Many thanks, dear James, but this ole doc and armchair climate collapse observer prefers simple heat energy over production markers, such as the increasing amounts of melting ice sheets and C3S reporting 1.2T tons of melting global ice in 2024, where each pound is absorbing 144 BTUs of heat energy and the 321 M cubic miles of oceans absorbing 25ZJ annually, on top of the 375 ZJ already absorbed. Mark Lynas' recent 2020 "Our Final Warning" has data on global melting glaciers (p. 144), a last line of failing global AC: "...rate of glacial melt had doubled in the 2000-16 period as compared with 1975 to 2000, from 20 cm to nearly 45 cm per year of vertical ice averaged across all 650 largest glaciers". With the Fascist Dictatorship of King Tramp now hell bent on destroying our ability to study/track climate collapse, in service to the fossil fuel overlords, the future of life on this dying planet is bleak indeed. Any damn fool can see the handwriting on the wall and I keep asking potential parents to seriously consider the hell they will bring another of the 360,000 innocent lives born every day they might otherwise have been free to bring into being. IT'S JUST TOO DAMN LATE NOW. Have a blessed day and know that you are honored by the few of us left to turn off the lights on the way out!
Echoing Theodore Rethers' point, the degradation of the biosphere, especially major tropical forest areas also has a warming effect since the conversion of solar energy to latent heat through evapotranspiration and subsequent release at high altitude, used to allow more energy to escape to space. This reduction by other anthropogenic means adds to the ECS, driving warming even faster than just the GHGs and direct feedbacks.
We await the December temperature data with trepidation.
I can hear hundreds of millions of people in the West yawn. Science has been political for a long time, and politics is PR for special interests. When millions in the global north are starving, they will still be ignorant of climate science. People don't learn what they don't want to learn. You and your collaborators have been doing good work for decades, and here we are. OK, young folks, apathy around and find out, or dismantle global fossil-fueled, neoliberal, financialized capitalism and build a better way of life that puts living systems before profit. Look at all the people at the World Cup, and the sold-out White House lawn UFC event. It's pathetic. Your audience will hardly grow until we are all unplugged. It's war they want to juice the markets, and war is a mammoth heat engine and omnicidal machine. People don't care. They watch a video on YouTube and call it a day. Knowing what's what is not enough, and that's bad news for ten-year-olds.
Well put Julio! We are humble lobsters numbed by apathy here in the north in a slowly heating pot. We don't act on climate because right now it's "them" ( tropics ) not us boiling.
We need Dr Hansen but we gotta heed Dr Hansen. There should be many more actively following Dr Hansen.
We are apathetic until the water starts getting too hot and it will be hard to get out of the pot. As Earth 🔥.
Ain't that the truth. MTI civilization started collapsing the minute it started. Civilization has been ecocidal for thousands of years. We now have the power to end civilization rapidly, and lack the wisdom or desire to do anything about it. We will enjoy our toys until we can't anymore. Look to the suffering South for ideas about what's next. The War economy will ensure that nation-states do nothing to mitigate the horrors ahead.
You know me: I’ll go after almost any aspect of modernity, including technology, agriculture, or even written language. Let’s now take a big swipe at “The Law.” ...
Humans are much better adapted to common-sense, case-by-case judgment among intimately familiar “citizens” based on norms that evolve with the group according to longstanding context and what works well for them in that place. Only when hierarchies, possessions, and writing emerged did law come into being: mostly motivated to protect the elites—and their acquired power—from the masses.
If laws were to be boiled down to a single word, that word would probably be: MINE! The aggrandizers couldn’t have done civilization without it! Once laws were in place, the sixth mass extinction could charge forward! By vesting power in written words and securing mass acceptance in their fictional authority, the way was paved for a disastrous end to the vastly-older and successful legacy of ecological anarchy.
Indeed. It's a pity most are not conscious of these truths. Some books for those very few who may stumble upon your comment.
Most folks were glued to the UFC event on the White House lawn. Enough said. Knowing what's what is not enough. How will K species H. sapiens evolve after 8 billion people starve to death?
The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality is a highly regarded book by legal scholar Katharina Pistor. It explains how private attorneys use the law to transform ordinary assets into wealth-generating capital.
"Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States" by political scientist and anthropologist James C. Scott is a provocative book that challenges the traditional narrative of human civilization. It argues that the transition to agriculture and permanent settlement was a disaster for human health, freedom, and prosperity.
Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse is a provocative 2025 non-fiction book by Cambridge scholar Dr. Luke Kemp. It analyzes over 440 societal lifespans to argue that civilization's greatest enemy is itself—specifically, the rise of monopolistic "Goliaths" defined by high inequality and concentrated power.
