Essay by Eric Worrall
According the Hansen the 2.0C climate target is dead.
Climate change target of 2C is ‘dead’, says renowned climate scientist
Prof James Hansen says pace of global heating has been significantly underestimated, though other scientists disagree
Damian Carrington Environment editorWed 5 Feb 2025 04.31 AEDT
The pace of global heating has been significantly underestimated, according to renowned climate scientist Prof James Hansen, who said the international 2C target is “dead”.
…
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) defined a scenario which gives a 50% chance to keep warming under 2C – that scenario is now impossible,” he said. “The 2C target is dead, because the global energy use is rising, and it will continue to rise.”
The new analysis said global heating is likely to reach 2C by 2045, unless solar geoengineering is deployed.
…
In the new study, published in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, Hansen’s team said: “Failure to be realistic in climate assessment and failure to call out the fecklessness of current policies to stem global warming is not helpful to young people.”
…“The basic problem is that the waste products of fossil fuels are still dumped in the air free of charge,” he said. He also backed the rapid development of nuclear power.
…
He said: “We do not recommend implementing climate interventions, but we suggest that young people not be prohibited from having knowledge of the potential and limitations of purposeful global cooling in their toolbox.”
Political change is needed to achieve all these measures, Hansen said: “Special interests have assumed far too much power in our political systems. In democratic countries the power should be with the voter, not with the people who have the money. That requires fixing some of our democracies, including the US.”
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/04/climate-change-target-of-2c-is-dead-says-renowned-climate-scientist
There is plenty of evidence voters already do have the power in the USA, even when they choose to use that voting power in ways James Hansen doesn’t approve. In the recent Presidential election, Kamala Harris substantially outspent President Trump, but voters still chose President Trump. Clearly money isn’t everything, at least when it comes to US elections.
I’m not going to lose any sleep over James Hansen’s climate doomsday predictions. In the article above, a number of Hansen’s former colleagues distanced themselves from his latest outburst – with good reason.
James Hansen has made a number of predictions over the years which proven to be less than accurate;
1988: Global Warming Will Cause Droughts
2001: West Side Highway Will be Underwater Within 30 Years
2008: In five to 10 years, the Arctic will be free of see ice in the summer
etc.
Of course, even amongst climate alarmists, there is always someone who is determined to go one better
Interestingly even Hansen’s zeal for reducing CO2 appears to have limits. WUWT once offered a joint platform with Hansen, to support research into nuclear reactors. But Hansen went quiet, and didn’t respond to our offer.
I am however concerned about Hansen’s repeated attacks on democracy.
Hansen has his moment of glory, though nowadays even Hansen’s colleagues politely distance themselves from his extreme predictions. But Hansen still has some influence.
I believe Hansen’s attacks on democracy are potentially damaging. In periods of turmoil like the present day, there is a risk Hansen’s words will influence more young people to join radical environmental movements. Hansen has appealed to young people, and may still have the power to influence young people to embrace his climate extremism.
If even one young person is influenced by Hansen’s alarmist rhetoric, and as a result decides to throw away their future by committing a futile act of eco-terrorism, what a waste and a tragedy that would be, and perhaps already is.
I am not accusing James Hansen of deliberately inciting acts of eco-terrorism. But if you tell a bunch of young people the system is broken, and the world they will inherit will be a dystopian hellscape, don’t be surprised if some of them decide to try to take matters into their own hands.
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The methodology of the Great American Empire for overthrowing governments, foreign and domestic; is to funnel money to groups that propagate unrest, racial tension, climate fear, and transgender rights. With the DOGE team closing down USAID, the amount of money being squandered producing climate hysteria is likely to take a real hit.
What’s even funnier is that some are saying that Congress will refinance the criminal cesspool known as USAID, but if they do Team Trump will be the ones choosing where the money goes! Popcorn, anyone!?
And having Team-Trump doing that has to be the most sensible solution.
What you have described is the methodology of the Great Russian Empire (as well?)
Leftism is simply modified Marxism. The anti-capitalist moral narrative of oppression by, and danger from, the big corporate capitalist entities.That can only be ‘corrected’ by a Big State that overrules democracy ‘for the good of all’. And then naturally becomes the instrument to deploy everything they warned you about…
BINGO!
