The short answer, is not all that well.
On June 23, 1988, NASA scientist James E. Hansen testified before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, where he expressed his “high degree of confidence” in “a cause-and-effect relationship between the claimed CO2 induced “greenhouse effect and observed warming.”
The 30th anniversary of Mr. Hansen’s predictions affords an opportunity to see how well his forecasts have turned out.
In an article in the Wall Street Journal today, climatologist Dr Patrick Michaels and meteorologist Dr. Ryan Maue compare Hansen’s predictions to actual reality over the past 30 years. Instead of the gloom and doom we heard in 1988, we have an earth that is only moderately warmer, and closer to Hansen’s “scenario C”, the bottom graph below, which is overlaid with actual global temperature data in red.
Here’s some excerpts from the article by climatologist Dr. Pat Michaels and meteorologist Dr. Ryan Maue:
“Thirty years of data have been collected since Mr. Hansen outlined his scenarios—enough to determine which was closest to reality. And the winner is Scenario C. Global surface temperature has not increased significantly since 2000, discounting the larger-than-usual El Niño of 2015-16. Assessed by Mr. Hansen’s model, surface temperatures are behaving as if we had capped 18 years ago the carbon-dioxide emissions responsible for the enhanced greenhouse effect. But we didn’t. And it isn’t just Mr. Hansen who got it wrong. Models devised by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have, on average, predicted about twice as much warming as has been observed since global satellite temperature monitoring began 40 years ago…”
“Several more of Mr. Hansen’s predictions can now be judged by history. Have hurricanes gotten stronger, as Mr. Hansen predicted in a 2016 study? No. Satellite data from 1970 onward shows no evidence of this in relation to global surface temperature. Have storms caused increasing amounts of damage in the U.S.? Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show no such increase in damage, measured as a percentage of gross domestic product. How about stronger tornadoes? The opposite may be true, as NOAA data offers some evidence of a decline. The list of what didn’t happen is long and tedious.”
It turns out that global surface temperature has not increased significantly since 2000, discounting the larger-than-usual El Niño of 2015-16.
And it isn’t just Hansen who got it wrong, models devised by the IPCC have, on average, predicted about twice as much warming as has been observed since global satellite temperature monitoring began 40 years ago.
What about Hansen’s other claims? He claimed that the late ’80s and ’90s would see “greater than average warming in the southeast U.S. and the Midwest.” No such spike has been measured in these regions.
In 2007, Hansen stated that most of Greenland’s ice would soon melt, raising sea levels 23 feet over the next 100 years. Subsequent research published in Nature magazine demonstrated this to be impossible.
Several more of Mr. Hansen’s predictions fizzled. Have hurricanes gotten stronger, as Mr. Hansen predicted? No.
Satellite data shows no evidence of this in relation to global surface temperature.
Have storms caused increasing damage in the U.S.?
No. Data from NOAA show no such increase.
How about stronger tornadoes?
No. In fact, the opposite may be true, as NOAA data offers some evidence of a decline.
“The list of what didn’t happen is long and tedious,” say Michaels and Maue.
“On the 30th anniversary of Mr. Hansen’s galvanizing testimony, it’s time to acknowledge that the rapid warming he predicted isn’t happening.”
The WSJ article:
‘Thirty Years On, How Well Do Global Warming Predictions Stand Up?’
https://www.wsj.com/articles/thirty-years-on-how-well-do-global-warming-predictions-stand-up-1529623442
The article appeared in the Wall Street Journal print edition as
‘A Hot Summer on Capitol Hill.’
See also this summary from Willis Eschenbach: The Thirty Year War
Some people will cover for AGW if indeed the transition /shift in climate takes place (which I think it will) trying to say it happened in the past.
NO- it has not happened , all the climate did in the past(1850-2017) was vary within a specific climatic regime. The key being all the temperature changes in the past were temporary this time this will not be case.
If I am correct the climate when in the new regime is still going to shift up and down but around a lower average. Like it has always done accept this time the underlying trend will be down not up. How much lower will the lower average be then today ? I like to see -1c or more to make it definitive. Even a climatic shift like happened in the late 1970’s to warmer but this climatic shift if it come would be to colder maybe on the on the order of -.5c I think effectively ends AGW theory.
