10-minute trainer: Hansen's faulty faith at Wirth's Sauna Session in 1988

Hansen was a performer in an event stage-managed by Senator Timothy Wirth to make an impact on the US Congress.  Wirth sneaked in the night before and opened all the windows in the room to be used for the hearing, thereby effectively disabling the air-conditioning for what was expected to be one of the  hottest days of the year. This childish piece of manipulation should not be forgotten.  Worse actions than that were to follow in pursuit of political goals through scaring the world about our impact on climate, but this is an early piece of arrogant and shoddy behaviour.  As for Hansen in his role as useful idiot, he put on a good show.  His faith in his vision of the future has turned out to be a faulty one.  The blog post by Steven Goddard points out how wrong he was on hot summers in the USA.  In the same year, he gave another interview in which he assured a journalist that roads in New York would be flooded by rising seas in 20 years.  That too has turned our badly for him.  Several years after this interview was published, he denied  this, claiming he said 40 years not 20 (but even 40 years is not being remotely supported by trends).  By then it was clear just how foolish the claim was from a scientific point of view.  It was not so foolish from an agit-prop one, and whether or not Hansen was aware of that, his words will have served to mislead many.

Everything below re-blogged from Real Science (Steven Goddard)

Posted on August 13, 2014by stevengoddard

On a hot day in 1988, Hansen told this to the US Congress

His Bold Statement Transforms the Debate On Greenhouse Effect

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

Published: August 23, 1988

He held up one die representing the climate for the period 1950-1980. Two sides were white for an average summer, and two other sides were blue for colder-than-average summers. The other two sides were red for hotter-than-average summers. Thus, on a roll of the die for that period, there were two chances in six of having a hot summer at any given location in the country.

Then Dr. Hansen picked up the die for the 1990’s and explained:

”If our climate model calculations are approximately correct, the greenhouse warming in the 1990’s will be sufficient to shift the probabilities such that the chance of a hot summer in most of the country will be in the range of 55 to 80 percent. Four sides of the die are red. I believe it is obvious that the man in the street will notice that by then the dice are loaded. There will be more hot summers than normal, and the hottest ones will be hotter than they used to be.” 

His forecast couldn’t possibly have done any worse. He gave it during the hottest summer on record in DC, and this year has been second coolest

So far this year, less than 2.5% of days in Maryland have been over 90 degrees, which is the second lowest on record. Compare to the peak year of 1988, when over 19% of days through August 11 were over 90 degrees.

For the entire US, the frequency of 90 degree days has plummeted, and is near record lows