What's HOT in Global Warming
Jim Hansen's Climate Forecast: Hot and Hotter
by Professor Bruce E. Johansen
by Professor Bruce E. Johansen
[Jan/Feb 2021]
James Hansen, whom I got to know on a ‘cold call’ (a letter requesting manuscript review) 20 years ago when he was head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University, is now retired to his farm in eastern Pennsylvania. He is still a climate scientist and activist who recently joined with a colleague, Makiko Sato, to take the measure of several factors that influence the direction and intensity of climate change—of which the carbon-dioxide and methane levels are major influences, but not the only ones.
Having ‘crunched the numbers’ for their newly published paper, “Global Warming Acceleration” 12/14/20, they anticipate that temperatures will rise moderately until about 2024 or 2025, and then (if major action is not forthcoming to severely cut the rise of greenhouse gases) it’s off to the races, with all of the influences coming into line to reinforce each other. This is a major warning from a scientist who has a record of being able to spot climate changes, and has been doing so for 40 years. I see no major media coverage thus far of this important warning.
Hansen’s and Sato’s paper opens with this abstract:
Record global temperature in 2020, despite a strong La Niña in recent months, reaffirms a global warming acceleration that is too large to be unforced noise—it implies an increased growth rate of the total global climate forcing and Earth’s energy imbalance. Growth of measured forcings (greenhouse gases plus solar irradiance) decreased during the period of increased warming, implying that atmospheric aerosols probably decreased in the past decade. There is a need for accurate aerosol measurements and improved monitoring of Earth’s energy imbalance.
Johansen, addendum: La Niña periods usually occur when global temperatures are stable or falling. The coincidence of La Niña with record high temperatures is a red flag to climate scientists, which indicates that—everything else being equal (which, of course, is not usually how the atmosphere usually works)—temperatures would be even higher during an El Niño year. Given the usual cycle of El Niño and La Niña, the warmer cycle should return in a few years.
Next, from Hansen and Sato:
“November 2020 was the warmest November in the period of instrumental data, thus jumping 2020 ahead of 2016 in the 11-month averages. December 2016 was relatively cool, so it is clear that 2020 will slightly edge 2016 for the warmest year.”
And:
“The rate of global warming accelerated in the past 6-7 years. The deviation of the 5-year (60 month) running mean from the linear warming rate is large and persistent; it implies an increase in the net climate forcing and Earth’s energy imbalance, which drive global warming.”
Johansen, in journalist’s language: The temperatures of the Earth are rising in a persistent pattern, with 2020 and 2016 the warmest in recorded history.
James Hansen, whom I got to know on a ‘cold call’ (a letter requesting manuscript review) 20 years ago when he was head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University, is now retired to his farm in eastern Pennsylvania. He is still a climate scientist and activist who recently joined with a colleague, Makiko Sato, to take the measure of several factors that influence the direction and intensity of climate change—of which the carbon-dioxide and methane levels are major influences, but not the only ones.
Having ‘crunched the numbers’ for their newly published paper, “Global Warming Acceleration” 12/14/20, they anticipate that temperatures will rise moderately until about 2024 or 2025, and then (if major action is not forthcoming to severely cut the rise of greenhouse gases) it’s off to the races, with all of the influences coming into line to reinforce each other. This is a major warning from a scientist who has a record of being able to spot climate changes, and has been doing so for 40 years. I see no major media coverage thus far of this important warning.
Hansen’s and Sato’s paper opens with this abstract:
Record global temperature in 2020, despite a strong La Niña in recent months, reaffirms a global warming acceleration that is too large to be unforced noise—it implies an increased growth rate of the total global climate forcing and Earth’s energy imbalance. Growth of measured forcings (greenhouse gases plus solar irradiance) decreased during the period of increased warming, implying that atmospheric aerosols probably decreased in the past decade. There is a need for accurate aerosol measurements and improved monitoring of Earth’s energy imbalance.
Johansen, addendum: La Niña periods usually occur when global temperatures are stable or falling. The coincidence of La Niña with record high temperatures is a red flag to climate scientists, which indicates that—everything else being equal (which, of course, is not usually how the atmosphere usually works)—temperatures would be even higher during an El Niño year. Given the usual cycle of El Niño and La Niña, the warmer cycle should return in a few years.
Next, from Hansen and Sato:
“November 2020 was the warmest November in the period of instrumental data, thus jumping 2020 ahead of 2016 in the 11-month averages. December 2016 was relatively cool, so it is clear that 2020 will slightly edge 2016 for the warmest year.”
