James Hansen: 'I Thought There Would Be a Rational Response'

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Scientists were warning about the dangers of climate change even before America discovered and used oil on an industrial scale. Here, in the second of three posts, we see how in the 1980s it appeared politicians would rise to the challenges itย presentsโ€ฆ

James Hansen was the first scientist to detect the current rise in global temperatures, but he certainly was not the first to understand the effect greenhouse gases have on globalย temperatures.

It was well understood for centuries that without carbon dioxide, the Earth would be too cold to maintain life as we know it. Warnings about climate change in fact predate the discovery ofย oil.

In 1824,ย Joseph Fourier discovered the โ€œgreenhouse effectโ€ and explained how heat from the sun is trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere. In 1861, the Irish scientist John Tyndall confirmed different gases in the atmosphereโ€”such as carbon dioxideโ€”could change the temperature of theย planet.

It was forty years later, on 10 January 1901, that brothers Al and Curt Hammil used a rotary drill for the first time and sunk an oil well that produced a hundred thousand barrels a dayโ€”โ€œthe combined production of every other well onย Earthโ€.

Guy Callender, a British scientist, came to the conclusion in 1961 that a contemporary rise in global temperatures was due to carbon dioxide, but his faith in the theory cooled when in 1963 Britain experienced the coldest winter in more than twoย centuries.

Worrier-in-chief

The terrible error of believing that even a decade of exceptionally cold weather undermined the theory of climate change would be made again, not least by Lawson and his Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

HOW CLIMATE SCIENCE BECAME A POLITICAL ISSUE

Part 1: James Hansen: How Climate Change Becameย Political

Part 2: James Hansen: I Thought There Would Be a Rationalย Response

Part 3: How Free Market Thatcher First Called for Climateย Action

Next Week: Moncktonโ€™s Odd Claim He Inspired Thatcherโ€™s Climateย Call

Pioneering climate science was initially welcomed and well understood in the White House. President Jimmy Carter, known as the โ€œworrier-in-chiefโ€, ordered his staff to draft the Global 2000 Report, which drew together all the potential risks to person and nation, which in turn posed the question about the sensitivity of the Earth’s temperatures to rising greenhouseย gases.

Carter installed 32 solar panels in the White House in June 1979โ€”at the height of the Middle Eastern oilย embargo.

He said the solar heater might become โ€œa small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people, harnessing the power of the sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreignย oil.โ€

Hansen would reflect years later: โ€œConsidering that Carter initiated and approved projects aimed at extracting oil and gas from coal, as well as cooking the Rocky Mountains to squeeze oil from tar shale, he had very good reason toย worry.โ€

Exterminate allย life

โ€œThese projects, if they had been carried to full fruition and spread to other nations, had the potential to exterminate all life onย Earth.โ€

The term โ€œglobal warmingโ€ was first used in a scientific paper by Hansen in 1981 when he published his article โ€œClimate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxideโ€ in the journal Science.

He told the author: โ€œThat was the point where it was clear that this was going to happen in ourย lifetime.โ€

โ€œI remember telling Andy Lassis, my colleague at Iowa University, that wow, by the end of this century we will definitely be able to see the effects that humans are having on this planet. And that was anย eyeย opener.โ€

Hansen at first struggled to get the article published. The scientist resorted to cutting out graphs showing how coal, oil and gas burning correlated with the rise in carbon dioxide in theย atmosphere.

The 1981 journal article prompted dire headlines on the front page of the New York Times. Hansen suffered no fear or trepidation backย then.

A rationalย response

โ€œWe had coal phase-out scenarios. I wasn’t thinking, ‘oh, this is really gonna happen out in the twenty-first century’, because I thought there would be a rationalย response.โ€

โ€œThere has not been: it’s as if we didn’t know. We might as well not know. Our fossil fuel use wouldn’t be much different. By and large, the emissions have just continued toย accelerate.โ€

Everything changed when Ronald Reagan, an avid reader of Hayek and exponent of the free markets, was elected president in 1981 and immediately ordered that the White House solar panels were to beย removed.

Under the new leader of the free world, the department of energy cancelling funding to Hansen’s department at NASA.

โ€œOther researchers were told their funding would be terminated if they used climate models developed in Hansen’s lab, and some of his researchers were laid off as other funding was arranged,โ€ according to environmental author Markย Lynas.

โ€œThe pressure was so intense that Hansen sometimes asked to testify as a private citizen rather than as a federalย employee.โ€

Climate change would be kept off the American policy agenda for a further seven years. After Hansen told the Senate in 1988 that America was experiencing its hottest year in modern human history, he was subjected to years ofย censorship.

Hansen, by demonstrating that climate change was already taking place, forced the issue. But, surprisingly, it was Reagan’s closest political ally and fellow advocate of the free market who would finally put the global crisis of climate change onto the internationalย agenda.

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