We Are Damned Fools: POV you are Dr. James Hansen reminiscing about the first time you testified on global warming before US Senators on June 23, 1988 (August 2023)
Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About The Coming Climate Catastrophe And Our Last Chance To Save Humanity, Dr. James Hansen
More than a decade later, in 1978, I was still studying Venus. And by then I was responsible for an experiment that was on its way to that planet, aboard the Pioneer Venus mission. In the five years since I had proposed that experiment to measure the properties of the Venus clouds, I had been working about eighty hours per week. Anniek, whom I had met while I was on a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, continued to believe me, each year, when I said that the next year I would have more time. Then I had to tell her that, after all that effort, I was going to resign from the Pioneer mission before it arrived at Venus, turning the experiment over to Larry Travis, another friend and colleague from Iowa.
The reason: The composition of the atmosphere of our home planet was changing before our eyes, and it was changing more and more rapidly. Surely that would affect Earth’s climate. The most important change was the level of carbon dioxide, which was being added to the air by the burning of fossil fuels. We knew that carbon dioxide determined the climate on Mars and Venus. I decided it would be more useful and interesting to try to help understand how the climate on our own planet would change, rather than study the veil of clouds shrouding Venus. Building a computer model for Earth’s climate was also going to be a lot more work. As always, Anniek accepted, and tried to believe, my promise that it would be a temporary obsession.
Another decade later, on June 23, 1988, I was a witness, an official witness, when I testified to a Senate committee chaired by Tim Wirth of Colorado. I declared, with 99 percent confidence, that it was time to stop waffling: Earth was being affected by human-made greenhouse gases, and the planet had entered a period of long-term warming. Combined with an unusually hot and dry summer and the attention global warming was getting nationally and internationally, my announcement garnered broad notice.
The planet seemed to conspire with us. Nature, science and politics aligned on June 23, 1988. We had an opportunity to draw attention to the threat posed by climate change.
Mother Earth was the star. Mid-America was searing in heat, and the discomfort was amplified by a drought of biblical proportions. The Mississippi River dried up -- riverboat paddlewheels ground to a halt. A bubble of hot Midwestern air expanded to encompass the nation’s capital, where the temperature exceeded 100°F (38°C). Global temperature was at a record level.
Our climate simulations were complete. Our paper describing the results, including examples of how extreme temperatures would increase in American cities, was submitted, refereed, and accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
Politicians were focused on the Presidential election. Early favorite Michael Dukakis crashed and burned from his own missteps in the face of negative campaign ads and President Reagan’s eviscerating depiction of him as an invalid. Political censors were not on high alert about climate. My testimony passed through NASA and OMB with minimal edits, which I accepted.
I called Rafe Pomerance the day before the Senate hearing. I wanted to be sure that there was good media coverage because, I said, “I’m going to make a pretty strong statement.”
I put down the phone and started writing my “oral” testimony. A “just in time” preparation strategy allows more things to get done, but it is also risky. I assumed that composing my remarks would be easy, because my three main conclusions were simple and clear.
I wrote on a tablet of white lined paper, printing initially in large, dark square letters that would be easy to read. The first conclusion was that Earth was warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental data. I noted, referring to my first graph, that the four warmest years in the past century all occurred in the 1980s. Also, the rate of warming in the last 25 years was the fastest in the record, and 1988 to date was so warm that it would probably break the prior record.
It was hard to work on the plane. When I got to my hotel in Washington, the evening before my testimony, I had finished one page. I commenced work on my second conclusion, namely that we could ascribe the global warming to the greenhouse effect with a high degree of confidence.
I should not have tried to get the Yankee game on the radio, while lying on the bed and writing. It was hard to catch announcer’s words over the static from the distant New York station. The Yankees had lost two in a row to the Detroit Tigers, both in the Tigers’ last at bat. Now, having fallen out of first place, the Yankees needed this last game in the series to reverse their slide.
Global temperature is “noisy,” fluctuating a lot from year to year. The atmosphere and ocean are dynamical fluids that, in effect, slosh about rather chaotically. The standard deviation, the typical amount that the temperature fluctuates annually about its 30-year average, is 0.13°C. When we wrote our 1981 Science paper, with observational data up to 1980, global warming in the prior century was 0.4°C. In the 1980s global temperature increased another 0.2°C. The warming rate was accelerating.
