Debunking James Hansen. Lesson #1
James Hansen debunks himself by adjusting his climate model twice since 1988...thats called backfitting the data...or covering your ass.
He used scare headlines and manipulated the data to garner support in 1988...now he is adjusting to the real world so that he will not look like such a manipulative liar later.
It's called managing your legacy...like a good little politician should ;-)
Hansen’s most recent figure, just published in Sciencexpress, is that the surface temperature ultimately changes 0.67°C per Watt per square meter (W/m2). In 1988 he said it was a full degree, and in 2001 he lowered it to 0.75.
The lower the climate sensitivity, the less that the global temperature will rise in the future (given the same amount atmospheric carbon dioxide) and the lower the threat of catastrophic climate change.
But the greenhouse emissions are also much lower than people expected. The standard modeling technique raises the carbon dioxide concentration of the atmosphere 1% per year, but the actual rate of increase for the last three decades has been around 0.45% per year. And, despite scary news stories, there’s little evidence for any sharp upward change
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Of course, there could be a more cynical explanation for the reduced climate sensitivity, namely the rational tendency to cover ones back. Here’s what Hansen wrote in 2003 in the Journal Natural Science.
Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue. Now, however, the need is for demonstrably objective climate…scenarios consistent with what is realistic under current conditions.
(The logical parsing of that paragraph was that it was OK for scientists to lie to gain policies they wanted, and that they weren’t being objective).
worldclimatereport.com |
