NASA “Climate Prophet” James Hansen Proclaimed The Arctic Would Be “Free of Summer Ice” by 2018

Cap Allon

[Article originally published on electroverse.net on Aug 2, 2020]

Bolstered by the sycophantic-praise he received following his 1988 Congressional testimony on man-made global warming, NASA activist-scientist James Edward Hansen continued his prophesies well into the 2000s despite his ever-growing list of climatic fails.

“The greenhouse effect is here,” pronounced doomsayer Hansen back on June 23, 1988; and “We’re [still] toast,” he repeated with a straight face 20 years later, in 2008.

In preparation for his 1988 Congressional testimony, Hansen produced three potential scenarios regarding the future trend for global average temperatures:

A) “Business As Usual” — if human’s did nothing regarding rising CO2 levels.

B) If we “moderately” reduced CO2 emissions.

C) If atmospheric carbon dioxide was reduced to year 2000 levels.


Real-world observations reveal Hansen’s projections were way off with scenarios A and B significantly over-predicting the warming trend.

Digging into the data, A overstates CO2 and other greenhouse gas growth and rejects against the observations; Scenario B slightly understates CO2 growth, overstates methane and CFCs and zeroes-out other greenhouse gas growth, and it too significantly overstates the warming.

The scenario that best-matches the observations is C — the one where Hansen has CO2 topping-out at 368 ppm in 2000 but then sees it fixed at that level thereafter–something that obviously didn’t happen. It’s this drastic “halt the industrial revolution” scenario that ended up with a warming trend most like the real-world observations.

Here is one thought, proposed by climate scientist John Christy:

Suppose Hansen had offered a Scenario D, in which greenhouse gases continue to rise, but after the 1990s they have very little effect on the climate. That would play out similarly in his modeled Scenario C, and it would match the data — this hypothetical Scenario D is the reality we’re living today.

James Edward Hansen is still considered a “climate prophet” by many, but his 1988 scenarios simply DO NOT FIT THE DATA.

And while on the topic of abject public failures, let’s look at Hansen’s Arctic sea ice predictions. Back in 2008, he claimed that within just “five to 10 years, the Arctic will be free of sea ice in the summer”:

[news.google.com]


In reality, though–rather than abstract computer modelling–ten years after Hansen made his ice-free prophesy, Arctic sea ice volume was up 7% and melting at the slowest rate on record, according to Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) data:

[DMI]
[DMI]


How anyone proved so wrong for so long can still garner the praise and accolades that James Hansen does is testament to the agenda at play.

Depressing, though, the political Juggernaut that is Anthropogenic Global Warming will keep-on-rolling for as long it’s needed, and the ever-growing posse of the poor and ill-informed will continue following that Pied Piper into the Hamelin cave where any and all self-respect and ability to think-critically is never to be seen again.