Green Army: Persons of Interest
I would like to draw three main conclusions:
- The Earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements.
- The global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe, with a high degree of confidence, a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.
- Our computer climate simulations indicate that the greenhouse effect is already large enough to begin to affect the probability of extreme events, such as summer heat waves.
— James Hansen (1941), Senate Committee Hearing, Energy and Natural Resources, 23 June 1998.
Chuck Kutscher [National Renewable Energy Laboratory]:
If you want to know the scientific consensus on global warming, read the reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
But if you want to know what the consensus will be ten years from now, read Jim Hansen's work.
[Nature] and the laws of physics cannot compromise — they are what they are.
(p xi)
[On] June 23, 1988 … I testified to a Senate committee [that,] with 99% confidence [the]
Earth was being affected by human-made greenhouse gases, and the planet had entered a period of long-term warming.
(p xv)
"
Clean coal" is an oxymoron.
The clean-coal concept, at least so far, has been … a diversion that the coal industry and its government supporters employ to allow dirty-coal uses to continue. …
[To prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, coal] use must be prohibited unless and until the emissions can be captured and safely disposed of.
(p 174)
Now, what are the means by which fossil fuel use can be reduced and eventually phased out?
The first priority … must go to energy efficiency. …
People in the United States, Canada, and Australia use about twice as much energy per capita as those in Europe or Japan …
California achieves energy efficiency close to that of Europe and Japan.
Since 1975, per capita use of electricity in California has remained constant, while growing 50% in the rest of the United States. …
(p 190)
Utility regulations in California also are structured such that the utilities make more money by encouraging efficiency rather than by selling more energy.
The second priority … is renewable energies …
(p 191)
However … renewable energies will not be a sufficient source of [baseload] electric power [in the forseeable future.]
[Currently,] there are now just two options for nearly carbon-free large-scale baseload electric power:
(p 193)
[It would cost trillions] of dollars for new carbon-capturing power plants to replace all the old ones in China and India that emit carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
(p 194)
The World Health Organization calculates that there might be as many as four thousand [excess] cancer deaths because of radiation released at Chernobyl, which compares with one hundred thousand other cancer deaths among the same population. …
[A conservative estimate of deaths attributable to coal related air pollution is] ten thousand deaths per year — every year.
(p 195-6)
[The] backbone of a solution to the climate problem is a flat carbon emissions price applied across all fossil fuels at the source.
This carbon price (fee, tax) must rise continually, at a rate that is economically sound.
The funds must be distributed back to the citizens (not to special interests) — otherwise the tax rate will never be high enough to lead to a clean energy future.
(p 219)
Climate history is our best source of information about how sensitive the climate system is, and, it turns out, the climate is remarkably sensitive — large climate changes can occur in response to even small forcings.
(p 35)
[Humans,] by burning fossil fuels, are now increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide by 2 ppm per year.
[This human induced] climate forcing is [twenty thousand times] more powerful than the natural forcing [ie one ten thousandth of 1 ppm per year due to tectonic activity.]
(p 161)
The carbon dioxide amount 34 million years ago, when Antarctica became cold enough to harbor a large ice sheet, was found to be 450 [350-550] ppm …
If humanity burns
most of the fossil fuels, doubling or tripling the preindustrial carbon dioxide level, Earth will surely head toward the ice-free condition …
It is difficult to say how long it will take for the melting to be complete, but once ice sheet disintegration gets well under way, it will be impossible to stop.
(p 160, emphasis added)
[The] last time that Earth was 2 or 3 degrees warmer than today [ie] about three million years ago, [sea] level was about 25 meters (80 feet) higher than today. …
About a billion people now live at elevations less than 25 meters. …
A sea level rise of [even] 5 meters (about 17 feet) would submerge most of Florida, Bangladesh, the European lowlands …
(p 141-2)
The rate of sea level rise can be rapid once ice sheets begin to disintegrate.
About 14,000 years ago, sea level increased 4 to 5 meters per century for several consecutive centuries — an average rate of 1 meter every 20 or 25 years.
(p 38)
If ice sheets begin to disintegrate, there will not be a new stable sea level on any foreseeable time scale.
Instead, we will have created a situation with continual change, with intermittent calamities at thousands of cities around the world. …
Change will not be smooth and uniform.
Instead, local catastrophes will occur in association with regional storms.
Given the enormous infrastructure and historical treasures in our coastal cities, it borders on insanity to suggest that humans should [rely on adaptation to, as opposed to mitigation of, climate change.]
