[Vision2020] December 2010: NOAA Proposes Listing Ringed Seal Under the Endangered Species Act.

[Ted Moffett]

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/hazards/

>From website above toward bottom of long web page:

"In early December, NOAA proposed listing four subspecies of the
ringed seal—Arctic, Okhostok, Baltic, and Lagoda—as threatened under
the Endangered Species Act. These subspecies are found in the Arctic
Basin, the North atlantic, and the Pacific Ocean. Noaa cited threats
posed by declining sea ice and reduced snow cover."
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According to NASA climate scientist James Hansen, director of the
Goddard Institute for Space Studies ( http://www.giss.nasa.gov/about/
), the two most serious impacts of anthropogenic climate warming are
sea level rise, and species extinction, as he stated in his book
"Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate
Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity"
( http://www.stormsofmygrandchildren.com/ ).

The excellent review (below) of this very important book (that sat on
the new book shelves for weeks at the Moscow Public Library with no
one but I having checked it out), verifies that this claim was made by
Hansen.

This review summarizes critical issues raised in Hansen's book
regarding climate science, phasing out coal burning without large
scale and stable CO2 sequestration, and the politics and economics of
addressing CO2 emissions.  Discussed is the emphasis the G. W. Bush
White House accorded to the climate science claims of the ubiquitous
MIT climate scientist Richard Lindzen, whom Hansen dubbed "the dean"
anthropopenic climate warming skeptics in "Storms of My
Grandchildren."  The critics of Hansen's activism on anthropogenic
climate warming are addressed.

Review of Hansen's "Storms of My Grandchildren" from website below:

http://www.celsias.com/article/storms-my-grandchildren/

Storms of my Grandchildren

Photos of James Hansen’s grandchildren have appeared not infrequently
in  his presentations in recent years.  He obviously delights in them.
 But he also fears for them.

The nature of that fear is spelt out in his newly published book
"Storms of my Grandchildren" with its foreboding subtitle "The Truth
About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save
Humanity."

Last chance?  As critical as that?  In his lucid concluding summary
statement Hansen points to climate system inertia as the reason.
Currently inertia is protecting us from the full effects of the
changes and can seem like a friend. But, as amplifying feedbacks begin
to drive the climate towards tipping points, that same inertia will
make it harder to reverse direction.

The ocean, ice sheets and frozen methane on continental shelves all
resist rapid change, but only for so long.  And they are being
subjected to human-made forcings far more rapid than any of the
natural forcings of the past.

Science is at the core of the book, but Hansen has woven it into a
narrative of his encounters with policy makers over the past eight
years. In 2001 he was invited to explain current scientific thinking
to the cabinet-level Climate Task Force. He focused on changes in
climate forcings, in watts per square metre, between 1750 and 2000,
using a graph which estimated the effects of a variety changes
dominated by human activity.

The information seems clear enough as Hansen shares it with us, but it
obviously became muddied in the Task Force proceedings, especially
when contrarian Richard Lindzen was invited to the second meeting and
focused on uncertainties as well as questioning the motives of
“alarmist” scientists. Hansen’s belief that the new administration was
serious about wanting to understand climate change looks a little
naïve in retrospect. Incidentally, Hansen himself is always aware of
uncertainties in his science and careful to accord them proper status.

A further invitation to a different White House group in 2003 saw him
centre his presentation this time on paleoclimate and the evidence
from the past that large climate changes can occur in response to even
small forcings. This topic is explored at some length, with occasional
exhortations to readers to hang on if it seems to be getting too
complicated.

Feedback figures prominently here, as does climate sensitivity to
doubled carbon dioxide.  The non-carbon dioxide forcings such as
methane and black soot attracted some interest at the meeting, but the
administration by now seemed to share Richard Lindzen’s perspective
and to distrust the scientific community.  He records no further
invitations to White House meetings.

2003 saw the publication of a paper by Hansen which questioned the
IPCC and conventional approach to sea level rise.  He explains in the
book the evidence from paleoclimate studies of rapid sea level rise
and discusses the part played by the huge reservoir of energy provided
by the ocean and by ice sheet dynamics.  If ice sheets begin to
disintegrate we can expect no new stable sea level on any foreseeable
timescale. Ocean and ice sheets each have response times of at least
centuries.

In 2005 Hansen endured the events described by Mark Bowen’s book
Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and
the Truth of Global Warming, reviewed here. Some of this ground is
traversed again here, and then Hansen offers readers the bad news that
the dangerous threshold of greenhouse gases is actually lower than the
450 ppm he had accepted for some years, and goes on to explain how
this change of mind occurred.

The name of Bill McKibben enters the scene at this point, for it was
in response to his request for an appropriate parts per million figure
for his website that Hansen settled with colleagues to re-examine the
question.  The result was the famous 2008 paper Target Atmospheric
CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?   and McKibben’s 350.org movement.
The two climate impacts that Hansen believes should be at the top of
the list that defines what is “dangerous” are sea level rise and
species extinction.  He explains how reduction of CO2 levels to 350
ppm would restore the planet’s energy balance.

Hansen is widely honoured and respected in the scientific community.
He has also taken some pains to make his scientific work accessible to
the general reader, as his website reveals. He is happy to accept
writer Robert Pool’s description of him as a witness, meaning
“someone who believes he has information so important that he cannot
keep silent.”

Criticised for his incursions into the field of policy in more recent
years, Hansen is unapologetic about it when he comes to draw
conclusions from the research on the appropriate target level of
atmospheric carbon dioxide. “Coal emissions must be phased out as
rapidly as possible or global climate disasters will be a dead
certainty.”

Should scientists deliver that conclusion and then leave it to the
politicians to deal with it?  Not in his experience. They will fudge
the issue if they can. In particular he is scathing in his rejection
of cap-and-trade schemes, which he considers will continue to allow
fossil fuels to be burned.  He favours instead a rising price on
carbon applied at the source, with the fee returned to the population
in equal shares.

This insistence on the carbon tax method rather than emissions trading
may well lack finesse, as his critics allege, but the suspicion of
vested interests and of the influence of lobbyists which underlies it
is surely justified.

He admits that the phasing out of coal emissions by 2030 is a huge
challenge.  Energy efficiency measures and renewable energy
development will probably not in his view be sufficient to replace
coal by then, and he eloquently pleads the case for 3rd and 4th
generation nuclear plants.

A scary chapter looks at what he calls the Venus syndrome.  Back in
1981 when he wrote his first comprehensive paper on the impact of
increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide he presumed that, as the reality
of climate change became apparent, government policies would begin to
be adapted in a rational way.  He didn’t count on two challenges to
that presumption. The first is the remarkable success of special
interests in preventing the public at large from understanding the
situation. The second is politicians’ almost universal preference for
greenwash and fake environmentalism.

All right, he says, what will happen if we go on burning and push the
planet beyond its tipping point? After a careful discussion of
consequences he concludes that if we burn all the reserves of oil,
gas, and coal there is a substantial chance we will initiate the
runaway greenhouse. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale it’s a
dead certainty.  Between times lie the storms which will be upon us
during the lives of his grandchildren.

Small wonder the scientist has become a climate activist and places
such hope as he can muster in the mobilisation of young people to
demand appropriate actions from their governments. Activists are not
gloom and doom merchants, and it’s clear that he hopes the general
public will yet become aware of the real threat discerned by the
science and demand the action so far avoided by politicians. All
honour to him for the witness he bears.

This review was originally posted on the Hot Topic website.
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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett