|  Author | Topic: James E. Hansen (Read 797 times) |
Deborah
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|  | James E. Hansen
« Thread Started on Jun 20, 2007, 10:32pm » | |
Download the 30-page .pdf version of this 2007 study from here:
Hansen, J., Mki. Sato, P. Kharecha, G. Russell, D.W. Lea, and M. Siddall, 2007: Climate change and trace gases. Phil. Trans. Royal. Soc. A, 365, 1925-1954, doi:10.1098/rsta.2007.2052.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2007/Hansen_etal_2.html
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March 19, 2007
Political Interference with Government Climate Change Science
Testimony of James E. Hansen to
Committee on Government Oversight and Reform
United States House of Representatives
oversight.house.gov/documents/20070319105800-43018.pdf
HTML version of the above:
Testimony by James Hansen
Political Interference with Government Climate Change Science
STATUS REPORT
Date Released: Monday, March 19, 2007
Source: House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=23642
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Deborah
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| | Re: James E. Hansen
« Reply #1 on Oct 9, 2007, 8:40pm » | |
Under "Files of Interest", click on October 2007: The Threat to the Planet: Dark & Bright Sides of Global Warming for the Powerpoint presentation given by Dr. Hansen at a recent conference.
http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ejeh1/
The last six slides are worth some attention.
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Deborah
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| | Re: James E. Hansen
« Reply #2 on Mar 21, 2008, 9:02pm » | |
Listen up:
March 21, 2008
Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/21/censoring_science_inside_the_political_attack
Guests:
Dr. James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space, NASA’s premiere climate research center, and adjunct professor of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University.
Mark Bowen, author of Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming. His previous book is Thin Ice.
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Deborah
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| | Re: James E. Hansen
« Reply #3 on Apr 7, 2008, 10:26pm » | |
Under "Files of Interest" click on March 2008 "Target CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?" (revised version posted April 7.)
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/
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Deborah
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Chem11
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| | Re: James E. Hansen
« Reply #5 on Apr 17, 2008, 5:05am » | |
Quote:Disinformation campaigns, by the fossil fuel industry and utilities, cannot succeed, and they raise great liability risks.
Utilities and the fossil fuel industry must reckon with the fact that the laws of Nature and the human instinct for survival will overrule any paper agreements that may exist now or be wrangled in the near-term. “Grandfathering” of fossil fuel plants and any ineffectual “cap and trade” scheme, should it be initiated, will necessarily be replaced by “cap and bulldoze”. |
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I'm beginning to like this guy, but there's a harsh reality he's not reckoning with, himself. As a species and on a societal level, humankind does not appear to be gifted with this 'instinct for survival' he speaks of... and that instinct as it exists on an individual level works against the possibility of anyone taking a bulldozer to the aligned monetary interests of the fossil fuel industry, the military and the politicians.
Whatever slim chance humanity has for developing a sustainable society lies not within it's instinct for survival, but within it's current and rightful obsession with self-destruction, I'm sorry to say.
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Looks like you got it wrong again, Jimbo! Sulfur content 'has been increasing'! - J. Reynolds
Obviously there is now an opening for us rank and file both to defend the environmental benefits of air pollution.. what about some comment on whether the "air pollution is good" line is utilisable, perhaps in rallies? - Wayne Hall
What we're able to do now is inadvertent.- Patrick Minnis, NASA |
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Deborah
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| | Re: James E. Hansen
« Reply #6 on Mar 15, 2009, 10:42pm » | |
15 March 2009
Plan B: scientists get radical in bid to halt global warming ‘catastrophe’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk....SS&attr=3392178
NOTE: I wouldn't characterize Hansen's position as being "radical." I would characterize it as being eminently sane. Anyone who has the guts to step out there and speak up about this issue in the service of reality is tagged as "radical." I'm sick and tired of that and so are a great many other people in my observation. The miserable, self-serving goons in whose exclusive interest it is to delay and derail international cooperation in the problem-solving department here need to be bypassed and rendered irrelevant once and for all.
THE director of a Nasa space laboratory will this week lead thousands of climate change campaigners through Coventry in an extraordinary intervention in British politics.
