The most conspicuous doubter in France is Claude Allegre, a former education minister and a physicist by profession. His new book, 'Ma Verite Sur la Planete' ('My Truth About the Planet'), doesn't mince words.

He calls Gore a 'crook' presiding over an eco-business that pumps out cash. As for Gore's French followers, the author likens them to religious zealots who, far from saving humanity, are endangering it. Driven by a Judeo-Christian guilt complex, he says, French greens paint worst-case scenarios and attribute little-understood cycles to human misbehavior.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aVvwX1RTVGr8&refer=muse

Hansen knows that the worldwide temperature records overstate the actual warming. He is no longer acting as a scientist. He is pushing an agenda.

I have a couple of nagging questions. I'm sure someone here has some answers.

First of all I question some of the temperature data even now, but I'm wondering how reliable data is going back past, say, 50 years. I would think data here in the U.S., parts of Canada, parts of Europe would be fairly reliable, but what about data in other parts of the world. When Hansen, or anyone, is talking about global temperatures in the 1930's how reliable is data from remote locations in the world. Parts of Asia, Africa, South America. For example, how much accurate temperature data was coming out of the Soviet Union during WWII? I have trouble believing there was a lot of data collecting as the Germans pounded Stalingrad. Where was the data coming from in Asia as the Japanese wrecked havoc in those areas? How much accurate temperature data was available in remote parts of Africa during the 1930's? I think this can be applied to many places. So I guess my question is, other than certain areas of the world, do we really have accurate, hard, data to base global temperatures on going back past 60 years?
Any thoughts?

" the impact of global warming on the clown fish habitat"

A clownfish habitat is a very mobile anemone.

The major impact to clownfish habitat is collecting anemones for the aquarium trade.

..and Hansen is a joke.

Quite a few records being broken in Colorado during Hansen's "warmest year ever, due to the Super El Nino."

Greeley (Eastern Colorado) broke their low temperature record this morning by 13 degrees at -20F.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KGXY/2007/12/28/MonthlyHistory.html

This is the first December in the modern record where the average high temperature was below freezing. Some NOAA maps show Greeley temperatures near normal, when they are actually more than 10 degrees below normal.

Southern Colorado is 12 degrees below normal for the month.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KALS/2007/12/28/MonthlyHistory.html

Western Colorado is about 5 degrees below normal for the month.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KCAG/2007/12/28/MonthlyHistory.html

Central Colorado is about 8 degrees below normal for the month, and -24F this morning.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KGUC/2007/12/28/MonthlyHistory.html

The San Juan Mountains are close to breaking the record for early season snowfall.
http://www.wolfcreekski.com/snow.asp

No doubt Hansen and NOAA will report this December as one of the 10 warmest on record out here.

January and February were also two of the coldest months on record, right at the peak of the super hot El Nino.

Fehlinger says, in a voice-over:
And the ingredients to that recipe came together in September 2007, when a story surfaced linking Hansen to the infamous global cooling craze of the 70s.

"A story surfaced"? Why the passive voice? "...the infamous global cooling craze of the 70s"? Why repeat this lie, when the truth (that this "craze" was a creation of badly-informed journalists) has been documented on this blog multiple times?

Why does Fehlinger avoid the truth?

A hit-piece was published in the Washington Times. It mentioned Hansen's name. Then, the contrarian swift-boat machine kicked in, conflating Hansen with a paper published by a co-worker. An illustrative example of how the right-wing blogosphere ran with this lie is found in a 19 September piece by Noel Sheppard.

The "swiftboat" verb is, in fact, literally correct. Notice the attribution granted Marc Morano in Sheppard's hit-piece. The same Marc Morano who spear-headed the "Swift-boat" attacks on Kerry.

This episode was, in fact, a lie. It has been well-documented, here and elsewhere. Why then, does Fehlinger avoid describing it as such?

Similarly, Fehlinger refers to the "infamous global cooling craze of the 70s." This "craze" was the creation of the journalistic community of the time. The contrarian community here, led by contributors such as Patrick Henry, perpetuates the lie that climatologists predicted global cooling. Climatologists did not. Hansen did not.

It is "infamous" only because contrarians and right-wingers relentlessly repeat it, knowing full well that it is a lie. When Fehlinger repeats it, without comment, she contributes to the perpetuation of this lie.

