Storms of My Grandchildren by Dr. James Hansen
"Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity" is NASA climate change scientist Dr. James Hansen's first book. Dr. Hansen is arguably the most visible and well-respected climate change scientist in the world, and has headed the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City since 1981. He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. Dr. Hansen greatly raised awareness of the threat of global warming during his Congressional testimony during the record hot summer of 1988, and issued one of the first-ever climate model predictions of global warming (see an analysis here to see how his 1988 prediction did.) In 2009, Dr. Hansen was awarded the Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the American Meteorological Society, for his "outstanding contributions to climate modeling, understanding climate change forcings and sensitivity, and for clear communication of climate science in the public arena."
Storms of My Grandchildren focuses on the key concepts of the science of climate change, told through Hansen's personal experiences as a key player in field's scientific advancements and political dramas over the past 40 years. Dr. Hansen's writing style is very straight-forward and understandable, and he clearly explains the scientific concepts involved in a friendly way that anyone with a high school level science education can understand. I did not find any scientific errors in his book. However, some of his explanations are too long-winded, and the book is probably too long, at 274 pages. Nevertheless, Storms of My Grandchildren is a must-read, due to the importance of the subject matter and who is writing it. Hansen is not a fancy writer. He comes across as a plain Iowan who happened to stumble into the field of climate change and discovered things he had to speak out about. And he does plenty of speaking out in his book.
James Hansen vs. Richard Lindzen
Dr. Hansen's book opens with an interesting chapter on his participation in four meetings of Vice President Dick Cheney's cabinet-level Climate Task Force in 2001. It seems that the Bush Administration was prepared to let Dr. Hansen's views on climate change influence policy. However, Dr. Richard Lindzen, whom Hansen describes as "the dean of of global warming contrarians", was also present at the meetings. Dr.Lindzen was able to confuse the task force members enough so that they never took Dr. Hansen's views seriously. Hansen observes that "U.S. policies regarding carbon dioxide during the Bush-Cheney administration seem to have been based on, or at a minimum, congruent with, Lindzen's perspective." Hansen asserts that Lindzen was able to do this by acting more like a lawyer than a scientist: "He and other contrarians tend to act like lawyers defending a client, presenting only arguments that favor their client. This is in direct contradiction to...the scientific method." Hansen also comments that he asked Lindzen what he thought of the link between smoking and cancer, since Lindzen had been a witness for the tobacco industry decades earlier. Lindzen "began rattling off all the problems with the data relating smoking to health problems, which was closely analogous to his views of climate data."
Alarmism
Global warming contrarians often dismiss scientists such a Dr. Hansen as "alarmists" who concoct fearsome stories about climate change in order to get research funding. Dr. Lindzen made this accusation at Cheney's Climate Task Force in 2001. However, Dr. Hansen notes that "in 1981 I lost funding for research on the climate effects of carbon dioxide because the Energy Department was displeased with a paper, 'Climate Impact of Increasing Carbon Dioxide,' I had published in Science magazine. The paper made a number of predictions for the 21st century, including 'opening of the fabled Northwest Passage', which the Energy Department considered to be alarmist but which have since proven to be accurate." If you read Dr. Hansen's book and listen to his lectures, it is clear that he is not an alarmist out to get more research funding by hyping the dangers of global warming. Hansen says in his book that "my basic nature nature is very placid, even comfortably stolid", and that nature comes through very clearly in Storms of My Grandchildren. Hansen's writings express a quiet determination to plainly set forth the scientific truth on climate change. He has surprisingly few angry words towards the politicians, lobbyists, and scientists intent on distorting the scientific truth.
