I am a naturally cynical and skeptical person. — Agree-to-Disagree
Scientists are meant to be skeptical. — Agree-to-Disagree
This is what happens when you reach the limits to growth, and by and large, we have reached and surpassed them. Overshoot leads to collapse. — unenlightened
South Asia and West Africa seem at most risk at the moment — jorndoe
30 years later, deniers are still lying about Hansen’s amazing global warming prediction
This article is more than 6 years old
Koch paychecks seem to be strong motivators to lie
Dana Nuccitelli
Thirty years ago, James Hansen testified to Congress about the dangers of human-caused climate change. In his testimony, Hansen showed the results of his 1988 study using a climate model to project future global warming under three possible scenarios, ranging from ‘business as usual’ heavy pollution in his Scenario A to ‘draconian emissions cuts’ in Scenario C, with a moderate Scenario B in between.
Changes in the human effects that influence Earth’s global energy imbalance (a.k.a. ‘anthropogenic radiative forcings’) have in reality been closest to Hansen’s Scenario B, but about 20–30% weaker thanks to the success of the Montreal Protocol in phasing out chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Hansen’s climate model projected that under Scenario B, global surface air temperatures would warm about 0.84°C between 1988 and 2017. But with a global energy imbalance 20–30% lower, it would have predicted a global surface warming closer to 0.6–0.7°C by this year.
The actual 1988–2017 temperature increase was about 0.6°C. Hansen’s 1988 global climate model was almost spot-on.
Scenario B from Hansen’s 1988 paper, with the trend reduced by 27% to reflect the actual radiative forcing from 1984 to 2017, compared to global surface temperature data from Cowtan & Way.
View image in fullscreen
Scenario B from Hansen’s 1988 paper, with the trend reduced by 27% to reflect the actual radiative forcing from 1984 to 2017, compared to global surface temperature data from Cowtan & Way. Illustration: Dana Nuccitelli
In the WSJ, deniers again lie about Hansen
The incredible accuracy of Hansen’s climate model predictions debunks a number of climate denier myths. It shows that climate models are accurate and reliable, that global warming is proceeding as climate scientists predicted, and thus that we should probably start listening to them and take action to address the existential threat it poses.
Hansen’s predictions have thus become a target of climate denier misinformation. It began way back in 1998, when the Cato Institute’s Patrick Michaels – who has admitted that something like 40% of his salary comes from the fossil fuel industry – arguably committed perjury in testimony to Congress. Invited by Republicans to testify as the Kyoto Protocol climate agreement was in the works, Michaels was asked to evaluate how Hansen’s predictions were faring 10 years later.
In his presentation, Michaels deleted Hansen’s Scenarios B and C – the ones closest to reality – and only showed Scenario A to make it seem as though Hansen had drastically over-predicted global warming. Deleting inconvenient data in order to fool his audience became a habit for Patrick Michaels, who quickly earned a reputation of dishonesty in the climate science world, but has nevertheless remained a favorite of oil industry and conservative media.
Last week in the Wall Street Journal, Michaels was joined by Ryan Maue in an op-ed that again grossly distorted Hansen’s 1988 paper. Maue is a young scientist with a contrarian streak who’s published some serious research on hurricanes, but since joining the Cato Institute last year, seems to have sold off his remaining credibility to the fossil fuel industry.
In their WSJ opinion piece, Michaels and Maue claimed:
Global surface temperature has not increased significantly since 2000, discounting the larger-than-usual El Niño of 2015-16. Assessed by Mr. Hansen’s model, surface temperatures are behaving as if we had capped 18 years ago the carbon-dioxide emissions responsible for the enhanced greenhouse effect.
They provided no evidence to support this claim (evidence and facts seem not to be allowed on the WSJ Opinion page), and it takes just 30 seconds to fact check. In reality, global surface temperatures have increased by about 0.35°C since 2000 – precisely in line with Hansen’s 1988 model projections, as shown above. And it’s unscientific to simply “discount” the El Niño of 2015-16, because between the years 1999 and 2014, seven were cooled by La Niña events while just four experienced an El Niño warming. Yet despite the preponderance of La Niña events, global surface temperatures still warmed 0.15°C during that time. There’s simply not an ounce of truth to Michaels’ and Maue’s central WSJ claim.
