James Hansen

James E. Hansen ( James Edward "Jim" Hansen, born March 29, 1941 in Denison, Iowa) is an American climatologist. From 1981 to 2013 he was director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies ( GISS ) at NASA and professor of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University. Hansen was especially known in the 1980s as one of the first scientists to urgently warned against the dangers of global warming. He finished in April 2013 his commitment to NASA, from then to use primarily on the political and legal level for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Training

Hansen received in 1963 a Bachelor of Arts degree with highest honors in physics and mathematics from the University of Iowa under James Van Allen. In 1965 he graduated as a Master of Science degree in astronomy, and in 1967 he received his Ph.D., also from the University of Iowa. 1962-1966 was Hansen participants in the graduate training of NASA, and 1965-1966 he was a visiting student at the astrophysical institute at the University of Kyoto.

Hansen was elected to the National Academy of Sciences 1995; In 2001 he won the prestigious Heinz Environment Award for his research on climate change and 2007 is endowed with one million dollars Dan David Prize.

Research

As a college student in Iowa Hansen was greatly inspired by space research at Van Allen. A decade later, he focused on planetary research, which included an understanding of the possible climate change due to human influences on the composition of the Earth's atmosphere.

One of Hansen's focus was the radiative transfer in planetary atmospheres and in this case particularly the interpretation of satellite data on the Earth's atmosphere and surface. Such data offer if they are analyzed correctly, an effective way to monitor global environmental change on Earth.

Another focus of Hansen's was the development and application of numerical climate models to better understand the current climate and the possible effects of global warming.

2008 Hansen published a study that says that the content of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere should not exceed a value of 350 parts per million (ppm ) when the 2- degree goal yet to be achieved and a tilting of the global climate system with irreversible consequences is to be prevented. The current value of around 400 ppm is already well above said Hansen border.

Political Activities

On June 23, 1988, he appeared before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee of the U.S. Senate and declared that global warming is caused by "99 percent probability " not by natural fluctuations but by liberated from manmade greenhouse gases.

Hansen accused the government under President George W. Bush and the set of her NASA head Sean O'Keefe repeated the experiment before to influence his public statements about the causes of global warming. After Hansen's information workers in the field of public relations were instructed to check his statements and interview statements, and the Bush administration have climate-related press releases re-edited to make global warming seem less threatening. He was not able to speak "freely" without getting a backlash of other government employees. During one of his public appearances, televised by TV CBS, he said: "In my more than three decades in public service I have never experienced such restrictions in the communication between scientists and the public. "

In the documentary An Inconvenient Truth, there is a short sequence of a hearing Hansen by Al Gore on 8 May 1989. Hansen Gore criticized for an apparent contradiction in his statements, after which Hansen indicates that the last paragraph in one of his texts did not come from him had been added but by someone else.

Hansen is engaged, inter alia, against Mountaintop Removal mining in Raleigh County, West Virginia, and was arrested there as in other actions several times.

2008, he called, manager of oil and mining companies, including the CEOs of ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal for "high treason against man and nature " to accuse. They would have similar resisted the doctrine of global warming, such as the tobacco industry wanted to cover up the relationship between smoking and cancer.

In February 2012, he gave a speech at the TED conference.

Hansen compared to a 2013 study published in the risks of nuclear and fossil fuels and called it for nuclear energy as compared to fossil fuel use significantly less risky and lower-emission technology from.

In 2013, Hansen was the Ridenhour Courage Prize is awarded in recognition of the fact that he was " bold and urgent pronounce the truth about climate change, and it even did when the Bush administration tried him as director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies silence bring and punish. "

Hansen is an ambassador of the climate protection organization 350.org goes back to their name in his study on the "safe limit " of CO2s content in the atmosphere.

2013 Hansen asked in an open letter together with colleagues Ken Caldeira, Kerry Emanuel and Tom Wigley, a " return to nuclear power " because the resistance against nuclear power plants would jeopardize the fight against climate change. The scientists appealed to world leaders and environmental organizations to work for the development of safe nuclear power plants. "There is no realistic way to stabilize the climate, which does not require a substantial proportion of nuclear energy ," the scientists write in her letter. However, the risks of nuclear energy are " orders of magnitude smaller " than the dangers arising from the use of fossil fuels. In the debate on the future energy policy should decide facts, not emotions, called Hansen and colleagues.

Publications

  • With taro Takahashi (eds.): Climate Processes and Climate Sensitivity. American Geophysical Union, 1984, ISBN 0875904041
  • With Mannava VK Sivakumar ( Eds.): Climate prediction and agriculture: Advances and Challenges. Springer, 2007 ISBN 3540446508
  • Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim? - Dr. James Hansen et al. February 2008 ( PDF file, 4.2 MB)
  • Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity. Bloomsbury, 2009, ISBN 978-1608192007 Official website of the book
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