NASA’s Dr. James Hansen once again goes over the top. See his most recent article in the UK Guardian. Some excerpts:
“The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.”
And this:
Clearly, if we burn all fossil fuels, we will destroy the planet we know. Carbon dioxide would increase to 500 ppm or more.
Only one problem there Jimbo, CO2 has been a lot higher in the past. Like 10 times higher.
From JS on June 21, 2005:
One point apparently causing confusion among our readers is the relative abundance of CO2 in the atmosphere today as compared with Earth’s historical levels. Most people seem surprised when we say current levels are relatively low, at least from a long-term perspective – understandable considering the constant media/activist bleat about current levels being allegedly “catastrophically high.” Even more express surprise that Earth is currently suffering one of its chilliest episodes in about six hundred million (600,000,000) years.
Given that the late Ordovician suffered an ice age (with associated mass extinction) while atmospheric CO2 levels were more than 4,000ppm higher than those of today (yes, that’s a full order of magnitude higher), levels at which current ‘guesstimations’ of climate sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 suggest every last skerrick of ice should have been melted off the planet, we admit significant scepticism over simplistic claims of small increment in atmospheric CO2 equating to toasted planet. Granted, continental configuration now is nothing like it was then, Sol’s irradiance differs, as do orbits, obliquity, etc., etc. but there is no obvious correlation between atmospheric CO2 and planetary temperature over the last 600 million years, so why would such relatively tiny amounts suddenly become a critical factor now?
Adjacent graphic ‘Global Temperature and Atmospheric CO2 over Geologic Time’ from Climate and the Carboniferous Period (Monte Hieb, with paleomaps by Christopher R. Scotese). Why not drop by and have a look around?
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It is absolutely impossible to burn all the fossil fuels.
Most of the oil will stay in the ground: from a typical oilfield only 40% of the oil in place is recovered.
Same is true for coal. Some of the coal is buried to deep to recover, some of the coal has to little carbon to be used as fuel.
This year the wordl will use 2 – 6 % less oil than in 2008: that means a reduction in CO2-production. Nature will continue at the same pace to assimilate carbondioxide, not bothered by the creditcrunch.
If there were no coal trains and no coal-fired power stations, millions of people would have died this winter. Seems more like life trains than death trains.
Considering the lives lost during mining, burning and chemicals and poisons emitted into the environment equated to many tens if not hundreds of thousands of death annually, worldwide, yes they are death trains.
You might want to check out what little flicks Dubaya left in last minute paybacks to the lobbyists of the mining industry. Check up on the sludge how it pollutes ground water, streams, rivers, lakes and sea. Of course it’s not happening IYBY, you’d think.
Given that a majority of electricity in the US is generated from coal, are electric powered cars … “death cars” as well ?
How come Hansen is still allowed to speak in public? His comments are so far outside the bounds of reality. Even assuming we project the slight very short term downtrend in ice area out two hundred years there’s no way the earth is going to be ice free in any near timeframe.
Half the things in his letter have no attachment to science or reality for that matter.
I’m tired of paying his salary.
“… Every basket (of coal) is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate… It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.”
ATTRIBUTION: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Apart from that graph being pure fiction, you’re missing the point, spectacularly. Sure, CO2 was higher, millions of years ago. Millions of years ago, Earth was not “the planet we know”. Human beings have never experienced an atmosphere with CO2 levels significantly above what they are today.
jeff – he seems more at home out of the US. If more people in the US heard his remarks, we would not be paying his salary much longer. And that would take Al Gore down as well.
So I take it this means that Hansen is proposing everyone switch to Nuclear energy as a cleaner better alternative?
Clearly, we can’t immediately shut down the coal generated electricity. But a good starting point would be to stop building coal-fired plants and to accelerate the production of energy from non-fossil fuel sources. It seems that a lot of coal plants are being canceled in the US.
Sekerob (11:44:43) :
Considering the lives lost during mining, burning and chemicals and poisons emitted into the environment equated to many tens if not hundreds of thousands of death annually, worldwide, yes they are death trains.
What exaggeration.
Are you not riding a death car? Considering the tens of thousands of people dying from car accidents?
What is your ideal world?
Back to the stone age to die before you turn 30 years old from tuberculosis or typhus?
I see that Mr. Hansen remains as just as stifled & muzzled under President Obama as he was under the Bush administration.
I suppose I should be ashamed of my father and all of the guys I’ve known over the years who worked in these “death factories”. Who knew that one day they’d be put on a par with the infamous death trains and factories operated by a certain group of National Socialists?
