WASHINGTON, June 24, 2008
NASA Climate Scientist Says "We're Toast"
Two Decades After His First Warning, Global Warming Expert Says Situation Has Worsened
-
Photo
Jim Hansen, a leading researcher on global warming, gives a briefing on global warming on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 23, 2008. House Select Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee Chairman Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., sits in the front row at right. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
-
Interactive
Global Warming
The greenhouse effect, a look at the Kyoto Protocol and a history of the Earth's climate.
James Hansen told Congress on Monday that the world has long passed the "dangerous level" for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and needs to get back to 1988 levels. He said Earth's atmosphere can only stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises.
"We're toast if we don't get on a very different path," Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences who is sometimes called the godfather of global warming science, told The Associated Press. "This is the last chance."
Hansen brought global warming home to the public in June 1988 during a Washington heat wave, telling a Senate hearing that global warming was already here. To mark the anniversary, he testified before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming where he was called a prophet, and addressed a luncheon at the National Press Club where he was called a hero by former Sen. Tim Wirth, D-Colo., who headed the 1988 hearing.
To cut emissions, Hansen said coal-fired power plants that don't capture carbon dioxide emissions shouldn't be used in the United States after 2025, and should be eliminated in the rest of the world by 2030. That carbon capture technology is still being developed and not yet cost efficient for power plants.
Burning fossil fuels like coal is the chief cause of man-made greenhouse gases. Hansen said the Earth's atmosphere has got to get back to a level of 350 parts of carbon dioxide per million. Last month, it was 10 percent higher: 386.7 parts per million.
Hansen said he'll testify on behalf of British protesters against new coal-fired power plants. Protesters have chained themselves to gates and equipment at sites of several proposed coal plants in England.
"The thing that I think is most important is to block coal-fired power plants," Hansen told the luncheon. "I'm not yet at the point of chaining myself but we somehow have to draw attention to this."
Frank Maisano, a spokesman for many U.S. utilities, including those trying to build new coal plants, said while Hansen has shown foresight as a scientist, his "stop them all approach is very simplistic" and shows that he is beyond his level of expertise.
The year of Hansen's original testimony was the world's hottest year on record. Since then, 14 years have been hotter, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Two decades later, Hansen spent his time on the question of whether it's too late to do anything about it. His answer: There's still time to stop the worst, but not much time.
"We see a tipping point occurring right before our eyes," Hansen told the AP before the luncheon. "The Arctic is the first tipping point and it's occurring exactly the way we said it would."
Hansen, echoing work by other scientists, said that in five to 10 years, the Arctic will be free of sea ice in the summer.
Longtime global warming skeptic Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., citing a recent poll, said in a statement, "Hansen, (former Vice President) Gore and the media have been trumpeting man-made climate doom since the 1980s. But Americans are not buying it."
But Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., committee chairman, said, "Dr. Hansen was right. Twenty years later, we recognize him as a climate prophet."
© MMVIII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Video and Galleries from SciTech
-
Video
Hi-Tech Drones Aid Terror Hunt
-
Photos
Attack on Ancient Babylon
-
Video
Baby Skates Sensation
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
...
- 9
- next
See all 440 CommentsPosted by faith_in_w
I''ll be sure to use all my vacation and sick time as well as max out my credit cards before then. Thanks...
If only we had spent the 3 trillion dollars that we''re spending in Iraq on developing sustainable energy technologies that already exist, we''d be well on our way to energy independence right now and the world would be better for it.
Unfortunately, conservatives are in bed with big oil and are completely incapable of forward thinking policy.
Harvard Biologist George Wald, 1970 "...Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind."
Kenneth Wat, Swarthmore College, April 19, 1970 "The world will be... eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age."
You have to love climate prophet predictions, they do entertain us so!
Baking cakes on Mars isn''t going to help us!
Morons:
The SCIENTIFIC debate on global warming and it''s cause is over.
The world is moving forward now. Either help out or get out of the way.
The National Academy of Sciences surveyed EVERY climate change study done in the last 10 years. Without exception they ALL agreed on three fundamental facts:
1. Global warming is real and happening now.
2. Global warming is caused by man.
3. The consequences of global warming will be catastrophic to all life on the planet. (this means you)
The SCIENTIFIC debate ended long ago. The POLITICAL debate rages on fueled by a multi-million dollar disinformation campaign which is funded by fossil fuels companies.
The time for DENIAL is over. The time for ACTION is now.
Well, as I look around the world today, I think Wald was correct. Civilazation, as we define "civilized man" does indeed appear to be ending.
John Coleman, Weather Channel Founder: Global Warming %u2018Greatest Scam in History.''
Choose whatever prophet you want, it''s all about which ploy gains the most amount of media attention.
The National Academy of Sciences surveyed EVERY climate change study done in the last 10 years. Without exception they ALL agreed on three fundamental facts:
1. Global warming is real and happening now.
2. Global warming is caused by man.
3. The consequences of global warming will be catastrophic to all life on the planet. (this means you)
The SCIENTIFIC debate ended long ago. The POLITICAL debate rages on fueled by a multi-million dollar disinformation campaign which is funded by fossil fuels companies.
