Turning Up the Heat on Climate Issue

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James E. Hansen, a NASA scientist, was testifying before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee . He was planning to say something radical: Global warming wasreal, it was a threat, and it was already underway.
Hansen had hoped for a sweltering day to underscore his message.
"We were just lucky," Hansen said last week.
Today, 20 years later, a series of events around Washington willcommemorate Hansen's appearance before the Senate committee. Hansenhimself will appear before a House committee on global warming.
This anniversary comes just after a major setback forenvironmentalists, as a bill that would have begun to regulategreenhouse-gas emissions failed in the Senate.
But still, activists say that Hansen's 1988 testimony will look tohistory like a turning point -- a moment when the word"if" started to disappear from the national debate aboutclimate change.
"Before Jim Hansen's testimony, global climate change was noton the political agenda. It was something that a fewenvironmentalists and a few politicians . . . were talkingabout," said Jonathan Lash, president of the World ResourcesInstitute, an environmental group.
"Hansen was clear, explicit and unequivocal," Lash said."It absolutely put global climate change at the center of thediscussion."
Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studiesin New York, will give a speech on climate change at noon at the National Press Club . In the afternoon, he is scheduled to give a briefing before theHouse Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming .
He is now semi-famous, at least in Washington, for his warningsabout the growing danger of climate change -- and for his repeatedshowdowns with higher-ups who have sought control over his message.The clashes have been particularly frequent with the administrationof George W. Bush .