Storms of My Grandchildren (42 page)
Read Storms of My Grandchildren Online
Authors: James Hansen
Therefore it is up to you. You will need to be a protector of your children and grandchildren on this matter. I am sorry to say that your job will be difficult—special interests have been able to subvert our democratic system. But we should not give up on the democratic system—quite the contrary. We must fight for the principle of equal justice.
One suggestion I have for now: Support Bill McKibben and his organization 350.org. It has the most effective and responsible leadership in the public struggle for climate justice. McKibben has done a remarkable job of helping young people get organized.
But as in other struggles for justice against powerful forces, it may be necessary to take to the streets to draw attention to injustice. There are places where action has begun to have some effect. The government in the United Kingdom, for example, may be turning against coal plants that do not capture carbon emission—strong activism there is surely playing a role. There have been some locally effective actions in the United States as well. But overall, results are small in comparison to what is needed. The international community seems to be headed down a path toward inadequate agreements at best. Civil resistance may be our best hope.
It is crucial for all of us, especially young people, to get involved. This book, I hope, has provided some assistance in understanding what policies we need to be fighting for—and why this will be the most urgent fight of our lives.
It is our last chance.
—James Hansen
October 12, 2009
I am indebted to longtime colleague and friend Makiko Sato for her artistic eye, physicist’s demand for accuracy, and indefatigable work ethic in producing the figures and checking for errors.
Nancy Miller suggested that I write this book. She and her colleagues at Bloomsbury, including George Gibson, Sabrina Farber, Peter Miller, and Mike O’Connor; as well as copy editor, Maureen Klier; and Dan Miller, were exceptionally supportive throughout the publication process, and especially deserve credit for improving the clarity of my writing.
Comments and suggestions on subject matter were provided by many friends and colleagues, including Yurika Arakawa, Bill Blakemore, Tom Blees, Barry Brook, Mark Bowen, Darnell Cain, Evelyn DeJesus, Paulina Essunger, Jane Halbedel, Vernon Haltom, Martin Hedberg, Pushker Kharecha, Charles Komanoff, Chuck Kutscher, Andy Lacis, Bill McKibben, Richard Morgan, Randall Morton, Matt Phillips, Makiko Sato, Robert Schmunk, George Stanford, Larry Travis, Jim Wine, and Maiken Winter.
Konrad Steffen provided the photo of a moulin on Greenland.
Data for several figures were obtained from NOAA Web sites.
I gratefully acknowledge the support of Hal Harvey and the Hewlett Foundation, Gerry Lenfest and the Lenfest Foundation, Lee Wasserman and the Rockefeller Family Fund, Steve Toben and the Flora Family Foundation, and Theodore Waddell and the Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Foundation, which has been permitted me to organize and carry out workshops on air pollution and energy and climate, as well as to speak out on these matters of importance to the public.
Most of all I am indebted to Anniek for her love and support in tolerating my inordinate obsessions and helping me make time to write this book—and to Erik, Christine, Yvonne, Chris, Sophie, Connor, and Jake for their love and inspiration.
Key Differences with Contrarians
Table employed in 1998 debates with Richard Lindzen and Pat Michaels.
1. Observed global warming: real or measurement problem?
RICHARD LINDZEN: Since about 1850 “…more likely…0.1 ± 0.3°C” (
MIT Tech Talk
, 34, no. 7, 1989).
JAMES HANSEN: Global warming is 0.5–0.75°C in past century, at least ~0.3°C in past 25 years.
2. Climate sensitivity (equilibrium response to 2 × CO2)
LINDZEN: <1°C
HANSEN: 3±1°C
3. Water vapor feedback
LINDZEN: Negative, upper tropospheric water vapor decreases with global warming.
HANSEN: Positive, upper and lower tropospheric water vapor increase with global warming.
4. CO2 contribution to the ~33°C natural greenhouse effect
LINDZEN: “Even if all other greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide and methane) were to disappear, we would still be left with over 98 percent of the current greenhouse effect.”
Cato Review
, Spring 1992, 87–98. “If all CO2 were removed from the atmosphere, water vapor and clouds would still provide almost all of the present greenhouse effect.”
Research and Exploration
9, 1993, 191–200.
HANSEN AND ANDY LACIS: Removing CO2, with water vapor kept fixed, would cool Earth 5–10°C; removing CO2 and trace gases with water vapor allowed to respond would remove most of the natural greenhouse effect.
5. When will global warming and climate change be obvious?
LINDZEN: “I personally feel that the likelihood over the next century of greenhouse warming reaching magnitudes comparable to natural variability seems small.”
MIT Tech Talk
, September 27, 1989.
