‘We don’t have a leader who is able to grasp [the issue] and say what is really needed. Instead we are trying to continue business as usual,’ say James Hansen. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA
The scientist who convinced the world to take notice of the looming danger of global warming says it would be better for the planet and for future generations if next week’s Copenhagen climate change summit ended in collapse.
In an interview with the Guardian, James Hansen, the world’s pre-eminent climate scientist, said any agreement likely to emerge from the negotiations would be so deeply flawed that it would be better to start again from scratch.
“I would rather it not happen if people accept that as being the right track because it’s a disaster track,” said Hansen, who heads the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
“The whole approach is so fundamentally wrong that it is better to reassess the situation. If it is going to be the Kyoto-type thing then [people] will spend years trying to determine exactly what that means.” He was speaking as progress towards a deal in Copenhagen received a boost today, with India revealing a target to curb its carbon emissions. All four of the major emitters – the US, China, EU and India – have now tabled offers on emissions, although the equally vexed issue of funding for developing nations to deal with global warming remains deadlocked.
Hansen, in repeated appearances before Congress beginning in 1989, has done more than any other scientist to educate politicians about the causes of global warming and to prod them into action to avoid its most catastrophic consequences. But he is vehemently opposed to the carbon market schemes – in which permits to pollute are bought and sold – which are seen by the EU and other governments as the most efficient way to cut emissions and move to a new clean energy economy.
Read the entire article here at the Guardian:
Copenhagen climate change talks must fail, says top scientist
Greg Goodknight (15:36:20) :
“The grapes are sour anyway”, said the fox.
Another Aesop fable comes to mind with the EU having a cap and trade policy and trying to sell it to the whole world: “The fox lost its tail in a trap, and went around trying to convince the rest that taillessness is in”
Icarus (04:40:16) :
“Also Icarus, you may want to consider that the world was 2-3 C warmer 5000 to 8000 years ago, but there was no world-wide tipping point then.”
Do you have any evidence to back that up? My understanding is that the world hasn’t been warmer than it is now in the 12,000 years since the last glaciation, and that you’d have to go back millions of years to find a time when it was 2 – 3°C warmer. I could be wrong.
Look at the plots http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png
Two degrees are there, and we are on a downward curve for sure, the only true prophecy: the ice age will come, we do not know the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png
Do not be fooled by the black average. It is specious averaging different proxies because even after very careful intercallibrations, the time intervals are dubious ( I just sat through a carbon 14 paleontological dating lecture, and learned that the latteral errors can be very large the further back one goes).
If anyone out there is interested in true science, you must read the following report:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/Monckton-Caught%20Green-Handed%20Climategate%20Scandal.pdf
Hansen is deeply mentally ill.
I’m not joking, unfortunately.
And it’s sad that someone as sick as he has gotten to be in charge.
Icarus,
I take your desire to learn to be sincere. If it is, I highly recommend:
Late Cretaceous and Cenozoic History of North American Vegetation, 1999, Oxford Univ. Press, by Dr. Alan Graham, Paleontologist Emeritus of Kent State.
The Amazon listing is here:
http://tinyurl.com/ybgl7jn
but you might want to check it out at your university library because it’s expensive.
Graham’s book is a masterwork synthesis of paleobotany and paleoclimatology. Everything you wish to know about past climates going back ~70 million years is in there.
Icarus (17:22:56) :
Bruce Cobb (17:07:06):
Icarus asked:
Do we know how much of a forcing would be required to trigger an unstoppable transition to a much warmer, ice-free world?
About 2 billion years from now the sun will have increased in brightness enough to reach that point. Until then, no worries. In about 4 billion years, we are cinder circling a red giant and maybe spiraling in to same.
There is a bit of a race condition between this and the earth core. Our nuclear fission furnace is running out of fuel. When that happens, the core starts to set up and we lose our magnetic field. Best projections are that the fuel runs out about now, plus or minus a couple of million years. So expect that we get less mag field protecting the planet somewhere in a few million years. It’s going to be a really bad day for life on earth then, as the atmosphere will likely do a “Martian disappearing act” then, much like it did on Mars when that planet ran out of nuclear fuel and it’s core set up. When the plate tectonics stop recycling CO2 from rocks and life sequesters it all, well, it’s going to be a very bad day… And a very cold one.
But we’ve got a few million years to figure out what to do about it. It takes a long time for the place to cool down inside. The good news is that we probably don’t have to worry about the sun consuming the planet. The bad news is that it will have been dead long before then, and us with it. The really bad news is that if we don’t get off this rock “soon” there may not be enough time to re-evolve sentient life that can do so (presuming we do something stupid like nuclear destruction of our selves).
So you can take your pick: Frozen desert with little air, like Mars. Wait longer and be burning cinder like Mercury. Get off this rock and preserve the diversity of life that evolved here on space stations and / or terraformed moons elsewhere in the solar system. Personally, I’d prefer “C”…
But we have plenty of time to discuss it and work out the details.
