Twenty three years ago, on this day, October 28, 2000, famed climate scientist James Hansen wrote an open letter…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 369,4ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that James Hansen had not yet retired from NASA – hadn’t yet been pushed out by the Bush administration’s attempts to shut him up. He knew that the IPCC report was coming out. And he decided to do some truth telling. And here we are.
What he says is
What I think we can learn from this
The problem is not the science, the problem is not the scientists. The problem is the power structures. This is nothing that radicals have been telling us that for a very long time, but the people who want to “save the world” never quite get their shit together. Here we are.
What happened next
Hansen started getting nicked on demos, bless him.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.