[Vision2020] Game Over for the Climate

[Paul Rumelhart]

I remember a day when scientists used to stick to the facts.  They would say things like "we can't tell you what to do, but we can tell you that our analyses have shown that this and this and this are likely with this level of uncertainty".  Nowadays, scientists are fricking political activists.  They give their opinions in articles in Rolling Stone and charge big sums of money for speaking engagements at various venues, and get arrested for protesting oil pipelines.


Can James Hansen show with scientific certainty that his plan would keep all the alarmist predictions of disaster at bay and then it would no longer be "game over"?  What is the scientific definition of "game over"?  Climate scientists need to, in my opinion, take back their scientific neutrality.  Here's what we've found, here's what our degree of confidence is.  Leave the rest to the politicians.

It's statements like "the science of the situation is clear — it’s time for the politics to 
follow" that make me immediately skeptical of everything he says.


Paul



________________________________
 From: Art Deco <art.deco.studios at gmail.com>
To: vision2020 at moscow.com 
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2012 11:49 AM
Subject: [Vision2020] Game Over for the Climate
 

 
 
________________________________
 
May 9, 2012
Game Over for the ClimateBy JAMES HANSEN 
GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.” 
If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate. 
Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain 
twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our 
entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and 
continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 
million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the 
disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea 
levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would 
become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would 
be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk. 
That is the long-term outlook. But near-term, things will be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the 
semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent 
drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with 
heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of 
the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no 
longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels. 
If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to reduce 
emissions dramatically. President Obama has the power not only to deny 
tar sands oil additional access to Gulf Coast refining, which Canada 
desires in part for export markets, but also to encourage economic 
incentives to leave tar sands and other dirty fuels in the ground. 
The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather, as I predicted 
would happen by now in the journal Science in 1981. Extremely hot 
summers have increased noticeably. We can say with high confidence that 
the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 
2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events — they 
were caused by human-induced climate change. 
We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the 
atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life. 
But add too much, as we are doing now, and temperatures will inevitably 
rise too high. This is not the result of natural variability, as some 
argue. The earth is currently in the part of its long-term orbit cycle 
where temperatures would normally be cooling. But they are rising — and 
it’s because we are forcing them higher with fossil fuel emissions. 
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 280 parts per million to 393 p.p.m. over the last 150 years. The tar sands 
contain enough carbon — 240 gigatons — to add 120 p.p.m. Tar shale, a 
close cousin of tar sands found mainly in the United States, contains at least an additional 300 gigatons of carbon. If we turn to these 
dirtiest of fuels, instead of finding ways to phase out our addiction to fossil fuels, there is no hope of keeping carbon concentrations below 
500 p.p.m. — a level that would, as earth’s history shows, leave our 
children a climate system that is out of their control. 
We need to start reducing emissions significantly, not create new ways 
to increase them. We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, 
collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The 
government would not get a penny. This market-based approach would 
stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging 
government or having it pick winners or losers. Most Americans, except 
the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in 
increased prices. Not only that, the reduction in oil use resulting from the carbon price would be nearly six times as great as the oil supply 
from the proposed pipeline from Canada, rendering the pipeline 
superfluous, according to economic models driven by a slowly rising 
carbon price. 
But instead of placing a rising fee on carbon emissions to make fossil 
fuels pay their true costs, leveling the energy playing field, the 
world’s governments are forcing the public to subsidize fossil fuels 
with hundreds of billions of dollars per year. This encourages a frantic stampede to extract every fossil fuel through mountaintop removal, 
longwall mining, hydraulic fracturing, tar sands and tar shale 
extraction, and deep ocean and Arctic drilling. 
President Obama speaks of a “planet in peril,” but he does not provide 
the leadership needed to change the world’s course. Our leaders must 
speak candidly to the public — which yearns for open, honest discussion — explaining that our continued technological leadership and economic 
well-being demand a reasoned change of our energy course. History has 
shown that the American public can rise to the challenge, but leadership is essential. 
The science of the situation is clear — it’s time for the politics to 
follow. This is a plan that can unify conservatives and liberals, 
environmentalists and business. Every major national science academy in 
the world has reported that global warming is real, caused mostly by 
humans, and requires urgent action. The cost of acting goes far higher 
the longer we wait — we can’t wait any longer to avoid the worst and be 
judged immoral by coming generations. 
James Hansen directs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and is the author of “Storms of My Grandchildren.”


Room for Debate: Should Churches Get Tax Breaks?
-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com

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