James Hansen Asks -- Copenhagen Summit: Is There Any Real Chance of Averting the Climate Crisis? (December 1, 2009)

James Hansen is director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. His opinion piece was published in Britain's Sunday Observer on November 29, 2009 with his title and affiliation noted. He is highly critical of the cap and trade approach to greenhouse gas mitigation.

Perhaps Australia's Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator Kim Carr, and the Chief Executive for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Dr Megan Clark, might take note.

Dr. Hansen has stated that NASA administrators have in the past tried to influence his public statements about the causes of climate change. He claims that NASA public relations staff during the years of the Bush administration were ordered to review his public statements and interviews after a December 2005 lecture at the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. NASA responded that its policies are similar to those of any other federal agency in requiring employees to coordinate all statements with the public affairs office without exception. Two years after Hansen and other agency employees described a pattern of distortion and suppression of climate science by political appointees, the agency’s inspector general found that the NASA's Office of Public Affairs had mischaracterized the science of climate change intended for the public.