You mean, of, course, a “tipping point”…
Well to be specific I’m referring to long-term positive feedbacks involving ice sheets, vegetation changes, failure of carbon sinks etc. – anything that would amplify the original forcing to the point where a dramatic climate change would ensue even if the original forcing stopped.
With increased CO2 and increased warmth we get more vegetation and more carbon consumption by plants and algae, not less. With more desertification you get more dust fertilization of the ocean and more algae blooms so more CO2 consumption, not less. With ice sheet reduction you get more plant growth and more CO2 consumption, not less. etc. etc.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/of-trees-volcanos-and-pond-scum/
Then there is also that 4th power function on radiation… Puts a lid on warmth.
So you see, there are “tipping points”, but they are all to the cold side. The warm side has a fairly ‘hard lid’ on warmth. We are presently enjoying that status (being at an unsustainable peak of warmth) but it will not last. Enjoy it while you can.
Palaeoclimate seems to show a lot of sawtoothiness rather than gentle changes.
That it does. And if you look at the graphs in this link you will notice that the sawtooth always heads to the cold side from where we are now. You will notice that we are on the unsustainable tip of a sawtooth and that all the risk is to the downside. Looking to the past we see a set of peaks, all about the present warmth, some a smidgeon higher, and all ending in a plunge into the abyss of cold.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/how-long-is-a-long-temperature-history/
The real problem is to find a way, any way, to prevent that plunge. I would hope and pray that the “CO2 Greenhouse effect” is real ( I think it is not, but I can hope…) because the alternative is not pretty…
The good news is that the coming ice age advances about 800 feet a year. We have a few generations to prepare for the ice. (Notice that the snow and ice builds up in a ‘jittery linear’ fashion in the graphs. The next ice sheet advances over 100,000 years or so. Take the Greenland edge, draw a line to the limit of the last advance. Divide the distance by 100,000 years. That’s the rate of advance in that particular direction, more or less.) The bad news is that the cold can arrive much more swiftly than the ice (it not requiring a mass transfer, as the ice does…).
I don’t expect this to happen in my lifetime, or even in the next generation or three. Though in reality, the LIA may have been the start of the entry. It is slow enough and with enough ‘wobble’ that we might well be in the middle of the start of the decent into the “next” ice age. Our lives are just too short to really notice a 100,000 year movement with 1500 year oscillations and 200 year wobbles and 60 year ocean cycles and 20 year solar cycles and… So we run this way and that with the weather and call it “climate”.
But let there be no doubt: From here, the direction is down and cold. But with enough cyclical wobbles for folks to get excited about “change” in both directions, and on a regular schedule too…
Oh, and as the moon drifts away from Earth, we become more unstable to changes of tilt. The ice ages are likely to become worse and the interglacials more extreme. We might even end up tipped over with a pole pointing at the sun 1/2 a year and away 1/2 a year like some other planets. The effect will take many millions of years to become significant, so there is the chance that we might expire from other causes before that, though.
Frankly, THE most likely event is a major “rock fall” from space, rather like the one that did in the Clovis People in the Younger Dryas as a rock smashed into the ice sheet in North America. Did-in the megafauna of North America too. Those happen every few thousands of years and it’s been a few thousands of years… They tend to cause a “nuclear winter” for various lengths of time, depending on size.
So if you are looking for something to be worried about, by far the largest and most real risk is that of a nuclear winter from a meteor or asteroid strike. Odd are that a significant one happens inside a couple of hundred years, a catastrophic one every 10,000 or so years, and a horrific evolution reset size event every 60 million or so years. Statistically it has no significance, but we are “due” for each of those scales of event. Tunguska (sp?) was about “one interval” of that size event ago. The dinosaur killer was about ‘one interval’ of that size ago. And we’ve already mentioned that the Clovis People event was about ‘one interval’ of that size ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-Earth_object
A Tunguska event over Paris would leave us with no Paris (nor much in a large chunk of surrounding France). A “Clovis Killer” size would end Europe (and plunge the rest of the world into a minor ice age event, that might well hasten our plunge into the real ice age for the next 100,000 years). We won’t talk about anything larger since there is no “after” to discuss…
And we are doing substantially nothing about it. It could be dealt with using 1/100 th the money being wasted on AGW.
And it will happen. Absolute. Tick tick tic…
Who’d a thunk it? Aspen trees soaking up CO2.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091204092445.htm
Gore’s absence was forecast over 48 hours prior in this story:
http://www.captainsherlock.com/Olympic-Debt-2/Chapter-1.html
In Chapter 2 going up soon, perhaps 12-18 hours, you will read what caused Obama to delay his arrival and what may cause Canadian P-M Harper to stay home. Several humors offerings at http://www.m4gw.com which stands for Minnesotans 4 Global Warming
Cheers,
Chips
http://www.captainsherlock.com
Minnesota
The Colonies
Well hell’s bells Mr. Hansen: I thought we only had a few months or a few years to stop our CO2 emissions to save the World. I am happy to see that we now have at least a generation to address this issue.