As a follow up to yesterdays post and once again to encourage you all to get your electronic selfs over to TED, Dr James Hansen, renowned Nasa Planetary Climate Scientist and now Earth Climate Change expert (in my humble opinion) delivered a very sobering talk in February, posted in March on TED's website.
Abstract - "In 1981, we published an article in Science magazine concluding that observed warming of 0.4 degrees Celsius in the prior century was consistent with the greenhouse effect of increasing CO2. That Earth would likely warm in the 1980's, and warming would exceed the noise level of random weather by the end of the century. We also said that the 21st century would see shifting climate zones, creation of drought-prone regions in North America and Asia, erosion of ice sheets, rising sea levels and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage. All of these impacts have since either happened or are now well under way.
That paper was reported on the front page of the New York Times and led to me testifying to Congress in the 1980's, testimony in which I emphasized that global warming increases both extremes of the Earth's water cycle. Heatwaves and droughts on one hand, directly from the warming, but also, because a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor with its latent energy, rainfall will become in more extreme events. There will be stronger storms and greater flooding. Global warming hoopla became time-consuming and distracted me from doing science -- partly because I had complained that the White House altered my testimony. So I decided to go back to strictly doing science and leave the communication to others.
By 15 years later, evidence of global warming was much stronger. Most of the things mentioned in our 1981 paper were facts. I had the privilege to speak twice to the president's climate task force. But energy policies continued to focus on finding more fossil fuels. By then we had two grandchildren, Sophie and Connor. I decided that I did not want them in the future to say, "Opa understood what was happening, but he didn't make it clear." So I decided to give a public talk criticizing the lack of an appropriate energy policy.
I gave the talk at the University of Iowa in 2004 and at the 2005 meeting of the American Geophysical Union. This led to calls from the White House to NASA headquarters and I was told that I could not give any talks or speak with the media without prior explicit approval by NASA headquarters. After I informed the New York Times about these restrictions, NASA was forced to end the censorship. But there were consequences. I had been using the first line of the NASA mission statement, "To understand and protect the home planet," to justify my talks. Soon the first line of the mission statement was deleted, never to appear again."
http://www.ted.com/talks/james_hansen_why_i_must_speak_out_about_climate_change.html
Of all the things discussed by Dr Hansen, I think the one element, if i was only to chose one, that causes me the most sleepless nights, is the concept of feedback loops. I was first scared to my very core by this concept after reading Fred Pearce's, The Last Generation, where he discussed releasing of stored methane from permafrost and in deep ocean clathrates. I encourage you all to read further on this!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_feedback#Arctic_methane_release
Wouldn't it be better to err on the side of caution and do something to ameliorate the changing climate conditions and be wrong?
The alternative is unthinkable!
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