The amnesia in today's Republican orthodoxy is bad for the world and the country. Please read the following from Pres. George H.W. Bush:
"Today I have signed the instrument of ratification for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which I submitted to the U.S. Senate for advice and consent on September 8, 1992. The Senate consented to ratification on October 7, 1992. With this action, the United States becomes the first industrialized nation (and the fourth overall) to ratify this historic treaty.
I signed this convention on June 12, 1992, in Rio de Janeiro at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). The convention was also signed by 153 other nations and the European Community. Today I am calling on them to join us in ratifying the convention as soon as possible and making a prompt start in its implementation.
The Climate Convention is the first step in crucial long-term international efforts to address climate change.
[...]
As proposed by the United States, the convention is comprehensive in scope and action-oriented. All parties must inventory all sources and sinks of greenhouse gases and establish national climate change programs. Industrialized countries must go further, outlining in detail the programs and measures they will undertake to limit greenhouse emissions and adapt to climate change and quantifying expected results."
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=21611
GOP is badly broken today, we need it fixed.
7
How do you spell n-u-c-l-e-a-r p-o-w-e-r
The answer is obvious but the liberals refuse to accept it. The consequences of climate change are their responsibility.
8
In time James Hansen will be viewed the same as Paul Ehrlich and Malthus, doomsayers whose predictions about the future were spectacularly wrong.
6
As I’ve been for years trying to tell the mindless herd on this silly comment page, optimists are extremely dangerous people. They should have been quarantined along time ago, but their damage has been done and it’s irreversible.
Here is my proposition, and I know of nobody that has the horsepower to refute it. If by some miracle not another mole of CO2, CH4......was ever again released to the atmosphere, we are still doomed as to global warming with what is already in the atmosphere.
Being a pessimist, I know to cut in half any model’s prediction as to its output.
Not only are we NOT going to cut back on CO2 we’ll increase our output load with China and India coming on line with a SUV in every driveway
Now, the earth will be fine without Man, it was before and will be again. Things look rather peaceful when looking out the Galilean telescope at the inorganic mass known as Saturn
All organic matter wants to return to its more peaceful nirvana inorganic state. The Carbon cycle proves this proposition.
“Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor or neoplasm. We have grown in numbers and disturbance to Gaia, to the point where our presence is perceptively disturbing…the human species is now so numerous as to constitute a serious planetary malady. Gaia is suffering from Disseminated Primatemaia, a plague of people.” As E.O. Wilson points out, “Darwins dice have rolled badly for Earth.”
James Lovelock
23
The last sentence says it all.
5
Oh come on, why worry?, God will certainly intervene to save us from ourselves... or alternatively, it is God's plan that we destroy thoroughly this planet so that we can have a nice rapture at the end of time... or again, let 99% of the world population suffer, starve, choke and die (because suffering is our God given fate on earth) and the 1% remaining (clearly of the pure white race favored by God - extra sarcasm) can start a new society without sin...
Obviously I am fantasizing Hollywood style or evangelical style rather. But is it less crazy to observe politicians, paid off by big lobbies or perhaps simply too stupid to accept facts, ignore the reality that science is very rationally putting in front of their eyes and prevaricate and procrastinate until it will be too late to take the necessary actions to correct the course of our "consume at any cost" approach, pure folly that has such detrimental effects on our environment?
What will it take for governments (and especially the US government) to take a responsible course of action?
11
People measure time in generational terms. A long time is one hundred years. Ancient time is a few thousand. Climate change now falls into the generational time zone. We as a world may slow down the rate of global warming but reversing it may be out of our gasp. We may have past a tipping point with the world's ice sheets.
The deniers may admit they were wrong someday in the future, if they are still alive. If they do say sorry, it will be hot comfort and probably a bit wet. RAW
8
I don't know how Dr. Hansen feels about the moniker "Prophet of Doom" but I think it's stupid and "click-bait".
Hansen was and is a first-class scientist. His prognostications are solidly based on science not some pseudoscience hand waving by some so-called "prophet".
Dr. Hansen is but one in a long line go good scientists warning about the tack we are one. Roger Revelle and Charles Keeling come to mind.
12
"prophet of doom was right"?
Really? Has doom occurred?
7
He was wrong thirty years ago. He predicted doom. Doom did not happen. Now his way out is to "fix" elections? What a crackpot!
7
The ability of a few ignorant, compassionless human beings to convince so many others that their profit motive is more important than the survival of human life on earth is what is truly mind-boggling. Death of reason, death of science, death of intelligence - can it all be blamed on conservative stupidity? How do people buy into such ignorance to the detriment of their own survival? Maybe the evangelicals are right - there is no evolution. Our actions today seem to argue against the furthering of intellect. Survival of the stupidest doesn't seem to be nature's plan, although seems to be that of the GOP and their fossil fuel overlords.
29
It's even harder to follow the facts when you'd rather follow your faith.
7
We are like mere frogs thrown into a pot that is slowly heating up. As the pot moves closer to the boiling point, we are blissful in our denial and apathy, and do not register the oncoming threat. However, like real frogs thrown into a cold pot that is slowly heated until the frogs all die, we are heading towards our own demise while cheering on our Climate Denier in Chief.
7
this is one side of the debate . WSJ had the other side
people should read both sides and be informed
https://www.wsj.com/articles/thirty-years-on-how-well-do-global-warming-...
8
"The survival value of human intelligence has never been satisfactorily demonstrated", Dr. Jeremy Stone, The Andromeda Strain
6
Prophets are so often ignored, untill it is too late.
1
I see the NYT conveniently neglected to mention Hansen is the strongest advocate of Nuclear Energy. The NYT editorial history of opposing nuclear is easy to document. Polls show liberals and most saliently females oppose nuclear. Not sure any "Democratic" reform can stop that. The irony here is that Trump has made three massive attempts to save our nuclear plants and liberals, the people supposedly who care about global warming, continue to ignore the climate scientist that support nuclear, but they attack Trump for trying to save our plants. Those three Executive actions included reform to NRC, Perry's Energy Resilience plan, and the new Nuke and Coal bailout. Described here by Michael Shellengberger. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/06/06/trumps-bail...
3
Of course we're not going to address climate change. The pace of our biological human evolution is far slower than the pace of our technological evolution. Although our big brains and "intelligence" enable us to furiously mine and burn fossil fuels to sustain comfortable lifestyles, our human traits of greed, self survival, tribalism and aggressiveness will never take a back seat to doing something as intangible as "fixing the planet".
As long as we're comfy and stupid we'll take that pathetic tax cut and put it towards a gas guzzling SUV. Don't expect humans to think, much less act, beyond the horizon of our own personal comfort or beyond the rhetoric of our personal political echo chambers no matter how divorced from scientific truth they may be.
We're essentially chimps with big brains, crashing cars and spraying automatic gunfire while threatening each other with nuclear weapons. Save the planet? That's a good one!
14
We have become the enemy of our future. Our selfish aggressiveness and disregard for Nature has now become our fatal weakness. All of this raises serious epistemological questions: Why are so many of us so blinded to this coming reality? Could it be that we have a self-destructive neurotic/psychotic cranial imperfection? And if this is the reason, how deeply implanted is it in our DNA eukaryotic chromosomic brains? And, do we psychologically neurologically have the ability to overcome our defect and replace it with a new form of global non aggressive synchronous behavior that establishes for Homo sapiens coexistent unity in inter active equilibrium with all life and nonlife on the planet? And then to the very big question: If not, what then?
1
"Millions have lived without love, but not one without water."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944)
9
I'm a believer. In nuclear power, that is . So out of pure cynicism
you know the world being what it is might I ask, was he a true believer or was he shilling for nuclear power industry?
1
Fossil fuels will run out sooner rather than later.
2
Funny, an author published in the Wall Street Journal yesterday reached the exact OPPOSITE conclusion, saying thirty years of data have proved the NASA scientist flat WRONG about human-caused global warming. Tells you more about the biases of the respective forums than anything else.
8
India is the world’s biggest democracy and also one of the biggest culprits of emissions. China is not a democracy but if it so wills, it can bring remarkable and drastic reductions in emissions. America is consumed by greed profits and now trade wars. Politicians are paid big bucks by military industry complexes, big oil big food big Ag big everything so there is no way no how American politicians can act with a conscience as long as their souls are for sale. America can help with world climate but it is only one of the players, it has to be a joint effort from every corner of the planet.
7
I would like to know the degree of regression testing of the major climate models in use today. As a minimum, can they properly hindcast the temperatures of the last ice age? Even better, can they describe the severe and very fast climate changes of the Lower Dryas period, about 16,000 years ago? I have not been able to get an answer to this question. Perhaps the NY Times would sponsor a climate article on this topic.
5
What a great story.
There are two take away's
1. Science does not get it perfect, its a process not an outcome. So what not all predictions match, but the trend is accurate.
2. we can't fix this problem, (or any other problem) until we fix our voting system.
But here is the common point, the GOP.
The GOP no longer believes in science. If you believe in reincarnation these are the same guys that threw Galileo in prison.
Almost everything that undermines our voting system stems fro the GOP.
Hyper-partisan Gerrymandering
Voter Id laws
Roll backs of the voting right act
Cutting the number of polling places.
etc.
Over the past two decades more federal and state government branches have been under Republican control. Its Red states and regions that suffer more. Why do you think red voters are so much angrier? They refuse to connect the dots. The only analogy that comes to mind is the witch scene in Monty Python. that is the scientific level of the GOP, (and we all know Hillary weighs as much as a duck).
SO,
If you want to save the planet, the U.S., and quite frankly the GOP, vote for any one else.
They need to lose power, they needs a psychological retreat for 2-4 years.
Vote out these Inquisitioners..
8
In the history books, Dr. Hansen will be haled as an American Hero while Trump will hopefully be tried for high crimes and misdemeanors.
7
The column should have mentioned that Reagan was president at the time.
4
Apparently this is what we get when Ancient Greek characters of myth try the "no means no" line on one of the gods. Thanks for nothing, Cassandra.
1
until we fix our ... economy and its measure of progress by the gross and the subjugation of all values to the dollar
2
This argument that “global warming is a fraud because I refuse to believe that tiny, invisible molecules could cause an entire planet to warm” is ludicrous. By that leap of logic, witches must be causing my cold because how could tiny, invisible viruses do it? And my lamp emitting light must be a feat of magic, because how could all them tiny, invisible electrons convey electricity?
3
James Hansen was interviewed in fall 2017 (10 minutes):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0MsAs-qCSY
He said: We must add a carbon fee and dividend. Cap and trade is not working! Politicians are working more for the fossil fuel industry, than for the public. He explains how carbon fee and dividend works. Economists agree. Fossil fuels appear to be cheapest -- but they are subsidized. And the fossil fuel industry is too powerful, in at least 12 nations.
James Hansen was interviewed in fall 2016 (4 minutes):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCOwMRBzb-s
CO2 emissions are increasing. (He uses Celcius and meters. 1 Celcius degree is almost 2 Fahrenheit degrees. A meter is a little more than a yard.)
7
Dr. Hansen is a genuine American hero in this dark time.
None of us knows how things will work out with this wretched regime or global climate change, but we must pay tribute and thanks to a man who has untiringly fought the good fight.
10
We would hike in the Italian Alps from 75 to 93. There was a spot, where the glacial snow would meet a "refugee". At that point, one would stop for soup and gear up, fixing snow/ice spikes on boots. Around 79, that became less and less necessary, and now, un-needed. "World Without Ice", a book recently published, says it all. P.S. Don't by coastal Florida R.E.
5
Heres a few numbers the left has/is going to ignore/deny. Under BHO u.s. hydrocarbon production increased to its highest level since 1970, yet we still are net importers of oil. Biggest oil spill? Ditto. Since 1988, when the "prophet" warned congress about global warming, the u.s. Population has exploded by another 80 million (2 present California's) from ~244 million to ~325 million, driven almost exclusively by immigrants and their kids. And, oh yeah, we lead the world in per capita co2 production. Willful denial of facts because you have a political agenda, or are just too cowardly to face the facts is not the exclusive domain of the right. No longterm, sustainable solution to this, or any other of our problems, will be forth coming without addressing how we live and how many of us there are and are going to be. Hate trump all you want, but democratic lawmakers with the help of a lot of republicans have given us 5% of the worlds population using 25% of its resources. If you don't address both of those numbers, nothing will ultimately change.
6
We're not saving the planet. We're saving ourselves.
4
Never has any propaganda campaign paid off better than the Koch brothers attack on science and climate science. Republicans don't think they are particle physicists or geologists, but they all think they are climate scientists. The Koch brothers invested in American ignorance and made a killing.
18
Ignoring the danger of a warming planet is unconscionable.
Even if, for some reason, you prefer to doubt the science, you have to look at the risk of it being real. And, if you consider the risk, then you must take action.
Ignoring climate change is immoral.
7
Allow me (with some nationalistic pride, I suppose) to remind readers about he real pioneer on the greenhouse gas effects on the climate, the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius.
In 1895 he presented a paper to the Stockholm Physical Society titled, “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground.” (Carbonic acid was a name for carbon dioxide in those days.)
In 1904 Arrhenius wrote that “the slight percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere may, by the advances of industry, be changed to a noticeable degree in the course of a few centuries.”
We find that real scientists have factual grounds for their claims. We should study them, learn from them, and act accordingly.
12
Replace your dark asphalt roof with modern PV.
Drive less.
Eat less meat.
Conserve more.
Employee Passive Solar as a guiding building and living principle.
It can be done, realistically, by each of us.
10
“It’s very hard to see us fixing the climate,” Dr. Hansen said, “until we fix our democracy.”
Picture two single file lines of voters.
Mrs Clinton won the vote "Of The People" by nearly 3,000,000 ballots.
That would make the line of folks, voting for Mrs. Clinton, longer than the line of folks voting for Trump, by Way over a thousand miles.
6
We've toyed with politically expedient ignorance for so long, we have crossed a tipping point: self-imposed ignorance is now the vicious habit of half the electorate.
Very few Republicans actually think all this is a "hoax." Rather, they have held to the classic Conservative view, that on some matters, the people cannot be trusted with the truth. So, they told their constituents it's all fake, the jury is still out, it's some liberal anti-capitalist plot, and so forth.
Well guess what? Now those same people believe that, and many elected officials do as well.
This is a textbook case in why the Conservative doctrine (going back to Burke) that sometimes the people cannot be trusted ends up creating spectacularly bad consequences.
It would have been a far better thing, to just tell the truth. But now, it is too late. And the cancer of saying the true is actually the false, has become a cornerstone doctrine of one of our two Parties.
5
“The ocean is rising, as Dr. Hansen predicted”
Nonsense. Utter nonsense.
Sea levels aren’t rising even remotely as much as Hansen predicted — which would have been glaringly obvious had Mr. Gillis included it in the article.
Instead, sea levels are rising very closely to their long term trend, almost as if greenhouse gases are irrelevant.
The difference between reality and Hansen’s prediction is at least an order or magnitude.
Seems that’s close enough for climate science.
18
Of course Hansen, a skilled and objective scientist, was right, and the after-the-fact sciencephobic con artist deniers of science have been almost totally wrong, if not laughably so. The historical track record, unless outrageously cherry-picked (which the deniers almost always do), is crystal clear.
11
“It’s very hard to see us fixing the climate,” Dr. Hansen said, “until we fix our democracy.”
This concluding statement is ominous because it is so true. Our inaction is because we have a large swath of Americans who will not be and cannot be persuaded by scientific arguments and logical facts. And, in spite of their scientific illiteracy and ineptitude in logical thinking, they have voting rights.
Churchill quoting an earlier unnamed source is reported to have said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
Sadly, we are in a democracy that includes such crazy people. Maybe we ought to call it democrazy.
20
The alarm about global warming is neither new, nor solely American. In March 2008, The Guardian ran a story about a scientist, arguably, more unknown than our own James Hansen.
In 1965, Shell corporation contacted a number of researchers to predict what the world would like in 2000. Dr James Lovelock told the oil giant that our greatest worry would be the worsening environment due to global warming. He invented the machine that measured CFCs and came up with the Gaia hypothesis, which presently underlies climate change.
His The Revenge of Gaia made some startlingly forecasts. By 2020, extreme weather will be accepted as normal. In 2040, Lovelock imagined large areas of Europe would be like the Sahara. Actions such as recycling or green lifestyle would have been useful if it had started in 1967.
Lovelock believes that food production will be the central problem. Nations will fail to act and develop the technologies to avoid a catastrophe. His envisions 80% of world population dying by 2100.
Preposterous? Perhaps. But a recent NYT story noted that Republican senators like Cruz and Paul are attacking certain agencies for “hyping” fear about climate change.
No amount of extraordinary storms will alter the path we have chosen. If Lovelock is correct, climate induced crises such as food shortage and population migration will result in a cataclysm.
We are going to need a "bigger wall."
8
Capitalists are opposed to the very idea of human-induced climate change, because it represents a fundamental failure of free-market ideology.
Free-market ideology is based on faith that the markets will recognize and correct any trend that is dangerous or threatening to human welfare.
But the rise in greenhouse gases is undeniably a result of free-market capitalism. So, if that rise in greenhouse gases threatens humanity, then all the faith in free markets has been misplaced.
For free-market economists, this is roughly equivalent to discovering that the Jesus Christ is a ruthless vampire bent on human destruction. It's untenable, it's viscerally twisting. It's unacceptable.
So, what is a free-marketer to do? The answer is, deny it. Bury it. Hide it by whatever means are necessary. And attack anyone who puts the data out in public, as Hansen did, and who simply invites everyone to see for themselves.
And that sort of denial is exactly what we see today. Thirty years after Hansen, and more than 100 years after Arrhenius.
As for me, I'm going into the air conditioner business. (just kidding)
10
An important and often ignored tidbit is that something like 93% of CO2 we throw into the air ends up in the oceans.
This oceanic COs absorption mitigates the CO2 buildup in the atmosphere and the increased insulation/warming it would cause (yeah!!), but it also has serious negative consequences different from warming (booo!!).
Believe what ever the heck you want, but math, chemistry and physics tells us we are committing collective suicide,
8
This might be an appropriate time to note that the overwhelming reality of climate change is pretty much up against the same political reality that governs the United States.
While I personally argue with many climate journalists for failing to provide empirical evidence to support their points, I freely acknowledge that more statistics or resolution of conflicts between predictive models is unlikely to persuade people who think that asylum seekers with small children at the Mexican border are just plain liars who belong in prison.
Maybe something will change. Would a climate disaster do it, or would it require the collapse of American Fascism?
6
To the single molecule (carbon) people I would ask;How is it possible for one molecule to support almost all life on the planet? Oxygen transformed life on this planet. We would not exist without it. One molecule = life as we know it planet-wide.
1
“The ocean is rising, as Dr. Hansen predicted, ...”
Well, that was a safe bet. The Oceans have been “rising” since the last ice age, some 10,000 years ago.
6
This is a biased, inaccurate assessment of James Hansen's legacy. He, and other alarmists, are wrong. There are several false statements in this article alone. The global temperature has not followed the alarmist predictions, and it's not even close. There was an increase some three years ago, but now a decline has set in. Luckily, the general public is getting tired of the endless climate harangue. It's time for Hansen to fade from the scene.
10
Whether it's the refugee crisis at the border or global warming, incompetence, ignorance, and laziness seems to be our country's responses. These issues require people to change their behaviors ( abandoning racist responses or making a smaller carbon footprint ) and we won't do that until we are forced to.
7
Excellent article. When I read it, my first thought was like Marlon Brando, I.e., “I coulda been a contenda”. Thanks to the Air Force, I was completing my masters degree in meteorology at MIT in 1964. My masters thesis concerned the effects of infrared energy radiation in the lower stratosphere. I won the award for best PhD thesis submitted to the department in 1964, still the only masters thesis so honored as far as I know. Google “Rossby Award MIT 1965”. C-G Rossby was a Swede that created America’s first Meteotolgy department.
The tools and techniques I used could have been applied to the effects resulting from an increase in CO2, which was about 330 PPM , in 1964. But in that era, nuclear winter was more pressing. Their was little or no mention of global warming. So I not only became the only winner with a masters thesis, I was the only winner that became nothing. My predecessor became head of the WMO and my successors became distinguished university professors and noted textbook authors. I had to settle for colonel’s eagles on my shoulder and managing a then classified weather satellite program in Vietnam. I was thrilled to earn two MIT masters, the other was in Aero-Astro, my mt MIT classmates included 3 of the 12 persons who walked on the moon, Buzz Aldrin, Edgar Mitchell, and Charlie Duke. America has been very good to me, the son of a Scottish immigrant who started in the WV coal mines. May America survive these troubling years.
20
Is the human race worth preserving? Are we any different from any other destructive organism that overruns its own environment? I really am asking a question and not trying to make a statement. I'd like to hear comments from others.
4
Let it burn.
Humans are animals like any other. If they destroy their habitat, they will end as a species. It's as simple as that.
Whatever's next will be hardy enough to survive the heat and radiation.
In the meantime, I'm going to turn up the air conditioning and watch Netflix.
4
To fix our democracy, our society, we can turn to the behavioral sciences.
It wasn't just the Libertarian Koch brothers that fed the human-caused climate change denial movement, but rather the Fossil Fuel industry that paid "scientists" to spin for them. Most were geologists, who had been on the payroll. Needless to say, they also funded the likes of Inhofe and now Pruitt to ensure the most destructive path possible. We seem to be the only major economic power with an ignorant voting populace.
39
The organized opposition to climate change is likely to cause many to go overboard in reaction. That was the case with evolution. Darwin's ideas were vigorously opposed by the church. And then extremists began to advocate Social Darwinism, which gave rise to eugenics and Nazism. Climate change opposition has already spurred similar extremists. Those who favor human engineering have proposed nefarious ways to reduce human population -- such as widespread forced sterilization of certain groups. Kooks who deny scientific innovation tend to spur kooks who take the innovation too far. Just one more example -- some have proposed putting anti-vaccinates in prison. There are dangerous people on both sides of scientific innovation and it would serve us well to remember extremism in defense of the truth is no virtue.
