James Hansen The Climate Crisis and the Need for an Energy Revolution

I have found another talk by James Hansen to listen to. It is titled 'The Climate Crisis and the Need for an Energy Revolution' and Hansen gave the talk on 10 October 2012 in New York as part of the Energy Emergency, Energy Transition roundtable convened by Cornell University's Global Labor Institute (GLI), a program of the Worker Institute at Cornell, and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

Facing the Truth About Global Warming a talk by James Hansen

I found another talk by James Hansen on the internet. Hansen gave the talk to the Center for Science Writings (CSW) at Stevens Institute of Technology after they had given him another award for his book Storms of my Grandchildren.

Facing the Truth About Global Warming

New James Hansen talk from 10 October

Here is a new talk by James Hansen on climate change and tipping points. It has been uploaded by Cornell University.

Dr. James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute addresses 75 international union leaders about the urgency of the climate crisis. The presentation was given in NYC on 10/10/12, and was part of the Energy Emergency, Energy Transition round table convened by Cornell University's Global Labor Institute (GLI), a program of the Worker Institute at Cornell, and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

James Hansen talks to a very young economist

This is James Hansen talking to a very youthful-looking interviewer from The Economist. I am assuming the interviewer had not been born when Hansen gave his well-known testimony to a committee of the US Congress.

The interview is 7 and a half minutes long. Hansen has his loaded climate dice and he talks about how extremely low the probability of recent extreme weather events would be if there was no trend of global warming.

Hansen also puts the case for a carbon price as a market-consistent policy that still lets markets decide the allocation of resources between competing uses. He warns that failure to adopt a steadily rising carbon price will inevitably lead to intrusive and additional Government regulation in order to achieve the same aim.

Dr Nick Smith promotes global warming via hydraulic fracturing for unconventional gas

What has happened to the former New Zealand Minister of Climate Change Issues, the hon Dr Nick Smith? In March he resigned from all his ministerial offices when his conflict of interest in the accident compensation case of his National-insider friend Brownyn Pullar became public.

Well Nick Smith is back in the public spotlight and is promoting the extraction of unconventional gas via hydraulic fracturing.

Smith has written an op-ed in the New Zealand Herald Fracking the sensible choice for NZ.

Fracking technologies are underpinning an energy revolution in the United States. Huge unconventional shale gas resources in Louisiana and Pennsylvania are coming on stream, enabling gas to replace coal-fired electricity generation. Gas emits one-third the greenhouse gas emissions of coal.

If we do not find new natural gas resources in the next decade, energy prices will rise and we will inevitably burn more coal. New Zealand must be open to responsibly using fracking to access our unconventional gas resources.

So, according to Smith, from a global warming perspective, unconventional gas is implicitly okay as its emits one-third the greenhouse gas emissions of coal.

Smith concludes that NZ needs;

a strong economy and a clean environment. That will only be possible if we take a rational and science-based approach to our natural resources and risk management.

But promoting unconventional gas development is not the climate science based approach.

Thats abundantly clear from James Hansen's talks in New Zealand in 2011. Did Dr Smith miss these?

Kharecha and Hansen, in their 2008 paper Implications of "peak oil" for atmospheric CO2 and climate. Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 22, GB3012, doi:10.1029/2007GB003142, have clearly told us that we can only keep carbon dioxide concentrations from exceeding about 450 ppm by 2100, if emissions from coal, unconventional fossil fuels, and land use are constrained.

The specific issue of whether a transition to conventional natural gas will actually reduce future greenhouse gas emissions is dealt with in Myhrvold and Caldeira (2012) Greenhouse gases, climate change and the transition from coal to low-carbon electricity.

The Carnegie Institute explains Caldeira and Myhrvold's conclusion; Only the lowest CO2 emitting technologies can avoid a hot end-of-century.

..in the case of natural gas—increasingly the power industry’s fuel of choice, because gas reserves have been growing and prices have been falling—the study finds that warming would continue even if over the next 40 years every coal-fired power plant in the world were replaced with a gas-fueled plant.