Fehlinger says, again in a voice-over:
But the misunderstandings didn't stop there

"Misunderstandings"?

What does Fehlinger think was "misunderstood"? Would she have us believe that the right-wing originators of these lies innocently "misunderstood" the facts of who started these lies?

If Fehlinger is looking for a more neutral word than "lies", perhaps "misstatements" is preferable. Not, however "misunderstandings".

The objective, factual truth is that Hansen had nothing to do with Rasool's paper. The objective, factual truth is that Rasool's paper did not "predict" any "ice age." The objective, factual truth is that no climatologist "predicted" a coming ice-age.

Just as the objective, factual truth is that Hansen made minor changes to some datasets in the summer of 2007. The objective, factual truth is that these minor changes are inconsequential to any of the issues we are discussing. The objective, factual truth is that the right-wing has attempted to fill the discussion with lies and distortions about these minor changes.

When a statement is shown to be false, a credible journalist notes that statement as such. When a false story is shown to be planted by a political operative and spread by a network of sycophants, a credible journalist reports that fact. When a journalist avoids reporting documented fact, the journalist becomes a cog in the propaganda machine that the journalist attempts to report on.

Fehlinger continues to do herself and this site a disservice by her unwillingness to state the objective truth when she covers a controversial story like this.

I'd like to take a crack at answering Iceman's question.

Temperature data is exceptionally difficult to interpret. A thermometer takes a single measurement of temperature at a single point in space, and is recorded at a single moment in time. Yet temperature is really a field of values rapidly changing in time. Meteorologists have tried to standardize temperature measurements, and nowadays the data is very reliable, but the further back in time you go, the less reliable the data.

But don't forget that "reliable" is itself a tricky term. The real question arise from precision and accuracy. Accuracy is the deviation of average values from the correct value; every measuring instrument yields values that are consistently a little too high or a little too low. Fortunately, with temperature measurements, the accuracies of individual measurements are under one degree Fahrenheit.

Precision is the variability of measurement. Classic mercury thermometers are quite good here; they have precision of well under a degree Fahrenheit.

All of which means that any single measurement is probably good to maybe one degree Fahrenheit. Of course, we're looking for changes of a few tenths of a degree Fahrenheit. How can we detect changes that are less than the measurement reliability of our instruments? By statistical methods. If you combine lots of measurements, you can improve your results.

Where this gets really hairy is when you try to combine everything into a single number for "global temperature". Talking about "global temperature" is like talking about "global wind velocity" or "global noise level". This problem is made even more confusing by the fact that the AGW hypothesis predicts much greater increases in temperature in the polar regions than in the tropics. So, do you water down the temperature increases in polar regions by averaging them with tropical temperature changes?

For this reason, many scientists prefer to use the term "climate change" rather than "global warming".

I'll also point out that, while the reliability of individual temperature measurements isn't so great, the number of measurements is enormous, and so statistically we can combine them to get pretty good results -- but only where we have lots of measurements. As you point out, we don't have a lot of data from all over the globe for the early 20th century.

Lastly, I'd like to point out that Patrick Henry's statements regarding Colorado weather are without much meaning because they are too narrow in range, both spatially and temporally. There's a mountain of data out there, literally terabytes of information. You can cherry-pick that data to prove almost anything you want. Give me enough data from hell and I can cherry-pick it to prove that the place is freezing over. You need to look at the big picture, not a couple of snapshots.

I think the deniers are talking to themselves today.

Personally attacking Hansen and Gore with smears only shows how extreme your views are.

PH -- The world is not Colorado and weather is not climate.

Iceman,

You will never get a straight answer because nobody will admit most of the data is subject to adjustments.
Just about everyone states (including the IPCC) that the US has the most accurate records of ANY country in the world.
Unfortunately, the US has many problems with their records as has been reported on this blog. So the US has spurious results and we are considered the best! So where does that leave the rest of the worlds records???? It leaves them open to adjustments until the man in charge gets whatever results he wants. He kind of reminds me of Richard Nixon denying anything is wrong. Nixon denials were studded with nonsense veiled as National Security issues; Hansen uses “World Apocalypse,” and “I don’t want to disappoint my grandchildren.”
I guess if your make the lie big enough it will be believed by many because it is so outrageous how could anybody make it up?
Aye so here’s the rub! We are back to the old Garbage In, Garbage Out nonsense. Yet he and the AGW crowd want the rest of us to trust his data because he is concerned and it’s the best information they have. Doesn’t anybody see that reasoning as absurdly crazy?
Somebody should tell Dr. Hansen that “minor math” mistakes published denied and then glossed over, seriously undermine his credibility with the majority of scientists in other disciplines. You don’t have to be a climatologist to know these mistakes show sloppy work and a shoddy peer review process. His field of science is looking more and more like a bunch of guys using scientific instruments and then making up whatever they want. When playing the science fact game fast and loose he should understand he can’t fool all the people all the time.
LOL Everybody have a great weekend.