2
Dr. Hanson's article reminds me of a comment Senator King made to me: "Almost no one who is currently a sitting Senator was a Senator when it was functioning well; we've never seen a well-run Senate in action and don't know what it looks like."
Fixing the democracy is such a long way off.
10
The climate deniers don't seem to realize that the earth is not in danger--Mother Earth is not going anywhere. It is the life of much of the earth's fauna and flora, including humans, that is threatened, and humans are the cause. It may be a cliche to talk about what happened to the dinosaurs, but it is a lesson and a stark reminder of our future if we do not commit to reality.
14
This is truly an amazing column--long on exhortation and short on data and analysis. Temperature changes have in fact almost exactly matched Hansen's lowest growth estimate. Clearly there is an anthormorphic climate effect, but the past 30 years have shown that it is far different from...and remarkably less than...Hansen's near hysterical alerts.
11
Again, deniers of Climate change ignore the data, the facts - all the warmest years are in the last 2 decades and the oceans are warming faster than predicted.
Dr, Hansen was right ....and that is the point of the article. The loudest and most clarion call on Climate Change is right. The deniers are wrong and we all suffer and will suffer much more in the near future.
23
Don't know much about Hansen, except for this article, but the Canadian Icefields, where half/track people movers used to pick up passengers just off the highway on the Icefields parkway between Lake Louise and Jasper now reside miles away, deeper into the valley. Where the glacier laid is now piles of gravel upon which tourists climb and try to see where the glacier has gone too.
4
Have you checked the comparison as of current.
It is accelerating past his scenario B as we speak, sure with the regular cycles it will correct down somewhat, but remeber we have just come out of a cooling phase (La Nina) and the sun has also been in a cooling phase for the last 2 cycles and we just had the Global warmest May on record as we head to a likely El Nino
2
Every human on the planet wants an internal combustion engine to propel her to work, plow his land, blow his leaves, trim grass around his garden. Also, 8 Billion people want to breath (producing a massive amount of CO2. They also want to eat.
So, really, the question is not do we "believe in" global warming. Everyone older than 15 does because they have seen it happen in their lifetime.
The question is: Who will stop driving their Toyota Tundra back and forth to work and the car wash to keep it nice and shiny?
Who will turn off their heat this winter or their air conditioning this summer?
Who will stop plowing their field to produce food with a big diesel tractor?
The reality is: The human population is too large, and, too dependent on fossil fuel to sustain that large population to change UNTIL: Fossil fuel is gone.
So, relax. Eventually the use of fossil fuel will drop precipitously. At that point, humans will have recycled all recoverable hyrdocarbon back to the atmosphere.
When that happens, the human population will relax back by billions, or, become extinct, and something else will happen on earth.
But, there is nothing we can do to change our dependency on hydrocarbons. Nothing. And, you should know that. Because, it is true.
13
Passive solar, PV, wind, waves/tidal, conservation and even biomass.
These can easily replace fossil fuels. Only how to manage the transition remains the challenge.
12
Actually the plan B was put out by Pinituba in 1991 which cooled the earth for a few years (not as bad as the year without a summer as the globe was warmer), then of course we had the Icelandic volcano early 2000's and the Ocean Cycles were not as well understood. However current state we are back on track with his graph B, that 30% is past
2
Not a scientist but I remember Dr. Hansen; he caused me to focus on what I could do to decrease my fossil fuel use, have fewer kids, eat less beef and generally avoid waste and abuse of the environment; to be socially conscious meant looking out for future generations.
Alarmed that the population of the USA was then 200 million when I was in school, it blows the mind that our population has almost doubled in 40 years.
Yes, we as humans have failed future generations.
How many humans are now concerned about population growth or concerned about the number of cattle pumping methane gas into the environment or the number of planes circling the globe and the resulting pollution of disposable plastic diapers floating in our rivers or piling up in landfills.
We may not have the power to always change bad governance, but as individuals we can choose to focus on those things that can bring about change in our own communities; and yes, vote for the environment, not for the money grubbers.
18
Hansen deserves great credit. However, while his Plan B may have been wrong by 30%, the potential release of methanol from melting permafrost may shrink the timeline o replace fossil fuels dramatically. Arctic News data suggests we may have only 3-7 years.
Intermittent solar & wind systems cannot do the job fast enough. Emerging new science can provide 24/7 cheap green energy and will make a real difference. See aesopinstitute.org for revolutionary technologies that provide a fighting chance.
For example, engines have been invented that will run on ambient heat instead of fuel. A Ford engine was converted to prove the concept. A Kia engine conversion is almost complete and will be certified at a State lab in Alaska.
Piston engines designed to run on ambient heat are being designed. Turbines were prototyped by a Russian scientist. The work was stopped. Apparently by a government with an economy dependent on oil & gas. See Fuel Free Turbines on the same site. Improved fuel free turbines have been designed in the USA.
Another small firm has developed a way to easily & cheaply convert existing combustion engines to run on water instead of gas or diesel. See Moving Beyond Oil on the site.
Radically new science takes issue with textbooks and is hard to believe. It often proceeds "funeral by funeral" which humanity can no longer afford.
Trolls attack "impossible" technology ranting it is fraud.
Human survival is at issue. Open minds are urgently needed now!
10
In 1970, the formulation of the gasoline in Mexico City was extremely toxic, which led to changes, and a lessening of the pollution. Now, however, the population of the city is 22 million people which leads to many more people commuting from the suburbs and driving their cars. The fact that the population in 1970 in the world was 3.5 billion, and now it is 7.3 billion, which is the number one driver of climate change. The overpopulation of this earth will not only increase the pollution for those living in the larger cities, which is about 60% of the population around the world, but will make the earth less livable when we have way too many people. Females who choose to have only 2 children, or those who have more than that, are those who will determine the future of the world for the better, or for the worse.
16
Since population growth has virtually ceased in the Western democracies, including the U.S., any future decreases in population will have to be driven by developing countries. This means that African, Middle Eastern, and poorer Asian nations will bear the brunt of future population control. Please expand on how this is supposed to happen, since there is currently zero population planning in these countries today.
3
Well, wind power and solar are certainly here.Driving across Texas you see thousands of huge wind turbines strung out over the flat plains. Enough power for whole cities.And you see solar panels everywhere in the southwest.Solar and wind are really big players in the energy mix out there. They used to depend on oil, but they know oil is polluting and is running out and wind and especially solar go on forever. Those huge turbines run on a breath of wind.
8
Good observations. Even conservative utility companies recognize the vale solar and wind generation energy.
2
Some comments here mention that Dr. Hansen’s predictions were wrong. Similar to Physicists who talk of velocity or acceleration and not the word “fast”, define wrong. If they’re commenting on large error rates between his highest and midrange predictions, yes these have greater MAPES than his lowest prediction scenario. However, this lower temp increase scenario does align trendwise with actual observations.
The trend in actual temps are up and models inclusive of natural cyclical events( Earth’s orbital shape, axis wobble , sun spot activity etc., etc.) leads to a reasonable conclusion that the increase is due to human activity.
As someone stated, the Planet and life on Earth will survive. However if we do not act to shift away from fossil fuels, the economic and social costs will rival those of the last two World Wars. Care to bet your children’s future on those odds all for the desire to use fossil fuels? Why? The technology exist today to shift to non CO2 energy sources. Why not?!
13
Predicted catastrophic effects of fossil fuel-fueled global heating area already taking place-- contributing to desertification of grain/legume regions of the USA, Asia, Australia and India and raising food prices and increased destruction of adjacent forests; contributing to mass migration out of the paths of cyclonic weather devastation in the East Sea region of Asia; contributing to tribal competition for basic living resources, leading to mass migrations (often of cultures that idealize and canonize fecundity as a sacred duty, which only makes it worse, regardless of race, origin, nation or cultural background.) Fossil fuel energy companies with intelligent planners are already leasing offshore wind energy blocks and are already driving down the price of electricity. The barricaded coal-mine, shale mine and tar sands hostage takers will lose out, because soon their ransom will be worth the price they place on their own children's futures: Nothing.
7
“It’s very hard to see us fixing the climate,” Dr. Hansen said, “until we fix our democracy.”
Indeed so, for the simple reason that many in our political "leadership" and in other positions of influence epitomize Upton Sinclair's comment, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary [or campaign fund] depends on his not understanding it."
We can't fix the climate until we fix the corruption.
30
Thank you for recognizing the work of Dr. Hansen and other scientists who have made a persuasive case that the #1 threat to civilization is global warming.
The threat should command the attention of the World's leaders to join in mobilizing the industrial and scientific base to implement solutions to evolve our current fossil energy economy to a cheaper, much more effective source of energy to serve the quality of living needs of the 11 Billion people projected to populate the Earth by this century's end.
Think Manhattan Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project. This was a threat on a doomsday scale of lesser importance than Global Warming.
Scientific and technical challenges are no longer barriers to implementing large-scale, space-based, solar power that can provide very cheap electric power to all of humanity.
With cheap electric power, it becomes feasible to desalinate water for human and agriculture needs, to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere combine it with hydrogen from water and make liquid hydrocarbons, including jet fuel, and to electrify our autos, trucks, and logistics to continue to manufacture, pack and ship the goods and foods that our future population will require.
The cost of making the conversion: only a small portion of the World economic output. This pathway has been outlined by Dr. James Powell, formerly of Brookhaven, in his books, the latest, "Spaceship Earth, How long before we crash?"
Let's get started.
11
Until we change the politicians in office that don't accept climate change, nothing will be done.
Make politicians more accountable.
It's time to asked "where are our leaders" not we should have not voted that leader in.
10
It's painful to contemplate what was done with the warning Hansen gave, how much time has been wasted, how much worse it's going to be - and that it didn't have to end up this way.
Future generations are going to be asking "What were they thinking? Were they thinking at all?"
16
Dr Edward Teller warned the American Fossil Fuel Industry as keynote speaker at their Centenary Symposium "Energy and Man". (transcripts are available)
The National Academy of Sciences officially warned the president Lyndon Johnson in 1965
2
What I want to know and what is not mentioned, is what will happen to the temperature of the earth when the polar ice melts completely. The earth already gets a redu tion in the circulation of the water in the oceans because of warming, the cold drives the winds,the climate, and the ocean systems of flow.
The polar ice is melting fast.
6
The food chains around the artic islands is also changing with species diminishing and other species flourishing. All due to warmer ocean temperatures up north where changes are more pronounced.
2
Unfortunately, the time since Dr. Hansen’s testimony - the past 30 years - has seen a rapid decline of respect and trust for science, and a rise of the attitude that all opinions are equally valid. This has not only made us a laughingstock among more enlightened nations, but it is gravely endangering our planet.
27
As Isaac Asimov once said, “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
And he died 26 years ago when it seemed like far more people still had respect for science.
3
The battle of the Christion religion for dominance over science has not helped climate change understanding. This is the ancient beliefs fighting the new discoveries because they are too disturbing to too many. A conflict of world views that is deep and wide. Not all religions are in this conflicting position.
2
skip: you're right about the early reactors, technically were 2 generations farther now..on the drawing boards reactors fueled by waste currently being stored on site now, then extract all the energy leaving behind a small amount of 100 yr/half life waste.
We can't be irrationally afraid to not include nuclear...its probably too late anyway slow carbon loading effects.
1
Unfortunately, we've dropped this ball and there's likely no picking it up again now. It'll be up to our children and grandchildren to sort out the mess we've made. Maybe there'll be technology solutions to the problem. Maybe they'll take existential risks to save themselves. Maybe it'll work. Maybe it won't. Meanwhile, we enjoy our moment of inflated wealth, having borrowed everything they have. It's sickening.
12
William Case, so you’re happy to go with the 1% of scientists that say it’s not human induced. Willing to bet your kids future on the 1% ? Does that sound like the decision your parents would have made? We will give our son William great odds at having a good future and go with the 1% chance!
Even if the 1% is right... how much better would the world be with less pollution, oil spillage, toxic chemicals fracking into our ground water and cleaner air in our city centres. Pity
12
Dr. Hansen was wrong yet climate panicky scientists still stand behind him. Why do you think they continue to have a hard time?
1
He wasn't wrong. We just happened to do something about it. Have you looked at the poles? Are you not aware of the increased intensity of storms? Are you not aware of the constant flooding in Miami? There's nothing panicky about recognizing the reality of what's happening. I don't understand people who live their lives in denial.
Besides, everything we do to stop global warming also decreases air and water pollution and will reduce the incidence of cancer and other diseases. So even if global warming is a myth, which it's most clearly not, we need to take the same steps as if it weren't a myth. Or maybe you like pollution and our dependency on imported fossil fuels and don't mind when oil spills or industry destroys water supplies.
11
In what way was he materially wrong?
Um, remind me what he was wrong about? Because he seems pretty frighteningly right to me.
1
If ever there was an issue that deserves the attention of a functioning democracy, global warming is it. We killing our planet and humanity's future. It is astounding and maddening that the national legislature of the most well-to-do country on the planet cannot do anything about it.
19
That should be no surprise when a great portion of the citizenry doesn't believe in science and believes that higher education is bad for the country.
And that's aside from the fact that industry and the Koch Brothers have numerous representatives in their pockets.
13
It is most appropriate that writer Justin Gillis mentions in his opinion piece on James Hansen that Hansen’s granddaughter Sophie Kivlehan is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed in Oregon by young people against the federal government for violating their constitutional rights to life and liberty by failing to act to stem climate disruption.
Hansen entitled his 2009 book “Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity” (Bloomsbury). Hansen includes photographs of his grandchildren in the book and explains why he wrote a work for nonscientists and general readers. “If it hadn’t been for my grandchildren and my knowledge of what they would face,” he declared, “I would have stayed focused on the pure science, and not persisted in pointing out its relevance to policy.”
Hansen further revealed that he believed that the “biggest obstacle to solving global warming is the role of money in politics, the undue sway of special interests.”
That those temporarily invested with power in this country have turned their backs on the Paris Climate Accords while simultaneously mouthing platitudes about their concern for future generations, is as unspeakable as turning the United States into a rogue nation.
The climate issue demands unprecedented cooperation among nations. Our political leaders should be leading the world in this global fight, not doing their utmost to sabotage efforts aimed at saving our planet.
21
The Wall Street Journal has an article about the same man, on the same day he delivers his testimony to congress. The difference is that the Journal leaves us with the impression that he was a tad alarmist and it didn't turn out to be as bad as his worst case scenario.
6
Yes, the Koch Brothers set up the Cato Institute to pay for that kind of commentary.
As for it not turning out as bad as his worst case scenario, that was just one of three difference scenarios he modeled.
Murchoch's editorial folks at the WSJ don't want us to pay attention to the fact that
a) the actual warming is within the range of scenarios Hansen described
b) no amount of money spent by right-wing think tanks will produce evidence that the greenhouse effect isn't real, that burning fossil fuel emits greenhouse gas, and that the extra heat retention will change what had been a pretty stable climate and sea level.
18
[“It’s very hard to see us fixing the climate,” Dr. Hansen said, “until we fix our democracy.”]
Replace our democracy with a technocracy?
Fix, not replace.
As long as there are politicians in places of power in the pay of the fossil fuel companies we will never have a fix.
People cause pollution, and there are way way to many people on this planet, and I see no way that will ever be controlled as there are too many religious fanatics that are in opposition to birth control.
3
I don't think that's what he was saying. In fact he was sort of saying the opposite.
2
Get money and special interests out of it
1
“It’s very hard to see us fixing the climate,” Dr. Hansen said, “until we fix our democracy.”
Indeed, the same could be said if we replace 'climate' with 'inequality' or 'over population' or any of the ills that afflict our planet.
But how do we fix democracy? Clearly it's a complex problem and there are likely to be several possibilities.
But before we rush to a solution it behoves us to understand the problem. As Einstein once proposed. ‘If I had an hour to solve a problem I would spend the first 55 minutes understanding the problem and five minutes fixing it.’ . . . or words to that effect.
So what then is the real problem?
From my perspective it’s the ‘Closed Mindset’. It affects us all to varying degrees. You see it expressed in the righteousness of Trump supporters screaming obscenities at the ‘Fake’ media. And you see it in the comments made by well meaning left leaning readers of this newspaper.
Pick your tribe and it will shape your response at an unconscious level.
Again it affects us all – we all suffer from confirmation bias amongst other things.
What to do? We need to cultivate a broadly based desire to develop the ‘Seek Openness and Learning’ (SOAL) mindset.
How do we start?
Whenever you hear someone say something or see someone do something ask yourself, ‘What are five possible explanations for this person’s behaviour?’
Why not try it and see?
Journey with courage and kindness,
Peter Rennie leadershipaustralia
5
Time for blunt language.
On our current path, within a few generations ALL humans on Earth are going to DIE OUT -- because of the colossal greed and ignorance of a corrupt powerful minority.
Even the heirs of the rich and famous like the Kochs, Trumps, Hannity, Murdochs, along with the Evangelicals and other gullible or complicit GOP supporters will die. No escape to another planet – not feasible in time. Perhaps they would enjoy eating insects and soylent green and living underground as natural disasters, plagues and wars rage.
I do not want that for my grandchildren’s children – or anyone.
This is an emergency of the greatest order for the entire world, but we fail to recognize the urgency as we are distracted daily by T-administration disasters.
We are capable of doing so much more! We must mobilize our country’s majority to address the many facets of this emergency, despite our current corrupt government. We need a consortium of leaders from all sectors to take power away from those who work against humanity, and to find and support solutions.
WE ALL HAVE TO ACT. NOW. Publically, privately, professionally. In many ways, every day, not taking our eyes off the ball, voting for, demanding and working towards multiple solutions. We must work on this as if our families’ lives depend on it, because they will.
22
Dr. Hansen’s forecast “was not flawless?” Are you kidding? His lowest - least alarming - prediction (Scenario C) overstated warming by approximately 30%. This alone gives global warming deniers ammunition in every serious argument involving Dr. Hansen. Sure, we now know why he was wrong, but that does not help. I appreciate Hansen’s pioneering efforts, but the truth is indeed inconvenient - Hansen’s predictions were wrong.
8
False, evidence please.
In fact we currently are a little above his Scenario B from having been below for some decades
1
Hmm. Do I trust your undocumented word, or what climate scientists present - with their comments having footnoted references? Because they found the following - and I'm going to point out for your benefit that the observations are higher than scenario C.
"The modeled changes were as follows:
Scenario A: 0.33±0.03ºC/decade (95% CI)
Scenario B: 0.28±0.03ºC/decade (95% CI)
Scenario C: 0.16±0.03ºC/decade (95% CI)
The observed changes 1984-2017 are 0.19±0.03ºC/decade (GISTEMP), or 0.21±0.03ºC/decade (Cowtan and Way), lying between Scenario B and C, and notably smaller than Scenario A. "
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/06/30-years-after-han...
1
Yadda, yadda, yadda, and I'm from Texas where it can be cold in the winter and hurricane Harvey was just a normal tropical storm, so global warming is wrong.
1
If we aspired to be a civil society we'd be alarmed enough to act on the threat climate change poses. Sadly, we losing our grip on democracy. Doubt me? Ask everyone you know if they'd do something to help save our species and look at what our representatives are actually doing. I have two teenaged daughters and they think adults have lost their minds. I think they're right. We don't seem to recognize that we are all members of the same endangered species: homo stultus
10
It was 1988 when Dr. Hansen said, "It is time to stop waffling so much, and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here."
Now, as you note, "The ocean is rising, as Dr. Hansen predicted, and the pace seems to be accelerating."
Add to those observations the expert estimate that the effects of human-caused climate change lag behind the causes by 25 to 50 years, the most commonly used figure being 40 years. That means certain consequences are already on the way, like light emitted by a distant star. We're seeing climate in revolt even now, and we need to understand that it's going to get worse no matter what we do.
Of course we must do all we can to arrest the continuing damage to the climate. That requires intense pressure on government and industry to change energy policies and practices. However, we also need leaders who are up to the monumental task of devising ways to manage the coming dislocations. We need people, both scientists and politicians, who are already thinking about that.
We also need to be talking about this aspect of the problem publicly. Such talk won't take the wind out of the sails of prevention. It will generate a following wind by making us think clearly about what is at stake.
8
Those who wish global action on climate change took the wrong strategy and we are suffering the consequences. The coalition of Big-Government leftists with anti-West identity-politic Social Justice Warriors saw the fight against Climate Change as an opportunity to both vastly increase the size of government and arrange some form of payment from the rich world to the poor to help the poor countries to "adapt."
These things are anathema to the right. If, instead, a market based approach had been approached, things would have been different. A tax on carbon in exchange for tax cuts elsewhere in a revenue neutral solution would have passed in the years before opposition to climate change had solidified. But alas, the left didn't want to give up their best opportunity to expand government and force people to live the way they want them to. Don't believe me? Look at what happened with the failure of a carbon tax in Washington State in the last two years.
3
That was exactly what the elder Bush’s administration offered. It was called, ‘cap and trade’. Obama proposed using it and conservative Republicans rejected it.
13
A carbon tax has been discussed for decades, but one side (Republicans) won't consider it, and won't even admit this is established science. Even now, there's an article on the Wall Street Journal suggesting that Hansen was completely wrong. Read the comments for the most depressing ignorance, denial, and outright falsehood you've ever seen. It is beyond absurd: A group with their own facts, who deny ALL of the established science. These people do not deserve a modern society: They should be denied all technology: television, cars, electricity, or anything that requires rational thought.
13
Please document the "vast increase" in government that is specific to climate change. I agree with you a carbon tax would be smart, but please also provide documentation that the bulk of Republican donors and free-market think tanks have done anything but fight sensible action since 1988.
That will be a terrific thing, because we need both parties taking action. But after John McCain's last attempt -with Joe Lieberman- to implement a cap and trade marketplace for emissions (it worked to solve acid rain) he then turned into a denier for the 2008 Presidential election.
