Let Jim Hansen Speak
January 28th, 2006Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
The Bush Administration once again demonstrates its unbelievable clumsiness when it comes to handling the politics of global warming. In a story carried on the website of the New York Times, Andy Revkin writes,
James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.
What is it that the Bush Administration is trying to keep Jim Hansen from saying?
According to the NYT article,
The fresh efforts to quiet him, Dr. Hansen said, began in a series of calls after a lecture he gave on Dec. 6 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In the talk, he said that significant emission cuts could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United States, climate change would eventually leave the earth “a different planet.” The administration’s policy is to use voluntary measures to slow, but not reverse, the growth of emissions.
Here is why the Administration’s actions are, from a political standpoint, incredibly stupid.
1. Many, many government scientists routinely engage in political advocacy on the climate issue. Revkin points to this in his article when he identifies a government scientist who expresses views less critical of the Administration’s stance on climate change, but who apparently does not have the same restrictions.
2. Clearly, Jim Hansen is being singled out because of his stature and visibility. But that same stature results in a front page New York Times story when he complains about his treatment.
3. Jim Hansen’s statements about “policy” are really just political exhortations, and not really about policy in any significant degree. The climate issue is in gridlock and it is inconceivable that (yet another) prominent scientist witnessing to his political values is going to change these dynamics, even if it offers some short term discomfort for the Bush Administration.
4. Jim Hansen’s statements had their 15 minutes of attention and were largely old news – the Bush Administration has turned a non-story into renewed focus on their approach to climate.
5. Finally, we want scientists to engage in policy discussions. Note to the Bush Administration – you are funding about $2 billion of research focused on improving policy. If scientists don’t talk about policy, then they are wasting the public’s money.
6. From a crass political standpoint, when scientists of the stature of Jim Hansen make overtly political statements absent any substantive or meaningful discussion of policy, they make themselves look bad. Had the Administration given Jim Hansen enough rope, he may very well have undercut his own authority by looking like just another scientist trying to couch his political views in science.
Let’s be clear: the Administration has every right to control what its political appointees say. They even are in the right when they insist that scientists clearly differentiate their own views from official government policies, particularly when the scientist is speaking from an official setting using government resources. This is especially important when the speaker is very prominent.
I am sure that the reaction of the Administration will be that this is either manufactured (read the whole NYT story) or it is the result of an over-aggressive political appointee (echoes of the defense used to explain why a prospective scientific advisory board member was asked who he voted for).
Two final points – this case helps to underscore how absurd it is to try to separate science and policy. The IPCC has a formal mandate to be “policy relevant, but policy neutral”. If the Bush Administration was smart and really wanted to silence scientists, it would ask why IPCC rules aren’t good enough for NASA scientists. Keeping science and policy separate makes no sense for the IPCC or U.S. government scientists.
And lastly, understanding this experience requires no need to fall back on a simple-minded “war on science”. This is just bad politics by the Bush Administration, which reflects on a policy failure shared by all.
January 28th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
Jim Hansen is not a political appointee. He’s a civil servant. I’m not completely sure, but I believe that may be a significant difference legally in this case.
January 28th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
Well, my bet that NASA is going to gift GISS to Columbia is looking better and better. You still have some time to get some money down before the next budget is published. However, there are a few points to be made.
Hansen is a member of the NASA Senior Executive Service (SES). It would be trivial to assign him to a desk job in Lost City, Nowhere, e.g. Stennis. His choices then are to retire or go to Lost City. Moreover, he can be demoted and other nasty things given enough political will http://www.doi.gov/hrm/pmanager/st6c.html
Roger’s points 3 and 4 are his own idle wishes which at best he learnt at the Daniel Okrent drive by school of posting. As you well know, Hansen has proposed and published on a number of policies to slow down the effects of global warming http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020103greenhouse.html for example, and as director of GISS is responsible for the surface temperature record, and climate modeling, activities in which he has played an important scientific role. But, of course, he does not have his own blog (yet).
