“If you Ignore the recent Warming, There’s Been No warming”: Deniers Go Full Arm-Wave on Hansen’s 1988 Predictions June 25, 2018

There’s been a flurry of climate denial activity coinciding with the 30 anniversary of James Hansen’s uncannily accurate testimony to congress on climate change, June 23, 1988. If you have not seen my vid on this, it’s at the bottom of the post.

Prominently, the Rupert (Fox News) Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal published a piece by serial climate denier and right wing think tank shill Pat Michaels, and a lesser known flack.

The piece is full of holes. Basically, “there’s been no warming since 1998 if you ignore all that warming.”

Dana Nuccitelli shines a light in the Guardian. Zeke Hausfather, above, has some supporting information.

Guardian:

Dumbest sentence in WSJ oped: "Global surface temperature has not increased significantly since 2000, discounting the larger-than-usual El Niño of 2015-16." Translation: "Temperature has not increased if you omit the data showing it has increased." — Andrew Dessler (@AndrewDessler) June 22, 2018

It’s also worth noting that Hansen’s 1988 paper accurately predicted the geographic pattern of global warming, with the Arctic region warming fastest and more warming over land masses than the oceans. And climate deniers in the 1980s like Richard Lindzen were predicting “that the likelihood over the next century of greenhouse warming reaching magnitudes comparable to natural variability seems small.” If anyone deserves criticism for inaccurate climate predictions, it’s deniers like Lindzen who thought there wouldn’t be any significant warming, when in reality we’ve seen the dramatic global warming that James Hansen predicted. Michaels’ and Maue’s misinformation didn’t stop there: Once again, this unsupported assertion is completely wrong. I evaluated the IPCC’s global warming projections in my book, and showed in detail that theirs have been among the most accurate predictions. The climate model temperature projections in the 1990, 1995, 2001, and 2007 IPCC reports were all remarkably accurate; the IPCC predicted global warming almost exactly right.

Below – “Radio lab” style interview with former Cato Institute climate denial hack Jerry Taylor. Now woke, as my video interview shows.

In discussing his climate awakening, Taylor relates how he relied heavily on a colleague, who most observers take to be Pat Michaels, for his talking points on climate change – talking points that Taylor eventually recognized, to his horror, were dishonest manipulations. (if you’re pressed, cut to 5:45)

Below, a team of science all-stars gives their evaluation of Hansen’s predictions plus 30 years.