As Joe Romm says natural gas is a bridge to nowhere

The zombie ETS infects the RMA with climate insanity

The Environment Court won't consider James Hansen evidence on coal and climate change in the appeal against opencast coal mine consents

The New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme ("NZETS") has become living-dead "zombie" legislation that infects other statutes with its own virulent climate change insanity. The example is a recent decision by the Environment Court that it can't consider climate change impacts of coal mining as described by James Hansen in the Forest and Bird appeal of the resource consents for the opencast 'Escarpment' coal mine.

The other week I saw the zombie genre film 28 Weeks Later on tv. The turning point in the film was when British actor Robert Carlyle kissed his wife and was instantly infected with the 'Rage Virus', which of course meant he had to turn into a homicidal-virus spreading-living-dead zombie who would then infect the rest of the surviving population of post-Rage Virus London. A great zombie movie movement!

For me, another much less amusing zombie moment, was last week's news from TVNZ, Radio NZ, the Otago Daily Times, and the Dominion Post, that the Environment Court had declared that climate change effects from coal mining will not be considered in Forest and Bird's appeal of the consents for the opencast coal mine the Escarpment_Mine_Project.

For background to the Escarpment Mine Project, including James Hansen's videotaped climate change evidence given to Jeanette Fitzsimons, and the conservation and biodiversity issues, see Claire Brownings Pundit post. And there is wildlife photographer Rod Morris' view that the mine proposal is simply ecological destruction on a massive scale. Botanist Alan Mark reminds us that the coal measure landscape of the Denniston Plateau is the only one left as Solid Energy have destroyed the other one - the Stockton Plateau.

According to the Dominion Post, Judge Newhook's decision was "that regulatory activity on the important topic of climate change is taken firmly away from regional government and made the subject of appropriate attention from time to time by central government by way of activity at a national level".

If we are at all unclear what that means, coal apologist and Stratera boss Chris Baker explains that this means the NZETS; "We have an emissions trading scheme, we are well ahead of our obligation internationally...".

The utter ill-logic of the "we have an ETS, more coal mining and exporting is okay" argument is that although the NZETS applies to all coal mined within New Zealand, all coal exported is exempted. Bathhurst Resources intends to export all the coal from the Escarpment Mine. So the application of the zombie NZETS to coal mining means that there will be no carbon price on the coal from the Escarpment Mine.

And this zombie effect of the NZETS in making coal "alive but dead" to a carbon price, then infects the application of our great sustainability-promoting externality-internalising Resource Management Act. The coal exports are "regulated" (in reality protected) by the NZETS. Therefore the RMA doesn't apply.

The consequence will be that the Environment Court will not be considering the effects of the Escarpment Mine on a level playing field. They will attempt to reach a broad overall judgement of what is sustainable. They will balance the economic effects of more export dollars and jobs on the West Coast against the many adverse environmental impacts on a unique coal measure ecosystem full of rare and endangered endemic species. But the scales of justice won't be fairly weighted, as the adverse impact and the externality of the greenhouse effect of the coal have already been taken off the adverse effects side of the ledger.

The NZETS is truly a ZOMBIE.

The Science is Clear - new James Hansen talk from TED 2012

I have just found this recent 2012 TED talk by James Hansen. It has been on-line since 7 March. The number of views on TED is 120,748 today. The number of views on Youtube was 13,473. I bet that rises.



The talk is very polished. Hansen reads from a script and has obviously run through the talk several times. Hansen discusses the natural greenhouse effect, the Earth's energy imbalance caused primarily by fossil fuel combustion, sea-level rise, species extinctions, impacts on agriculture and the need to act for the benefit of future generations as represented by his grandchildren.

James Hansen at 5min.com

I have just seen a new source of online videos of James Hansen. The website 5min.com is also free of the advertisements that seem so pervasive at You Tube these days.

The Affects of CO2 Emissions on the Climate

Can we defuse the global warming time bomb?

In June, 2003, James Hansen gave an address titled "Can we defuse the global warming time bomb?" to the Council on Environmental Quality in Washington, DC.

I have found a version on the web in html: http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh.html.