As governor, Sarah Palin had formed a cabinet subcommittee to deal with climate change in Alaska.
https://gov.alaska.gov/admin-orders/238.html
Then 2008 campaign funds were needed and she, too, lost her mind. Then Murdoch paid her on Fox and she drank the Kool-aid.
Mike Huckabee in the 2007 primary races took a principled stand as an evangelist - talking about the need as stewards of God's earth to clean it up and reduce pollution and CO2 emissions. He didn't win the nomination, and Murdoch paid him to be on Fox and he drank the Kool-aid.
It's kind of clear that a party where Nixon created EPA and signed major, Federal legislation to clean our air and water has, esp. since the Tea Party was bought out by big money, become too addicted to funds and too scared of the farthest right.
Cracks are appearing - wind power is saving rural economies, utilities are sick of coal. We'll see and hope.
11
It's very distressing to see what little is being done to address climate change. Even if the science is not exact, why are we taking any chances with it?
One thing that lately startles is the expanding number of SUVs out there. How has this happened without serious pushback from environmentalists? SUVs are clearly gas guzzlers, and not long ago these sorts of vehicles were very out of style. But they've come roaring back, in all sorts of up-scaled varieties. And of course the push to "develop" and profit from exploiting land and natural resources can't be helping. The upshot? Money and profits have eclipsed many efforts to reign in carbon emissions and protect our environment.
11
The Human Condition (Skepticism) keeps many from admitting Hansen’s work is accurate. The problem is presenting the FACTS. There so many naysayers that the voices of authority are blocked out. As long as the voices of reason and fact are ignored, nothing will be accomplished.
5
From an accuracy perspective his work has proven to be inaccurate. And all the “reasons” given could have been foreseen by Hansen. But then there would be not snake oil purchasers. As a scientist he failed, because he assumed all warming is due to co2. At that time one could see that early 1900 warming was about as intense as late 1900 one. One could not be blame on co2. But the bear goes on
2
Maybe the wildfires and flooded low countries and destabilized tundra communities and hurricane blasted towns will get the reason eventually. It is not all just by coincidence. Not to mention the fishermen losing ground and wheat growers getting fried out and orchards waiting for bees and the dying northern forests and the bare glaciers. Too much to ignore.
9
"From an accuracy perspective his work has proven to be inaccurate"
Evidence please, where are we currently relative to his 3 scenarios ?
As a retired geologist, its important to make a clear distinction about global climate change. It is most definitely happening, and our human civilization will be severely tested in the coming decades of the 21st century. But let no think this man-made climate change will affect the planet - it will continue on whether we're here or not, as it has for the past 3+ Billion years. Rather its just humans ability to live on the planet Earth in a manner similar to the last 10,000 years that will be compromised well-beyond current mainstream beliefs.
14
The planet and the wild creatures left will be better off without us. Maybe the few humans left will have to live within the laws of the natural world instead of exploiting the resources of the earth for profit. This should make for an entirely different kind of people, I wish I could be here to see it.
3
As an Earth Scientist, I like to say that the Earth's going to continue on just fine. It's really a question of whether we want to save ourselves.
7
The global sea is swimmingly full of micro and macro plastic bits.Whales eat by straining out particles from sea wAter, they cannot discriminate.They ingest tons of plastic and plastic is in every aspect of our life. Fish and seabirds are dying. This is not global warming, but it is another example of how human civilization pollutes the planet.The billions of gallons of oil that make plastic
products do contribute to climate change as well as to plastic pollution of every corner of the global seas. Climate change is just as pervasive and deadly as plastic pollution is to whales. Plastic pollution has no non-human source and cannot be disputed.
9
I'm not sure what Mr. Hansen means when he says we need to "fix our democracy." We live in what is about as close to a reasonable concept of democracy as is possible, and it works. Note how effective public opinion was on getting Trump to reverse his policy on separating children from their parents.
The problem is that there is no similar public support for actions to affect climate change. Ask people how much more they are willing to pay to reduce climate change and you won't get a very big number. In fact I suspect a plurality would say "Zero." And if actions to reduce climate change will save us money, it will happen automatically, without government intervention.
I suspect what Mr. Hansen and liberals actually want is for their "elites" to decide what is best for us and implement that regardless of public opinion.
5
If you were to tote up votes for democrats vs. republicans in the last thirty years or so, and compare those percentages with the number of democrats vs. the number of republicans in power, it would be hard for you to make the case that this is as close to a reasonable concept of democracy as is possible. How about one person one vote? To me that seems reasonable.
4
It states pretty clearly in the article that he advocates "ranked choice" voting as a way to allow for a more nuanced election process and hopefully elect representatives more in line with the center, rather than the extremes we get with our current system. (There's a link in the article explaining this method of voting, written by a conservative figure, so maybe you will approve.). It's still democracy, not a different form of government, but it gives more opportunity to elect less polarizing figures -- and hopefully these politicians will be more likely to work together to solve problems. In other words, it's a way to hopefully avoid the rancor of politicians name-calling and categorizing (as you did in your response), and might hopefully lead to a more civilized and effective democratic process.
3
Put climate change to a deliberative vote, of the type held in Ireland last year, and you would get a different answer.
irishtimes.com/opinion/ireland-must-listen-to-citizens-assembly-on-clima...
Put energy policy to a deliberative vote, as has been held in Texas (during the governorship of George W. Bush) and you get visionary policy:
texastribune.org/2013/09/17/book-excerpt-how-public-got-behind-tx-wind-p...
No group of 500 Americans, in a deliberative process, would vote to drown NYC or Miami, which is the long term outlook with business-as-usual emissions.
Scott Pruitt could pick the jury of 500, and they still would vote to preserve the cities and the coasts. The mistake was in putting economists in front of the choice that reasoning people would make. And that has a history, too.
psmag.com/magazine/fallacy-of-endless-growth
3
Fossil fuels are like the crack cocaine of modern society. They are a drug and we are all addicted to them. It will require a herculean effort to defeat the fossil fuel industry;nuclear and solar power, electric vehicles, mass-transportation, and housing density and walkable cities could do it, but it will be tough to unseat fossil fuels unless those things can be cost competitive with fossil fuels, and unless all of those who would like to see less fossil fuel use can overcome the coordinated and and highly interested lobbying done by the fossil fuels industry at all of levels of government to keep their product as cheap and as widely available as possible.
I don't mean to be pessimistic, just to alert people of the need to recognize the difficulty of this task so that people opposed to fossil fuel use can plan accordingly.
7
In states like Illinois and New Jersey, it's possible to select which company you buy your electricity from, then the power utility delivers. This is a very positive choice people can make - increasing demand for grid-scale renewable power. That helps market forces (like what's been killing coal) drive investment that further decreases the costs for wind or solar.
3
Purity of,
You have every right to be pessimistic. We've had 30 years of informed warning about the consequences, and have done essentially nothing under either Democratic or Republican administrations.
For those who think Obama and the 2015 Paris Agreement would have saved us and Trump's withdrawal dooms us, see Peter Brannen, 2017, p. 257. Brannen notes we'll blow by the goal of staying under the 2 degree C increase by 2100 hoped for in the Agreement, even if the US had stayed in it. Making matters worse, he notes that even if we do only the 2 degree increase, that "will wipe out most of the coral reefs and major parts of the rainforest, bring unprecedented heat waves and legions of extinctions, and eventually drown coastal cities around the world." In short, things look bad even if the Paris Agreement goals are met.
What kind of civil unrest will occur when livable land and resources become scarce is anybody's guess.
8
Steve, for a change follow down until there is no more following to do on that 2 degree limit and where I came from. It should be interesting chase
1
One day, Reagan will be most remembered for his egregious short-sightedness on this issue. As our problems due to climate change increase, it will finally become obvious to all that this is far and above the single most important problem for us to address, in every way possible.
13
It was the religious extremists that got him in power too and they boast about it
The same suspects continue their work to denigrate Hansen's predictions. The June 21 edition of the WSJ had two Cato institute writers, not climate scientists, telling readers that his predictions were wide of the mark. The show goes on.
"Thirty Years On, How Well Do Global Warming Predictions Stand Up?
James Hansen issued dire warnings in the summer of 1988. Today earth is only modestly warmer."
7
Funny how the Cato Institute, founded by brothers who make a ton of money from fossil fuels; whose ultra-libertarian viewpoints conveniently help them line their pockets; always pretend nothing's happening.
The Koch Brothers are heavily invested in tar sands in Canada. They happily spend billions to promote their extreme views and fight regulations that would benefit the public.
And too many people willingly dupe themselves to believing everything's fine, and parrot things like "follow the money" to pretend that researchers drilling for ocean muck are doing this for all that grad-student moolah - yet they blindly fail to follow money back to wealthy people preserving profits.
Instead, they buy into silly conspiracy theories, or take the Pollyanna approach that somehow EVERY indicator is wrong, and every result will fall on the benign side.
The ones who've swallowed the conspiracy theories who think scientists go through years of post-graduate education to get rich should ask themselves one question:
"If 200 years of climate science is a vast conspiracy, with tens of thousands of people all in it for the money, how come the Koch Brothers haven't found that one qualified whistleblower and made that person wealthy?"
This brief video from Richard Alley (geoscientist, and libertarian Republican) provides another convincing argument that IF real scientists could really disprove the greenhouse effect, there'd be lots of takers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_WLArrksB4
8
I don't think you need to be a climate scientist to see if someone's predictions were accurate or not. Do you have Hansen's predictions compared to today's actual data?
1
The question isn't whether Hansen predicted perfectly. He didn't of course. The question is, How have Hansen's predictions performed relative to equally specific predictions made 30 years ago by scientists on the other side of the debate? Except those have been quietly buried haven't they? The ones which ever existed that is.
3
“It’s very hard to see us fixing the climate,” Dr. Hansen said, “until we fix our democracy.”
Dr. Hansen's analysis has indirectly identified one of the big problems reasonable people face in addressing climate change: the model of the country extreme conservatives use as their guide. Along with the authoritative father model of the country (and its resulting support for President Trump), two of its tenants involve using the earth's resources to generate wealth and suspicion of education and informed decision making. The first step toward creative thinking to incorporate more (and novel) renewable sources in our energy portfolio and overcoming foot-dragging resistance may only be achievable at the ballot box.
7
Our species will survive the global warming we have already locked in. At least some of it.
We can significantly increase the chances of a better outcome if we wish to. The actual sacrifices will be quite manageable for most Americans. Not so much for the Bangladeshis.
Rooftop solar already employs more people than coal-mining, and the work is far safer.
12
Climate change has resulted from the great use of materials that will produce great amounts of heat for producing power for engines of every kind for every purpose relying upon machines. Replacing those materials must require abandoning the systems relying upon those materials. That alone will render vast amounts of assets worthless. Thus the reaction to predictions of catastrophe from continuing to use these materials resulted in denial not concern, and so today we are in very bad shape because the replacement of power by these materials has not progressed quickly enough. If you listen to the arguments of the deniers, it’s clear that they oppose reducing the burning of hydrocarbons for power with assurances that technologists will somehow find a solution besides alternative energy systems. It’s just crazy magical thinking.
13
Mr. Gillis states, “The ocean is rising, as Dr. Hansen predicted, and the pace seems to be accelerating.”
Indeed sea level is rising, but at a steady pace, not an increasing pace. In the 1980s, NOAA (a government agency) fit sea level rise with a model showing an increasing rate. The model failed miserably. 30 years later, NOAA used the same exact model, but shifted the dates forward. The results still do not fit the data collected by academic institutions. When scientists and pundits like Mr. Gillis misrepresent available data to skew results toward being more supportive of their bias, all scientific credibility is lost. A steady rate of sea level rise is concerning, but when the scientific community loses all credibility by making exaggerated claims nothing will be accomplished.
These issues are real, and they deserve action. Mr. Gillis and his ilk have done a great disservice toward advancing progress.
9
No they haven't. It has been rising faster than predicted and ice on land has melted faster than was predicted. Which is why it is a steady increase going faster every year. It was much slower back in the 80s' and 90s' for example.
15
"The pace of global sea level rise doubled from 1.7 mm/year throughout most of the twentieth century to 3.4 mm/year since 1993."
NOAA disagrees with your hypothesis.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-chan...
But why let actual facts interfere with a comforting narrative?
9
Steve, perhaps Mr. Gillis was providing recent news, such as this from 2016:
"Is the detection of accelerated sea level rise imminent?"
J. T. Fasullo, R. S. Nerem & B. Hamlington
Scientific Reports volume 6, Article number: 31245 (2016)
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep31245
And from this year:
"Climate-change–driven accelerated sea-level rise detected in the altimeter era"
R. S. Nerem, B. D. Beckley, J. T. Fasullo, B. D. Hamlington, D. Masters, and G. T. Mitchum
PNAS February 27, 2018. 115 (9) 2022-2025; published ahead of print February 12, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1717312115
Both articles are open for the public to read.
1
So the crowd that believe they are Gods have crowned yet another prophet. Opinions are like a certain part of anatomy that we all have. What spews forth is somehow familiar and, therefore, somewhat comforting to the owner.
I knew this piece was coming after the Wall Street Journal published one that questioned the accuracy of of Dr Hansen's predictions. Note I said accuracy, which implies analyzing values.
Like any other religious treatise this article is short on analytics. Only the heretics dare question the prophets as their prognostications shall remain inviolate for eternity. The unbelievers shall suffer the consequences.
I've always found it amusing that Socialists believe they can predict the future outcomes of our current behaviors with a high degree of accuracy.
11
Only Socialist Time Lords.
The fact of global warming is not opinion. It is reality.
But deniers don't believe in facts.
As for behavior, well to a certain degree, it can be predicted when parts of the world are no longer inhabitable. Mass migration will occur.
I guess such things as computers, GPS, and other things brought to us by science must be our imagination also. Since those same 'gods' invented all those things with their 'religion' of science.
Because the same science that brought us the modern scientific world is the same science that says climate change is a reality. So you must reject all that science has brought us what we have today. It is all the same science, because science is a method of examining the world. And that is what has given us what we have today.
So you must reject all of science, because all of it is connected by the use of the same method. So why do you believe in computers? It is all fake science after all.
13
I walk. Park my 2,400-pound addiction (motor vehicle) and walk this aging body. I'd rather drive -- vehicle is like a metal womb, the throbbing engines lull and dull people's body-minds into compliance and complacency. Including me. So I walk.
11
No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Use an electric or hybrid vehicle. How much is your time worth on foot beyond the necessary exercise?
1
Progressives use co2 emission as a vehicle to instate socialist policy. Natural gas is cheap and plentiful,cheaper than most coal and all 'renewables'. The most effective solution,nuclear is not considered. Learn from past mistakes,use latest technology,and scientifically calculate cost benefit risk...rather being guided by a Jane Fonda movie.
The west could be carbon negative in 30yrs. And provide the poorest in the world a path to carbon neutral prosperity too.
Currently for every pound of co2 reduction in the US 5 pounds is added else where much of it is fueled by deforestation, dirty coal and fuel oil... the 'progressive' path we're on will further hollow the middle/,lower class with unnecessarily high energy costs and leave the 3rd world burning dirty fuel in quantity.
4
What do you do with all that radioactive material that we can't even dispose of today from nuclear plants? We have so much that we can't get rid of now. No one wants it buried in their backyard.
Plus nuclear plants use a great deal of water, water is scarce in the western US. It is not going to get better for them.
Nuclear will not save us, not with all the problems it causes.
And oh by the way, most nuclear plants in the US are built the same way as the japanese plant and many are near fault lines. Many are just an earthquake away from suffering the same disaster.
7
All of these statements are false.
1
First, thank you, thank you, for this article. Having written in the comment section of the Times more times than I can count that climate change is the ONLY issue until we give it our full attention, I am delighted to see the prominence given to the problem that could wreck the planet for human or large animal life. Back in the day when nuclear war was the biggest threat, we used to joke about cockroaches “inheriting the earth.” With each day that the US stays out of the Paris Climate Accords, that scenario seems more likely. Please continue to report on what James Hansen, Bill McKibben, and other climate scientists are doing. Also on the progress of the suit. Perhaps you can clarify for some sceptics why they must vote for Democrats.
17
Unfortunately, no one likes to hear bad news especially the selfish current generation. And as long as it does not hurt them personally in their lifetimes, they could'nt care less. They will be long gone when the armageddon happens and every living being on our planet drowns and dies. As for the scientists like Dr. Hansen and fellow scientists who fore warn about what the future holds are just ignored into ignominy, who are just prophets of gloom and doom. I hope the generation of millennials like his grand-daughter pick up the cudgels and wrest power from this self-centered generation of baby-boomers and the ones before them. My greatest fear is that we may have already crossed the irrevocable line.
9
Will the Prophet of Doom be right about the Paris Climate Accords? Probably.
James Hansen, father of climate change awareness, calls Paris talks 'a fraud'
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/12/james-hansen-climate...
Will he be right about nuclear energy? Probably.
Hansen: Nuclear power paves the only viable path forward on climate change.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/03/nuclear-power-paves-...
This time, let's not wait 30 years to find out.
4
"“It’s very hard to see us fixing the climate,” Dr. Hansen said, “until we fix our democracy.”"
.
Yet the Supreme Court continues to tip the scales against democracy, as in Ohio.
.
Facts no longer matter because the oil industry, like the tobacco industry before it, has waged a wall-to-wall, 24/7/365 campaign for the last 30 years to undermine fact-based decision-making.
.
Polarisation is about making people's minds numb to reason.
.
That numbness set the stage for an entire candidacy indifferent to, and unattached from, any kind of objective truth. The Clown was pushing on an open door ...
.
That's why people who care about science are also campaigning as hard as they can for electoral reform.
.
But they have nothing like the money that the oil industry has. It is a very unequal contest - thanks, once again, to Supreme Court decisions on campaign finance.
14
30 years ago computers weren't as powerful, Antarctica wasn't fully mapped, ice core samples weren't as abundant and predictions were based on the near term not a century from now. So how did he know? The science wasn't there yet. If anything it was a hypothesis not statistical fact.
When did scientist become Prophets, of impending disasters or anything else? Are you sure the religious mumbo jumbo you believe has more veracity than some evangelical who believes the earth is 6000 years old. If you need a prophet there's a few out there you might want to examine. Scientist however reduce things to numbers. When they hear 8 billion people they tend to forget the subject is people.
I'm not so sure a better democracy would be better run by scientists when its assumed people should see them as prophets. Thats not science. Its religion.
6
Another who doesn't understand science or how it works. They knew enough back in the 60s to know it was happening. We had data from long ago that shows what happens when the CO2 increases.
He was not working in a vacuum. And the science today shows how right he was.
It isn't prophecy to say 1+1 = 2. That is how science works. Put facts together to get the answer.
Considering how scientists are worrying about what will happen to the people on the planet contradicts what you say about them. They wouldn't worry if it was only about numbers.
10
That's ridiculous, JoeG. Most scientific pursuits involve projections and probabilities. Calling them prophets for that just sounds medieval.
1
"suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy."
James Hansen
3
Rapidly was the key word back in 1988. It is now 2018 though and we haven't tried to move at all from fossil fuels.
8
Thirty years don't make climate. 300 years might, 3000 years does. That is why the medieval warming period, and then the little ice age is scoffed at rather than considered climate change.
4
Neither were global, which is why they are not considered climate change. Climate change is global.
2
tomjoe9....here we go again with the old "climates have always changed" trickery. Once again....yes, climates have always changed. What makes anthropomorphic climate change different is rapidity of onset more akin to the catastrophes that have brought on mass extinctions.
5
It's not too late. Surprisingly, eating less beef would have a significant impact. So would fleets of electric cars. And prudent building codes. Unfortunately Republicans are in power and so not one of these reasonable and doable things will be done. Not one.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/186570/transforming-lives-limit-global-w...
13
As I eat my Big Mac, I'll ponder the fleet of electric cars running on fossil fuel derived electricity. Bold thinking!
4
Not bold thinking; more like not thinking. It takes a lot less fossil fuel to produce the electricity for electric cars therefor less pollution. BTW, that Big Mac also required a lot of fossil fuel to produce those high calories. Bon Appetit.
1
My hybrid generates a lot of its own electricity when coasting down hill and when braking, it also generates from use of the gas engine. It saves a lot of gas. It is quiet and has plenty of power.
1
30 years ago I worked in Antarctica doing science. Back then we knew things were not going to change easily, to convince government, politicians and others of the geophysical climate perils. I never met a more pessimistic bunch of researchers back in 1988. They knew the truth then and were absolutely correct. Sadly we are still trying to convince the world that we are in grave danger. Either you 'get it' or your job relies on not understanding it. Only 1% of scientists are climate change deniers and we all know whose payroll they are on. The major oil companies are the greatest science debunkers and are ultimately the most evil perpetrators of lies and obfuscation of the facts. Go to www.whrc.org for important information in regards to recent climate change studies.
37
"Only 1% of scientists are climate change deniers"
Sorry bud, but that out's you as not a scientist. I would guess 100% of scientists agree that the climate changes. Of those probably less than 25% believe in the climate apocalypse.
1
As further proof that we have made a deal with the devil, oil tanker cars have derailed in Iowa spilling oil into a river today. Of coarse, NO ONE wants a pipeline, right? The number of Americans living the way we do, basically precludes any longterm solutions to global warming. It's fun to self righteously proclaim no pipeline, but the truth is we need the oil and it has to be moved around some how. If we don't reduce our numbers and modify the way we live, we can go on wringing our hands while blaming trump and the republicans forever and nothing will change. It really is us. All of us.
1
Nope. Don't need the oil. Coal use already diminishing, and Koch has sold off its coal assets. Natural gas is a bridge fuel, and will continue for awhile. But, just as Germany has learned the past two summers (when on several days generation from renewables exceeded their national energy requirements), so too is the day coming when the US will achieve the same. (California has already achieved this on a number of days.) We should be working/investing even more than we already are, on grid-scale energy storage: in the South and West, renewables will soon generate enough energy in the summer to last the entire year -- if only we had a viable way to store it inexpensively (PowerWalls/batteries are too expensive by about 1000X). The company that solves the storage problem will reap tremendous profits in the marketplace.