How One Idea Built Civilization and Now Threatens to Destroy It (also released as Progress: A History of Humanity’s Worst Idea) by geographer and human ecologist Samuel Miller McDonald.
The moral hazard is not heeding Dr Hansen in earnest. As the World Cup gets underway the IPCC is setting up for the World COP with teams to kick the cans down the fields. As Earth 🔥.
James et al - " Based on this scientific evidence, we expect that when the horse race comes down the stretch, in November and December of this year, we will be riding a thoroughbred, a strong young horse, and Zeke will be atop a fading old nag. "
Love it. And I admire your confidence in the science work you do to stand up like this. I've seen this kind of Credibility Gap before. I know what is behind that curtain. The IPCC, and the Zeke's who enable the marketing of it, does not exist to solve climate change. It exists to summarize the science. That is a clerical mission, not an operational one.
There is no penalty for being wrong. No reward for being right. No mission to guide priorities. No yardstick to measure success. Just bandaids. Forever. Instead, every paper is treated as equally valid. Every uncertainty is buried in the same way. Every inconvenient signal is dumped into "natural variation" because there is no mission-driven reason to excavate it.
The system will not reform itself. But when it finally breaks, the people who saw it coming will be the only ones who know how to rebuild. You are one of those people Jim. You have been for 40 years. The one's you're now training will carry on for another 40 years. Well done.
Because even if your predictions turn out to not hit the mark, you are all so much more correct than all the others.
Am envisioning Dr Hansen on Secretariat at that infamous Belmont race waving his hat at the finish line with all the climate jockeys 🏇 many furlongs behind. "No dead heat here!", he yells out.
I noticed that too. He should have 100 times more followers than Bill McKibben and such. We gotta network him in. Restack his posts and ask other substackers if they will follow Dr Hansen and restack him. He's a caring scientist and not a self aggrandizing social media clown.
If the longer term co2 calibrations are historically grounded with a fully functioning biosphere would we need to recalibrate to the one we have. From my limited research, currently the biosphere stress response are what we would expect at a full degree more of warming so one would assume the time line response to co2 would change although the overall effect would not. Ie the curve would steepen and shorten. This would also change the time where the land and ocean would become net emitters. In Part you probably both right and this recalibration may help sort out relevance to faster biosphere breakdown which we are all responsible for co2 or not.
Thanks for continuing to do the work in this area, long after your "retirement." We need realistic assessments of our situation rather than the relatively optimistic assessments, which are still dire, themselves, but appear to give us more breathing room than probably exists.
Anxious to read this whole piece at this critical time. Bothers me that already of 6 comments there are 3 by some den, Prof Dave White, trying to discredit your science data.
Dear Jim Hansen, I hope you're doing well and are OK. I am hoping you and your team can launch a scathing retort to this by Zeke - a day late and a dollar short - he, dessler and trenberth annoy me no end - why do they need to lie so much about you and others besides their huge egos demand it?
Readers, the majority climate scientists who are doing the real work—the ones who support Hansen--the ones who don't appear in the media every 48 hours—are often quietly grateful that someone is paying attention to the details. Support them anyway you can. Push back. Ask tough scientific questions.
Hausfather's article, widely covered by outlets like PreventionWeb and Yale Climate Connections, states that the latest model runs show the 2026-27 El Niño is "not only very likely to be the strongest event since reliable records began—it may end up the strongest by a truly mind-blowing margin"
The 2027 Projection Convergence
Hausfather's updated 2027 central estimate is now 1.61°C (with a range up to 1.93°C), a significant upward revision from his December 2025 estimate of 1.57°C. He acknowledges this remains "a bit lower than Hansen's (1.7°C), but its consistent with the size of the year-over-year bumps we've seen in past strong El Niño events".
What's worth noting is that he's still framing this as a statistical extrapolation from past events—HE IS NOT YET engaging with ANY OF THE PHYSICAL MECHANISMS (high ECS, cloud feedback, aerosol unmasking) that Hansen argues are driving the acceleration.
The irony is precise: Hausfather built his reputation on cautious, model-consensus "fog of models" projections. Now, even those same models are projecting something so unprecedented he's having to grapple with the same kind of "uncharted waters" framing he previously used to dismiss Hansen's more physics-based approach.
He even acknowledges this directly: "Seasonal forecast systems have real, demonstrated skill at this lead time for ordinary events, but no ensemble has ever forecast (and then verified against) a 3.6°C El Niño, because one has never happened. Model agreement is reassuring, BUT IT IS NOT PROOF"
Why? Because it's not based on real physics--it's a hypothetical map based on modelling assumptions, missing data, guesses and unproven facts not found in empirical data evidence and real world physics.
