Eli Appreciates James Hansen

James Hansen retired today as Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Science.  Justin Gillis summarizes the political and policy nexus that motivated Hansen to retire.  This was Hansen's decision impelled by his concern for the future.

There have been many descriptions of Hansen's contributions to climate science, some of them even at Rabett Run, but Eli would like to point to yet another facet of a remarkable career:  GISS.

GISS was founded in 1961 to accommodate Robert Jastrow who did not want to move down to DC to join NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.  The emphasis as shown by their publications was on space studies and planetary science.  The world is a small place, at least at certain levels, and Jastrow, together with Fred Seitz and William Nierenberg founded the Marshall Institute, which starting from when it was founded led a push back against climate science. 

Jastrow was (Eli hears) forced to resign in 1981, running afoul of civil service rules, at which point Hansen, who had come to GISS in 1967 as a post doc, became director.  By that time Jim Hansen's interests had shifted away from the morning star, Venus, to the most important planet, the Earth, and he changed the emphasis at GISS and assembling a great team.  Eli has often wondered about how the relationship between Jastrow and Hansen shaped the denial of the Marshall three about human driven climate change.  It is also fitting that Hansen has won the Nierenberg Prize for science in the public interest.

NASA by nature is a funny beast.  As is the case for most federal laboratories, it has more contractors than civil servants.  GISS is exceptional, only ~20% of the staff is civil service.  That means that a budget has to be raised each year to fund them.  The total staff including civil servants today is about 140.   Ones that the bunnies are most familiar with include Andy Lacis, David Rind, Drew Shindell, Gavin Schmidt, and Hansen's close collaborators Makiko Sato and Reto Ruedy. 

Because Hansen is not a gifted orator, his delivery being kind of Iowa flat, he is easy to underestimate but his appointment as Director of GISS at a relatively early age, his negotiation of the NASA shark tank over thirty years, the way in which he destroyed the 2005 attempt to muzzle him, are testimony to his mastery.   Further, Hansen has displayed a rare ability to capture political and press attention for the issue of climate change starting with congressional testimony in the 1980s and continuing today with his use of non-violent protests to mobilize opposition to the Keystone Pipeline.  Hansen has always been three steps ahead of his detractors. 

Two short stories capture Hansen's style.  When Steve McIntyre started to download the entire GISSTemp data base, in a convincing imitation of a DOS attach which locked others out and was in turn dumped by the webmaster, McIntyre raised an almighty whine.  Hansen's reaction?

There are some desperate characters trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill.

and

Do we want to lower ourselves to debating with a court jester? Of course that's what he wants.

I don't have a strong preference as long as it is not taking a significant amount of my time.

I have not read the stuff you are referring to [McIntyre's whinge to Town Hall], but as I recall, as soon as I was told about the matter, I said that he was welcome to the data

The second may be apocryphal.  When told that a colleague after much work and study had concluded that, yes, Hansen was right and climate change was a major problem, Hansen, as Eli recalls replied something like "That's good, but what is he going to do about it?"

And that is the question that James Hansen answered today.