It’s also worth noting that Hansen’s 1988 paper accurately predicted the geographic pattern of global warming, with the Arctic region warming fastest and more warming over land masses than the oceans. And climate deniers in the 1980s like Richard Lindzen were predicting “that the likelihood over the next century of greenhouse warming reaching magnitudes comparable to natural variability seems small.” If anyone deserves criticism for inaccurate climate predictions, it’s deniers like Lindzen who thought there wouldn’t be any significant warming, when in reality we’ve seen the dramatic global warming that James Hansen predicted.
Michaels’ and Maue’s misinformation didn’t stop there:
And it isn’t just Mr. Hansen who got it wrong. Models devised by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have, on average, predicted about twice as much warming as has been observed since global satellite temperature monitoring began 40 years ago.
Once again, this unsupported assertion is completely wrong. I evaluated the IPCC’s global warming projections in my book, and showed in detail that theirs have been among the most accurate predictions. The climate model temperature projections in the 1990, 1995, 2001, and 2007 IPCC reports were all remarkably accurate; the IPCC predicted global warming almost exactly right.
Why lie? To keep cashing Koch paychecks
We don’t even have to guess at the motivation behind Michaels’ and Maue’s misinformation; they give it away toward the end of their opinion piece, asking:
Why should people world-wide pay drastic costs to cut emissions when the global temperature is acting as if those cuts have already been made?
Michaels and Maue don’t want us to cut carbon pollution, and it’s easy to understand why. They work for the Cato Institute, which was co-founded by and is heavily controlled by the Koch brothers, who have donated more than $30 million to Cato. As Michaels admitted, they’re basically fossil fuel industry employees.
But the answers to their question are simple. As climate scientists have predicted for decades, global temperatures are rising dangerously rapidly. Moreover, research has shown that the economic benefits of cutting carbon pollution far outweigh the costs.
Michaels and Maue want us to bet the future of all life on Earth. They want us to put all our chips on black – a bet that burning billions of barrels of oil and billions of tons of coal every year won’t cause dangerous climate change. They want us to make that bet even though their arguments are based on unsupported lies, whilst they cash paychecks from the Koch brothers.
We would have to be incredible suckers to take their bet.
desperate people will deny the facts and withdraw into a fantasy world. — Agree-to-Disagree
Haven't the oligarchs watched the Terminator film series?
I'll be back. :cool: — Agree-to-Disagree
If you had looked at the article then you would have found that the article has links to where it got information from. — Agree-to-Disagree
The Lad Bible is infallible. — unenlightened
In a report this week, James Hansen, the famed former NASA scientist, argued that cutting pollution had already played a big role in causing global warming to accelerate. The reason is a little counterintuitive: For decades, humans have not only been emitting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases when they burn fossil fuels. They’ve also been spewing tiny sulfate particles into the air.
These particles spur the formation of more and brighter clouds, which help shield Earth from the sun. But as regulators have curbed sulfate pollution to protect people’s lungs, this cooling effect has diminished, exposing the planet to more of the full force of greenhouse warming.
outlandishly awful idea, which is why I am assuming Trump has a different intention. — Tzeentch
EVs are not without costs to the environment — unenlightened
abuse anybody who is more intelligent than them — Agree-to-Disagree
It is clear that you do not have any coherent understanding, but are flailing about looking for contrarian ideas to whatever is the last thing that has been said. — unenlightened
Combustion engines, also known as internal combustion engines, have several problems including significant air pollution due to emissions like carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter, high fuel consumption, noise generation, vibration, dependence on fossil fuels, and potential for maintenance issues like oil leaks, worn bearings, and faulty spark plugs, all contributing to environmental concerns and potential health risks.
In a 2014 interview in the Washington Post of University of Miami climatologist Larry Kalkstein, who has published numerous research papers on weather-related mortality, weighed in on the matter: “Comparing apples to apples, which would be to evaluate acute or short-term responses to weather, I would always give the nod to heat-related deaths. However, if you are considering the seasonal differences in daily mortality, rather than just the “spikes” that we find with acute deaths, I can see why one can argue that winter (or cold-related) mortality is greater.” That was certainly the conclusion of a 2015 epidemiological study of deaths in 13 countries in The Lancet, which found that cold-related deaths in the U.S. were about a factor of fifteen higher than heat-related deaths. Cold deaths outnumbered heat deaths by a factor of twenty when averaged over all 13 countries studied. However, this study did not control for the seasonal cycle in death rates; deaths are always higher in winter, due to influenza and other non-weather-related factors.