Our new study focused on the period since 1958, when accurate CO2 measurements began. Expected warming for the observed greenhouse gas increase, if climate sensitivity was at least 3-4°C for doubled atmospheric CO2 as indicated by paleoclimate data, was almost 0.2°C per decade based on simple models. Our global three-dimensional model concurred. Natural climate forcings were small. Solar irradiance measurements, initiated in the late 1970s, showed that solar climate forcing was small. The Mt. Agung volcanic eruption in 1963 and El Chichón in 1982 had detectable cooling effects, but the effects lasted only a few years.
By 1988 observed warming in the prior two decades was 0.4°C, three times the standard deviation. The chance of such warming as an unforced fluctuation was less than one percent, so I could say with 99 percent confidence that it was a real warming trend, not “noise.”2 Furthermore, I had “insider” information: global warming at the observed rate was expected because of increasing greenhouse gases. Therefore, I could say, with a high degree of confidence, that there was a cause-and-effect relationship between increasing greenhouse gases and observed global warming.
Other characteristics of the observed temperature change also carried a signature of the CO2 greenhouse effect. For example, the stratosphere, the atmosphere above a height of about 10 miles, was cooling, while the lower atmosphere and the surface were warming.
“In all of these cases,” I wrote, “the signal is at best just beginning to emerge, and we need more data.” And further: “There are certainly other climate change factors involved in addition to the greenhouse effect.”
“Altogether the evidence that the earth is warming by an amount which is too large to be a chance fluctuation, and the similarity of the warming to that expected from the greenhouse effect, represents a very strong case, in my opinion, that the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now.”
I was on the third page already, my writing was getting scrunched and light, and I was mixing long-hand with printing. The testimony was getting too long. The Senators will not cut me off, I thought, it is too important. But I had more to write. So, I scratched some explanations.
The Yankees lost in extra innings, again. Steinbrenner surely would go berserk. Why did I hang on these games? Was it not clear that both the Yankees and Don Mattingly were sinking fast? My eyes drooped and I could not think well. I decided to sleep. Better to get up early. I would not need breakfast. I had a raisin bagel with me – I always take raisin bagels on my trips – and I could get coffee at NASA Headquarters, where I had to attend a meeting in the morning.
The next morning, I started a clean 4th page, for a fresh beginning on my 3rd conclusion: global warming was already large enough to affect the probability of extreme events such as an unusually hot summer. The idea is simple. Take the 30-year period 1951-1980 to define the normal climate that people expected. At each location around the world, we define the 10 coldest summers as “cold summers.” The 10 hottest ones are in the category “hot summers,” and the middle 10 are the “average” or “normal” climate, so during that 30-year period there was about a 33 percent chance that a given year would fall within the temperature range defined as “hot.”
Greenhouse warming by CO2 and other trace gases was changing the odds. I wrote: “In the late 1980s the probability of a hot summer is somewhere in the range 40-60%,” but I put this in parentheses. If the Chairman asked me to speed up, I would skip statements in parentheses.
I started a fifth page. I would finish it at NASA Headquarters. I arrived a few minutes late, but the scientists, about 30 of them, were still finding seats at a long table or in chairs along the wall. Ichtiaque Rasool, Chief Scientist in NASA Earth Sciences, announced that he had approval for a $2,000,000 per year research program for early detection of global climate change. I wanted to appear involved in the meeting before I tuned out to work on my testimony, so I piped up “Are you sure you are not missing a zero?” Two million dollars was chicken feed to NASA. Twenty million could cover observations, high-speed computers, and research and analysis.
Rasool ignored my comment and continued with the meeting, and I resumed writing. But when Rasool stated that “no respectable scientist” would say that the human-made global warming signal had already been detected, my head jerked up and I said “I don’t know if he’s respectable or not, but I know a scientist who is about to make that assertion.” Several scientists turned to look at me, but, again, Rasool did not take the bait.
