By Jethro Nededog

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Jim Rash hasn't let his Oscar for co-writing "The Descendants" go to his head.

"Oscar or no Oscar, it doesn't matter," Rash told TheWrap.

"It's like, 'You did that, great. Now, do it again' or 'Let's see if you got what it takes.' The pressure is always going to be there no matter what," he continued. "So I feed off that pressure, because obviously I want to do the best job as I can. But, it really doesn't mean anything. You can still write a piece of crap next time around."

He certainly didn't take the easy route when writing Thursday's episode of NBC's "Community," which features a body-switching "Freaky Friday" theme that throws the study group for a loop.

"Just randomly the nugget of 'Freaky Friday' was something that was in my head, like the idea," he explained. "Not surprisingly in the world of 'Community,' the writers were like, 'Oh my God, we talked about a body switching thing at some point.' Then we realized sort of in talking out loud this was a great opportunity to use that device to do the real emotional part of the story, which is obviously Troy and Britta and Abed will be sucked into that."

On the episode, titled "Basic Human Anatomy," Danny Pudi and Donald Glover play each other's characters. "They know each other so well as friends on and off-screen, they were actually recording their parts for each other. So, they were really giving each other homework basically. They really did study up."

And although it's only his first time writing for the comedy in its almost four seasons on-air, Rash made sure to include an acting challenge for himself, which doubled as revenge on co-star Joel McHale. Rash's Dean Pelton gets to switch bodies with Jeff (McHale) - kind of - and the actor proves he can do a pretty good impersonation of his co-star.

"I just like to give Joel s--t in general," the alum of L.A.'s Groundings Improv group said. "It was fun for me just to even do it. It's sort of like payback for me, because when we did the documentary episode and he got to 'play me' -- an exaggerated, horrible version of me for the video - I was always partly offended."

That's a writer's perk, but not all that Rash got out from the experience of writing the episode.

"It's hard, but it's a great ride," he said. "It was a dream come true. It's very simple, I wanted to do right by our writers and by. I hope I did. They were so supportive, it's really a team effort too. At the end of the day, it's people loving a show and doing their best to keep it going. All very good."

Vice President Joe Biden, a Democrat, and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a tea party favorite with national aspirations, descended on South Carolina on Friday to whip up the partisan faithful and offer a presidential campaign tease for the state. Both parties are preparing for next week's special congressional election featuring former GOP Gov. Mark Sanford and Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, the sister of comedian Stephen Colbert.

"As soon as I show up in South Carolina, the Washington press corps comes out and says, 'Is Biden getting ready?'" the vice president said at an annual party dinner, insisting that he came at the request of another Democrat, South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn. "I've got to make clear: I would go anywhere Jim asked me to go."

At the Democratic confab, more than 1,000 packed a convention center ballroom for the $125-per-person dinner, where Biden laid into House Republicans for "fighting like the devil" for a budget plan that he said slashes education, undercuts law enforcement and gets rid of Medicare.

"Where are they from? What don't they understand about this country?" Biden said, his voice rising to a roar. "What don't they understand about those decent Americans, who paid their whole lives, who built this country, who fought in wars?"

Cruz reminded Republicans at an annual state GOP dinner that less than a decade ago the party controlled the White House and Congress. He said Republicans could begin to turn the tide by regaining control of the Senate in the 2014 elections. "Things can change quickly," Cruz said.

In this conservative state that reliably votes Republican in national and statewide general elections, partisans already are getting a hefty amount of attention. Typically, South Carolina finds itself at the center of American politics for a brief time every four years during the presidential primary season, when it usually is the third state to weigh in on who should become the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees.

South Carolina's primaries have played an important role in the nominating process for both parties; the state gave Barack Obama a commanding victory in 2008 and until last year, every Republican nominee had won the state's primary since Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Years ahead of the 2016 contests, Republican and Democratic hopefuls alike already are starting to survey the landscape, court support and weigh in on local matters, with wide-open fields shaping up in both parties.

