From MSNBC.
During his big emotional climate speech this week, President Ovbama said:
“I don’t want my grand-kids to not be able to swim in Hawaii or not be able to climb a mountain and see a glacier because we didn’t do something about it,That’d be shameful of us.”
But for some who study climate change the only shame is this: Obama’s plan does not go nearly far enough. It’s meek and dangerously self-congratulatory, sapping the movement of urgency while doing almost nothing to maintain the future habitability of the earth.
“The actions are practically worthless,” said James Hansen, a climate researcher who headed NASA’s Goddard’s Institute for Space Studies for over 30 years and first warned congress of global warming in 1988. “They do nothing to attack the fundamental problem.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” he wrote, when asked if the plan would make continued climate activism unnecessary. Obama’s plan, and for that matter the proposed plan Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, he continued, “is like the fellow who walks to work instead of driving, and thinks he is saving the world.”
Hansen suggested a gradually rising fee for fossil fuel extraction, collected at the port of entry or, in domestic cases, the place where the material actually comes out of the ground. “As long as fossil fuels are allowed to (appear to be) the cheapest energy, someone will burn them,” he wrote in an email to msnbc. “It is not so much a matter of how far you go. It is a matter of whether you are going in the right direction.”
The right direction is away from a global temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. If that grim milestone is reached the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that irreversible damage to society would be the likely result.
In Copenhagen in 2009, world leaders agreed to work together to keep global temperatures below that mark. In Paris this coming November and December, climate ministers will gather again in hopes of negotiating a new agreement, one that puts the world on a path for less than 2 degrees of warming.
…
The White House is reviewing the criticisms and told msnbc that it would respond shortly.
More: http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/obamas-climate-policy-practically-worthless-says-expert
You gotta love the single mindedness on display at MSNBC in the poll that accompanies the story:
There’s no option for a simple “No, I don’t support it”. Typical.
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A pathetic insane hack of a scientist complaining that Mr. Obama’s anti-science energy policy is not crazy enough.
Good summary
“Morbus Hansen” is, in medical terms, Leprosy. This case, anyhow, seems different and, brain related only, hopelessly incurable. Probably Lewandowsky has a better diagnosis but I doubt that his personal
cookchef has a remedy.BTW, that “practically worthless” is, although formally correct, a first-class understatement, and the reasons he came to such a conclusion are dead wrong.
This German weather website (www.wetter.de) contains good news and bad news, or maybe just different kinds of bad news.
Firstly there is this, which bemoans the disappearing glaciers in the Alps:
http://www.wetter.de/cms/die-gletscher-schmelzen-unaufhaltsam-alpen-besonders-betroffen-2404337.html
Then there is this, whose title warns of an imminent shortage of honey and coffee but in fact talks about a shortage of a certain kind of tea:
http://www.wetter.de/cms/lebensmittelversorgung-durch-klimawandel-bedroht-kaffee-honig-und-co-gibt-es-bald-nicht-mehr-2394052.html?c=bec4&i=32
But this article warns of the danger of a mini-ice age:
http://www.wetter.de/cms/sonnenaktivitaet-macht-schlapp-kommt-2030-eine-mini-eiszeit-2377678.html
Google provides the following translation:
Predicted Little Ice Age
That’s a whole new scenario: In a few years we will be on the earth is not about all grilled because of climate change but have to get dressed properly warm. At least mathematics professor and doctor of astrophysics Valentina Zharkova from the Northumbria University looks a little ice age to come down to earth. In addition, she reported now at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno, Wales. My new model for the calculation of irregularities in 11-year solar cycle says a drop in solar activity during the years 2030 to 2040 preceded by up to 60 percent. This phenomenon was most recently in the mini-ice age from 1645 to 1715 and was named after its discoverer, the astronomer Edward Walter Maunder, “Maunder Minimum”. Zharkova and her colleagues believe that the solar cycle of not only deep inside Sun is well founded. So, however, the previous assumption. There were close to the surface a second cycle, the researchers suggest. If the highlights of both cycles at the same time take place, they cancel each other out. This declining solar activity. According to the researcher’s predictions about 97 percent accurate.
Maybe Obama should be worried that his (prospective) grandchildren won’t be able to go bathing in the sea at Hawaii as it will be too cold.
Obama and Dr. James Hansen ‘practically worthless,’ says climate.
There, fixed it for ya.
If we were clever and foolish enough to turn away, how low do we go? Two degrees Celsius below pre-industrial times? Is that the optimum range for people … p/m 2 degrees? Is that the optimum range for all living things? For all glaciers? For all sea levels? For the emergence of spring, annual hurricane energy, wildfire and drought occurrence?
And what if we operate in the optimum range, does everything thrive sustain-ably? Or do we get runaway sustainability? Better yet, how many of our grandchildren must we eliminate in order to keep this terraformed utopia operating within the control limits? Who gets to choose, do we vote?
