Word: hansen
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Testifying before a congressional committee last week, James Hansen, an atmospheric scientist who heads NASA's Goddard Institute, riveted Senators with the news that the greenhouse effect has already begun. During the first five months of 1988, he said, average worldwide temperatures were the highest in the 130 years that records have been kept. Moreover, Hansen continued, he - is 99% certain that the higher temperatures are not just a natural phenomenon but the result of a buildup of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases from man- made sources, mainly pollution from power plants and automobiles. Said Hansen: "It is time...
...that temperatures over the past century had increased in winter more than in summer, and that areas in high latitudes like Paris and New York had warmed up more than regions near the equator. That was consistent with computer models. "These are all expected signatures of the greenhouse effect," Hansen said. Still, he and other leading scientists warned against concluding that the greenhouse effect is directly responsible for the heat wave that is parching areas of the U.S. "Why didn't we have a drought last summer?" he asks. "You can only say that the probability of drought is increased...
...phenomenon that Hansen describes is actually a natural, beneficial atmospheric process that many scientists believe has gone awry -- perhaps irreversibly. Without the greenhouse effect, life on earth would be a nightmare of subzero temperatures. Instead, naturally produced CO2 and other gases, mainly from plant and animal life, behave in the atmosphere like the glass in a greenhouse: they let the visible warming rays of the sun in but inhibit the escape of infrared rays back into space...
...Hansen contends that over the past century worldwide temperatures have risen by about 1.2 degrees F, compared with the natural variation over such a period of only 0.4 degrees F. "Warming has been sufficient that it is unlikely to have been accidental," he notes. But other scientists question whether this can be attributed to the greenhouse effect. Stephen Schneider of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder agrees with Hansen that this has been the warmest decade on record and that the planet is gradually heating up. But the evidence, he says, is circumstantial. Contends Schneider: "It doesn...
...Angeles has attracted as many first-rate mystery novelists as any other metropolis, and none have been better at evoking the landscape, the light, the architecture and the ethnic diversity than Joseph Hansen. The ninth and most affecting of his series featuring Dave Brandstetter, a homosexual insurance- claims investigator, returns the private eye to the byways of the gay subculture, particularly among more secretive and closeted denizens. Early Graves (Mysterious Press; 184 pages; $15.95) is not the first novel to deal with the impact of AIDS and will surely not be the last, but it will probably rank with...