Earth Equity News

James Hansen Awarded Sophie Prize. Reuters, April 7, 2010. "U.S. climate scientist James Hansen won a $100,000 environmental prize on May 5 for decades of work trying to alert politicians to what he called an unsolved emergency of global warming. Hansen, born in 1941, will visit Oslo in June to collect the Sophie Prize, set up in 1997 by Norwegian Jostein Gaarder, the author of the 1991 best-selling novel and teenagers' guide to philosophy Sophie's World. 'Hansen has played a key role for the development of our understanding of human-induced climate change,' the prize citation said. Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies since 1981, testified to the U.S. Congress as long ago as 1988 about the risks of global warming from human activities led by the burning of fossil fuels... Hansen said his granddaughter was called Sophie, a name directly inspired by Gaarder's book. After years focused on science, he said he started speaking out more about risks of global warming in 2004, reckoning his grandchildren would not forgive him if he stayed silent. His latest book is called Storms of My Grandchildren."