As people read the fine-print in the latest epistle from Hansen, the high priest of the global warming religion and defender of creation, they are finding a confession that the net man-made effects on climate have been greatly exaggerated by computer models.

This has been posted on so-far by HS in James Hansen admits man-made global warming has been greatly exaggerated by climate models and ContractorUK at Leading climate scientist admits climate models are bollox.

The disclosure was the subject of an essay Anthony Cox and I submitted to the ABC Unleashed website on 2nd May called Honest Jim: the science is not settled. The comments on the article make interesting reading, with about an equal number sceptic and warmist, which makes a change from the usual bias one way or the other.

Reading the abstract, you wouldn’t think that the paper is attempting to explain overestimates of the models of two times in the human-caused warming and an overestimate of deep ocean heat transfer by 50 times.

Earth’s Energy Imbalance and Implications
James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha, Karina von Schuckmann

Abstract

Improving observations of ocean temperature confirm that Earth is absorbing more energy from the sun than it is radiating to space as heat, even during the recent solar minimum. The inferred planetary energy imbalance, 0.59 \pm 0.15 W/m2 during the 6-year period 2005-2010, provides fundamental verification of the dominant role of the human-made greenhouse effect in driving global climate change. Observed surface temperature change and ocean heat gain constrain the net climate forcing and ocean mixing rates. We conclude that most climate models mix heat too efficiently into the deep ocean and as a result underestimate the negative forcing by human-made aerosols. Aerosol climate forcing today is inferred to be -1.6 \pm 0.3 W/m2, implying substantial aerosol indirect climate forcing via cloud changes. Continued failure to quantify the specific origins of this large forcing is untenable, as knowledge of changing aerosol effects is needed to understand future climate change. A recent decrease in ocean heat uptake was caused by a delayed rebound effect from Mount Pinatubo aerosols and a deep prolonged solar minimum. Observed sea level rise during the Argo float era can readily be accounted for by thermal expansion of the ocean and ice melt, but the ascendency of ice melt leads us to anticipate a near-term acceleration in the rate of sea level rise.

Goes to show, never judge a paper by its abstract. The bottom line — serious modelling when the unknowns are so great is pointless; satellite measurements of the major aerosol uncertainty should have been done long ago.