Would coastal cities be rebuilt, given the knowledge that sea level will continue to rise? …
[Where] would people in low-lying regions such as Bangladesh migrate to?
Global chaos will be difficult to avoid if we allow the ice sheets to become unstable.
(p 85)
[Most] of the climate response to fossil fuel emissions will occur … within the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren. …
[If] we burn all [known conventional] reserves of oil, gas, and coal, there is a
substantial chance we will initiate [a] runaway greenhouse [effect and] destroy all life on the planet …
If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale … the Venus syndrome is a
dead certainty.
(p 236, emphasis added)
The [safe] limit on permitted global warming, if we wish to preserve the great ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland, and thus preserve the coastlines that have existed for the past seven thousand years, is much less than has generally been assumed [ie 350 ppm of carbon dioxide.]
Halting global warming is still feasible — but requires international cooperation in taking urgent, unprecedented actions, which would have additional benefits for human health, agriculture, and the environment.
(p 34)
[In 1863] Abraham Lincoln … established the National Academy of Sciences {to advise the nation on important matters that required the best scientific expertise}.
President Bush, early in his first term, asked the academy for advice on global warming.
Specifically, the White House sought the academy's evaluation of the conclusions reached by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [which had been making] increasingly strong statements about the likely consequences of continued increases of greenhouse gases.
The White House was probably hoping that the academy would document some criticisms of the [IPCC's conclusions.]
If so, the White House was disappointed.
(p 56)
The answer that the National Academy of Sciences had delivered … was not the answer the White House wanted to hear.
The president did not ask the academy for advice about global warming again during the remainder of his eight years in power.
(p 58)
Coal burning at power plants is the greatest source of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide.
It is also the source most susceptible to control.
[Bush's decision in March 2001] not to restrict power plant emissions reneged on a promise [he] made repeatedly during the 2000 presidential election campaign … to include carbon dioxide in a "four pollutant strategy" to reduce the most damaging pollutants from power plants.
That promise, together with the Clinton-Gore administration's poor record in constraining carbon dioxide emissions, stymied Al Gore from raising the environment and climate change as an effective campaign issue.
Given the razor-thin margin in the 2000 election, and the environmental awareness of Florida voters, it seems clear that Gore would have become president if it were not for Bush's pollution-reduction promise.
(p 2)
[On the other hand, the Bush administration did take steps to reduce]
non-carbon dioxide emissions, including methane and black soot. …
[The methane-to-markets program] helps reduce methane emissions via capture at coal mines, landfills, and agricultural and waste management facilities and uses the captured methane as fuel.
White House interest helped Kruger and the EPA initiate the program in the United States and extend its effectiveness via cooperation with several developing countries that have larger methane emissions than the United States.
This approach, extended globally, is better than the Kyoto Protocol approach [since methane] is one of the escape hatches that make the Kyoto approach ineffectual for carbon dioxide.
The Bush administration also deserves credit for major tightening of soot emission limits in the face of opposition from diesel producers, truckers, and other industries.
In addition to supporting rules that reduced soot emissions from trucks and buses, the administration later expanded regulations to cover tractors, trains, and ships.
(p 52, emphasis added)
In my talks I began to emphasize the first line of the NASA mission statement:
[To] understand and protect our home planet.
But in the spring of 2006, a NASA colleague sent me an e-mail warning me that I had better stop using that statement as a rationalization for my actions because it no longer existed.
Sure enough, when I checked the mission statement on the NASA Web site, the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet" was gone.
[Nobody] knew what had happened.
It had just disappeared.
The second thing to disappear was 20% of the NASA earth science research and analysis budget.
Because most of the budget goes toward fixed items, such as rent and civil service salaries, a 20% cut is monstrous, a signal almost of going out of business.
(p 135)
Mark Bowen:
A high insider at headquarters told me that Michael Griffin rewrote the mission statement and the agency's strategic plan basically on his own.
(Censoring Science, Dutton, 2008)
(p 136)
Michael Griffin (1949) [NASA Administrator, 2005-9]:
[Climate change is only a problem if you] assume that the state of the Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had, and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change.
First of all, I don't think it's within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown.
And second of all, … I would ask which human beings … are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have … right now, is the best climate for all other human beings.
I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take.
(NPR)
(p 152)
David Mould, [George W Bush appointee and] head of public affairs for NASA, [had] held senior positions in public and media relations at the Southern Company of Atlanta, the second-largest holding company of coal-burning utilities in the United States and thus the second greatest emitter of carbon dioxide.
Southern's contributions to the Republican Party [in 2000] were exceeded … only by Enron's.
(p 127)
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