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse?
Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
Maurice Strong
“some are saying that Congress will refinance the criminal cesspool known as USAID, but if they do Team Trump will be the ones choosing where the money goes!”
Congress probably will continue USAID under the direction of the State Department.
USAID does have some worthwhile programs, so we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, and Trump is not going to do that. Trump is holding over about 600 USAID employees to handle some ongoing programs.
As for “Trump doing the choosing”, that is correct. The Democrats want to claim that Trump is breaking the law by thwarting programs authorized by Congress, but Congress did not authorize each individual project of USAID, they left that to the bureaucrats, and Trump is in charge of these bureaucrats, as USAID is under the Executive Branch, so has the perfect legal right to order a review of what they are doing.
Democrats are jealous and upset that Musk is ruining their Chinese deals.
I wonder how much can be clawed back from the fraudsters.
Musk says he has found that about $100 billion per year is paid out by the government to people who have no identification, no social security number, or any other number.
Also, the NBA, the NFL, and all of Hollywood… without the Chinese’s money they’d all be bankrupt
‘USAID does have some worthwhile programs, so we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater…’
For instance?
Food aid, real disaster relief. There still are earthquakes, famines and natural disasters. That’s what usaid was originally for. Trump is just trimming the mission creep.
It’s worse than mission creep. We’ll see how bad it is in the near future, but in some ways it’s like the CIA had to create enemies for us to fight.
I’m old enough to remember when the Left absolutely hated the CIA. Now that the former has successfully ‘marched through the institutions’, including the latter, they can’t get enough of it.
Yeah, I remember when they were anti-war and were on the side of free speech and they hated censorship.
My, how things have changed!
Yeah, the Democrats are just a bunch of deranged radical leftists now. There’s no common sense in their political party.
Other than U.S. Senator John Fetterman. The only guy on the Democrat side who uses common sense.
I didn’t know Fetterman until this last election year, so I didn’t know him before he had his stoke, and I don’t know if he showed the same common sense before the stroke as he has after the stroke.
But Fetterman has recovered nicely, and is now someone you can actually reason with. I don’t know if this is a product of his stroke. If it is, every Democrat should have such a stroke.
I think Fetterman should switch his political party to Republican. He’s talking like a Republican, and the radical Democrats are starting to notice, and are grumbling about it, and Fetterman will probably be ostrasized by the radicals.
So come over to the conservative side, John. You are a conservative. It’s your natural home. You will be treated like a Rock Star on the other side. And, you will be on the right side of history.
Fetterman started talking sense only fairly recently. It’s like his stroke turned him into a totally different person.
With the stuff he’s saying lately, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Dems try to kick him out of the party.
That’s interesting.
I won’t be surprised if the Democrats kick him out. He and they are not on the same page, and that’s something the Democrats can’t stand. It’s their way, or the highway. They think if you don’t agree with them, there must be something wrong with you. They never consider that it might be them who are on the wrong side.
Fetterman did vote to deny medical care to “born alive” babies who survived an abortion. I’ll take his help where he wants to give it, but he is not remotely conservative.
He also refuses to vote for RFK Jr.
As we uncover the nature of things we will discover that G.H.W.B. Director of Central Intelligence, under Gerald Ford, seeded this deep state and all those arguing back and forth that “this is a Democrat thing, no this is a Republican thing” were either misinformed or part of the flim flam.
We have been living under a corrupt 2 party system since Reagan left office, in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, which traces its roots back to LBJ. Reagan forced the Deep State to operated under cover. Trump has known this all along and wishes to fix it and restore our Constitutional Republic, (not a democracy all you uninformed public school “gradiates” under the hypnosis of the Education Department, thanks Jimmy Carter, and the media that keeps beating that drum), in order to cement his legacy and feed his oversized ego which took a blow in Butler Pennsylvania. I am now 100% behind Trump despite the fact that I voted for Johnson in 2016. It matters not his motivation, if it is good for the citizens and bad for the Deep State. If he succeeds with his vision then I will gladly vote to carve his likeness into Mount Rushmore.