James Hansen plans to use Thursday’s Climate Change Day of Action to put pressure on Gordon Brown to wake up to the threat of climate change - by halting the construction of new power stations and the expansion of airports, with schemes such as the third runway at Heathrow.
The move by a leading American researcher is the highest-profile example to date of the way climate change is politicising scientists.
It follows last week’s climate science summit in Copenhagen where 2,500 leading climate scientists issued a stark warning to politicians that unless they took drastic action to cut carbon emissions, the world would face “irreversible shifts in climate”.
They warned that global temperature increases averaging more than 4C were now possible and that human-generated CO2 could also acidify the world’s oceans, wiping out life-forms ranging from tiny plankton to coral reefs.
Hansen, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said he believed scientists, the people who knew most about climate change, now had a moral obligation to become politically active. He has chosen Coventry to stage Thursday’s protest because it is home to E.ON, the power company that is planning a giant new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent.
He will lead the demonstrators to a final protest on its doorstep. The protest, being organised by Christian Aid, will involve a New Orleans-style funeral march by “mourners” for future lost generations.
“We can no longer allow politicians and business to twist and ignore science,” said Hansen.
“The scientists can connect the dots and define the implications of different policy choices and we should make clear those implications.”
Hansen also launched a direct attack on the Labour government, criticising its decision to approve a new runway at Heathrow and calling the Kingsnorth proposal a “terrible idea”.
“One power plant with a lifetime of several decades will destroy the efforts of millions of citizens to reduce their emissions,” he said.
Hansen is just one of a number of leading researchers who believe that scientists must get out of their laboratories and campaign on climate change.
They say researchers have spent nearly two decades producing high-quality research demonstrating that the world risks dangerous warming - yet political inaction means CO2 emissions are rising faster than ever. Many also believe the United Nations talks aimed at a global treaty on cutting emissions are likely to fail.
They compare the anger and concern among climate researchers to that felt by physicists as they watched the massive growth in nuclear weapons in the 1950s and 1960s.
Back then, such concerns prompted many leading scientists to become politically active in movements such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
The leaders of that movement even included Professor Peter Higgs, the theoretical physicist now best known for describing the Higgs Boson particle, which is thought to give matter its mass.
His modern counterparts include scientists such as Dr Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow, at the Earth and Biosphere Institute at Leeds University, whose recent research on the impact of climate change on tropical forests has been published in leading journals such as Nature and Science.
Lewis believes his understanding of climate change means he is morally obliged to become a climate activist. He took part in the recent Climate Camp protests at both Kingsnorth and Heathrow.
He has also joined with other protesters to buy land outside Sipson, the village near Heathrow that would be destroyed by construction of the runway.
“If the government permits the building of new infrastruc-ture which locks us into a future of high CO2 emissions, there is a moral obligation to try to stop them,” he said.
Even the Met Office, which traditionally has been one of the government’s most conservative research institutions, has become quietly radical over climate.
It sent a team of its top climate scientists to the Copenhagen meeting - backing them with a team of publicists who lobbied journalists intensively to maximise coverage of their research.
Others have used scientific publications to make overtly political points. Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre, the government’s leading global warming research centre, recently used the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, one of the world’s most respected academic journals, to call for a “planned global recession” to cut carbon emissions.
“Emissions are rising so fast that we are heading for a world that will be 4C-5C warmer than now by 2100. That would be catastrophic,” he wrote.
“Unless economic growth can be reconciled with unprecedented rates of decarbonisa-tion, it is difficult to foresee anything other than a planned economic recession being compatible with stabilising the climate.”
Even other climate researchers were shocked by such overtly political comments in a pure research paper but Anderson is unrepentant.
Speaking in Copenhagen last week, a meeting he attended by train and ferry to maintain his personal boycott of flights, he said: “Scientists have lost patience with carefully constructed messages being lost in the political noise. We must stand up for what we know.”
Others believe many more scientists will feel obliged to take a similar stand.
Marcus du Sautoy, professor for the public understanding of science and professor of mathematics at Oxford University, said climate change was “galvanising” the scientific community.
“The evidence and data is all there but politicians don’t seem to understand what the science is telling them, so the scientists feel they have to respond,” he said.