10
How about the other 300 days in Germany when they had to fire up those coal plants?
Wow. I guess 2+2= green in some fantasy worlds. The government reports that California is a net importer of 25% of its electrical needs. Same with oil. No matter how much wishful thinking you do, it won't change the fact that 40 million people living in that space can ever be sustainable.
I was going to the University of Colorado, Boulder.
The first Earth Day was celebrated on the field in front of the Norlin Library. Many large signs warned of "Global Warming."
I was so happy and grateful for those scientists.
They warned us in time and we would be able to prevent it.
That day was April 22, 1970
23
How were we able to prevent it? When did we do this?
They did a great job. Sixty seven degrees here in NY on the second day of summer.
Climate change means unstable weather patterns. More cold, more hot, more storms.
Dr. Hansen is the type of noble-minded, pragmatic, clear-headed citizen informed by his extraordinary scientific mind I once thought was the normal behavior of an American professional and citizen. He made a career as a professional working for an agency where the spirit of innovation is only matched by the pragmatism made possible through a culture of integrity that spawned incredible innovation. Could we have seen the advances made by NASA over the past 50 years if it were a culture of the lunatic fringe funded lie that protects its funders interests while putting the future at extreme risk? Imagine a rocket manufacturer making more from shuttles exploding on an insurance scam built on deception rather than achievement? If you understand that analogy, you understand the era Dr. Hansen came from versus the nightmare we are living in. As heroic as Dr. Hansen is, there are so many heroes we never hear of across the spectrum of agency and legitimacy. They've just been swallowed by the appetite of a media hyperfocused on the train wreck of Trump while the real power behind the curtain keeps destroying everyone in its path. Journalism is supposed to be the anchor of democracy that informs the citizenry based on the facts obtained through access and integrity. When will the NY Times go on a war footing concurrent with our modern realities considering what's at stake?
20
Earth and Mars meet. Planet earth looks sick and depressed. "What's going on?" asks Mars. "I have humans" replies Earth. Mars consoles Earth: "No worries, that will pass"
11
So here we are. What was supposed to be a 30’ rise
In sea level, turns out to be 6” over 100 years. Excuse my boredom
12
Excellent point. The truth always is ignored by the alarmists.
3
Just open your eyes and look around you. It is in plain sight.
1
Trump and Congressional Republicans are not rejecting environmental responsibility because they think the data don't reflect potential regulations or improving technology. No, they reject the conclusions because they reject science. Trump withdraws from the Paris Climate Treaty, with encouragement from GOP lawmakers, who just want businesses to operate unfettered. There is nothing equally valid here.
9
It’s unconscionable that Scott Pruitt was put as the head of the EPA and it’s even worse that Trump heaps praise on Pruitt. Instead of focusing on clean energy that could form the basis of future energy use the Trump,administration is pursuing the climate destroying fossil fuels and outdated coal plants.
13
Trump is still in the industrial age-the age of coal.
2
Stand by for 50% more fossil fuel emissions of CO2 since 1800 over just the next 25 years. It is already baked in.
8
There is some hope even now when the United States has voted itself into irrelevance. Europe is working to control climate change and, more importantly, so is China. If Europe, China and eventually India combine to control or at least slow this deepening global crisis, we may last long enough to find a way of rolling it back. Finally, the financial collapse predicated by Trump's economic policies should do much to slow production of greenhouse gases.
4
Please don't confuse the misguided policies of the White House and many Republican followers with the general trends in the USA. GOP "leadership" let money fossil industry and libertarian billionaires blind them to trends in business and public opinions. I DO hope this hurts them in polls.
The Plains States (TX, OK, KA, IA leading) are increasingly wind-powered, because it's so much cheaper than coal plants, and because large corporations in tech and other industries (like WalMart and Budweiser's parent company) are going renewable.
Cities and states are ignoring the "Backwards at all cost" push from D.C., too.
Republican mayors in Miami and surrounding Southern Florida counties are raising taxes to pay for half-a-billion dollars of pumps and other infrastructure, just to keep the increasingly-common fair-weather flooding from crippling the city.
And the GOP continues to ignore "the market" they claim to revere in other ways. Miami-Dade's real-estate market appears to be noticing climate change is real - since 2000, oceanfront property is appreciating slower than properties a meter or more above sea-level. Well, this year's sea level:
"Climate gentrification: from theory to empiricism in Miami-Dade County, Florida"
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabb32
Other Republicans in low-lying states should try to slow warming, too, for their property's sake if nothing else.
https://www.zillow.com/research/climate-change-underwater-homes-12890/
6
Texas and California lead the nation in renewable energy. What do you mean nothing?
2
Religion is often called a 'Perfect Credence Good', that is, a good the value of which cannot be determined either before or after purchase; belief in the need for action on climate comes close to this standard. We learned during the 'Enlightenment' not to be led by religionists. Now they've switched from fighting sin to fighting the thermometer. What strategy should sensible people adopt in dealing with them? It's easy, just as our ancestors did in the eighteenth century, make a decision not to be led by them and hope they eventually apostatize or find work.
BTW, I always heard that nature was a negative feedback system that self-corrected excess. Now we've decided we can't trust nature anymore to do its job? I also remember that we used to plume ourselves on our adaptability as a species, now we see extinction at every turn. What has happened? Come on people, show a little confidence in nature; show some self confidence, too.
2
FIY Sea level rise by 2100 AD is predicted to be 1-6 ft. with the caveat that if the Thwaites glacier of Antarctica collapses suddenly we could see another 6 ft. increase.
But the sea level will not stop rising in 2100 AD . It will continue to rise for hundreds of years.
1
Nature, and the Earth, will be fine. Both have survived multiple mass extinctions. There will be little trace of us in 200 million years whatever we do. Humanity may not survive the next century or two, and if it does survive, billions (truly...billions) could still end up dying from famine, flooding, and wars directly attributable to human-caused climate change.
14
The Enlightenment taught people to use their brains and guide actions based on knowledge - so that's what we need to do - reduce greenhouse emissions.
There are a lot of people who, rather than take responsibility for changing from a dangerous behavior, will instead try harder and harder to pretend the danger doesn't really exist. So they'll take it as a statement of faith that hundreds of years of science, in dozens of disciplines, is somehow just a very recent conspiracy of mind-boggling scale.
They'll cling to unfounded claims that switching behavior is ruinously expensive, or that changing is really some weird form of big government for big government's sake.
Let's take energy. It's cheaper now to build new wind power or solar capacity in much of the United States than to continue running existing coal plants. These new energy supplies also lead to notable decrease in healthcare costs and lost worker productivity from cardiovascular disease, so they actually save us money. And costs keep dropping.
Another weird faith-like claim is we need fossil fuels for our national security. The oil industry has been useful in many ways, but how much money has it cost us in lives, money, terror, etc. from our entanglements with a bunch of resource-rich, squabbling nations in the Middle East?
Our own military sees climate change as a threat to their readiness and to global stability - the US military is not a bunch of liberals. And which nation can cut off our wind and sunlight?
10
Ha--that's a funny one. A number of comments below employed a knowledgeable, quasi-scientific meme I hadn't heard before: "How could a single molecule alone be so bad"? I like the whiff of erudition evoked by the use of the word "molecule".
On a somewhat different note, I wonder if any of these experts are aware of the fact that 3.5 billion years ago, there were only traces of oxygen on our planet. Not nearly enough for any animal life to survive. But wait--how could one lowly atom tilt the balance of life or death? Oxygen isn't even a molecule!
4
Oxygen comes as a binary molecule, O2. Generally speaking, the more complicated the molecule, the more it adds insulation to the Earth's atmosphere.
6
On the other hand without CO2 life as we know it doesn't exist so it cannot be a pollutant. Oh, yeah and like Steve said Oxygen Gas is O2 - a molecule. The idea that a single molecule CO2 controls the climate is like I said earlier just silly.
Hey honey, it's cold in here. Response: Ok I'll turn up the CO2...
O2 is too a molecule!
I remember Dr. Hansen sticking his neck out, his courageous stance in 1988. Left out of this account is the attempt by the first President Bush to silence him over the next few years.
I remember because I had just started my environmental career in New Jersey, as the coastal coordinator for the American Littoral Society, and I was attending conferences on rising sea levels and hurricane threats - and dangerous building practices at the coast. We were just beginning to link climate changes, warming, to rising sea levels. I had noticed during my long drives across the state how early the red maple trees had flowered that year. I sensed something was changing.
Then I switched to the NJ Audubon Society, stationed close to all those internationally known scientists at Bell Labs and other large companies. And soon I was arguing with the wife of one of them who was a climatologist, Tom Graedel, and he didn't think much of Hansen. But I said that I thought Hansen was right.
I worked global warming considerations into my arguments for saving the New Jersey Highlands, our northern forested watershed region. That was in 1990-1991. And I remember that some of the staff didn't like the pessimism of Bill McKibben's book sounding the alarm: "the End of Nature." Of course, it was a rhetorical exaggeration, but had he phrased it to be "The End of Nature as We Know It" - it would have been spot on - if not an understatement.
And I've never backtracked since then.
16
A quote: "the last time the planet was about 1 C warmer than now... about 118,000 years ago, sea level peaked at... 6-9 meters (18-27 feet) higher than it is now. So it doesn't make sense to say we are going to have policies that allow temperature to go up another 2 C, because at some point that is almost certainly going to cause a very large sea level rise. We can argue about how fast that will occur, I think it will probably be quite rapidly... but for sure some generation downstream is going to feel that effect so it just doesn't make sense to do that. Its very irresponsible of us as a society to allow that to happen when we know from Earth's history that the consequences are likely to be enormous."
He was right 30 years ago, why wouldn't he also be right 118,000 years ago?
https://climatecrocks.com/2018/06/22/james-hansen-today-a-warning-on-ant...
7
It's like we're not even going to put our foot on the brake. We're just going to crash straight into it like fools.
1
More than a decade ago I was sitting with a coworker in the cafeteria discussing climate change. He said he didn’t think it was true and was ready for an argument, as I was a notorious liberal. I merely said it didn’t really matter because nothing would be done about it, true or not. If you didn’t believe in it then just continue on with your life. If you did believe in it then figure out a way to make money from it. What would happen would happen. He was a bit taken aback! I have not seen anything during the ensuing years to change my appraisal.
18
Go look at the western states and see really big wind and solar running cities.
3
Apparently the models didn't account for fully the lowering of solar irradiance over this period.
In the next decade his predictions may well be underestimates. We toy4d with 1.5C 2016 n now a El Nino looks again.
4
Not sure if his did at the time, but the newest ones do. It has been known for some decades that we should be entering an ice age instead of warming.
So far the predictions on the melting of the polar caps ice has been under predicted. They are melting faster than projected.
The scientists have been conservative in their statements for the most part.
3
The scientific consensus seems clear enough. The data shows the climate is warming and scientists say they understand the main mechanisms that are driving the warming.
Many economists support a carbon tax as the most efficient way to address the problem. Prominent center right Republicans have proposed a revenue neutral carbon tax that they think is politically feasible. Many energy companies claim to support the idea. We should thoroughly explore the idea, out in the open, with an eye towards actually implementing it, even though that will probably involve fighting through heckler’s vetoes, correcting misperceptions, and figuring out how to deal with disinformation campaigns.
7
Real question: How can a predicted scenario be a "reasonably close match" and also off by 30 percent? Maybe I'm missing something. Also, it's absurd to assert that "prophets of impending calamity are rarely thanked" when precisely the opposite is true in the United States, even when those prophets are wrong by wide margins.
1
The short answer to the question about how Hansen could be correct when his prediction was off by 30% is that he provided 3 possible scenarios based on the amount of CO2 actually emitted. Actual temperature increase was closest to option B. So then how could Hansen's prediction have been proven wrong? He would have been wrong of temperatures remained steady or declined. In fact his fossil fuel industry funded opponents claimed over the next decade that the climate wasn't changing. Only when the effects of climate change became undeniable did the climate change denial narrative change. The effect of CO2 on climate had been understood since the 19th century. Climate change denial has moved from one narrative lie to another. That denial had no basis in science only in politics.
11
You are missing something. There were two aspects to the scenarios presented. One was the level of emmisions. The other was the impact on global warming. Scenario B got close to the emmisions but overestimated the warming by about 30%. This is pretty clear in the article as is the following explanation. Do you want to try and understand objectively or not?
7
I am grateful for one thing, that I was born in 1944 and until recently have been alive in the greatest country in the world. I fondly remember snow, ponds that could be skated on, skiing the Rockies, abundant food, plastic and balsa model planes, jobs for the asking and feeling safe in my home, driving on our roads and walking in our cities. Those memories are quickly fading in to dust. If our country continues down the frightening path it is now following, it will only get worse from now on, even worse than can be imagined in your worst nightmare. I only hope that during the next decade or more I have to live, I won’t get to see the absolute and total decline of my country and the world. I had hoped for a normal retirement and a quick, painless death. Now I have to worry about being shot, vaporized or worse. I feel sorrow for my sons who’ll suffer more than I as the future come to them. I feel sorrow for my fellow citizens and our hopeless human species. If there is a better place to run to, I’d like to know. I'll be on the star cruiser tonight; if onle one existed.
35
Get involved in something positive for your community and the feeling of dread will be replaced by the satisfaction of helping your community. Really works.
4
The planet has been warming since the last Ice Age ended about 20,000 years ago. It will continue to warm until the next ice age intervenes.
8
The warming has obviously been slow, very slow, until the last 2 centuries. The problem isn't that it's warming, the problem is that the warming has accelerated at a rate we haven't seen in the recorded history of humankind. William or any other doubter, why do you think the warming is happening so fast now?
14
Actually that is untrue. The next ice age is suppose to be already on us. And the last one ended about 12K ago. They were going in about 10K cycles because of the solar activity and tilt of the earth.
So we should be freezing now instead of warming.
6
The problem may be that young people have no experience on which to make a judgement. Once you are 80 or so there is no doubt.
If you live in the western United States you witness and experience climate change on a nearly daily basis. I was reading something the other day that said the west now has two seasons - uncomfortably hot with smoke from devastating wildfires and winter - and that seems to be true.
Southeastern Arizona, characterized by a lush growth of beautiful and varied vegetation, seems to be in a state of perpetual drought these days, brown and parched for most of the year. We just ended our fifth longest period without rain since recordkeeping began. It looks like in a few short decades this magnificent desert will be reduced to mostly sand and rock, like other barren desert landscapes on earth.
I count myself as fortunate to have always been deeply connected spiritually with Mother Earth. I find the greatest beauty and sense of wonderment and peace in the natural world and marvel at how Mother Earth provides for us. Watching the degradation and destruction of the planet, particulary with regard to manmade global warming, saddens me beyond words.
The Earth will survive with or without man and perhaps in the future it would be better off without a species that knowingly and purposely destroyed its own source of life. Future evolutionary trends might produce a more englightened species to govern over the Earth's resources. What an unthinkable tragedy.
20
Actually, it's trending toward one season out West..... we're losing winter.
3
If some future species must eat another to survive or kill each other for mates or resources it too will fail and die away.
1
Before anyone endorses ranked choice voting, they need to read what happened in Pierce County, Washington State.
A perennial gadfly candidate became the Assessor-Treasurer in 2008 simply due to name recognition.
After the legal battles were over, the County owed over $850,000 to settle employee lawsuits, and it took years to get the work of the office going again.
Be very, very careful about setting up ranked choice systems. The unintended consequences of an unqualified candidate can be very expensive in dollars, and in public confidence in elected officials.
3
We have been quite capable of electing numerous unfit candidates with our current voting system. So if you've only one example, I am all for trying the ranking system.
10
Uh, yeah. I think we're all getting a lesson in the dangers of having someone unqualified in public office.
3
Your critique is not on point. Name-recognition is always valuable and will be exploited by candidates in any way that they can.
Years ago, we got a marginally qualified state Supreme Court Justice because people mistook him for a qualified local judge of the same name. He unseated a competent and highly professional sitting justice who had the unfortunate burden of bearing the last name "Callow."
Your critique is not about ranked voting. It is about ignorant voters. The only remedy for that is to invest more money in education. And who knows if that will work?
2
We haven't just done nothing about climate change- we are making the problem worse.
Every year the highest per capita emitting country, the United States, allows millions of illegal immigrants to enter and stay in the country. Each of those illegal economic migrants makes our problems worse.
We had been looking at a declining population, a good thing, but some citizens have decided that packing the country with as many people as possible is what would really help us.
Our collective future is going to look really grim in the near future.
11
Will. You obviously aren't a scientist. Everybody knows that adding millions of people to the u.s. will not only stop GW but balance the budget and save the environment. You only have to look at India and China, the only two more populous counties on earth to see how well this plan can work.
3
Wow. That's a unique take on the problem of climate change!
It's incredibly ignorant, but it is unique.
2
Thank you for your humanitarianism, your environmentalism, and your impeccable conscience, James Hansen.
In a world full of mindless greedsters, shysters and destructive propagandists, you are a lighthouse of morality, decency and and honesty.
May we overcome man's destructive nature in order to preserve human, animal and plant life on Mother Earth as we know it.
We have a choice to do the right thing.
We were warned by the good Mr. Hansen, but do we have the character and decency to heed his honest warning ?
37
To answer your question...in a word, no.
1
The Wall Street Journal has an article on this exact same person and they come to the completely opposite conclusion about global warming. They also provide many specifics supporting their argument. So who are we supposed to believe?
11
For one, look at who owns and controls both publications and ask yourself who benefits from either conclusion.
35
Reply to rpe123: My husband, who has a Ph.D. from Yale in Geophysics and has studied Climate Change for over 30 years, worked with Dr. Hansen in NYC. We would always laugh when we watched Seinfeld and saw his building. What we never laugh at is the fact that Climate Change is indeed real and that humans are complicit in it. I assure you, you can believe the article in the Times and you most definitely can trust Jim Hansen, a brilliant and compassionate man.
27
It doesn't matter what you believe. Climate change on the scale Hansen warned of is already inevitable.
12
Now this is a profile in intellectual integrity and the courage to lean into a political headwind and speak truth to power, something all too rare in these times.
33
I think that most Americans don't want to make the sacrifices necessary to save the planet and those who are willing feel powerless to do so under the weight of so much indifference.
That is why we need to vote in people who are pro-environment right now. We need laws that require renewable energy to be used as much as possible. We also need to immediately set up farming techniques that won't fail from drought and protect areas that are at risk of being destroyed by rising water levels. This is not a drill.
43
The right wants to get rid of even the minimal environmental regulations we have now, from mpg standards to using more coal. The left wants to flood the country with more people by basically opening the borders, the single worst thing you can do for the environment. We really don't have much choice anymore if you want to do right by the environment or GW.
2
Show me anyone on the left espousing "open borders." False equivalence. Also, climate change is one area that is a zero-sum game so beloved of the libertarian capitalist; it doesn't matter where those people are, here or in China, the fact that they exist adds to the overpopulation and thus climate change problem. Maybe we can get religious leaders and lawmakers to back family planning operations rather than condemning and undermining them. That would actually help, not like closing the borders which does nothing but cut off the potential work supply for alternative fuel industries.
1
Congress seems well able to pass tax cuts, roll back banking regulations, and otherwise comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted.
It’s not a political center we need, it’s a political left.
37
I'd find AGW alarmists a lot more believable if they would get as upset about the dismantling of CO2 free nuclear power plants as they do about SUVs, pickup trucks and various other Left wing bogey men.
10
In 2015 Hansen wrote a piece where he argued that nuclear power is the only way forward for reining in climate change. So you can’t argue that he is against nuclear as a solution.
28
Most climate hawks want action to save the current fleet of nuclear reactors because they are sources of carbon free electricity. The problem is constructing new nuclear plants is prohibitively expensive. The only one that is under construction in the United States currently is in Georgia and it has blown past its budget to the tune of billions, costing consumers in that state, hence the focus on renewable sources of electricity.
20
Economics and public safety concerns destroyed public support for nuclear. Did you forget Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima? Plus 21 other serious nuclear plant accidents since 1952? This list (only to 2011) may refresh your memory: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/mar/14/nuclear-power-plan...
The future (and economics) is with Solar, Wind, Geothermal, Tides, general efficiency, hydro, hydrogen, biomass, natural gas, biofuels, wave energy.
21
I have no hope that anything will change. The damage already done in 518 days continues to reverse the meager gains made in the past 30 years.
26
I'm waiting for the republican meltdown, then some serious work could begin. But for every concerned American, and there are millions, time for action is now: Out on the strets! Talk to your neighbour and the aliens in Wyoming! (They do in fact speak your language) Vote! (There is still time and a lot of climate enhancing work have been done, wind turbines, photvoltaic solar panels etc. DT is too frightened/stupid to make significant damage. Coal/oil is doomed. In Sweden I do my part: Renweable methane in my Volvo V70, an electric bicycle, a Toyota Prius is some of my contributions.
You ain't seen nothing yet. Four more years! Trump 2020.
The Koch boys and like minded fossil fuel mavens with insatiable greed are largely responsible for where we are now.
The science is clear as are the solutions, but despite rising seas and temperatures the billionaires continue their fake facts campaigns of climate change denial.
Just last week the Times had an article describing the Koch boys effective multimillion dollar campaign to defeat mass transit proposals for major cities in the United States.
Europe, Japan and China have all shown that mass transit can be run efficiently and economically but America is the Ostrich with its head in the sand regarding interstate high speed rail and inner city mass transit.
Our first grandchild was born a few months ago to unconditional love and a family wanting him to have a happy life in the wonderful place this Earth still is.
It’s tragic for all of us that the Kochs and their ilk don’t feel the same about their descendants.
