Tag: James Hansen

Feb 17, 2013 – Scientists, activists, actors, arrested outside Whitehouse, protesting #Keystone

Post author By drmarchudson
Post date February 17, 2022
No Comments on Feb 17, 2013 – Scientists, activists, actors, arrested outside Whitehouse, protesting #Keystone

On this day, the 17th of February 2013, nine years ago, climate scientists, activists and activists were arrested outside the White House. They were protesting against the Keystone pipeline. Those arrested included James Hansen, actor Daryl Hannah, civil rights leader Julian Bond and environmental advocate Robert Kennedy Jr.

[This wasn’t their first go at this rodeo]

There were about 40,000 people on the march (though these guesstimates are always rubbery).

Why this matters

We need to celebrate resistance. Remember that we have resisted, albeit without much success, for who knows how much worse things would have been if we hadn’t.

What happened next?

Keystone may have been cancelled, but the extractivist infrastructures continue to be built…

Protesters Call On Obama To Reject Keystone XL Pipeline (npr.org)

Tags Daryl Hannah, James Hansen, Julian Bond, Robert Kennedy Jr

Agnotology Science Scientists United States of America

Jan 29, 2006: Attempts to gag James Hansen revealed

Post author By drmarchudson
Post date January 29, 2022
No Comments on Jan 29, 2006: Attempts to gag James Hansen revealed

Jan 29

On this day, the New York Times released a report, written by Andy Revkin, about how famed climate scientist James Hansen was being subjected to attempts at gagging him by some of George W Bush’s appointed goons. You can read all about it here. There’s a whole (very good) book about the campaign, called Censoring Science.

Hansen had already been up against this sort of stuff in 1981, when the incoming Reagan administration had cut his funding in retaliation to a previous front page story on the New York Times.

Why this matters?

Because if scientists, charities, think tanks, civil trade unions, etc, are gagged and silenced, then the public don’t get a real sense of “what’s up” (though by now, it amounts to wilful ignorance, and anyway, information on its own counts for nothing). This is all part of the long war against impact science, usually by no means exclusively, on the part of the “ right “. You have to remember that when the “left” is in charge, it also doesn’t go particularly well for independently minded scientists.

What happened next

Hansen is still publishing. You can see his Google Scholar page here because Hansen is in the old Yiddish term, a mensch.

Tags 2006, George W Bush, James Hansen, New York Times

Ignored Warnings Scientists

2007, Jan 1: “If we fail to act, we end up with a different planet”

Post author By drmarchudson
Post date January 1, 2022
No Comments on 2007, Jan 1: “If we fail to act, we end up with a different planet”

On this day, 15 years ago, the now defunct newspaper the Independent, ran a front page interview with famed climate scientist James Hansen.

This came with climate change already high on the agenda – the previous year had seen the first “Camp for Climate Action” and the release of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. New Conservative Party leader David Cameron had decided environmentalism was a leading way to detoxify the Tory brand, and in April 2006 had travelled to the Arctic to ‘hug a huskie’. More generally, humanity was going through its second big “something must be done” moment on climate (and its third on environmental matters more broadly – see “issue attention cycles” in the concepts page of this site).

In the interview Hansen, famous for his efforts to raise public awareness and concern, predating his iconic June 23 1988 testimony in front of a Senate committee (which we will return to later) said

““If we go another 10 years, by 2015, at the current rate of growth of Co2 emissions, which is about 2 per cent per year, the emissions in 2015 will be 35 per cent larger than they were in 2000. But if we want to get on a scenario that keeps global temperature in the range that it’s been in for the last million years we would need to decrease the emissions by something of the order of 25 per cent by the middle of the century and by something like 75 per cent by the end of the century“

Hansen is usually out in front on these matters. Events have overtaken him on this one, and there is now scientific consensus around much much steeper cuts in emissions. There is an alleged political consensus around “zero carbon” by 2050.

So, an ignored warning from the past. So what? This matters because there will still be people who tell you ‘”we’ve only just become aware of the problem, we need to give technology time to work”.

What happened next? We kept burning the fossil fuels – (we’ve burnt more between 1991 and 2019 than we did from 1751 to 1990). Hansen wrote a book (see further reading), and, well, Groundhog Day has kept on coming around again…

References

Connor, J. (2007) ‘If we fail to act, we will end up with a different planet’. The Independent, 01 January, p.1

Further reading