John Harris, professor of bioethics at Manchester University, said scientists had become more willing to get politically active after mounting successful campaigns against proposals to put legal restrictions on embryo and stem cell research.
“Scientists are increasingly aware of their public responsibilities and realise there is not much point in doing science unless your findings will be uti-lised. They now realise that if they make themselves heard on climate change then policy makers will react,” he said.
Kathy Sykes, professor of sciences and society at Bristol University, said scientists were increasingly aware that they had a duty to convey their knowledge more effectively - and that meant becoming political.
“Every now and again, when things become absolutely desperate, as it has with climate change, scientists have to become advocates,” she said.
The threat
Copenhagen climate summit - the scientist’s key findings and recommendations:
Humanity is releasing 50 billion tons of CO2 into the air each year - and this is rising by 2%-3% a year, far faster than scientists had predicted
Such emissions are already changing the climate, including an increase in the Earth’s temperature, rising sea levels and a rapid melting of the world’s glaciers
About 40% of humanity’s CO2 emissions are absorbed by the oceans - but these are now acidifying, threatening marine life Global temperature rises could exceed 2C by mid-century, which would cause widespread water shortages and potentially famine
Every year of delay in cutting greenhouse gas emissions makes it much harder to keep the global temperature rise below 2C
Delays also raise the risk of crossing tipping points - changes in the Earth’s dynamics that accelerate the warming effects
Developing countries are least able to cope with climate change, so millions of the world’s poorest people will suffer the worst deprivation as temperatures rise
Humanity would gain many extra benefits from cutting emissions, including new jobs, improved health and preservation of wildlife
Inaction is “inexcusable”. The world has the technology and tools needed to tackle greenhouse gas emissions and rising temperatures
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Chem11
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| | Re: James E. Hansen
« Reply #7 on Mar 18, 2009, 1:08am » | |
Quote:| Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre, the government’s leading global warming research centre, recently used the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, one of the world’s most respected academic journals, to call for a “planned global recession” to cut carbon emissions. |
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Oh, wait.
Quote:
Marcus du Sautoy, professor for the public understanding of science and professor of mathematics at Oxford University, said climate change was “galvanising” the scientific community.
“The evidence and data is all there but politicians don’t seem to understand what the science is telling them, so the scientists feel they have to respond,” he said. |
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Apparently many of these scientists are as lacking in their grasp of politics as politicians are of science.
AIG put Obama in their corner for 100K (and McCain for 60K).
Bring your checkbook next time.
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Looks like you got it wrong again, Jimbo! Sulfur content 'has been increasing'! - J. Reynolds
Obviously there is now an opening for us rank and file both to defend the environmental benefits of air pollution.. what about some comment on whether the "air pollution is good" line is utilisable, perhaps in rallies? - Wayne Hall
What we're able to do now is inadvertent.- Patrick Minnis, NASA |
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Chem11
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| | Re: James E. Hansen
« Reply #8 on Mar 19, 2009, 8:01pm » | |
Leading climate scientist: 'democratic process isn't working'
![[image]](http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/4559/climate460x276.jpg)
Protest and direct action could be the only way to tackle soaring carbon emissions, a leading climate scientist has said.
James Hansen, a climate modeller with Nasa, told the Guardian today that corporate lobbying has undermined democratic attempts to curb carbon pollution. "The democratic process doesn't quite seem to be working," he said.
Speaking on the eve of joining a protest against the headquarters of power firm E.ON in Coventry, Hansen said: "The first action that people should take is to use the democratic process. What is frustrating people, me included, is that democratic action affects elections but what we get then from political leaders is greenwash.
"The democratic process is supposed to be one person one vote, but it turns out that money is talking louder than the votes. So, I'm not surprised that people are getting frustrated. I think that peaceful demonstration is not out of order, because we're running out of time."
Hansen said he was taking part in the Coventry demonstration tomorrow because he wants a worldwide moratorium on new coal power stations. E.ON wants to build such a station at Kingsnorth in Kent, an application that energy and the climate change minister Ed Miliband recently delayed. "I think that peaceful actions that attempt to draw society's attention to the issue are not inappropriate," Hansen said.
He added that a scientific meeting in Copenhagen last week had made clear the "urgency of the science and the inaction taken by governments".
