Image by Levi Guzman.
Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate, New York Times, June 24, 1988: On June 23, 1988, NASA scientist Dr. James E. Hansen testified before the U.S. Senate, stating he was “99 percent certain that human-induced global warming had begun.”
Over the intervening 38 years, Dr. James Hansen has proven to be climate science’s most reliable academic voice expecting a climate-disruptive future. Now, it’s officially here and it’s a rising star on nightly news broadcasts across the world, if it’s not wildly burning, it’s flash-flooding. The leadership of the world has failed the science. Yet, today’s dangerous disruptive climate system did not have to happen.
What’s next?
James Hansen’s most recent research article explains his expectation of deeper climate system disruptions immediately ahead, entitled: “Super-Duper El Niño and the Bigger Problem,” d/d August 21, 2026, “The El Niño has blossomed. It is off the charts. The usual measures of El Niño have blown past prior record levels in the period with good data, even though maximum effects are still several months in the future.”
The Abstract of this article ominously states: “The ongoing El Niño is already the strongest in the modern record. However, increasing global anomalies, poleward shifting of climate zones, increased rainfall extremes, more rapid flash droughts and fires, and marine heat waves are a result of accelerating human-made global warming. The abnormal El Niño strength is itself likely human-driven.”
Hansen identifies the early indicators of the upcoming Super-Duper El Niño: (1) the heat anomaly in the upper 300 meters of Equatorial Pacific Ocean already exceeds prior super El Niño events “that drove extreme global warming” and (2) sea surface temperature (SST) in the equatorial Pacific also “far exceeds” prior events. These are the leading indicators of what to expect from the current El Niño over coming months deep into 2027. Every data point is at an extreme reading, well beyond the historical norm. It spells ‘trouble ahead.’
This is not a pretty picture, as it possibly makes the devastating 2026 climate system look like a walk in the park. The depth of the problem, in Hansen’s words: “The super-duper El Niño arrives on a planet already infected by human-made global warming. Heat waves are increasing, at sea and on land.”
Using a baseball metaphor to explain 2027, here’s the pitch with the biggest El Niño windup: “Land temperature reached +2.4°C relative to the 1880-1920 mean during the 2023-24 El Niño and is likely to approach +2.7°C in 2027 (almost +5°F).” Ouch!
Accordingly, numerous news sources have already in 2026 reported excess deaths in Europe this summer at +1.39°C to +1.47°C above pre-industrial (1850-1900) over 25,000 deaths and rising, because of pounding heat. Infrastructure is taking a beating. During the severe summer heat waves, widespread maximum surface temperatures across Western and Southern Europe frequently met or exceeded 40°C (104°F), with peak regional extremes up to 43°C to 48°C (109°F to 118°F) in hard-hit countries like Spain and Italy.
Moreover +2.7°C in 2027 would bring incalculable numbers of death and considerable crucial infrastructure coming to a sudden halt. And you thought Europe’s dried up major river systems were unusual, Rhine, Danube, Po, and Loire facing severe waterway restrictions, exposed riverbeds, ancient relics, World War II shipwrecks. Guess again. A recent study shows that each degree of Celsius of global warming adds “a month of intolerable heat for one billion people.”
When Will the World get Serious?
Hansen extemporaneously “this and other emerging climate impacts should provide incentive for the world to finally get serious about understanding and addressing human-made climate change.”
Oh jeez, really? Talk about ‘late, really late, to the party!’
Otherwise (assuming “the world” doesn’t get with it) living conditions for large populations will become intolerable. This is already approaching in parts of South Asia, Gulf nations, Africa, as well as the Mediterranean and neighboring European nations, and America’s Southwest where drought has intensified extreme-extreme low levels at Lake Mead and Lake Powell, America’s two largest reservoirs. Clearly, unless governments convene (10 times, or more, the Marshall Plan, almost overnight) to reverse these powerful negative global warming trends, it’ll continue to worsen, especially 2027. Buckle up!
But honestly, “how realistic is any kind of significant reversal?” This should haunt the dreams of every political leader of countries that have repeatedly failed to address the problem of global warming ever since James Hansen told the US Senate that humans are changing the chemistry of the atmosphere. That was almost four decades ago for Christ’s Sake! Today’s massive reach of extremely destructive global warming is largely a political problem. The politicians of the world have failed. They’ve ignored the warnings from scientists. And it’s about to get much worse.
Ordinary citizens have a right to be royally pissed off at the incompetence and ignorance of world leadership in the face of a rapidly dangerous evolving climate system that has been self-advertising itself as a killer of life on the planet. Life-supporting ecosystems throughout the planet are caving-in, crumbling right in front of their eyes, either burning-up in flash fires or drowning-out in flash floods or drying-out in extreme droughts.
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, as of August 18, 2026, 44.34% of the United States and Puerto Rico (and 52.70% of the Lower 48 states) are experiencing official drought conditions. Copernicus European Drought Observatory claims 60% of the European Union is in drought because of heatwaves and low rainfall.
About 30-40% of the world land mass is in drought versus 10-12% in the years 1990-2000. That’s an astounding 3-fold increase in a geological blink of time, something that’s never been recorded in human history. This is the result of global warming, umm, that thing that’s been talked about, and slandered, so much for decades now while right under everybody’s collective noses more than 1/3rd of the planet goes dry, and, even more concerning, over 90% of the oceans experienced 500 days of consistent heat waves comparable to what the EU is now experiencing on land, except the oceans had a remarkable 500 days of way above normal temperatures 3C-to-5C, without stop, fish died, 30,000 offshore W. Australia, to wit: “The team found that the 2023 MHWs (Marine Heat Waves) surpassed all previous records for intensity, length (500 days), and coverage. These events persisted four times longer than the historical average and spread across 96% of the world’s oceans.” (SciTechDaily, August 2025) One of the marine scientists for the study said, “I am scared.”
All of this is so far from normal that it’s ridiculous; it’s incomprehensible.
Ethical politics could have prevented this, and it is important for people to know this. Their political representatives have failed.
It’s the mark of extremely weak leadership that doesn’t recognize a threat to its constituents by something larger than life that stands out like a sore thumb, also known as disruptive radical climate change. It’s been talked about, written about, debated for four decades! It’s been right in everybody’s face!
But there’s nothing on the drawing boards of world leaders with a sense of urgency to help to mitigate to adapt to the most fearsome climate change in human history. The leaders are immobile caricatures, deers in headlights.
It’s remarkable that thousands, millions of people are not in the streets, screaming their lungs out until they faint!
