Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming

All that says (in your second paragraph) is that if you're going to predict the actual temperature, you need an accurate CO2 prediction, which of course is true.

But here is Hansen's original 1988 paper: https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha02700w.html

From the abstract: "We make a 100-year control run and perform experiments for three scenarios of atmospheric composition. These experiments begin in 1958 and include measured or estimated changes in atmospheric CO2, CH4, H2O, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and stratospheric aerosols for the period from 1958 to the present. Scenario A assumes continued exponential trace gas growth, scenario B assumes a reduced linear linear growth of trace gases, and scenario C assumes a rapid curtailment of trace gas emissions such that the net climate forcing ceases to increase after the year 2000."

Note the word "assumes." There's no attempt to really model what humanity would choose to emit. None of these assumptions exactly match what happened with CO2 and other greenhouse gases, so of course none of them exactly match the temperature either. But adjusted for actual greenhouse emissions, they come remarkably close.

Were they completely accurate in that way? Certainly not. People knew a lot less back then. It took a while to nail down things like the effect of water vapor, which is a greenhouse gas but also makes clouds that reflect sunlight away. But they were close enough to make good policy decisions, and if we'd paid attention, we'd be much better off today.

Incidentally, the case for global warming doesn't depend on models. There have been warming events before, and there's enough evidence in geological history to tell us what's going to happen. Hansen's book has details.

This is exactly the sort of position that manufactures new climate change skeptics.

If there can be disagreement over something as basic as "are temperatures actually going up", then that throws all of climatology into doubt. Global temperature is the question that motivates this field, yet you're arguing here that whether it was going up or stable was merely an "idea" rather than a matter of measuring physical reality. It is absurd that such a basic question is actually a matter of dispute at this point: reading thermometers and averaging them just isn't that difficult compared to what other scientific fields routinely accomplish.

There's also an interesting social viewpoint on display: you claim the "climate science community" is a completely separate group from "skeptics" and they only "had" to spend time answering the "question" of a pause due to "beating the drum".

Are there no climate scientists skeptical of beliefs in their own field, like there are in every other field of science? If not, why not? Why are people asking obvious questions like "why does it seem temperatures stopped rising" seen as nuisance outsiders rather than fellow scientists seeking the truth? From an outsider's perspective this looks a lot like groupthink.

There was never some broadly held idea that warming dynamics had paused.

This is not true, as refurb already showed. To spell it out, his [2] link starts by saying: "The United Nations panel of climate science experts mentioned it in a 2013 report, scientists have published more than 200 papers analyzing it, and climate deniers said it was proof that climate change didn't exist, but in reality the global warming pause or hiatus never occurred."

Over 200 papers published analysing a pause is clear evidence that this was a broadly held idea.

There seems to be a problematic tendency in climatology to try and retroactively rewrite history. Prior disputes or false predictions are recast as "scientists didn't actually believe that" or "scientists weren't actually wrong after all" using dubious, Orwellian style practices. Even temperature records themselves are constantly being rewritten: basic questions like "what was the temperature on date X at location Y" had different answers in the past to what they do now.

As another example, elsewhere in this thread [1] the author of the paper we're discussing claims he couldn't find any papers that predicted global cooling. Predictions of a new ice age were widely covered in the media and discussed in the literature in the 1970s. There were global conferences and scientific summits held about it. Embarrassingly, some random Hacker News commentator was able to produce a list of six such papers within an hour of that post being made.

What is wrong with climatology? Other fields like physics or medicine don't have problems dealing with their past history of wrong experiments, theories or measurements.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21709263

> Eleven papers with fourteen distinct projections were identified that fit these criteria.

This brings to mind the old joke: "I used to smoke weed. I still do, but I used to, too."

Specifically, the phrase "were identified that fit these criteria" sets off my skepticism spider senses. Kind of like the popular "97% of scientists..." meme, that doesn't quite hold water when you dig under the covers.

To be clear, I'm not saying deceit is taking place, I am simply saying that I am skeptical.

I wasn't able to find any details on the specifics of the literature search, such that the search could be reproduced. Any idea if that was included in the study and I somehow overlooked it?

It isn't the same reasoning at all. Our prior for what could possibly happen should be informed by what has happened before, and we know to the best of what geology can tell us, that many mass extinctions on earth were caused by CO2 mediated warming, including the one that wiped out 95% of all species at the end of the Permian. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/science/climate-change-ma...

Yes, I have. Have you?

Also: https://www.google.com/search?q=China+is+the+largest+green+e...