Officials will gather in Bonn later this month to continue talks on a new global climate treaty, which campaigners have called to be signed at a UN meeting in Copenhagen in December. Hansen warned that the new treaty is "guaranteed to fail" to bring down emissions.
Hansen said: "What's being talked about for Copenhagen is a strenghening of Kyoto [protocol] approach, a cap and trade with offsets and escape hatches which will be gauranteed to fail in terms of getting the required rapid reduction in emissions. They talk about goals which sound impressive, but when you see the actions are such that it will be impossible to reach those goals, then I can understand the informed public getting frustrated."
He said he was growing "concerned" over the stance taken by the new US adminstration on global warming. " It's not clear what their intentions are yet, but if they are going to support cap and trade then unfortunately i think that will be another case of greenwash. It's going to take stronger action than that."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/mar/18/nasa-climate-change-james-hansen
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Looks like you got it wrong again, Jimbo! Sulfur content 'has been increasing'! - J. Reynolds
Obviously there is now an opening for us rank and file both to defend the environmental benefits of air pollution.. what about some comment on whether the "air pollution is good" line is utilisable, perhaps in rallies? - Wayne Hall
What we're able to do now is inadvertent.- Patrick Minnis, NASA |
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Deborah
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| | Re: James E. Hansen
« Reply #9 on Mar 23, 2009, 11:59pm » | |
Mar 19, 2009, 8:01pm, Chem11 wrote:Leading climate scientist: 'democratic process isn't working'
Protest and direct action could be the only way to tackle soaring carbon emissions, a leading climate scientist has said.
James Hansen, a climate modeller with Nasa, told the Guardian today that corporate lobbying has undermined democratic attempts to curb carbon pollution. "The democratic process doesn't quite seem to be working," he said.
Speaking on the eve of joining a protest against the headquarters of power firm E.ON in Coventry, Hansen said: "The first action that people should take is to use the democratic process. What is frustrating people, me included, is that democratic action affects elections but what we get then from political leaders is greenwash.
"The democratic process is supposed to be one person one vote, but it turns out that money is talking louder than the votes. So, I'm not surprised that people are getting frustrated. I think that peaceful demonstration is not out of order, because we're running out of time."
Hansen said he was taking part in the Coventry demonstration tomorrow because he wants a worldwide moratorium on new coal power stations. E.ON wants to build such a station at Kingsnorth in Kent, an application that energy and the climate change minister Ed Miliband recently delayed. "I think that peaceful actions that attempt to draw society's attention to the issue are not inappropriate," Hansen said.
He added that a scientific meeting in Copenhagen last week had made clear the "urgency of the science and the inaction taken by governments".
Officials will gather in Bonn later this month to continue talks on a new global climate treaty, which campaigners have called to be signed at a UN meeting in Copenhagen in December. Hansen warned that the new treaty is "guaranteed to fail" to bring down emissions.
Hansen said: "What's being talked about for Copenhagen is a strenghening of Kyoto [protocol] approach, a cap and trade with offsets and escape hatches which will be gauranteed to fail in terms of getting the required rapid reduction in emissions. They talk about goals which sound impressive, but when you see the actions are such that it will be impossible to reach those goals, then I can understand the informed public getting frustrated."
He said he was growing "concerned" over the stance taken by the new US administration on global warming. " It's not clear what their intentions are yet, but if they are going to support cap and trade then unfortunately i think that will be another case of greenwash. It's going to take stronger action than that."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/mar/18/nasa-climate-change-james-hansen |
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It's late and this will be brief.
Hansen is absolutely right about the "greenwash." It's about damned time someone of his caliber had the guts to stand up and call a spade a spade in this regard. Good for him.
As for the "intentions" of the new administration, this just in:
23 March 2009
Democrats to shelve fast-track process on climate bill, for now
Source: Copyright 2009, ClimateWire
Date: March 23, 2009
Byline: Darren Samuelsohn
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=122213
Capitol Hill Democrats are expected to bypass the fast-track budget process for global warming legislation but plan to keep the option open later this year if they cannot win bipartisan support on one of President Obama's signature agenda items.