James Hansen 350 Aotearoa

James Hansen gave an interview to 350.org.Aotearoa. during his speaking tour of New Zealand.

What is science telling us about climate change?

Why is 350 parts per million important?

What can we do about climate change?

How much time do we have?

All answered in 7 minutes 25 seconds.

James Hansen University of Canterbury

Here's the Video of James Hansen of speaking at the University of Canterbury.

If you missed James Hansen in NZ

Jim Hansen spoke to over crowded lecture theatres during his recent speaking tour of New Zealand. In Wellington, 600 people listened to him - 300 in person in one lecture theatre and another 300 listened via a video link. I saw him speak twice and it was very much a highlight.

However, the New Zealand government still does not get it and is encouraging offshore oil, gas and lignite extraction.

Hansen more or less gave this talk.

The future of coal

Last Tuesday (17 May) I attended the Institute of Policy Study's Future of Coal symposium. For those who want to know what was said, Claire Browning gives a very good summary at the Pundit blog. Audio of the presentations, including Hansen and Elder can be listened to at the Science Media Centre The Science Media Centre has also summarised the presentations. Environment Commissioner Jan Wright's speech is on her website.

Elder's presentation, coming after Hansen, was a case of the ridiculous following the sublime. After his over view of climate change, Hansen spoke of the disconnect between the scientific understanding and the political rhetoric of governments and businesses. Elder's pro-lignite, pro-mining, "Solid Energy is sustainable" speech demonstrated Hansen's point perfectly. The disturbing thing about this is that Elder's narrative is no doubt accepted by the National Government and the business sector.

I rescued myself from depression about this when it occurred to me that Don Elder has a strong resemblance to John Clarke in his satirical dialogues with Bryan Dawe - particularly the The Front Fell Off interview.

Bryan Dawe. Dr Don Elder, thank for you being here to talk about coal, lignite and climate change.

John Clarke. You're welcome Bryan. I think its really important that New Zealand has a good open discussion about our future. I am very open minded about this. So I came here, against advice that it would be 300 to one with a lot of unthinking NIMBY proponents. Its all too often that a debate is started, such as last year's debate about further mining under Schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act to grow the economy. And that debate just becomes dominated with unthinking slogans such as "No mining in National Parks"..

Bryan Dawe. But Dr Elder, the Government did in fact propose to remove protection from thousands of hectares within Paparoa National Park that is on top of a coal seam!

John Clarke. We were just trying to start a discussion! The response was unthinking slogans like "No mining in National Parks" and "Keep the coal in the hole". To me that is the same level as "Leave the Asians in Asia". It was meant to be a discussion.

Bryan Dawe. But Dr Elder, isn't Jeanette Fitzsimons correct when she observes that seeking non-notified consents for your lignite briquette plant at Mataura shuts down any discussion or debate?

John Clarke. Well, she would say that! It's ridiculous! We are just trying to get a resource consent. Everyone wants their consent not notified. Everyone gets their lawyers to write to the council. Its just the same as you getting a consent for your garden trellis!

Bryan Dawe. Dr Elder, Dr Jan Wright, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, points out that you refused to give her information on the carbon content of your lignite process. How does that help with the discussion?

John Clarke. Well, Bryan, that was commercially sensitive information. Dr Wright may have set a competing lignite to fuel plant. She has qualifications in physics and chemistry, you know.

Bryan Dawe. Dr James Hansen, of NASA, has just presented the climate change case for the rapid phase out of coal and non-traditional fossil-fuels such as lignite, tar sands and oil-shale. What is your response to this?

John Clarke. Bryan, I am glad you have asked that, as are no doubt half the people here who now agree with me. We need to understand that there are a couple of billion poor people in less developed countries - who have not enjoyed several generations of energy-intensive wealthy lifestyles as we have - who want lignite briquettes but can't afford them. In light of that need, who are we in New Zealand, not to process the lignite into diesel and fertiliser that we can then substitute for imports from China

Bryan Dawe. Dr Elder, won't the development of a large scale lignite industry increase New Ziealand's annual carbon dioxide emissions by 25%, depending on the number of plants? Won't that contribute to global warming.

