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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Center for Biological Diversity Declares Legal War on Global Warming
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2009/2009-02-13-091.asp
SAN FRANCISCO, California, February 13, 2009 (ENS) – To fight climate change, the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity Thursday opened a new law institute in San Francisco and announced the dedication of an initial $17 million to the project.
The Climate Law Institute will use existing laws and work to establish new state and federal laws that will eliminate energy generation by the burning of fossil fuels – particularly coal and oil shale.
Burning these materials emits greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that have already raised the planetary temperature, threatening the widespread extinction of species, sea level rise and ocean acidity, food and water scarcity, heatwaves, wildfires and floods.
“Global warming is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. It is the defining issue of our time,” said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center.
“To meet the challenge, the Center for Biological Diversity has created the Climate Law Institute to extend the reach of current environmental and human health laws to encompass global warming, pass new climate legislation, and reinvent America’s approach to protecting endangered species and public lands,” he said.
“The planet can not afford a single new coal-fired power plant,” said Suckling. “It can’t even afford existing coal plants. Working with partners in government and the environmental movement, the Center for Biological Diversity will ensure America moves beyond coal energy as rapidly as possible. Our lives depend on it.”
————————————————————-
A man with the appropriate name to feed at the public trough.
Robert Bateman,
If oil, natural gas and even light Helium can remain buried for hundreds of millions of years, then CO2 can as well. Natural gas is routinely pumped underground for storage. The right geology is all that is required.
This is a link to the project I was talking about. It is being carefully studied with papers published in Nature etc. to ensure the CO2 is, in fact, being sequestered. Enhanced oil recovery is the place to start since these projects more than pay for themselves (155 million barrels of oil pays for a lot of CO2).
http://www.ptrc.ca/weyburn_statistics.php
Logan (15:31:49) :
“Ron de Haan: Thanks for the link to green-agenda.com, which everyone here should study. In effect, the rational remarks found here are considered irrelevant by the church of Gaia, as represented by the Club of Rome, the UN, Agenda 21, etc. A new pseudo-religion has been invented, and the effects will be grim. The agenda is transparent and available to anyone who spends a little time reading the remarks of the high priests.”
Logan,
You are welcome.
I have taken notice of the content of the Green Agenda but I kept my reservations until the financial crises started.
The Green Agenda mentioned an economic crises as the starting point of the First Global Revolution.
As this crises coincides with the new Obama Government (strong ties with the UN and the IPCC Climate Agenda and the World Bank) the message became a lot more convincing.
We do not have to wait very long for real evidence for the Green Agenda scenario to be true or not.
Hansen is a bit confused about coal in Britain. It was the only thing keeping millions alive through the recent cold snaps with little wind or sun.
Had the coal trains stopped running, then many people would have died. The lack of common sense displayed is – remarkable.
Climate Heretic (15:35:50) :
“Warmer is Better” is just banal nonsense. Tell that to the families of the 35,000 who died in the European heatwave of 2003.
This has been discussed in great detail, there are far more deaths each year from COLD than HEAT. Picking an anolomous year as proof of something has also been beaten to death”.
Climate Heretic,
Although I agree with your posting a small detail is important to mention:
People do not die from heat.
People die because of dehydration, they don’t drink enough.
Especially elderly people.
After the 2003 Heatwave in Europe a social network was setup to check up on elderly during warm days to see that they take sufficient fluids to prevent dehydration.
Cold however is a “direct” killer.
Hypothermia and freezing simply happen if you are not able to heat your house.
Agree with your post but for a wry chuckle, I suggest changing that to bass ackwards.
My respect for Dr. Patrick J. Michaels as the only scientist testifying that the science isn’t settled and disputing the ability of the IPCC models to accurately predict the climate in the future.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1494&Itemid=1
I would recommend to watch the video recording where it is quit clear at the 2.05 hour mark how hostile those testimonies can get.
Paul Shanahan (14:49:59) :
Care to post up a graph with what you believe is the real levels of CO2 throughout geological history? I’m sure it would be appreciated.
