Hansen and his bosses
Jan. 29th, 2006 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinPolitical appointees at NASA really don't like what Jim Hansen has been saying about global warming. A scientist who works for Hansen speaks here.
We mostly have Hansen's side of the story here, but nothing I've heard about his statements suggests to me that he's a hysterical loose cannon. His warnings about a closing window of opportunity to prevent major ice sheet melting further down the line are, as far as I can tell, pretty much based on consensus science on the subject, and downright conservative compared to, say, James Lovelock's recent we're-all-gonna-die-with-Gaia strangeness.
I don't think global warming is going to kill us all; I do think that if global temperatures go up by a few degrees over the coming century, and sea levels rise, storms become more destructive, etc., the usual thing is going to happen, which is to say that the poorest and most defenseless people in the world are going to be hit hard—and the rest of us will lose some things we'd rather not, such as, say, New York and Boston. But in the near term, an American administration judging results in climate science on the basis of loyalty bothers me more.
We mostly have Hansen's side of the story here, but nothing I've heard about his statements suggests to me that he's a hysterical loose cannon. His warnings about a closing window of opportunity to prevent major ice sheet melting further down the line are, as far as I can tell, pretty much based on consensus science on the subject, and downright conservative compared to, say, James Lovelock's recent we're-all-gonna-die-with-Gaia strangeness.
I don't think global warming is going to kill us all; I do think that if global temperatures go up by a few degrees over the coming century, and sea levels rise, storms become more destructive, etc., the usual thing is going to happen, which is to say that the poorest and most defenseless people in the world are going to be hit hard—and the rest of us will lose some things we'd rather not, such as, say, New York and Boston. But in the near term, an American administration judging results in climate science on the basis of loyalty bothers me more.
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Climate Chaos
Date: 2006-01-29 07:35 pm (UTC)I'm surprised there's not more campus activism around it.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 01:39 am (UTC)...
Wait, hold on.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-30 01:51 pm (UTC)