Hausfather's statistical approach still effectively assumes the future will look like the past —extrapolating from historical ENSO behavior. But as the climate system moves into territory with no historical precedent, that assumption breaks down. Hansen's framework—rooted in high ECS, ocean heat content dynamics, and physical mechanisms—is now looking more prescient by the day.
The irony is now public: even the flawed--always running behind reality--model consensus has caught up to where Hansen's physics-based analysis has been all along.
The consensus modelling community ZEKE and Trenberth represent in that article and comments section, has become overly dependent on an imperfect modeling framework, and is resistant to evidence that challenges that framework's core assumptions. I have no faith CMIP7 will be any better, the internal processes, the unfounded estimate assumption not based on actual observations data or substantiated science - but missing data about feedbacks aerosols clouds etc.
They are too flawed (unreliable and myopic) because the errors and unconfirmed guesses are being passed on from one to the next. While they ignore actual real world physics and observations as shown by Hansen and HUNDREDS of others in the field that also get dismissed and minimized the the consensus people in the public eye and wrongly presented as the GOTO resident experts of everything. They aren't.
There is a well-documented pattern of epistemic closure in climate science when it comes to Hansen's more radical claims. They outright refuse to engage with the science and the data he presented over years. Where is the satellite data for aerosols and cloud dynamics and feedbacks and analyses? It does not exist yet they claim it's in the Modelling Fog output.
The debate isn't "was aerosol reduction the cause?" It's "how do we explain the simultaneous acceleration of warming, albedo decline, ocean heat uptake changes, and observed post-El Niño temperature floor?"
"I'm not arguing that aerosols nor the IMO change are the sole cause—but neither is Hansen. The question is whether the aerosol forcing was underestimated and whether, when combined with high ECS and cloud feedbacks, it explains the post-2015 acceleration better than the standard model ensemble."
Meanwhile no one is using satellite measurements to determine any of this. They guess and draw implications instead based on the already flawed "modelling fog."
"The 300m heat anomaly gave a 4-month lead time. If that diagnostic is wrong, let's see the physical critique. If it's right, then we need to update our understanding of how the ocean stores and releases heat."
Hausfather, Trenberth, Dessler, Mann, Schmidt at realclimate just ignore all these differences Hansen brings to the table. As if they doesn't exist - they keep deferring to NINO3.4 surface temps - ignore paleo-climate implications instead.
"ACID TEST - The post-2023-24 El Niño temperature floor was a test. The floor didn't fall to where models expected. That's not a 'trash talk'—that's a data point."
The Consensus Model Fog people ignore that too. They have no idea what Hansen et al (the team behind him) have been saying for years. It's as if they're dyslexic and cannot see it.
Came across this ai response: Hansen’s recalibration of climate sensitivity to 4-5°C for doubled CO2—supported by four independent lines of evidence from ice ages to satellite data—fundamentally challenges the narrative we’ve been operating under, and if correct, means we’re staring at far more committed warming than IPCC models have led the public to believe. What makes this projection so valuable isn’t just the bold call that 2026 will break the 2024 record, but the explicit laying out of scientific reasoning behind it, which creates an opportunity for genuine scientific learning rather than the opacity that often clouds climate modeling. The divergence between Hansen’s assessment and Zeke Hausfather’s 26.6% probability for 2026 being warmest highlights a critical problem: we have major disagreements among climate scientists about fundamental parameters—aerosol forcing, climate sensitivity, cloud feedbacks—yet the public hears these as settled science. The double whammy Hansen identifies—higher climate sensitivity plus additional warming from aerosol reductions—suggests that even our most concerning climate scenarios may be underestimating the speed and magnitude of change in the coming decades. Whether the “thoroughbred” or the “fading nag” finishes first come November will provide a data point, but what we really need is a scientific culture willing to acknowledge deep uncertainties and revisit foundational assumptions rather than defending established models.
I heard the vortexes that were circulating the Earth's poles collapsed. From my layman's view the circulation patterns now look like some planetary gear arrangement out of an auto transmission. Anyway, I am wondering how these new polar circulation patterns might interact with the upcoming El-Nino? Like in North America, (I live in Virginia) are we also going to be seeing super hot days interspersed with some somewhat cools days in the places where we live?