The administrative structure for GISS, is that GISS is a unit of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. What may protect Hansen is that he is three levels down from headquarters and those levels are respected scientists as well as administrators. Even at HQ there are three levels between public affairs and the science directorate. It is not clear that someone two levels down in public affairs at HQ can order Hansen to do anything. Given the structure of the thing it would require going up to the deputy administrator level. The reason this is important is if they want to actually order Hansen to do anything it has to be done at some point above him in the organizational chain for it to be used to discipline him.
Hansen can have a named professorship pretty much at any top twenty research university any time he wants. The issue for him is preserving what he has built at GISS and the team he has assembled.
The sociologically interesting part of this is that the first director of GISS was Robert Jastrow who was Sally Baliunas’ mentor. In Jastrow’s time GISS’s focus was astrophysics.
January 28th, 2006 at 8:50 pm
“Jim Hansen’s statements about “policy” are really just political exhortations, and not really about policy in any significant degree.”
Although, looking at p. 60 of his AGU talk
(http://www.giss.nasa.gov/~jhansen/keeling/keeling_talk_and_slides.pdf)
it does appear he’s been thinking about fuel economy and stabilization.
January 28th, 2006 at 9:19 pm
Eli-
Thanks for the comments.
The 2002 reference that you point to was related to methane policy. That study was indeed focused on policy and ironically enough has been the focus of a major Bush Administration effort – Methane to Markets, which we discussed here:
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/000350methane_policy.html
However, that 2002 study is not the focus of today’s Revkin article or the recent Hansen AGU talk (which does not at all discuss methane policy). As I wrote, Hansen’s _AGU talk_ (not Hansen’s entire academic history) was not really about policy, more about politics … read on in my reply to Phil …
January 28th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
Phil-
Thanks for your comment.
I have pulled out a few statements from Hansen’s talk below, (from the following location: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/~jhansen/keeling/keeling_talk_and_slides.pdf), and I really don’t think that there is much substance or novelty in them as far as policy goes. You and I may simply have different definitions of “policy” but from where i sit Hansen’s loose talk about desired goals is much more about politics. The details of how we achieve desired goals get much more into policy. In fact, with the exception of some very overt political statements at the beginning of Hansen’s talk, it is hard to see why the Bush Administration would raise a fuss abotu what Hansen is talking about in the first place, e.g., given his foucs on technology etc.. Consider the following statements, are they innovative or new statements of policy? I don’t think so.
“Efficiency will always be needed. It could be achieved now if we seriously pursued it, and if it were pursued we could get onto an ‘alternative’ scenario track.”
“The U.S. has an opportunity to address a number of issues including energy independence.”
“China and India, overall, are even less efficient than the U.S. There will be a tremendous market for improved efficiency, which we should be pursuing much more vigorously, for our own good as well as for the planet’s.”
“The goal of keeping further global warming under 1°C requires two things: first, flattening out and then decreasing the rate of growth of CO2 emissions, and second an absolute decrease in emissions of non-CO2 climate forcings, particularly methane and carbon monoxide, and therefore tropospheric ozone, and black carbon (soot) aerosols. There are multiple reasons to do this, with benefits for developed and developing countries, and for the planet and future generations. But these are not things that will simply happen because they make sense. There has to be leadership.”
“Yes, it is technically possible to avoid the grim “business-as usual” climate change, to follow an alternative scenario in which growth of greenhouse gas emissions is slowed in the first quarter of this century, primarily via concerted improvements in energy efficiency and a parallel reduction of non-CO2 climate forcings, and then reduced via advanced energy technologies that yield a cleaner atmosphere as well as a stable climate. The required actions make practical sense and have other benefits, but they will not happen without strong policy leadership and international cooperation.”
January 28th, 2006 at 11:00 pm
“You and I may simply have different definitions of “policy” but from where i sit Hansen’s loose talk about desired goals is much more about politics. The details of how we achieve desired goals get much more into policy.”
