We Beat Global Warming!

"The Group of Eight industrialized nations joined with developing countries in agreeing Wednesday that average global temperatures shouldn't increase by more than 2 degrees Celsius in a significant new acknowledgement in the fight against global warming."

Thirty years of NASA satellite measurement show that, as of June 2009, we are essentially back to the temperatures of 1979. For those wishing to dispute the satellite numbers, they come from the same NASA that gives us James Hansen, the Apostle of Man-Caused Global Warming.

This is wonderful news, since even the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has steadily reduced their warming estimates: "In 1996 a new IPCC prediction was for an increase of 0.8 degrees to 3.5 degrees Celsius by 2100 - less than half the warming in twice the time."

This was followed by: "A U.S. government survey of the global climate model literature predicted even less warming - between 0.5 degrees and 2.0 degrees Celsius by 2100."

James Hansen, whose 1988 pronouncements started the clamor for action to prevent global warming, wrote in the 1998 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that "the forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with accuracy sufficient to define future climate change."

Now Hansen is even more forthright:

Urging caution regarding “implausible” and “unduly pessimistic” IPCC climate scenarios, NASA’s Hansen opts for observations to guide his forecasts of a 0.75ºC temperature rise by the year 2050.

NASA’s James Hansen, who is widely credited as being the “father of global warming” recently wrote that the climate change scenarios put forth in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2001 Third Assessment Report (TAR) “may be unduly pessimistic,” and that the IPCC extreme scenarios are “implausible.” In fact, he argues, the observed trends in atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane concentrations for the past several years fall below all IPCC scenarios, so consequently future temperature rise will most like be about 0.75ºC during the next 50 years.

Hansen makes these claims in articles including “Defusing the Global Warming Time Bomb,” which appeared in the March Scientific American. He bases his conclusions on simple empirical evidence that he considers more precise and reliable than model results “because it includes all the processes operating in the real world, even those we have not yet been smart enough to include in the models.”

Mr. Hansen, I'm sure you have his number, so would be so kind as to tell Mr. Gore all this so we can get on to solving real problems?

Like Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security unfunded liabilities of over $80 trillion, and they come due long before 2100.