As reported in the Tom Nelson Blogspot
According to James Hansen, coal-fired power stations are death factories. Close them! The government is expected to give the go-ahead to the coal-burning Kingsnorth power plant. Here, one of the world’s foremost climate experts launches an excoriating attack on Britain’s long love affair with the most polluting fossil fuel of all.
James Hansen in the UK Observer
A year ago, I wrote to Gordon Brown asking him to place a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants in Britain. I have asked the same of Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd and other leaders. The reason is this - coal is the single greatest threat to civilisation and all life on our planet.The climate is nearing tipping points.
Changes are beginning to appear and there is a potential for explosive changes, effects that would be irreversible, if we do not rapidly slow fossil-fuel emissions over the next few decades. As Arctic sea ice melts, the darker ocean absorbs more sunlight and speeds melting. As the tundra melts, methane, a strong greenhouse gas, is released, causing more warming. As species are exterminated by shifting climate zones, ecosystems can collapse, destroying more species.
The public, buffeted by weather fluctuations and economic turmoil, has little time to analyse decadal changes. How can people be expected to evaluate and filter out advice emanating from those pushing special interests? How can people distinguish between top-notch science and pseudo-science?Those who lead us have no excuse - they are elected to guide, to protect the public and its best interests. They have at their disposal the best scientific organisations in the world, such as the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences. Only in the past few years did the science crystallise, revealing the urgency.
Our planet is in peril. If we do not change course, we’ll hand our children a situation that is out of their control. One ecological collapse will lead to another, in amplifying feedbacks.The amount of carbon dioxide in the air has already risen to a dangerous level. The pre-industrial carbon dioxide amount was 280 parts per million (ppm). Humans, by burning coal, oil and gas, have increased this to 385 ppm; it continues to grow by about 2 ppm per year. Earth, with its four-kilometre-deep oceans, responds only slowly to changes of carbon dioxide.
So the climate will continue to change, even if we make maximum effort to slow the growth of carbon dioxide. Arctic sea ice will melt away in the summer season within the next few decades. Mountain glaciers, providing fresh water for rivers that supply hundreds of millions of people, will disappear - practically all of the glaciers could be gone within 50 years - if carbon dioxide continues to increase at current rates. Coral reefs, harbouring a quarter of ocean species, are threatened.The greatest danger hanging over our children and grandchildren is initiation of changes that will be irreversible on any time scale that humans can imagine. If coastal ice shelves buttressing the west Antarctic ice sheet continue to disintegrate, the sheet could disgorge into the ocean, raising sea levels by several metres in a century. Such rates of sea level change have occurred many times in Earth’s history in response to global warming rates no higher than those of the past 30 years. Almost half of the world’s great cities are located on coastlines.The most threatening change, from my perspective, is extermination of species. Several times in Earth’s history, rapid global warming occurred, apparently spurred by amplifying feedbacks.
In each case, more than half of plant and animal species became extinct. New species came into being over tens and hundreds of thousands of years. But these are time scales and generations that we cannot imagine. If we drive our fellow species to extinction, we will leave a far more desolate planet for our descendants than the world we inherited from our elders. Clearly, if we burn all fossil fuels, we will destroy the planet we know. Carbon dioxide would increase to 500 ppm or more. We would set the planet on a course to the ice-free state, with sea level 75 metres higher. Climatic disasters would occur continually. The tragedy of the situation, if we do not wake up in time, is that the changes that must be made to stabilise the atmosphere and climate make sense for other reasons. They would produce a healthier atmosphere, improved agricultural productivity, clean water and an ocean providing fish that are safe to eat.Fossil-fuel reservoirs will dictate the actions needed to solve the problem. Oil, of which half the readily accessible reserves have already been burnt, is used in vehicles, so it’s impractical to capture the carbon dioxide. This is likely to drive carbon dioxide levels to at least 400 ppm. But if we cut off the largest source of carbon dioxide - coal - it will be practical to bring carbon dioxide back to 350 ppm, lower still if we improve agricultural and forestry practices, increasing carbon storage in trees and soil.
Coal is not only the largest fossil fuel reservoir of carbon dioxide, it is the dirtiest fuel. Coal is polluting the world’s oceans and streams with mercury, arsenic and other dangerous chemicals. The dirtiest trick that governments play on their citizens is the pretence that they are working on “clean coal” or that they will build power plants that are “capture-ready” in case technology is ever developed to capture all pollutants.The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death. When I testified against the proposed Kingsnorth power plant, I estimated that in its lifetime it would be responsible for the extermination of about 400 species - its proportionate contribution to the number that would be committed to extinction if carbon dioxide rose another 100 ppm.The German and Australian governments pretend to be green. When I show German officials the evidence that the coal source must be cut off, they say they will tighten the “carbon cap”. But a cap only slows the use of a fuel - it does not leave it in the ground. When I point out that their new coal plants require that they convince Russia to leave its oil in the ground, they are silent. The Australian government was elected on a platform of solving the climate problem, but then, with the help of industry, it set emission targets so high as to guarantee untold disasters for the young, let alone the unborn.