The science of climate change
The bulk of Storms of My Grandchildren is devoted to explanations of the science of climate change. Hansen's greatest concern is disintegration of the gerat ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica causing sea level rise: "Once the ice sheets begin to rapidly disintegrate, sea level would be continuously changing for centuries. Coastal cities would become impractical to maintain." Hansen is concerned that evidence from past climate periods show that the massive ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica can melt quickly, with large changes within a century. For example, sea level at the end of the most recent Ice Age, 13,000 - 14,000 years ago, rose at a rate of 3 - 5 meters (10 - 17 feet) per century for several centuries. Hansen is convinced that just a 1.7 -2°C warming, which would likely result if we stabilize CO2 at 450 ppm, would be a "disaster scenario" that would trigger rapid disintegration of the ice sheets and disastrous rises in sea level. Hansen advocates stabilizing CO2 at 350 ppm (we are currently at 390 ppm, with a rate of increase of 2 ppm per year.)
Another of Hansen's main concerns is the extinction of species. He notes that studies of more than 1,000 species of plants, animals, and insects have found an average migration rate towards the poles due to climate warming in the last half of the 20th century to be four miles per decade. "That is not fast enough. During the past thirty years the lines marking the regions in which a given average temperature prevails (isotherms) have been moving poleward at a rate of about thirty-five miles per decade. If greenhouse gases continue to increase at business-as-usual rates, then the rate of isotherm movement will double in this century to at least seventy miles per decade."
Hansen's other main concern is the release of large amounts of methane gas stored in sea-floor sediments in the form of methane hydrates. If ocean temperatures warm according to predictions, the higher temperatures at the sea floor may be enough to destabilize the methane hydrate sediments and release huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse gas 20 - 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Solutions to the climate change problem
Dr. Hansen is a controversial figure, since he has stepped outside his field of expertise and become an activist in promoting solutions to the climate change problem. He devotes a chapter called "An Honest, Effective Path" in the book to this. His main theme is that we need to tax fossil fuels using a "fee-and-dividend" approach. All of the tax money collected would be distributed uniformly to the public. This carbon tax would gradually rise, giving people time to adjust their lifestyle, choice of vehicle, home insulation, etc. Those who do better at reducing their fossil fuel use will receive more in the dividend than they will pay in the added costs of the products they buy. The approach is straightforward and does not require a large bureaucracy, but currently has little political support. Hansen is vehemently opposed to the approach that has the most political support, "Cap-and-trade": "Cap-and-trade is what governments and the people in alligator shoes (the lobbyists for special interests) are trying to foist on you. Whoops. As an objective scientist I should delete such personal opinions, to at least flag them. But I am sixty-eight years old, and I am fed up with the way things work in Washington." Hansen also promotes an overlooked type of nuclear power, "fast" reactors with liquid metal coolant that produce far less nuclear waste and are much more efficient than conventional nuclear reactors.
Quotes from the book
"Humanity treads today on a slippery slope. As we continue to pump greenhouse gases into the air, we move onto a steeper, even more slippery incline. We seem oblivious to the danger--unaware how close we may be to a situation in which a catastrophic slip becomes practically unavoidable, a slip where we suddenly lose all control and are pulled into a torrential stream that hurls us over a precipice to our demise."
"In order for a democracy to function well, the public needs to be honestly informed. But the undue influence of special interests and government greenwash pose formidable barriers to a well-informed public. Without a well-informed public, humanity itself and all species on the planet are threatened."
"Of course by 2005 I was well aware that the NASA Office of Public Affairs had become an office of propaganda. In 2004, I learned that NASA press releases related to global warming were sent to the White House, where they were edited to appear less serious or discarded entirely."
"If we let special interests rule, my grandchildren and yours will pay the price."
"The role of money in our capitals is the biggest problem for democracy and for the planet."
"The problem with asking people to pledge to reduce their fossil fuel use is that even if lots of people do, one effect is reduced demand for fossil fuel and thus a lower price--making it easier for someone else to burn...it is necessary for people to reduce their emissions, but it is not sufficient if the government does not adopt policies that cause much of the fossil fuels to be left in the ground permanently."
"I have argued that it is time to 'draw a line in the sand' and demand no new coal plants."