Good question, Robert, as these polar vortexes interact with the jet streams and weather patterns tending to stall more often, and now more irregular, and then the result can be days of hot weather or rain, like in Texas some years ago with over 3 ft of rain!. Or deep freezes in Texas, can it continue to get worse and stall with rain for 40 days? To a fellow retired engineer, from Nfld Canada, where the Labrador current sends icebergs and sudden ocean temperatures drops and effects on cod and capelin, which stocks collapsed in the late 1980s, my interest in climate change for 43 years, so what type of engineer as to your background? Henson is confident of his research data and I expect he's right.
Got a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Worked in the Shipbuilding Industry for 38 years. I trust Henson's work also; that is why I regularly read his blogs.
No it isn't shift in tilt of the earth warming not global warming see data page on cctruth.org. The IPCC admitted their reports are deliberate science fiction week of May 11th 2026. Globalchange.gov was shutdown. https://cctruth.org/ipcc.pdf
Has anyone looked at what the research shows, keeping in mind that war emissions are estimates from scientific tracking groups (military emissions aren't counted in official national climate reports, so these are the best available figures).
The CO₂ picture
Russia–Ukraine war (4 years, Feb 2022 – Feb 2026): ~311 million tonnes CO₂e 
• Breakdown: warfare/fuel ~37%, reconstruction ~23%, landscape fires ~23%, energy infrastructure attacks and refugee movement the rest 
• Comparison: that's France's entire annual emissions, or half of Germany's — for a single war . Social cost estimated at $57+ billion .
Israel–Gaza war: ~33 million tonnes CO₂e total 
• Active military operations alone (bombs, rockets, flights): ~1.3 Mt; the ~70,000 tonnes of bombs delivered account for roughly 390,000 tCO₂e from bombing flights . The bulk comes from rebuilding destroyed infrastructure — Gaza generated ~39 million tonnes of rubble .
• Comparison: equal to Jordan's entire annual emissions or 7.6 million gasoline cars driven for a year .
US/Israel–Iran war: ~5 million tonnes CO₂e in just the first 14 days 
• Biggest chunk was destroyed buildings (2.4 Mt), then oil facility fires (1.88 Mt — burning 2.5–5.9 million barrels of oil, which caused Tehran's infamous "black rain"), then military fuel use (~529,000 t) 
• Comparison: two weeks of that war emitted more than Iceland does in a full year, and at that burn rate equals the combined annual emissions of the world's 84 lowest-emitting countries .
The sulfur picture (less data, but real)
Nobody has published a clean total for SO₂ from these wars, but here's what's known:
• Oil facility fires are the main SO₂ source — the Tehran refinery (225,000 bbl/day) and Shahran fuel depot fires released sulfur dioxide, NOx, black carbon, and VOCs over a city of ~10 million people . Tehran's geography (ringed by mountains) traps this pollution, and Iran already loses ~59,000 people a year to air pollution .
• Explosives and burning diesel also emit SO₂, but at small scales compared to oil fires.
• For scale: a single major oil depot fire can release thousands of tonnes of SO₂ — comparable to what one coal plant emits in months — but concentrated over days and directly over civilians.
The bottom line
Combined, these three conflicts have added roughly 350+ million tonnes of CO₂e — equivalent to adding another country the size of France to the planet for a year, or ~1% of total annual global emissions (40 billion tonnes). That sounds small globally, but the point is it's wasted emissions eating into the remaining carbon budget
There is a new El Niño out there and it was officially declared already on June 11 by NOAA. This is both unusually early in the year and very soon since the last El Niño in 2023-24. Another remarkable thing is the seasonal forecasts, which for a couple of months have indicated that it may well be at strengths by the end of the year that we have not seen before. All these three aspects combined seem to make this El Niño different to the previous ones.
IPCC must stand against clean air health policies and recommend homogeneization of sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere. No choice! This is an engineering problem not a philosophical one, “green” ideologies can do worse than science and technologies.
Many thanks, dear James, but this ole doc and armchair climate collapse observer prefers simple heat energy over production markers, such as the increasing amounts of melting ice sheets and C3S reporting 1.2T tons of melting global ice in 2024, where each pound is absorbing 144 BTUs of heat energy and the 321 M cubic miles of oceans absorbing 25ZJ annually, on top of the 375 ZJ already absorbed. Mark Lynas' recent 2020 "Our Final Warning" has data on global melting glaciers (p. 144), a last line of failing global AC: "...rate of glacial melt had doubled in the 2000-16 period as compared with 1975 to 2000, from 20 cm to nearly 45 cm per year of vertical ice averaged across all 650 largest glaciers". With the Fascist Dictatorship of King Tramp now hell bent on destroying our ability to study/track climate collapse, in service to the fossil fuel overlords, the future of life on this dying planet is bleak indeed. Any damn fool can see the handwriting on the wall and I keep asking potential parents to seriously consider the hell they will bring another of the 360,000 innocent lives born every day they might otherwise have been free to bring into being. IT'S JUST TOO DAMN LATE NOW. Have a blessed day and know that you are honored by the few of us left to turn off the lights on the way out!
