IN THE US, it seems, it is inappropriate for scientists on the federal payroll to talk about the dangers of climate change. Ask Jim Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and George W. Bush’s top climate modeller. In December 2005, he told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union that the Earth’s climate “is nearing a tipping point”. This week a report by the UK government makes a similar analysis (“Icy warning”). Yet NASA has been trying to shut Hansen up.
Strictly speaking, this gagging order is not new. Just before the last presidential election in 2004, Hansen told a public meeting: “I have been told by a high government official that I should not talk about dangerous anthropogenic interference with climate, because we do not know how much humans are changing the Earth’s climate or how much change is dangerous. Actually, we know quite a lot.” Which he then proceeded to explain.
We should listen to Hansen. He first got global warming onto the world’s front pages in 1988, when he told a senate committee hearing during a sweltering US drought that there was strong evidence for the greenhouse effect and it was time to stop waffling. He knows how to use the media, a skill that should be applauded. He knows the science. We need to hear more from him.
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