PBS Newshour interviews James Hansen on the increasing likelihood of extreme events under climate change.
A layman’s overview of his new paper is here. Key diagram below, click for larger image.
PBS Newshour interviews James Hansen on the increasing likelihood of extreme events under climate change.
A layman’s overview of his new paper is here. Key diagram below, click for larger image.
Richard Alley:
(Why the extreme weather?, USA Today)
As I mentioned before or elsewhere, I hope that they’ve also done the stats for decades going back to earlier in the 20th century.
There was a cooling, for reasons which are not clear (to me), covering most of that ’51-’80 period and that opens up an opportunity for contrarians to say “this has happened before”
I just watched a Hansen talk in Sydney from 2010 – it’s the 1st time I can recall him talking at such length about issues other than climate.
He explains the need for a simple carbon tax / fee & dividend, why cap & trade on a global scale is not feasible, what the focus should be in our approaches to reducing CO2 below 350 ppm and even talks about nuclear power, why non-hydro renewables are currently able to make a dent in power usage.
Although there are many things I don’t fully agree with, I have increased respect for this man, and I was already an admirer of his scientific prowess.
I also understand why the denialist crowd smear him so much – he’s really dangerous.
This is not some green-foam-at-the-mouth environmentalist; this is a serious scientist who’s also a rational and concerned humanitarian.
In essence, if they can’t ignore him, they have no choice but to demean him.
The 7-part video, about 1.5 hours begins here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtR9lXI_fdo
Reblogged this on uknowispeaksense and commented:
Further to James Hansen’s upcoming paper to be published today.
Not only has the range moved upwards, the distribution has flattened. Extreme events are much more likely.
Is it possible to produce a distribution similar to the last 2 decades even if you allow flagrant cherrypicking?
For example, if you were to allow the periods to be any length between 10 and 30 years and to permit the choice of start and end points to be at any point within a contiguous period of a chosen duration, could you produce a graph similar to the distribution for 2001-2011?
What would a graph covering the period from Dec 1st, 1926 – Oct 1st, 1936 look like?
Would it be possible to produce a graph that was the opposite of the one shown for 2001-2011, with a dramatic shift towards cold records?
Any idea which journal this is being published in?