"The activists in this state are unhappy about the results of the presidential election," said Jay W. Ragley, a former executive director of the state Republican Party. "They're looking for someone who has a message which national Republicans can rally behind."

With Obama barred from seeking a third term, Democrats here also may be starting to seek their own consensus candidate.

This week, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a potential 2016 candidate, endorsed Sanford, and the party announced that Paul would hold fundraisers for Republicans in the state on June 28. Last month, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, talked up his record and heaped criticism on South Carolina Republican Gov. Nikki Haley during a Democratic event in Charleston, while former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, said to be eyeing another run after losing the GOP nomination last year, campaigned for Curtis Bostic, who lost to Sanford in a Republican run-off for the open congressional seat.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a potential 2016 candidate, was here months ahead of the pack, headlining the state's Silver Elephant dinner last year.

Absent thus far, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has longstanding ties to South Carolina going back to the time of her husband's presidency. The former first lady and New York senator has said she has not made any decisions about her future, but many Democrats are eager for her to step forward and campaigns urging her to run are underway.

In a sign of the hunger for Clinton, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi gushed over Clinton's experience during an event Thursday at the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock, Ark., telling an audience, "I pray that Hillary Clinton decides to run for president."

Biden and Cruz were in the spotlight Friday evening speaking at party events about two miles from each other.

"I'll bet they're talking about the middle class ooph," Biden said mockingly of Cruz's Republican event.

Cruz told the GOP gathering that Biden was in Columbia. "You know, the great thing you don't even need a punch line. You just say that and people laugh," he said.

The vice president headlined the state party's Jefferson-Jackson dinner and then dropped by an annual fish fry held by Clyburn. Biden, who twice unsuccessfully ran for president, hasn't ruled out running a third time in 2016. But Biden's decision about whether to run seems unavoidably overshadowed by Clinton, who many Democrats say would eclipse the vice president should she choose to run.

At the fish fry celebrating Clyburn's 20 years in Congress, it was Biden who worked a rope line five people deep, greeting supporters and working the room the way he did four years ago during his second presidential campaign, and then again later as Obama's running mate.

While careful not to upstage the president with flagrant displays of ambition, Biden has kept at least a toe planted firmly in the political world since the start of his and Obama's second term.

He schmoozed with prominent Democrats from Iowa and New Hampshire the first two states to hold presidential primary contests last year during the inaugural weekend. He's making calls for the House Democrats' campaign arm, working to recruit candidates to help his party win the House next year. And last month, he traveled to Michigan to give the keynote at a state party dinner.

Biden became the figurehead for Obama's push on gun control, appearing countless times with gun violence victims and advocates to urge his former colleagues in the Senate to act. It was unsuccessful. Yet, Biden says he's not giving up the fight; he met with law enforcement officials about the issue Thursday. The same day, while in Mexico, Obama announced that Biden would play an active role in a new partnership with Mexico to strengthen the two countries' economic ties.

Cruz, meanwhile, joined a chorus of people paying tribute to former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, who was an early supporter of the freshman senator.

The Texan is new to national politics, having been in Washington just a few months after becoming the lone tea party candidate to win a Senate seat last year.

In just a few weeks on the job, the insurgent Republican ran afoul of GOP mainstays, prompted Democrats to compare his style to McCarthyism and voted against nearly everything of significance that came before him. Through it all, he made clear he intends to be a conservative standard-bearer.

All that endeared him to a segment of the party and sparked talk of presidential ambitions.

On Wednesday amid presidential buzz, Cruz issued a statement on his Facebook page: "In my short tenure, my focus has been and will remain on two things: fighting for conservative principles in the Senate and working to help elect strong conservatives to win a majority in the Senate in 2014." He added: "It is a continued source of amazement that the simple fact that I am working hard with like-minded senators to keep my promise is seen as newsworthy and cause for wild speculation."