"The present situation is analogous to that faced by Lincoln with slavery and Churchill with Nazism--the time for compromises and appeasement is over."
"Humans are beginning to hammer the climate system with a forcing more than an order of magnitude more powerful than the forcings that nature employed."
"Once ice sheet disintegration begins in earnest, our grandchildren will live the rest of their lives in a chaotic transition period."
"After the ice is gone, would Earth proceed to the Venus syndrome, a runaway greenhouse effect that would destroy all life on the planet, perhaps permanently? While that is difficult to say based on present information, I've come to conclude that if we burn all 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, I believe the Venus syndrome is a dead certainty."
"One suggestion I have for now: Support Bill McKibben and his organization 350.org. It is the most effective and responsible leadership in the public struggle for climate justice."
Commentary
James Hansen understands the Earth's climate as well as any person alive, and his concern about where our climate is headed makes Storms of My Grandchildren a must-read for everyone who cares about the world their grandchildren will inherit. Storms of My Grandchildren retails for $16.50 at Amazon.com. Dr. Hansen's web site is http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Tropical Upper Tropospheric Trough.
Noted by the bulge to the WSW of the pink lines along 25-20N 60-70W. Note the higher shear below the TUTT axis.
It's funny to see how all of the wishcasters, downcasters, upcasters and garbagecaster just seem to go away when there is nothing serious going on. As soon as we have something important to watch, they come back to slow down the blog. They should be placed on ignore as soon as they show up.
I'm still here and I'm non of those... :)
I don't think his (JFlorida) ban is up yet from yesterday...
Quoting thermoclined:
Here we go again. Dee Nial is more than a river in Egypt...I'm outta here
Don't let the door...
#1 Ad Homonym -3
#2 Irrelevant & Immaterial -2
I know that you are not. That is why you are still here
One way to free up blog space would be to ignore or look the other way instead of instigating the constant back and forth that's created by responding to said post.
Didn't Wilma have the lowest pressure of any Atlanitic hurricane ever when it was south of Cuba after hyper-intensified over a 24 hour period?
News to me! I didn't realize.
Its funny as soon as a statement like this pops up.. the blog goes nuts with arguments.
Wilma was most intense in Atlantic history, but did she crack the top 5 worldwide?
or give em more alcohol so they cant walk to the water
The pressure measured in Wilma, 882 mb, is currently the lowest recorded pressure for a tropical cyclone in the Atlantic Basin, as well as the lowest pressure for any cyclone measured in the Western Hemisphere. It also reached its 882 mbar pressure in a span of 24 hours, making it the fastest pressure drop of any storm in the Atlantic Basin, although Hurricane Felix of 2007 reached a greater windspeed rise in 51 hours. At its peak intensity, the eye of Wilma was about 3 miles (5 km) in diameter, the smallest known eye of an Atlantic hurricane.[1] In Mexico, Isla Mujeres reported 64 inches (1637 mm) of rainfall—five times what Hurricane Gilbert dropped. This set a 24-hour rainfall record for the country of Mexico, and was the highest point total for rainfall from a tropical cyclone since Hurricane Mitch in 1998. It was the costliest Atlantic hurricane in Mexico, and the second costliest natural disaster in Mexican history, behind only Hurricane Pauline of the 1997 Pacific hurricane season, which did $8.84 billion worth of damage.[20]
The top ten is in order..
Wilma, Gilbert, Labor Day, Rita, Allen, Katrina, Camille, Mitch, Dean, Cuba, and Ivan.
Dry air seems to have tapered enough for this to possible develop some.
I think this is an interesting sat image, why you may ask. look at 18n 5w. Look at the shape of that twave. Is that low level winds making it look symmetrical or is that dust??
Scientist Warns Massive Asteroid Could Hit Earth in 2182
Published July 28, 2010 Space.com
A large asteroid in space that has a remote chance of slamming into the Earth would be most likely hit in 2182, if it crashed into our planet at all, a new study suggests.
