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.

Carbon dioxide

It's hard to believe, but the man in this Youtube video, who thinks Global Warming involves the claim that carbon dioxide is carcinogenic, is soon to be the speaker of the US House of Representatives.

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.

Powered by coal

Here's a CBS 60 minutes documentary featuring James Hansen and the CEO of Duke Energy, the USA's third largest coal thermal power plant owner. The CEO says he totally accepts that carbon dioxide contributes to global warming. However, his plan is to phase out coal over 40 years. CBS cut to Hansen who of course says "No new coal fired power plants and a phase out must take place in 20 years or less". CBS goes back to the CEO and ask him how much Duke has invested in carbon capture and sequestration. The answer is not a cent!

The Carbon Forest: Book launch

The Carbon Forest: Book launch is given some coverage in the New Zealand Wood Watch Blog!

There was also a mention on Intersect website complete with a very serious picture of Tom Bennion.

Jan Wright says leave the lignite

Dr Jan Wright, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has channeled her inner James Hansen into her latest report Lignite and Climate Change: The high cost of low grade coal.

She concludes that the lignite plans of NZ's state-owned coal miner, Solid Energy, will just exacerbate the gap between NZ's actual greenhouse gas emissions and our policy goals. She recommends that the Government (as shareholder) should instruct Solid Energy to withdraw their plans to develop the Southland lignite deposits.

Here she is on Youtube

New Zealands GHG emissions

Here is a line chart of New Zealand's emissions of greenhouse gases from 1990 to 2008. It can be found on the Wikimedia Commons webpage. I made it.