Hansen and Gore

Writing in the New York Review of Books, Jim Hansen -- yes, that Jim Hansen, NASA's leading climate expert -- appraises the threat to the planet posed by global warming, while reviewing recent books on the subject by Tim Flannery, Elizabeth Kolbert and Al Gore.

As you would expect, the review is authoritative and outspoken. The most interesting section is the one dealing with Gore, as Hansen and the former Vice President have shared history. Writes Hansen:

The reader might assume that I have long been close to Gore, since I testified before his Senate committee in 1989 and participated in scientific "roundtable" discussions in his Senate office. In fact, Gore was displeased when I declined to provide him with images of increasing drought generated by a computer model of climate change. (I didn't trust the model's estimates of precipitation.) After Clinton and Gore were elected, I declined a suggestion from the White House to write a rebuttal to a New York Times Op-Ed article that played down global warming and criticized the Vice President. I did not hear from Gore for more than a decade, until January of this year, when he asked me to critically assess his slide show. When we met, he said that he "wanted to apologize," but, without letting him explain what he was apologizing for, I said, "Your insight was better than mine."

You will recall that attempts were made by Bush-appointed handlers within NASA to muzzle Hansen. So it is interesting to note that his review carries a note at the outset stipulating that his opinions are expressed "as personal views under the protection of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution."