by Nik Polyakov The beginning of the climate realization came from a fitting spokesman, an up-and-coming NASA researcher. The late 1960s saw Dr. James James Hansen working with Iowa physicist James van Allen, an architect of NASA's early instrumentation. They were focused on an important question: Was Venus’s high microwave radiation due to an ionosphere or is it just extremely hot? In 1970 the Soviet Venera spacecraft issued a retrospectively sobering reality: Venus had an average temperature of almost 482°C.   In the months following, Alan and Hansen were tasked with understanding why. Following a successful satellite launch led by Hansen, smog was discovered on the planet. A now familiar explanation was offered: Carbon dioxide was insulating the planet and functioning as a planetary greenhouse. Venus is not alone in experiencing this effect. Having known Earth's atmosphere is changing in composition, particularly in carbon dioxide, Hansen now turned to studying the a...