(Hmmm “foinavon” 8 count (2 x 4) in the 8-10 sweet spot for total length… “Benjamin P.” 10 count (with space) in the 8-10… Rachel trolls bait, picks up nibble, sets stage for foinavon? Or maybe not. Wonder if their IP numbers are ‘near’… )
At any rate, don’t we have an IPCC approved CO2 series from ice cores or some other “must have it for IPCC” graph with higher CO2 in the past?
I don’t suppose it is worth pointing out that all the CO2 in coal folks are stressing about came from the air in the Carboniferous so you get to pick one: 1) CO2 was much higher then. or 2) Burning the coal will not make CO2 “high”.
If there is no IPCC graph with higher CO2, then there is no coal or IPCC are terribly wrong. If there is such a graph, then there was more CO2 in the past, proportional to coal.
No, that would be logical and self consistent…
Also note that the removal of the CO2 ended in an ice age… I’m not keen on having another ice age.
Rachel:
Its a combination of genetics and your bodies adaptation to its environment. People who have lived in cold climates for generations have changed genetically to handle the cold. There was a series of programs on a few years ago in the UK by a scientist, whose name escapes me now, that showed how humans had adapted genetically to different environments.
If you want some figures then, in Canada, for every 1oC drop in temperature hospitalizations due to heart failure increase by between 0.15 and 0.81% and deaths increase by between 0.56% and 1.08%
David Ball (12:45:12) :
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 !!!
The thing is — 2.4 Billion Humans living in India, China and (possibly) Brasil will step forward on the back of fossil fuel powered electricity and transport regardless of what the US and the rest of Western Civilisation decide to do.
If we cut our own economic throats, the international movement of Capital in search of an investment return will ensure the pre-eminence of these nations for the rest of this century.
If you notice, these countries have not backed off fossil fuels one iota. they are happy to take green funds from the west for Hydro plants – who wouldn’t, as they are not run by people captured by a “craze”.
The whole anti-CO2 movement reminds me strongly of the witch craze of the 1600s amplified by a modern mass media system.
For those who are saying we shouldn’t sequester CO2 or what is the scientific basis,
My answer is we should just in case.
Temps have increased by 0.7C over the last 150 years (0.4C if you take out the artificial inflation of the numbers by Hansen and Jones and the like.)
It seems GHGs are the most likely reason for that increase. If the increase continues, we are looking at temperatures increasing by 1.0C to 1.5C by 2100. Probably not a disaster and probably not a reason to increase electricity by 100%.
But Hansen could be less than 50% wrong (as the numbers to date show). He could be 75% right.
Or Hansen may be more than 50% right in the extended future, beyond 2100. He could be right that the deep oceans are absorbing some of the increased temperature right now and once they catch up, the warming will be higher than the current trends indicate (might take another 1,000 years for the rest of the temp increase to appear).
(Credit to Lucia for this analogy) If you set your oven temp to 400F to cook a turkey, the temperature in the oven will only be 390F while the cold turkey cooks and absorbs some of the heat energy. When the turkey eventually reaches 395F (which would be a very burnt turkey), then the oven temp will continue rising until it reaches 400F.
So, just in case, Hansen is less than 50% wrong or more than 50% right in the very long-term (over 1,000 years), we should err on the side of caution where it makes the most sense. And the only place it makes sense right now is for the biggest emitters, which are the coal-fired electricity plants.
Bill Illis:
I’m sure we can do it either way, and the only criteria we need be concerned about is getting the most out of our finite energy supplies while at the same time avoiding the bad toxins.
I have just heard that the early experiments for pumping CO2 below ground failed and set the projects back. There was also some experimentation with Calcium Hydroxide (or something like it) trees for placing in winds streams.
Hansen forgets that his suggested policies will cause people to freeze to death and starve to death
I seriously contemplated it, Ross.
But I am really worried about supposed top scientists & politicians who propose taking away the coal that keeps whole populations from freezing to death.
Such stances sound remarkably exterminationist and inhuman.
Who’s going to need scientists or politicians when civilization has returned to the Stone Age?
