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 Scientist Describes Death Threats And Personal Attacks At The Hands Of Deniers

Since 1996, Michael Mann has been at the forefront of the climate change "debate." That was when he published the first "hockey stick" graph showing the intense upward trend of warming on Earth.

(The graph was recently updated, and is even more striking.)

Mann works at Pennsylvania State University, where he directs the Penn State Earth System Science Center.

Being at the forefront of your field's public persona isn't all glory, though, especially when it is as controversial as climate change.

Mann just published a a blog post for the magazine "The Scientist" about his decades-long persecution at the hands of climate deniers.

Here are some interesting excerpts of what he said.

On attacks on him personally:

Politicians have demanded I be fired from my job because of my work demonstrating the reality and threat of human-caused climate change... and was the target of what The Washington Post referred to as a “witch hunt” by Virginia’s reactionary Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.

I have even received a number of anonymous death threats.

On the oil companies:

This cynicism is part of a destructive public-relations campaign being waged by fossil fuel companies, front groups, and individuals aligned with them in an effort to discredit the science linking the burning of fossil fuels with potentially dangerous climate change.

Investigations into his work:

In 2003, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) denounced my work on the Senate floor and called me to testify to his committee under hostile questioning. Two years later, House Representative Joe Barton (R-TX) attempted to subpoena all of my emails and research documents from my entire career, and the correspondence and files of both my senior coauthors, presumably looking for some way to both intimidate and discredit me. Inhofe and Barton are two of the largest recipients of fossil fuel money in the U.S. Congress.

On the silver lining:

I’ve become an accidental public figure in the debate over human-caused climate change. Reluctant at first, I have come to embrace this role, choosing to use my position in the public eye to inform the discourse surrounding the issue of climate change.

Read his entire blog post at The Scientist >

SEE ALSO: 16 Irrefutable Signs That Climate Change Is Real

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