“A dramatic loss of ozone over the Antarctica proves the “greenhouse” effect” is real and presages a gradual warming of the earth that threatens floods, drought, human misery in a few decades and — if not checked — eventually extinction of the human species, scientists warned Tuesday… James Hansen, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said global temperatures should be 2 degrees higher in 20 years. “Which is the warmest the earth has been in the last 100,000 years.”
Thank God Hanson wasn’t working in the Mercury, Saturn or Apollo projects where the real rocket scientists worked. Accuracy is critical for an organization like NASA. Anyway, this article is wrong is so many ways. James Hansen is arguing that less ozone, a potent greenhouse gas, would result in warming. CO2 absorbs LWIR at 13 to 18 microns, consistent with a black body of -50 to -110 degrees C. Ozone, O3, absorbs at 10 microns, dead center of the atmospheric window, and consistent with earth’s average temperature of around 18 degrees C. Note how CO2 and H20 absorptions overlap in the “cool tail” (above 10 microns) of the black body curve, and CO2 absorption if absent from the “warm tail” (below 10 microns). The peak wavelengths emitted from earth are centered around 10 microns. The blue is the “atmospheric window, transparent to most LWIR except Ozone. Hansen is arguing that by reducing the only greenhouse gas that absorbs the major wavelength emitted by the earth, 10 microns, will result in warming. In other words, both more and less greenhouse gas can cause warming. Heads I win, tails you lose.
The peak wavelengths emitted from earth are centered around 10 microns. The blue is the “atmospheric window, transparent to most LWIR except Ozone. Hansen is arguing that by reducing the only greenhouse gas that absorbs the major wavelength emitted by the earth, 10 microns, will result in warming. In other words, both more and less greenhouse gas can cause warming. Heads I win, tails you lose.
While satellite temperatures show basically no warming since 1986 (current temperatures are below the levels reached in 1987), James Hansen’s “adjusted” temperatures come pretty close to the 2-degree increase if you use degrees F. Pretty good evidence you would never allow the person that makes the prediction also control the data “adjustments. ”
Just a few years earlier the headlines were all about the coming Ice Age. Oddly, CO2 is never really mentioned in the articles of the 1970 and early to mid-1980s.
Over the past 20 years, life hasn’t gotten worse, it has gotten much better. Human misery has declined, the globe has greened, and population has exploded.
Lastly, we are nowhere near the highest temperature of the past 100,000 years, we aren’t even at the highest temperature of the Holocene. If you just use unadjusted consistent thermometer data over the past 300 years, there has been little to no warming at all. If you use the satellite data for the areas not corrupted by the urban heat island effect, there is no warming since the inception of the data.