Echoing Theodore Rethers' point, the degradation of the biosphere, especially major tropical forest areas also has a warming effect since the conversion of solar energy to latent heat through evapotranspiration and subsequent release at high altitude, used to allow more energy to escape to space. This reduction by other anthropogenic means adds to the ECS, driving warming even faster than just the GHGs and direct feedbacks.
We await the December temperature data with trepidation.
"..the degradation of the biosphere.."
Like suggested in 2015 by Jeffrey Masek (NASA), are land processes going to saturate?
Trees may not be able to store as much planet-heating carbon as hoped, a study suggests, with researchers finding photosynthesis does not always lead to wood growth. Many of the models estimate the uptake using the levels of photosynthesis, rather than actual wood growth. https://earthclimate.eu/2026/06/21/trees-may-not-store-as-much-carbon-as-previously-thought/
I can hear hundreds of millions of people in the West yawn. Science has been political for a long time, and politics is PR for special interests. When millions in the global north are starving, they will still be ignorant of climate science. People don't learn what they don't want to learn. You and your collaborators have been doing good work for decades, and here we are. OK, young folks, apathy around and find out, or dismantle global fossil-fueled, neoliberal, financialized capitalism and build a better way of life that puts living systems before profit. Look at all the people at the World Cup, and the sold-out White House lawn UFC event. It's pathetic. Your audience will hardly grow until we are all unplugged. It's war they want to juice the markets, and war is a mammoth heat engine and omnicidal machine. People don't care. They watch a video on YouTube and call it a day. Knowing what's what is not enough, and that's bad news for ten-year-olds.
Well put Julio! We are humble lobsters numbed by apathy here in the north in a slowly heating pot. We don't act on climate because right now it's "them" ( tropics ) not us boiling.
We need Dr Hansen but we gotta heed Dr Hansen. There should be many more actively following Dr Hansen.
We are apathetic until the water starts getting too hot and it will be hard to get out of the pot. As Earth 🔥.
Ain't that the truth. MTI civilization started collapsing the minute it started. Civilization has been ecocidal for thousands of years. We now have the power to end civilization rapidly, and lack the wisdom or desire to do anything about it. We will enjoy our toys until we can't anymore. Look to the suffering South for ideas about what's next. The War economy will ensure that nation-states do nothing to mitigate the horrors ahead.
You know me: I’ll go after almost any aspect of modernity, including technology, agriculture, or even written language. Let’s now take a big swipe at “The Law.” ...
Humans are much better adapted to common-sense, case-by-case judgment among intimately familiar “citizens” based on norms that evolve with the group according to longstanding context and what works well for them in that place. Only when hierarchies, possessions, and writing emerged did law come into being: mostly motivated to protect the elites—and their acquired power—from the masses.
If laws were to be boiled down to a single word, that word would probably be: MINE! The aggrandizers couldn’t have done civilization without it! Once laws were in place, the sixth mass extinction could charge forward! By vesting power in written words and securing mass acceptance in their fictional authority, the way was paved for a disastrous end to the vastly-older and successful legacy of ecological anarchy.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2026/06/a-lawful-anarchist/ and the comments section may be helpful too
Indeed. It's a pity most are not conscious of these truths. Some books for those very few who may stumble upon your comment.
Most folks were glued to the UFC event on the White House lawn. Enough said. Knowing what's what is not enough. How will K species H. sapiens evolve after 8 billion people starve to death?
The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality is a highly regarded book by legal scholar Katharina Pistor. It explains how private attorneys use the law to transform ordinary assets into wealth-generating capital.
"Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States" by political scientist and anthropologist James C. Scott is a provocative book that challenges the traditional narrative of human civilization. It argues that the transition to agriculture and permanent settlement was a disaster for human health, freedom, and prosperity.
Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse is a provocative 2025 non-fiction book by Cambridge scholar Dr. Luke Kemp. It analyzes over 440 societal lifespans to argue that civilization's greatest enemy is itself—specifically, the rise of monopolistic "Goliaths" defined by high inequality and concentrated power.
How One Idea Built Civilization and Now Threatens to Destroy It (also released as Progress: A History of Humanity’s Worst Idea) by geographer and human ecologist Samuel Miller McDonald.
