Hansen rolls the ‘climate dice’ in new paper…

… and craps out.

NASA’s James Hansen has a new essay on his web site called “Climate Variability and Climate Change: The New Climate Dice“, in which he argues that unless global warming is slowed there will be more extreme weather events.

His argument goes like this:

  1. Extreme temperatures are more common now than during the period 1951-1980.
  2. Fossil fuel emissions are increasing.
  3. Increasing emissions will cause more global warming (i.e., “loading the dice”) and extreme temperatures.
  4. Therefore, we need to put a price on carbon “if we are to preserve life as we know it.”

The problem of course is that Hansen assumes that temperatures are driven by CO2. He offers no scientific evidence of this phenomenon — he just assumes that it goes without saying.

Hansen says,

People who deny the global warming cause of these extreme events usually offer instead a meteorological “explanation”. For example, it is said that the Moscow heat wave was caused by an atmospheric “blocking” situation, or the Texas heat wave was caused by La Nina ocean temperature patterns.

Wrong. We say there is no evidence that atmospheric CO2 levels have any discernible role in weather events.

Expect to hear more of the “loaded dice” analogy — in some ways it’s an appropriate one.

“Loaded dice” are used by con artists — like anyone we know?

Read Hansen’s “Climate Variability and Climate Change: The New Climate Dice”.

5 thoughts on “Hansen rolls the ‘climate dice’ in new paper…”

  1. Extremely bland periods aren’t caused by human activity, they’re caused by nature, only extreme periods or anything bad is caused by human activity.

    Just remember, Bad=Human activity, Good=Nature. There now, that was easy. Now drink this green kool-aid I brought. drink deeply.

  3. So is an extreme cold period also global warming? How about an extremely bland period?

  4. I don’t know that that statement is true. A statistician in Houston did a study on the odds of Houston having 7 months of “the hottest temperature,” I won’t deny it, it was freaking hot this year. One of his methods was plotting so called “hottest or coolest” months sin the 1890’s. You can see the report here: http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2011/11/how-statistically-significant-were-houstons-six-ridiculously-hot-months/ Based on my reading of this chart, you have had extremes, that cluster for either hot or cold throughout temperature record history.

  5. ‘Extreme temperatures are more common now than during the period 1951-1980. ‘

    …so I am guessing hansen IGNORED the fact that cooling was taking place during much of that period?

    The stupid *astards take advantadge of the fact that most people don’t have the time to learn these things for themselves.

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