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Wrestling with climate change at NASA
By: K. Lloyd Billingsley
6.1.2007
"I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of the Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had, and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change." Michael Griffin, NASA administrator, said that on National Public Radio's May 31 "Morning Edition" program. NASA's Jim Hansen did not like his boss's statement. "I almost fell off my chair," he told NPR's Madeleine Brand. "It's remarkably uninformed. You know, civilization developed with the current climate. And we've got an infrastructure along coastlines that assumes that our climate is going to stay roughly what it is now. But if we are going to simply allow human emissions to greatly change climate, I think that's extremely arrogant of our species. It will be devastating to many other species on the planet, not to mention many of our own species." On the same program, Mr. Hansen said, "I think it's very timely to get together and start to do something where time is really running out. . . We are at a tipping point. If we don't begin to make some changes in our emissions – reducing greenhouse gas emissions – we're going to get some really large climate changes." Is Jim Hansen being insubordinate? Or are there differences of opinion on climate change, and the extent to which we must "wrestle" with it, even among the folks at NASA?
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