John Clarke. No Bryan, not at all. We have to think about this globally as Soild Energy does., We make the lignite into fuel and fertiliser in Southland. We stop importing fertiliser made from coal in China. Globally, there are less emissions as we have saved the transport emissions!

Human-Made Climate Change: A Moral, Political and Legal Issue

Dr James Hansen is giving a lecture in Wellington. The details Monday 16 May 2011, 5.45pm -7.30pm, Rutherford House, Lecture Theatre 1, 23 Lambton Quay, Wellington, No RSVP required - all welcome.

Here is Hansen talking recently about phasing out coal powered thermal power stations.



Here is the full detail of Hansen's public talk in Wellington.

Human-Made Climate Change: A Moral, Political and Legal Issue

Dr James Hansen is Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University's Earth Institute. He is the author of Storms of my Grandchildren (2010), and is probably best known for being one of the first scientists to bring global warming to the world's attention, when he delivered Congressional testimony on climate change in the 1980s.

Trained in physics and astronomy in Dr James Van Allen's space science program at the University of Iowa, Dr Hansen has been an active researcher in planetary atmospheres and climate science for nearly 40 years, with the last 30 years focused on climate research, publishing more than 100 scholarly articles on the latter topic.

Elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1995, Dr Hansen has received numerous awards, including the WWF Conservation Medal from the Duke of Edinburgh, the American Geophysical Union?s Roger Revelle Medal, and the Heinz Environment Award.

In addition to numerous testimonies given to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, Dr Hansen twice made presentations to President George W. Bush Administration's cabinet level Climate and Energy Task Force, chaired by Vice President Dick Cheney.

While Dr Hansen's work has evolved from space science to climate science, it has constantly sought to make the results of that work widely available to the public. Time Magazine designated Dr. Hansen as one of the world's 100 most influential people in 2006, a tribute to his continuing efforts to serve the public through his scientific work.

Dr Hansen's Wellington lecture will focus on human-made climate change as a moral, political and legal issue. To quote:

'Human-made climate change is a moral issue. It pits the rich and the powerful against the young and the unborn, against the defenseless and against nature. Climate change is a political issue. But politics fails when there is a revolving door between government and the fossil fuel-industrial complex. Climate change is a legal issue. The judiciary provides the possibility of holding our governments accountable for their duty to protect the public interest.'

The Mayor of Wellington, Celia Wade-Brown will be present to welcome and introduce Dr Hansen.

James Hansen Tokyo 2008

Here is interview with James Hansen recorded in July 2008 in Tokyo, at an event called the United Nations University G8 symposium on innovation and climate change.

CLIMATE CHANGE - James Hansen from UNUChannel on Vimeo.

Cap and dividend - Hansen

From the Treehugger.com website, here is a set of slides from James Hansen on economic policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As the article's author notes "We need more influential academics like James Hansen to sound the alarm for a more robust alternative to the now conventional cap-and-trade approach."

James Hansen on "Tax and Dividend" Climate Policy

View more presentations from Andrew Revkin.

This must especially be the case in New Zealand where we have emissions permit trading via our NZETS that is not even "cap-and-trade".

2050 Emissions Reduction Target submission

Here's my submission on Nick Smith's "50% by 2050" emissions reduction target.

2050 Emissions Reduction Target Consultation
Ministry for the Environment
PO Box 10362
Wellington 6143

By email to 2050target@mfe.govt.nz

28 February 2011

Submission in opposition to 2050 Emissions Reduction Target

Dear Sir/Madam,

I oppose the proposed target of a 50 per cent reduction of net greenhouse gases in CO2-e from gross 1990 levels by 2050.

Reasons

Gross-net inconsistency

1. The proposed target is misleadingly framed to give the impression of reducing emissions while actually allowing increases in gross emissions. This is because the measurement of the 2050 target is inconsistent with the measurement of the 1990 baseline. The 2050 target is to be ‘net’ (after deducting carbon sink removals) and the 1990 baseline is ‘gross’ (without deducting carbon sink removals).