Never expected to hear this from you.
Now don’t get in a twist; at least it shows I read some of your posts even though I usually disagree.
An alternative interpretation might be that “they” are alarmist AI’s trying to pass the Turing test. Perhaps you have caught them out?
How right you are, and I suspect that is the true intent of the alarmists.
It is time for us to be alarmed to this threat.
“The planet can not afford a single new coal-fired power plant,” said Suckling. “It can’t even afford existing coal plants. Our lives depend on it.”
Well, yes, our lives do depend on coal-fired plants. What are they going to do, remove all of them and build nuclear plants? There isn’t enough bio-mass, solar, wind or hydro power to meet America’s needs.
It will take 10 years to bring new nuke power online, and accidents at the
scale they are thinking of will surely happen.
Plus you have a really bad storage, security and proliferation risk.
What happens to solar if the climate turns really cold and cloudy?
I don’t rightly believe that these jokers have a clue as to what reality looks like. They surely don’t talk like it.
We in the 21st century live the most comfortable lives ever experienced in human history because of electricity generation, and our ability to use electricty to heat and cool our environment and power our lives. If you want to see human misery on a scale unprecedented in human history, stop Dr. Hansen’s “death trains.” The result will be apocylyptic. But then, maybe that’s what Hansen and Rachel want–a world with no human influence. I think I’ll object to that nonsense.
Hansen uses the term “death train” to bring up an obvious analogy with the Holocaust. WWII was not the worst holocaust in the last century in terms of avoidable human deaths. That would go to those who banned DDT. About 100 million people have died of Malaria and 80% of those could have been prevented by DDT.
Those deaths were due to “environmentalists.”
Now due to fears about global warming, we are desperately seeking alternatives and burning food for fuel. In February 2007 the World Food Program Director James T. Morris reported that 18,000 children are now dying every day from hunger and malnutrition.
I wonder who at the end will be the biggest mass killer, Rachel Carson or James Hansen? If half the deaths due to malnutrition could be prevented by cheaper food, the Hansen has about 18 years to go. Of course, if it gets colder and crop yields drop……
Back in the seventies one of my son’s (he’s now a PhD geology professor) favorite books was by Richard Scarry and the title was something like, “What Do People Do All Day”, or as we called it when we read it before bed, “The How People Do Book”. Among the occupations featured in the book were coal miners. I distinctly remember coal being described as “BURIED SUNLIGHT”. When you take the series of steps that include photosynthesis, plants, burial and conversion to coal, the buried sunlight seems right on the mark. So it seems obvious to me that we simply rename all the coal fired power plants as producing energy using solar power. The greenies should be thrilled to find out that their energy is clean, green and solar.
I have family-running those trains and mining that coal-my late father in law helped liberate Dachau.Now if Hansen want s to compare death.If Carl was alive today he’d love to escort him on a little tour of the Garden spots of Europe and Dachau and i have a feeeling he’d wear his Army boots to kick Hansen’s butt from Bastonge to Remagen.
This is an insult to humanity and America what arrogance!!!!
BTW Carl’s family are coal miners in Kentucky…..
@foinavon (16:17:58) :
“[…] I don’t use my real name on the Internet. I did a few years ago and had an unpleasant experience where someone chose to hunt down my work address and engage in harrassment that required me to reconfigure my security profiles, disappear from the web for a spell, and change my email and web addresses. I’m not anyone in particular…however I can be found on the web. So I prefer not to use my real name. […]”
I can relate to that. I (and several others on another internet forum) had a similar scary experience a few years ago. The stalker/madman actually tried to get several of us fired and twice made false complaints to the police that brought the authorities to one fellow’s house.
Fortunately, Anthony allows those who choose not to reveal their identities to post here on WUWT. I sincerely appreciate that I’m allowed to participate on a blog with a world-wide audience. I accept that my posts will be considered a notch below those posts made by clearly identifiable individuals.