Orwell was more right than even he could have imagined…
Sekerob (11:44:43) :
“Considering the lives lost during mining, burning and chemicals and poisons emitted into the environment equated to many tens if not hundreds of thousands of death annually, worldwide, yes they are death trains.”
This is perhaps your most heinous post ever – how do you generate your own electricity Mr Rob? Hamsters on little wheels? What about where you work? If these are your actual views and not just ones made up to be anti the subject matter of each and every thread, then I’d suggest you find some sort of hate blog where you will feel much more settled. Perhaps you can get a job at NASA as Hansen’s media adviser. You’ll definitely feel right at home there.
It’s safe to say then, that Mr. Hansen wouldn’t object to terrorist acts against the power stations and the trains.
Sekerob (11:44:43) : Check up on the sludge how it pollutes ground water, streams, rivers, lakes and sea.
Oh yes, that terrible terrible fly ash…
Have you thought that maybe it isn’t the ‘stuff’ but what you do with it that matters? That everything is a useful resource if you let the engineers make the decisions rather than the politicians?
For example, how about LEED buildings? Platinum level of environmental stewardship? Is that good enough for you? John Deere facilities in Greensburg were destroyed in a tornado, they rebuilt very very ‘green’.
From:
http://www.rentalmanagementmag.com/newsart.asp?ARTID=3549
As the city of Greensburg made its recovery, local leaders also decided they needed to build more efficient, sustainable facilities. “There was a ground swell of interest for the town to come back and everyone agreed that to do so, we would need to build green,” Estes says. After the towns leaders decided that all city-run facilities would be built to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum standard [see story on page 31], Estes decided that the new BTI Greensburg would follow suit.
[…]
“A shop is not typically thought of as being green because of the nature of what we do and the materials we are dealing with,” he says. “This might be the first shop environment in the country to be given a LEED Platinum designation.”
[…]
As part of the green building plan, recycled, local and renewable materials were used in construction. Cement foundations from buildings destroyed by the tornado were scrapped and much of the new parking lot at BTI Greensburg will be made from recycled cement.
Concrete inside the building includes fly ash, a fine, glass-like powder that is a byproduct of burning pulverized coal. U.S. power plants produce millions of tons of fly ash annually, which is usually dumped in landfills. Fly ash can be an inexpensive replacement for Portland cement used in concrete and is believed to improve strength, segregation and ease of pumping of the concrete. Also, the concrete floors are diamond polished, which Estes says makes them easier to clean and maintain.
From:
http://www.ageng.ndsu.nodak.edu/newsltr00.html
Scott is investigating the use of coal combustion byproducts (fly ash, bottom ash) for providing a more durable feedlot surface. Using a coal ash stabilized surface is expected to improve animal welfare and performance, as well as provide opportunities for reducing some of the environmental impacts from feeding areas.
From:
http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/topics/?topic=38&offset=4
Worldwide, manufacturers are experimenting with using organic waste materials as a substitute for some of the cement used in concrete. These materials can replace up to 25 percent of the cement in the mix. Less cement means less greenhouse gas produced.
A few coal-rich nations use fly ash, a residue created when coal is burned, as a supplementary cementing material. Brazil’s excess of bagasse, the dry pulpy residue left after the extraction of juice from sugar cane, has proved a reliable composite in concrete. Likewise, the fine gray-white ash of rice husks, chemically similar to cement, is increasingly used as a substitute ingredient in Asia.
I’m not a ‘green’ I’m an ‘olive’. I don’t mind making things better using technology, land, farming and construction. And I don’t panic because someone hands me a lemon, I just make lemonade (and a nice olive lemon marinade for the trout dinner… ceviche anyone?) and would love to have that dinner on a fly ash containing “green” patio…
I thought the Cambrian Explosion was when all the complex animals suddenly appeared? Does that suggest CO2 was good or bad for life?
Apart from the people who enjoy this blog and others like it, the general public has very little understanding of any of this. Hansen currently has the advantage in this regard, and the manipulation of the MSM under the guise of “saving the planet”. I would love to see a cleaner energy source, but in order to achieve that, we need technology. To remove our energy sources would cripple our ability to attain an new, cleaner, power source. These guys have it backwards. Imagine living in the middle ages or the dark ages? We have come a long way. We all want to reduce pollution, but to go backwards in our living standard is NOT the answer. Mother Nature ( or God if that is your preference) has brought humanity into existence. All life forms will maximize their potential in their habitats. We are no different. We are designed this way. Our herd will be culled if that is what is required, but it is beyond arrogance to think that culling is our job. We have been given the skills to rise above and perpetuate our existence. Humanity was not given the choice of civilization or no civilization, we are programmed to maximize our potential, as any ant colony would, or school of fish. We are no different. I would like to “save the planet” as much as anyone, but we need technology to do it. Backwards is not the answer. MHO !!!