If people read more and talked about the books face-to-face... https://www.cospolon.eu/book-recommendations
As Earth 🔥 it is clear there is a trichotomy of the human tribe:
1. Lavish Savage - the Goliath that plunders all for self and doesn't care as the fire rates Earth.
2.Humble 🦞- Tries to get by and is almost clueless that the water in the pot they are in is boiling.
3.Heated Citizen - Sees the madness and calls it out.
Nice way to characterize the predicament.
Sean, I'd also like to share this with you. https://youtu.be/aVwrUsib4vU?si=QNT1y0_Cb2yjY96Q
https://youtu.be/vb8qQcShWUk?si=LjXaAlrw1EbIm4sn
Anarchy is unbridled entropy. The laws of physics allude to governance by their very nature as being unbound rules.
I have referenced Tom's blog for years. It's keystone info, ideas, thoughts, and feelings.
The moral hazard is not heeding Dr Hansen in earnest. As the World Cup gets underway the IPCC is setting up for the World COP with teams to kick the cans down the fields. As Earth 🔥.
James et al - " Based on this scientific evidence, we expect that when the horse race comes down the stretch, in November and December of this year, we will be riding a thoroughbred, a strong young horse, and Zeke will be atop a fading old nag. "
Love it. And I admire your confidence in the science work you do to stand up like this. I've seen this kind of Credibility Gap before. I know what is behind that curtain. The IPCC, and the Zeke's who enable the marketing of it, does not exist to solve climate change. It exists to summarize the science. That is a clerical mission, not an operational one.
There is no penalty for being wrong. No reward for being right. No mission to guide priorities. No yardstick to measure success. Just bandaids. Forever. Instead, every paper is treated as equally valid. Every uncertainty is buried in the same way. Every inconvenient signal is dumped into "natural variation" because there is no mission-driven reason to excavate it.
The system will not reform itself. But when it finally breaks, the people who saw it coming will be the only ones who know how to rebuild. You are one of those people Jim. You have been for 40 years. The one's you're now training will carry on for another 40 years. Well done.
Because even if your predictions turn out to not hit the mark, you are all so much more correct than all the others.
Am envisioning Dr Hansen on Secretariat at that infamous Belmont race waving his hat at the finish line with all the climate jockeys 🏇 many furlongs behind. "No dead heat here!", he yells out.
Can't understand why tens of thousands are not reading/ liking/ commenting, on Hanson's excellent research.
I noticed that too. He should have 100 times more followers than Bill McKibben and such. We gotta network him in. Restack his posts and ask other substackers if they will follow Dr Hansen and restack him. He's a caring scientist and not a self aggrandizing social media clown.
If the longer term co2 calibrations are historically grounded with a fully functioning biosphere would we need to recalibrate to the one we have. From my limited research, currently the biosphere stress response are what we would expect at a full degree more of warming so one would assume the time line response to co2 would change although the overall effect would not. Ie the curve would steepen and shorten. This would also change the time where the land and ocean would become net emitters. In Part you probably both right and this recalibration may help sort out relevance to faster biosphere breakdown which we are all responsible for co2 or not.
Thanks for continuing to do the work in this area, long after your "retirement." We need realistic assessments of our situation rather than the relatively optimistic assessments, which are still dire, themselves, but appear to give us more breathing room than probably exists.
Anxious to read this whole piece at this critical time. Bothers me that already of 6 comments there are 3 by some den, Prof Dave White, trying to discredit your science data.
Dear Jim Hansen, I hope you're doing well and are OK. I am hoping you and your team can launch a scathing retort to this by Zeke - a day late and a dollar short - he, dessler and trenberth annoy me no end - why do they need to lie so much about you and others besides their huge egos demand it?
https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/the-strongest-el-nino-ever
Readers, the majority climate scientists who are doing the real work—the ones who support Hansen--the ones who don't appear in the media every 48 hours—are often quietly grateful that someone is paying attention to the details. Support them anyway you can. Push back. Ask tough scientific questions.
Hausfather's article, widely covered by outlets like PreventionWeb and Yale Climate Connections, states that the latest model runs show the 2026-27 El Niño is "not only very likely to be the strongest event since reliable records began—it may end up the strongest by a truly mind-blowing margin"
The 2027 Projection Convergence
Hausfather's updated 2027 central estimate is now 1.61°C (with a range up to 1.93°C), a significant upward revision from his December 2025 estimate of 1.57°C. He acknowledges this remains "a bit lower than Hansen's (1.7°C), but its consistent with the size of the year-over-year bumps we've seen in past strong El Niño events".
What's worth noting is that he's still framing this as a statistical extrapolation from past events—HE IS NOT YET engaging with ANY OF THE PHYSICAL MECHANISMS (high ECS, cloud feedback, aerosol unmasking) that Hansen argues are driving the acceleration.
