What do you make of the "Willis E" analysis of Hansen's 1988 global warming projections?

Question

Origin's question to this effect keeps getting deleted, so I thought I would ask it in a more balanced manner.

Here is an analysis of Hansen's 1988 global warming predictions on Climate Audit by someone named "Willis E"

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=796

He claims the model has been way off since 1998.

Here is an analysis by NASA climate modeller Gavin Schmidt.

"Given the scenario that came closest to the real world [Scenario B], the temperatures predicted by the model are well within the observational uncertainty. That is, even if you had a perfect model, you wouldn’t be able to say it was better than [Hansen's model predictions].

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/

Willis E also wrongly claims the planet has not warmed since 1998.

http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/t1998.jpg

Anyone know who this "Willis E" is, and have any perspective on whose analysis is more accurate?

Willis E = Willis Eschenbach. The only thing I can find out about him is that he seems to live in Fiji and study climate effects on islands.

Origin - for one thing you are clearly wrong. For another you didn't answer the question, which violates community guidelines. I'm not going to report you, but consider yourself warned.

Willis Eschenbach seems to be published in Energy& Environment frequently, which does not speak well of him.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&sa=G&oi=qs&q=willis+eschenbach+author:w-eschenbach

Energy& Environment has very low standards. That's where scientists go when they can't get published in a respected peer-reviewed journal.

Jello - you lie about the data and then link an irrelevant dataset (lower 48 United States).

You really deserve that global warming top answerer spot.

I think J S has found the discrepancy - Hansen no doubt uses the GISS data while Willis uses HadCRUT3, which has systematically lower temperature values (but the same rate of change).

In other words, the correct analysis is Schmidt's, as he examines the trends rather than the individual data points. The trends match.

Hansen's model was indeed very accurate.

Answer 1

Read Willis E's comments carefully, and examine the illustrations in detail.

From the description he apparently uses a different data set, overlays it on an old graph of Hansen's 1998 data set and scenarios, then concludes:

"Mainly, the problem is that the world has not continued to heat up as was expected post 1998, while his Scenarios A and B did continue to warm."

First of all, it's very clear that the latest five data points on the introduced data set (blue) DO show significant warming over nearly all prior points in that same data set, so his data clearly refutes his own hypothesis. Bizzare.

So how does he come to his conclusion? He seems to be making his statement based on comparing his new data set (blue) with Hansen's old data set (red), which is essentially the same, but shifted higher.

Comparing different data sets from different sources would be absurd. Are they from the same weather stations? He does not justify that HADcrut3 data is equivalent in anyway to Hansen's data set, he simply compares them without explanation, then apparently draws a conclusion from them being different. Apples are different from oranges?

The time difference between the two data sets also introduces relevance issues. Using 1998 data and comparing it with HADcrut3 2005 data is misleading because the data used in 1998 was corrected at the time and has been corrected in newer runs to remove some minor issues that have been pointed out in the meantime. What corrections or omissions do the sets used contain to remove innacurate stations and to account for influences such as the "urban heat islands" influence? Willis E would have to use the corrected 1998 data set, not an old chart. What corrections does his new set contain, if any?

Hansen frequently addresses the concerns of bloggers such as Willis E. One such response with recent notes and diagrams appears here:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/distro_peakrevandgistemp_070907.pdf
Another that discusses his 1998 approach in response to Michael Crichton's finction “State of Fear” appears here:
http://columbia.edu/~jeh1/hansen_re-crichton.pdf

To address one of Willis E's less significant criticisms of Dr. Hansen's 1998 chart, he complains that the gray shaded area of the chart is above current observations. Yes, if he had bothered to understand the chart or read Dr. Hansen's papers that led to it, he'd know that the range of that shaded area shows the approximate temperature range of previous warm periods, showing how close we are to crossing the temperatures in altithermal (8500 yrs ago) and Eemian (the previous interglacial) times. It's labeled.

It's a shame that Willis E's argument is not as coherent or transparent as Dr. Hansen's frequent explanations and responses. I'd like to know if it had any merit. So would Dr. Hansen. So far the model has been corrected, improved, and updated as needed, which is a normal and valuable part of the scientific process.

Not only have the conclusions remained the same, but it doesn't take a computer model to glance at the chart (even Willis E's) and see that the last 5 years of extremely high temperature data lies well above recent history.

Answer 2

Why does everyone use James Hansen's data to prove global warming.
by the global warming believers own criteria his data is worthless as he is not a climatologist.

any time a scientist that is not a climatologist claims that global warming is not real the believers claim that the research is worthless.

YET they turn right around and use a non climatologist's data to try to prove that global warming is real.

they can not have both ways.

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/jhansen.html

to be fair Willis Eschenbach IS A REAL NOBODY.
As he has no published biography on the internet

Answer 3

I would like an explanation from Hansen why he chose to put the observation above the models. It seems he is trying to push a supposed trend instead of facts. I think he probably believes it is OK to exaggerate since he is after all trying the change the world for the good. The problem with that type of thinking is that science gets lost.

Answer 4

Clearly the temperatures aren't rising, they have been trending downward over the last decade.

The reason why graphs are used rather than the raw numbers is because the numbers were massaged so heavily so they would fit into Hansens graphs. This is why Hansen wouldn't present the raw numbers in his famously flawed hooky stick graph.

[Edit] The link isn't irrelevant. The last time I checked, the USA was part of the globe. If it's truly "Global" warming, then it should be warming in the USA as well.

Since it's not, it's just local warming, or weather.

Really, when are people going to learn the difference between global warming and weather?