HANSEN: “With the climatological probability of a hot summer represented by two faces (say painted red) of a six-faced die, judging from our model by the 1990s three or four of the six die faces will be red. It seems to us that this is a sufficient ‘loading’ of the dice that it will be noticeable to the man in the street.”
Journal of Geophysical Research
93, 1988, 9341–9364.
6. Planetary disequilibrium
LINDZEN: No known stated position, but his view on climate sensitivity implies a near zero planetary disequilibrium.
HANSEN: Earth is out of radiative equilibrium with space by at least approximately 0.5W/m2 (absorbing more energy than it emits). The planetary disequilibrium, or planetary energy imbalance, is the most fundamental measure of the state of the greenhouse effect. It could be measured as the sum of heat storage in the ocean plus energy going into the melting of ice. Existing technology, including very precise measurements of ocean and ice sheet topography, could provide this information.
Global Climate Forcings
and Radiative Feedbacks
Climate forcings and feedbacks—a simplified version of the table presented at the Gore-Mikulski roundtable and Climsat workshop.
More sources, including my communications, presentations, and scholarly publications, are available at
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1.
Preface
Pool, Robert. “Struggling to Do Science for Society,”
Science
248 (May 11, 1990): 672–73.
Chapter 1: The Vice President’s Climate Task Force
Fröhlich, Claus. “Solar Irradiance Variability Since 1978,”
Space Science Reviews
125 (December 8, 2006): 53–65.
Hansen, James, Makiko Sato, and Reto Ruedy. “Radiative Forcing and Climate Response,”
Journal of Geophysical Research
102 (March 27, 1997): 6831–64.
Hansen, James, Makiko Sato, Reto Ruedy, Andrew Lacis, and Valdar Oinas. “Global Warming in the Twenty-First Century: An Alternative Scenario,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
97 (August 29, 2000): 9875–80,
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/18/9875.full.
Hansen, James, Makiko Sato, Reto Ruedy, Larissa Nazarenko et al. “Efficacy of Climate Forcings,”
Journal of Geophysical Research
110 (September 28, 2005): D18104 (45 pages).
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis
. Edited by John T. Houghton, Yihui Ding, David J. Griggs, Maria Noguer et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
———.
Climate Change 2007
:
The Physical Science Basis
. Edited by Susan Solomon, Dahe Qin, Martin Manning, Melinda Marquis et al. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Chapter 2: The A-Team and the Secretary’s Quandary
Hansen, James. “Case for Vermont” (May 3, 2007),
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2007/Vermont_20070503.pdf.
Hansen, James, Darnell Cain, and Robert Schmunk. “On the Road to Climate Stability: The Parable of the Secretary” (November 14, 2005),
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2005/ateampaper_20051114.pdf.
Chapter 3: A Visit to the White House
Charney, Jule G., Akio Arakawa, D. James Baker, Bert Bolin et al.
Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment
. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1979.
http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/~brianpm/charneyreport.html.
Hansen, James. “Can We Defuse the Global Warming Time Bomb?” naturalSCIENCE (August 1, 2003),
http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh.html.
Kerr, Richard A. “Greenhouse Skeptic out in the Cold: A Prominent Meteorologist Says the Greenhouse Warming Will Probably Be a Bust; Experts in and out of the Climate Community Staunchly Disagree with This Latest Iconoclast,”
Science
246 (December 1, 1989): 1118–19.
Petit, J. R., J. Jouzel, D. Raynaud, N. I. Barkov et al. “Climate and Atmospheric History of the Past 420,000 Years from the Vostok Ice Core, Antarctica,”
Nature
399 (June 3, 1999): 429–36.
Siddall, M., E. J. Rohling, A. Almogi-Labin, Ch. Hemleben et al. “Sea-Level Fluctuations During the Last Glacial Cycle,”
Nature
423 (June 19, 2003): 853–58.
Vimeux, Françoise, Kurt M. Cuffey, and Jean Jouzel. “New Insights into Southern Hemisphere Temperature Changes from Vostok Ice Cores Using Deuterium Excess Correction,”
Earth and Planetary Science Letters
203 (2002): 829–43.
Chapter 4: Time Warp
Hansen, James, William Rossow, and Inez Fung, ed.
Long-Term Monitoring of Global Climate Forcings and Feedbacks.
New York: NASA Conference Publication 3234, February 3–4, 1992 (90 pages).
Marshall, Eliot. “Bringing NASA Down to Earth,”
Science
244 (June 16, 1989): 1248–51.
Chapter 5: Dangerous Reticence: A Slippery Slope
Hansen, James. “A Slippery Slope: How Much Global Warming Constitutes ‘Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference’?”
Climatic Change
68 (2005): 269–79.
