World has 10-Year Window to Act on Climate Warming - NASA Expert
SACRAMENTO, California - A leading U.S. climate researcher said on Wednesday the world has a 10-year window of opportunity to take decisive action on global warming and avert a weather catastrophe.
NASA scientist James Hansen, widely considered the doyen of American climate researchers, said governments must adopt an alternative scenario to keep carbon dioxide emission growth in check and limit the increase in global temperatures to 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit).
‘I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change … no longer than a decade, at the most,’ Hansen said at the Climate Change Research Conference in California’s state capital.
If the world continues with a ‘business as usual’ scenario, Hansen said temperatures will rise by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 7.2 degrees F) and ‘we will be producing a different planet’.
On that warmer planet, ice sheets would melt quickly, causing a rise in sea levels that would put most of Manhattan under water. The world would see more prolonged droughts and heat waves, powerful hurricanes in new areas and the likely extinction of 50 percent of species.
Hansen, who heads NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has made waves before by saying that U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration tried to silence him and heavily edited his and other scientists’ findings on a warmer world.
He reiterated that the United States ‘has passed up the opportunity’ to influence the world on global warming.
The United States is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, most notably carbon dioxide. But Bush pulled the country out of the 160-nation Kyoto Protocol in 2001, arguing that the treaty’s mandatory curbs on emissions would harm the economy.
Hansen praised California for taking the ‘courageous’ step of passing legislation on global warming last month that will make it the first U.S. state to place caps on greenhouse gas emissions.
He said the alternative scenario he advocates involves promoting energy efficiency and reducing dependence on carbon burning fuels.
‘We cannot burn off all the fossil fuels that are readily available without causing dramatic climate change,’ Hansen said. ‘This is not something that is a theory. We understand the carbon cycle well enough to say that.’
3 Responses to “World has 10-Year Window to Act on Climate Warming - NASA Expert”
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September 16th, 2006 at 11:55 am
This warning is a timely attidote to all those, including socialist Cubans, celebrating the discovery of new oil fields four or fives miles down und the Gulf of Mexico. The point, which many sorely miss, is not to discover still more underground carbon to burn into the atmosphere, but to reverse the process, moving to noncarbon fuels, along with high design for conservation.
‘Find a need and meet it’ is a watchword of entrepeneurs. Well, here’s a dire need outlined–reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Now let’s encourage a policy rewarding the ‘high road’ green entrepreneurs, socialist or capitalist, who can deal with it.
September 21st, 2006 at 9:48 pm
Why there needs to be left leadership to prevent Climate Catastrophe!
I am writing this to the Left in general, but particularly Left parties and leaders, because I have seen so little mention of Global Warming as a Climate Catastrophe, and because I have seen so little discussion of the vital role of Left leaders in demanding and championing a call for a world-wide preventative plan. Instead we seem to be leaving it up to non-political scientists and non-scientific politicians, who don’t even speak of preventing a catastrophe that is likely to make all our very good and important works relatively irrelevant!
So I ask, why aren’t we discussing how to prevent the coming global climate catastrophe? Why are we collectively avoiding thinking about if and how we might prevent it? Or have we, lemming like, come to accept it as inevitable and thus we don’t even want to think about how bad it will be?
Each day brings escalating proof and more rhetoric about this fuzzy thing called “global warming,” but there remains a great silence and absence of leadership about preventing this catastrophe that threatens us all.
I won’t bother here to repeat the frightening list of changes that have already begun nor their almost unimaginable consequences. Make your own list and see if you can predict what they will do to all the things we now take for granted and worse to those already vulnerable.
At least the term “tipping point” is being introduced and some vague long range plans are being offered.
Yet, it is hard to find anyone who dares to argue we still have a chance to prevent these irreversible changes and damage to our climate, environment and civilizations. Still no major leadership is warning us of what we must do and by when, and even if we are to have a chance to prevent this catastrophe - nor what the full consequences will be if we fail.
Yes, the environmental movement and evidence grows weekly. New plans are being launched which focus on lessening the effects and suggest mechanisms to encourage more responsible behavior. Optimistic scientists say we have 10 or more years, while the pessimists argue it’s too late already. Others focus on slowing down the rapidly escalating rate of change and then make suggestions how we might adapt as best we can.
Al Gore’s film didn’t include many of the newest threats, but even he spelled out millions of deaths, losses of port cities and vast changes to ecosystems that would destroy food and water sources for much of the human population. But Gore, like all other leaders offers nothing sufficient to mobilize us.
He says he is an optimist and that we can do it! I agree with Se Si Pueda, but do we really have time, the kind of decades and centuries usually assumed to make the profound changes needed? Gore and others are laying out scenarios we aught to follow, but no one yet has taken the responsibility to spell out just what are the minimums we must do to have even a reasonable chance to prevent this irreversible catastrophe.
Without a clear deadline and explanation of what will work, I doubt the general public will be able to force the politicians and those controlling resources to do enough to prevent the increasingly definite Global Catastrophe (GC) from happening.
Consider, if there was a large meteor going to hit us in 2 years, one that was going to destroy cities, kill millions and threaten our very survival, maybe that would get our attention and force us to try and divert it. I am convinced that without such a target and time line, we will realize what we should have done, only when it’s too late.
And if the GC happens, all our other good works, efforts and important stuff won’t really matter. So while we may still have that chance, I’m urging everyone to demand of the scientists, politicians, rational folk and anyone who wants humanity to have a viable future, that a plan based on what’s possible and needed, be spelled out. If Katrina wasn’t just one city and a few thousands of people, but if Katrina was our planet faced with a truck sized asteroid, maybe we would have had done better. Maybe even the profiteers and racist politicians would have sounded the alarm and done something.
Note that with far fewer resources, Cuba’s socialist perspective warned and prepared and successfully protected their people. When Cuba offered much needed and capable medical assistance to the US, the callous US leaders rejected and still deny the people of the Gulf the medical help they need.
So I am asking we not remain silent on this and the we speak most loudly to the more rational and humane leaders and say this time, we need them to act now, while there is still time.
Imagine if you can, how we, those of us who claim some passion for humanity and reality, will be judged if we could have, but didn’t prevent this catastrophe; because no one pointed out what had to be done – and by when and so we were too late with too little! Who would be most guilty if we fail to meet this challenge?
So to prevent this catastrophe,
Where is the Plan?
What is the minimum that must be done?
When is the deadline?
Walter
September 22nd, 2006 at 9:12 am
Ted Glick of the Independent Progressive Political Network and the Climate Crisis coalition has been out front on this from the left for some time, and has many good ideas and plans, as has Al Gore from the liberal center.
There are others. Tom Hayden, Meda Benjamin, the Greens. Booby Rush, the former black Pather but now Congressman, is very good on this issue.
http://www.climatecrisiscoalition.org/
Gore is working on training 1000 young people to take his film and slide show on the road. No reason we can’t encourage a bunch of our folks to join them, do some good work, learn a few things, and form some alliance for longer-range tasks.
You’re in DC, Walter. Take on the task on making a list of those potential allies on the Hill who understand this and are looking for solutions. We can hook then up with ‘high road’ think tanks who can help with a positive program.
But in the end, it requires radical change toward Economic Democracy , and a ‘long march through the institutions,’ so let’s start taking these first steps.