<div dir="ltr"><div>I did not even know about this till today... Yikes! <br><br></div><div>Consider this quote from the article below regarding putting a price on CO2 emissions, which contradicts the often held view that those promoting regulations to address climate change are big government liberals or socialists.... rather Hansen refers to "conservative principles:"<br>
<br>Dr. Hansen agrees that a price is needed on carbon dioxide emissions, but he wants the money <a title="Explanation of the fee-and-dividend proposal" href="http://www.citizensclimatelobby.org/node/444">returned to the public</a>
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.
<br></div><div>----------------------------------<br><h1 class="">Climate Maverick to Retire From NASA</h1>
<h6 class="">By
<span>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/justin_gillis/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by JUSTIN GILLIS"><span>JUSTIN GILLIS</span></a></span></h6>
<h6 class="">Published: April 1, 2013 </h6><p><a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/james_e_hansen/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about James E. Hansen." class="">James E. Hansen</a>, the climate scientist who issued the clearest warning of the 20th century about the dangers of <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="Recent and archival news about global warming." class="">global warming</a>, will retire from <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_aeronautics_and_space_administration/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about the National Aeronautics and Space Administration." class="">NASA</a> this week, giving himself more freedom to pursue political and legal efforts to limit greenhouse gases. <br>
</p><div class="">
<p>
His departure, after a 46-year career at the space agency’s <a href="http://www.giss.nasa.gov/">Goddard Institute for Space Studies</a> in Manhattan, will deprive federally sponsored climate research of its best-known public figure. </p>
<p>
At the same time, retirement will allow Dr. Hansen to press his cause in
court. He plans to take a more active role in lawsuits challenging the
federal and state governments over their failure to limit emissions, for
instance, as well as in fighting the development in Canada of a
particularly dirty form of oil extracted from tar sands. </p><p>
“As a government employee, you can’t testify against the government,” he said in an interview. </p><p>
Dr. Hansen had already become an activist in recent years, taking
vacation time from NASA to appear at climate protests and allowing
himself to be arrested or cited a half-dozen times. </p><p>
But those activities, going well beyond the usual role of government
scientists, had raised eyebrows at NASA headquarters in Washington. “It
was becoming clear that there were people in NASA who would be much
happier if the ‘sideshow’ would exit,” Dr. Hansen said in an e-mail.
</p><p>
At 72, he said, he feels a moral obligation to step up his activism in his remaining years. </p><p>
“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.” </p><p>
His departure, on Wednesday, will end a career of nearly half a century
working not just for a single agency but also in a single building, on
the edge of the Columbia University campus. </p><p>
>From that perch, seven floors above the <a title="Web site for Toms Restaurant" href="http://tomsrestaurant.net/">diner</a>
made famous by “Seinfeld,” Dr. Hansen battled the White House,
testified dozens of times in Congress, commanded some of the world’s
most powerful computers and pleaded with ordinary citizens to grasp the
basics of a complex science. </p><p>
His warnings and his scientific papers have drawn frequent attack from
climate-change skeptics, to whom he gives no quarter. But Dr. Hansen is a
maverick, just as likely to vex his allies in the environmental
movement. He supports nuclear power and has taken stands that sometimes
undercut their political strategy in Washington. </p><p>
In the interview and in subsequent e-mails, Dr. Hansen made it clear
that his new independence would allow him to take steps he could not
have taken as a government employee. He plans to lobby European leaders —
who are among the most concerned about climate change — to impose a tax
on oil derived from tar sands. Its extraction results in greater
greenhouse emissions than conventional oil. </p><p>
Dr. Hansen’s activism of recent years dismayed some of his scientific
colleagues, who felt that it backfired by allowing climate skeptics to
question his objectivity. But others expressed admiration for his
willingness to risk his career for his convictions. </p><p>
Initially, Dr. Hansen plans to work out of a converted barn on his farm
in Pennsylvania. He has not ruled out setting up a small institute or
taking an academic appointment. </p><p>
He said he would continue publishing scientific papers, but he will no
longer command the computer time and other NASA resources that allowed
him to track the earth’s rising temperatures and forecast the long-run
implications. </p><p>
Dr. Hansen, raised in small-town Iowa, began his career studying Venus,
not the earth. But as concern arose in the 1970s about the effects of
human emissions of greenhouse gases, he switched gears, publishing
pioneering scientific papers. </p><p>
His initial estimate of the earth’s sensitivity to greenhouse gases was
somewhat on the high side, later work showed. But he was among the first
scientists to identify the many ways the planet is likely to respond to
rising temperatures and to show how those effects would reinforce one
another to produce immense changes in the climate and environment,
including a sea level rise that could ultimately flood many of the
world’s major cities. </p><p>
“He’s done the most important science on the most important question
that there ever was,” said Bill McKibben, a climate activist who has
worked closely with Dr. Hansen. </p><p>
Around the time Dr. Hansen switched his research focus, in the 1970s, a
sharp rise in global temperatures began. He labored in obscurity over
the next decade, but on a blistering June day in 1988 he was called
before a Congressional committee and <a title="Original Times article on the testimony" href="http://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/24/us/global-warming-has-begun-expert-tells-senate.html">testified</a> that human-induced global warming had begun. </p>
<p>
Speaking to reporters afterward in his flat Midwestern accent, he <a title="Times article." href="http://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/24/us/global-warming-has-begun-expert-tells-senate.html">uttered a sentence</a>
that would appear in news reports across the land: “It is time to stop
waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the
greenhouse effect is here.” </p><p>
Given the natural variability of climate, it was a bold claim to make
after only a decade of rising temperatures, and to this day some of his
colleagues do not think he had the evidence. </p><p>
Yet subsequent events bore him out. 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. </p><p>
In worldwide temperature records going back to 1880, the 19 hottest years have all occurred since his testimony. </p><p>
Again and again, Dr. Hansen made predictions that were ahead of the rest
of the scientific community and, arguably, a bit ahead of the evidence.