His appearance here was only fueling the talk, though he did not address the issue head-on. DeMint, a mentor who recently stepped down to become president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, tried to tamp down the speculation. "I can assure you he's thinking about Senate business and that's about it right now," DeMint said of Cruz.

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Follow Ken Thomas on Twitter: http://twitter.com/AP_Ken_Thomas

Follow Josh Lederman on Twitter: http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP

The latest salvo came a day after China's foreign ministry dismissed as groundless a Pentagon report which accused China for the first time of trying to break into U.S. defense computer networks.

The Pentagon also cited progress in Beijing's effort to develop advanced-technology stealth aircraft and build an aircraft carrier fleet to project power further offshore.

The People's Liberation Army Daily called the report a "gross interference in China's internal affairs".

"Promoting the 'China military threat theory' can sow discord between China and other countries, especially its relationship with its neighboring countries, to contain China and profit from it," the newspaper said in a commentary that was carried on China's Defense Ministry's website.

The United States is "trumpeting China's military threat to promote its domestic interests groups and arms dealers", the newspaper said, adding that it expects "U.S. arms manufacturers are gearing up to start counting their money".

The remarks in the newspaper underscore the escalating mistrust between China and the United States over hacking, now a top point of contention between Washington and Beijing.

A U.S. computer security company, Mandiant, said in February a secretive Chinese military unit was likely behind a series of hacking attacks that targeted the United States and stole data from more than 100 companies.

That set off a war of words between Washington and Beijing.

China has said repeatedly that it does not condone hacking and is the victim of hacking attacks -- most of which it claims come from the United States.

"As we all know, the United States is the real 'hacking empire' and has an extensive espionage network," the People's Daily, a newspaper regarded as a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, said in a commentary.

The article -- which was published under the pen name "Zhong Sheng", meaning "Voice of China" -- said "in recent years, the United States has continued to strengthen its network tools for political subversion against other countries".

"Cyber weapons are more frightening than nuclear weapons," the People's Daily said. "To establish military hegemony on the Internet by repeatedly smearing other countries is a dangerous and wrong path to take and will ultimately end up in shooting themselves in the foot."

(Reporting by Sui-Lee Wee; Editing by Michael Perry)

"The extremely devastating results are already dramatic today but could be catastrophic tomorrow" if nothing is done to halt the Cassava Brown Streak Disease, or CBSD, scientist Claude Fauquet, co-founder of the Global Cassava Partnership for the 21st Century, told The Associated Press.

Africa, with a burgeoning population and debilitating food shortages, is losing 50 million tons a year of cassava to the disease, he said.

In Uganda, a new strain of the virus identified five years ago is destroying 45 percent of the national crop and up to 80 percent of harvests in some areas, according to a new survey, said Chris Omongo, an entomologist and cassava expert at Uganda's National Crops Resources Research Institute.

"The new strain looks to us to be much more aggressive," Omongo said.

Fauquet said one problem is that the virus attacks the tubers underground, so a farmer can husband his crop for up to 18 months and only realize when he goes to dig up the cassava that all his fields are infected.

Omongo has participated in a training video funded by U.S. aid to the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa where farmers in north Tanzania are shown digging up cassava and cutting into roots turned black and brown with rot. The farmers say the rotten bits taste bitter and are inedible. They say they spend hours trying to chop away blighted parts.

The disease is spreading too fast to measure its impact, say scientists. A moderate infection with up to 30 percent root damage decreases the market value of cassava tubers drastically, to less than $5 a ton instead of $55, according to a study published last year in the journal Advances in Virology.

"Recent estimates indicate that CBSD causes economic losses of up to $100 million annually to the African farmer and these are probably an underestimate, as the disease has since spread into new areas," the article said.

Africa produced 150 million tons of the global harvest of 250 million tons last year, with Nigeria alone producing 50 million tons, according to Fauquet.

