James Hansen: I do think the public, in general, trusts scientists. If we’re careful in explaining things and do a good job at that I think it will help in getting the actions that are needed.
James Hansen is the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. In 2008, he was selected as the EarthSky 2008 Science Communicator of the Year – the scientist who best communicated with the public on vital science issues or concepts in 2008 – by a panel of over 600 EarthSky Global Science Advisors. Hanson is also lead author of a new study that claims Earth’s level of atmospheric CO2 is dangerously high. In the two EarthSky podcasts above, Dr. Hansen speaks with EarthSky’s Jorge Salazar about the Earth’s climate reaching a ‘danger zone.’
James Hansen: We didn’t realize that we already have increased CO2 into a dangerous zone. What’s become clear from a number of different criteria is that the safe level of CO2 is no more than 350 parts per million, and probably less, which requires significant changes in our energy use. We simply are not going to be able to burn all the fossil fuels.
CO2 levels today sit well over what Hansen believes is an acceptable level. They continue to rise mainly from our use of fossil fuels like coal and oil, and Hansen believes we could cause major changes.
James Hansen: We can already see that the ice sheets are beginning to disintegrate.
Hansen and colleagues analyzed ice core data going back 65 million years to see how sea level responded to CO2 in the air.
James Hansen: The last time all the fossil fuels were in the atmosphere instead of in the ground, there was no ice on the planet. Sea level was 250 feet higher.
Hansen added that it’s not too late for the world to act. He believes one step would be to phase out the use of coal by 2030.
James Hansen: Coal is the primary source of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and it’s very dirty stuff. It’s got mercury in it. It’s got heavy metals. And these things are polluting the world atmosphere and ocean. That’s why you’re told, ‘don’t eat fish too much,’ because there’s too much mercury in it. All of that mercury is coming from coal, from coal-fired power plants. So we’ve got to figure out other sources of energy. And that is possible.
Hansen talked about the bright side of moving beyond fossil fuel.
James Hansen: The world beyond fossil fuels is going to be a much cleaner world. You know, there are several hundred thousand people per year who die of air pollution, mostly in places like China and India where the air pollution is much worse. But even in the United States, 30 or 40 thousand people per year die of air pollution. And most of that comes from fossil fuels. So when we develop clean energy sources, and we have vehicles that do not emit air pollution, it will be a better world.
Hansen warned that the problem is urgent.
James Hansen: If we go even another ten years building more and more coal-fired power plants, we will have the CO2 up to a level that there’s no practical way to get it back down. But if we would get the message and get on to a new path, then we can solve the problem and, as I’ve said, it is a brighter future if we do that.
Hansen believes that scientists are beginning to speak out more.
James Hansen: Twenty years ago when I testified to Congress, I got a lot of flack from other scientists. But now, that’s changed. There are a lot of scientists who agree that we do have to speak out.
Truth: Ice is at 1980 levels and is increasing. Truth, the earth is cooling rapidly.
Question: Why is 350 ppm the cut off for CO2? At 150 ppm, plant growth stops. At 1000 ppm, plant growth rates double.
Hansen is paid by the government to spout the party line in spite of the facts. This is about wrecking the economy of the United States of America and has nothing whatsoever to do with reality or science.
We have no climate emergencies. We have political and economic problems and the government is the problem, not the answer. The UN is trying to gain control of all humanity. If it succeeds, there will be famine and death worldwide. Bureaucrats don’t know how to do anything useful. They have meetings and formulate politically correct policies which tend to be, at best, disasters.
I have some news for James Hansen, every animal and plant life from a one cell organism to a multicellular organism, including al gore, emits CO2 as a byproduct of living.
The closest ‘truth’ I can think of that applies to Earth’s CO2 is that too much of a good thing can do you harm. Yes, we need CO2 for life, look at the moon. Too much CO2 can cause difficulties though, look at the planet Venus. I wouldn’t want to live on either of those places.
People who are science-inclined might take a look at the journal article co-authored by Dr. Hansen, Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim? The paleoclimate details are ugly to non-scientists, but his points are clear. This is how he described them to me.
“The people who prefer to deny the reality of what is happening will say, oh, this is all climate models and we can’t trust them. Well, in fact our most important source of information is the history of the Earth, how the Earth responded in the past when there were changes in the boundary conditions such as atmospheric composition. And the second most important source of information is observations of what’s happening right now in response to the human-made changes over the past hundred years. And climate models help us interpret what’s happened, and they help us extrapolate into the future. But they are not the primary source of our knowledge.”
Personally I would jump on the chance to report news that Earth is cooling, that glaciers are expanding, that Arctic summertime sea ice average is off the charts, that Western Antarctica and Greenland were bursting at the seams with new ice. Unfortunately, the science data and the scientists involved do not agree with this wishful thinking.
Jorge, plese check out the following article: http://www.mlive.com/opinion/flint/index.ssf/2009/01/its_time_to_pray_for_global_wa.html
We are not warming. If only we were. Warming would provide a much better environment for agriculture.
Benjamin – you’re a turd.
Do yourself a favor. Instead of “reading” articles you find off of .com opinion pages, go to your local community college, if your po-dunk oil town has one, and take a class on Environmental Science.