Yes help in time of need is good. USAID has been corrupted to promote unauthorized programs, this type of activity must end.
Much of the food aid is counter-productive. It leads to the collapse of the recipient’s agricultural base and perpetual dependence. It also largely gets siphoned off by whatever corrupt government is present and reinforces the overall problem. Bilateral trade is almost always a better option, raising the standard of living on both sides and collapsing corrupt governments. When the US bureaucrats get involved it almost always leads to disaster.
Now disaster food aid when a particularly devastating natural disaster strikes is something else entirely.
‘It leads to the collapse of the recipient’s agricultural base and perpetual dependence.’
That’s a feature, not a bug. Subsidized farming here and destabilized farming and regime change there. A little something for both sides of the political aisle.
I think it started under President Kennedy, focused on helping the U.S. in the cold war with the Communists of the world.
USAID has obviously been transformed into a piggy bank to use to promote radical leftwing ideology all over the world.
Did you see where USAID gave the radical leftwing anti-American billionaire, George Soros, $250 million?! Somebody ought to go to jail for this one!
Yeah, for a Commie, Soros sure loves Capitalist OPM funding (other people’s money) when doing business
That’s a job for private charities financed by voluntary contributions.
I heard one today: USAID was treating women who had the AIDs disease and were pregnant, with drugs that prevented their child from suffering from AIDs, and supposedly is saving thousands of lives by doing so.
I think this might be one of the projects of George W. Bush, when he was president. He had a big focus on doing something about AIDs.
Depends on his definition of “fix”
From Wiktionary (en)
Yup
“Fix” can also mean removing reproductive organs.
Sounds about right.
Also depends on his definition of ‘our democracies‘:
Democracy (from the greek) <=> majority aka ‘Mob’ rule; universally reviled by the founders of the american republic.
Our <=> plural possessive pronoun, therefore vague, re identity of the Possessors.
So, a common-sense interpretation of the neologism ‘Our Democracy’:
‘ We-the-would-be-oligarchs have bought & paid for this Mob, so we own it! ‘
He is a political activist rather than a scientist and his views are corrupted by that.
I think deep down he is a misanthrope.
Misanthrope appears to be a lucrative profession in today’s world. Human genetics hasn’t changed much so it’s probably here to stay. The normal people will have to be more diligent in containing outbreaks of this illness in the future.
At least he has enough sense to understand the viability of nuclear energy over wind and solar. Thus, he is not currently or directly on the take from the “green” industrial complex. Rather, his past reward was for being a foot soldier among their useful idiots.
When Naomi Oreskes calls him names, then you know the stink is getting old.
That is another word for authoritarian. The elite always think they know what is best for the rest. Just ask Plato, or Gates, or the plethora of dogmatists and dictators in between.
I couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss what people like Hansen say.
I’m dreading my gas bill over this most unwarm January. Supplemented by the open fire.
Of course, the BBC tells me…
January 2025 ‘unexpectedly’ warmest on record https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/articles/cdxnpr8xwjno
Utter Bolleaux
Well I pay for my oil up front. Fortunately oil is quite sanely priced compared with electricity and comparable with gas.
Something like 6-7p/kWh.
Compared with over 20p for pressurised electrons…
Doesn’t stop people saying that the reason that electricity is high is because ‘gas prices are high’ when they are typically one third of the electricity cost, retail.
Whatever they may say
Carbon Emissions Tax https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/carbon-emissions-tax
Ah, so you know how to pronounce “gatocks” : )
“Supplemented by the open fire“.
If you have an open fire — you need to find a way of enclosing it so as to keep the heat in the room – not up the flue.
Otherwise, the inefficiency is staggering.
Isn’t it funny how these people always want just the West, or in this case democracies, to do something, reduce emissions. Never want the biggest fastest growing emitters like China and India to do anything, even though, on the theory, these guys are doing more than enough on their own to destroy civilization. And yet they never even mention China or India in their fulminations.
