The Shadow

We publish inspiring stories about different topics for a productive and entertaining life

Follow publication

Member-only story

A Science Bomb Cyclone for the New Year

Albert Bates
The Shadow
Published in
10 min readDec 31, 2022

The model proposed by Hansen reveals ten degrees of heating is already baked into Earth’s surface temperature, but has been masked by aerosol cooling

James Hansen has always been a good climate scientist searching for an even better editor. Scientists, engineers, writers and poets all train differently and may even have different thought patterns and gut microbiomes. Occasionally you get a hybrid — Neil deGrasse Tyson; Carl Sagan; James Burke — who can both do the nerdy computations and communicate to receptive ignoramuses. Hansen is not one of those. He follows the orthodox scientist cast — defensive; assertions couched in equivocation; tentative conclusions; arcane arithmetic and acronyms.

When President George W. Bush, in his second week in office, created the National Energy Policy Development Group, headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, the Veep realized NEPDG would need to mention the risk of climate change in its report. His predecessor Al Gore had bequeathed him that as a job description. So, Cheney asked Hansen to come to the White House and make his best case. It was a disaster. Cheney, an oil man like the President, had no interest in recommending anything other than more drilling. Hansen played right into that, giving a mind-numbing powerpoint about Watts per square meter, forcing and feedbacks, percentages of confidence, framed with the…

Create an account to read the full story.

The author made this story available to Medium members only.
If you’re new to Medium, create a new account to read this story on us.

Or, continue in mobile web

Already have an account? Sign in

The Shadow
The Shadow

Published in The Shadow

We publish inspiring stories about different topics for a productive and entertaining life

Albert Bates
Albert Bates

Written by Albert Bates

Emergency Planetary Technician and Climate Science Wonk — using naturopathic remedies to recover the Holocene without geoengineering or ponzinomics.

Responses (1)

Write a response