The next time a climate change denier spouts off about how they've never come close to accurate projections of future temperature trends or says that James Hansen is just playing politics instead of doing science keep this in mind. In 1981 Hansen and some associates published a paper that so far has been fairly accurate. 100% accurate? No. But in fact they slightly underestimated the warming trend. Given the uncertainties at the time concerning particulate and aerosol pollution they didn't do badly at all.
RealClimate: Evaluating a 1981 temperature projection
