Where would the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW, aka: man-made global warming) be if it weren’t for the climate models that forecast devastatingly high temperatures, sea level change that will make hundreds of millions of people homeless, mass extinctions of all manner of creatures, etc? What if those forecasts consistently were in error? You would have to conclude, that the warmers don’t have a viable theory and they would quickly fade away. Well, the forecasts are consistently in error and warmers still have not faded away. So what is going on?
Because it is Father’s Day, let’s look at James Hansen’s (father of the current man-made global warming cult) forecast presented to the US Congress in 1988:
Chart from: James Hansen et al. Global Climate Changes as Forecast by Goddard Institute for Space Studies Three-Dimensional Model journal of Geophysical Research.
The chart forecasts a global temperature increase that will be caused by different levels of CO2 emissions. Scenarios “A” (blue) which postulated an increase in CO2 emissions by 1.5% per year and “B” (green): constant increase in CO2 emissions after 2000 and “C” (red): no increase in CO2 emissions after 2000. The black line is the actual global temperature.
Since 2000, the CO2 emissions have increased about 2.5% per year. So one would expect the observed temperature to have exceeded the blue line “A”. Yet we see the actual temperature increase matching or perhaps coming in lower than that forecast by the red line “C” that was based upon a forecast of O% per year increase in CO2 after 2000. How many ways can you say FAIL!!!
Hansen’s influential presentation was widely broadcast and had a profound effect on Congress. If you had been in the Capitol that day, you might have become concerned. But with time, the Hansen forecast has been demonstrated to be very wrong. The Chart above came from Wattsupwiththat (WUWT) blog and the comments by readers to the WUWT posting are quite interesting. The warmers that commented essentially said—well, sure, it was wrong but some things happened; volcanoes, less fluorocarbons in the atmosphere, less methane in the atmosphere and the positive feedback he used is now imagined to be less than it was imagined to be at the time of the Hansen forecast.
Wow, that is a lot of things going wrong considering we are still being told that only CO2 really matters. Isn’t it amazing that when the forecasts play out for a lot of years (in Hansen’s case, 24 years), only then can you find out if they are really any good. Forecasting today what the world will look like in 2100 is an interesting exercise but only fools would believe that it was likely to be accurate.
We know that money and control drives the warmers and the politicians to continue this charade. But the media has bought into this lock, stock and barrel. What drives them? I know that bad news (fear of global warming caused catastrophe) sells more papers than good news. And the falling readership that the mainstream media is experiencing, makes them desperate to continue echoing everything the green alarmists say. Why are there no latter-day Woodwards and Bernsteins that want to expose the lies after some 20 years of flat global temperatures and failed predictions? Skeptics are gaining the upper hand with regard to public opinion, but if the media owned up to the facts and began questioning the AGW theory, this round of Lysenkoism could be ended.
cbdakota
Climate Change Sanity 
//Wow, that is a lot of things going wrong considering we are still being told that only CO2 really matters. //
That would be bad news for AGW if indeed they claimed ‘only Co2 really matters.’ Unfortunately for you, no climatologist I read says that! They acknowledge *all* sorts of forcings. It’s the Denialists who say ‘only Co2 really matters’. In quoting that myth yet again, I’m afraid you just took one for the team.
I consider your comments contradictory. You say: ”That would be bad news for AGW if indeed they claimed ‘only Co2 really matters.’ Unfortunately for you, no climatologist I read says that! They acknowledge *all* sorts of forcings.” Then you tell us that “all” sorts of forcings are going on but they are just “waves” And then you come in with the coup de grace saying: “But here’s the real kicker. Increasing the Co2 in the atmosphere is like leaving the tap on. Sooner or later, those ‘waves’ are going to overflow and do some damage. Just wait till El Nino switches.”
So, CO2 IS the real thing in your mind after all.
Oh, by-the-way, which of us is building straw men? This is rather an odd statement: ”It’s the Denialists who say ‘only Co2 really matters’.
Just when I thought we skeptics believed that the globe is warming and believed that it is mostly due to natural causes. I guess I have not talked to the right strawmen.
cbdakota
Use a longer sweep of time to eliminate the ‘waves’ and see that the ‘tap’ has been left on.
Maybe if you watch this you might see how silly it is to quote WUWT. It’s the climate Denialist’s that have made ridiculous predictions of ‘cooling over the next 12 to 18 months’…. just before America experienced record daytime temperatures and even MORE telling, record night time temperatures. The ‘lows’ at night are just too high. Exactly as those who ‘believe in’ the demonstrable physics of a heat trapping gas might predict.
Yes, Co2 is the main culprit. But, as you suggested above, it is not the ONLY forcing in town. Imagine weather and ENSO cycles are like a kid playing in the bath. There are going to be waves, no doubt about it. The climatologists discuss and analyse those waves. You’ve straw-manned them as denying those waves. They don’t. But here’s the real kicker. Increasing the Co2 in the atmosphere is like leaving the tap on. Sooner or later, those ‘waves’ are going to overflow and do some damage. Just wait till El Nino switches back. Then you’ll eat your words.