And:
“The rate of global warming accelerated in the past 6-7 years. The deviation of the 5-year (60 month) running mean from the linear warming rate is large and persistent; it implies an increase in the net climate forcing and Earth’s energy imbalance, which drive global warming.”
Johansen, in journalist’s language: The temperatures of the Earth are rising in a persistent pattern, with 2020 and 2016 the warmest in recorded history.
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Record highs during a La Niña year are downright scary.
And, from Hansen and Sato: “Slower CO2 growth offsets increased CH4 and N2O growth, so our estimate for the added GHG forcing in 2020 is essentially the same as in 2019… As discussed in our “Young People’s Burden” paper (Hansen et al. 2017), the cost of CO2 removal to get back on track is likely to be in the trillions of dollars.” Johansen: Expensive, yes, but cheaper than expenses the next 200 to 300 years, when rising sea levels will probably have sea water lapping into many major cities and lots of valuable ocean-front property, such as Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago. “Mar” is lousy Latin for “ocean”, and the ocean will be quite a bit higher by then—high enough that people may be lobbing rotten tomatoes at portraits of |
Trump in the Greenhouse Gas Museum. Note the carbon dioxide level graph. It’s rather easy to tell when humankind got hooked on fossil fuels. This spike will continue to be reflected in temperature rises long into the future even if further emissions rises come to a screeching halt, which is unlikely.
Hansen and Sato comment: “Carbon dioxide growth is slower than usual right now, but this is being offset by increases in methane and nitrous oxides. Temperature increases will accelerate when human-provoked increases in carbon dioxide rise as well… The impact of solar irradiance on global temperature lags solar irradiance by 1-2 years, so we are still at the point where we are getting maximum cooling from the solar cycle. Maximum added push of the solar cycle toward a warmer climate will be in mid-decade, i.e., in about 5 years.”
Hansen and Sato conclude: “Global temperature prognostication: 2021 will be cooler than 2020, because of the lagged effect of the current strong La Niña. When the next El Niño occurs, perhaps about mid-decade, hang onto your hat.”
Hansen and Sato comment: “Carbon dioxide growth is slower than usual right now, but this is being offset by increases in methane and nitrous oxides. Temperature increases will accelerate when human-provoked increases in carbon dioxide rise as well… The impact of solar irradiance on global temperature lags solar irradiance by 1-2 years, so we are still at the point where we are getting maximum cooling from the solar cycle. Maximum added push of the solar cycle toward a warmer climate will be in mid-decade, i.e., in about 5 years.”
Hansen and Sato conclude: “Global temperature prognostication: 2021 will be cooler than 2020, because of the lagged effect of the current strong La Niña. When the next El Niño occurs, perhaps about mid-decade, hang onto your hat.”
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Please see the illustration to the right of drought over the United States. This pattern has been locked in for several years, and is a large factor in western fires, with a jet stream to the north, which then runs southeast over the middle of the United States, and then northeast up the Atlantic coast. This wave is a major cause of “nor’easters” (with frequent heavy snow) there. Nebraska is in the middle, with mainly dry flow from the northwest, but an occasional wiggle that can add snow to the mix in winter and drought year-round as well.
The Real Problem, Speaking of the “Young People’s Burden:” Hansen and Sato’s paper takes the prospects for significant warming out about five years. If we go out about 100 years on land and 200 to 300 or 400 years in the oceans, we run into some high-stakes bingo, involving thermal inertia. The due bills for our use of fossil fuels are now being served. By 2015, scientists had figured that “burning the currently attainable fossil |
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fuel resources is sufficient to eliminate the [Antarctic] ice sheet. This study was directed at Antarctica only, but all other ice would melt at the same time. How much time may be required to produce an ice-free planet? No one really knows. At present rates of increase, the actual burning of fossil-fuel reserves may take place within a thousand years. Complete melting of the ice, factoring in delays of thermal inertia, may require several thousand years. The momentum of this inertia would be irreversible, however.
Global warming is a deceptively backhanded crisis in which ‘thermal inertia’ delivers results a half-century or more after our burning of fossil fuels provokes them. Our political and diplomatic responses, however, generally only kick in after we see results. Thermal inertia plus political inertia thus presents the human race (and the planet we superintend) with a challenge to fashion a new energy future before raw necessity—the hot wind in our faces—compels action. Global warming is dangerous because it is a sneaky, slow-motion emergency, demanding that we acknowledge a reality occurring centuries into the future with a system of individual, legal, and diplomatic responses that are implemented immediately, in the present. As Ken Caldeira of Stanford University’s Carnegie Institute of Science told the Washington Post in 2015, “The legacy of what we’re doing over the next decades and the next centuries is really going to have a dramatic influence on this planet for many tens of thousands of years.”
