The Thin Green Line : [NASA climatologist James Hansen] arrested in green protest

Actress Daryl Hannah was arrested this afternoon in West Virginia along with NASA climatologist James Hansen, local activist Michael Brune of Rainforest Action Network, Goldman Prize winner Judy Bonds, 94-year-old former U.S. Representative Ken Hechler and more than a dozen others.

Global Warming Confusion

...“It can’t be global warming,” he said. “It has been too cold.”

In that instant, I felt my head explode. What? Did? I? Just? Hear?

For a moment, I imagined grabbing his phone. Over the loudspeaker I would demand that a cleanup was required not only in Aisle 4 but in the minds of climate skeptics everywhere.

I pictured people stopping and peering at the ceiling, trying to determine where this voice was coming from. They would stand stalk-still and listen rapturously.

In my most authoritative voice (the one I use when my kids are questioning whether their mother really knows anything at all…), I would begin: “ People,” I would say, “with all the scientific data – peer-reviewed, internationally acknowledged – pointing to climate change as caused by human activity, I’m astounded that anyone can still delude themselves into thinking otherwise. According to the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (NASA), the ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1997. The document that draws this conclusion contains plenty of science-speak, such as latitude surface temperature, natural dynamical variability and solar irradiance (which, I confess, means nothing to me). However, the conclusion is clear enough for even a stats-challenged science-phobe like me to understand.”

What’s more, I imagine myself proclaiming, even if we discard the whole global warming debate, how can we argue with first-hand accounts of such environmental disasters as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
---
Leslie Garrett is a national award-winning journalist, author and editor, based near Toronto, Canada. She is the author of The Virtuous Consumer: Your Essential Shopping Guide for a Better, Kinder, Healthier World and she has also written a dozen children’s books, including a biography of renowned environmentalist David Suzuki and “EarthSmart”, a book for young children on protecting the environment.