I think your reputation has held up rather well in this thread, don’t you, James?
Perhaps James should have more concern about his grandchildren remembering their grandfather as a failed prognosticator who was arrested while always wearing a silly hat.
An interesting field of study would be if CAGW Belief causes mental instability, or if there is a pre-existing tendency. Hansen would be a good test subject.
Reblogged this on SiriusCoffee and commented:
Yes folks, you read that right. The key to curbing climate change is… more taxes!
Expanding the size and scope of government will save us all from ourselves. It’s almost like our hands hover over the BIG RED BUTTON and we’d press it if not constrained by the ever watchful hand of State.
Over on Judith Curry’s blog, ‘Turbulent Eddie’ offered an important observation about what portion of US carbon emissions are produced by the electric utilities:
My response to ‘Turbulent Eddie’ went like this:
President Obama’s stated 2025, 2030, and 2050 emission reduction targets as applied to the above graph of United States CO2 emissions would produce these approximate numbers:
2005 Baseline..: 6.0 G-tne (2005 Emission Baseline)
2013 Emissions.: 5.5 G-tne (2013 Emission Figure)
28% by 2025….: 4.3 G-tne (1.2 reduction from 2013)
32% by 2030….: 4.1 G-tne (1.4 reduction from 2013)
80% by 2050….: 1.3 G-tne (4.2 reduction from 2013)
One estimate from recent Congressional testimony is that the Clean Power Plan falls roughly 40% short in achieving President Obama’s 2025 target for US carbon emission reductions.
That additional carbon has to come out of the 3.2 G-tonnes of Year 2013 C02 emissions which come from sources not associated with the production of electricity — transportation, chemical processing, etc.
We can play as many games as we might like to with alternative CO2 reduction strategies and alternative scenarios for the future mix of carbon and non-carbon energy resources.
But what it comes down to is that President Obama’s targets cannot be achieved without very significant and painful energy conservation measures.
The most effective and economically efficient way to enforce those energy conservation measures would be for the US Government to put a stiff price on carbon and to take actions which directly constrain the supply and availability of all carbon fuels.
If the overriding objective is to achieve President Obama’s emission reduction targets, regardless of any other considerations, it isn’t going to happen any other way.
“I don’t want my grand-kids to not be able to swim in Hawaii”
Obama could have grand-kids in the next decade, does he seriously think Hawaii will be underwater by then?
The plan is an assault on prosperity. The opinion of someone who apparently does not understand the relation between mathematics and the physical world is worthless.
If you understand the relation between mathematics and the physical world, you understand that, for a forcing to have an effect, it must exist for a period of time and the effect of the forcing is calculated by its duration. If the forcing varies, (or not) the effect is determined by the time-integral of the forcing (or the time-integral of a function thereof).
The CO2 level has been above about 150 ppmv for at least the entire Phanerozoic eon (the last 542 million or so years). If CO2 was a forcing, its effect on average global temperature (AGT) would be calculated according to its time-integral (or the time-integral of a function thereof) for about 542 million years. Because there is no way for that calculation to consistently result in the current AGT, CO2 cannot be a forcing.
Variations of this proof and identification of what does cause climate change (R^2 > 0.97) are at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com
The activist mantra is always ‘it’s just a beginning – a bare beginning.’
No matter what the cause is, no action is ever enough, and never will be, because being part of a ’cause’ is the real journey. That’s why they always jump the shark.
Well see, here’s the thing; I am almost attempted to agree with James on this . . . . then I realize, if you are agreeing with him, you are probably missing something important.
Say, for a moment you wanted to hamstring the U.S. economy as much as you possibly could, and knew your influence wouldn’t last beyond a certain period of time.
The policies proscribed by the Obama administration would be the best possible tool. It doesn’t require passage of either house of congress and, while it may be overturned by a later administration, it will continue to have a meaningful impact long after the decision is reversed, just because the resource development will never catch up to where it could have been. Huge opportunity costs.
If that were your goal, you wouldn’t call this useless. It’s just a matter of perspective. Hansen is a true believer in the greenfreak movement, while Obama is only a watermelon member; green on the outside, red on the inside. His policies always seem to lean to the side that damages America with respect to our competitiveness with the rest of the world. Always.
You can say all I have is correlation, but then, that’s all the alarmists have, really.
Did anybody else catch this?:
“I don’t want my grand-kids to not be able to swim in Hawaii or not be able to climb a mountain and see a glacier because we didn’t do something about it,That’d be shameful of us.”
Of course, what he *doesn’t* want is you, or any of your offspring to *ever* go anywhere (because any travel will release the demon-gas CO2) – much less hop on a commercial jet and go to Hawaii.