White House officials and some Democratic leaders first floated the idea last month of folding cap-and-trade legislation into a budget reconciliation bill because they remain short of the 60 votes needed to break a Senate Republican filibuster on the controversial legislation.
But a collection of moderate House and Senate Democrats and Republicans have pushed back against that approach and persuaded leadership to shelve the strategy -- for now.
"I'll put it this way: It is not included in the budget that I will present to my colleagues," Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said yesterday on ABC's "This Week." "I have said for weeks, I don't think it is the right way to write substantive legislation, because if you get into the details -- and we won't do that here -- it just doesn't work very well."
Conrad added, "But what they're -- what they're talking about ... is negotiating leverage, sending a signal that it still remains open."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also is not focused on reconciliation, according to House Natural Resources Chairman Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.). Rahall met last week with Pelosi, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), about 10 coal-state Democrats and United Mine Workers Association President Cecil Roberts to discuss coal, climate change and the budget.
Reconciliation came up in the meeting. "But that didn't take more than 10 seconds," Rahall said. "The speaker is not worried about that at this point."
Global warming has rocketed to the top of the Capitol Hill agenda in recent weeks amid talk of inserting cap-and-trade language into a budget reconciliation bill. And some of the very moderate Democrats and Republicans needed to pass the broader authorization legislation have not been pleased.
"I'm a strong supporter of climate change legislation and continue to be," said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). "But this is a major policy change, and it should not be jammed through using reconciliation. We should have a full debate, and ample opportunity for a lot of different amendments."
Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) last week urged Democratic leaders to use the reconciliation threat in the same way that lawmakers must take heed of climate regulations from states and cities and U.S. EPA, which has a Supreme Court ruling allowing it to write rules for motor vehicles, power plants and other industrial sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
"My message to my colleagues is we can sit here and stop at what we're doing now, and allow EPA to do it with the president's support, allow cities, allow the world to do, allow these regional networks, or we can move forward," Boxer said. "That's what I call a reality check."
Aides to Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Friday that no decisions have been made on reconciliation. And Jared Bernstein, an economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, would not rule out the fast-track strategy on Sunday. "I don't think he took it off the table," Bernstein said on ABC. "I think it has to stay on the table. But it's something we would rather avoid."
Under budget reconciliation rules, Democrats could move cap and trade at any point during the legislative calendar under the expedited process that requires only 51 Senate votes. If they take this route, however, the program may not end up looking like its authors intended. The "Byrd Rule," for one, allows the Senate parliamentarian to strip out any provision that has no budget impact. For something as big as cap and trade, Conrad has said the final product may end up looking like "Swiss cheese."
Democrats for now appear willing to work on cap and trade through regular order, starting with a markup by Memorial Day in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. House floor action and a Senate bill are expected to follow this summer, with advocates optimistic they can win over some GOP support along the way. If not, reconciliation would return as an option.
Originally posted at: http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/03/23/....ndtr-10245.html
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Deborah
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| | Re: James E. Hansen
« Reply #10 on Apr 1, 2009, 8:57pm » | |
April 1, 2009
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090401/NEWS01/904010352/1001/RSS01
Concord, New Hampshire
CLIMATE CHANGE expert James Hansen will speak tomorrow at the State House on advances in global warming research and the need for swift action. His audience will include lawmakers, but the public is invited, too. He'll be speaking in Representatives Hall beginning at 11 a.m., followed by a question-and-answer session. Hansen is director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
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Deborah
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| | Re: James E. Hansen
« Reply #11 on Sept 25, 2009, 9:20pm » | |
Apr 1, 2009, 8:57pm, Deborah wrote:April 1, 2009
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090401/NEWS01/904010352/1001/RSS01
Concord, New Hampshire
CLIMATE CHANGE expert James Hansen will speak tomorrow at the State House on advances in global warming research and the need for swift action. His audience will include lawmakers, but the public is invited, too. He'll be speaking in Representatives Hall beginning at 11 a.m., followed by a question-and-answer session. Hansen is director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. |
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| | Re: James E. Hansen
« Reply #12 on Dec 4, 2009, 9:09pm » | |
Copenhagen climate change talks must fail, says top scientist
Exclusive: World's leading climate change expert says summit talks so flawed that deal would be a disaster
* Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 2 December 2009 20.54 GMT
![[image]](http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/1296/jameshansen0018188082.jpg)
'We don’t have a leader who is able to grasp [the issue] and say what is really needed. Instead we are trying to continue business as usual,' say James Hansen. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA
The scientist who convinced the world to take notice of the looming danger of global warming says it would be better for the planet and for future generations if next week's Copenhagen climate change summit ended in collapse.