THEN, come on here and act as if you know what you’re talking about.
Let’s do a scientific experiment. Let’s put you in a room, totally sealed off from the outside world, and slowly increase the CO2 content. How well do you think you’ll do?
Just to make it interesting, we’ll throw in a couple plants.
Your comment on their growth rates going up is wrong.
Once CO2 levels in the atmosphere reach a certain point, plants stop taking in carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen. They instead, begin taking in CO2 and releasing… guess what? CO2.
So yes, by all means, let’s keep cutting down the tropical rain forests to make room for our McDonald’s cattle. It’s just forest, it doesn’t matter, right? Even through over half the life on earth lives in tropical rain forests… but who cares right? We NEED our deep fried, double bacon cheeseburger with a side of cow fat to dip it in.
And before you say anything, I’m a carnivore. Only difference is I know where my meat comes from, and it’s not cow.
Did you know that if the human population became strictly vegetarian we could increase the world’s capacity to hold AND feed the human population by 16 times?
10 acres of farmland could feed up to 16 people… or one cow.
We have knew CO2 will affect our environment and cause the greenhouse effects, but we still keep the same lifestyle. as the auther say, we need to change our lifestyle and reduce the quantily of CO2 we make.
Just want pass along that the 350 ppm level is long pasted. I manufacture and sell CO2 monitoring equipment and I have not seen 350 ppm outdoor ambient. We are currently using 400+ ppm for outdoor reference and seldom actually see that level typical is 430. Indoors we use 650 to 900 ppm for properly ventilated and energy efficient environment, lower than 650 and you’re over ventilating or have a doors open which waste a lots of energy. More references for you consideration at CO2meter.com
Mr. Hanson’s comment that the last time all the fossil fuels were in the atmosphere instead of in the ground is a bit strange. I assume he is talking about the Mississipian or Pennsylanian epoch of geologic time. I sincerely doubt that there are any ice sheets left from 350 million years ago, and I would also point out that carbon “deposits” (oil and coal) began forming as soon as life began to take over the planet. Ice cores all show that CO2 levels increase AFTER warming. This makes sense chemically as CO2 is less soluble under warmer conditions: hence the current increase in CO2. Environmental extremists love to tell people what to do. Cheap energy allows people to do all kinds of things that extremists do not like, like driving, having big homes, living out of the cities, etc. There is also a huge amount of money involved with people getting grants to study “man-made” warming, and entire fleets of “environmental reporters” who might have to find another way to support themselves. A 16-20% increase in a trace gas is not driving our climate change.
GORE IS NOT THE ANSWER
SEE OH TOO IS LIFE
Stop EnvironMENTALism
Recently I read an article where Hansen’s former supervisor had some rather unflattering thing to say about him. Among them was Hansen’s lack of the use of scientific methoad and his blind following of the global warming folly. Not an authority on his subject and fails to represent correctly what he knows is the truth.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html
2006 – 2008 Trend = -44.25 degF / Decade COOLING
2005 – 2008 Trend = -16.35 degF / Decade COOLING
2004 – 2008 Trend = -1.50 degF / Decade COOLING
2003 – 2008 Trend = -0.69 degF / Decade COOLING
2002 – 2008 Trend = -2.47 degF / Decade COOLING
2001 – 2008 Trend = -0.17 degF / Decade COOLING
2000 – 2008 Trend = -0.74 degF / Decade COOLING
1999 – 2008 Trend = -1.08 degF / Decade COOLING
1998 – 2008 Trend = -1.77 degF / Decade COOLING
1997 – 2008 Trend = -0.15 degF / Decade COOLING
1996 – 2008 Trend = 0.92 degF / Decade WARMING
fact is folks, the earths climate system is driven more by the sun than CO2, by a very large amount. To make it really apparent, we are appear about ready to enter a period of prolonged solar minimum which, if it happens, will usher in cooler temperatures on earth possibly as much as a little ice age. I hope you have your long johns.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/
http://www.schulphysik.de/klima/landscheidt/iceage.htm
http://penoflight.com/climatebuzz/
There is no question that we are observing global warming. There has been approximately + .2C warming over the 1979 baseline although that warming appears to have stopped over the past decade. The question is what are the drivers? How well do we understand the ENSO steps, El Nino, La Nina, the Pacific Decadal Oscillations (which are presently in a negative mode), thermohaline circulations, poorly modeled cloud cover and spectral response of water vapor vs. CO2 (similar wavelength while water vapor has much greater influence).
Other factors poorly modeled in the general circulation models (CGM) are the heat transconductance interface between the oceans and air, keeping in mind the air doesn’t heat the oceans, but rather the oceans heat the air. Most recent peer reviewed studies in ocean temperature reconstructions have shown no net increase in oceanic sub surface temperatures (SST) over instrument history. Not modeled at all is the heat effects of ocean turbidity which can (without the help of CO2) raise the ocean SST (and lake SST’s) by as much as 3 degrees for a given total solar insolation (TSI).
