Twelve years ago, in a paper now carefully buried, NASA scientist James Hansen wrote (h/t WUWT):
..we argue that rapid warming in recent decades has been driven mainly by non-CO2 greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as chlorofluorocarbons, CH4, and N2O, not by the products of fossil fuel burning, CO2 and aerosols..
If sources of CH4 and O3 precursors were reduced in the future, the change in climate forcing by non-CO2 GHGs in the next 50 years could be near zero. Combined with a reduction of black carbon emissions and plausible success in slowing CO2 emissions, this reduction of non-CO2 GHGs could lead to a decline in the rate of global warming, reducing the danger of dramatic climate change.
Then, somehow and somewhere, Hansen had an epiphany and stopped being a scientist. He began to preach that carbon dioxide is the main or sole culprit, to claim that global warming is a moral issue like slavery, and to loudly compare more sober researchers to Holocaust deniers.
In his Farewell Address, better known for the term “military-industrial complex,” President Eisenhower warned of the
“…prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. (Emphasis mine)
With people like Hansen and so many other members of this scientific-technological elite in government, I fear that we are there.
