Scientists: Global warming imminent
Planet faces ‘clear and present danger’
By Tony Kindelspire
The Daily Times-Call
DENVER — His battles with his bosses at NASA have not silenced him. If anything, the notoriety James Hansen has received from those skirmishes has put a spotlight on work he’s been doing for nearly two decades: warning the world of the “clear and present danger” the planet faces by human-caused global warming.
“In my case, I just say what I want,” Hansen said Monday during the SOLAR 2006 conference. “I don’t think they’ll fire me, because they’ll just get more bad publicity.”
Hansen has been outspoken on global warming and on what he says are attempts to block out scientific evidence of it. He argued Monday that “the public affairs officers of the agencies are now staffed by political appointees.”
Hansen, who heads the NASA Institute for Space Studies, first testified about the threat of global warming before Congress in 1988. On Monday, he called on the public to “get informed and get angry.”
While the conference itself is focusing on renewable forms of energy, especially solar power, Monday morning’s plenary session featured Hansen and Warren Washington, a senior research scientist specializing in climate change at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
While at times heavily laden with detailed analysis only someone with an earth sciences degree could understand, Hansen nonetheless laid out two possible futures for the planet: Humans can proceed with “business as usual” or begin to move to an “alternative scenario,” in which steps are taken to curb, and ultimately eliminate, the burning of fossil fuels into the atmosphere.
“We still have a chance, but the window of opportunity is quickly closing,” said Hansen, whose battles with his bosses at NASA have been covered by national news outlets such as “60 Minutes.”
Hansen said that since 2000, carbon dioxide emissions have increased 2 percent every year and coal is the main reason for that.
He referred to a comment Washington made during his talk, when he stated that China is building a new coal-fired plant “every six to 10 days.”
Washington said the only solution to global warming is “drastically lowering greenhouse gas emissions” around the planet.
Using several animated computer modelings, Washington showed the effect rising temperatures are having, such as increases in the melting of glacial ice, the intensity of storms, and the number of regional heat waves, particularly in the Southwest and Northwest United States, “where they’ve had relatively few heat waves.”
One image that drew applause and even a few hoots from the audience was accompanied by this comment from Washington: “Hopefully, the future climate- change policy will take place here — I’m not sure how soon.”
As he spoke, a satellite image showing the North American continent slowly zoomed in until the image was that of a single building: the White House.
SOLAR 2006, the 34th national conference of the National Solar Energy Society, is being held in Denver for the first time since 1991 and runs through the rest of this week.
The key issue at this year’s conference was climate recovery, something both Hansen and Washington agreed could be achieved, at least partially, by renewable forms of energy.
But as Hansen noted, it’s up to the public to get informed, and that’s not always easy when there are famous voices out there like Michael Crichton, whose latest book, “State of Fear,” basically attempts to debunk people like Hansen who say the global warming threat is real.
Hansen noted that it was President Abraham Lincoln who created the National Academy of Sciences, and that among that august body there is no disagreement on the subject.
“Instead of listening to the National Academy of Sciences, we listen to a science fiction writer!” Hansen said.
longmontfyi.com |