Bruce E. Johansen, Frederick W. Kayser Professor at the University of Nebraska–Omaha, is author of Climate Change: An Encyclopedia of Science, Society, and Solutions (2017).
Global warming is a deceptively backhanded crisis in which ‘thermal inertia’ delivers results a half-century or more after our burning of fossil fuels provokes them. Our political and diplomatic responses, however, generally only kick in after we see results. Thermal inertia plus political inertia thus presents the human race (and the planet we superintend) with a challenge to fashion a new energy future before raw necessity—the hot wind in our faces—compels action. Global warming is dangerous because it is a sneaky, slow-motion emergency, demanding that we acknowledge a reality occurring centuries into the future with a system of individual, legal, and diplomatic responses that are implemented immediately, in the present. As Ken Caldeira of Stanford University’s Carnegie Institute of Science told the Washington Post in 2015, “The legacy of what we’re doing over the next decades and the next centuries is really going to have a dramatic influence on this planet for many tens of thousands of years.”
Bruce E. Johansen, Frederick W. Kayser Professor at the University of Nebraska–Omaha, is author of Climate Change: An Encyclopedia of Science, Society, and Solutions (2017).
What's HOT in Global Warming
Donald Trump and Earth's Existential Crises
[Nov/Dec 2020]
Goodbye, Donald J. Trump. Goodbye, and to hell with you, literally. “Lock him up!”
I’m not saying this just because he is a coarse, small intellect… An ugly man utterly lacking decency and respect for the Earth and all of the plants and animals to which it gives sustenance. That’s part of it. The real story here, though, is that we are now up to our eyeballs in existential crises. And riding in a car with Donald Trump and his cronies is like speeding at 200 miles an hour on a crowded freeway in the wrong direction.
One of these existential crises, of course, is climate change—usually the subject of this column. If you have been traveling with me for any length of time, you know why raising the levels of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, etc.) in our atmosphere is a slow-motion death sentence. When I first started paying attention to this problem about 25 years ago, most of this was theory with warnings from forward-thinking scientists such as James Hansen of NASA. Now, it’s obvious: witness wildfires choking Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Sydney, and many other places, just in the last year. To Trump, global warming is still a joke, a “hoax” (one short word in his meager vocabulary he employs for many things that he doesn’t understand). Poetic justice requires an F-5 tornado to roll over Mar-a-Lago. I would offer Trump a major hurricane, but that would also wipe out many other houses north and south of Mar-a-Lago. A tight F-5 tornado on a direct path, descending and ascending at the right times, might teach Dum Dum Donald a little climate science.
The Pervasive Nature of Climate Change
A changing climate messes with just about everything on which daily life depends. I’ll offer an illustration, courtesy of NASA’s wonderful eyes in the sky (see adjacent graphic). This is a map of South America with precipitation patterns highlighted. Please notice that precipitating winds are coming out of the west, upslope along the Andes, giving the west coast an abundance of rain and snow. The west-to-east wind pattern then descends along the mountains (let’s mess with Donald’s mind and use a scientific term: “adiabatic flow”), drying and warming, producing desert conditions and fires. Meanwhile, the west coast, usually a desert, gets flooded out. Hey! an informed observer might say, this airflow is running backward. And indeed it is. Global warming messes with atmospheric air flow. This one does not reverse itself all the time, but often enough (influenced by El Nino and La Nina) to have a major effect on South America’s weather.
By now, I’m sure that my imaginary Donald Trump would be squirming with boredom, so just suffice to say that global warming is getting worse, and given thermal inertia, it would continue to get worse for 50 to 100 years even if we completely stopped using fossil fuels right now. Everyone who experienced seven hurricanes mauling the Gulf of Mexico Coast in one summer this year may want to keep listening, but let’s save that one, and get along to our second existential crisis.
Goodbye, Donald J. Trump. Goodbye, and to hell with you, literally. “Lock him up!”
I’m not saying this just because he is a coarse, small intellect… An ugly man utterly lacking decency and respect for the Earth and all of the plants and animals to which it gives sustenance. That’s part of it. The real story here, though, is that we are now up to our eyeballs in existential crises. And riding in a car with Donald Trump and his cronies is like speeding at 200 miles an hour on a crowded freeway in the wrong direction.
