Hansen claimed this week that bad weather almost never used to happen.
Significant climatic “extreme events” were now occurring over 10 to 15 per cent of the planet annually, whereas between 1950 to 1980 they occurred over less than 1 per cent. He added: “So in places like Texas this year, Moscow last year, and Europe in 2003, the climate change is so big that they are undeniable. Within 10 to 15 years they’re going to occur over 15 to 20 per cent of the planet, so people have to notice that the climate is changing.”
According to a CIA report from the 1970s, the correct figure was closer to 100% than it was to 1%.
Early In the 1970s a series of adverse climate anomalies occurred
The world’s snow and ice cover has increased by 10-15%
In the eastern Canadian area of the Arctic Greenland, below normal temperatures were recorded for 19 consecutive months. Nothing like this has happened in the last 100 years.
The Moscow region suffered its worst drought in three to five hundred years
Massive floods took place in the midwestern United States
Drought occurred in Central America, the Sub-Sahara, South Asia, China, and Australia
Within a single year, adversity had visited almost every nation on the globe
http://www.climatemonitor.it/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/1974.pdf
Cia was over-hyping normal weather patterns and Hansen, as usual was using his preferred Smoothing Al-Gore-Rhythm for past weather to remove the signal while overplaying individual recent events, just like Da Mann. That seems to be standard practice for self proclaimed Climate “Experts”.
One or two orders of magnitude error is acceptable in cosmology, or estimating the constants in the Drake equation, since both are a form of entertainment.
I’ve been collecting some of these ‘factor of ten’ers’ for a few months now. For example-
Ocean heat content was predicted by climate modeler James Hansen to rise by 6 x 10^22 Joules since 2003. The measured rise is actually 0 Joules since 2003. That’s more than a factor of ten smaller than the prediction.
The number of species disappearing was estimated by Myers in 1979 to be 40,000 per year. The number of documented species extinctions is less than 10 per year. That’s more than a factor of 1000 lower than estimated.
The number of climate refugees was estimated in 2005 by the UNEP to be 50M by 2010. Detailed maps indicated specific regions that would lose population. The actual number of climate refugees is zero. Many of the most endangered regions have increased populations. The AAAS has now pushed the prediction out to 2020.
Recent articles have likened global warming to setting off 1,000,000 Hiroshima bombs per day all over the globe. The actual analogy is more like 1,000- a factor of 1000 lower than claimed.
Has solar electricity reached grid parity in Canada? Ontario has decided to pay residents 70 cents/kWhr when they deliver solar electricity to the grid. The feed-in tariff was selected to give residents a reasonable return on investment. This is more than a factor of ten more expensive than existing electricity prices.
Global sea level rise has been predicted to accelerate from 3 mm/year to 10 mm/year or more. Rather than accelerating, global sea level over the last 5 years has decelerated to <1 mm/year. That is almost a factor of ten lower than predicted.
Mark Serreze, director of the NSIDC says on July 12, 2011, “There will be ups and downs, but we are on track to see an ice-free summer by 2030." Yet Mark Serreze also said this a few years ago of a predicted ice-free Arctic by 2013- “But Wieslaw is a smart guy and it would not surprise me if his projections came out.” So the ice-free Arctic has shifted from 2 years from now, to 19 years from now, a factor of 10 increase.
The AR4 claimed that Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035. But the study upon which the claim depended actually estimated a date of 2350. The estimate went from 345 years in the future, to 30 years in the future, a factor of ten decrease.
The Times world atlas released in 2011 claims that 15% of Greenland glacier coverage was lost over a 12 year period. The actual value is about 0.1%, resulting in an exaggeration of at least a factor of 100.
In 1988, Hansen predicted that the west side highway in NYC (10 feet above sea level) would be underwater in 40 years. Sea level at NYC has been rising about 2.2 cm per decade for the last century. For Hansen to be correct, sea level would need to rise at least 3000 mm in the next 17 years, or 176 mm/year. This is almost a factor of 100 larger than what is currently observed.
In 1957, noted physicist Dr. Joseph Kaplan predicted that ocean levels would rise at least 40 feet (480 inches) in the next 50 or 60 years unless atmospheric temperatures could be controlled. Since 1957, sea level has risen by about 3 inches. This is more than a factor of 100 lower than what was predicted.
According to climatology practices those predictions were somewhat consistent with reality!
Just ask The Gav! The Waskly Wabbit could also explain why that is true also.