He's not the messiah!

Maybe I'm making too much out of one paragraph in a short post on one blog, but I'd rather try to deal with it now before this particular meme travels much further. The offending line appears today in a post on Joe Romm's Climate Progress blog by Jeff Goodell. It offers a description of a man who has, for better or worse, become a lightning rod for the global warming debate, NASA's chief climatologist:

Maybe Justin Timberlake or Barry Manilow draws a more adoring crowd, but I doubt it. Hansen is not just a rock start here at AGU, but the one true prophet, the Man Who Saw It All Before Anyone Else. And Hansen, in his own quiet way, did not disappoint.

So well known is the guy that his surname is sufficient. James' only peer when it comes to attracting media attention on this subject is Al Gore. He's a scientist with remarkable credentials, and courage. I follow his work closely, as does just about anyone interested in climate change research.

But as the Monty Python gang had Brian's mother admonish the adoring crowd: "He's not the messiah."

I've had a chance to exchange a few words with Hansen, and he's always been very courteous and helpful responding to my email queries. He's a good guy in my books. What he is not is perfect. Let's not treat him as if his every utterance is infallible. He's a scientist, which means we should be concerned primarily with what his research says, and treat it with the appropriate degree of skepticism.

I'm not criticizing Goodell's choice of words so much as fearing that they accurately reflect the feeling of many of those who sincerely believe Hansen is right. But the truth is, not every climatologist agrees with the way Hansen interprets his data. In fact, Hansen is one of the few leading scientists who have embraced an atmospheric CO2 concentration target of 350 parts per million, significantly lower than the conventional wisdom of 450. He came to that conclusion by studying paleoclimatic data. That's only one way to look at things. Is he right? Most of us hope not, but many fear it is so.

Among Hansen's peers even at his workplace, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, you can find those who think he's too alarmist. Such sentiments appear frequently at Real Climate, or on William Connelley's Stoat blog here at ScienceBlogs.

I'm not arguing that we shouldn't be paying close attention to Hansen's work, and even his letters and other non-scientific writings, which he makes available on his website. I just don't want to turn him into a saint. That's not what scientists should be.

Already, there's a loud contingent of global warming pseudo-skeptics who hurl invective and hatred at Hansen, in part because so many of the rest of us are treating him as if he's above criticism. That's inevitable, but not something we should ignore.