At the coffee break I asked David Rind about atmospheric dynamics in our model. Was there a reason why the Midwest and Southeast U.S. often had extreme summer heat in our model runs? He noted that the ocean off the East Coast tended to warm less4 than the land, which could cause high pressure along the east coast and thus circulation of warm air north into the Midwest or southeast, but he included appropriate caveats about model shortcomings.
David’s suggestion was fine, but I should not have commented on dynamics. Our model did not explicitly include ocean dynamics or allow ocean dynamical effects to change as climate changed. Atmospheric dynamics in our eight-by-ten- degree model was adequate for poleward heat transport, but not for reliable analysis of a specific regional climate feature. The Senators would not notice or understand a comment on dynamics, but it would turn out to be a cause of irritation and outrage for certain fellow scientists.
At lunch break, I rushed out and hailed a cab. The ride to the Dirksen Senate Building was short – no time to rehearse the testimony. That was o.k. – I had planned to read it anyway.
However, I thought of a summary statement, intended for the media. On a separate page I wrote “it is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here and is affecting our climate now.” I put this page behind the five numbered pages.I might be able to use it during the give-and-take discussion, after the formal testimonies.
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Myth’s Note: As it turns out, Senator Tim Wirth and Dr. James Hansen made a few deliberate choices to capitalize on the unusually hot summer of 1988 to “set the scene” in the hearing room the night before his testimony. As Wirth recalls:
“... What we did it was went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right? So that the air conditioning wasn’t working inside the room and so when the, when the hearing occurred there was not only bliss, which is television cameras in double figures, but it was really hot. ...
So Hansen's giving this testimony, you've got these television cameras back there heating up the room, and the air conditioning in the room didn't appear to work. So it was sort of a perfect collection of events that happened that day, with the wonderful Jim Hansen, who was wiping his brow at the witness table and giving this remarkable testimony. ...”
We’ll return back to Hansen’s story now.
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In the hearing room, a staffer pulled me aside and took me to speak with Senator Wirth. Wirth had read my statement and wanted to make me the first witness. Of course, I agreed. People would be paying more attention at the beginning.
At least half a dozen Senators were present. They knew media would be present, providing the chance for a sound bite that would get on television or in the newspapers.
J. Bennett Johnston, Louisiana, Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, went first and uttered a one-liner that got in the news: “We have only one planet. If we screw it up, we have no place else to go.” He followed with some insightful commentary, presumably prepared by his staffers: “The greenhouse effect has ripened beyond theory now. We know it is fact. What we don’t know is how quickly it will come upon us as an emergency fact, how quickly it will ripen from just simply a matter of deep concern to a matter of severe emergency.”
Johnston then turned the chairmanship of the hearing over to Senator Timothy E. Wirth of Colorado, who stated: “The Energy Committee must move aggressively to examine how energy policy has contributed to the greenhouse effect and the kinds of changes in energy policy that may be needed to reverse the trend of increased emissions of carbon dioxide…”
Senator Dale Bumpers of Arkansas made an emphatic statement that proved prescient, indeed, it sounded like an instruction to all the media in attendance: “Dr. Hansen is going to testify today to what…ought to be cause for headlines in every newspaper in America tomorrow morning.”
Doubtless I was tense, but I was confident, because I could read the testimony and I knew that I could answer their questions. I wanted my three conclusions to be unambiguous, so I began:
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[Myth’s Note: This is a combination of the verbal statement of Dr. Hansen, along with some selected excerpts from his prepared written statement to assist with visualizing what he attempted to explain.]
Statement of Dr. James Hansen, Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Mr. Chairman and committee members, thank you for the opportunity to present the results of my research on the greenhouse effect which has been carried out with my colleagues at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
I would like to draw three main conclusions:
Number one, the Earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements.
Number two, the global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.
And number three, our computer climate simulations indicate that the greenhouse effect is already large enough to begin to affect the probability of extreme events such as summer heat waves.