My reference to p. 60 though, was to the cited article in preparation and the graph, which reads:
“30% of fleet hydrogen powered from non-CO2 sources by 2050″. At any rate, he titled the talk “Is there still time to avoid ‘Dangerous Antropogenic Interference’ with global climate?”, which is an accurate description of the first 45 (of 50) slides. As you note above, the only reference to policy in the NYT article is a paraphrased quote from a NASA public affairs official to the effect that he shouldn’t be talking about policy.
I’d find it helpful if you could cite a couple of examples of scientists who are doing global climate research and are usefully engaged in policy work. From your comment above it looks like Hansen’s work on methane is one, are there others?
Thanks, Phil
January 28th, 2006 at 11:23 pm
Come on Roger, surely you know that what Hansen was talking about in 2000, 2002 and now grows out of
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/18/9875 Global warming in the twenty-first century: An alternative scenario James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Reto Ruedy, Andrew Lacis, and Valdar Oinas, PNAS August 29, 2000 vol. 97 no. 18 9875-9880
And pretty much everything he has said since 2000 has been consistent. This is nothing new. The brushback from Bush & Cie is.
Having read that article and the following work AND what you point to and quote, you also know that Hansen sees reductions of other forcings, such as methane, as a way to buy time for the necessary reductions in CO2 emissions. So, the Bush administration is saying reduce CH4 emissions and Hansen is saying we must reduce CH4 AND CO2 emissions. Big difference
January 29th, 2006 at 12:57 am
Rationally Ignorant
I read these Arnold Kling posts 1,2,3 about Bryan Caplan’s work and forthcoming book. So here’s my offer: If I use the title you suggest, I’ll take you to lunch at Morton’s (Tyson’s Corner or Reston, your pick). I meant to develop and apply the ideas …
January 29th, 2006 at 2:01 am
Eli-
Thanks for the follow up.
The fact that the Bush Adminstration is only now trying to silence Hansen, rather than after the PNAS article or at other times, provides a pretty strong indication to that thay are reacting to something else. Maybe it is payback for his 2004 endorsement of John Kerry. But the timing suggests that it is directly related to the more over political statements in his AGU lecture.
And if you think the PR hack referred to in the Revkin articles is aware of all of the subtlties that you describe, then you are giving more credit to these folks than I would. But as usual Eli, we can agree to disagree, no crime in that, thanks!
January 29th, 2006 at 2:05 am
Phil-
There is a lot of policy-related work. Much of it is focused on the Framework Convention on Climate Change, and is summarized in IPCC WG III (www.ipcc.ch). Here also is a good review document for other approaches to policy:
http://www.rivm.nl/bibliotheek/rapporten/500036001.html
And there is plenty more out there …
January 29th, 2006 at 9:43 am
“There is a lot of policy-related work. Much of it is focused on the Framework Convention on Climate Change, and is summarized in IPCC WG III (www.ipcc.ch).”
Right, but how many of these people are climate scientists? Your statement above that “If scientists don’t talk about policy, then they are wasting the public’s money” seems to suggest that everyone should be simultaneously contributing to both WG1 and WG3 activities. To me that would mean publishing and reviewing articles in JGR or J. Climate, supervising graduate students in atsc, math, chemistry or physics departments and getting funding from NSERC, NSF or NOAA science panels while tracking and contributing to policy research. That’s a difficult career straddle, and I would be interested in individuals who, in your opinion, are managing it successfully.
thanks, Phil
January 29th, 2006 at 9:43 am
Roger
There may be more to these NASA shenanigans than meets the eye. It would appear that Hansen is essentially accusing your government of causing human mass extinction due to negligence.
In a related media interview published in the Washington Post, Hansen claims that a rise of temperatures by 4 degrees F in the next 100 years would be fatal to the human race.
