NASA's Hansen: Public Must Take The Lead On Fossil Fuels

Image: Credit: Dr. James Hansen.



Dr. James Hansen, the eminent climate scientist, offers his thinking directly on his Columbia.edu website.
I prefer to read his work directly, as he is quite precise in his thinking.
Hansen's experiences and research have led him to posit that the public must take the lead on the issue of fossil fuel replacement. His reasons are in his own words, at the end of this post.

The header link here will take you to Amazon, to the link for Mark Bowen's book, "Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming"
by Mark Bowen (Author)
Publishers Weekly sums up this important book as:
" It is portrait of NASA climate scientist James Hansen and his decades-long struggle to alert the public about global warming's perils and potential solutions ranges from deeply disturbing and frightening to inspiring. Disturbing, as Bowen (Thin Ice) gives convincing evidence that the Bush administration did its best to control NASA scientists' communication with the public in order to undermine belief in global warming and belittle its consequences. According to Bowen, the administration set up ideological political loyalists in positions formerly held by career professionals, gutted NASA's earth science budget, then denied these actions. Frightening, as Hansen concludes that climate is significantly more sensitive than two years ago and that our choice may be not between no change and a significant change, but between a significant change and disaster. Inspiring, in Bowen's portrayal of Hansen, who obeys the Feynman admonition in both science and policy—describe the evidence very carefully without regard to the way you feel it should be. Bowen's in-depth treatments of politics and science, although hard going at times, give his arguments substance. Hansen's conviction that tools exist right now to mitigate the worst effect—if only we will use them—is surprisingly hopeful."

Hansen's thoughts:
"In our draft (http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080317.pdf) “Target CO2” paper we show that 450 ppm CO2 is far into the dangerous zone, and we recommend a goal of phasing out coal emissions by 2030 (the practical difficulty of phasing out coal emissions in 20-25 years is acknowledged and discussed at the end of the paper). This keeps peak CO2 close to 400 ppm, again with some variation depending on the magnitude of true undiscovered oil reserves. People can help assure that maximum CO2 stays close to 400 ppm by vociferously opposing oil drilling in environmentally sensitive regions such as the Arctic and Antarctic, on public land, in off-shore regions where states and other governments can foil the desire of oil companies to extract every last drop of oil, etc. Of course the most effective way to assure that we do not act as desperate addicts, refusing to move to the cleaner world beyond fossil fuels, tearing up the land for every last bit of fossil fuels, is via a significant and gradually rising price on carbon emissions. The public must take the lead, because there are so many “well-oiled” officials in our governments, and not just in the United States. To summarize the present and prior discussions, important things that the public can do are: 1. Fight for a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants, 2. Oppose extraction of fossil fuels in public and environmentally sensitive regions, 3. Vote for politicians who take the Stewardship pledge ( http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20070802_Stewardship.pdf ) -- do not vote for “well-oiled” politicians who accept funding from fossil fuel interests. The Earth’s history shows us that we cannot put all the carbon in fossil fuels back into the air without producing a very different planet from the one to which humanity is adapted. There is still time to phase off fossil fuels, but it requires sensible policies in the public interest. This will not be easy: the special interests are pouring huge amounts of funding into disinformation campaigns. More on this soon."