My first viewgraph, which I would like to ask Suki to put up if he would, shows the global temperature over the period of instrumental records which is about 100 years. The present temperature is the highest in the period of record. The rate of warming in the past 25 years, as you can see on the right, is the highest on record. The four warmest years, as the Senator mentioned, have all been in the 1980s. And 1988 so far is so much warmer than 1987, that barring a remarkable and improbable cooling, 1988 will be the warmest year on the record.
Now let me turn to my second point which is causal association of the greenhouse effect and the global warming. Causal association requires first that the warming be larger than natural climate variability and, second, that the magnitude and nature of the warming be consistent with the greenhouse mechanism. These points are both addressed on my second viewgraph.
The observed warming during the past 30 years, which is the period when we have accurate measurements of atmospheric composition, is shown by the heavy black line in this graph. The warming is almost 0.4 degrees Centigrade by 1987 relative to climatology, which is defined as the 30 year mean, 1950 to 1980 and, in fact, the warming is more than 0.4 degrees Centigrade in 1988. The probability of a chance warming of that magnitude is about 1 percent. So, with 99 percent confidence we can state that the warming during this time period is a real warming trend.
The other curves in this figure are the results of global climate model calculations for three scenarios of atmospheric trace gas growth. We have considered several scenarios because there are uncertainties in the exact trace gas growth in the past and especially in the future. We have considered cases ranging from business as usual, which is scenario A, to draconian emission cuts, scenario C, which would totally eliminate net trace gas growth by year 2000.
The main point to be made here is that the expected global warming is of the same magnitude as the observed warming. Since there is only a 1 percent chance of an accidental warming of this magnitude, the agreement with the expected greenhouse effect is of considerable significance.
Moreover, if you look at the next level of detail in the global temperature change, there are clear signs of the greenhouse effect. Observational data suggests a cooling in the stratosphere while the ground is warming. The data suggest somewhat more warming over land and sea ice regions than over open ocean, more warming at high latitudes than at low latitudes, and more warming in the winter than in the summer.
In all of these cases, the signal is at best just beginning to emerge, and we need more data. Some of these details, such as the northern hemisphere high latitude temperature trends, do not look exactly like the greenhouse effect, but that is expected. There are certainly other climate change factors involved in addition to the greenhouse effect.
Altogether the evidence that the Earth is warming by an amount which is too large to be a chance fluctuation and the similarity of the warming to that expected from the greenhouse effect represents a very strong case. In my opinion, that the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now.
[Myth’s Note: It’s interesting to note that the paragraph above, as noted in the US Senate transcript, deviates from the only known video clip of Dr. Hansen’s testimony. I wonder what else was edited.]
Then my third point. Finally, I would like to address the question of whether the greenhouse effect is already large enough to affect the probability of extreme events, such as summer heat waves.
As shown in my next viewgraph, we have used the temperature changes computed in our global climate model to estimate the impact of the greenhouse effect on the frequency of hot summers in Washington, D.C. and Omaha, Nebraska. A hot summer is defined as the hottest one-third of the summers in the 1950 to 1980 period, which is the period the Weather Bureau uses for defining climatology. So, in that period the probability of having a hot summer was 33 percent, but by the 1990s, you can see that the greenhouse effect has increased the probability of a hot summer to somewhere between 55 and 70 percent in Washington according to our climate model simulations. In the late 1980s, the probability of a hot summer would be somewhat less than that. You can interpolate to a value of something like 40 to 60 percent.
I believe that this change in the frequency of hot summers is large enough to be noticeable to the average person. So, we have already reached a point that the greenhouse effect is important. It may also have important implications other than for creature comfort.
My last viewgraph shows global maps of temperature anomalies for a particular month, July, for several different years between 1986 and 2029, as computed without global climate model for the intermediate trace gas scenario B. As shown by the graphs on the left where yellow and red colors represent areas that are warmer than climatology and blue areas represent areas that are colder than climatology, at the present time in the 1980s the greenhouse warming is smaller than the natural variability of the local temperature. So, in any given month, there is almost as much area that is cooler than normal as there is area warmer than normal. A few decades in the future, as shown on the right, it is warm almost everywhere. [Myth’s Note: Apologies for the lack of colour scheme this primary source didn’t have it available.]