If AGW were real the global temperatures would be higher then what we have now despite ENSO /VOLCANIC ACTIVTY etc but they are not.
The climate today is not even in a different climatic regime(post 1850) much less unique.
If AGW were real monthly departures BY NOW (because so much time is going by) would not be like they have been(satellite data), they would have to be at least showing a monthly departure of at least +.50c , more likely approaching +1c month after month. It is not happening not even close and as each month ticks away and it does not happen, not to mention a possible cooling trend I think the time is fast approaching to say AGW is no longer a viable theory.
Let me add overall oceanic sea surface temperatures have been in a down trend for the past year, and if that remains intact no global warming is going to take place.
Why past year? What about 2 years? Three? 10? 20? 30?
Let’s go with May 2017 through 2018. That’s what a real scientist would do.
From the Texas Policy Foundation:
What to Know: The carbon tax is back, this time in a Massachusetts bill.
“This legislation is a forward looking plan that prepares Massachusetts for the inevitable obstacles that will come with climate change, according to the release,” the Wicked Local Wareham newspaper reports. “The policies and programs will protect public health, increase the use of renewable energy, reduce greenhouse emissions, implement a price on carbon, and create jobs in the innovative green-energy economy… The legislation raises renewable portfolio standards, lifts the cap on solar net metering, authorizes additional hydropower and offshore wind procurement, establishes market-based greenhouse-gas emission limits, and implements statewide energy storage goals.”
The TPPF Take: Carbon taxes remain bad policy, both expensive and ineffective.
“The result of this legislation will be higher living costs and associated lower standards of living with limited effect on the environment,” says TPPF’s Vance Ginn. “Many of the policy changes are sold as market-based measures, such as a carbon tax, but having the government create a market is the antithesis of a free market, negating its benefits. Instead, history proves that increased economic prosperity supported by limiting government’s influence in our lives promotes innovation that reduces toxic pollutants.”
How come we hear the phrase “man made global warming” but one never hears the phrase “man made climate change”?
This is actually a serious question because it implies that only humans can change the climate and there is no natural climate change.
I recommend everyone on WUWT start using “man made climate change” rather than “climate change”. Words are important.
Coal and Jew hater
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.”
Feynman
Truer words have never been spoken !!
We agree.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-projected-global-warming
So where did Watts get that red-line graph? It’s wrong.
“So where did Watts get that red-line graph?”
________________________
Good question. The Hansen chart quotes ‘Gistemp’ 5-year running averages with the start centred on 1960, so it must be that, right?
Wrong.
It can’t be that, because the Gistemp 5-year running average anomaly with the start centred 1960 is currently sitting at 0.85 C; whereas the red line on the featured chart only goes up to 0.50 C. Whatever that red line represents, it’s not a Gistemp data.
If Gistemp data were used for that chart, then the red line would currently be sitting just below scenario B and well within the error range of it.
Ironic that folks here are quoting Richard Feynman. Feynman who was notorious for never just accepting other peoples’ results; who always sourced the raw data and carried out the calculations or the experiments himself to verify someone else’s work.
Yet the same people quoting Feynman haven’t raised a single question about the chart referred to above. The one comparing a red line claiming to be “actual global temperature data” to Gistemp anomalies, but which has no cited source and which clearly isn’t Gistemp data, because it’s easy to check that Gistemp isn’t a good fit for it (see above).
Here’s another Feynman quote:
“The first principal is the you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool”
If we accept other people’s work without at least giving it a rudimentary check, then we are already falling foul of Feynman’s “first principal”.
I wish Feynman were here to tell this site to straighten up or fold up. He would certainly yell them to stop using his quotes.
The red line graph is from here. I think it is right, although the scale is awkward. Here is my version:
The GISS numerical data is here.
Temps since 1960 have gone up about 1.0°C. I think Watts clipped the graph and did some Monckton adjustments to it.
Good to see the chart showing “forecast” and actual temp updated and published. It is a wonderful condemnation of “modeling” based upon spurious notions about CO2.
