One of my research interests is radiative transfer in planetary atmospheres, especially interpreting remote sounding of the earth's atmosphere and surface from satellites. Such data, appropriately analyzed, may provide one of our most effective ways to monitor and study global change on the earth. The hardest part is trying to influence the nature of the measurements obtained, so that the key information can be obtained.
Or is it the unconscious desire to come clean?
:-)
[pp 208-216] "On June 23, 1988, climatologist James Hansen testified before a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on a day when the temperature in Washington D.C. reached a sweltering 38C... Hansen had impressive data from 2,000 weather stations... which documented not only a century-long warming trend but a sharp resumption of warming after the early 1970s... Hansen flatly proclaimed that the earth was warming on a permanent basis because of humanity's promiscuous use of fossil fuels [sic]... Recently, James Hansen and a group of his colleagues have argued that the rapid warming of recent decades has in fact been driven by non-CO2 gases such as chlorofluorocarbons. Fossil fuel [sic] burning CO2 and aerosols have both positive and negative climatic forcing effects, which tend to cancel each other out. Hansen and his team point out that the growth rate of non-CO2 gases has declined over the past decade and could be reduced even further. This, combined with a slowing of black carbon and CO2 emissions, could lead to a decline in the rate of global warming. Much more research is needed to confirm this hypothesis."In other words, in 1988 Hansen warned Congress that CO2 would raise world temperatures. About ten years went by, after which Hansen claimed that CO2 doesn't have any net impact at all. So much for his data. Mind you, this came from the book shown below, which is egregiously in advocacy of the notion of "global warming".
The Little Ice Age:
How Climate Made History 1300-1850
by Brian M. Fagan
Paperback
