A Climate Crusader's Battle

Dr. James Hansen is the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and one of the world’s preeminent climatologists. His groundbreaking research has been published in top scientific journals and front page headlines.

More than thirty years ago, he created one of the early computer climate models and has used it to predict--with astounding accuracy--much of what has happened to global temperatures since.

In recent years, Dr. Hansen has gone from scientific stalwart to climate crusader, writing letters to world leaders, defying the Bush administration, attending rallies and publicly scolding the energy industry. He was arrested while protesting mountaintop mining in West Virginia on tuesday.

Elizabeth Kolbert profiled Dr. James Hansen in this week’s issue of The New Yorker, and we called Elizabeth Kolbert at her home in the Berkshires for more.

An abstract of Elizabeth Kolbert's profile of James Hansen in The New Yorker

(Photo by World Development Movement via Flickr/Creative Commons)