</p><p>
“Jim has a real track record of being right before you can actually prove he’s right with statistics,” said <a title="Web site for Dr. Pierrehumbert" href="http://geosci.uchicago.edu/%7Ertp1/">Raymond T. Pierrehumbert</a>, a planetary scientist at the University of Chicago. </p>
<p>
Dr. Hansen’s record has by no means been spotless. Even some of his
allies consider him prone to rhetorical excess and to occasional
scientific error. </p><p>
He has repeatedly called for trying the most vociferous climate-change
deniers for “crimes against humanity.” And in recent years, he stated
that excessive carbon dioxide emissions might eventually lead to a
runaway greenhouse effect that would boil the oceans and render earth
uninhabitable, much like Venus. </p><p>
His colleagues pointed out that this had not happened even during
exceedingly warm episodes in the earth’s ancient past. “I have huge
respect for Jim, but in this particular case, he overstated the risk,”
said Daniel P. Schrag, a geochemist and the head of Harvard’s <a href="http://environment.harvard.edu/">Center for the Environment</a>, who is nonetheless deeply worried about climate change. </p><p>
Climate skeptics have routinely accused Dr. Hansen of alarmism. “He
consistently exaggerates all the dangers,” Freeman Dyson, the famed
physicist and climate contrarian, <a title="Times Magazine profile of Freeman Dyson" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?pagewanted=1">told</a> The New York Times Magazine in 2009. </p>
<p>
Perhaps the biggest fight of Dr. Hansen’s career broke out in late 2005,
when a young political appointee in the administration of George W.
Bush began exercising control over Dr. Hansen’s statements and his
access to journalists. Dr. Hansen <a title="Times article breaking the story of the restrictions" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/earth/29climate.html?ex=1296190800&en=51c46d7689bee520&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">took the fight public</a> and the administration <a title="Article about NASA emphasizing openness" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/science/04climate.html">backed down</a>. </p>
<p>
For all his battles with conservatives, however, he has also been hard on environmentalists. He was a <a title="Blog post on Dr. Hansens criticisms of the climate bill" href="http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/james-hansen-hopes-waxman-markey-cap-and-trade-bill-fails-has-he-lost-the-plot.html">harsh critic</a> of a failed <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/energy-environment/climate-and-energy-legislation/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="More articles about climate and energy legislation." class="">climate bill</a>
they supported in 2009, on the grounds that it would have sent billions
into the federal government’s coffers without limiting emissions
effectively. </p><p>
Dr. Hansen agrees that a price is needed on carbon dioxide emissions, but he wants the money <a title="Explanation of the fee-and-dividend proposal" href="http://www.citizensclimatelobby.org/node/444">returned to the public</a>
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.
</p><p>
In the absence of such a broad policy, Dr. Hansen has been lending his
support to fights against individual fossil fuel projects. Students
lured him to a coal protest in 2009, and he was arrested for the first
time. That fall he was cited again after sleeping overnight in a tent on
the Boston Common with students trying to pressure Massachusetts into
passing <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/energy-environment/climate-and-energy-legislation/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="Recent and archival news about climate and energy legislation." class="">climate legislation</a>. </p>
<p>
“It was just humbling to have that solidarity and support from this leader, this lion among men,” said <a title="Profile of Mr. Altemose" href="http://www.betterfutureproject.org/who-we-are/staff/">Craig S. Altemose</a>, an organizer of the Boston <a title="Article about the protest" href="http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/green/articles/2009/12/07/sleep_outs_draw_to_a_close_on_eve_of_climate_summit/">protest</a>. </p>
<p>
Dr. Hansen says he senses the beginnings of a mass movement on climate
change, led by young people. Once he finishes his final papers as a NASA
employee, he intends to give it his full support. </p><p>
“At my age,” he said, “I am not worried about having an arrest record.” </p><p> </p><div class="">
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<h6 class="">A version of this article appeared in print on April 2, 2013, on page <span>D</span><span>1</span> of the <span>New York edition</span> with the headline: Climate Maverick to Quit NASA.</h6>
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------------------------------------------<br></div><div class="">Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett<br></div></div></div>