2O Years Later, NASA’S Hansen Returns, Warns Congress +2C = Global Disaster NOT Salvation
Glenn MacIntosh | July 7, 2008
On June 23rd 1988, NASA's James Hansen was the first leading scientist to warn of the dangers of global warming before a U.S. Congressional committee. On June 23rd 2008, he returned to warn that the Earth's climate is nearing dangerous tipping points, to call for a national carbon tax and to declare that the CEO's of energy companies should be tried for crimes against humanity and nature.
Three of his most alarming statements:
"We have reached a point of planetary emergency..."
"...climate is nearing dangerous tipping points. Elements of a “perfect storm”, a global cataclysm, are assembled..."
"...the oft-stated goal to keep global warming less than +2 C (+3.6 Fahrenheit) is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation."
Our take on Hansen:
His conservative, congenial disposition comes across as counter to the urgency of the global emergency and social injustices posed by the devastating impacts of climate change that are being suffered by the people of the most impoverished nations RIGHT NOW, let alone the rapidly approaching future "global cataclysm" he warns of.
Never-the-less, Hansen has bravely led the scientific call to action for two often lonely decades, and has done so despite the considerable efforts of the Bush administration to censor and discredit him and fossil fuel industry-funded misinformation campaigns designed to deceive and betray the general public.
The real danger limit is NOW: For the last two years, politicians and environmental organizations have been saying we must avoid a +2 C tipping point. The problem is, this has always been a political 'target', never a scientific one.
The first proposed U.N. safe limit was +1 C in 1990, when targets were first considered, but the fossil fuel industry sold the world on the +2 C tipping point and has suckered us into delaying action all these years.
There will soon be no northern ice cap in the summer. Carbon feedback has been recorded from Alaska, Northern Sweden and Siberia. Methane hydrates are emitting off the Siberian shelf and carbon sink failure (the inability to absorb carbon due to full capacity) is occurring in two oceans.
The true danger limit is not +2 C. It is, in fact, less than +0.78 C, the present average global temperature increase to date and we've got to do something about it - FAST!
New York Times Hansen video interview by Andrew Revkin:
Full 2008 congressional speech (4 pages)
PowerPoint (all 44 slides in thumbnail view)
PowerPoint (one slide per page, 44 pages)
Dr. James Hansen's personal post on The Huffington Post after his presentation to Congress - 20 years later: tipping points near on global warming
Guardian audio - 'We had better get something done next year, or else'
Guardian article - Put oil firm chiefs on trial, says leading climate change scientist
Toronto Star, Tim Harper - Earth near tipping point, climatologist warns
Guardian, George Monbiot - Big oil's big lie
Special thanks for original contributions from ecoSanity.org Kindred Defender, Dr. Peter D. Carter, and for information received in an email from Carbon Equity, www.carbonequity.info.
Read more about 'the case for emergency action' in the new book, Climate Code Red.
Comments
James Hansen is one of the
James Hansen is one of the biggest, bravest heroes on our Earth today. Can you imagine his frustration, his angst, his private tears? And yet, he keeps doing the research, and keeps finding new ways to get it out to us, in ways we can hear it.
He is taking his job of warning us very seriously, because the threat is the most serious ever to face humanity. (Nuclear annihilation was never anything more than a potential threat. Global climate change has already killed a million people in Africa, and the threat continues to grow.) Anyone who says this is not part of Hansen's job is not a thinking, feeling human being.
His call to try the CEOs of fossil fuel companies for crimes against humanity (and the rest of nature) is spot on. These men have known for years that what they spew is creating destruction (pardon the pun), and yet they keep ramping it up. At least the tobacco company CEOs never forced cigarettes into our mouths!
Here's to the bravery of James Hansen, hero for the Earth, the Children, and the Future.