———. “Defusing the Global Warming Time Bomb,”
Scientific American
(March 2004): 68–77.
———. “Scientific Reticence and Sea Level Rise,”
Environmental Research Letters
2 (May 24, 2007): 024002 (6 pages),
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1748-9326/2/2/024002/erl7_2_024002.html.
Chapter 6: The Faustian Bargain: Humanity’s Own Trap
Camp, Charles D., and Ka Kit Tung. “Surface Warming by the Solar Cycle as Revealed by the Composite Mean Difference Projection,”
Geophysical Research Letters
34 (July 18, 2007): L14703 (5 pages).
Hansen, James. “Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference: A Discussion of Humanity’s Faustian Climate Bargain and the Payments Coming Due,” presentation at the Distinguished Public Lecture Series at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa (October 26, 2004),
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2004/dai_complete_20041026.pdf.
Hansen, James, Reto Ruedy, Jay Glascoe, and Makiko Sato. “GISS Analysis of Surface Temperature Change,”
Journal of Geophysical Research
104 (December 27, 1999): 30,997–31,022.
Hansen, James, Makiko Sato, Reto Ruedy, Andrew Lacis et al. “Forcings and Chaos in Interannual to Decadal Climate Change,”
Journal of Geophysical Research
102 (November 27, 1997): 25, 679–720.
Chapter 7: Is There Still Time?
A Tribute to Charles David Keeling
Bowen, Mark.
Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming.
New York: Dutton, 2008.
Hansen, James. “Is There Still Time to Avoid ‘Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference’ with Global Climate? A Tribute to Charles David Keeling,” presentation at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, San Francisco, December 6, 2005,
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2005/Keeling_20051206.pdf.
———. “Swift Boating, Stealth Budgeting, and Unitary Executives,” Worldwatch Institute (October 15, 2006),
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4665.
Hansen, James, and Makiko Sato. “Greenhouse Gas Growth Rates,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
101 (November 16, 2004): 16109–14,
http://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16109.full.
Hansen, James, Makiko Sato, Reto Ruedy, Pushker Kharecha et al. “Dangerous Human-made Interference with Climate: A GISS ModelE Study,”
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
7 (May 7, 2007): 2287–312,
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/7/2287/2007/acp-7-2287-2007.html.
Chapter 8: Target Carbon Dioxide:
Where Should Humanity Aim?
Hansen, James, Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha, David Beerling et al. “Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?”
Open Atmospheric Science Journal
2 (2008): 217–31,
http://www.bentham.org/open/toascj/openaccess2.htm.
Hearty, Paul, John T. Hollin, A. Conrad Neumann, Michael J. O’Leary, and Malcolm McCulloch. “Global Sea-Level Fluctuations During the Last Interglaciation (MIS 5e),”
Quaternary Science Reviews
26 (2007): 2090–112.
Zachos, James, Mark Pagani, Lisa Sloan, Ellen Thomas, and Katharina Billups. “Trends, Rhythms, and Aberrations in Global Climate 65 Ma to Present,”
Science
292 (April 27, 2001): 686–93.
Chapter 9: An Honest, Effective Path
Hansen, James. “Dear Prime Minister” (December 19, 2007),
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20071219_DearPrimeMinister.pdf.
———. “Dear Chancellor, Perspective of a Younger Generation” (January 22, 2008),
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2008/20080122_DearChancellor.pdf.
———. “Dear Prime Minister Fukuda” (July 3, 2008),
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20080703_DearPrimeMinisterFukuda.pdf.
Kharecha, Pushker A., Charles F. Kutscher, James E. Hansen, and Edward Mazria. “Options for Near-Term Phaseout of Coal Emissions in the United States” draft (June 2009),
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2009/UScoalphaseout_draft.pdf.
Chapter 10: The Venus Syndrome
Hansen, James. “Climate Threat to the Planet: Implications for Energy Policy and Intergenerational Justice,” Bjerknes Lecture, American Geophysical Union, San Francisco, December 17, 2008,
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/AGUBjerknes_20081217.pdf.
Zeebe, Richard E., James C. Zachos, and Gerald R. Dickens. “Carbon Dioxide Forcing Alone Insufficient to Explain Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum Warming,”
Nature Geoscience
2 (July 13, 2009): 576–80.
Chapter 11: Storms of My Grandchildren
Pritchard, Hamish D., Robert J. Arthern, David G. Vaughan, and Laura A. Edwards. “Extensive Dynamic Thinning on the Margins of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets,”
Nature
461 (October 15, 2009): 971–75.
Hansen, James. “In Defence of Kingsnorth Six,” September 10, 2008,
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2008/20080910_Kingsnorth.pdf.