61
The Kochs are incredibly wealthy and probably assume that their financial resources and political influence will buy them out of the worst consequences of climate change. The rest of us will have to take what comes and hope for the best.
18
People are responsible for where we are. People emit. People consume.
The Kochs are preventing laws from being passed- they are not preventing people from consuming less. They are not preventing people from having fewer children.
In 12 years there will be another 1 billion people on this planet. I doubt a single one of those 1 billion new people will be the son or daughter of a Koch brother.
2
The problem comes down to money in politics - which might be the same thing as saying that the problem is: capitalism.
18
Capitalism is doing well in Australia, Canada and many other Western Countries. Our Lobbyocracy has perverted capitalism. The 0.1% does better in the US than in Democratic countries - the 90% not so much!
1
Yes, the problem is capitalism. It's 100% unsustainable. It depends on endless growth, which translates directly to the rape and pillage of the planet. It views the beings and material of the planet (animals, minerals, oil, what have you) as a pot of "resources" to be turned into piles of worthless, polluting, yet profitable, garbage. With 7 billion humans on the planet, we are cutting through everything precious like a red-hot knife through butter.
Alan Watts delivered a moving talk years ago, in the early 60s, about so-called "materialism," as a counter to those who decry it. He said that we aren't materialists, because we don't value material at all (remember that the root words of "material" and "mother" are the same, "matrix"), but are hellbent on converting all material into rubbish.
Humans have a basic disregard for the sacredness of the place we live. We treat it like a sewer. Dumping our waste in to rivers and into the air, expecting no ill effects.
Wendell Berry says there are no sacred or unsecured places. There are only sacred places, and desecrated places.
That's our legacy. To desecrate everything irreplaceable and precious, and limited (our soil, our water, our air, the precious life on earth) to convert it into money to spend on more garbage. Pope Francis said it best in Laudato si, when he said that we are turning the earth into an enormous pile of filth.
Capitalism worships capital, and nothing else. Pity the fools who try to stand in its way.
I imagine in your utopia people would still have to pay energy bills, so call me a denier, heretic or even a capitalist but I will not vote for someone like Merkel who has tripled the cost electricity and wants to ban all fossil fuel energy.
I might be ignorant but I ain't stupid.
I think the majority of Americans believe science regarding climate change, yet they remain largely unmotivated by the issue. Why?
It's one thing to love your spouse or child or dog or cat, but to genuinely extend that love to the world, or even more abstract, to the future world, is rare. I'm pretty sure this behavior would persist even if NYC was under 30 feet of water tomorrow. Add to this selfish state one's own mortality. If this disaster will take several decades or longer to play out, how is it relevant to me? Add to that the American individualist mindset, which is antithetical to community-centered thinking, let alone globalist thinking. Add to that the general apathy about getting anything done politically, and then the claim by many that it's already too late.
I'm not casting blame, the previous paragraph describes me perfectly.
Perhaps that's why global warming is here --to prune out all of the aforementioned shortcomings over the next generations.
17
Well, recogningtion of a problem is the first step to change.
3
Deniers are so aggressive in sowing confusion that most folks are conflicted.
2
Does it depend only on government action? Consumers are responsible for voting their values in the marketplaces. I've chosen to call retirement my last career and moved back to family farmland in the heartland to explore how to integrate regenerative farming, renewable energy, the computational sciences, and small-scale digital manufacturing. This is not beachfront property. We're just a few miles from where they are strip mining coal. But the best legacy I could think of for my children and grandchildren was to get started on a positive reference implementation for an alternative future. My descendants can pick up where I leave off.
16
Your grandchildren may well be grateful.
Anyone who is a gardener, or farmer, knows that climate change is a reality. Is it "only one molecule" that's the cause? From my perspective as a home gardener, not a scientist, this technical red herring makes no difference to me when destructive plant pathogens, unusually heavy rain, long droughts, and extremely annoying insects have been wreaking more and more havoc in my NY garden over the past 20 years or so. Indeed, poison ivy is now pretty happily enjoying its expanding habitat. If, as some of the deniers in these comments claim, one single molecule cannot be the cause, then please tell me what exactly is causing this observable phenomenon in one human's lifetime?
17
You just woke up? PI has been a scourge forever. Kudzu on the other hand is in remission
I was there and very alarmed. Not in DC, but later that year at Bellcore’s headquarters in NJ, where Dr. Hansen gave us the same talk. Since then, I complained, protested, and have despaired of any solution. Unless the monied interests are directly confronted and our political choices are honestly counted, our future is increasingly imperiled.
29
The WSJ also had a piece on this same 30 year prediction and concluded just the opposite of this article. The political divide continues.
14
Consider the source and the money it represents. Big Oil will continue to deny climate change until Miami and the Newport News Navy Yard are under water and even after that. The US military is dealing with climate change as are some states. That WSJ continues to go with deniers is simply criminal.
7
Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch, did you expect them to be "fair and balanced"? Hardly!
1
Of course the WSJ is owned by one of the richest and most backward people in the world, Rupert Murdoch. He is the model of the fact that becoming very very rich is not a sign of having brains.
excellent article for those who are equipped and open - minded enough to comprehend it.
most unfortunately for most of us however, those in position and OBLIGATION to act on such grave matters effecting the US(let alone the planet !)have no interest in acting on anything.
not for nothing the obvious connection between the political
paralysis and moral bankruptcy of Congress has been included in the article. yet, if we assume that the likes of Mich Mconnel , Paul rayan and their lieutenants read this article, what do you think goes through their educated mind ?!
after many years, last night I watched again Danny Kaye doing his unsurpassed magic in : " Hans Christian Anderson".
when he got to the section where he sings / tells a group of kindergarten children the story of " the kings' new cloth"- it came to me again : those kindergarten children INSTANTLY GRASPED what our politicians are either unable to / unwilling to grasp.
the frightening, inescapable conclusion is of course that its not only about the king. its about who put him there, the reality/ science deniers, who, in spite of all the proof needed - remain complicit in allowing the INEVITABLE climate calamity to march on. it'll be most interesting to see how that law suit of the youngsters from Oregon will be handled by the mostly conservative Supreme Court.
17
It is not right to call Prof. Hansen a "prophet of doom." He is a scientist, collecting data and reporting as accurately as possible on its implications. Any religious connotation, even in cliche form, muddies the very real issue of climate change. Hansen isn't looking into a crystal ball or consulting tea leaves. He isn't casually tossing off opinions. He's working from the best information we have to tell us as clearly as possible that this particular unintended experiment in CO2 elevation will end badly for the human race. Not because the gods will smite us, but because temperatures rise when CO2 increases. The sooner we follow the guidance of only those with a clear understanding of the science, the sooner we can leave invalid arguments intended to preserve the status quo behind.
Our atmospheric gasses couldn't care less where you "stand" on climate change, folks. We're all going to cook if we don't act on what Hansen, other scientists, and those who read the science have known for decades. That my fate, and that of my children is tied to the fate of those who don't get it and don't care is, well, more than a little troubling.
74
Agreed. A fine article from Justin Gillis with a horrendous title.
Human caused climate change is real. That's the overwhelming scientific consensus. Can we deal with it?
Centrist Democrats, like Obama and Hillary Clinton, weren't helping. When presented with possible energy sources during his administration -- fossil fuels and renewables -- Obama responded with "all of the above." Hillary was in agreement, adding that natural gas makes a great "bridge fuel" until renewables become viable. Never mind that when methane leakage is considered, natural gas may be as harmful as coal. And Hillary couldn't support a carbon tax. Furthermore, the centrist Democrats' much touted 2015 Paris Agreement is woefully inadequate, even if every country complied (Peter Brannen, 2017, p 257), which they won't because compliance is "voluntary."
Centrist Democrats simply do not have the will to deal with human caused climate change. Fossil fuels need to be much more expensive with taxes. Dealing with climate change would require opposing the fossil fuel industry and multinational corporations. No centrist Democrat and certainly no Republican will do that.
As long as we are not willing to rethink capitalism, with its emphasis on cheapest is best, the political system will keep fossil fuels the cheapest energy and the world climate will become more destructive.
18
Sorry but the country just isn't ready for something more progressive right now than "centrist Democrats". And in the end, will a small percentage of those apparently more enlightened than these centrists (and being smugly boisterous about it) prevent slow progress and a wider acceptance of the difficulty going forward?
5
Centrist Democrats are the only ones acceptable to Americans, right now. At the very least, Pres. Obama was working alongside other First World countries to move us towards a more sustainable future. After the disaster we have in the White House, we may swing to a more progressive government, hopefully!
3
George Ladshaw,
Given the magnitude of the problem and the apparent consequences now and worsening into the future, centrist Democrats' "incrementalism" is no longer an option, if things are to get better.
I wish I could take comfort in being "smug." I see only catastrophe coming for our children, and that evokes distress and a sense of failure, not smugness.
Frequently correct about the cause and the direction, scientists are nonetheless frequently wrong about the magnitude of an effect. Global warming is a standout example of this type of error.
8
So tell us, how are corals on the Great Barrier Reef doing? According to Chasing Coral, the magnitude of decline is truly frightening: https://youtu.be/b6fHA9R2cKI
And how is ice doing? According to Chasing Ice, not great:
https://youtu.be/eIZTMVNBjc4 Can the past tell us anything about how fast climate change can affect us? Most surely: https://youtu.be/IvNWboZ96YY What was that you were saying about magnitude?
31
No. Scientists propose several scenarios based on a plethora of possible future emission scenarios. These scenarios always encapsulate actual trends, generally right down the middle. Trying reading something other than The Drudge Report and you might actually learn something.
24
You could not be more wrong. Global warming models have become more accurate; meanwhile, climatological predictions of the magnitude and effects of human-caused global warming that were calculated in the 1970s and 1980s are showing to be quite down the mid-line of the scenarios tested.
9
So the earth is warming and humans are at least a partial cause. So what? With stone age technology we’re the species that handled the ice age and we’ll handle whatever may come.
A far, far larger and immediate problem is the 1.3 billion humans on this planet still without electricity or clean running water. They lead short, impoverished lives. We have a moral obligation to do whatever it takes to let them raise their standard of living as quickly and inexpensively as possible. That means they should do just what we in the west did: burn coal and lots of it.
What actions should we take to help for people 100 years from now? Nothing. We have no idea what they may need. Should people in the 19th century have conserved whale oil so there would be enough for our lamps?
13
We have a "moral obligation" to those impoverished now, but none due to future generations? Really?
26
Yes, using the 1.3 billion as an excuse, lets threaten the entire 6 billion with flooding and increasingly scarce water resources by getting the 1.3 addicted to coal. Yes, we'll handle whatever may come by acting on it and not by combining doing nothing with spreading the gospel of coal
18
Bouy: It’s always possible to suppose extremely harsh events in the distant future as a result of bad our behavior today. But one doesn’t upset today’s world based on suppositions of the distant future.
Besides, the threat of future punishment for today's bad behavior is what religious leaders have used for millennia. Today’s environmental zealots are just the secular clerics for our time.
1
Whenever I find myself discussing climate change with someone, I'll ask them if they know what the current atmospheric CO2-ppm is. If they don't know, they aren't informed, and their opinion is meaningless.
The latest CO2-ppm as measured by the Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, Scripps UCSD (https://www.co2.earth/) is 411.31. In 1960 it was 315.
14
As a result the planet's plant mass has increased by between 25% and 50% over the last several decades. The molecule CO2 is essential for life here on this planet, and 411.31 ppm is better for plants than 315 ppm. I find the concept that the earth's climate is controlled by a single molecule - CO2 - ridiculous. Anyway in the past the CO2 concentration has been much higher, in the 1000 ppm range.
6
Question, when CO2 concentrations were "in the 1000ppm range" did mammals populate the Earth, were humans a species?
3
No-one claimed the current warming was uniquely a result of CO2 -- but of all the possible drivers (CO2, CH4, N2O, HFCs, O3, soot, SO2, aerosols, clouds, land use, ocean circulation, variations in solar output) CO2 is the most important over time scales we care about: https://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml
1
The argument is that global warming is a result of the activities of people. The worlds population is currently growing at a rate of over 80,000,000 people per year. The worldwide average carbon footprint is 4 Tons per person. Thats an increase year over year of 320,000,000 Tons. Unless we are willing to tackle the threat of overpopulation of which global warming is only one albeit very important element, chipping away at the fringe arguments might feel good but will not prove adequate.
66
The increase in world population, more babies = more carbon crunchers, looms large indeed. Realistic arguments for optimism about our chances are hard to find.
19
Yes, the seventies produced a movement, Zero Population Growth, that addressed the population bomb. Like everything else, no one listened. Now we know how Cassandra felt.
4
On what basis is the number of children someone has not considered consumption of the commons and subject to control? The usual argument about birth control is that it is mostly brown people that would be impacted but the arguers neglect to consider that brown people make up 90% of the world population. In any event it is obvious the Chinese are the leaders in this area and the outcome to their society in terms of eradicating poverty should be a model for the rest of the world.
It’s past time for climate change deniers, most of them in this country on the far-right of my own Republican Party, to simply accept the obvious. The planet is warming, this phenomenon THIS time has been caused largely by human beings and their byproducts (including sharp human increase), we’re feeling the effects today and likely will feel them even more intensely over the remainder of this century, and it COULD become an existential issue not for the planet but one for the human civilizations we have known.
But, then, tell that to a cohort that believes the Earth to be a mere 6,000 years old. Thankfully, most of us don’t.
Good for Dr. Hansen: he secured his own small but legitimate purchase on history, which is never a trivial thing to do. But, in the end, what does it all really mean?
First, forget about some unifying force among mankind’s 7.3 billion (and less the 10 billion projected by 2050 or the 11 billion or higher projected for 2100) that causes us to voluntarily and fundamentally transform how we consume based on the reality of global climate change. As populations increase to the maximum carrying-capacity of the planet based on available foodstuffs by current and projected methods of agriculture (some estimate less than 10 billion), the sheer weight of that human freight will generate requirements for energy and the byproducts of increasingly sophisticated living far greater than we do today – regardless of WHAT we do about it.
So, what to REALLY do. Well, …
4
… first we need to find ways of preserving civilization by means other than immense surface-cities close to major oceans and rivers; and we need to find ways of producing and distributing vast amounts of food that don’t rely on immense expanses of arable land within temperate climates. We might also consider leveraging technology to seek the artificial REMOVAL of as much carbon from our atmosphere as we can.
Losing our coastal cities likely will be the most disruptive element as our oceans rise from melting icecaps; and, similarly, dessert-based populations where it soon may be too hot to support surface life. No rule requires that this is how human beings must live or maintain civilization. We can build arcologies in the most habitable remaining regions, we can build underground arcologies, we can even build arcologies that are submerged in our oceans and seas; and we can even create vast artificial habitats orbiting the planet. Neither these nor our other challenges are insoluble.
Very roughly 10,000 years ago, we finally left caves and extremely primitive dwellings and started to build more complex communities on which we developed great civilizations. It may be time we put aside how we live today for more sustainable ways of living in a different climatic reality on which we develop even greater civilizations. But it starts with people accepting what’s happening, not panicking, and by viewing future needs rationally.
2
It is not quite so obvious as you imply, that the climate is warming is likely - the extent to which that warming is a result of a single molecule - CO2 - being emitted into the atmosphere is in question. Additionally the sensitivity of the climate to that single molecule is also in question. Most climate scientists do not prophesize a climate apocalypse - that is left to a very few climate "scientists" who have a financial interest, and to politicians who have a power interest.
4
jaco:
Keep saying that as Vegas gets to 140 degrees Fahrenheit in August. I ALREADY burst into flame there as I walk from one casino to the next.
It would be good for non-believers to take a moment and imagine a minute layer (roughly 10 miles in height) enveloping the Earth and see how the minimal but pervasive flow of foreign particles with very distinct absorbing properties could really start to change its nature (started 150 years ago) and whether we can adapt.
Perhaps compare it to a minute amount of zinc entering the bloodstream from now onward.
At what point in such processes does the brain's alert system kick in realizing that the surrounding air properties are degrading exponentially, similarly to the way in which the Earth population's growing rate is exponentially getting out of control.
Try to look at the situation as if you could imagine our solar system with us a mere inconsequential speck in it. Right now there is nothing preordained to a guaranteed evolution of the human race.
Species regularly become extinct for mal-adaptation and particular weaknesses. Human cooling and breathing systems come to mind as average temperatures rise.
13
Gaaawwd, you MUST be a liberal Democrat. All imaginable scenarios visible at the distance of the end of one's nose comprise the totality of possible outcomes available.
4
Yes. And your faith in future technologies is just as ill-considered. If we think immigration is a big problem now, what happens as equatorial areas become uninhabitable and the victims look for a place to survive? For that matter, what happens if the northern US suffers and our residents look for solace in Canada? Amnesty anyone? After our response at our own southern border, it's hard to imagine that we will be welcome.
Your idea about cities being unsustainable is nonsense in the face of reality. Cities are much more energy efficient than the little towns in the middle of nowhere that have none of the cities' economies of scale. Of course, we may find ways to survive, but the calamity that approaches if we do nothing is very real.
Get your head out of the sand.
Thanks for this article on an existential threat to us all.
For documentation on how we arrived at this tragic point over the past 50 years, see
https://www.legalreader.com/50-years-of-legal-climate-change/
13
Thank you, Mr. Lombardo, for your career-long efforts in trying to make our lives safer.
3
The longstanding campaign by commercial interests to obfuscate the truth about climate change has only intensified, the fossil-fuel industry being more concerned about its own survival than that of the planet's. Science is under siege, scientists are on the defensive, and the term research has been stretched to included industry propaganda sanitized by the names of so-called experts attached to prestigious institutions. We can only hope that advocates for sanity in combating climate change will stay strong against these persistent headwinds.
30
This is a global economy, especially as regards fossil fuels, which globally net a trillion dollars a year in pure profit. A trillion dollars a year, after operating costs are taken out. All of this is at existential risk of being reduced to zero, if Dr Hansen's warnings are taken seriously. I think it is worth asking if this much money is worth trashing the worlds democracies and replacing them with strong-man rulers willing to call climate change a Chinese hoax. I think it does much to explain Vladimir Putin's behavior, at the least.
19
"The warming over the past 30 years has indeed fallen well within his upper and lower bounds."
Can somebody please explain what "WELL within his upper and lower bounds" means?
Can a result be within the upper and lower bounds but NOT WELL within the upper and lower bounds?
3
areader: It means that the observed temperature record is not close to either the lower or upper bounds of Dr. Hansen's scenarios. It was closer to his central estimate (scenario "B") than to either the lower or upper trajectories: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/climate-model-projections-compared-... In the mid-2000s it might have appeared to be closer to the lower estimate for a while -- but since the ocean dished out stored heat over the last few years, it's closer to B.
4
"Well within" implies reality hasn't turned out to be at the edges of either extreme of the range he projected. It's clear what Justin G. means if you read the very next paragraph.
My prognosis for Germany-Mexico was:
1. Germany wins 5:1
2. Germany wins 2:0
3. Germany loses 0:1
The result has fallen well within my upper and lower bounds.
The fact that climate change denial seems greatest in the US where it is forecasted to have the worst effects tells me it is simply too big for those people to grasp.
Likewise for changes to the economy, demographics and culture.
America has never responded well to gradual change, which is usually the biggest and most important kind, like rising sea levels.
Last year's hurricanes were a warm up, even though combined damages exceeded the combined cost of several decades of severe storms. But the underlying and ever growing severity is hidden by cyclical changes in ocean temperatures.
So expect the next wave to hit with a ferocity that dwarfs Harvey, Maria, Irma and other 2017 storms. That is pretty hard to grasp for anyone, much less those in the path.
16
Looks ahead -- but not clearly, apparently. Last years hurricanes exceeded the combined cost of several decades of storms. Several reasons for that -- including it had been 12 years since a major hit the US coast. Inflation plus many more people living on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. In fact, there were years that pre-date any possible effect of a warming climate that had as many major Atlantic hurricanes.
Well, "those people" are supposed to reference Mexicans immigrants etc, Compare to "that one" and "the deplorables", equally questionable epiphets in this context.
Global waming is troublesome to grasp for a lot of people because of the complexity of it's physics and because of it's non-intuitional qulities ie "how can a temerature change of only 2 deg Celcius cause global damage when it's almost undetectable by a human being without a thermometer? and "Why is co2-levels so damaging when c02 is vital to every living creature? You have to pick the fights: One soundly frightening fact to use to complacent humans might be the fairly understandable argument of the south pole ice sheet. It's melting today in enormous volumes, alas still a very small amount of what's left: global sea-levels will rise 60 meters/yards if/when all ice has melted. That's a fact to contemplate and fairly easy to calculate. Greenlands icecap will completly melted, rise the global sea level with 7 meters: http://climatenewsnetwork.net/24096-2/
Here is a great NYT primer/FAQ on the entire global warming subject: https://nyti.ms/2jCULJy
Words don't quite convey just how accurate Hansen's predictions were. See
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/06/30-years-after-han...
for a graph comparing his three scenarios with what actually happened. How anyone can look at that graph and claim Hansen was "wrong" in his predictions, as several commenters here have already done, is beyond me. Science is not a matter of opinion. Human-caused climate change is as real and undeniable as gravity.
98
If science is not a matter of opinion AND the Wall Street Journal ran the same exact article yesterday AND they reached a completely different conclusion what does that say about science?
Steve in New Mexico,
Thanks for that link. Your post is spot on.
2
bsb:
It says that the WSJ which is owned by fossil fuel interests lies, because their article was not the same.
The WSJ is an opinion rag which consistently denies truth.
Reading the WSJ for science is like going to walmart for the mind. It is not going to educate you.
1
This is why the Democrats fail: “It’s very hard to see us fixing the climate,” Dr. Hansen said, “until we fix our democracy.”
The prescription is plain to see, proven, and scalable at levels from individual to enterprise: saving energy saves money; saving money is measurable and competitive; competitiveness is the essence of effective performance in capitalism.