The cassava disease is endemic along the Indian Ocean coast of East Africa, affecting Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique. In the past, it had not struck at high altitudes. But recently the disease has been found at up to 1,500 meters (nearly 5,000 feet) above sea level in Uganda, Congo and Tanzania's lake zones, the article in Advances in Virology reported. The disease also is found in Burundi and Rwanda.

In the past year, Fauquet said, symptoms of the virus have been found as far south as Angola and moving into West Africa. The white fly that acts as a vector for the disease also has been spotted in Cameroon, in central Africa, and in Zambia to the south.

"If the disease makes it to the Congo Basin, which is a big cassava producer, and really frightening reaches West Africa and Nigeria, the biggest producer, you can just imagine the impact, the magnitude," Fauquet said.

This week, scientists are meeting in Bellagio, Rome, to discuss what can be done.

Fauquet said what is needed is the kind of international effort that the West put into creating a virus-free potato after World War II, ending the chance of a disaster such as the Irish potato famine. Similar work has been done on other crops over the past 50 years, including sugar cane and sweet potatoes, he said.

But it has never been done in Africa for many reasons, including the corruption that makes it a difficult environment in which to operate and differences in transport, communications and infrastructure across the continent's many countries, Fauquet said.

What's needed is a virus-free cassava seed and the Italian meeting is hosting major funders including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, hoping to convince them of the importance of the project.

Global warming brings a new urgency, said Fauquet and Omongo. Higher temperatures may already be favoring the new strain of the disease, said Omongo. Higher temperatures will increase the number of explosions of insects that transmit viruses, including the white fly, said Fauquet.

"In the next 40 years, starting now, we need to invest in cassava because it could tremendously help Africa and the world but also so that we are more prepared for more diseases," Fauquet said.

Scientists have called cassava "the Rambo" of food crops, a singular food source expected to become even more productive as the Earth warms, resistant to drought and simply shutting down until rains come. Cassava can also be left in the ground and stored there, providing food security for lean times. Scientists look to cassava as the best bet for African farmers threatened by climate change.

Some 500 million Africans eat cassava, boiled and roasted like potatoes, or pounded into flour to make a stiff porridge-like staple.

Omongo said the good news is that scientists at his research institute have developed a variety of cassava that is more tolerant to brown streak disease, but they cannot produce enough to meet even a quarter of Ugandan farmers' needs.

"When I say tolerant, I mean that perhaps only 5 percent gets infected instead of an entire field," he said. "What we need is research to continue so that we can come up with resistant varieties."

Nigeria's Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala this week said her country is trying to substitute imported wheat with locally grown cassava, and has so far succeeded in replacing 20 percent of its wheat imports. She said they also are having success encourage people to cook and eat bread made from cassava flour instead of wheat.

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On the Net

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NLBEsRjW2M Video with Chris Omongo showing cassava disease

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Louisville won the 75th edition of the NCAA men's basketball championship on Monday, beating Michigan 82-76 in a pulsating final in front of more than 74,000 fans at the Georgia Dome.

The Cardinals overcame a slow start, in which they twice trailed by 12 points in the first half, to outscore Michigan 45-38 in the second and capture their third national title after previous wins in 1980 and 1986.

Luke Hancock came off the bench and scored a career-best 22 points, including five three-pointers, while Peyton Siva added 18 points and Chane Behanan 15 for Louisville.

"We went into a war today against a great Michigan team," said Hancock, who was named the outstanding player of the tournament. "We needed to rally and we have done it a couple of games."

Trey Burke, the national player of the year, scored 24 points in a losing effort for the Wolverines while Spike Albrecht contributed 17 after coming off the bench, all in the first half.

"We fought for 40 minutes, there was never a time when we gave up," said Burke. "Louisville was just a really solid team at the end of the game."

Michigan made a flying start and built a double-digit lead before the Cardinals took control, matching the second biggest comeback in an NCAA final in the same massive building where the 'Dream Team' won Olympic gold in 1996.

Inspired by their team mate Kevin Ware, who broke his leg earlier in the tournament in a horrific fall, Louisville's players burst into celebration when the clock ran out and confetti rained down on the Georgia Dome court.