Interesting graph. I took the average global temp to be 13C, which works out to 55.4F, which is exactly the temp commonly found about 50 feet into the ground (whether shaft or adit) from my years working as an underground miner.
Have Hansen write us when the CO2 reaches 3000 ppm, 60% of our working limit, and when the 50 foot underground temp rises to 76F.
That should keep him busy for the next 30 million years.
CO2 is a fertilizer given that most plant life developed during periods of higher CO2 atmospheric concentrations. I can see the Hg issue with burning coal.
The CO2 issue could be cured with those who believe that exhaling CO2 is a crime against Mother Earth giving it up along with their progeny to save Gaia.
Doesn’t Hanson commute ~ 90 mi. each way to work? WUWT? This guy should set an example by at least retiring to his compound and minimizing his breathing.
REPLY: He has a small apartment in NYC near Columbia, where he lives during the week, commuting on weekends. – Anthony
James Hansen truly has become the “Apocalyptic Prophet”.
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate/P3/
Hansen seems to be suffering from some form of intellectual insanity where a fear of the falsification of his belief would result in a falsification of his “self”. Our planet has been cooling as of late, and may continue to do so for some time, escalating Hansen’s fears even more. As much as we may disagree with him, this is really just a sad, sad situation. Someone at NASA needs to wake up and remove Hansen from his position and the spotlight.
Actually, the simplest solution seems to elude the experts:
Just take the massive waste of power that is common worldwide (commercial lighting left on 24/7, streetlights 12/7, transporting whole commodities as far as you can to jack up the price) and use it to scrub the bad stuff out of the emissions, and all you have left is harmless CO2.
Wonder what will happen if SC24 & 25 fail totally and the place freezes?
Think they will stop wasting all that energy and keep greenhouses and houses warm?
Or will they declare home heating and growing food to be acts of terrorism?
Human beings have never experienced an atmosphere with CO2 levels significantly above what they are today.
No, but we have experienced global temperatures plus or minus 5 degrees C compared to now. When it was colder (Wisconsin Glaciation) the human species nearly went extinct. Other hominids did; we were lucky. When it was warmer (various climatic optimums in the Holocene) humanity flourished, as did most other life forms.
When it was 15 to 25 degrees C warmer (during the Eocene), life also flourished. Flowering plant species proliferated. Tropical, paratropical, and boreal temperate forests reached their greatest extent in planetary history. Fauna flourished and biodiversity in all animal phyla and orders was enormous. Since the Eocene, global temperatures have plummeted into Ice Age conditions and at least 60% (probably more) of all species have gone extinct.
Warmer is Better.
The “coal trains of death”, like the term “denier”, are thinly veiled references to the Holocaust. As such they are pure Alarmism with a capital “A” and hugely objectionable. Stalin murdered 3 or 4 times as many people as did Hitler, and Mao murdered twice that. Stalinism and Maoism are not “solutions” to mass murder.
The blanket authoritarian collectivist approach that underlies the Alarmist agenda is the most horrific death train in history, as proved by the bloody inhumanity of the 20th Century. If there ever has been a time when we need to learn from history, this is it. And the history we need to learn from is the worldwide slaughter that took place in and around WWII. It is not climate change that threatens humanity; it is unbridled authoritarianism.
How deadly is CO2?, supossing it really has a detectable “greenhouse effect”, so increasing temperature, is there a physical limit for this increment?, how many degrees of temperature would it have our planet if it had, say, 1000 ppm of CO2?
Could we melt iron using CO2 green house effect?
Choo–Choo!!
People of the world, join in.
Board the death train, death train.
People of the world, join in.
Board the death train, death train.
The end of the world will be soon.
Tell all the folks in India and China too
If you don’t heed the word about carbon…
then this train will keep driving, driving towards you.
Well, well well…
Robert in Calgary (12:35:03) : wrote:
It’s safe to say then, that Mr. Hansen wouldn’t object to terrorist acts against the power stations and the trains.
—————————–
Cognitive dissonance mutates to cognitive disobedience ??
Is this guy really the gatekeeper and messenger of global temperature measurements from GISS ?? Quite possibly the most unbelievable scenario ever in the history of science …. and pseudoscience.