“Earth’s average temperature has risen nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past 30 years, he noted, and another increase of about 4 degrees over the next century would “imply changes that constitute practically a different planet.” “It’s not something you can adapt to,” Hansen said in an interview. “We can’t let it go on another 10 years like this. We’ve got to do something.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/28/AR2006012801021.html
I don’t know on what kind of evidence Hansen is basing his dubious claim, but I’m pretty sure that playing the doomsday card will neither enhance his reputation nor will it work politically, as green campaigners have been finding out to their astonishment.
http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article337367.ece
Benny
January 29th, 2006 at 10:15 am
Phil-
My expectation is that good policy reearch necessarily requires the contribution of a number of disciplines and perspectives. In most cases such work will be the result of folks with WGI experise working together with people with WG II and III expertise. A scientific assessment should be relevant to policy and requires that the experts clearly identify the significance of the science that they are assessing for action.
The structure of the IPCC, and a more general view, that holds that climate science is somehow separate from cosiderations of policy is artificial and not useful to the end of developing practical and effective policy options.
Thanks!
January 29th, 2006 at 10:56 am
Rationally Ignorant
I read these Arnold Kling posts 1,2,3 about Bryan Caplan’s work and forthcoming book. So here’s my offer: If I use the title you suggest, I’ll take you to lunch at Morton’s (Tyson’s Corner or Reston, your pick). I meant to develop and apply the ideas …
January 29th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
Hi, Roger:
Some comments on what you’ve written:
1) “Let’s be clear: the Administration has every right to control what its political appointees say.”
As others have pointed out, I don’t think James Hansen is a “political appointee.” If you know differently, you should say so. Otherwise, I think it’s a good idea to clarify that James Hansen is *not* a political appointee.
2) “Had the Administration given Jim Hansen enough rope, he may very well have undercut his own authority by looking like just another scientist trying to couch his political views in science.”
Suffice it to say, I don’t understand the Bush Administration at all. I do understand that communication is definitely not G.W. Bush’s personal forte’. But I **don’t** understand why his entire administration has such problems communicating with the public.
Were I in the Adminstration, I would have someone higher up in NASA actually respond to Hansen’s statements, e.g.
“Dr. Hansen has stated that Earth’s average temperature has risen nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past 30 years, and has stated that another increase of about 4 degrees over the next century would ‘imply changes that constitute practically a different planet.’ ‘It’s not something you can adapt to,’ he has said. ‘We can’t let it go on another 10 years like this. We’ve got to do something.’”
“First, I think the warming over the 21st century will be less than 4 degrees Fahrenheit.” (It would be necessary to find someone higher up in NASA who actually thinks this, but it should not be impossible.)
“However, even if the warming is 4 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s hard to imagine how such warming could result in ‘practically a different planet.’ For one thing, as Dr. Hansen has noted, it has warmed 1 degree Fahrenheit in the last 30 years. Further, it warmed approximately 2 degrees Fahrenheit from 1904 to 2005. I know of no one who claims the rise of 2 degrees Fahrenheit from 1904 to 2005 made the world, ‘practically a different planet.’”
“What *has* made the world ‘practically a different planet’ from 1904 to 2005 is the increase in human wealth and in human technological capabilities. In 1904, there was no air conditioning, no mass-produced automobile, no electrical grid, no nuclear power, no radio/TV/Internet. Many homes even in richer countries had no indoor plumbing. It can certainly be expected that the increases in human wealth and technology in the 21st century will match or dwarf those of the 20th century. Doesn’t Dr. Hansen agree that these changes in technological capability and wealth will likely dwarf the changes caused by an increase in temperature of 4 degrees Fahrenheit (or less)?”