'GETTING A TATTOO'

Louisville went into the championships as the number one seeds and stretched their winning streak to 16 games with Monday's victory under the guidance of Rick Pitino, who became the first coach to win NCAA titles at different universities after steering Kentucky to the 1996 title.

"For a young basketball team, to play that well is absolutely fantastic," Pitino said.

"These guys ... they said if you win the national championship, 'Coach, you are getting a tattoo'. I said, 'Hell, yeah, I am getting a tattoo.'"

Michigan were making their first appearance in the final since 1993 when they were beaten by North Carolina after a bizarre ending to the game.

The Wolverines were trailing by two points with just 11 seconds to go when Michigan's Chris Webber called a time-out even though his team did not have any left, resulting in a technical foul that effectively ended his team's hopes of winning.

Michigan coach John Beilen thought his team did not perform the way they could have on Monday but paid tribute to the "terrific" Cardinals.

"We feel bad about it, we could have done some things better, every one of us," said Beilen.

"At the same time, Louisville is a terrific basketball team. I have not seen that quickness anywhere, it's incredible."

(Editing by Ian Ransom/Peter Rutherford)

Michelangelo Pistoletto, one of the world's leading conceptual artists, covered one panel of the pyramid with the reflective symbol that's meant as a defiant political gesture: Politicians and society must look at follies of excess that led to the global financial crisis.

It had spectators gawping some in awe, others in confusion.

"It's fantastic. It's like an eye looking out onto what Paris has become: finance, greed," one spectator, Fabrice Bing, said.

Another onlooker, Anthony Cuvillier, was less certain: "I don't know what it means, but it definitely looks cool."

Pistoletto, one of the main exponents of "Arte Povera," an influential movement that uses poor and everyday materials in art to protest against consumerism, has no doubt as to his art's message.

"Politicians should look at themselves in the mirror, and learn to take responsibility for this terrible mess and think of the infinite future ahead for humanity," he told The Associated Press.

Pistoletto is the first artist the Louvre has invited to work on the outside of the pyramid, the large glass and metal structure, designed by architect I. M. Pei, that was commissioned nearly 30 years ago to great controversy by former President Francois Mitterrand.

The installation continues deep inside the museum in more than a dozen separate works that the artist has "hidden" among the sprawling classical antiquities, made from mirrors and secondhand rags.

"It's a mystery. The public is asked to come on a treasure hunt," said curator Marie-Laure Bernadac, who agreed that the works will appeal to the many tourists who still come and see the pyramids because of the mysterious associations from Dan Brown's best-selling book "The Da Vinci Code."

But the works also have their fair dose of humor.

One work near the "Mona Lisa," consists of mirror with an image of a tourist taking a photo.

"I'm also poking fun... I'm trying to say that people don't look with their eyes any more, they just consume and take photos of the Mona Lisa because it's famous. I'm trying to make people think," Pistoletto said.

One of the strongest works is a marble statue of Venus, being pushed back by a gargantuan heap of rags. Pistoletto said it was a metaphor for how all the refuse in the world has cluttered and polluted nature.

"They're secondhand rags, but they're all very well washed," he joked."Don't forget, this is the Louvre."

Pistoletto's "Year 1, Heaven on Earth" will run until Sept. 2.

___

Thomas Adamson can be followed at Twitter.com/ThomasAdamsonAP

The season started about a month earlier than usual, sparking concerns it might turn into the worst in a decade. It ended up being very hard on the elderly, but was moderately severe overall, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Six of the pediatric deaths were reported in the last week, and it's possible there will be more, said the CDC's Dr. Michael Jhung said Friday.

Roughly 100 children die in an average flu season. One exception was the swine flu pandemic of 2009-2010, when 348 children died.

The CDC recommends that all children ages 6 months and older be vaccinated against flu each season, though only about half get a flu shot or nasal spray.