The asteroid, called 1999 RQ36, has about a 1-in-1,000 chance of actually hitting the Earth, but half of that risk corresponds to potential impacts in the year 2182, said study co-author María Eugenia Sansaturio of the Universidad de Valladolid in Spain.
Sansaturio and her colleagues used mathematical models to determine the risk of asteroid 1999 RQ36 impacting the Earth through the year 2200. They found two potential opportunities for the asteroid to hit Earth in 2182.
The research is detailed in the science journal Icarus.
The asteroid was discovered in 1999 and is about 1,837 feet (560 meters) across. A space rock this size could cause widespread devastation at an impact site in the remote chance that it hit Earth, according to a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences.
First, I called neither you nor anyone else here stupid yesterday. (I may have thought it, but that's not against the blog rules AFAIK.) :-)
Second, the green line in the chart on Watts' page shows, of course, the climatic average from 1958-2010. Go to the page with the actual charts and click on any of the years; you'll note that the jagged red lines--which show actual measurements--trned much lower in the early years (1950s and 1960s) than they do in the later years (1990 onward). What the chart shows, then, is that while day-to-day and month-to-month temperatures fluctuate, the averages are rising. I.e., the north polar region is warming. Considerably.
Third, the daily mean temps are scientifically calculated from multiple data points: "The daily mean temperature of the Arctic area north of the 80th northern parallel is estimated from the average of the 00z and 12z analysis for all model grid points inside that area. The ERA40 reanalysis data set from ECMWF, has been applied to calculate daily mean temperatures for the period from 1958 to 2002, from 2002 to 2006 data from the global NWP model T511 is used and from 2006 to present the T799 model data are used...The ERA40 reanalysis data, has been applied to calculation of daily climate values that are plotted along with the daily analysis values in all plots. The data used to determine climate values is the full ERA40 data set, from 1958 to 2002."
Fourth, there are vastly more data pointing to a warming planet than just the GISS charts. I'll be happy to relink you to many of them.
Fifth, regardless of my beliefs, I truly hope GW/AGW is not happening, for its effect on my children, and theirs, and so on, could well be as devastating as some fear...if not worse. I've no vested interest either way, which is a heck of a lot more than most contrarians can say.
hmmmm, I was kinda wondering if things in the Atlantic are starting to get more favorable now. I mean we are heading into August.
and more
LOL! Just tryin' to be fair and balanced...
+3
1) Since 1851, there have only been 18 seasons in which neither a tropical/subtropical storm nor a hurricane made landfall in the state and/or affected the state with Cat 3 or high winds. That's a batting average of .886, for those of you who track baseball stats. (And, yes, we're already there with Bonnie, but I'm not going very far out on a limb when I say I don't believe that's the last we peninsulans will see from the tropics this year)
2) Of the 488 known storms to have made landfall in Florida in recorded history, 373 (or about 78%) have done so in the peak months of August, September, or October.
3) The decade from 1800-1809 (inclusive) saw only two known storms make landfall, while there were five each in the 1810s and the 1820s. By contrast, there were 17 storms in the 1920s...but 53 from 2000-2009 (again inclusive). [Note--some of the early low numbers were likely partially due to under-reporting brought about by a sparse population, but there's little doubt of recent increased activity.]
4) The storms have caused a total of 10,272 deaths, and roughly $115 billion in property damage in today's dollars. While the majority of those deaths occurred previous to hurricane hunter flights that began in 1943, the vast bulk of property damage has occurred in recent decades as a result of a swelling population.
Here's a map overlaid with the paths of all storms to affect Florida prior to 1900. (Talk about your spaghetti plots):
Link??
Looks like our GOM ULL moves out in 48 hr to the west, this is/could open up a whole new
opinon on any westward storms that might brew up in the carb.(IMO)
Hey StormW, do you think this is possible next week?
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