I didn't think anybody could beat out Al Gore for global-warming hysteria, but this guy takes the prize:
Exactly 20 years after warning America about global warming, a top NASA scientist said the situation has gotten so bad that the world's only hope is drastic action.
James Hansen told Congress on Monday that the world has long passed the "dangerous level" for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and needs to get back to 1988 levels. He said Earth's atmosphere can only stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises.
Mass extinction in 20 years. Those nasty old gasoline prices seem sort of trivial by comparison, eh?
Comments
Hansen is the head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Over the past year, there's been a *precipitous* drop in world temperatures - enough to wipe out a century of "global warming". Coldest winter in a century in China. Baghdad saw its first snow in history. Most snow in Wisconsin since they've started keeping records. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Mexico, Australia, Green, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, etc.
But that's all *anecdotal* evidence. Sorta like the fact that someone has smoked since they are 6 and they're 96 now, and they still don't have cancer. A single data point is not a trend.
However, in February, all four major global temperature tracking outfits - GISS, UA-Huntsville, RSS, and GISS - have released updata, and all four show global temperatures have dropped. Not a little, a lot. UA-H and RSS have been saying that we reached a peak in 1998, and we've been cooling since.
Yes, we are experiencing climate change. Yes, we are stupid to dump more and more poison into the air.
But water vapor is so much more important as a greenhouse gas that CO2 is insignificant any place other than the middle of a desert.
There are a lot of lies in "An Inconvenient Truth", and anyone who tries to find sources for the claims Gore makes is hard pressed to find truths.
Willy Geist says that James Hansen was his little league coach, and he was good at that. Glad he's good at something, because he doesn't seem to be very good as a scientist.
I don't think trying to avoid polluting the air is a radical idea. Rachel Carson's been a part of our lives for almost 50 years, and there isn't much argument any more, but the Gore concept (Hansen is his chief science advisor) has enough serious problems that "drastic action" based on it is a really stupid idea. Clean air, yes. Demonizing CO2? No.
When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. Hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.
-- Michael Crichton, "Jurassic Park"
Well said, gadfly.
B.G.
Well, if we don't servive maybe at least the polar bears will.
Excuse me--that's survive.