“Finally, the idea that a 4 degree Fahrenheit rise is ‘not something we can adapt to’ seems clearly alarmist and wrong. After all, there is more than a 12 degree Fahrenheit difference between the annual average temperature in Miami FL and Memphis TN. And there is approximately a 30 degree Fahrenheit difference between Miami and Minneapolis, MN. Does Dr. Hansen seriously claim that if all three of those cities had their average temperatures increase by 4 degrees Fahrenheit, they would all become unlivable? After all, the net migration in the United States over the last 30 years has been from North to South. Apparently, most Americans seem to prefer warmth.”
Of course, it would be necessary for the Bush Administration to find someone higher up in NASA who actually thought all those things. (It would be an absolutely horrible idea to try to force someone to say them, if they didn’t think they were true!) But it’s hard to believe that there isn’t at least SOMEONE higher up in NASA who doesn’t agree with those statements. They aren’t at all extreme or not supportable by facts.
Mark
January 29th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
All-
Jim Hansen is NOT a political appointee. If he were this would not be news.
January 29th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
Sheesh, Benny. Take a breath. Oh, wait, that’s just your tactic. Never mind.
It’s a long step from wishing and projecting that Hansen “is essentially accusing our government of causing human mass extinction due to negligence” for an event that hasn’t happened yet.
And then your little wish that when Hansen says that ecosystems may flip and adaptation is an inadequate strategy, he really means that this strategy is negligence.
What he means is that we don’t have models to change society’s direction after ecosystems flip.
As we have no knowledge that ecosystems can sustain 9B people after they flip, maybe when Hansen says adaptation is inadequate he means adaptation is inadequate.
I know you want to paint a different picture, but come now.
Best,
D
January 29th, 2006 at 9:12 pm
Some other perspectives on the policy/politics distinction re: Hansen:
http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=on_ejecting_scientists_from_politics&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=243
January 30th, 2006 at 8:49 am
“They even are in the right when they insist that scientists clearly differentiate their own views from official government policies, particularly when the scientist is speaking from an official setting using government resources.”
I have a problem accepting this line of reasoning. Government policies ought to square with the truth – we’re paying these
folks ‘ salaries – and it’s not to be fed a string of lies or distortions. No, they don’t have the right to insist anything of the sort. Government, in this definition, translates into Bush adminsitration,special interests, mumbo jumbo science. “Official government policies” says who?! When are we going to call these charlatans out?
January 30th, 2006 at 9:09 am
Penny-
Thanks for your comments. “Squaring policies with truth” sounds great, but is actually pretty complicated once you realize that policies have to simplfiy the real world in order to be implemented. See our recent discussions of the FCCC and national flood policy on these points.
A more appropriate criteria for policy evaluation than “truth” might be “effectiveness”. Whatever one thinks about the truth of Bush Administration climate policies, they are certainly not effective.
ANd on government officials speaking out of line with official policy, think about international relations. Officials who make official-sounding pronouncemnts can move markets and get people killed. There are good reasons for governments to speak with one voice on many political issues.
I’d agree that silencing government scientists is not one of those situations.
January 30th, 2006 at 11:32 am
New Energy Currents: 2005-08-05
Much like the thank-God-it’s-finally-over Energy Bill, New Energy Currents for July is a little late. Hey, it’s summer. New Energy Currents is a broad, monthly roundup of new developments in energy science, technology, and policy, by John Atkinson of…
January 30th, 2006 at 3:02 pm
James Hansen was interviewed on CNN this morning, here is the transcript. has some interesting allegations about NOAA and hurricanes
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0601/30/ltm.07.html
M. O’BRIEN: It’s a beautiful morning here in New York City. A little warmer than we’d like it to be.
A question about science. Facts are facts, but when good science meets a political reality, a political agenda, what happens?
A gag order, or so it is alleged, by a leading climate scientist at NASA. He says the Bush administration is trying to silence him because he is sounding alarm bells about the impact of climate change, global warming.
James Hansen is director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
He joins us here this morning.
Dr. Hansen, good to have you with us.
JAMES HANSEN, NASA’S GODDARD INSTITUTE FOR SPACE STUDIES: Hi.
