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Comment by josho | Hacker News Reader

An excellent introductory book is Storms of My Grandchildren by James Hansen. It speaks to the science and directly addresses the common objections that deniers bring up.

What surprised me is that the science comes at this from multiple angles, so even if someone were to dispute the computer models, then we have other lines of science that still back the theories, e.g. looking at the environment over geologic time scales where we can see what the climate was like under certain CO2 levels.

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James Hansen is the Doctor Oz of climate change. Dude will release study after study before they hit peer review. He's a god damn charlatan.

https://theconversation.com/study-predicts-multi-meter-sea-l...

More like the Wizard of Oz of climate change - Hansen is an outright alarmist. I'm afraid my mad-hatter friend (whom I posted of earlier) has been reading Hansen's book with all critical faculties disabled.

I hoped that on hacker news folks would provide a reason for why his research/conclusions are wrong, rather than simply offer up character attacks.

Do you have an example of where his research is wrong or his conclusions were overly pessimistic?

It is a mistake to believe

- that there is anyone lurking on HN who is able to argue on this topic as authoritatively as James Hansen and

- that such a person would be willing to educate you here.

You might try

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=why+is+james+hansen+wrong%3F

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen#Criticism

If you had googled it for me then you'd have seen that much of the search results echo what you said earlier--that people take issue with Hansen's advocacy, but say very little about his science.

When it does speak to the science (the first result refutes a 1988 paper), it seems a quick validation shows that his predications were not correct in 2010 when the article was written, but his prediction is inline with current temperatures reported.

So, yeh, I did look into this already, and haven't found a good critique. So, rather than blindly repeat claims that Hansen is wrong or an alarmist, I urge you to critically read the topic before spreading others lies further.

Be careful, as your sources are suspect and don't speak to his research.

Your mashable link is a summary of a piece from Glover Park Group, in their own words they turn 'strategies into outcomes', so they seem to be a firm that gets paid to shape public opinion. For that reason alone we should dismiss the messenger.

While your 'the conversation.com' link seems broken, but searching on their site for Hansen returns a first result that is critical of carbon tax programs, seemingly favoring emissions trading. Yet, emissions trading is largely seen as benefiting banks to give them a new financial instrument to trade while not actually reducing carbon emissions. So, I'm left somewhat skeptical about conclusions coming from that site as well.

What I'd rather see is a critique of Hansen's papers coming from the scientific community. I would give that an honest read and open consideration.

Heard and agreed. Somewhere i have quotes from his peers on the topic. Those are the fastest i could find in a rush. Will look tonight.

Ok. Two screaming kids... while i don't have time to find the direct sources of scientific comment, they should be referenced in the following article about Hansen's 2015 paper.

https://judithcurry.com/2015/07/26/hansens-backfire/

Lol. Don't read the comments, while i find judith to be above board, many of her fans are definitely rabid troglodytes.

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