In an interview with the Guardian, James Hansen, the world's pre-eminent climate scientist, said any agreement likely to emerge from the negotiations would be so deeply flawed that it would be better to start again from scratch.
"I would rather it not happen if people accept that as being the right track because it's a disaster track," said Hansen, who heads the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
"The whole approach is so fundamentally wrong that it is better to reassess the situation. If it is going to be the Kyoto-type thing then [people] will spend years trying to determine exactly what that means." He was speaking as progress towards a deal in Copenhagen received a boost today, with India revealing a target to curb its carbon emissions. All four of the major emitters – the US, China, EU and India – have now tabled offers on emissions, although the equally vexed issue of funding for developing nations to deal with global warming remains deadlocked.
Hansen, in repeated appearances before Congress beginning in 1989, has done more than any other scientist to educate politicians about the causes of global warming and to prod them into action to avoid its most catastrophic consequences. But he is vehemently opposed to the carbon market schemes – in which permits to pollute are bought and sold – which are seen by the EU and other governments as the most efficient way to cut emissions and move to a new clean energy economy.
Hansen is also fiercely critical of Barack Obama – and even Al Gore, who won a Nobel peace prize for his efforts to get the world to act on climate change – saying politicians have failed to meet what he regards as the moral challenge of our age.
In Hansen's view, dealing with climate change allows no room for the compromises that rule the world of elected politics. "This is analagous to the issue of slavery faced by Abraham Lincoln or the issue of Nazism faced by Winston Churchill," he said. "On those kind of issues you cannot compromise. You can't say let's reduce slavery, let's find a compromise and reduce it 50% or reduce it 40%."
He added: "We don't have a leader who is able to grasp it and say what is really needed. Instead we are trying to continue business as usual."
The understated Iowan's journey from climate scientist to activist accelerated in the last years of the Bush administration. Hansen, a reluctant public speaker, says he was forced into the public realm by the increasingly clear looming spectre of droughts, floods, famines and drowned cities indicated by the science.
That enormous body of scientific evidence has been put under a microscope by climate sceptics after last month's release online of hacked emails sent by respected researchers at the climate research unit of the University of East Anglia. Hansen admitted the controversy could shake public's trust, and called for an investigation. "All that stuff they are arguing about the data doesn't really change the analysis at all, but it does leave a very bad impression," he said.
The row reached Congress today, with Republicans accusing the researchers of engaging in "scientific fascism" and pressing the Obama administration's top science adviser, John Holdren, to condemn the email. Holdren, a climate scientist who wrote one of the emails in the UEA trove, said he was prepared to denounce any misuse of data by the scientists – if one is proved.
Hansen has emerged as a leading campaigner against the coal industry, which produces more greenhouse gas emissions than any other fuel source.
He has become a fixture at campus demonstrations and last summer was arrested at a protest against mountaintop mining in West Virginia, where he called the Obama government's policies "half-assed".
He has irked some environmentalists by espousing a direct carbon tax on fuel use. Some see that as a distraction from rallying support in Congress for cap-and-trade legislation that is on the table.
He is scathing of that approach. "This is analagous to the indulgences that the Catholic church sold in the middle ages. The bishops collected lots of money and the sinners got redemption. Both parties liked that arrangement despite its absurdity. That is exactly what's happening," he said. "We've got the developed countries who want to continue more or less business as usual and then these developing countries who want money and that is what they can get through offsets [sold through the carbon markets]."
For all Hansen's pessimism, he insists there is still hope. "It may be that we have already committed to a future sea level rise of a metre or even more but that doesn't mean that you give up.
"Because if you give up you could be talking about tens of metres. So I find it screwy that people say you passed a tipping point so it's too late. In that case what are you thinking: that we are going to abandon the planet? You want to minimise the damage."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20....ge-james-hansen
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
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