The 2005 study, Heat Mortality Versus Cold Mortality: A Study of Conflicting Databases in the United States, advocated using gross mortality (or excess mortality, as shown in Figure 2 for the 1995 Chicago heat wave) as a way to arrive at a better estimate of heat-and cold-related deaths. They stressed that one must correct for the seasonal cycle in deaths before using this technique, to remove the influence of the winter influenza season and other non-weather-related factors. Interestingly, they found that major heat waves cause big spikes in the death rate, whereas major cold waves do not: “Severe heat waves often produce large "spikes" in mortality, especially during the 1995 heat wave across the Midwest. However, abnormally cold conditions have little effect on the standardized daily mortality. For example, February 1996, a cold period across much of the United States, produced no spikes in winter mortality levels.” Similarly, from the 2016 U.S. National Climate Assessment: “The relationship between mortality and an additional day of extreme heat is generally much larger than the relationship between mortality and an additional day of extreme cold.”
in relation to the problems of climate change, which, in case you had forgotten, is the topic under discussion. there are no serious problems at all; the problems you have suggested are trivial by comparison with the effects of climate change. — unenlightened
You are a delusional evangelist — Agree-to-Disagree
You, nor MGUY choose to remotely consider them:— all your research and all your criticism is directed at problems that arise from efforts to find alternatives, and the difficulties of pinning down the exact extent of a global change of inconceivable complexity — unenlightened
And don't let those who have an anti-EV agenda lie to you.
I don't know if Trump was lying or just honestly has his facts wrong, but either way, there is no EV mandate. The Biden administration DID tighten fuel-economy standards (though not as much as initially proposed) and the EPA did tighten tailpipe-emissions rules but there is no rule or law forcing automakers to build EVs or a certain percentage of EVs. Biden has set a goal of 50 percent EV sales by 2030, but that's a goal not a mandate.
Some might argue that the tighter rules will, in effect, force automakers to build more EVs in order to comply, but that would ignore that automakers can get there using other tech including hybrids. Automakers could also, if I understand the rules correctly, be in compliance simply by building more vehicles that have fuel-efficient internal-combustion powertrains -- you know, the kind of vehicles that have become scare as consumers flock to more-profitable crossovers and SUVs.
Even if the new rules do force automakers to alter their product mix and offerings to be in compliance, it is not a mandate that they build EVs.
I'd also add, taking off the fact-checker hat and putting on the analyst hat, that many American-built EVs are built in states that show heavy support for Donald Trump. Not only is Trump likely upsetting automakers, who need regulatory consistency since they plan models years in advance, but he could be upsetting his own constituents.
The Biden Administration dropped a new rule limiting tailpipe emissions from passenger vehicles yesterday, and you know what that means.
Yes, it's lying season!
I want to focus on one particular egregious lie. You will soon see arguments from certain anti-EV types that new rule is an EV mandate. It very much is not.
First, some background from the New York Times:
The rule increasingly limits the amount of pollution allowed from tailpipes over time so that, by 2032, more than half the new cars sold in the United States would most likely be zero-emissions vehicles in order for carmakers to meet the standards.
We can argue all day long about whether the rule is too stringent or not, or whether automakers will be able to achieve the administration's goals. But as the Times points out, the government is NOT forcing the fleet to become all electric:
The E.P.A. regulation is not a ban. It does not mandate the sales of electric vehicles, and gas-powered cars and trucks could still be sold. Rather, it requires carmakers to meet tough new average emissions limits across their entire product line. It’s up to the manufacturers to decide how to comply.
That hasn't stopped the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers lobbying arm from calling the rule "Biden's EPA car ban." This is where I credit the oft-beleaguered Times, which I have hit at here and there, for not pulling punches and calling that assertion false.
It's not a ban on cars or internal-combustion engine cars. It's just not. And don't let those who have an anti-EV agenda lie to you.