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This version is OUT OF DATE, see: CREDENTIALS_JAMES_HANSEN
November 6, 2015
In contrast to Amory Lovins, James Hansen's background could not
be more impressive in the conventional way: he's got earned
degrees in physics and astronomy (albeit all from a state school,
the University of Iowa), and after that he followed a path of
internships and postdocs to NASA Goddard, where he ended up
serving as the head of the Institute for Space Studies for
several decades.
An issue that comes up fairly frequently among the "green" left:
is Hansen a hero for calling out global warming in 1988, or is he
a villain for calling for nuclear power in 2008? The usual
justification cited for rejecting his nuclear power stance is
that he's qualified to speak in one area but not the other.
Here's an example from a recent post by Rod Adams:
"Appealing to the hearts and minds of the people at APIEL": http://atomicinsights.com/appealing-to-the-hearts-and-minds-of-the-people-at-apiel/
"On Sunday Mary Olson, a NIRS activist, spoke about the health
effects of radiation, noting that regulators around the world
agreed that there was no safe dose of radiation. I asked her if
she was familiar with James Hansen’s peer reviewed paper
calculating that nuclear energy had saved 1.8 million lives
already and could save far more in the future. She responded by
stating that she has a great deal of respect for his work as a
climate scientist, but they said that he was completely
unqualified in the area of energy policy."
The Hansen paper that Rod Adams referred to is: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es3051197
Keith Pickering talked about it at the dailykos: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/04/1199024/-James-E-Hansen-Nuclear-power-has-prevented-1-8-million-deaths
"Climatologist James E. Hansen, who just this week retired as
head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Science, has just
co-authored a paper that has been accepted by the journal
*Environmental Science & Technology*, in which he calculates http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es3051197
that nuclear power has prevented 1.84 million deaths
worldwide that would have occurred if nuclear power plants
had been built as fossil-fueled power plants instead. That's
actually a conservative figure, because it doesn't count a
number of things, like the effects of CO on climate change."
"Although this number isn't terribly surprising to those who
study energy issues, it does point up a hugely under-reported
aspect of energy policy: nuclear power is the safest way ever
devised to generate electricity. Safer than wind. Safer than
solar. And far, far safer than fossil fuels."
(I thought I might as well quote that here, because I I'm
going to refer to it in the section "Freeman Dyson nods".)
In that
Rod Adams piece http://atomicinsights.com/appealing-to-the-hearts-and-minds-of-the-people-at-apiel/
he continues:
"She [Mary Olson] referred me to a piece published on the
NIRS web site that refuted Hansen’s work. This commentary
from Sovacool, Parenteau, Ramana, Valentine, Jacobson, http://www.nirs.org/climate/sovacool-et-al-hansen.pdf
Delucchi, Diesendorf appears to be the document she was
referencing."
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