The irony is precise: Hausfather built his reputation on cautious, model-consensus "fog of models" projections. Now, even those same models are projecting something so unprecedented he's having to grapple with the same kind of "uncharted waters" framing he previously used to dismiss Hansen's more physics-based approach.
He even acknowledges this directly: "Seasonal forecast systems have real, demonstrated skill at this lead time for ordinary events, but no ensemble has ever forecast (and then verified against) a 3.6°C El Niño, because one has never happened. Model agreement is reassuring, BUT IT IS NOT PROOF"
Why? Because it's not based on real physics--it's a hypothetical map based on modelling assumptions, missing data, guesses and unproven facts not found in empirical data evidence and real world physics.
Hausfather's statistical approach still effectively assumes the future will look like the past —extrapolating from historical ENSO behavior. But as the climate system moves into territory with no historical precedent, that assumption breaks down. Hansen's framework—rooted in high ECS, ocean heat content dynamics, and physical mechanisms—is now looking more prescient by the day.
The irony is now public: even the flawed--always running behind reality--model consensus has caught up to where Hansen's physics-based analysis has been all along.
The consensus modelling community ZEKE and Trenberth represent in that article and comments section, has become overly dependent on an imperfect modeling framework, and is resistant to evidence that challenges that framework's core assumptions. I have no faith CMIP7 will be any better, the internal processes, the unfounded estimate assumption not based on actual observations data or substantiated science - but missing data about feedbacks aerosols clouds etc.
They are too flawed (unreliable and myopic) because the errors and unconfirmed guesses are being passed on from one to the next. While they ignore actual real world physics and observations as shown by Hansen and HUNDREDS of others in the field that also get dismissed and minimized the the consensus people in the public eye and wrongly presented as the GOTO resident experts of everything. They aren't.
There is a well-documented pattern of epistemic closure in climate science when it comes to Hansen's more radical claims. They outright refuse to engage with the science and the data he presented over years. Where is the satellite data for aerosols and cloud dynamics and feedbacks and analyses? It does not exist yet they claim it's in the Modelling Fog output.
The debate isn't "was aerosol reduction the cause?" It's "how do we explain the simultaneous acceleration of warming, albedo decline, ocean heat uptake changes, and observed post-El Niño temperature floor?"
"I'm not arguing that aerosols nor the IMO change are the sole cause—but neither is Hansen. The question is whether the aerosol forcing was underestimated and whether, when combined with high ECS and cloud feedbacks, it explains the post-2015 acceleration better than the standard model ensemble."
Meanwhile no one is using satellite measurements to determine any of this. They guess and draw implications instead based on the already flawed "modelling fog."
"The 300m heat anomaly gave a 4-month lead time. If that diagnostic is wrong, let's see the physical critique. If it's right, then we need to update our understanding of how the ocean stores and releases heat."
Hausfather, Trenberth, Dessler, Mann, Schmidt at realclimate just ignore all these differences Hansen brings to the table. As if they doesn't exist - they keep deferring to NINO3.4 surface temps - ignore paleo-climate implications instead.
"ACID TEST - The post-2023-24 El Niño temperature floor was a test. The floor didn't fall to where models expected. That's not a 'trash talk'—that's a data point."
The Consensus Model Fog people ignore that too. They have no idea what Hansen et al (the team behind him) have been saying for years. It's as if they're dyslexic and cannot see it.
Came across this ai response: Hansen’s recalibration of climate sensitivity to 4-5°C for doubled CO2—supported by four independent lines of evidence from ice ages to satellite data—fundamentally challenges the narrative we’ve been operating under, and if correct, means we’re staring at far more committed warming than IPCC models have led the public to believe. What makes this projection so valuable isn’t just the bold call that 2026 will break the 2024 record, but the explicit laying out of scientific reasoning behind it, which creates an opportunity for genuine scientific learning rather than the opacity that often clouds climate modeling. The divergence between Hansen’s assessment and Zeke Hausfather’s 26.6% probability for 2026 being warmest highlights a critical problem: we have major disagreements among climate scientists about fundamental parameters—aerosol forcing, climate sensitivity, cloud feedbacks—yet the public hears these as settled science. The double whammy Hansen identifies—higher climate sensitivity plus additional warming from aerosol reductions—suggests that even our most concerning climate scenarios may be underestimating the speed and magnitude of change in the coming decades. Whether the “thoroughbred” or the “fading nag” finishes first come November will provide a data point, but what we really need is a scientific culture willing to acknowledge deep uncertainties and revisit foundational assumptions rather than defending established models.
