him and feed him to the dolphins.

Of course, if he predicts no significant change over 5 years, we just flay him now. It's called having skin in the game :-)
Posted by: Iblis   2012-08-04 13:01  

#4  Doom is always upon us, but it never quite gets to the point of being beyond the ability of wealth transfers to reverse. That's know as the "climatology sweet spot."
Posted by: Matt   2012-08-04 11:18  

#3  Thanks for the linkie !
Posted by: Besoeker   2012-08-04 10:58  

#2  Running a bit below normal in the UK. That's the problem with modern communications, as millions tune in they actually see other 'weather'. Over the month as a whole temperatures were over 1C below average, despite the very warm last week. The Central England Temperature (CET) was 15.5C which is 1.2C below the mean for 1981-2010, the lowest in July only since 2011 with a run of cool Julys recently. - from the MMGW obsessed Weather Channel.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2012-08-04 10:57  

#1  Rebated to legal residents? Racist.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2012-08-04 10:49  

00:00