Good to be here.
M. O’BRIEN: Tell us what you said, first of all, scientifically.
HANSEN: Scientifically I said we’re getting very close to a tipping point in our climate system. If we continue along a business as usual path with greenhouse gases increasing faster and faster, then it’s going to become impossible to avoid losing the Arctic, for example. Already the sea ice there is reduced 25 percent in the summer.
Within a few decades, we may lose the sea ice there and, therefore, the ability for wildlife like polar bears, seals, reindeer, to survive.
M. O’BRIEN: Let’s take a look at a couple of animations. These come from some of the models which have been put together to try to project global warming.
The first one I want to show you shows what happened since about 1870 to present and then beyond. And, as you can see, blue is cooler. And as you move along here, the red portions are the places that become warmer.
Projecting outward, as you see, we get into modern time now. This is the industrial age. And as you can see, over the industrial countries, you’ve got these splotches of red. And as time goes on, it becomes kind of a big red blob over this entire globe of ours.
At this point, some would suggest it’s so far gone it cannot be stopped.
HANSEN: No, I — that’s the point. It’s not too late to stop and avoid the worst consequences. But we would need to get on the scenario in which we slow down the rate of growth of greenhouse gases, get that to flatten out. And before the middle of the century, we’re going to have to be producing less and less carbon dioxide than we are now. M. O’BRIEN: And that’s not the way we’re going right now?
HANSEN: That’s not the way we’re going now.
M. O’BRIEN: Now, you have been told to be careful about what you say.
Why don’t you explain what you heard from public affairs people at NASA in particular about the comments you made?
HANSEN: Well, they were very unhappy about my presentation in December at the American Geophysical Union.
M. O’BRIEN: Why?
HANSEN: Well, I think because I’m connecting the dots, all the way from emissions to the future consequences and it’s — and it has — and I look at alternative scenarios, if we continue on this path or if we take other paths. And that is getting too close to policy, I guess.
M. O’BRIEN: Well, but there really isn’t much of a scientific debate anymore. So when you talk among scientific peers, there is tremendous agreement that global warming is real and it is hastened by human action or inaction.
HANSEN: Right.
M. O’BRIEN: So really what this is, is about politics, isn’t it?
HANSEN: Well, yes. I think there’s a big issue here, and that is the fact that the agencies, the public affairs offices at the agencies are staffed by political appointees. And that is affecting the ability to communicate with the public. So, for example — and it’s not just true in NASA.
In NOAH, for example, the hurricanes last summer, there becomes an agency perspective rather — and you’re not free to speak your own ideas. You have to follow that perspective.
M. O’BRIEN: So, in other words, if a scientist at NOAH said these storms are stronger, perhaps by virtue of the fact that the climate is changing, global warming…
HANSEN: Exactly.
M. O’BRIEN: … the administration will say no, you can’t say that.
HANSEN: Yes (ph).
M. O’BRIEN: Let me just — I want to inject this so we have the other side here, so to speak.
Dean Acosta, who is NASA’s top public affairs official, who is a political appointee, by the way, he says this: “NASA is committed to open and full communications. Our policy, which is similar to that of any other federal agency, corporation or news organization, is that any NASA employee speaking on the record, issuing a press release or posting information on our Web site must coordinate such activities with the Office of Public Affairs, no exceptions.”
Now, I’ve covered NASA for years. Whenever you book an interview, you have to go through public affairs. That’s not anything, I suppose that is out of the ordinary.
What is different now, though, do you think?
HANSEN: Well, for example, National Public Radio in Boston wanted me to do an interview. And they were told no, they needed to do the interview with someone at NASA headquarters. And then the interview didn’t occur, because they wanted to speak to the scientists, not somebody at NASA headquarters.
M. O’BRIEN: Right.
So sum it up here.
Do you think that there continues to be pressure from the Bush administration not to say what scientists fully believe here about global warming?