2. This framing allows actual gross emissions excluding LULUCF to increase by the amount of the actual carbon sink removals identified for 1990. These carbon removals amount to 31 million tonnes (MfE April 2010: “New Zealand’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory 1990–2008”, Report No ME 1009). A net target that represents such a quantum of increased production of GHGs hardly represents a meaningful transition to a low carbon economy. Nor is it particularly credible.

3. I recommend that the 2050 target be expressed consistently with the baseline, either as ‘net to net’ or ‘gross to gross’.

Target is irrelevant to climate policy

4. The proposed target lacks any credible integration with other sections of the Climate Change Response Act 2002, the provisions of the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZETS) or any other NZ Government policy on climate change.

5. The emissions reduction target is not defined in the interpretation section of the Climate Change Response Act 2002. Within that act the emissions reduction target does not influence the setting of NZETS emissions caps, or the setting of allocations of emission units, or the setting of prices for emissions units. The proposed target appears irrelevant to the key design features of the NZ ETS.

6. If the proposed target has no meaningful impact on the operations of the NZETS, then the gazetting of the proposed target is merely window-dressing for ineffective policies on climate change mitigation.

Target lacks scientific support

7. The proposed target is not consistent with the science. It is predicated on stabilizing carbon dioxide concentrations at about 450 parts per million (ppm) and keeping temperature increase since the 18th century to two degrees C.

8. In the paper Hansen et al 2008 “Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?” (PDF), Hansen and his co-authors conclude that a temperature increase of two degrees C will constitute dangerous interference in the climate system and that the target of 450 ppm, if long maintained, would push Earth toward an ice-free state and that the present global mean carbon dioxide concentration of 391 ppm, already exceeds a safe level. Hansen et al conclude that a safer concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

9. In the paper by Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows 2011: Beyond 'dangerous' climate change: emission scenarios for a new world, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. 369, 20-44 doi: 10.1098/rsta.2010.0290, the authors make the following three points:

• There is now little to no chance of maintaining the rise in global mean surface temperature at below 2 degrees C.
• A temperature increase of 2 degrees C now represents a threshold, not between acceptable and dangerous climate change, but between dangerous and ‘extremely dangerous’ climate change; in which case the probability of exceeding 2 degrees C increases substantially.
• Annex 1 countries should be aiming to reduce GHG emissions by 100% by 2050 in order to allow Non-Annex 1 countries the space for carbon intensification of their economies to similar levels to Annex 1 countries.

I welcome the release of this submission or any information contained in this submission under the Official Information Act 1982.

Yours sincerely

NB. This process is a farce. There is no independent decision maker, and the Minister is clearly already committed to '50% by 2050'. Its just consultation for less than consultations sake.

But temperature and CO2 went up an down in the ice ages?

How often do we hear that? Or similar statements such as;

In the ice ages, the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere increased after increases in temperature, so CO₂ can't be causing warming.

My short answer would be to say

Hey, how many coal-fired thermal power stations were running in the ice ages? Yeah, thats right, None!

But there is a Climate Crock of the week Youtube video explaining that the initial trigger (or forcing) for the ice age cycles has been the Earth's axis and that CO₂ can be both a forcing and a feedback amplifying the impacts of the tilt and spin changes. And, as ever, James Hansen's work plays a key role.

Hansen Emissions and Global Warming

Here is James Hansen giving a four minute explanation of global warming caused by our greenhouse gas emissions and the need to phase out coal within decades.

World Temperature Trends

Is the world's average temperature warming? Yes, it is.
Here is a chart I have made with the R programme from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies data.

The data is the Combined Land-Surface Air and Sea-Surface Water Temperature Anomalies (Land-Ocean Temperature Index, LOTI), Global-mean monthly, seasonal, and annual means, 1880-present

The chart is a line plot of differences in annual land-ocean average temperature from the average for the base period 1951-1980 global mean temperature index, 1880 to present. The dotted blue line is the annual mean and the solid red line is the five-year mean, calculated with a Lowess function.