Of course China and India will say, “but our per capita emissions are still very low”. That excuse fails because the greens say green energy is cheaper. Thus China and India should add only green energy and save money and get their per capita emissions even lower! /s
Chinese per capita emissions are not very low at 8.84 tCO2e in 2023. They’re much higher than Europe’s, and overtook the UK as long ago as 2014. The UK is now at around the global average of 5.0 tCO2e – or lower if we counted our population properly.
Interesting- glad to know that.
The new analysis said global heating…..
Notice the Guardian style guide showing itself again. Don’t say ‘warming’, say ‘heating’.
“heating” isn’t really scary enough- they should use “roasting” /s
Yes! Add that one to the stylebook.
Global warming was rebranded to climate change and rebranded again to climate extinction. I guess another rebrand is due since Trump is back, so global boiling it is.
There was a PowerPoint pres. on the internet going back about 15 – 20 years, where Hansen talked about the oceans boiling due to CO2’s back radiation effect. I described it, at the time, as the most incorrect calculation in the history of science (nobody could find a more idiotic one). The climate crackpots must have agreed with me, at least somewhat, because I don’t think you can find that now. I didn’t download it so as not to pollute my computers. Anthony, CTM or others might have it.
Dr Professor Beeton (below) might be interested in taking a look at that one. He seems to take the position that if you can’t find it on the internet, then it never existed on the internet. Others know better.
The man is mentally ill, take him away somewhere secure.
South Sandwich Islands? Really cool place.
Beach property in the Arctic Circle if those are full.
Maybe Trump Properties, Inc. can develop some snazzy, Soviet style apartment buildings in Greenland; once the negotiations are finalized! I’ll bet a lot of alarmists will want to move there to avoid the expected global boiling!
Liberalism (marxism) is a mental disorder.
Maybe a hot room with the air conditioners disabled, filled with DC parasites. This time just keep the doors locked from the outside!
Worrall didn’t fact check his own claims. Hansen made none of these predictions,, except that global warming will cause droughts, and that prediction has come to pass (eg, the American West).
They never had droughts in the American SW prior to rising CO2 levels?
The denial of reality is breaking out at an astounding rate. It’s virulent, stoked by mainstream media. One brother called, great until he brought up politics. He gets his news from the local paper and network news and refuses to believe USAID was running a pork fest even when I explained they have invoice after invoice documenting it. He actually agrees the D party has been taken over by wingnuts (he’s a retired rail and union rep) and abandoned the blue collar population yet he can’t overcome his acquired TDS and gets emotional about it. Can’t fathom that I don’t really care for DJT on a personal level yet know the policy change is imperative unless we want to go over an economic cliff that threatens everyone. This is why I despise the media and Fauci so vehemently, COVID lies and the media have broken society and they are largely responsible.
You’re right. Among other disillusionments, recognition of the insanity of the trans movement is helping some people to break free of democrat psyops.
24 June 2008
“We see a tipping point occurring right before our eyes,” Hansen told the AP before the luncheon. “The Arctic is the first tipping point and it’s occurring exactly the way we said it would.” Hansen, echoing work by other scientists, said that in five to 10 years, the Arctic will be free of sea ice in the summer.
https://realclimatescience.com/2022/04/james-hansen-2008-this-is-the-last-chance/#gsc.tab=0
I didn’t check the others.
Unless that article was peer reviewed in an official scientific journal, then it doesn’t exist.
/sarc
The Saturday funny
Beeton
Droughts? You want droughts? Do some research, there are hundreds of studies identifying thousands of droughts globally all during the Holocene, including the American West. Don’t you know how to look up the research?
It doesn’t do any good, denny! He’s only pretending to be stupid and ill-informed; a rather convincing act if you ask me!
Our week old snow drought in Colorado is over. The slopes were a little weary yesterday, but new coverage this morning is patching things up and more is on the way.
https://www.eldora.com/the-mountain/webcams/snow-stake-cam
Yeah, droughts come and go. No big deal. No big change from the past. With the exception of the horrendous drought in the middle of the country during the 1930’s. Imagine the heated rhetoric from climate alarmists over a time period like the 1930’s. The rhetoric is bad enough today, without a horrendous drought to fuel it.