As for the C02 vs Temp graph above. I have a lot of respect for geologists and geological science. I take the graph as generally accurate in the relationship between the variables but only somewhat accurate in the actual values of the variables. You can put some honkin’ error bars on the variables in that graph and the relationship would still tell the same tale, eh?
H.R.
P.S. I do give a valid e-mail address to Anthony and the moderators in case the wish to question me. I’m not into salty language or ad homs on individuals so I really haven’t given Anthony and the WUWT mod team any reason to contact me. They have enough on their plates as it is.
foinavon (16:17:58) :
E.M.Smith (15:38:14)
That is a rather paranoid post, if I may say so! John Philip and Joel Shore may or may not be real names, but what difference does it make?
The difference depends on who is really whom and what their motives are…
I said it was somewhat paranoid. No argument. I spent a lot of years hanging out in law enforcement. A few decades dealing with being under constant attack by hackers (and not getting hacked…). I’ve worked in the computer security department of a stock broker (with requisite FBI checks). It’s part of the ‘turf’. Never heard of ‘human factors’ attacks?
You learn to look at the paranoid as ‘the canary in the coal mine’ (Knew I could work coal in to keep it on topic 😉 and use what it tells you to inform your ignorance. It gives you ‘first clue’ and that is vital in a dogfight… It helps you find the truth more often than it misleads. It’s all in how you filter the false alarms…
Now, I have no issue with hiding who you are (I am blessed with a name that is functionally ‘anonymous anonymous’ but still take care about degree of personal pointers left about…).
That said, I do like to know when I’m being “double teamed” or when one person is doing ‘their own set ups’ or when I’m dealing with a financed organization wolf pack. (Russian government attacks are always ‘by the book’ down to coffee breaks!) It would be naive to assume that everyone always is working solo from their living room. (Though that is more common among skeptics than AGWers … something about the relative propensity to ‘rugged independence’ vs ‘socialism’ IMHO).
And this isn’t about “attempt to wash ones hands of good arguments by dismissing these as “trolling”!” it’s about knowing who’s who (even if pseudonyms) and how they work.
Now I prefer to play all the cards ‘face up’. The game is faster and more fun. But other folks like ‘bridge’. You don’t even get to the cards for half an hour! It’s all about knowing what motivates the other party and how they will behave.
“trolling”. Whether or not someone uses their real name makes no difference to me. As with science in general it’s all about the evidence and the arguments!
And about when someone does their own ‘set up’ under a pseudonym to put a predetermined bit of propaganda into a thread to hijack it… or posts self confirmatory followups under a second name to give the appearance of a social agreement on direction when there is none, and … are they someone who likes bridge more than 21. But you already know these things.
The bottom line is that yes, it’s only the truth from science that matters; though getting to that truth involves running the gamut of trolls and wolf packs with agendas and, unfortunately, folks like Soros tossing lots of money at influence and folks like AlGore using influence to get money.
So my ‘false alarm’ filter says there isn’t any ‘corrective action’ for the observation; but I’m still going to observe. And observing is not paranoid.
Back on coal: By definition it is just returning to the biosphere that which was in the biosphere before. This is bad because the biosphere was bad before?
“Human beings have never experienced an atmosphere with CO2 levels significantly above what they are today.”
For vegetable culture in an “actual greenhouse,” It’s usual to raise the CO2 concentration up to 1000 ppm or more.
Rachel (13:28:14) :
Methinks Rachel that you are confusing overall avarage temps with “weather”. Not being from the USA I would presume that Texas and Florida have average temperatures that are more than 5 deg higher than Minnesota or Maine. Yet from what I understand there are a few more people retiring in Florida than compared to Maine. Gee maybe the warmer climate has something to do with it.
Sure people die in heatwaves, lot’s more die when it’s cold and freezing. Food grows pretty well in the tropics but not so well in Siberia or greenland. Same old, Same old, weather events of hot weather prove CO2 causes GW but cold weather proves nothing. It’s the non-falsifiability of all the AGW rhetoric that is the issue.
Maybe Hansen should stop killing people by sucking all that coal-generated electricity into his GISS computer simulator. Let people with functional computers do good with it.