Actually, such forecasts essentially become forecasts of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Ironical!
Bob Hoye
Mr. Hansen initially predicted global cooling in the sixties. Since he couldn’t EVER be wrong he had to find something/someone to blame.
That seems very unlikely, care to support that claim with data?
In 1970 or ’71, two other “scientists” applied Hansen’s model of Venus’ atmosphere to Earth’s, and “confirmed” the then dreaded global cooling.
http://scottishsceptic.co.uk/2015/03/25/hansen-was-part-of-the-global-cooling-consensus/
I don’t know if Hansen at that time publicly agreed with the cooling consensus or not.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GISSTemperature/giss_temperature2.php
For climate science you don’t have to be factually correct; you just have to be ideologically correct.
It’s simply amazing what the mainstream media can brainwash into people’s minds.
The “Programming” of the people works on about 50% of the population while the other 50% can see right through it and withstand the indoctrination. Global Warming (then it became “climate change”) has been fed daily through multiple avenues (TV, Print, Radio, Movies, etc.) into the life of everyone in the USA. Half soaked it up and became believers and half spit it out.
The MSM is absolutely adept at massaging the masses minds into achieving their desired political aims.
They now have done this with Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Some people’s minds are so fragile and so easily manipulated while others are able to resist.
The tool of propaganda has been used on populations since the dawn of time.
Haven’t we evolved enough to recognize that and started thinking rationally for ourselves?
THE DUNNING–KRUGER EFFECT – DEFINED
By Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people of low ability have illusory superiority and mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is. The cognitive bias of illusory superiority comes from the metacognitive inability of low-ability people to recognize their lack of ability; without the self-awareness of metacognition, low-ability people cannot objectively evaluate their actual competence or incompetence.[1] On the other hand, people of high ability incorrectly assume that tasks that are easy for them are also easy for other people.[2]
As described by social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, the cognitive bias of illusory superiority results from an internal illusion in people of low ability and from an external misperception in people of high ability; that is, “the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.”[1]
THE DUNNING–KRUGER EFFECT – DEFINED
By George Carlin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyifuNC0MT8
“Think of how stupid the average person is; and then realize half of them are stupider than that!”
“Global Warming (then it became “climate change”) …”
The UN IPCC was set up in 1988 and hasn’t changed its name since. What do you reckon the ‘CC’ bit stood for Mike?
DW Rice
When politicians and others talk about “Climate Change”, you are hearing the prattling of scoundrels and imbeciles. The term Climate Change was selected because it is a NON-FALSIFIABLE HYPOTHESIS – it can mean anything – hotter, colder, wetter, drier, windier, etc. etc. Climate has always changed – naturally.
To be precise, the threat alleged by the global warming alarmists is from CATASTROPHIC MANMADE GLOBAL WARMING (“CAGW”), allegedly driven by increasing atmospheric CO2, and that hypothesis was effectively FALSIFIED by the natural global cooling that occurred from ~1945 to ~1975, AT THE SAME TIME THAT ATMOSPHERIC CO2 STRONGLY INCREASED.
Fossil fuel combustion increased strongly after about 1940, and since then there was global cooling from ~1945 to ~1975, global warming from ~1975 to ~1996, and relatively flat global temperatures since then (with a few El Nino and La Nina upward and downward spikes). This so-called “Pause”.is now about 22 years in duration, as long as the previous warming period. The correlation of global temperature with increasing atmospheric CO2 has been negative, positive and near-zero, each for periods of ~20 to ~30 years.
This so-called climate sensitivity to CO2 (aka “ECS”) has been greatly exaggerated by the warmists in their climate computer models – in fact, if ECS exists in the practical sense, it is so small as to be insignificant – less than 1C/(2xCO2) and probably much less. That means that THE ALLEGED GLOBAL WARMING CRISIS IS A FICTION – IN REALITY, IT DOES NOT EXIST.
The warmists have responded by “adjusting” the temperature data record to exaggerate global warming. Here is one USA dataset, before and after adjustments:
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/2015-12-18-12-36-03.png
Im in a cooling trend where i live, huh-whats up with that!??
