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James Hansen is the inconvenient prophet of global heating

2021-11-08T18:43:51.814Z


He is a figurehead in climate research, and many of his forecasts have come true. But his science was an uncomfortable one - he defended some demands so vehemently that the handcuffs clicked.


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Climate researcher James Hansen

Photo: [M] Sean Gallup / Getty Images

On June 23, 1988, an inconspicuous man with thinning hair, carefully parted sides and a light suit sits in front of the US Senate and speaks plain text.

In a calm voice, he fires three statements at his audience with which he should make history:

  • "First, in 1988 it is warmer than it has ever been since the temperature measurements began."

  • "Second, global warming is so rapid that it is most likely caused by the greenhouse effect."

  • "Third: Our computer-aided climate models indicate that the greenhouse effect is already large enough today to favor extreme heat waves."

With what James E. Hansen presented, the most important thing about the just looming climate crisis was said.

Oh yes, and of course the scientist mentioned that there is a "99 percent probability" that these fluctuations have no natural causes, but are caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that humans release.

There had been indications of anthropogenic climate change decades before the American appeared. But the general public at that time did not see global warming with a rise in temperatures as proven, which was also due to the skillful lobbying of the oil industry, as we now know. Hansen announced the results of climate research to US politicians for the first time. Now at least none of these people could say they had no knowledge of the effects of the massive carbon dioxide emissions.

At that time, the physicist was working for NASA at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York; he was director of the institution until 2013.

Hansen grew up with six siblings on an Iowa farm.

Initially, however, he did not devote himself to the mechanisms of the earth's atmosphere, but to space, more precisely to planetary research.

For example, he was involved in a project about Venus.

"He was remarkably ahead of his time"

At some point he realized that one could also draw knowledge about our own from the satellite data about the atmospheres of foreign planets.

From the mid-1970s, climate research was the focus of his work, and he became one of the leading scientists in the field of greenhouse gases.

And one of the first to warn of the consequences of human-made global warming.

A few years before his appearance before the Senate, Hansen and five colleagues published a sensational study. The journal Science published a prognosis on the rise in temperature on earth under the title "Climate Effects of Increasing Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere". He assumed that the global average temperatures would increase so much in the 1990s that one could clearly see that it was not a matter of a few random weather conditions, but that the human system was behind it. In fact, the German Klaus Hasselmann, who was awarded the Nobel Prize this year, actually managed to provide this evidence.

Hansen expected the global temperature to rise by a maximum of 0.45 degrees Celsius on average from the 1980s to 2010.

The actual value is 0.48 degrees.

"He was remarkably ahead of his time and predicted global warming, which we actually measured three decades later," says the renowned US climate researcher Michael E. Mann of him.

Hansen is one of the most important climate researchers not only because of his public impact, because over the years the list of his scientific publications has always been longer than that of his prizes and honors.

Since the 1960s, he has mostly published several articles in specialist journals every year.

And: The 80-year-old answered the question, which is still much debated today, of whether scientists should only address science in their messages or whether they should also address appeals to the public or even demands to politicians, with a clear yes. For him, who has held a professorship for earth and environmental research at Columbia University in New York since 1985, science and activism are not a contradiction in terms.

That was probably also due to an episode he experienced in 1989 before another appearance before the US Senate Commission on Energy and Natural Resources. At that time, his script is said to have been changed in advance by employees of the government agency - an act that Hansen later repeatedly denounced publicly; he demanded that politics should refrain from any influence on his research results. Hansen denounced similar attempts during the tenure of US President George W. Bush.

When Hansen realized that politicians were not reacting as vigorously on the issue of carbon dioxide reductions as they were before the ban on CFCs, which destroy the ozone layer, he became increasingly activist. With some points of view and demands, he also offended some colleagues. His commitment went so far that he was arrested several times during demonstrations for climate protection and never tired of demanding that coal energy be phased out. What drives him to venture so far? "What would you do if you knew what I know?" Hansen asked once during a lecture.

In 2013 he emphasized that he considered the phase-out of nuclear power in some countries - including Germany - to be a mistake.

Instead of saying goodbye to technology, one should press ahead with the development of safe power plants.

That was too much even for some environmentalists.

But in the end this discussion also picked up speed again.

Perhaps Hansen was ahead of his time on this, too.

Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2021-11-08

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