“What I can comment on is this prediction by Dr. Hansen: “The West Side Highway [which runs along
the Hudson River] will be under water.
” As you can clearly see in the Google Earth images, the West
Side Highway remains dry and open. Sea level (at which the Hudson River at that point becomes) is not
encroaching on the highway’ (Anthony Watts)
James Hansen made his statement in response to a question by Bob Reiss, a journalist and author,”
I think you are wrong Warren.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/30/analysis-of-james-hansens-1988-prediction-of-global-temperatures-for-the-last-30-years/
Hanson is right in one respect, most politicians in western democracies are more responsive to those making political donations than they are to voters.
He’s also right that nuclear energy is a scalable zero emissions electricity source you can run an industrial economy on.
But his hyperbole and theatrics has let the west to waste trillions of dollars on dead end technology and move energy intensive industrial processes to “developing” nations so global emissions continue to rise.
Instapundit is dead on stating that we have the worst ruling class in history. Actively trying to destroy civilization. I don’t think they know how close they are to pushing people into a place we don’t want to be. Every day I thank our lucky stars Kamalama Ding Dong is gone. She may have been the last straw that pushed things over the edge.
Yes, it would be very bad had Kamala been elected.
That might have been the end of the United States as we know it. The Deep State might have decided it was time to shut real democracy down in the U.S., and create a pretend democracy where the Deep State gets to pick all the leaders, and the opposition is beaten into submission.
So Trump now needs to separate the Deep State from its power over the election process and over everything else.
Trump is moving pretty fast, I must say! I’m loving it! There’s a lot of corruption to root out.
Who is Hanson?
A scientist homophone.
Ref nuclear, and the Naomi Oreskes article in particular, the question should be “can you design me a renewable system to reliably meet the UK’s demand, and how much will it cost”?
Spoiler alert:
She can’t.
Nothing a pair of cement overshoes and a research trip to the Marianas Trench can’t fix.
““The basic problem is that the waste products of fossil fuels are still dumped in the air free of charge,” he said.”
Don’t you know, Dr. Hansen, that you and your radical “climate” friends are still dumping the waste products of your own metabolism into the air, free of charge, every time you exhale?
Ditch the idea that CO2 is a “waste” product. Feed the plants. Eat the plants, and the animals that eat the plants. Snap out of this manufactured illusion that incremental CO2 is capable of driving the climate outcome. It is not even a flea on the mole in the molehill compared to the mountain of self-regulating dynamic energy conversion and energy transport in the atmosphere.
I wonder if Hansen would claim he never purchases anything made with the help of ff- and I wonder if he has an EV. And I wonder if he has the courage to admit that many of his predictions (if not all) have not occurred.
Free plant food. A lot of indoor growers use propane for both heating and boosting CO2 for plant growth. I’m not sure that Hansen has ever acknowledged photosynthesis.
If 2C is dead, we can stop trying to stop it.
Most likely the population of this planet is going to drop in the next century, possibly substantially. Nuclear will make a comeback. As time goes by, eventually ff will rise in price, and little by little it will be less of the total energy production. Maybe by then fusion energy will also contribute to energy mix. The planet will not be damaged by climate change. It’s more likely to be damaged by wars and the stupidity we see in LA by the city and state not managing fuel loads and water resources.
If we’ve learned anything, renewable fire hydrants are a bad thing.
Even inclusive ones!?
Give me an example.
I believe that was a facetious dig at LA and in support of your original fire hydrant statement.
They really need a sarcasm font on the internet….
I think the ones in West Hollywood are pink, but maybe they just identify as LGBT!
Hansen comes out with more climate change scaremongering at the same time that the temperatures have cooled by 0.5C from the high point in 2024.
The legacy media is currently hyping Copernicus Climate propaganda where they claim January is the hottest on record. They are ignoring the satellite data. We really need Trump to get his science agencies to change their tune. Hope that is coming soon.
Scientists like Hansen cannot be unaware of the NASA CERES data either. As Willis pointed out, the data shows no increase in the strength of the greenhouse effect across the entire data set. At some level they must know the truth. Hence, anything alarmist is intentionally lying.