It requires no "fix" to democracy for one person or one hundred million people to decide, on their own, for their own reasons, to make improvements. Businesses that decline to spend more wisely on energy decline to compete effectively. There has been a national stampede in the markets and in technology towards better energy use, lower carbon outputs, and improved return on energy investments.
The Times' negligent coverage of the real change on the ground reflects the paper's chronic to look where the solutions are emerging. The Democrats ongoing failure to capitalize on this reflects their stance of moralizing a hopeful solution instead of supporting the real one.
One word needs to be removed forever from the discussion: sacrifice. As long as the Right insists that conservation equals sacrifice they will appeal to the selfishness of their voters. As long as the Left anoints itself with nobility in sacrifice, they will miss the point. Conserving energy isn't sacrifice. It's smart. It's even selfish. It's inexcusable that the Democrats still don't see that they're the Party of Business.
16
Bad actors like the Koch brothers campaign against light rail and other public transportation to disrupt the market choices people might make. Trump puts tariffs on solar panels. The energy market is not a free market. It should be.
18
Businesses can spend wisely on energy issues, yes, but what do you do about the bad players in the Energy Industry that have sunk their bets into dirty energy production and are paying more money to keep from having to pay for expensive upgrades, changes to how they handle waste, like fly ash or CO2 and Mercury emissions when these people go out of their way to not only pollute in order to do things the cheapest way possible.
They also work with people like Pruitt who wants to destroy any sort of regulatory system, no matter Who gets hurt, as long as their profits roll in.
Republicans, by and large, represent Dirty Energy and Dirty Laws and our present head of the EPA is the epitome of that type of corruption. They plain do not Care about anybody but massively self-serve themselves.
6
When Democrats recommend top down approaches to address climate change, they're slammed. When they suggest approaches that MAKE money, they're also slammed. It's all tribal, pure and simple.
1
Climate science has a shaky foundation. The global temp record since 1880 that is pointed to as evidence of a "dramatic" global temp increase is bogus. If you go to Berkeley Earth and look at how many temp stations have been in place, you will see the # of stations is laughably small. I'll use Africa (20% of the global land mass) as an example.
1880: 30 stations
1900: 40
1950: 250
Now: 514
Worse -- stations weren't placed in randomly selected locations, most were/are on or near the coast. They weren't installed for the purpose of measuring global temps, but for other reasons like local agriculture. And there was not a common method used for collecting data.
Our global temp record is at best an estimate cobbled from a haphazardly put together data set, not a result of rigorous data collection.
The US -- which has the most extensive network of temp stations (half the world's stations) -- shows what is clearly a pattern of normal variation. Much of the country hasn't warmed at all and most of the parts that show warming have undergone extensive urbanization (look at Phoenix vs Arizona on Climate at a Glance, the NOAA data site). And:
1) hurricanes haven't increased in intensity/frequency
2) ditto tornadoes
3) Sea levels have been rising since the last ice age. Urban flooding is more related to subsidence.
And -- the increase rate in US avg temps from 1888 - now is similar to 1902-1934. Gillis either doesn't know that or left it out.
9
Between Ralphie's dataset and the relatively conservative dataset of almost all climate scientists worldwide, a responsible and prudent lawmaker would choose the latter.
8
We look forward to your scientific research laying all of this out, along with
an explanation of your methodology and it's conclusions (peer-reviewed, of course).
4
While your anecdotal assertions about global warning is at best stimulating to further the science to follow, analyze and fight the, by professionals vastly agreed, threat aganist the single known planet able to maintain a human population, I miss your references.
So, where is your references? We need them to take your dismissal of established facts seriously.
1
"But within a few years after he raised the alarm, fossil-fuel interests and libertarian ideologues began financing a campaign of lies about climate research."
It's so refreshing to see this spade called a spade.
And the campaigns of lies have since expanded to many different subjects and continue today. Until a majority of people recognize this disinformation campaign for what it is, and utterly reject it, we will fail to make progress.
40
The misinformation campaigns about tobacco in the 1950s/1960s provide something of a road map for how our society thinks of/values fossil fuels. Cigarettes were found hazardous to health in this time - the purveyors switched their messaging to appeal to values of independence (just watch the first episode of Mad Men). Automakers/oil companies do this with even greater power and dexterity. It wasn't until the negative side effects of smoking on non-smokers became more clear that our society started to shun smoking. Perhaps we all need to focus attention on how excessive fossil fuel use is like second hand smoke, on a global scale.
11
After James Hansen testified in 1988, I was hired by a Public Utility to ascertain the probabilities of climate change legislation passing in the near term future. The utility was in the midst of its planning process and wanted a reading on new coal fired plants. I researched the issue and explained to them that it was about 20 years between the time that acid rain was first identified as a problem about 1968 and the passage of legislation addressing the problem, so I didn't see climate change legislation impacting their plans over the coming decade. That was 30 years ago. So Congress is behind even its own glacial speed.
30
It would seem that stakeholders and constituencies would/could force this issue to a head if there was the will, but apparently there is not as witnessed by our own actions and consumption. Civilization has given us the comforts and insulated us from the threats posed by the natural world which distant ancestors had to bear. Not so long ago people died young, for instance, regularly. Apparently we intend to ignore the issue and run civilization as we know it off a cliff.
16
As a senior, I expect I'll live long enough to see the unmistakable signs of global warming before I see our democracy fixed. Sea-level rise and coastal inundation is what it will take to wake people up. As for democracy, I feel like one of the characters at the end of Orwell's "Animal Farm": not sure of my eyesight and unable to distinguish between the new bosses and the old bosses. R.I.P. Boxer.
20
You've already lived long enough.
Dr. Hansen was profoundly wrong. Being the director of NASA GISS, he promoted a culture where any dissent to catastrophic anthropogenic global warming narrative was discouraged.
Hansen and the climate models he cited predicted accelerating sea level rise. Here is the sea level at Battery Park according to NOAA:
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=851...
If Dr. Hansen had been correct, we would see an accelerated rise. What I see is a straight line rise from the mid 19th century to present. Science is about testing a hypothesis. After a 40-year test, Dr. Hansen's hypothesis has fallen very short.
10
You are seeing a straight line because that is what NOAA fit to those data. However, globally there is acceleration:
https://sealevel.nasa.gov/understanding-sea-level/key-indicators/global-... for reasons that are becoming ever clearer: https://sealevel.nasa.gov/news/129/ramp-up-in-antarctic-ice-loss-speeds-...
9
Paul, with your observation of the straightness of a line on a graph duly noted: what are the academic qualifications which enable you to conclude "we would see an accelerated rise," in sea level measured at Battery Park, from the mid-19th century to the present?
Before the Industrial Age, global sea level was decreasing by .1 mm/yr. In 2018 it's increasing 20 times faster.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/06/2000-years-of-sea-...
2
Bob,
I don't need academic qualifications. I need nothing but a graph that, if Dr. Hansen was correct, should be a curve, but in fact is a line. Do we need academic credentials to discern the difference between a curve and a line?
I you can't get a Republican to understand why the interior of his car gets hot when parked in the sun, can you imagine explaining to him why ranked voting is better?
The biggest problem with ranked voting is explaining how winners and losers are chosen. It still seems to me that giving everybody 3 (or 5) votes to distribute any way they want makes more sense... especially in terms of explaining it to the people. "The most votes wins." Simple.
I'm happy to hear from anyone who can better explain why ranked voting is better than "One Person, 3 Votes." No doubt there are good statistical arguments, but is it so much better that it can overcome it's relative incomprehensibility?
3
That is the problem with you pretend climate "scientists" vastly over-simplifying. The earth's climate is so much more complicated that a car parked in the sun that only one who is scientifically challenged would make the comparison.
7
But the basic mechanism of global warming through greater concentrations of greenhouse gases is about as simple a physical proposition as a car heating up in the sun. In fact, it's a good approximation.
I learned all I needed to know about the basic physics of planetary warming in eighth grade science. I imagine you did too.
1
Yes. The three essential factors in a planet's surface temperature: 1. starlight intensity at top-of atmosphere from the local star (ours: Sol); 2. the Bond albedo of the planet (atmosphere and surface) that determines how much light is reflected and how much is absorbed (and therefore the intensity of longer wavelength thermal IR radiation emitted); and 3. the composition of the atmosphere and in particular the radiative effects of "greenhouse gases" and clouds that intercept outgoing IR.
For many outside the science community, Dr. Hansen's history in climate science began with his 1988 congressional testimony. He established his credentials in 1976 with:
Wang, W.-C., Y.L. Yung, A.A. Lacis, T. Mo, and J.E. Hansen, 1976: Greenhouse effects due to man-made perturbation of trace gases. Science, 194, 685-690, doi:10.1126/science.194.4266.685.
As I remember that paper, its predictions were tentative about the magnitude of climate change effects. In the intervening time, I can point to only 2 limitations of his and colleagues' conclusions.
First, increased temperatures occurred much sooner than suggested in that paper. The second is how pervasive the effects of unanticipated heat transfer from the atmosphere to the oceans and polar regions would be, as well as the effects that ensured.
That paper, the scientific basis of subsequent climate science, was too conservative. Well, that was 1976. Who would have predicted then that denial would grow more rapidly than experience when the effects of a steadily and preventable atmospheric warming would become so dire within even one life time? Not I.
Remember Ibsen's play Enemy of the People? If we had an award by that name for scientists who gave largely futile testimony of preventable harm or avoidable risk discovered by scientific or rational inquiry, Mr. Hansen would be first on my nominee list.
35
"Who would have predicted then that denial would grow more rapidly than experience..."
A good social historian might well have. Not that it would have helped. One of the better pieces of evidence for my pessimism there is that the "deniers" frequently called, and still call, us doom-sayers "Cassandras" - illustrating their own total ignorance.
100 years ago, it would have been difficult to find a high school graduate who did NOT know who Cassandra was; today it is probably only 1 in 30 who somehow learned - Cassandra was cursed by the gods, to always be foreseeing disasters; accurately, but never be believed by those she warned.
The ancients knew about this human tendency; and here we are- unchanged.
33
Would like to point out that by contemporary lore, 97% of scientists accept (believe) climate change as a real and significant phenomenon. If 97%, a large margin of acceptance is still true. Cassandra's prophesies of fate were ignored until it was too late.
James Hansen as a person and the idea of pernicious climate change in as a phenomenon is being vilified by opponents. that suggests to me that opponents do either believe him, or fear that widespread public acceptance of the phenomenon is occurring. That acceptance is a risk to their own self interest and belief systems if public acceptance leads to a responsible countermeasure. That's why I want him to get the Enemy of the People award.
(I do hope no one reads this who fails to understand the phrase Enemy of the People is Irony.)
An anecdote: I'll never forget 1988. That year I was living in Massachusetts and started back skiing after a long hiatus. In the spring I dropped a bundle of cash on new gear up at Killington, and then anxiously awaited the winter to come.
On Christmas week of 1988 in my yard, I saw a flash of yellow. I walked over to it. It was a Forsythia bloom. Not only that, but I had blooming roses. So much for the new ski gear. Well, in mid-January it did begin to snow, and that very day I rushed to a local ski area to use the new skis.
In the 1960's there was an article in Scientific American that predicted that the amount of C02 in the atmosphere would double by the end of the century. Here we are.
Our global economy is built on growth by generating entropy: driving everywhere in inefficiently planned communities, tearing down structures for new ones. CO2 is a byproduct of that strategy.
Given our inept political environment that is driven by poor education, it seems unlikely that we can cease, let alone reverse, this globally destabilizing process.
23
Mr. Hansen has been proven wrong in just about every single one of his prophecies. But of course that doesn't stop modern day Prophets of Doom.
8
"So while his temperature forecast was not flawless, in a larger sense, Dr. Hansen’s 1988 warning has turned out to be entirely on target. As emissions have soared, the planet has warmed relentlessly, just as he said it would; 1988 is not even in the top 20 warmest years now. Every year of this century has been hotter.
The ocean is rising, as Dr. Hansen predicted, and the pace seems to be accelerating. The great ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are dumping ever-rising volumes of water into the sea. Coastal flooding is increasing rapidly in the United States. The Arctic Ocean ice cap has shrunk drastically."
While the exact numbers are off, the trend is unmistakeable and alarming. Ask the insurance companies, which say that climate change is the biggest problem we face.
71
Really? If you don't believe the scientist, just ask the Navy. They are getting ready to move military bases because of climate change.
If the military sees climate change as a security threat, maybe the rest of us should pay attention.
11
And truth and science don't stop the modern-day conservative ignorati from continually being wrong about virtually everything.
5
There was the exact same editorial in the Wall Street Journal yesterday that, based upon the exact same numbers and facts, reached an entirely different conclusion. What gives? The WSJ stated that the world has not seen the climate crisis that the NYT sees.
13
Where was the WSJ on tobacco? On lead paint? On most public health issues? Their corporate bias, while perhaps unconscious, is fairly obvious.
"So while his temperature forecast was not flawless, in a larger sense, Dr. Hansen’s 1988 warning has turned out to be entirely on target. As emissions have soared, the planet has warmed relentlessly, just as he said it would; 1988 is not even in the top 20 warmest years now. Every year of this century has been hotter.
The ocean is rising, as Dr. Hansen predicted, and the pace seems to be accelerating. The great ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are dumping ever-rising volumes of water into the sea. Coastal flooding is increasing rapidly in the United States. The Arctic Ocean ice cap has shrunk drastically."
29
"What gives?" What gives is that the WSJ article is disingenuous at best if not purposely dishonest. Among other things it totally failed to reveal that Hansen's 1988 prediction was based on very early computer models, relatively sparse data and computers that were far less powerful than those now available. Hansen also assumed that refrigerant gases, which create a thermal blanket that is thousands of times more effective than that of CO2, would be continued to be released into the atmosphere. Fortunately because it was also destroying the ozone layer which protects the Earth from really damaging radiation, the world stopped production of these gases and found alternatives. It also, ignores the actual data (see Real Climate) which show although T did flat line after 2000, (which BTW, has been shown to be due to the oceans absorbing more heat than predicted) the last 4 years are very much in accord with Hansen's "most plausible" B prediction. Also they fail to note that as climate modeling predicts the Arctic is undergoing extremely rapid warming to the extent that at current rates the Arctic ocean will be ice free by 2040. The list goes on and I cite only some of the most blatant distortions and cherry picking of the WSJ article compared to the honesty of the Gillis article. That's what gives!
14
Surprise surprise, that WSJ article is by Ryan Maue, of the Cato Institute (formerly the Charles Koch Foundation).
3
The illiteracy of science by the majority of people in this country speaks volumes. Betsy DeVos is doing her job well.
29
RJR -- I mean, that is just a silly comment. DeVos has been in her job for how long?
And I think what you may see is not "illiteracy of science" but a clear understanding that whoever posits a theory, charges someone with a crime, etc. has the burden of proof. Climate scientists have not developed convincing proof. Period. The only people who believe that man made global warming is real are those who are predisposed to because of their progressive views.
Ever think about how Americans now buy > 67% of gas guzzler vehicles now?
Ask them about this, please.
17
It's sad to see that what a visionary scientist knew 30 years ago has been largely ignored here. Dr. Hansen has been turned into a political Cassandra by the wealthy fossil fuel industry that has bought control of what is left of the Trump-controlled Republican Party. This is a global emergency that requires "zero tolerance" for oil and coal and the phasing out gas as well once renewable energy and nuclear energy can replace them. It's time to institute a carbon tax and stiff tariffs on coal, oil and gas imports by all nations who signed the Paris climate accord. It will be too late if wait for rising sea levels to engulf Trump Tower.
21
I still don't understand why the NYTimes and it's economic reporters and editorswho get an entire section of the paper-totally ignore the issue and talk about hydrocarbon prices as though oil and gas will rule the world, always, exactly as they did in 1930.
To read this newspaper-one would be forgiven for assuming the people who think hydrocarbons must no longer be used as fuel are just another bunch of nuts at the fringes of society.
Pretty soon the most important use for the Times will be to stop leaks in the houses rebuilt at overpriced beachfront property, which ought to have been condemned decades ago-even as we either switched to electric cars and planes- by laws-or gone back to living in central cities with subways or light rail.
Eventually(all too soon) property will be bought & sold depending on how high it is and far away from the water line.
Ads for apartments will promise rooftop basements and boilers, full boat mooring and waterproof construction to keep out hurricanes and Finally people will be able to jump out a window without injury-, they can use to them to hail cabs and swim to work or school.
The night of November eighth, 2016 was a dark one to me (and for many others) as we watched the election returns come in. One of the things that still gives me a knot in my stomach is the fact that progress on fighting climate change before it’s too late became almost impossible. I truly think the dark side won that day. It felt like the beginning of the end.
166
Well even paranoia about the environment is not necessarily irrational if it leads to increased survival rates of the human species. You only have to be wrong once, so to speak, for humanity as we know it to disappear. That being said, it is primarily a technological challenge. America's right wing denies while the left indulges in empty feel-good rituals that have no effect. If energy production as a field gets hot, so to speak, and attracts half the talent and money that social media has in the last 15 years, we might be on to something.
4
We simply cannot rely on the profit motive to fix everything. Government has to be on board with something like this. While changing over to smarter energy and transportation will ultimately be profitable to someone, we have in the meantime, some very powerful, amoral individuals who are doing everything they can to keep us tied to oil and 19th century technology. We’re paying with our children’s lives, futures, and treasure for an endless, hot war for oil. If we can’t “fix” our democracy, let’s at least get the big payola out of our political system. This is serious business—we’re on the brink of losing some very precious things
17
You realize that around the world >10x people die of cold than heat, right?
It is sad to see that the past and present governments have ignored the advise of non political scientists. But now it is worst , I glad that Trump put the present EPA chap in charge . He will able to accelerate the destruction .
7
So, what are we going to do about it? For those people still in denial--do you think the major corporations of the world would have been preparing for the opening of the long-dreamt-of Northwest passage for the past 25years if they did not believe the science?
22
No reason to feel any personal shame. After Adam and Eve both ate the apple, God just sort of shrugged as well. If even he learned early on not be be too hard on himself, why can’t we? Stuff happens, time heals all wounds.
This man was off in every prediction he made concerning future temperatures.I'd never heard of him before and will no likely hear him mentioned again.
This is a religious argument. For those who are devoted followers of our state religion radical progressivism, your man-caused global warming scare is central dogma.
However, For educationally and morally intact adults, this is all one sales piutch that just never worked.
Enjoy your play-pretend drama, emotion-bots, but the Earth and other planets have warming and cooling cycles that have gone on for millions of years.
Didn'y you get a clue when people you knew despised our way of life demanded that we give up our standard of living and every advancement going back decades - or the sky would fall?
7
There are many misrepresentations in your post, that I would far exceed the Times's character count to refute them all.
Just for one: "…the Earth and other planets have warming and cooling cycles that have gone on for millions of years."
a) It's ridiculous that you would depend on scientists' observations to make that statement, but scoff at the same scientists who warn of the damage climate change is causing right now.
b) Sure enough, planets have been warming and cooling for millennia, but the point is the Earth's warming these days is increasing much more rapidly that humankind can handle, e.g. large swaths of India are running out of water.
21
Mercutio seems to know that "other planets have warming and cooling cycles..." He might study up on the planet Venus-not just its current climate of incredible heat, but its destiny for millions of years to remain a broiling nightmare . I don't know if tomorrow will find him a serious scholar, but it is likely that increased pollution of the earth with CO2 and other greenhouse gases will result in many of us being grave people.
9
Excellent post - very insightful.
In 1988 as a citizen activist, a scientist and myself put together a slide show on global warming and we made presentations to whoever would listen, audiences such as high schools, churches and clubs. The evidence, we said was convincing enough to take action, and, the proposals, including energy conservation measures of all sorts would have side benefits, regardless. Then, in 1991 Mount Pinatubo erupted, the weather cooled down (.5 C), fossil fuel industries and right wing anti-government forces began their campaign to cast doubt on the science. Hansen was right but sadly the issue had become a political football to the detriment of us all. It is high time to recognize the costs to society and the planet and do something on the national level. Citizens and many progressive cities and states are not waiting. They will lead the country, now still tied in knots.
20
Dr. James Hansen, you have already forever joined people like Lincoln, MLK, JFK, and Snowden as a national and world hero, thanks to your relentless fact-based calls for basic action to oppose the fossil-burners' climate attacks.
Thank you for your service, even as I fear your old government employer will be tarnished for decades by the remaining months of "covfefe" GOP malmanagement.
23
“It’s very hard to see us fixing the climate,” Dr. Hansen said, “until we fix our democracy.”
That's not how I see it. What we really need to fix is our education system which has become ever more damaged by self-serving tribalism, propoganda and science denial. Fix that and democracy will fix itself.
27
The American public education system(?) quite rightly does need improvement. By scanning international rankings of literacy and math scores, that point is driven home clearly.
However, Dr. Hansen's point about fixing a broken democracy trumps your take on education being paramount in fighting climate change and climate-change deniers.
In light of the fact that the current occupant of the White House did not win a plurality of votes to achieve office, it is obvious that America must actually 'adopt' a democracy.
7
Climate change, yes. Apocalypse, no. Life on Earth has survived asteroid impacts, volcanism, ice ages and so on. Humans will also survive, we are very resourceful. Whales, circus animals, unbroken swathes of forest and so on may have to go. We are heading to 10 billion, so they need to get out of the way. There used to be wolves in England, now there aren't. Too bad for the wolves, but people are doing fine. We will have a plantationalized planet, warmer, with more tropical storms, less wild animals, agriculture as far as the eye can see and oceans full of jellyfish. But the Grand Reckoning so many environmentalists preach about just isn't going to happen. People will be fine and there will be more of us than ever.
3
One can only hope this comment is meant as satire. People are as dependent on a functional biosphere as wolves and whales.
17
"Soylent Green", anyone? That movie still gives me chills as it seems to more and more accurately predict our future.
