James Hansen on Fire

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 24, 2023

“Interestingly, none other than Michael Mann disagreed with Hansen’s climate acceleration hypothesis. Is it because Mann et al. know that doomerism is a political loser? Climate science is so political and PR-driven it is hard to know.

Recently in the Guardian, James Hansen unloaded on the complacent public for giving the world the current heat wave. How interesting, coming 35 years after he went alarmist to inspire exaggerated and falsified predictions of future temperature and sea-level-rise. And today, even alarmist scientists are pushing back on Hansen’s dire prediction of heating acceleration.

Here is another data point on the outlier Hansen. In 2006, he gave this ultimatum:

We have at most ten years—not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions.

This expired seven years ago, which should have shifted the public policy orientation of the author to adaptation rather than governmental/political mitigation.

Hansen’s Latest

“‘We are damned fools’: scientist who sounded climate alarm in 80s warns of worse to come,” Oliver Milman of the Guardian wrote (July 19, 2023). His article begins:

The world is shifting towards a superheated climate not seen in the past 1m years, prior to human existence, because “we are damned fools” for not acting upon warnings over the climate crisis, according to James Hansen, the US scientist who alerted the world to the greenhouse effect in the 1980s.

Hansen is quoted:

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…. It means we are damned fools. We have to taste it to believe it.

And continuing:

“Things will get worse before they get better. This does not mean that the extreme heat at a particular place this year will recur and grow each year. Weather fluctuations move things around. But the global average temperature will go up and the climate dice will be more and more loaded, including more extreme events.

Interestingly, none other than Michael Mann disagreed with Hansen’s climate acceleration hypothesis. Is it because Mann et al. know that doomerism is a political loser? Climate science is so political and PR-driven it is hard to know.

Hansen at His Best

Hansen’s surety on the physical science of climate change is a red flag. But at least the father of the climate alarm has recognized truths in energy (density as the driver) and the unhinged climate politics. Quotations follow:

• “Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.” (here)
• “Most environmental groups lived in fairyland, never working with utility experts — who must keep the lights on — and not understanding that most nations will always give priority to their immediate development and economic well-being over the long-term global warming issue.” (here)
• “Let’s be clear: the frequent comparison of the fossil fuel and tobacco industries is nonsense. Fossil fuels are a valuable energy source that has done yeomen service for humankind.” (here)
• “Fossil fuels provided the energy that today’s developed world employed to reach its current standard of living…. [I]f fossil fuels provide the only realistic available path to development and improved living standards, that path surely will be taken.” (here)
• “[The Paris Agreement is] a fraud really, a fake. It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.” (here)
• “The bad news: we approach the gas bag season – the next Conference of the Parties (COP26) is scheduled for November 1-12. Gas bag politicians … may have been honestly duped about the science and engineering, but many must be blatant hypocrites.” (here)

Hansen has also let Big Green have it in the mouth:

“Big Green consists of several ‘environmental’ organizations, including Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), each with $100+M budgets, each springing from high-minded useful beginnings, each with more high-priced lawyers than you can shake a stick at. EDF …was chief architect of the disastrous Kyoto lemon. NRDC proudly claims credit for Obama’s EPA strategy and foolishly allows it to migrate to Paris.”

– James Hansen, “Isolation of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: Part I,” November 27, 2015.