Since the 1850′s there has been a 10% decrease in earth’s magnetic flux and a significant shift of the magnetic axis, which scientists just now realize affects the atmosphere’s composition and sensitivity at polar regions. The warming trend of the early 1900′s was as great as the present yet C02 played no role. Temperatures declined from the late 40′s through the 70′s (when CO2 was starting to rise significantly). The ice sheets in the Arctic were nearly gone in the late 1940′s, early 1950′s – so much so that navy submarines were able to break through the thin ice and surface at the North Pole (which they can’t do today). There is far more ice today than then yet CO2 levels were normal then.
The point here is climate change is real. However, there are much larger natural and man made climate variables than CO2. Our current general circulation models, while improving, still model the climate poorly and by the standards of other areas of science fail miserably to predict anything without unreasonably high climate sensitivity. As the models improve they are demonstrating that other natural forcings have a much greater influence on climate while climate sensitivity to CO2 is much less than originally believed.
Land use plays a much greater role in the land surface temperature record than CO2. The Urban Heat Effect (UHE) has been shown to bias the North American land temperature record by as much as six degrees and affects some 80% of our current USHCN land monitoring stations. All of this seriously raises doubt about how much CO2 really affects climate. It does to some small degree but it’s net effect is lost in the noise (or confidence intervals) of much larger drivers and historical errors.
Hansen needs to get off his ignorant position of the CO2 boogie man and radical alarmism and start to read the latest Geophysical Research Journal abstracts. We are learning much about our climate. We still have much to learn. Hansen is starting to look rather uninformed and more like a politician with each opening of his mouth.
this is a very confusing subject,
we cant prove anything nor can we blame anyone but ourself
we dont know the people that do this research so we dont know if this is correct or not.
I want to know how, now that the ClimateGate scandal has broken, Earth & Sky can justify not reporting on the suppression of scientific data contradicting AGW, the intentional smearing of any scientists who questioned the dogma by James Hansen, Michael E. Mann and others promoting this thoroughly false theory. How can you call your organization a “clear voice for science” and fail to acknowledge the biggest science scandal ever?! Not only do you ignore it, you continue to promote a now discredited theory and the hoaxters who perpetrated it.
ClimateGate is not only a scandal of science, it is also a scandal of journalism. It is shameful that Earth & Sky so willingly participated in a colossal fraud and now the evasion of its unraveling. Shame on you all.
I can understand frustration with the careless language used by scientists in the private emails that were illegally hacked and leaked at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia.
Ultimately, the process and power of science boils down to being able to reproduce experiments about questions people have on what’s happening in our world, whether it’s rising surface temperatures, sea level rise, glacier retreat, or Arctic sea ice loss. No amount of collusion or conspiracy will ever be able to completely shut that out.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts about the incident.
Jorge Salazar,
Your evasive response indicates that you, and by extension Earthsky, are so deeply invested in the AGW fraud that you are still refusing to acknowledge reality. You try to divert attention from the content of the emails by stressing that they were illegally obtained and dismissing their language as “careless”. This is pure obfuscation. Have you even bothered to read the emails? Or are you simply regurgitating the talking points of Andrew Rivkin and the New York Times in their profoundly dishonest article trying to spike the breaking scandal?
It looks more and more like a disillusioned insider leaked these emails, which were not private by the way, in order to prevent their destruction. All were subject to public disclosure and had been requested under Britain’s Freedom of Information Act. The method of their release is not as important as the fact that they reveal brazen crime on the part of a number of scientists. They show not “careless language”, but active collusion to alter data in order to support predetermined conclusions, smear critics and, insidiously, subvert the peer review process to shut out any scientists who dare deviate from AGW dogma. This doesn’t concern you??!!
These emails reveal not only an enormous case of organized scientific fraud, but also criminal activity. Phil Jones at CRU has raked in millions in Grant money. How much, I wonder, has Michael E. Mann received? More than that, however, countries around the world have adopted policies that have shackled economies and spent billions of taxpayer dollars on the basis of a theory that has now been incontrovertibly revealed as pure fraud. This is the scandal of the century and needs to be thoroughly investigated. But, it seems clear that Earth & Sky will play no role in that. Seriously, how can you live with yourselves? How can you call yourselves journalists and yet ignore this, perhaps the biggest science story ever? Again, shame on you – you are, in effect, complicit in the scandal.
I do not accept that scientists who report that global warming is occurring, or that it is to some extent due to human activity, are motivated by greed, dishonesty or any ulterior intent to destroy our economy. Nor do I believe that thousands of scientists, in hundreds of separate educational and research institutions around the world, are colluding to fulfill some obscure, self-destructive political agenda at the long-term expense of their reputations and careers, nor do I think they are ignorant of science. I\’m happy to see people post thought provoking counter arguments, but you only lose credibility with me when you try to undermine other people by making unsupportable, and frankly, ridiculous, accusations of greed, fraud, ignorance or ulterior political motivation.
There are more than a dozen climate variables and 175 years of carbon dioxide chemistry excluded from the U.N. IPCC study that only focuses on Human Carbon dioxide.
Please go to http://co2u.info
Thank you
Bruce A. Kershaw
I have been testing CO2 since 1976