One of these existential crises, of course, is climate change—usually the subject of this column. If you have been traveling with me for any length of time, you know why raising the levels of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, etc.) in our atmosphere is a slow-motion death sentence. When I first started paying attention to this problem about 25 years ago, most of this was theory with warnings from forward-thinking scientists such as James Hansen of NASA. Now, it’s obvious: witness wildfires choking Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Sydney, and many other places, just in the last year. To Trump, global warming is still a joke, a “hoax” (one short word in his meager vocabulary he employs for many things that he doesn’t understand). Poetic justice requires an F-5 tornado to roll over Mar-a-Lago. I would offer Trump a major hurricane, but that would also wipe out many other houses north and south of Mar-a-Lago. A tight F-5 tornado on a direct path, descending and ascending at the right times, might teach Dum Dum Donald a little climate science.
The Pervasive Nature of Climate Change
A changing climate messes with just about everything on which daily life depends. I’ll offer an illustration, courtesy of NASA’s wonderful eyes in the sky (see adjacent graphic). This is a map of South America with precipitation patterns highlighted. Please notice that precipitating winds are coming out of the west, upslope along the Andes, giving the west coast an abundance of rain and snow. The west-to-east wind pattern then descends along the mountains (let’s mess with Donald’s mind and use a scientific term: “adiabatic flow”), drying and warming, producing desert conditions and fires. Meanwhile, the west coast, usually a desert, gets flooded out. Hey! an informed observer might say, this airflow is running backward. And indeed it is. Global warming messes with atmospheric air flow. This one does not reverse itself all the time, but often enough (influenced by El Nino and La Nina) to have a major effect on South America’s weather.
By now, I’m sure that my imaginary Donald Trump would be squirming with boredom, so just suffice to say that global warming is getting worse, and given thermal inertia, it would continue to get worse for 50 to 100 years even if we completely stopped using fossil fuels right now. Everyone who experienced seven hurricanes mauling the Gulf of Mexico Coast in one summer this year may want to keep listening, but let’s save that one, and get along to our second existential crisis.
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Coronavirus as Existential Threat
Donald, I hope that you have your facemask and hand sanitizer handy. Because none of us, not even you, Mr. Commander-in-Chief, can bully our way out of the coronavirus. This is a wily disease, the end result of tens of millions of years of evolution (no one knows how long, really). It can mutate around whatever cure we may attempt, as a species, to throw at it. It may allow some of us to get away with a slight case of the sniffles, and kill others in breathless agony. It doesn’t care who you are, or whether you voted for Biden or Trump. All it wants from us is suitable habitat—that is, a route into our lungs. As evidence of its enduring nature, coronavirus can mutate into forms that afflict other mammals, such as mink, (the reason that Denmark recently killed its entire stock of valuable mink that were destined for expensive coats), or maybe domesticated pets—our beloved dogs and cats—then mutate again and re-infect human beings in a form that allows it immunity from vaccines adapted to the pre-mutation form of the virus. One lick from super-spreader Fido, and you may end up on a ventilator, gasping for breath. This is all speculation right now, but it is well-informed speculation, so it’s not a guess. It is a good reason why we should not regard this virus with the kind of diffidence that Trump has assigned to it. Like with global warming, he assumes that human |
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beings are the masters of the Earth, and that our current status as ‘king of the hill’ is permanent, no matter how foolish or self-aggrandizing we may be.
It’s perhaps time again to remind ourselves of some tough truths.
Tough Truths
The late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific and public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with other intelligent species (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves after reaching technological complexity.
On Earth, the damaging side-effects of our own ingenuity may finish us off barely two centuries after we have discovered the wonders of fossil fuels, atomic energy, plastics, deficit financing. That’s less than one percent of human beings’ tenure on Earth. Only during the last half-century have we discovered that our civilization may not be sustainable without major changes in our way of life. Because he is so stupifyingly ignorant of nature’s rules of existence, Trump and his cronies are dangerous to all of us. Don’t let your guard down. These bloodsuckers will be back.
Bruce E. Johansen, Frederick W. Kayser Professor at the University of Nebraska–Omaha, is author of Climate Change: An Encyclopedia of Science, Society, and Solutions (2017).
It’s perhaps time again to remind ourselves of some tough truths.
Tough Truths
The late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific and public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with other intelligent species (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves after reaching technological complexity.
On Earth, the damaging side-effects of our own ingenuity may finish us off barely two centuries after we have discovered the wonders of fossil fuels, atomic energy, plastics, deficit financing. That’s less than one percent of human beings’ tenure on Earth. Only during the last half-century have we discovered that our civilization may not be sustainable without major changes in our way of life. Because he is so stupifyingly ignorant of nature’s rules of existence, Trump and his cronies are dangerous to all of us. Don’t let your guard down. These bloodsuckers will be back.
Bruce E. Johansen, Frederick W. Kayser Professor at the University of Nebraska–Omaha, is author of Climate Change: An Encyclopedia of Science, Society, and Solutions (2017).