HANSEN: Well, I think that public affairs offices have probably, for a long time, been used by whatever party is in power. But it’s become much more intense in the current administration.
M. O’BRIEN: James Hansen, who is one of the leading scientists on climate change. He works for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center — Goddard’s Institute for Space Studies, I should say, more accurately.
Thank you for being with us.
HANSEN: Thanks.
January 30th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
Roger, Clinton was president in all of 2000 and for most of January 2001, the PNAS article was published in mid August 2000. At the time the article was published it was not in full accord with the Clinton administration policy which was to try and impliment Kyoto. By offering an alternate path Hansen was perceived by many as undercutting that policy. Simple googling tosses up a number of such links to the usual suspects (Pat Michaels, SEPP, Fraser Institute, etc.) both contemporaneous and present to this paper and a 2001 PNAS follow on which looked in the trends for forcings.
Please Roger, we are now three steps into the yes, but, game. You said something. Phil and I have pointed out major weaknesses in your argument and you are dragging the cat in.
Ok, my turn. How does a PR hack (your words) hear about Hansen’s AGU speech? What is more, I will offer a side bet that this guy has been shadowing Hansen for a lot longer than since December.
The promethian spam nazi is on the loose again.
January 30th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
The interview is interesting. The one suggestion I would have for JH is that he lean a bit more heavily on the fact that “avoiding dangerous climate change” is a policy that has already been adopted by the US government. Saying how close we are to such change is a matter of scientific judgement, and IMHO even talking in general terms about various approaches that might be most effective to avoid it does not constitute “policy advocacy.”
Also, Roger, regarding what the Bush regime was trying to accomplish here, I would say that they were making an attempt to silence Hansen to the degree possible in advance of the ‘06 Congressional elections, where Bush looks to be in serious trouble on a range of issues. I suspect they selected a relatively low-level PR person (allegedly acting on his own) for purposes of deniability. Even if ineffective with Hansen, this move is of course a way of sending a message to all the scientists who don’t have ready access to the front page of the NYT.
January 30th, 2006 at 6:44 pm
We’re in the middle of a global mass extinction event, and you guys are arguing politics and policy, and invoking economics.
Why am I not impressed?
http://cosmic.lifeform.org
January 30th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
Eli-
I’m developed the impression that if I wrote that 2+2=4 you’d probably disagree with my choice of font used to express that perspective!
January 30th, 2006 at 9:25 pm
Actually Roger, I have said some very nice things about you and your blog, but you do have a small tendency to build impressive straw castles. What I have also done is challenge a lot of your assertions.
As someone once told me about the Economist, they have a real skill at arguments that start with if pigs were horses cows would fly. You always will loose if you accept the premise and try to argue with them about the logic of the thing. What you have to do is point out that the density of flying pigs is pretty low.
The interview with Hansen was interesting also, especially the bit about NOAH, a smile bringing misprint. Let me point to one interesting place there at the end when Hansen says:
“Well, I think that public affairs offices have probably, for a long time, been used by whatever party is in power. But it’s become much more intense in the current administration.”
Which is pretty much what Chris Mooney was saying and you were pooh-poohing.
Still, the question is open “How does a PR hack hear about Hansen’s AGU speech? What is more, I will offer a side bet that this guy has been shadowing Hansen for a lot longer than since December.” Today we opened the window on how long till they close the climate institute above the bar.
January 31st, 2006 at 1:39 am
I was about to make a snide comment that the Bush administration uses George Orwell’s “1984″ as an instruction manual.
Then I tried to follow the link to Dr. Hansen’s talk, http://www.giss.nasa.gov/~jhansen/keeling/keeling_talk_and_slides.pdf
and find that it has been removed from the website. It was sent down the memory hole.
The Bush administration uses George Orwell’s “1984″ as an instruction manual!
Say what you will about Dr. Hansen’s science, the appropriateness of his pronouncements, and NASA’s legitimate PR needs, this is censorship. It is flat out horrifying.