These governments are not green. They are black - coal black.The three countries most responsible, per capita, for filling the air with carbon dioxide from fossil fuels are the UK, the US and Germany, in that order. Politicians here have asked me why am I speaking to them. Surely the US must lead? But coal interests have great power in the US; the essential moratorium and phase-out of coal requires a growing public demand and a political will yet to be demonstrated.The Prime Minister should not underestimate his potential to transform the situation. And he must not pretend to be ignorant of the consequences of continuing to burn coal or take refuge in a “carbon cap” or some “target” for future emission reductions. My message to Gordon Brown is that young people are beginning to understand the situation. They want to know: will you join their side? Remember that history, and your children, will judge you.
James Hansen is director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. He was the first to testify to congress on global warming in 1988. In 20008 in an anniversary, testimony, the globe was significantly cooler than in 1988.
By Environmental News Service
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
“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.”
The primary goals of the Climate Law Institute are to:
* Establish legal precedents requiring existing environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Protection Act, Clean Water Act, and the California Environmental Quality Act to be fully implemented to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, land management, and wildlife management
* Establish new state and federal environmental laws and policies to rein in global warming
* Ensure all new laws and policies are judged against the scientific standard of whether they will lead to a reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide from the current level of 385 parts per million to below 350 ppm
* Prevent the construction of new coal-fired power plants and coal mines while quickly phasing out existing coal-fired power plants
* Prevent the creation of an oil-shale or tar sands energy sector
* Reverse the deadly process of ocean acidification
* Prevent the loss of Arctic ice cover and likely runaway global warming that would ensue
“Climate change is a crisis we don’t need and can’t afford. It’s time to kick the fossil fuel addiction once and for all,” said Climate Law Institute advisory board member Patrick Parenteau, professor of law at the Vermont Law School.
Initial funding of $6.3 million for the Climate Law Institute has been provided by the California Community Foundation, The Sandler Foundation, The Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, and others.” Read more here.
By Dr. Nicholas Drapela , Oregon State University Chemistry Department
My dear colleague Professor Hansen, I believe, has finally gone off the deep end. When you have dedicated the bulk of your career to a cause, and it turns out the cause has been proven false, most people cannot bring themselves to admit the truth. It is truly sad to read the rantings of this elderly man and see that they contain neither reason nor truth when compared to the volumes of daily literature being published in scientific journals today on climate change. It is not difficult to refute the words of Professor Hansen.
On the contrary, one feels it is almost unfair. Note that in his piece he never refers to factual data. It is not scientific, but 100% political. He does not use logical reasoning based on evidence, which is what science is based upon. Instead, he employs the following tactics, none of which are relevant to science:
1. The “consensus” card. I feel sorry for this human being. Not only is there no consensus on global warming in the scientific community, but I would wager that MOST scientists have discarded the theory today. Google the Oregon Petition on Global Warming which contains the names of 31,000 scientists who say global warming is essentially an embarassment to science today.
2. Errant, capricious statements. 99% certainty on global warming? This sounds truly more like a senile senior citizen that a lucid scientist. What is he talking about? Where did he get these numbers? Does he not read the scientific literature? I have to presume he does not!
3. A truly desperate, alarmist tone and wording. The global warming “time bomb”, the “present, dangerous situation”, “the perfect storm”, “global cataclysm”, “disasterous climate changes that spiral dynamically out of humanity’s control.” These are the words of an apocalyptic prophet, not a rational scientist.
4. Attacking a scapegoat, presented as the very source of evil itself, namely petroleum companies, and attributing the lack of agreement between scientific data and his views to a vast, conspiratorial cover-up by “them”.
5. Ultimatums. Act now or you die. Right now. This very instant. Don’t think. You have 5 seconds to decide. I ask you, is this science or high-pressure salesmanship? But I cannot go on. The piece above is sad but actually a little bit scary to me. Scary in the same way that it was scary when Ronald Reagan was losing his mind in the late 80’s and was still the most powerful man in the world.
The fact that the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute apparently has the inability to use reason unsettles me. I’m worried about Professor Hansen. He evidently lives in a world where he is unaware of reality and only sees what he believes exists. Not only this, but he feels obligated to save modern society today by completely controlling it. “We must all sacrifice for the common good. Progress. Greatness.” The manifesto above sounds more like Lenin, Mussolini, or Hitler than I care to admit. Please, people, don’t base your beliefs on authority no matter who is talking. Base them on reason. Get the facts. There are many places to start, but you are welcome to start at my site. The site is primitive, but will hopefully get you started on the road to your own assessment based on facts. At this site you can find documentaries, other professor’s talks, and references to the primary scientific literature. It’s a start. I urge you: Know the world for yourself.