All but four of the children who died were old enough to be vaccinated, but 90 percent of them did not get vaccinated, CDC officials said.

This year's vaccine was considered effective in children, though it didn't work very well in older people.And the dominant flu strain early in the season was one that tends to cause more severe illness.

The government only does a national flu death count for children. But it does track hospitalization rates for people 65 and older, and those statistics have been grim.

In that group, 177 out of every 100,000 were hospitalized with flu-related illness in the past several months. That's more than 2 1/2 times higher than any other recent season.

This flu season started in early December, a month earlier than usual, and peaked by the end of year. Since then, flu reports have been dropping off throughout the country.

"We appear to be getting close to the end of flu season," Jhung said.

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Online:

CDC flu: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/index.htm

The first photo shows an adultin very good health that has just preyed upon a gaur, also known as an Indian bison, according to a release from the World Land Trust, which funded the creation of the protected area. Thespotted another adult tiger, also in good health, earlier in the year.

The corridor, which is about 4 miles (6 kilometers) long and connects two adjacent wildlife reserves, was originally created to allow to move between the parks. Indeed, elephants have been spotted moving through the area, as have sloth bears, leopards, barking deer and mongooses, according to the release.

"We are all very pleased to see the increased usage of the corridor by a wide range of animals, and capturing these tigers on film is very exciting," said Sandeep Kr. Tiwari, deputy director at Wildlife Trust of India.

The Thirunelli-Kudrakote corridor, as it's called, runs through a global hotspot of diversity, the World Land Trust reports. India's largest elephant population calls the corridor home, as do 10 native mammal species (including the Salim Ali's fruit bat and the Nilgiri tahr, a type of goat) and 13 endemic bird species, like the Malabar parakeet.

Email or follow him . Follow us, or . Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

Researchers grew(Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) which are echinoderms (a group that also includes sea stars and brittle stars) with spiky protrusions made of calcium carbonate in the lab. The invertebrates were grown under conditions mimicking expected future levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

In response to high carbon dioxide levels, the urchins showed substantial changes in the proportion of genes involved in regulating their cells' pH (the degree of acidity) and skeletal development.

The oceans are expected to become increasingly acidic this century as carbon dioxide gets pumped into the atmosphere and, ultimately, the seas. The acidity is particularly problematic for organisms that must , because the shells are more likely to dissolve under acidic conditions. []

"The big unanswered question is, if and how marine organisms will be able to respond to ocean acidification," said Melissa Pespeni, an evolutionary biologist at Indiana University and lead author of the study, published today (April 8) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Pespeni and her colleagues bred adult sea urchins, collected from the Pacific Ocean between central Oregon and Southern California, in tanks exposed to regular carbon-dioxide levels or elevated levels of carbon dioxide forecasted to occur as a result of climate change. The scientists measured the growth and genetic variation of the urchin larvae during their first week of development, a time when the larvae are still free-swimming blobs undergoing major skeletal growth.

Theshowed few visible changes in growth and development, but there were noticeable differences in the abundance of certain genes. The urchins exposed to higher carbon-dioxide levels showed changes in genes involved in promoting growth, producing minerals and keeping pH within a range that's tolerable to them. In comparison, the urchins exposed to current carbon-dioxide levels showed only random genetic variation.

The findings demonstrate that the high-carbon-dioxide environment was exerting natural selection on the urchin larvae: Only the "fittest" those with the most advantageous genes survived. It was exciting to see that the urchins could adapt, Pespeni told LiveScience.

"If any organism were able to adapt and evolve, it would be the sea urchins, because they live in an environment where they're experiencing daily changes in pH," she said.

The urchins are very long-lived and have more genetic variability than any other species including humans, she added. Consequently, the urchins have a broad arsenal for responding to changes in their environment. The findings give scientists hope that organisms like the purple sea urchin might be able to adapt to rising carbon-dioxide levels, but it's unclear whether other organisms will be so flexible.

