From James Hansen’s talk at The New School, 10 February 2006 (here in PDF).

I do not attempt to define policy, which is up to the people and their elected representatives, and I don’t criticize policies. The climate science has policy relevance, but I let the facts speak for themselves about consequences for policy-makers.

But then the very next sentence says:

I intend to show that the answer to the question “Can we still avoid dangerous human-made climate change” is yes, we could, but we are not now on a path to do that, and if we do not begin actions to get on a different path within the next several years we will pass a point of no return, beyond which it is impossible to avoid climate change with far ranging undesirable consequences. Why we are not taking actions to avoid climate change relates to the topic of this conference, which I will address in the latter part of my talk.

I have a lot of respect for Dr. Hansen’s stand against being muzzled in NASA, but his statement on policy suggests that he is either woefully uninformed about the nature of policy and politics or he is willfully couching political advocacy in the cloth of “science.” Further into his presentation he is explicitly political, and sadly misinformed about how politics works:

It seems to me that special interests have been a roadblock wielding undue influence over policymakers. The special interests seek to maintain short-term profits with little regard to either the long-term impact on the planet that will be inherited by our children and grandchildren or the long-term economic well-being of our country. The public, if well-informed, has the ability to override the influence of special interests, and the public has shown that they feel a stewardship toward the Earth and all of its inhabitants. Scientists can play a useful role if they help communicate the climate change story to the public in a credible, understandable fashion.

The public is in fact made up of special interests, which includes groups such as Democrats, Republicans, environmentalists, industrialists, academics, and NASA employees. Politics is not about “overriding special interests” but balancing them. Dr. Hansen would do well to read Federalist 10. After that he should read Sarewitz. With all this talk about scientific literacy of the public, perhaps we might start talking about politcal literacy among scientists. I have no problem with Dr. Hansen talking about policy and politics. I do have a problem with him talking about policy and politics and framing his comments as “science.” This is what politicizes science.

Dr. Hansen aside, perhaps one of the obstacles to developing effective climate policy is that we as a society have placed “Working Group 1” expertise in charge of leading the debate on climate policy when what we really need is the expertise found in “Working Group III” and beyond.