3
I like people as well as anyone, but having "more of us than ever" does not sound like a good thing.
3
We are starting to see major cities around the world effectively turning off the taps to households, because reservoirs are there no longer. A lot of cities (even in the U.S. are close - maybe a decade away from doing the same)
The essentials of life begin with water, and if you think Democracy has broken down now (with money forces influencing everything), then wait until it reaches a critical mass that has to live off of bottled water. Then wait until that bottled water is cut off. Anarchy will ensue.
We already have a major city (Flint Michigan) that is essentially doing so. but they are a predominately poor and a minority population, so no one really cares. (especially the press that has moved on from the story)
Soon water will be more precious than oil, and in some places it already is. Usually those places are war zones.
There is your answer.
87
The financiers are already on the water supply issue. They are buying it up as fast as possible. Hey, everybody needs it, so how could you lose?
1
Since life began, water has always been more precious than oil.
It's just that we "humans" don't get it, yet.....
1
To give credit where it is due, it was Carl Sagan who began warning of climate change as early as 1980, when he discussed the "runaway Greenhouse effect" in his landmark book and television series, Cosmos. Sadly, his prophetic warnings of what we now call global warming are beginning to prove all too true.
17
For humanity as a whole is there a way of determining whether climate change is a positive or an negative??
2
Yup. It’s simple:
Many more people die of cold than heat.
Don’t expect the public to respect science, even though it was science that brought them the smart phone they are using right now to tweet their denial of climate change.
32
Yes it is remarkable that they deny science while using the result of that science.
3
This administration will not act until a crisis bigger than Katrina happens - maybe Miami falling into the ocean or NYC. Even New York's subway flooded all the way up to 30th St by the Sandy storm hasn't moved anyone. How soon we forget.
17
When Hansen came out to warn about climate change there were quantitative uncertainties about the rate of global warming, but the fact that the planet would heat up with increased carbon-dioxide concentration in the atmosphere was already indisputable, because it is based on simple and solid science arguments.
By now climate models have increased in sophistication and the rate of global warming is largely understood. Yet, many in Congress pretend that facts don't matter and proudly tout their ignorance (or invoke "natural climate fluctuations" in contrast to human caused global warming) in order to avoid dealing with perhaps the most urgent issue facing modern humankind.
Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate accord stands out among his many poor judgment calls. Trump will likely be dead when Mar-a-Lago floods, and Florida real estate prices plunge, but our grandchildren will have to suffer the consequences of the recklessness of climate-change deniers.
Each year we leave Trump and his Republican ideologues in power will make things worse for all of mankind, America included.
18
Climate change denial did not start with the odious Trump.
Bush II fought all efforts to control emissions. Then the Republican congress stymied Obama's efforts, on climate and everything else. The Republican party and their corporate masters bear full responsibility for US failure to act on the most important issue of our times.
17
I agree. Thank you for your response.
“It’s very hard to see us fixing the climate until we fix our democracy.”
So true. And fix our culture. And species.
Look at the SUVs and trucks being bought like addicts buying meth.
This is like a lump someone is in denial about until it it too late.
17
Lawmakers have not only 'taken no action' - they are actively aiding and abetting Trump's climate destruction by standing by while he deregulates toxic chemicals, deregulates dumping in our waterways, deregulates coal smokestack servers, deregulates automobile emission restrictions, deregulated offshore drilling safety protocols, and increases offshore drilling...
Yes, yesterday's GOP standing idly by was a crime - but today's Trumpian GOP is hacking at our earth, and ignoring the death knell pealing in warning is a crime against humanity.
23
We're standing in the middle of a highway with a blindfold on, and in the distance we hear the roar of trucks speeding toward us, louder every second. Our leaders tell us not to worry. At what point do we consider their neglect criminal, especially given the economic interest many of them have in ignoring the danger. When the trucks arrive it's too late.
17
Bravo- Dr. Hansen. Your love for our great nation is self evident. Donald Trump and his corrupt swamp is doing everything to destroy the basic foundation of our need- the air we breathe and water we drink. They are serving their paymasters, Koch brothers, Mercers and the pollution making industries. The actions by the corrupt swamp are beyond any comprehension. How do they sleep at night? Do they have any love for their children or grand children? Rich or poor alike breathe the same air and money cannot buy pollution free air. So, this issue should be a no brainer. But not the swamp created by Trump: the Environmental Destruction Agency under a morally bankrupt and corrupt criminal Pruitt is doing everything the destroy the environment. People- please wake up. We don’t have the lixury to close our yes. It is already late. Please vote during the midterm and defeat the corrupt Republican Party by a landslide.
18
Why would lawmakers ever enact measures that would threaten our way of life? A mere few generations will consume fossil fuel and other natural resources that took millions of years to form, all why having at least some vague notion it may also be destroying the planet. Do we read much guilt about that on the left or the right? Hardly.
7
One of the problems is that we cannot even agree on the facts. This piece says that he was mostly correct in his analysis. The WSJ ran a piece that suggests he mostly got it wrong. These are the two leading papers in the country that look at his work and conclude different things. Go figure.
6
Depends who is working behind the scenes...vested interests are sometimes hard to figure out
8
Follow the money. That’s how you know who not to believe. And oil industry money taints most on the right who deny climate change.
12
"Follow the money".
Hansen according to this article recently received somewhere around $650000. Obama during his presidency spent over $400 Billion on climate change bologna. Private industry could not even come close.
1
Yes "as best he knew them". We still don't "know" them that well. When the models fail another attribute is discovered. The measurement systems for CO2 and Temps are poor. Many other factors are not really considered. How about we plant a lot of rain forests and protect them as a partial solution? Restrict development in countries that don't produce CO2 rather than reduce those that currently do? How about some more adaptation, like not building in flood prone areas?
11
In 1982, 36 years ago, I took 2nd prize at my 8th grade science fair for my study of the impact of carbon dioxide on temperature, inspired by what I had read about global warming, probably in Discover Magazine or Scientific American.
The deniers are pathetic stooges of the fossil fuel industry and its investors. Sad!
27
Mike, I hear you. Fifty years ago I did a project on the hole in the ozone layer. I contacted all of the leading scientists and read all of the research. The undeniable science concluded that ultra-violet radiation would destroy all of the oceanic phytoplankton, kill most land based flora and cause cancer in humans. In spite of bans on fluorocarbons, the hole persists today over Antarctica. And, sure enough, the oceans are dead, land based plants are nearly gone, and most of us have terminal melanomas. Just like the scientists predicted fifty years ago.
4
This is America, where the Koch brothers are allowed to buy unlimited influence to keep the value of their carbon based empire as high as possible. Some of the money is directed where it can be seen but even more of it is hidden.
If the American people are stupid enough to be conned into allowing a congress of people who stare the cameras in the eye and declare human climate change a hoax, then we deserve the great deluge and everything else we are responsible for creating.
We are the only country that allows money so much power over the will and performance of our government. Maybe the first change required is serious campaign finance reform.
In the rest of the world the debate is not whether this is happening but how to deal with it because they don't allow money so much influence.
It gets harder every day to be a proud American- I hope we begin to have a sea change this coming Nov. Open your wallets and volunteer folks.
33
This problem is so much bigger than Trump, politics, the United States. Its about our goods produced in China,billions of people striving for First World lifestyles, our revering everyone's right to have as many children as they want, our need for more and more. Worldwide last year we used record amounts of renewable energy, but also record amounts of fossil fuels.
I wonder how close we will get to the inevitable environment collapse before the average person realizes that growth was the problem, not the solution.
While we applaud Dr. Hansen for warning us, it appears almost impossible for facts and science to override human nature.
77
The author notes, "within a few years after [Dr. Hansen] raised the alarm, fossil-fuel interests and libertarian ideologues began financing a campaign of lies about climate research. The issue bogged down in Congress, and to this day that body has taken no action remotely commensurate with the threat."
This describes what may prove to be the most consequential, most evil acts and failures to act in the history of the world.
23
Agreed -- though there was a short window in which some human beings were apparently still in charge of some of the fossil industries. Viz. https://youtu.be/0VOWi8oVXmo
Sadly, venal lizards have been in charge since the late 90's. See also Exxon Knew: https://youtu.be/ppfpFZ92JAY
3
The US political denial of global warming as witnessed in the recent withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement and continued lobby for deregulation has shifted the US from a major leader in the world to fight global warming to a role model of complicity, all for corporate and individual profits. Look no further than the Koch's oil funded SuperPACs and Citizens United to see that this problem isn't going away any time soon and it's likely too late.
16
Is this the NASA that Trump said “We’re reopening” earlier this week?
1
The only way the US can affect climate change for the better is by government leadership outlining a plan(s) based on the most recent science, implementing that plan(s) and monitoring and enforcing it.
We have not elected enough leaders who care or who want to understand the problem and are backed by partisan media entertainers propping up a false narrative of all is well.
Even when the waves of the Atlantic are crashing over Rush Limbaugh's house in Miami illustrating what has been denied, it will not be enough to change the entrenchment.
Some corporations and some environmental groups are making a difference, but when the largest economy in the world refuses to move on the issue, there is little if any incentive for marginal developing countries to follow suit. It is playground human nature on the world stage.
The best thing to do, in my view, is to support the case going to court and help make it successful with donations, rally's, letters, and more.
33
We will meet or exceed the Paris non binding goals through private and below the federal government actions. The market and private actions are more effective than mandates. How about China and India not increase their emissions if it is so serious of a problem?
2
Thirty Years On, How Well Do Global Warming Predictions Stand Up?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/thirty-years-on-how-well-do-global-warming-...
4
Thanks for showing how thoroughly the WSJ has become a tool for fossil fuel propagandists. As Gillis points out, scientists like Hansen have always had a range of possible scenarios. The worst of those scenarios has not come to pass yet, but most of the mid range to worst scenarios are happening right now.
11
Ever think about how Americans now buy > 67% of gas guzzler vehicles now?
Ask them about this, please.
Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal, Wall Street... let me think... wait -- Wall Street?! Wall Street couldn't possibly have an iron in this fire -- could it?
2
I would argue instead that it will be very hard to fix the climate crisis until we get money out of politics.
As long as the fossil fuels industry can buy votes in Congress, we'll not be able to change their minds about this crisis. Or more to the point, change anyone's votes, since I don't believe for a moment these so-called representatives actually believe that climate change is a hoax.
18
In observing human behavior, there are really only a few things that really motivate change: imminent threat of physical harm, financial gain/loss, and cultural norms/taboos. People won't change just because it's the right thing to do anymore than brushing and flossing 3 times a day. To really change behavior on a mass scale, we need to think creatively about how to pull these levers.
Economics would be a great place to focus with tangible incentives supported both through the private sector and government. Of course, to have governmental policies designed to affect the process would require a government and populous that actually believes in science and believes that their 'way of life' would not be adversely affected in any major way. Again, a tall order given that our current Congress can barely tie their shoe laces.
The best we can hope in the short term seems like some lukewarm global treaties coupled with private sector attempts to commoditize the changes needed (e.g. recycling, solar, alternative fuels, CO2 sequestering, etc.).
6
Try pulling those levers by mandate in the Us and see the results. It has been tried in other democracies, it does not work. What we are doing does work, get improvements that are a cost or direct benefit. Use the market and charity to reduce emissions, and improve other aspects that effect climate. It is not all about CO2, if you understand the science a little.
1
As a species, we are not capable of acting on future threats. There will be no significant action until people start dying by the millions. By then, of course, it will be much too late to affect the trajectory of the climate .
4
Mr. Hansen has been consistently wrong on the science and his alarmist projections for future disasters. The West Side highway in Manhattan is not under water as he predicted in 1988. When do we get his apology?
5
Not wrong as you would know if you had actually read anything he had written. His worst scenario has not yet played out, but his mid-range scenarios are.
12
Arctic ice nearly gone. Antarctic ice sheets are collapsing. Coral reefs disappearing, sea levels rising, flooding in Miami, Chesapeake bay and elsewhere. Record breaking heat around the globe (over120 degrees in Bangladesh). Desertification of American south west. Hurricanes, wildfires, accelerated extinction of species. But the grand poobahs at the WSJ are focused on just one thing- they still can see the West Side Hwy. Talk about myopia. You might as well have your head in the sand.
15
There was more of a consensus on the issue before Citizens United brought virtually limitless money into campaigns. The fundamental problem with capitalism as it is structured in the US is that it has profits as the prime objective of any enterprise. In any event, our system doesn't function and certainly does not function well enough to protect the environment.
22
In hard science there is no place for "consensus" that is opinion. Science required reliable data (we don't have much on a global scale), experiments (none are really possible on a global scale and are dangerous), or models that accurately predict (we are working on those but without a good understanding of the global climate and good global measurement systems that is doubtful). Adapt and improve that is the best that we can or will do.
1
Defeatist! And of course there are good global measurements (surface and satellite) and there is a consensus (97%). The concept that global warming is being caused by human activity has coherence, - consilience, - and consensus:
Coherence - a theory that coherently explains the multiple observed lines of empirical evidence across multiple aspects of the climate system.
Consilience - the predicted and projected changes being confirmed across multiple scientific disciplines observing the multiple aspects of the climate system.
Consensus - agreement amongst scientific researchers from many different academic disciplines that the first two C's are correct, and that no alternate theory can adequately explain this.
1
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) sought to limit man made warming below 2 deg C in the Kyoto Protocol. In 1997 the US Senate passed the Byrd-Hagel Resolution with a vote of 95-0 which disapproved of the US entering into an agreement which did not require developing countries to make emissions reductions and which would seriously harm the US economy. Sound familiar? The Paris Agreement seeks to keep warming below 2 deg C, ideally below 1.5 deg C, but reports in prominent scientific journals indicate that we will blow past the targets due to inaction across the globe.
Germany has only reduced the use of coal from 50% to 40% since 2000 in spite of over $189 billion Euros spent on renewable energy subsidies. There were almost blackouts last winter when renewables produced almost nothing as Germany is also shutting down nuclear plants, which coal will need to replace. Japan is building 40 coal fired plants to replace nuclear facilities, Chinese companies are planning to build 700 coal fired plants, India has the single largest coal plant producer, and across the globe about 1600 coal fired plants are planned.
Those cheaper imports from Asia have the cost of increased greenhouse emissions as many can pollute at higher levels since they are developing economies. By all means blame climate change deniers but realize there is plenty of blame to go around.
16
A graph of Global energy consumption shows that coal, oil, and gas have greatly increased in the past 30 years, according to data from BP. It's scarey for our grandchildren's future. What a mess we are leaving them!
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/EnergyConsump/
Great article about James Hansen and climate change. Humans are notoriously short term oriented. This is an example of non adaptive behaviour, stemming from uncertainty and fear about the future. Many use religious to mitigate these fears about future events.
But my main comment is about ranked choice voting. I think a better method of selecting a representative assembly is the hybrid system used in Germany. Germany's hybrid system has single member districts in each state for about 50% of the seats, and the remaining 50% are backfilled by proportional representation. While no system is perfect, this approach allows the voices of minority groups that are spread out over many districts to have representation. I believe a large reason so many people do not vote is they feel that their vote does not count since they are not the dominant minority in their district. Ranked choice voting is good for executive positions such as President, Governor, Mayor etc. But neither political party has expressed much interest in modern election practices. They want power primarily and they have little interest in better democratic processes.
6
I appreciate the capsule summary of Dr. Hansens's carer. But our reporter leaves an impression that AGW can be understood as a measure of global temperatures.
This omits the observed disruption of rainfall and ensuing drought in some regions (Sahel and US southwest among them). This omits changes to the ocean's acidity, and damage to life within it. This omits the dangers to phytoplankton and consequent challenges to the oxygen in the air we breathe (all 7 billion of us). This omits the dangers of extreme nighttime temperature highs to the health of colossal numbers of people. This omits the destabilizing effects on methane trapped in clathrates and permafrost.
This omits the chance that runaway global warming will drive the world into a dystopia of climate refugees and mass starvation. Our writer has done a good job, but could he not mention some of the dangers that Hansen's work only revealed a sliver of?
17
And if some of those occur, a partial solution will happen. Over population is the root cause and mass elimination of humans is one partial solution. Not that it is very likely, and some of those effects are well just returning to normal like the desert in California.
2
Years ago when I taught critical reading and writing at the University of Delaware, I chose a three part series by Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker as one of the readers my students would analyze. Dr. Hansens "wedges" were part of those articles. Overall, many of my students were somewhat engaged, but generally felt the readings were "boring." Still I persisted and when Al Gore's movie came out - An Inconvenient Truth - I folded that into the curriculum, knowing that it was important for students to become critical consumers of visual media as well. The movie was a shocker for almost all of my students, although not all bought in. All I asked was a critical analysis, with support for whatever argument they wanted to make.
This was over 15 years ago to begin with - I only hope that some of these young people who are now in their late 20s and 30s took something important away from what we read, critiqued, and responded to. And that they vote.
118
Suggest working "Chasing Ice" into your student's program.
Anyway, good work. Keep up the fight!
The late standup philosopher, George Carlin, pointed out that we are no threat to the planet. He noted the earth has a dynamic system for change and corrections. The planet isn’t going anywhere. We are. Keep this up and we are going away. And the earth will not miss us. In a remarkably short time, you won’t even know we were here.
Now we can run the experiment and see if Mr. Carlin was right.
25
Sure some of us are going away, humans without our level of technology survived much worse climate changes, many of us will as well. After all if we somehow had a pretty massive nuclear war some humans would probably survive.
"Now we are running the experiment and will see Mr. Carlin was right."
FIFY!
I was privileged to hear Dr. Hansen speak about a good way to encourage reduction in harmful human generated emissions by instituting a revenue-neutral carbon tax that would pay dividends to every legal resident in the U.S. This could be a true bipartisan issue and could over-ride the current President and his love affair with the fossil fuel industry. Please take a look at this plan and start calling your representatives in Washington. This is the issue of utmost importance. Thanks to Dr. Hansen as he works tirelessly for future generations, an American hero.
14
Good for who, those that would run, audit and manage such a system? I have seen it and nobody should vote for such a foolish idea. We can't even increase the fuel tax to adequately fund our roads and bridges so what chance would this much broader plan have?
if you could post a link to this plan I would greatly appreciate it. It might be something Lisa Murkowski could /would support.
Thank you very much
3
James Hansen has links to his articles & talks on carbon fee and dividends, at his website: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1
2
Thank you for honoring Dr. Hansen's terrific work. As a part-time journalist in 1992 I interviewed Al Gore on his book tour for Earth in the Balance, and off the record asked who else in the US Senate understood our environmental challenge? He said Wirth, and the late John Heinz were the only others. So sad. Today still just a handful including Merkley and Markey and other Dems, and apparently no GOP senators (McCain once "got it"). Pathetic. US should have adopted a carbon tax in 1992 when proposed by Pres Clinton, which failed by one vote in the Senate - of course it was an Oklahoma senator voting contrary to his party but in synch with his industry - a Pruitt predecssor (Sen Boren). The climate deniers should have to put up a performance bond - so they actually suffer if they are wrong, which they are in spades. My late father grew up in Okla and had enough sense to switch parties to Dems in early 2000s as GOP melted into full foolishness mode. Where are such sensible Republicans now?
16
Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma is a hero among Evangelicals for his opposition to scientists and the evidence of climate change. No amount of fraud and deception on Pruitt's part will lessen that support.
When will Americans face the fact that Evangelicals are not a religious group at all - they are a political party with an extremely lethal intent toward US survival?
396
They long for the end of the world to justify their faith in their religion. And if that means they have to help it along, so be it, as they think it's doing God's work.
8
On human survival.
4
make that "global survival"
In 2015, Hansen joined with climatologists Kerry Emanuel, Ken Caldeira and Tom Wigley to lay out in simple, unequivocal terms their prescription for meeting the most daunting challenge of human existence:
"Nuclear power paves the only viable path forward on climate change."
This time we don't have thirty years to recognize they're right.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/03/nuclear-power-paves-...
3
The article actually says, "Alongside renewables, nuclear power will...." Says it right at the top.
Please don't cherry-pick Dr. hansen's argument this way, especially given that cherry-picking data has come to be a central denier tactic.
26
Robert, please don't cherry-pick yourself. Since you're insisting on full disclosure, the article also says:
"Some have argued that it is feasible to meet all of our energy needs with renewables. The 100% renewable scenarios downplay or ignore the intermittency issue by making unrealistic technical assumptions, and can contain high levels of biomass and hydroelectric power at the expense of true sustainability. Large amounts of nuclear power would make it much easier for solar and wind to close the energy gap."
Context is everything, isn't it?
Partially true but have you seen any such happening? In fact we are not even going to replace our current fleet when it eventually has to be retired.
1
I hope the case progresses and the children plaintiffs win. Usually it is only in retrospect that we see where we went wrong and regret the path we took. Usually the people responsible like the Scott Pruitts of the world get off scot free. It is rare that courts address a crisis like carbon pollution and resolve it before it does the damage it is predicted to do. The plaintiffs have the example of prudent and responsible government action in the ban of CFCs. It would redeem our society, if not humanity itself, if our courts were up to this challenge against those who refuse to regulate carbon pollution and force ignorant and irresponsible people like Scott Pruit to do the right thing.
8
Very amusing. Just yesterday read an editorial in the WSJ showing how wrong Hansen and his models have been. No wonder the public is confused. Maybe the proponents of both sides should establish the facts before writing opinions .
3
I too am amused, but by the way deniers don't seem to be willing to read a short article and notice its explicit discussion of what Hansen got wrong, as well as what he got right.
Who wrote your WSJ article, please?
1
The Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns Fox News. During the criminal trial of his news organization for tapping phones in Britain, Mr. Murdoch said he didn't have any time for such shenanigans; he spent most of his time with WSJ editors.
Fox News is famous for giving 70% of its climate change coverage to denialists. There is not mystery why Fox News and the editorial page of the WSJ deny climate science. Murdoch and the rest lie about climate change on behalf of fossil-fuel industrialists who oppose regulation of heat-trapping gasses; it reduces their profit.