Similar here in the mountains of N California. Today and tomorrow are set to hit in the low 100s. Otherwise temps have been great so far this year with average day temps in the mid 80s. Great for the tomatoes, and very different from the previous 6 years where the heat would arrive maybe as early as late April, or certainly in May. The reason for this, imo, is the continued extensive cloud formation across the Northern Pacific Ocean. This has been the main pattern over the last 9 months. Conditions almost resemble winter a bit with the moderate sized ARs moving across the ocean.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=total_cloud_water/orthographic=-158.83,40.27,887/loc=-129.443,42.984
If you thought that temps in all regions have to increase at the same rate, you would be wrong. It’s just that more places will show a warming trend than not.
If you thought that cold records would cease to exit, you would be wrong. Hot records outpace cold records by about 2:1, which is expected to happen in a warming system.
Most people are experiencing a warming trend. Nothing odd about that when the planet is warming.
And democrats want us to spend HOW MUCH? To correct a problem that doesn’t exist?
If there is a buck to be made then somebody will try to take advantage like: Al Gore, Bill Nye, and David Suzuki. These guys hang out with jet setters flying all over the world preaching their false climate BS and get paid for it. How have they diminished their carbon footprint. A lie 30 years ago is still a big one now!
How well? Extremely well. So well that the temperatures climbed above the B scenario in the past few years for the paper published in 1988.
Now THAT’S what we call a slam dunk. Or for this site, we look at some random red line that is supposed to be the earth’s average temp. No need to know how that graph was created, because you really don’t want to know how well it did.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-projected-global-warming
Oh well. Facts to the rescue once again.
I don’t have official data but I have a hard time believing today is warmer than 30 years ago. 30 years ago we were breaking records set in the 30’s. We still have records from the 30s though
And then there is this review, obviously biased as it is (What is reality?):
This scamming jackass was on Yahoodie’s front page last week, saying that all his predictions came true. Both he and Yahoodie are shameless.
You will only confuse those that believe Al Gore and others. No one wants to look at facts only drama and hyperbole.
Hansen rubbed my fur the wrong way by “adjusting” temperatures.It is one thing to propose a scary theory, but quite another to falsify public records. But some good did come out of it.
First, in August 2007 I heard about a site called “Climate Audit” after reading someone named Steve McIntyre had exposed Hansen’s “adjustments” in the Toronto Star. (I actually did know about Climate Audit before that, but found the site far too technical for me. The post referred to by the Toronto Star was the first post I read and found I could understand:)
https://climateaudit.org/2007/08/08/a-new-leaderboard-at-the-us-open/
When I gleefully told friends and family about a government stooge (Hansen) getting caught red-handed, I figured we could all get a good laugh, but then learned a second thing that perhaps was not good, but it was good I became aware of it. Rather than gleeful, certain people became more irate than I would have thought sanity allowed. I discovered some people had rabies of a new sort, and that I was a “denier”.
The McIntyre post was mentioned by Rush Limbaugh, and Climate Audit then received such a flood of visitors that it crashed. Some feared the government had closed it down, and there were some anxious hours on the web as people became paranoid and advanced conspiracy theories. It was during that time, as we all cast about for reliable sources, that I heard of a new site called Watts Up With That.That was the third good thing.
Before that we all were lost souls, in some ways. Some credit should be given to John Daly, who passed away in 2004, for his early skeptical site, which still exists, and still rings true:
http://www.john-daly.com/index.htm
In those early days, especially before 2000, Hansen had it easy, for some of us were just getting our first computers and just learning the ropes. But learn we did, and that is the fourth good thing.
A fifth good thing is that some of us learned to control our outbursts of ire. Or, in some cases, at least to spell a certain word “Phrawd”, in order to avoid being automatically deleted or snipped by auto-moderators.
However, despite these good things, I think dealing with Hansen for thirty years has been a huge waste of time. I’m tired of being polite. For the simple fact of the matter is that Hansen, right from the start, has been a Phrawd and a Phoeknee and a Phake and a Phool and an a$$.
Strips this a-clown of his degree. He doesn’t know jack.