Climate Scientist Quits NASA To Testify Against The Government

Now that NASA scientist James E. Hansen is retiring, he will finally be able to pursue a longtime passion: helping climate activists suing the U.S. government.  

For 46 years Hansen was a pioneering climate researcher for the government and one of the first scientists to warn the world about the causes and effects of a warming planet.

Hansen has tilted further toward activist in recent years, earning him both the ire of opponents and the concern of colleagues who think his protests undermine the value of scientific neutrality. As you can see in the picture in this post, he's been arrested a few times at protests.

Being a NASA scientist for 46 years, though, has prevented him from doing what he has felt his research has compelled him to do: Force the government to adopt stricter controls on greenhouse gas emissions.  

"As a government employee, you can’t testify against the government,” he said in an interview with Justin Gillis of The New York Times.

"If we burn even a substantial fraction of the fossil fuels, we guarantee there’s going to be unstoppable changes" in the climate of the earth, he said. "We’re going to leave a situation for young people and future generations that they may have no way to deal with."

Even when he couldn't accuse the government of crimes against the climate, Hansen has been arrested for protesting mountaintop mining, and the Keystone XL Pipeline.

"At my age," which is 72, "I am not worried about having an arrest record."

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Climate Change Researcher James Hansen Becomes a Full-Time Activist

Climate change researcher James Hansen, the
long-time head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is
retiring from government employment to campaign for policies that
he believes must be adopted to avoid impending catastrophic global
warming, reports the New York Times. Back in 1988, on a
blistering hot DC day in June, Hansen testimony at a Congressional
hearing brought man-made global warming to the broader public's
attention. Skeptics have questioned just how
accurate Hansen's 1988 predictions have turned out to be:

On the other hand, the Times reports:

Since the day he spoke, not a single month’s temperatures have
fallen below the 20th-century average for that month. Half the
world’s population is now too young to have lived through the last
colder-than-average month, February 1985.

In worldwide temperature records going back to 1880, the 19
hottest years have all occurred since his testimony.

To his credit, Hansen does not see man-made global warming as an
excuse for growing the size and scope of government. As the
Times notes:

For all his battles with conservatives, however, he has also
been hard on environmentalists. He was a harsh
critic of a failed climate
bill they supported in 2009, on the grounds that it would have
sent billions into the federal government’s coffers without
limiting emissions effectively.

Dr. Hansen agrees that a price is needed on carbon dioxide
emissions, but he wants the money returned to the
public in the form of rebates on tax bills. “It needs to be
done on the basis of conservative principles — not one dime
to make the government bigger,” said Dr. Hansen, who is
registered as a political independent.

More recently, Hansen has
admitted that increases in global average temperatures have been
halted for the last sixteen years. He argues that the rise must
resume, but we shall see. In the meantime, other climate
researchers are suggesting that the
sensitivity of the climate to loading up the atmosphere with
more carbon dioxide is somewhat less than many climate models have
assumed.

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