However, the point that I would like to make it that in the late 1980’s and in the 1990’s we notice a clear tendency in our model for greater than average warming in the southeast United States and the Midwest. In our model this result seems to arise because the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the United States warms more slowly than the land. This leads to high pressure along the east coast and circulation of warm air north into the Midwest or the Southeast.
There is only a tendency for this phenomenon. It is certainly an imperfect tool at this time. However, we conclude that there is evidence that the greenhouse effect increases the likelihood of heat wave drought situations in the Southeast and Midwest United States even though we cannot blame a specific drought on the greenhouse effect.
Therefore, I believe that it is not a good idea to use the period 1950 to 1980 for which climatology is normally defined as an indication of how frequently droughts will occur in the future. If our model is approximately correct, such situations may be more common in the next 10 to 15 years than they were in the period 1950 to 1980.
Finally, I would like to stress that there is a need for improving these global climate models, and there is a need for global observations if we’re going to obtain a full understanding of these phenomena.
That concludes my statement, and I’d be glad to answer questions if you’d like.
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My oral testimony was probably 12-15 minutes. Senator Wirth then had the other scientists give their testimony before opening up for discussion. The other panel members were Michael Oppenheimer, George Woodwell, Suki Manabe, Dan Dudek and Bill Moomaw.
Discussion following the presentations raised several points. There was agreement that a specific drought or other meteorological event cannot be blamed on the greenhouse effect.
However, the probability and severity of such events increase in a hotter world.
My assertion of 99 percent confidence astonished some Senators. Senator Wirth said that he agreed with the 99 percent assertion, based on his reading of studies and meeting many people in this research field. However, he seemed to anticipate scientific backlash to my testimony, as he pointed out that programs such as energy conservation, alternative energy sources and reforestation should take place regardless of the degree of confidence in the climate assessment.
The Senators needed to rush to a vote on the Senate floor, but Senator Domenici took over as the presiding Senator, because he wanted to continue discussion about policy, chiding the other Senators, to laughter of the audience, that he could still “run there and get there.”
Senator Domenici raised the issue of incrementalism. Incrementalism is an appropriate policy, at least in early stages, incremental diminution of the problem via steps such as improved energy efficiency. He seemed to get agreement on the incremental approach from the scientists who focused on policy.
Senator Domenici foreshadowed a great policy failure. Incrementalism, accompanied by strategic long-term vision and action, made sense. But incrementalism, as an excuse to avoid clear policy implications of the science, sentenced future generations to climate disasters. Nevertheless, once the reality of the climate threat was recognized globally, the policy choice recommended by the United States and accepted by the global community was incrementalism.
As the hearing adjourned at 4:15 p.m., I realized that I had not used my “waffling” comment. Several reporters waited in the back of the room. Phil Shabecoff of the New York Times asked what global temperature rise was needed to confirm the human-made greenhouse effect as cause.This was my opportunity. I said that there was no “magic number” for that, but “it is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.”
The next day, Friday morning, that quote – along with our graph of global temperature from 1880 to 1988 – was prominent in Shabecoff’s front-page article in the New York Times, which was headlined “Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate.”
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Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About The Coming Climate Catastrophe And Our Last Chance To Save Humanity, Dr. James Hansen
It soon became apparent, though, that my testimony, combined with the weather, was creating a misimpression. Global warming does increase the intensity of droughts and heat waves, and thus the area of forest fires. However, because a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor, global warming must also increase the intensity of the other extreme of the hydrologic cycle—meaning heavier rains, more extreme floods, and more intense storms driven by latent heat, including thunderstorms, tornadoes, and tropical storms. I realized that I should have emphasized more strongly that both extremes increase with global warming.
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‘We are damned fools’: scientist who sounded climate alarm in 80s warns of worse to come, Oliver Milman
“There’s a lot more in the pipeline, unless we reduce the greenhouse gas amounts. These superstorms are a taste of the storms of my grandchildren. We are headed wittingly into the new reality – we knew it was coming.”
“[...] We scientists did not communicate more clearly and [...] we did not elect leaders capable of a more intelligent response.”
“It means we are damned fools; we have to taste it to believe it.”
- Dr. James Hansen, July 2023
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