Moreover,is just one of many changes associated with climate change. It would be interesting, Pespeni said, to find out how the urchins would adapt to other stressors, such as temperature.

Despite the ability of some species to adapt to climate change, it is still important to preserve large, robust populations of various animals, Pespeni and her colleagues stressed.

Follow Tanya Lewis on and .Follow us , & . Original article on.

Hansen recently spoke with The National Memo about the dangers of global warming, the benefits of nuclear power, the failures of both Republican and Democratic administrations, the imperatives of scientific advocacy — and how a carbon tax might actually replace "cap and trade," which seems to be disintegrating in Europe.

Now 72, Hansen is the son of a tenant farmer who studied with the legendary space scientist James Van Allen at the University of Iowa, before going on to postgraduate work in the Netherlands and at Columbia University, where the Goddard Institute is located. He joined NASA in 1972, planning to study the effect of gas clouds on the climate of Venus, but eventually realized that investigating climate changes on Earth was "probably more important — a planet that is changing before our eyes and has people living on it."

By 1981, his team at NASA-Goddard published its first major paper on carbon dioxide and climate in the journal Science, which prompted page-one coverage in The New York Times.

"We said we can't burn all the coal without producing a very different planet," Hansen recalls. But "it wasn't until 1988 that I gave testimony which got a lot of attention, and that was because that was the year of a heat wave and tremendous drought in the Midwest United States." Hansen's warnings increasingly irked the Republican oilmen in the Reagan and Bush administrations, who tried to silence or fire him, but they never drove him out.

"Being at NASA and having the access to both computing capability and satellite observation capability is kind of the ideal research situation to try to understand global climate change. So of course I preferred to stay in the government — and I was fortunate that (the late) Senator John Heinz, a moderate Republican from Pennsylvania, came to my rescue when John Sununu (chief of staff in the first Bush White House) was on the warpath and wanted to have me fired."

Publicly, he remained quiet for 15 years. "But the message in the science had become clearer and clearer ... It was well accepted by (2004) that the planet really was getting warmer and the cause was human-made greenhouse gases. And yet the policies still took no account of that, and the plan was to build more and more coal-fired power plants."

He finally spoke out again at the University of Iowa — "to make clear that the Bush administration was not taking effective action." That speech "drew the attention of the Bush administration," he says, laughing, "and they decided to assign someone to keep track of me and prevent me from speaking out." (Eventually the Times reported that, too.)

In recent years, Hansen has been arrested in climate protests at the White House and elsewhere, and in retirement plans to intensify his activism. Freed from the strictures of government, he plans to assist in "legal actions against state and federal government for not adequately protecting the rights of young people and future generations. And also contributing to the cases where they're trying to stop coal exports from the West Coast — and the (Keystone) tar sands pipeline. In May I'm going to Europe for a week to try to persuade some governments there that they should be putting an extra fee or tax on tar-sands oil because it is more damaging per unit of energy than the easily extractable oil."

In order to remain effective, "I really have to say on top of the science, so most of my time will be spent on scientific research. ... But I also want to be involved in trying to make clear the implications of the science for policy. It seems to me that scientists are well trained for connecting dots — and I never quite understood why even the really good NASA high-level people would always caution me to 'stick to the science, don't mention policy."

Catastrophic climate change can be averted, Hansen says, but only if we start "putting an honest price on the fossil fuels that includes their environmental costs, both their effect on human health, those costs being paid completely by the public, their effects in air pollution and water pollution, but also their effects on climate."

He scorns the current "dishonest" cap-and-trade scheme. "You have to have a simple system which is transparent and which actually reduces the fossil fuel use. There's really no value added by bringing the big banks into the problem. But with the cap-and-trade (system), the prices fluctuate and because there's so much politics involved the prices can collapse, and so no one has any confidence in that system.