The time for DENIAL is over. The time for ACTION is now.
China now exceeds the US in carbon emissions & India is not far behind. Projections indicate that China''s & India''s emissions will increase 30% greater than today''s level by 2020 and they have given no assurances that they have any plans to curb it. Many more emerging countries will be adding to that.
So, I guess the big question is if the US takes every measure to minimize carbon emissions, are we hosed anyway. What could the world do, try and impose a carbon tax upon them? Not likely!
A Word About Consensus
"Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you''re being had.
"Let''s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus.
"Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus."
Michael Crichton
Or perhaps he is unaware of the report out of the University of Oregon signed by 31,000 scientist debunking man made global warming theories. Again, not reported on CBS.
I guess he did not look at last years climate data either. The year 2007 experienced the greatest change in global temperature for a single year since records have been kept. Global temp went down .5C. That almost completely wipes out the .7C upward change in temp from the last 150 years. WHAT GLOBAL WARMING!!!
Not all of us are as stupid as you think CBS. Give us some real news.
Posted by govwatch
Typical reactionary naysayer response. You parrot the misinformation you hear on talk radio and expect everyone to accept your unsupported statement. In 2006, 285 NASA scientists published an open letter stating their support of Hansen''s conclusions. http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php/csw/details/nasa-scientists-statement/
Those are government employees who risked their jobs to disagree with the Bush Administration''s official position! They are experts who are continually monitoring the global climate changes for our space program, but also for military purposes: spy satellites, etc. For them to speak out so boldly is a clear indicator of the importance they place on this issue. And they are not the only scientists supporting Hansen''s assessments.
Meanwhile, politicians quarrel and filibuster. They choose to fiddle while Rome, and the rest of the world, burns. This is too important to all of us to allow it to be held prisoner by partisan politics. In areas where consumers can pay a small extra fee for "green" power, they need to do that. The rest of us need to pressure our suppliers to develop alternative energy sources...and reduce our personal carbon footprints. Reduce, recycle, reuse. Walk, ride a bike, take public transit, carpool, downsize your everyday car. Small choices can have a large impact.
I have not heard one Senator or Congressmen out right say Stop Making SUVs and Start making 40+ mpg cars.
Earth''s atmosphere can only stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises.
Well I guess that in a few more decades nature is going to decrease the human population. Everybody is talking about More Food needs to be produced to fee the world population.
Why isn''t anybody talking about HUMAN POPULATION CONTROL, isn''t that the real issue. This Planet Can Not support 6 Billion Humans and life in 25 years is going to be pretty ICKY with 9 Billion Humans and Sea Level Rise and less land to live on.
If you would read news from places other then CBS or liberal blogs you would know that their is no concensus. Read my full post below.
Please do the math, it has been more than 30 years since 1970 and civilization has not yet ended. That''s not to say there isn''t global warming, only that people need better math skills.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H.L. Mencken
Posted by pboskovich
And your Ph.D. is in...?
The program you talk about is from the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, NOT the University of Oregon and NOT an acredited University.
I sure hope you live somewhere less than 20 ft above sea level. I''ll ask you too, since you''re so obviously an expert - your Ph.D. is in ...?
I BUY IT!
I''m American!
With all due respect, Sen. James Inhofe is the proverbial frog in the pan of water with the flames under it. He''d rather boil alive than to hop out.
Posted by zgomer
There goes your credibility out the window - "radio hosts" presumably thos eesteemed scientists Limpbore, Shammity and O''Wrongly shouldn''t even be mentioned in the same sentence as "reliable sources."
To cut emissions, Hansen said coal-fired power
plants that don''t capture carbon dioxide
emissions shouldn''t be used in the United
States after 2025, and should be eliminated in
the rest of the world by 2030.
If he did his homework, he would know that the rest of the industrialized world predominately uses nuclear power, not coal (other than emerging nations like China). Nearly all of the EU uses nuke power. It is the very environmentalists pushing for clean air who are opposing the technology that can supply the needed power. I''m all for hydrogen-cells, wind, and solar, but the economics of those are not going to power America anytime soon. In the meantime, we need to work with what technology we already have that works.
Posted by pboskovich at 11:03 AM : Jun 24, 2008
You know, there are always two sides to every story. You read both sides to get a good perspective, then decide which side sounds more believeable. After reading your version of is happening with global warming, I''m not convinced you don''t know what you are talking about. I believe you are in denial. With all but a very few scientists telling us we have a serious climate problem some, like yourself, seem determined to defy all wisdom and then condemn the messenger (CBS) for reporting their findings. You have a long way to go to disprove those scientists'' findings.
Antonino Zichichi, emeritus professor of nuclear physics at the University of Bologna and president of the World Federation of Scientists : "...models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are incoherent and invalid from a scientific point of view".
Reid Bryson, emeritus professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison: "It%u2019s absurd. Of course it%u2019s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we%u2019re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we%u2019re putting more carbon dioxide into the air."
David Douglass, solid-state physicist, professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester: "The observed pattern of warming, comparing surface and atmospheric temperature trends, does not show the characteristic fingerprint associated with greenhouse warming. The inescapable conclusion is that the human contribution is not significant and that observed increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases make only a negligible contribution to climate warming."
