On June 24, 2008, the Associated Press ran a story about "top NASA scientist" James Hansen's warning to lawmakers on Capitol Hill that without "drastic action" to address global warming there was no hope for planet earth.
"James Hansen told Congress on Monday that the world has long passed the "dangerous level" for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and needs to get back to 1988 levels," according to the AP report printed by multiple other news sources. "He said Earth's atmosphere can only stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises."
Well, that was 16 years ago and... we're still here and there haven't been mass extinctions or dramatic changes to sea levels — according to NOAA, the sea levels between 2006 and 2015 increased 0.14 inches per year.
Hansen's 2008 testimony at which he was called "a prophet" by then Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) was to "mark the anniversary" of his 1988 testimony before Congress. In remarks commemorating his supposedly enlightened warnings, Hansen said the "most important" thing to do is to "block coal-fired power plants," a cause that President Joe Biden took up with his administration's unconstitutional — according to the Supreme Court — attempt to ban such power generation plants.
This climate prophet escalated his 1988 warnings about the planet's supposedly dire state, saying in 2008 that "there's still time to stop the worst, but not much time," according to AP. "We see a tipping point occurring right before our eyes," Hansen claimed, adding the "Arctic is the first tipping point and it's occurring exactly the way we said it would."
Well, in 2008, Hansen — the supposed "prophet" who insisted the tipping point was "occurring right before our eyes" — said that "in five to 10 years, the Arctic will be free of sea ice in the summer."
Now 16 years later...the Arctic is not, in fact, free of sea ice. Instead of admitting they are less than prophetic the experts simply move the deadline a few more years into the future and reissue their warnings while ignoring data that shows the amount of Arctic Sea Ice in January 2024 was the same as in January 2004.
Who's climate zoomin' who?
— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) February 13, 2024
'Hottest year' but January 2024 had as much Arctic sea ice as 20 years ago in January 2004.https://t.co/ad2sDjIY2b pic.twitter.com/XZxT4OhHtg
Did the AP update its story to reflect the fact that its glowing coverage of the prophetic Hansen turned out to be just one instance in a long line of alarmist warnings that never came true? Of course not.
Instead of noting that Hansen's warnings proved the opposite of prophetic, the AP continued to cite him as an expert on the topic. In 2018, the year by which the Arctic was supposed to be free of sea ice in the summer, AP published a story declaring: "James Hansen wishes he wasn’t so right about global warming." You can't make it up, but Hansen apparently can.
The warnings of "tipping points" and deadlines by which we must fundamentally change our societies to prevent mass extinctions aren't new now, weren't new in 2008, and were standard in the 1980s. Manhattan submerged under feet of seawater? Didn't happen. Florida cut off from the rest of the continental United States? You can still drive from Georgia to the Keys. Before "global warming" alarmism became "climate change," experts such as Hansen were warning of a new ice age.
16 years ago today, the Associated Press predicted that the Arctic would by ice-free by 2018. pic.twitter.com/3zMfXjqZB7
— "Experts" Posting Their Ls (@ExpertsPostLs) June 24, 2024