Running Hot And Cold
Changing positions:
But Newsweek didn't note that (James) Hansen was a consultant to Al Gore's slide-show presentations on global warming. He also once received $250,000 from the Heinz Endowments, the foundation headed by Pittsburgh pickle princess Teresa Heinz. (Pittsburgh Tribune Review, August 12, 2007)
That's something to keep in mind when you read this from Investor's Business Daily:
On July 9, 1971, the Post published a story headlined "U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming." It told of a prediction by NASA and Columbia University scientist S.I. Rasool. The culprit: man's use of fossil fuels.
The Post reported that Rasool, writing in Science, argued that in "the next 50 years" fine dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out so much of the sun's rays that the Earth's average temperature could fall by six degrees.
Sustained emissions over five to 10 years, Rasool claimed, "could be sufficient to trigger an ice age."
Aiding Rasool's research, the Post reported, was a "computer program developed by Dr. James Hansen," who was, according to his resume, a Columbia University research associate at the time.
So what about those greenhouse gases that man pumps into the skies? Weren't they worried about them causing a greenhouse effect that would heat the planet, as Hansen, Al Gore and a host of others so fervently believe today?
"They found no need to worry about the carbon dioxide fuel-burning puts in the atmosphere," the Post said in the story, which was spotted last week by Washington resident John Lockwood, who was doing research at the Library of Congress and alerted the Washington Times to his finding.
Now, can someone change their scientific opinion because of changed data, or better data? Sure. But they generally acknowledge that they have. Hansen, when forced to revise his "authoritative" global warming numbers downward - because they were wrong - responded by attacking anyone who questioned his findings as "court jesters." He then dismissed the importance of the corrections because the US data only accounts for 2% of the earth's landmass. Yet Hansen seems more than willing to change positions whenever it is convenient and not acknowledge that he is doing so:
While Hansen and Schmidt now decry the immateriality of U.S. temperature history, this was definitely not the position of Hansen et al 2001. The entire purpose of Hansen et al 2001 was to provide a re-statement of U.S. temperature history, eliminating the inconvenient negative trend since the 1920s in the earlier publication. The heavy lifting for this re-statement had been done by co-author Tom Karl at NOAA, whose adjustments for time-of-observation and “station history” led to the re-statement of U.S. results reported by Hansen et al. The first sentence of the abstract stated:
The purpose of the present paper is to document the changes that have been made in the GISS analysis of surface temperature change subsequent to the documentation of Hansen et al. [1999] and to use this new analysis for a closer look at the United States and global temperature change.
In the running text, they observe ( a quote cited by a poster at realclimate):
Although the contiguous U.S. represents only about 2% of the world area, it is important that the analyzed temperature change there be quantitatively accurate for several reasons. Analyses of climate change with global climate models are beginning to try to simulate the patterns of climate change, including the cooling in the southeastern U.S. [Hansen et al., 2000]. Also, perceptions of the reality and significance of greenhouse warming by the public and public officials are influenced by reports of climate change within the United States.
Another reason is, of course, that there are far more temperature histories reaching back to the 1930s from the U.S. than anywhere else (more on this on another occasion). The adjustments did not include allowance for HO-83 thermometers known to have a positive bias on readings for a number of stations in the 1990s.
A really smart reporter might want to really look at who is benefiting from global warming hysteria. Because there are some real questions as to why the hysterics are demanding a switch to a fuel that actually increases CO2 emissions rather than cutting them, isn't there? And some agribusinesses stand to get very rich, don't they? Follow the money.
Environment, Politics, Science | Gaius Sunday, 23 September , 2007
By Quilly Mammoth, Sunday, 23 September , 2007 @ 8:26 am
First!