I heard the vortexes that were circulating the Earth's poles collapsed. From my layman's view the circulation patterns now look like some planetary gear arrangement out of an auto transmission. Anyway, I am wondering how these new polar circulation patterns might interact with the upcoming El-Nino? Like in North America, (I live in Virginia) are we also going to be seeing super hot days interspersed with some somewhat cools days in the places where we live?
Good question, Robert, as these polar vortexes interact with the jet streams and weather patterns tending to stall more often, and now more irregular, and then the result can be days of hot weather or rain, like in Texas some years ago with over 3 ft of rain!. Or deep freezes in Texas, can it continue to get worse and stall with rain for 40 days? To a fellow retired engineer, from Nfld Canada, where the Labrador current sends icebergs and sudden ocean temperatures drops and effects on cod and capelin, which stocks collapsed in the late 1980s, my interest in climate change for 43 years, so what type of engineer as to your background? Henson is confident of his research data and I expect he's right.
Got a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Worked in the Shipbuilding Industry for 38 years. I trust Henson's work also; that is why I regularly read his blogs.
No it isn't shift in tilt of the earth warming not global warming see data page on cctruth.org. The IPCC admitted their reports are deliberate science fiction week of May 11th 2026. Globalchange.gov was shutdown. https://cctruth.org/ipcc.pdf
Massive Fraud and waste in federal government.
https://cctruth.org/fraud.pdf
see greenhouse gas page on cctruth.org measured data
Donate on cctruth.org its tax deductible.
I'm all for planting trees.
Has anyone looked at what the research shows, keeping in mind that war emissions are estimates from scientific tracking groups (military emissions aren't counted in official national climate reports, so these are the best available figures).
The CO₂ picture
Russia–Ukraine war (4 years, Feb 2022 – Feb 2026): ~311 million tonnes CO₂e 
• Breakdown: warfare/fuel ~37%, reconstruction ~23%, landscape fires ~23%, energy infrastructure attacks and refugee movement the rest 
• Comparison: that's France's entire annual emissions, or half of Germany's — for a single war . Social cost estimated at $57+ billion .
Israel–Gaza war: ~33 million tonnes CO₂e total 
• Active military operations alone (bombs, rockets, flights): ~1.3 Mt; the ~70,000 tonnes of bombs delivered account for roughly 390,000 tCO₂e from bombing flights . The bulk comes from rebuilding destroyed infrastructure — Gaza generated ~39 million tonnes of rubble .
• Comparison: equal to Jordan's entire annual emissions or 7.6 million gasoline cars driven for a year .
US/Israel–Iran war: ~5 million tonnes CO₂e in just the first 14 days 
• Biggest chunk was destroyed buildings (2.4 Mt), then oil facility fires (1.88 Mt — burning 2.5–5.9 million barrels of oil, which caused Tehran's infamous "black rain"), then military fuel use (~529,000 t) 
• Comparison: two weeks of that war emitted more than Iceland does in a full year, and at that burn rate equals the combined annual emissions of the world's 84 lowest-emitting countries .
The sulfur picture (less data, but real)
Nobody has published a clean total for SO₂ from these wars, but here's what's known:
• Oil facility fires are the main SO₂ source — the Tehran refinery (225,000 bbl/day) and Shahran fuel depot fires released sulfur dioxide, NOx, black carbon, and VOCs over a city of ~10 million people . Tehran's geography (ringed by mountains) traps this pollution, and Iran already loses ~59,000 people a year to air pollution .
• Explosives and burning diesel also emit SO₂, but at small scales compared to oil fires.
• For scale: a single major oil depot fire can release thousands of tonnes of SO₂ — comparable to what one coal plant emits in months — but concentrated over days and directly over civilians.
The bottom line
Combined, these three conflicts have added roughly 350+ million tonnes of CO₂e — equivalent to adding another country the size of France to the planet for a year, or ~1% of total annual global emissions (40 billion tonnes). That sounds small globally, but the point is it's wasted emissions eating into the remaining carbon budget
How the mighty have fallen
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/07/this-new-el-nino-is-different/
There is a new El Niño out there and it was officially declared already on June 11 by NOAA. This is both unusually early in the year and very soon since the last El Niño in 2023-24. Another remarkable thing is the seasonal forecasts, which for a couple of months have indicated that it may well be at strengths by the end of the year that we have not seen before. All these three aspects combined seem to make this El Niño different to the previous ones.
(I am looking fwd to Jim's next item)
IPCC must stand against clean air health policies and recommend homogeneization of sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere. No choice! This is an engineering problem not a philosophical one, “green” ideologies can do worse than science and technologies.