Articles by Ed Markey

Waking America from the BP nightmare

57 days ago, in the dead of night, the worst environmental nightmare in U.S. history began. The spill cam, requested by Congress, has brought the horror into homes across the country, as we watch tens of thousands of barrels of oil billowing into the Gulf every day. For years, the oil industry swore this could […]

On the one year anniversary of the Recovery Act, clean energy leaders celebrate jobs and savings

The Recovery Act, a key component of America’s tectonic shift away from foreign oil, should be celebrated for what it has saved — jobs, money and energy. By making smart investments in clean energy technology and cutting taxes for 95 percent of Americans, the Recovery Act kept America on track to double our renewable energy […]

Student solar homes shining light toward the future

The public tours the international U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon, featuring energy-efficient, solar-powered houses built by 20 university teams from North American and Europe, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 13.Photo: Stefano Paltera/U.S. Department of Energy Solar DecathlonI wanted to congratulate all the students who competed in the Solar Decathlon on […]

Thoughts on the 20th anniversary of James Hansen’s historic Congressional testimony

In Greek mythology, Cassandra was given the gift of prophecy -- of seeing the future. But she was also cursed to have no one believe her. For far too many years, Dr. James Hansen has been a modern-day Cassandra. Gifted with a scientific training that allowed him to see the forces at work that are warming the planet, for too many years he was also not believed by many who chose to ignore or deny the scientific reality of global warming.

Today, it is my pleasure to welcome Dr. James Hansen back to Capitol Hill on this 23rd of June 2008. It was twenty years ago today in 1988 that Dr. Hansen first came to Congress to deliver his message about global warming. He stated: "The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now."

Dr. Hansen, who currently serves as the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and a professor of the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department at Columbia University, is a pioneer in modeling research and showed rising greenhouse gas levels would cause "temperature changes sufficiently large to have major impacts on people and other parts of the biosphere."

Dr. Hansen has been more than just a leader within the global warming research community. He has served as a spokesperson communicating the global warming science to the public. Dr. Hansen has stood up to pressure to change the tone of his scientific research for political reasons in order to ensure that the pubic receives the most accurate information possible about climate change.

Over the past twenty years, the body of evidence Dr. Hansen and his colleagues began has only continued to grow. It recently resulted in the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report showing how rising concentrations of man made pollutants are changing the climate of our planet. The debate is over. Global warming is here. Dr. Hansen was right.