Sea-Captain Hansen-Ahab & his remaining crew have their harpoon aimed directly at the Great White Whale, for one last best shot:
Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed?James E. Hansen,Pushker Kharecha,Makiko Sato,George Tselioudis,Joseph Kelly,Susanne E. Bauer,Reto Ruedy,Eunbi Jeong,Qinjian Jin,Eric Rignot,Isabella Velicogna,Mark R. Schoeberl,Karina von Schuckmann,Joshua Amponsem,Junji Cao,Anton Keskinen,Jing Li &Anni Pokela show less
Pages 6-44 | Published online: 03 Feb 2025
Oh no, temperature whiplash.
“Special interests have assumed far too much power in our political systems,” said the special interest.
Special interest, noun. – 1. A person, group, or organization attempting to influence legislators in favor of one particular interest or issue.
Jim is just not very bright, or at least, he has no self awareness.
….. yep, a good description of the political pawn known as “a useful idiot”.
Hansen was manipulated and “used” to advance an agenda.* No excuses for him, though. He should have known better back in June, 1988, and he should know better today than to think that the minor radiative effect of incremental CO2 could ever be isolated for proper attribution of reported warming.
*Senator Timothy Wirth explains in this interview.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hotpolitics/interviews/wirth.html
Can someone translate this for me? I don’t speak Green Blobian.
I’ll give it a shot – “don’t tell the kids our real motives for lying to them”.
Hansen is suggesting that somehow climate change skeptics are preventing Hansen and other climate alarmists from getting the climate crisis word out.
Nobody is stopping Hansen or anyone else from making their scary climate change claims. Their problem isn’t skeptics censoring them, it’s they can’t prove what they claim, and have repeated the same old mantras year after year, and their scary stories never come true, so people are starting to ignore climate alarmists, more now than in the past, because the climate alarmist’s track record is getting worse.
He said that nonsense when he was Director of PISS, lying then lying now, the man is a Climate Change SCAMMER!
Can someone ask Hansen if the world would be better off if we had been cooling for the last 150 years?
In democratic countries the power should be with the voter,
Oh, but it IS with the voter, Dr. Hanson, and the voters usually rank your AGW hysteria far below illegal immigration invasions and trannies claiming legal privileges.
Who is Hanson?
It’s not about the climate.
It is supposed to be a Republic – not a democracy – if we can keep it. The USA now has $35 trillion in debt so all this USAID outrage is just printing money and the citizens have not approved it. It is so easy to be generous with OPM – printed money.
It’s ~ $36.5 trillion. A lot of presents were purchased in December.
The end is nigh, just as it has always been and will forever be in the circles of the castrophists. But the end, just like the long promised globalist, socialist nirvana or the miraculous green economy never actually arrives. For that we can all be thankful.
I survived a fixed, socialist “democracy” once. I don’t want to try again.
Hansen threw the grenade in the 90s, and has spent the time since trying to convince everybody that it’s going to go off, really, any minute now, you just wait…
He’s a fraud, plain and simple.
Yeah, Hansen did say at one time that the year 1934, was 0.5C warmer than the year 1998.
Then, when cooling started after 1998, Hansen started changing his tune and saying 1934, was not warmer than 1998.
This was the beginning of the bastardization of the satellite-era (1979 to present) surface temperature charts by NASA. They had to keep up the fiction that temperatures were continuing to climb after 1998, even though the satellite data showed the temperatures were cooling.
NASA, and Hansen were lying to Americans about the temperatures, for political/personal purposes.
Dishonest temperature data mannipulation.
If Climate Alarmists didn’t have the bastardized temperature record, they wouldn’t have anything. And that’s the truth.
Anyone musing over the idea of solar geoengineering is tacitly admitting that –
“It’s the Sun, stupid!”
By “fixing” he means “rigged” to provide the result the Climatrons want.
The following quote of Hansen sounds like it came from the Kamala Devi Harris school of journalism:
“We do not recommend implementing climate interventions, but we suggest that young people not be prohibited from having knowledge of the potential and limitations of purposeful global cooling in their toolbox.”