Hi Guys,

Iceman, you also have to take into account that prior to the 1960s the majority of recording devices where good ol mercury thermometers. Which have a degree of error of 0.5 degrees C. I have no comment on Hansen just see the other post. The guy cracks me up, not alarmist give me a break.

Hansen is living in the past. It is his current mis-predictions and mis-calculations that are the real problem.

Hansen's super hot, dry El Nino is hitting Australia this summer with record cold and rain, just the opposite of his forecast.

ftp://ftp.bom.gov.au/anon/home/ncc/www/temperature/maxanom/week/colour/latest.gif
ftp://ftp.bom.gov.au/anon/home/ncc/www/rainfall/percent/cmonth/colour/latest.wa.gif

Katie,

How about asking James Hansen about my "TUNNEL" idea? Tell him he can confer with with Frank Marks at the National Hurricane Research center (HRD),Kerry Emanuel at MIT,and Hugh Willoughby at FIU about the idea or me of course.They all think the "TUNNEL" idea needs computer modeling and have the PROOF saying so.I already E-mailed James about the "TUNNEL" idea but he never replied yet.

I am struck by his comment that scientists are, by their nature, skeptical and conservative.

If the scientists who study GW were truly skeptical, they would quickly come to realize that the very idea of a supposed consensus in opinion would be seen as quite odd.

Conservatism taken in the study of GW would tend to lead to a warm bias thereby producing a warm result. This is because "excess" heat is the primary concern that would lead to all things "bad" in their eyes.

BT:

I'm confused. If you hate our show so much, why do you continue to watch it? I assumed you'd be thrilled to see Hansen on the show!

Have a great New Years! :)

Hansen Downgrades Warming Threat

James Hansen, the director of NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has published a study in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences (December 18, 2002) that downgrades the magnitude of global warming. Reply: That's five years ago.

According to his analysis, the growth rate of climate forcing from greenhouse gases peaked in 1980 and has since declined from about 5 watts per square meter (W/m2) per century to about 3 W/m2 per century. When all forcings, both negative and positive, are taken into account total net forcing is about 1.6 1.1 W/m2. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assumes a 4 W/m2 forcing. As the study notes, "Most climate simulations, as summarized by the IPCC, do not include all of the negative forcings; indeed, if they did, and other forcings were unchanged, little global warming would be obtained."

Hansen and his co-author Makiko Sato, with Center for Climate Systems Research at the Columbia University Earth Institute, predict that "Global warming at a rate +0.15 0.05 degrees C per decade will occur over the next several decades." This is what the so-called skeptics have been saying all along.

Hansen and Sato put an interesting twist on their argument, however. They state that "the slowdown was caused mainly by phase-out of CFCs" (chlorofluorocarbons), which are also greenhouse gases, under the Montreal Protocol. The previous claim that sulfate aerosol emissions are masking the warming is no longer satisfactory since that has been cancelled out by the discovery of an equal but opposite forcing from black carbon.

Despite Hansens latest conclusion that the planet will only warm about 1.5 degrees C over the next century, a miniscule amount, he still argues for international cooperation to stop global warming. He calls for a "cooperative, not punitive" program of technology transfer from developed to developing world to reduce emissions.

ted, the fact that data is imperfect does not make it garbage. I've handled a lot of data over the years, and I have NEVER come across a perfect dataset. If data were perfect, all the datapoints would fall on a perfect straight line on the graph; they never do.

We don't have to use an extreme measure of "it's either perfect or it's garbage". Instead, we just rely on the error bars to give us a handle on the reliability of the data. That's why most of the graphs you'll see on the IPCC reports have error bars on them -- to give you an idea of the margin of error.

