October 26, 2004
THE ENVIRONMENT
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
A top NASA climate expert who twice briefed Vice President Dick Cheney
on global warming plans to criticize the administration's approach to
the issue in a lecture at the University of Iowa tonight and say that a
senior administration official told him last year not to discuss
dangerous consequences of rising temperatures.
The expert, Dr. James E. Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard
Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, expects to say that the Bush
administration has ignored growing evidence that sea levels could rise
significantly unless prompt action is taken to reduce heat-trapping
emissions from smokestacks and tailpipes.
Many academic scientists, including dozens of Nobel laureates, have
been criticizing the administration over its handling of climate change
and other complex scientific issues. But Dr. Hansen, first in an
interview with The New York Times a week ago and again in his planned
lecture today, is the only leading scientist to speak out so publicly
while still in the employ of the government.
In the talk, Dr. Hansen, who describes himself as "moderately
conservative, middle-of-the-road" and registered in Pennsylvania as an
independent, plans to say that he will vote for Senator John Kerry,
while also criticizing some of Mr. Kerry's positions, particularly his
pledge to keep nuclear waste out of Nevada.
He will acknowledge that one of the accolades he has received for his
work on climate change is a $250,000 Heinz Award, given in 2001 by a
foundation run by Teresa Heinz Kerry, Mr. Kerry's wife. The awards are
given to people who advance causes promoted by Senator John Heinz, the
Pennsylvania Republican who was Mrs. Heinz Kerry's first husband.
But in an interview yesterday, Dr. Hansen said he was confident that
the award had had "no impact on my evaluation of the climate problem or
on my political leanings."
In a draft of the talk, a copy of which Dr. Hansen provided to The
Times yesterday, he wrote that President Bush's climate policy, which
puts off consideration of binding cuts in such emissions until 2012,
was likely to be too little too late.
Actions to curtail greenhouse-gas emissions "are not only feasible but
make sense for other reasons, including our economic well-being and
national security," Dr. Hansen wrote. "Delay of another decade, I
argue, is a colossal risk."
In the speech, Dr. Hansen also says that last year, after he gave a
presentation on the dangers of human-caused, or anthropogenic, climate
shifts to Sean O'Keefe, the NASA administrator, "the administrator
interrupted me; he told me that I should not talk about dangerous
anthropogenic interference, because we do not know enough or have
enough evidence for what would constitute dangerous anthropogenic
interference."
After conferring with Mr. O'Keefe, Glenn Mahone, the administrator's
spokesman, said Mr. O'Keefe had a completely different recollection of
the meeting. "To say the least, Sean is certain that he did not
admonish or even suggest that there be a throttling back of research
efforts" by Dr. Hansen or his team, Mr. Mahone said.
Dr. Franco Einaudi, director of the NASA Earth Sciences Directorate at
the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Dr. Hansen's
supervisor, said he was at the meeting between Dr. Hansen and Mr.
O'Keefe. Dr. Einaudi confirmed that Mr. O'Keefe had interrupted the
presentation to say that these were "delicate issues" and there was a
lot of uncertainty about them. But, he added: "Whether it is obvious to
take that as an order or not is a question of judgment. Personally, I
did not take it as an order."
Dr. John H. Marburger III, the science adviser to the president, said
he was not privy to any exchanges between Dr. Hansen and the
administrator of NASA. But he denied that the White House was playing
down the risks posed by climate change.
"President Bush has long recognized the serious implications of
climate change, the role of human activity, and our responsibility to
reduce emissions,'' Dr. Marburger said in an e-mailed statement. "He
has put forward a series of policy initiatives including a commitment
to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of our economy.''
In the interview yesterday, Dr. Hansen stood by his assertions and said
the administration risked disaster by discouraging scientists from
discussing unwelcome findings.
Dr. Hansen, 63, acknowledged that he imperiled his credibility and
perhaps his job by criticizing Mr. Bush's policies in the final days of
a tight presidential campaign. He said he decided to speak out after
months of deliberation because he was convinced the country needed to
change course on climate policy.
Dr. Hansen rose to prominence when, after testifying at a Senate
hearing in the record-warm summer of 1988, he said, "It is time to stop
waffling so much and say the evidence is pretty strong that the
greenhouse effect is here."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/26/science/26climate.html?
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