Newsweek: The Hot Zone

« back

I contributed to my first climate change story in 1992, when people were still quaintly referring to the problem as the “greenhouse gas effect.”  This 1996 cover featured leading climate change scientist James Hansen’s comments on how “global warming” did not begin to capture the magnitude of changes in global climate that would accompany increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  Fast forward to 2011, and on virtually every scientific front, the data sets are getting stronger, the observations more conclusive, the models more robust, and the scientific consensus more profound:  the planet is warming, and humans are contributing to this worrisome trend.  So why aren’t people listening?