January 31st, 2006 at 3:16 am
Roger et al,
I can now link to Hansen’s talk, and I can’t wait to finish reading it. It seems to be almost entirely science, and in his brief foray into matters of policy (which I am happy to allow him) he makes a critical point: the infrastructure (capital goods) that we build today creates CO2 for decades. That’s why accelerating energy efficiency should start today.
For the best discussion of the economic benefits of efficiency that I have seen, visit the Rocky Mountain Institute at http://www.rmi.org, especially their book, “Winning the Oil Endgame” (available free online).
Meanwhile, congressman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) has weighed in with an excellent letter,
http://www.house.gov/science/press/109/109-184.htm.
He reminds NASA that we need scientists to be able to speak freely, so they should back off. I can’t tell you how happy I was to read it.
January 31st, 2006 at 3:22 am
Sorry, the link to Rep. Sherwood Boehlert’s letter was broken. Try:
http://www.house.gov/science/press/109/109-184.htm
Thanks.
January 31st, 2006 at 7:09 am
I must be starting to go soft in the head. But I read your blog, that says:
‘What is it that the Bush Administration is trying to keep Jim Hansen from saying? ‘
Then I read the NYT article, courtesy of your link.
But I can not see where the hand of the “Bush administration” appears in all this, rather than “NASA officials”.
Perhaps you could steer my right.
January 31st, 2006 at 8:03 am
Philip-
Sure – the Public Relations official responsible for serving as a “gatekeeper” and who disallowed the NPR interview that Dr. Hansen referred to is a political appointee, menaing that he is appointed to his post by the Bush Aministratiopn, and is thus part of the administration.
January 31st, 2006 at 4:26 pm
Hansen, part III
If you’ll excuse my quiet few days (traveling and without a real computer), I’ll get back to the Hansen bidness. The reason I got into this blogging business in the first place is to throw ideas out there, hear other…
January 31st, 2006 at 4:28 pm
Hansen, part III
What I am saying is that Hansen needs to lay off the political policy statements in his science releases. And I don’t string together “political policy statements” accidentally here, as Hansen is politicizing a policy option. Be a scientist AND tell …
January 31st, 2006 at 5:03 pm
Roger,
I find the extrapolation a little tenuous, especially when the article really only implicates one person.
January 31st, 2006 at 5:18 pm
Philip- No extrapolation necessary, from todays NYT:
“The climate scientist, James E. Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, and several other National Aeronautics and Space Administration employees said Bush administration appointees at headquarters had demanded to review his lectures and publications in advance.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/31/science/31climate.html
There is no allegation (that I have seen) that it goes any higher that this one member of the Bush Administration.
January 31st, 2006 at 8:36 pm
I may be missing something here, but why is someone so far down in NASA’s org chart a political appointee (e.g. the guy referred to in the initial NY Times article)?
January 31st, 2006 at 9:57 pm
Eli- Excellent question. The guy in question is Dean Acosta, deputy assistant adminstrator for public affairs for NASA.
http://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights/acosta_bio.html
His position is what is called a “noncareer appointment” which is subject to change when adminstrations change. It is not a “presidential appointment” but he is a political appointee nonetheless.
Details here:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/plumbook/2004/p179-180_nara.pdf
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/plumbook/2004/pv-vi.pdf
http://www.opm.gov/transition/TRANS20R-Ch4.htm
February 3rd, 2006 at 8:03 pm
Roger, does this remind you a bit about Bob Ehrlich’s eminance gris, Joseph Steffen?
February 7th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
It gets stranger: http://scientificactivist.blogspot.com/2006/02/breaking-news-george-deutsch-did-not.html
But then again, what did we expect?
June 29th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
[...] January 2006 I wrote a post titled “Let Jim Hansen Speak” in which I called the actions of the Bush Administration to limit the ability of [...]