As far as correcting data goes, that's a perpetual process. Contrary to your assertion, scientists who make minor revisions in their data do not lose credibility, because we're ALWAYS making minor revisions to the data as we go over it in greater detail, ferreting out problems here and there.

Darren writes:

"If the scientists who study GW were truly skeptical, they would quickly come to realize that the very idea of a supposed consensus in opinion would be seen as quite odd."

No, consensus is very much a part of the scientific process. Consider, for example, the Steady State versus Big Bang theories. In the 1950s, there was no consensus at all. With the discovery of the 3 degree K microwave background, there was a strong shift towards Big Bang, but it didn't firm up to a consensus until the early 1970s. In the same way, when the National Academy of Sciences first address the issue of climate change in the 1970s, they stated that there was no solid basis for predicting future climate -- more data was needed. Over the years, the NAS reports have steadily grown more confident as the consensus has firmed up. You can argue about exactly what "consensus" means: 51%, 75%, 90%, 99%. But the best indicator is the direction that published papers are taking, and that direction is pretty clearly that most climatologists now accept the basic AGW hypothesis and are now extending it, nailing down loose ends, correcting minor flaws, and so forth.

Patrick Henry
You certainly are a one note samba. Here is some weather data from another mountain community. The temp yesterday in Asheville, NC was 58 deg. The low was 40 deg. The avg for this time of year is 47 hi/27 lo. So yesterday's temps were quite a bit higher and it has been that way all fall and into winter with very little precip. Can I then extrapolate from this information that there IS global warming? Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Weather is not climate. On Jan. 2 the forcast for Asheville is for a hi or 29 deg and a low of 0! The cold bubble that you are experiencing is moving east!In my home town, on the northwest coast of Washington, we are now experiences slightly warmer and wetter winters and, it seems to me, a lot more wind. I would love to blame AGW, but weather is not climate. In a few more years we will know for sure. As to Greeley Colorado, it is 13 deg there today and a low of 0. That truely is cold and I don't envy you. But next week (Jan 6) it is predicted to be 42 hi/17 lo, which is almost right on your average. So buck up, global warming is on its way to help you out! Happy New Year!

bt,

Take a deep breath, calm down, sit back, and relax. Your moonbat tendencies are surfacing along with your acute bout with BDS. Besides, what's with all this political stuff you're flinging around?

Why do you defend Hansen? You know he's a political hack, one of Gore's underlings.

And why are you attacking the messenger?

Get a grip, bt. Or at least put your tinfoil hat back on.

getting cold,

I'm curious why you consider directly quoting Hansen to be "smearing him?" When a scientist makes a ridiculous, high profile, prediction and it turns out to be incorrect - it reflects badly on him.

I'm also curious why you don't have a problem with NOAA maps misrepresenting temperature data in Colorado, or anywhere else?

An interesting note about temperature measurements in America and how dis-interested the IPCC was to hear that problems may exist.

http://www.nationalpost.com/story-printer.html?id=ccfdd609-3321-42d5-b9ef-40e20fc8db33

If you wrote a comedy this absurd and incoherent, the critics would kill you.

Hansen says we are going to be OK

Hansen Downgrades Warming Threat James Hansen, the director of NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has published a study in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences (December 18, 2002) that downgrades the magnitude of global warming.
http://www.globalwarming.org/node/160

Hansen says we are all going to die

NASA: Danger Point Closer Than Thought From Warming 'Disastrous Effects' of Global Warming Tipping Points Near, According to New Study
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id=3223473&page=1

Antarctica is getting cold

New Problem: Antarctic Cooling BBC News has reported on the research findings of U.S. scientists who have established that much of Antarctica is cooling
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0QNZ/is_2002_Jan_14/ai_n6252669

Antarctica is getting hot

Antarctica's atmosphere is heating up three times faster than the earth average, British scientists said after a 30-year study released Thursday. A new analysis of weather balloon observations from the last 30 years reveals that the Antarctic has the same 'global warming' signature as that seen across the whole Earth, but is three times larger than that observed globally.
http://www.physorg.com/news63005021.html

Another interesting article. A bit off topic but worth the read.
Excerpt:
The complexity of climate change does not suddenly make a sociologist, economist, computer programmer, etc. a credible skeptic. In fact, the weakness of Inhofe's list is readily apparent by the very fact that he had to include such people on his list.

http://www.climate-resistance.org/2007/12/physician-heal-thyself.html