"And the banks of course" — he laughs — "JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, they have skilled trading units, hundreds of highly capable people who will make big dollars out of trades — but it adds nothing of value to the system, and where does that money come from? It doesn't come out of thin air; it comes out of the public, the people, paying more for their energy. "

The so-called cap-and-trade "offsets," which award carbon credits for preserving trees, "can be really hokey, really hard to verify — and they don't actually pay attention to the physics of the problem, which tells you that the fossil fuel carbon that you put into the atmosphere will stay in the climate system for millennia. ... That means that there is a limit on how much fossil fuel you can burn. And they're trying to trade other things in there as if they were equivalent to this fossil fuel carbon, but they're not."

Instead, Hansen favors a simple carbon tax or what he calls "fee and dividend," with a rising surcharge on fossil fuels that is rebated in full to all taxpayers.

"The reason for the fee is simple — it really needs to be collected at the domestic mine or port of entry so that it's just across the board — but unless you're giving that money to the public, the public will never allow the fee to continue to rise because they will see the impact on the cost of gasoline at the pump and in their utility bills until there are some alternatives."

The alternative that Hansen favors — a rapid worldwide expansion of nuclear power — is highly controversial among environmentalists, to say the least.

"I just published a paper with (fellow Goddard scientist) Pushker Kharecha, in which we point out the number of lives that have been saved by nuclear power. And that's nuclear power of the early generations, 50-year-old technology. Even with that old technology, the accidents that did occur — the number of lives lost — was very limited in comparison to the number that are killed every year by coal, by the air and by water pollution from fossil fuel burning and fossil fuel mining. "

Hansen believes that new cooling systems and advanced reactor designs can answer concerns about accidents like the meltdown at Fukushima, Japan — "that's solvable now" — and how to dispose of radioactive waste. "With a fourth generation of nuclear power, you can have a technology that will burn more than 99 percent of the energy in the fuel. It would mean that you don't need to mine uranium for the next thousand years. We have got enough excess weapons material and nuclear waste to provide the fuel for many centuries."

Hansen knows this isn't a popular viewpoint. "There are certain environmental organizations — especially the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Natural Resources Defense Council — which are just dead set against nuclear power. And I understand where they were coming from, several decades ago."

Today he worries that solar, wind and other renewable sources will not soon provide sufficient reliable energy. "I think that nuclear is probably needed, but I'm quite happy to just say 'let's put a rising price on carbon and let the market decide.' I hope that Germany or California is successful in their efforts to get these so-called renewables to provide most of the energy but I think that's unlikely. ... If we would put this price on carbon it would favor renewables, and it would favor energy efficiency, and it would favor nuclear power — it would favor anything that is carbon-free. That's the way to do it — not by government deciding, this is the winning technology."

He stands with the environmentalists in strong opposition to the Keystone XL project, however. "If you make that pipeline, that sort of guarantees that over time, you're eventually going to exploit a lot of that (tar sands) resource. And it doesn't make any sense economically if you look at it — the only reason they go ahead with it is that it's partly subsidized and it's not made to pay for its cost to society. If we could stop it and get any sort of a price on carbon that even partially reflects the cost of CO2 to society, then tar sands would simply not be exploited."

According to a paper he will soon release, "simple economic modeling shows that if you put a moderate rising price on carbon — $10 a ton, going up $10 a ton for 10 years — by the end of 10 years you would reduce United States emissions by 30 percent. And that's 10 times or 11 times more than the volume of the Keystone pipeline. So there are much more effective ways of assuring our energy independence and contributing to stabilizing climate than trying to develop more fossil fuel sources." Government should also adopt much tighter regulations to conserve energy in appliances, buildings and transportation, he adds.

Politically, Hansen urges Americans to support Citizens Climate Lobby, a group advocating a simple flat carbon fee, with the money distributed to the public. He is considering whether to help found a "grandparents" movement against climate change. "But frankly in the United States it looks very difficult with our present two parties to get prompt action. I think we need a third party. Money has too big an influence on our politics in Washington and somehow we need to do something about that."

To find out more about Joe Conason, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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