Who’s Who in Green: Dr. James Hansen
January 30, 2009 · Print This Article
No one has been more vocal about the need to address climate change than Dr. James Hansen. The NASA climate scientist’s testimony to Congress in the 1980s brought global warming into the spotlight, alerting the world to just how serious of a problem it really is. Since then, he has continued to advocate swift action on global warming, courting controversy at times but always staying true to his message.
There’s no question that Hansen has been incredibly influential. Despite pressure from colleagues who disagree with his urgent warnings, Hansen has never faltered in articulately communicating just how dangerous global warming is, how it’s going to affect the world and what we need to do to stop it.
As a college student in Iowa, Hansen trained in physics and astronomy, and he later focused his research on trying to understand the climate change on earth that would result from man-made changes to the atmosphere. Hansen was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1996, and he is now head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Among his specialties are interpreting satellite data and developing global numerical models for the purpose of understanding current climate trends, as well as predicting the impact of humans on climate.
In a June 2008 article at The Huffington Post, Hansen warned that “tipping points are near” for global warming, 20 years to the day after his famed 1988 congressional testimony.
What is at stake? Warming so far, about two degrees Fahrenheit over land areas, seems almost innocuous, being less than day-to-day weather fluctuations. But more warming is already “in the pipeline,” delayed only by the great inertia of the world ocean. And climate is nearing dangerous tipping points. Elements of a “perfect storm,” a global cataclysm, are assembled.
Climate can reach points such that amplifying feedbacks spur large rapid changes. Arctic sea ice is a current example. Global warming initiated sea ice melt, exposing darker ocean that absorbs more sunlight, melting more ice. As a result, without any additional greenhouse gases, the Arctic soon will be ice-free in the summer.
More ominous tipping points loom. West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are vulnerable to even small additional warming. These two-mile-thick behemoths respond slowly at first, but if disintegration gets well under way, it will become unstoppable. Debate among scientists is only about how much sea level would rise by a given date. In my opinion, if emissions follow a business-as-usual scenario, sea level rise of at least two meters is likely within a century. Hundreds of millions of people would become refugees, and no stable shoreline would be reestablished in any time frame that humanity can conceive.
Hansen boldly spoke out in 2005 and 2006 to the media about attempts by NASA administrators to influence his public statements about the causes of global warming. He claimed that NASA public relations staff were ordered to review his public statements and interviews, and said the White House edited climate-related press releases to make global warming seem less threatening. Though he was accused of having political motivation for making these statements, since he was no supporter of former President Bush, Hansen maintains that he’s actually a “middle-of-the-road conservative”.
In 2008, Hansen’s name was in the headlines once again after he controversially called for putting oil company executives on trial “for high crimes against humanity and nature”, saying the oil chiefs were actively spreading doubt and misinformation about global warming for their own financial benefit. Hansen also testified on behalf of the activists who defaced the Kingsnorth power station in Kent, England – and the activists were acquitted.
There are few people who can claim to have done as much for global warming awareness as Dr. Hansen, save perhaps Al Gore. It seems clear, standing now on the cusp of serious climate change consequences, that Dr. Hansen will go down in history as the man who tried to warn us all.
Dr. James Hansen’s Green Score: 97,665
Photo credit: Oscar Hidalgo for The New York Times
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GLOBAL WARMING . Well , back in the days when we had no satellites people believed myths more easily . It is unfortunate that UAH and RSS temperature sensing satellites measured objective data that directly contradicts Al Gore’s claim of an impending Global Warming disaster . And NASA , under the very apolitical Dr. James ” The Magician ” Hansen have been rewriting earth’s temperature history again and again to favor and provide supporting evidence for Al Gore’s apocalyptic prophesies . Unfortunately for politics free science , Mr. Global Warmings search for relevance after his defeat in the 2000 presidential election lead many of us who failed to check for the truth , to believe Al Gore’s prophecy without much reservation .