It's only one side that establishes facts before writing opinions, only one side that is responsible and prudent in the face of scientific warnings like Hansens, and it's not the WSJ and it's not Fox News.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/20...
13
Since they only have "consensus" which at best is informed "opinion" they don't have any hard "facts". The measurement systems are poor, and I bet those volcanos are creating CO2 and other elements that effect climate.
1
Even if we are wrong about climate change, cleaner air and water, better gas mileage, the conservation of finite resources, preserving the planet for future generations, etc. etc. are in no way bad things to strive for.
184
Cleaner?? Better mileage. At what price to the US citizens. Let China reduce their emissions, they like to lead things.
Every on who raises China as the country that needs to change should be required to post the per capita emissions for each of China and the U.S. and then try to produce a convincing argument that China is the one who need to reduce emissions. Or are you suggesting that you would favour reducing the U.S. per capita levels to match China's?
Hopefully, in a couple of decades we will wonder what "gas mileage" meant. If you have never driven a 100% electric vehicle, you probably will not understand but if you have, you will. They are on the way: look, there's one now! You can get a few-year-old BMW i3 for under 20 grand, LEAF for less than half that. Don't love it 'til you've tried it!
5
It's a shame you needed such a purple "prophet of doom" title to get attention. It's enough that James Hansen was a scientist. In fact, he was not just speaking as a scientist but for a global community of scientists. It's therefore no surprise that he was "right" even if challenged by the limits of the available data and computing power of the time.
14
I am not sure how ranked choice is addressing the problem. It is still largely a matter of money dumbing down the majority of the voters.
The Trumpsters have found a very effective method: Repeat garbage often enough and it will be accepted as fact. Instill fear to get people to vote on your issues. Take fear away of seemingly intractable problems by saying that they don't exist (like global warming) and his voters will stick their heads in the sand.
It comes down to basic psychology, Stupid (Democrats)!
Facts are irrelevant when it comes to voting, psychology is what matters.
Wanting to do the right thing is not enough, packaging it so that people embrace it is what counts.
7
That's the problem with zealotry, prophesizing doom rather than addressing this and those other big issues, peaceful global collaboration, nuclear weapons and the general proliferation of arms globally since the George Bush I "new world order" was decreed.
Old timer Geologists knew about global warming long before Hansen did, it's evidence is scattered all around the Northeast USA where glacial erratic dropstones and other glacial deposits are found. There was a mile thick sheet of ice covering the upper Midwest, New York and New England during the Pleistocene, just 10-20 thousand years ago, that subsequently melted to form the Great and Finger Lakes, now that's some global warming, pre-civilization.
Our great leaders should stop embracing weapons and war that use up a lot of carbon based energy and rather embrace peace and global collaboration and then we might dial down our carbon energy use to at least help slow down industrialized man's contribution to the post- Pleistocene warming cycle.
No need to be gloomy, life will go on and the world will turn regardless of climate change, man might better address the injustices he perpetrates on his fellow man, and spread the knowledge, wealth and peace.
3
The unfortunate, and biggest, problem is that the overwhelming majority of people don't think analytically. The virtually complete absence of scientific education and, as a result, rejection of the complex analysis done by "those elite scientists" compounds the problem.
The global warming results don't fit in the standard human vision of what we would like the world to be. So we reject it. We take comfort in the fact that some "scientists" (say 1%) disagree with climate change solutions and scientists are sometimes wrong. So therefore, scientists are certainly wrong this time. That is even though the 99+% of scientists who understand the analysis agree with it.
Not in our comfort zone? Let's just wait and see ... Even when ocean surfers in gas masks hit the beaches in Houston, we'll still be just waiting to see ...
56
It isn't a mistake that critical thinking is not being encouraged in schools. It is by design. People who cannot thinking their way out of a paper bag with the end open are very easily lead.
5
Congress has rightly refused to act on climate concerns, this is not a failure of democracy. Activists need to answer a few important questions: 1.) What is the correct temperature for the planet, 2) What makes anyone think we have the power to regulate the climate to achieve it, 3.) Within what political structure, 4.) In what time-frame, 5.) At what cost. Climate activism is like religion: Belief by the faithful that we face an existential crisis, that we must act before its too late; but supporting evidence is controversial and their action plans are unrealistic.
4
OK, I'll bite.
1.) What is the correct temperature for the planet?
About 14 °C±0.5 (~57 °F). The one that allows us to grow crops all over the place, lobsters to thrive in the Gulf of Maine, corals to live in the Great Barrier Reef (and elsewhere), and ice to remain in Glacier National Park, the Alps, Greenland, WAIS, global sea ice, etc. etc.
2) What makes anyone think we have the power to regulate the climate to achieve it?
Science (physics, chemistry, biology, y'know?) and math (technology x 7.3 Billion).
3.) Within what political structure?
Democratic -- unless you have a better proposition?
4.) In what time-frame?
ASAP, obviously. Economists have calculated that the longer we leave it, the more expensive it will be. On the other hand, perhaps you think we should just leave the bill to our grandkids and hope they have the wealth and tech to fix the planetary problem that we created?
5.) At what cost?
Without action now the overall costs of climate change will be at least 5% of global gross domestic product (GDP) each year, now and forever. Or more if we wait. That's if we do nothing; if we take action now, the annual cost of achieving stabilization of CO2e between 500 and 550 ppm could be 2% of GDP to account for faster than expected climate change. That's according to economists (they could be wrong -- in either direction -- uncertainty is not our friend). There are multiple side-benefits: cleaner air, healthier residents, less cancer, asthma, faster cars...
24
Bravo, meltyman. I'm learning a lot from your comments.
Ocean acidification is wreaking havoc with coral reefs and shellfish, and rising ocean temperatures will have devastating effects on fish populations and phytoplankton (which produce up to 85% of the oxygen in our atmosphere). Even if we somehow manage to use geoengineering to reduce the planet's surface temperature, we need to sequester carbon dioxide before it dissolves in seawater. After that happens, it is unclear how to adequately correct for the lower pH levels in the global marine environment. If we lose our oceans, it will be very difficult for us to recover.
Atmospheric methane is another serious issue as it is over 80 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Salient current problems are leaks from natural gas mining and cattle farming for meat production.
We certainly need to fix our democracy, and we also need to work on our cultural habits that pump all these greenhouse gases into the air in the first place.
57
We need no fix for our democracy, that would be what everyone does not want a dictator, or a group that acts like a dictator. Our constitution has features to avoid that, one worked pretty well in getting rid of Hillary.
vulcanalex:
If you read the last three paragraphs of this article, you will see what Dr. Hansen is trying to convey in terms of voting and our democracy. I can't figure out what else you are talking about.
9
Read the piece in the WSJ. It reaches the exact opposite conclusion about Dr. Hansen.
3
Yes, but it's written by employees of the Cato Institute, which is funded by the fossil-fuel industrialist Koch brothers.
22
Recent key predictions made by Dr. Hansen bear repeating. Much stronger storms due to warmer oceans. Plus Rapid sea level rise.
Such strong storms that the devastation in Puerto Rico will seem quite mild. Storms that will devastate large areas in the Caribbean and the US gulf and East coasts.
Also that ice melting is an exponential not a linear process, so sea level rise and coastal submergence should be expected to accelerate far beyond the current mainline predictions, flooding the east coast US cities within my lifetime and in 50 years we will face abandoning all the large coastal cities worldwide. The US military study on this problem of swamped coastlines said that hundreds of millions of new dispossessed climate migrants can be expected to trigger many regional wars and the US is likely to be drawn into the fighting. Not doomsday, but not a peaceful or pleasant world. A new HOT world where life will be very hard. Our children and grandchildren will face disaster upon disaster.
11
As ice melts, methane release increases and fossil fuel burning continues, the feedback loops are building beyond anything we can undo. Our tipping point is now (if not 10 years ago) and our nation has been hijacked by myopic, ecocidal fossil-fuel shills.
This is indeed a state of emergency that makes Pear Harbor and 9-11 paltry. Unless we have sane responsible leadership willing to do what is necessary to move us away from fossil fuels rapidly, adapt our infrastructure and develop carbon capture technology and permaculture farming, we will likely be extinct by the end of the century.
119
It’s nice to see someone else besides me mention methane as a threat. It seems that the vast majority of people see methane as a benign factor, which it is certainly not. Natural gas is far from being the "clean" energy it is so often touted as.
https://www.npr.org/2018/06/23/622727843/large-methane-leaks-threaten-pe...
8
So as I insist it is far too late for anything other than adapting to the changes. Somehow you recognize this yet insist on more ineffective and costly policies. Just the sort of thinking that prevents improvement.
I insist because, though wee cannot undo the damage, we cam reduce how bad it gets -- to a degree. Moving away from fossil-fuels combined with carbon capture technology and permaculture, carbon sequestering agriculture are our only chances of maintaining a minimally survivable world in a few areas.
1
Our Democracy is not broken, it’s voters who don’t pay attention and are incurious about the world. We are the problem.
51
What is democracy if not the involvement of the people?
Without people voting and getting involved then there can be no democracy. People plus a right to vote make democracy happen.
Vote.
4
Citizens Untied (pun intended) and recent events (national-scale gaslighting by Trump, "the free press is the enemy of the people", and on and on) -- and you think our Democracy is not broken?
4
As I understand it, what we have here is a classic case of good versus evil, money now versus life tomorrow -- and how that plays out will in large measure be determined by a court case in which some children from Oregon have sued the federal government, claiming that it has a legal responsibility to protect the future under common law.
It could be a turning point like the Boldt Decision, but with a thousand times the implications.
I, my children, and their girls, not yet a year, all thank those who are fighting the forces of greed like the Koch Brothers, the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute -- Trump's people.
But doesn't it speak ill of our condition as a nation, that the most sensible policies on guns and climate are being carried by children?
We should help them but then most of us are not even aware of this pivotal battle.
https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/us/federal-lawsuit/
82
A ton of money has to go into research for a way of pulling carbon out of the air. Even if the US stopped burning fossil fuels (which isn't happening) what about the countries that are just starting to industrialize? Both approaches are necessary.
7
No "research" needed we know how much energy it takes to break that bond, and we already know how to pump it underground.
1
I wonder how future citizens of the world will judge our esteemed third-way environmental groups and willow-the-wisp journalists who tried to find common ground between climate scientists and those making serious cash off of burning fossil fuels. Unfortunately they got played like all marks do in the end. Who knows, maybe the entire earth's population will soon collapse and all will be good. This assumes that the population not around are the ones that population control folks want around.
Bring back Gillis. I believe Revkin is working for one of Rupert Murdoch's properties now. Anything to help billionaires heirs, oil & gas folks and finance types not feel so badly about themselves is truly doing the lord's work.
3
It's too late. We're done. No worry about the planet though. A million years or so, a mere speck in the life of the planet, and it will get back to where it was before we arrived. In the meantime here's to the next species that may come to replace us, along with a hope and a prayer that they're not human.
154
Actually, it is not too late -- if we reduce emissions now we can still make a significant impact in less catastrophic climate change over the next century. Fatalism at this point is just as bad as denialism.
10
Our Universe is 14 billion years in the making. The process of evolution includes climate change throughout the universe whether through natural or human cause. Fundamentally, we (humans) cannot escape climate change. Therefore, humans are integral to the process of evolution and climate change. We cannot rely on government to fix our human actions and the damage it is causing. It is the responsibility of every person to educate themselves and do what they need to do to prevent their impact on global warming. Literally, there is no time to waste.
13
@Mike
Regarding your words "We cannot rely on government to fix our human actions and the damage it is causing", what makes you so sure that the private sector can address it, as it is the primary source of the global climate change?
Educating the public about the issue is the crux, not because individuals would then be able to know what to do, as you suggested, but rather to elect informed politicians who can then direct the vast government resources towards addressing the issue, including regulating the private sector, when appropriate, to achieve the desired outcome. We Americans are the premier energy wasters in the world (and a close second in CO2 emission) and will continue to be unless government institutes policies and rules constraining our over-use, such as in transportation and home heating/cooling and electric power application. Otherwise we will keep buying the big SUVs, trucks and mega-mansions far out in suburbs to fuel our right of conspicuous consumption.
4
Since we all have been wondering, the Yankees were at Detroit that night prior to Hansen's Senate testimony in 1988. Naturally, we recall such names as Don Mattingly at first base, and Ricky Henderson in left field. Henderson hit a home run in the third inning off Frank Tanana to deep left field. But it was a tied ballgame late....and the Tigers took the Yankees down in the 10th on a Luis Salazar single to center that scored Brookens from second base. Final score: 3-2.
5
and even earlier... in the late 60s and early seventies, the calls for more climate respect were loud, clear, and effectively mocked....
Pigs live in disgusting pens.... a cautionary tale !
8
Thank you, Dr. Hansen. You will be well regarded and admired, when we have a functioning government. Best wishes.
207
Hardly so, Americans have consumed profligately without trepidation through good and bad administrations, one and all.
2
135 days to go.
1
Ranked choice voting is THE way to restore some semblance of a functioning democracy to the U.S. Delightful to see endorsement by a person of the stature of Dr. Hansen.
140
Yeah well, our present POTUS sells other kinds of doom too, time for both main parties to stop snowing the American people, greed is not good when you are a partisan zealot just out to loot the national Treasury and enrich your personal power. Rather let's become a real egalitarian democracy not an Oligarchy, empower all citizens not just a wealthy few who are in contempt of all people's rights and freedoms.
2
Yes, Dr. Hansen was right. Yes, he is still right. Yes we have evidence which demonstrates that he was correct, albeit using a flawed model. And no we will not do anything, because if we did, then someone rich and powerful would not get enough richer and more powerful to fund our candidates.
We think in three month stock price cycles.
And that is going to kill our economy and a lot of people, but in the future when we can blame someone else. It is probably all Obama's fault, anyhow.
105
Good article..and thanks, Dr. Hansen.
34
Everything circles back to the Koch brothers and their friends. We must work harder to throw back the curtain they hide behind, and de-program the masses who have bought the propaganda they have forced on us. And register new voters. Masses of them. We don't have much time.
301
My one consolation is that the mega mansions the billionaires have constructed on Cape Cod and the Hamptons will be the first to succumb to the rising tides. I will get a tiny thrill as I watch the waters drown the landscaping and lap at the first floor windows.
3
I disagree. Everything circles back to citizens and our ability to stand up for our democracy, our rights, and our planet.
1
Dr. Hansen's closing statement: “It’s very hard to see us fixing the climate until we fix our democracy.” is a perfect summary of why there will be no timely action by the United States to stave of man-made climate change .
Our government has been taken over by right wing forces that seek greater and greater profits from fossil fuels. Much of their political strength comes from low education science deniers including religious fundamentalists who support right wing politicians including Donald Trump. The Koch brothers, for example, are major players in the fossil fuel industry and they have backed those elements of the Republican Party with dark corporate money that put Trump in place through a highly suspect electoral process. A mere seventy thousand votes across three states counted for more than the three million vote majority that Hillary Clinton received.
Our democracy is in disarray and among the major benefactors are those that promote the denial of global warming. Until the voice of the majority of Americans makes its voice heard, there is no remote chance that the US will take steps to improve the future of our planet.
378
I remember when my husband, a former climate scientist in the U.S.G.S., first told me about global warming in the late '80's. At first I couldn't believe it. I was shocked; but then a comforting thought came: scientists and government leaders will surely do something about such a terrible threat to our planet. Sadly, I was wrong (although many scientists have tried, as well as a few leaders). I am coming to the conclusion that we humans may not be capable of making the decisions and taking the actions necessary to preserve our planet and even our own children's futures.
274
The political strategy to avoid action on climate has been particularly despicable. Rather than to accept the scientific consensus on climate and engage in a debate about the proper public policy to address it, the Republicans have demeaned the scientists and the science rather than to address proper action. The attacks have been particularly ridiculous; as a physicist, I know that no one in his/her right mind ever went into scientific research for the money, and no one advances in science by endorsing orthodoxy. The primary reward for a scientist is having understood the problem they have worked at. Having done a good job at the research is the primary reward. The most successful scientists have overturned the current understanding; think Albert Einstein. To one ever makes it big in science by saying "I agree with you".
11
A couple of years ago I heard a segment on NPR that put this in perspective. A scientist was talking about single cell organism in petri dishes. Given enough nutrients, they eat and reproduce until they fill the dish; but, being single cell organisms, they don't stop reproducing. They continue until they drown in their own waste. She said that all organism do the same thing. We are doing the same thing. We have more in common with protozoans that we think!
1
Not all but most billionaires are narcissistic, sociopaths. Even Jeff Bezos can’t think of anything better to do than spend his fortune on space travel - yet there is zero percent chance humans can reach a habitable planet before we have made our present one uninhabitable. These sick billionaires, Trump and Republicans are robbing our children of their last chance for a decent, healthy future. Not just “other people’s” children - everyone’s. Not even the children of sociopathic billionaires deserve this. By the time today’s newborns are senior citizens their lives will have been ravaged by their parents’ and grandparents’ failure to protect Earth’s environment and climate. There is no amount of love or money that can protect any child from the consequences of unmitigated climate change. How much consolation will it be for even the richest to be confined in luxury biospheres, afraid of the desperate millions living outside and bereft of the freedom to explore Earth’s once glorious coastlines , snow capped mountains and natural beauty?
2
“It’s very hard to see us fixing the climate,” Dr. Hansen said, “until we fix our democracy.” Add to that our educational system which does an abysmal job of teaching science and critical thinking to young people.
Reagan added to the paranoia about government but issues like this are exactly why we need government to step in and do the heavy lifting. This is the only planet we have to live on. We do not have the technology to travel to another planet or solar system or galaxy. The evidence was fairly clear when Dr. Hansen testified in 1988. If he had been wrong we would not be seeing the rises in temperature we're seeing now along with the failure of seasonal rains, the bleaching of coral, and the northward movement of flora and fauna that are not cold tolerant.
Even now we're wasting time because businesses don't want to change how they dispose of waste, what they destroy to make various products, and our own unwillingness to deal with the pollution we've created. The regulations and requirements could create jobs for people. Our very existence, our food supply, our well being depends upon small things like insects, spiders, phytoplankton, rain at the right time.
Politics cannot change a seed's need for water and soil, or our need for clean air and water. But politics can change how we deal with climate change if our political leaders develop some backbone and say no to the likes of the Koch Brothers and their ilk when it comes to regulating pollution.
140
It isn’t that the Republicans want to do the right thing but lack courage. It’s that they’re sociopaths who are indifferent to what’s right and only care about advancing their own interests.
3
Mr. Gillis,
Anyone who knows any of the history of the Earth knows that it has always experienced a changing climate! The “best minds” when I was growing up, thought we were entering a new glacial period. Many of those same individuals thought that “Continents could never drift” and that “Communism was inevitable”
The majority of the “best” of my childhood stand 0-3 today. The seas have relentless risen since the end of the last glacial period. Sometimes the rise was rapid and sometimes it slowed or even seemed to reverse but it stands 150 meters higher today and you can’t walk to Alaska or England from Europe anymore.
It also stands to reason that to melt all that ice the Earth must have warmed these last 12 thousand years! Since a majority of this change occurred when there were few humans and little technology it also stands to reason that humans were not responsible for 11, 800 of that change!
Are they responsable today? How could they not be? There are Billions of us today with Billions more on the way! Too many of us is the problem! Do you or anyone have a solution past “let nature take its course”?
Will putting Al Gore in charge stop this relentless population increase? No one here talks about anything except gaining control as a cure. Putting them in control will solve the real problem in what way?
All else past reducing the number of humans is nice but it’s nice window dressing!
What is your solution?
21
We knew things were changing too fast for nature to adapt when Nixon started the Environmental Protection Agency. We knew we were polluting the air and waters of the planet, dumping trash and toxins and tainting underground water.
A joke going around middle schools in the 1960s: Did you hear they discovered water under Lake Erie?
Generations of Americans have been watching things get worse, while government limps along aimlessly, and then, undoes what little progress we've made.
If you want to know why people have lost faith in government, go back to the 1970s, when we thought if we could put a man on the moon, we could do anything.
59
Hansen was a great scientist & gave the best projections on where we were headed one could give in 1988.
He focused on an emissions scenario that was middle of the road regarding likely future emissions of CO2 and other GHGs.
He projected that by 2017, the globe’s 5-year avg T would be about 1.85 deg F (1.03 C) higher than the 1950-1980 NASA-measured avg.
NASA’s 5-year avg global T ending in 2017 was 1.48 deg's F above the 30-year avg. So yes, his 1988 projection was high, but also quite accurate by any reasonable standard.
In fact for the data, knowledge, cpu's/technology that existed in 1988 that was a very accurate projection of a likely future.
It is important for non-scientists to understand: scientists deal in probabilities, not certainties...especially in regards to a tremendously complex system like earth's climate.
He and others did not claim they were predicting what would happen, they were projecting what was plausible based on the best science of the time, on the temp rise that would most likely take place if we doubled CO2 in the atm.
And how much heat would be stored in the ocean, how heat would cycle in & out of the ocean as a result of major ocean-atm processes like El Nino, etc.
And how clouds and melting ice affected the system.
I'm a retired scientist & say w/o reservation he did an astounding job.
To those with no scientific training, ignorance does not = expertise.
It's good to listen to the true experts, and try to mitigate likely risks.
210
Thanks for this excellent comment...we need more reflection like this in the media. The public is vastly confused about science!
20
So he was wrong, but that's ok because he was a scientist? His computer was slow? He is an ideologue with little to support his alarmist views other than a religious certainty that he is right. Sorry, no sale.
Easter Island is an example we should heed. They had a finite environment and they cut down all the trees to make their huge head monoliths to appease the gods. They refused to look ahead, instead depending on their ancestors beliefs.
Humans set their world view very early and it is the basis of everything else they learn and it colors everything else they learn.
35