What is happening under the surface? That might oh.... I dunno cause EARTHQUAKES/tidalwaves
The ever shifting crust of the earth is being further shifted by our own mechanical means of displacing what is under the crust. Hmm... just a thought
Posted by govwatch
Arguing that is is 800 to 1 against global warming is not accurate. A large majority of scientist believe global warming is occurring. There is some disagreement as to the cause, but most believe the main cause is man made. There is a minority who do not believe global warming is occurring.
In any case, it still makes sense to look at alternative energy sources as well as conservation.
To cut emissions, Hansen said coal-fired power
plants that don''t capture carbon dioxide
emissions shouldn''t be used in the United
States after 2025, and should be eliminated in
the rest of the world by 2030.
If he did his homework, he would know that the rest of the industrialized world predominately uses nuclear power, not coal (other than emerging nations like China). Nearly all of the EU uses nuke power. It is the very environmentalists pushing for clean air who are opposing the technology that can supply the needed power. I''m all for hydrogen-cells, wind, and solar, but the economics of those are not going to power America anytime soon. In the meantime, we need to work with what technology we already have that works.
I''m not a tree hugger But I can definitely relate to cause and effect potentials.
What is happening under the surface? That might oh.... I dunno cause EARTHQUAKES/tidalwaves
The ever shifting crust of the earth is being further shifted by our own mechanical means of displacing what is under the crust. Hmm... just a thought
Maybe some of these "natural disasters" are not so natural - after all. Including the "possiblity" of global warming.
I''''m not a tree hugger But I can definitely relate to cause and effect potentials.
Posted by jh6379
You must not be listening very carefully. Most of the world governments signed the Kyoto Treaty a decade ago because of their concern about global warming. The U.S. was the only major country not to sign. And we are schizophrenic in our environmental efforts...celebrating Earth Day while we continue to buy SUVs and throw-away computer toys that are toxic to the environment. Yes, we cleaned up much of our water, but most Superfund clean-ups and EPA pollution enforcements have stopped under the Bush Administration.
Noone is asking you to give up your toys. But you must be willing to pay the real cost for them. There must be responsible consumption and disposal that recycles those things which are recyclable, and develops disposal techniques that don''t just dump dangerous substances into third-world countries that cause health and environmental problems there. We must stop ignoring these out-of-sight consequences of our throw-away habits and step up to our responsibilities. America used to lead by example. We need to return to that standard.
I would say the technology for nuc is ceretainly better now than when they tried to cram this down our throats in the 60''s and 70''s, but the economics of nuc power plants are still highly questionable when you consider both the construction and deconstruction cost of the plants and the incredibly poisonous by products of our current nuc plants.
The neocons plan to use the contrived $5 and $6 gas at the pumps to ram their nuc agenda down our throats now.
Tim Patterson, paleoclimatologist and Professor of Geology at Carleton University in Canada: "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth''s temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years. On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century''s modest warming?"
Tad Murty, oceanographer; adjunct professor, Departments of Civil Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa: global warming "is the biggest scientific hoax being perpetrated on humanity. There is no global warming due to human anthropogenic activities. The atmosphere hasn%u2019t changed much in 280 million years, and there have always been cycles of warming and cooling. The Cretaceous period was the warmest on earth. You could have grown tomatoes at the North Pole"
WELL I WONT WASTE MY TIME ON THIS! SO I HAVE MOVED ON!
Has ANYONE thought With all of the "Global Concern" - what is happening as we "suck out" trillions of barrels of oil from deep below the earths surface to feed our energy wants (not needs)?
What is happening under the surface? That might oh.... I dunno cause EARTHQUAKES/tidalwaves
The ever shifting crust of the earth is being further shifted by our own mechanical means of displacing what is under the crust. Hmm... just a thought
Maybe some of these "natural disasters" are not so natural - after all. Including the "possiblity" of global warming.
I''''''''m not a tree hugger But I can definitely relate to cause and effect potentials.
Posted by USBrit at 11:22 AM
So true. I get so tired of those people being "consultants" as to the reality of global warming. The sad thing is that they will not be the ones to clean up the mess for promoting ignorance.
Good quotes! I think there can be good cases made that our warming is a natural cycle...but that doesn''t negate the consequences. In previous cycles the world human population was much smaller. Our destruction of natural environments that help mitigate the effects will make the impact larger. We have displaced huge numbers of other species, which makes them particularly vulnerable to climate changes. And we largely ignore our dependence on complex food chains until we are in a crisis--for example the honey bee die off. Agriculture is dependent on pollinating insects. The unintended consequences of destruction of habitat and use of broad-spectrum insecticides can be devastating to the world economies!
Climate change cannot be viewed realistically outside the larger picture. We need to stop looking for spot band-aids for selective problems and think more holistically. There isn''t one solution, but each of us must become aware of the small things that we do, and changes we can make, that collectively can make an enormous difference. The alternative might just be mass die-offs and extinctions...ourselves included.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
...
- 9
- next
See all 440 Comments