SHOCK: The ‘Father of global warming’, James Hansen, dials back alarm
The upshot is that there is already much more climate change “in the pipeline” without any further increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs). That does not mean the problem is unsolvable, but it does mean that we will need to decrease the amount of GHGs in the relatively near future.
In other words, no matter what rate we reduce the emissions now, the changes that will happen are going to be significant. In order to avoid even more significant changes, we need to be changing the generation of energy for electricity and transportation as quickly as possible. And that will take decades. In the meantime, the changes already foreordained by the present amount of GHGs will cost us dearly.
Probably "the pipeline" will have much less effect than previously thought, because in this change of Hansen attitude is the implied failure of the Climate Sensitivity numbers which have been constantly revised DOWN for nearly 2 decades. Climate sensitivity actually include a SHORT TIME number ( which obviously was badly botched from way back in the 80s -- and it includes a LONG TERM number, which really is STILL a guess. And nobody knows IF and how feedbacks will affect the LTerm number.
Climate sensitivity is what converts POWER (the CO2 forcing number) to ENERGY (the resultant increase energy in the atmos and at the surface. ENERGY is time dependent quantity. So if Hansen now champions the "PONDEROUS" and slow thermo system
that I've been telling you that it IS --- It's likely that the LTerm CSensity numbers are gonna result in LESS actually energy being added to the atmos and the surface, and spread out over LONGER time scales than any of the models used up til about 2010..
GEE --- does this mean we'll no longer see that see that expectation of temperature rising to mimic the CO2 Concentrations? You know -- the ones that assumed that the system OUTPUT (temp) needed to look EXACTLY like the INPUT (CO2) ??? Poor Crick. The end of that era of showing CORRELATION between CO2 and temperature.
Golly -- it appears I AM gonna live long to see the actual truth come out about the fear mongering and the hype.