Climate close to tipping point, says Hansen
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Our planet may have reached what scientists call a “climate tipping point.”
Earth & Sky spoke with James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard institute for Space Studies in New York. He described what he calls a “climate tipping point,” when little if any additional forcing — from the burning of fossil fuels — will be needed to cause large, relatively rapid climate change and impacts. Is our planet there yet?
James Hansen: We’re a lot closer than we thought we were. If we don’t roll back emissions, and eventually the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, then we’re going to lose all of the sea ice in the Arctic, and we’re going to have large sea level rise eventually as well as many regional climate effects.
Hansen said that, right now, carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is about 385 parts per million – more than 100 parts per million higher than before the Industrial Revolution.
James Hansen: We don’t understand how fast ice sheets can respond. But what we’re learning is that they’re responding a lot faster than we realized even a few years ago. So I think that we’re getting close to the point of no return, and that’s why we have to begin to make changes within the next few years, or we very well may be beyond the point of no return.
Back in the 1980s, Hansen was the first scientist to testify before the U.S. Congress on the threat of climate change.
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I think it is rapidly approaching the point of no return, though I fear it doesn’t matter. we reached the point of no return when money became more important than most other things. we could never act now, we could only hope to get those who pollute most to agree to a long and slow transition to another fuel source or a method of manufacturing that emits less greenhouse gases into the air. taking 30 years to “solve” a problem that should have been fixed 30 years ago isn’t going to work. sometimes I fear that making preparations for the future earth climate would be time better spent than trying to figure out how to stop it from happening. which is sad, really.
Dear Zephyrus and James Hansen,
Is humankind living in a twilight zone where unbridled and endless economic growth can occur without conscious regard for the fact that human beings exist in a relatively small, evidently finite and noticeably frangible world?
Steve Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
certainly. the problem is that we are no longer governed by nature’s laws. a few humans here and there taking all they need when they need it won’t have any effect on our environment. but a few million all over the place, with an almost 100% chance of living at least a fairly long life, taking all they want when they want it is going to overload the earth’s natural systems of replenishing the supplies and keeping things constant. I think humans can be seen as a disease, we’re activating the earth’s responses and it’s trying to get rid of us. but we’re a smart disease, we should be able to figure out a way to live symbiotically with the earth, shouldn’t we? as soon as we figure out that money isn’t everything.
Dear Zephyrus,
At least to me, human beings are neither a pathogen nor a smart disease. Homo sapiens are a wondrous species, perhaps the most marvelously endowed species ever to inhabit this place in the Universe. What we are as remarkably evolved creatures of the natural world, with all our splendid attributes, is different from the things we are unknowingly doing now. Who we are and what we are inadvertently doing are two different things.
I believe humankind possesses all that is needed to respond ably to the human-induced, multi-faceted predicament before us, even now visible on the far horizon. Our challenge is to do things differently from the way we are doing them now.
Sincerely,
Steve
Mr. Hansens folly, First of all,when a man or woman states that they are a climate scientist and does not even understand nary a word of grid Science,he or she tends to have hoof and mouth disease without understanding they are inhabited with fun gi.Oh so barbarous am I ,old grid scientist that I am.With a complete understanding of grid science,Mr. Hansen would understand that earths warming was caused by cosmic forces that return and return ,just as he does understand that the 11 year solar sun spot cycle,also coined the solar minimum and maximum has direct effects on our weather. He knows that and still spouts the company line.We have been experiencing a long term solar event from a system explosion long ago that puts energetic energy into our planets grid system,heats the magma more,melts the ice,causes more forceful,read higher electrical activity on our planet. This process will abate in a few short years,but not until we get alot more problems from this energy system that returns to us with the same periodicity everytime. Ice core evidence shows high carbon periods in the past without industrialization being called the culprit. We definitely need to reduce the carbon output on the planet as it uses more oxygens than we Earth Scientists(Grid Scientists) are comfortable with.The coal burning must stop,it has been doing serious damage to our eco-system and genetics/intellect on this planet.With the proofs if you so desire as to that statement if you so desire.The global warming boys have an agenda and refuse to listen to the other science men about the solar cycle causation for the warming and extremities of weather we are experiencing.We have a motor engineered into this planet with a ground system placed here also that propagates the weather systems across each continent. There are no big bangs ,except for the system explosion 28 ago that made the first round of vegetable oil(The sour crude)14 ago the second batch was made.The dating boys are way off on their time tables for most things as they have to put some very important variables into their fuzzy math to get even close,which as I stated,they are not.Mr.Hansen even understands the energetic uptick in processes reaped by his own organization of the other planetary spheres over this many year period and still runs his IPCC garbage to whos TUNE??? Money ,money,money. Now they are going to cap and trade carbon,my,my. And of course carbon tax to be paid by us,more expensive energy to force us to pay or suffer the no transportation and heating scenario that is just devastating families economies.Meeting after meeting in just the right climate for the year and the whole disgusting shebang. Mr. Hansen,you do not even understand how oxygens come into our planet and the oh so simple science of the music of the spheres.Citizens and even scientists go to a barber shop with the dis-infecting light cutting instrument storage for years and years and dont seem to even under stand that the blue uv light is producing o3,OXYGEN. And that the Big and small boys and girls will sit in a hot tub with an ozone production machine that produces that oxygen from LIGHT FREQUENCY. We do not get our oxygen from plants and they do NOT gather atmospheric Co2 to them for re-generation into oxygen. Does anyone really want to absolutely know how gravity works on every turning sphere,and specifically this one. Its really simple and you dont have to pay someone billions to figure it supposedly on a blackboard full of meaningless numbers,us Grid Scientists can give it “COMPLETE” with no mathematicaql gibberish involved. This is a mechanical system built by Earth Service for human habitation,plain and simple.We understand how the motor on the planet operates,how weather propagates,how hurricanes are formed and how they can be completely controlled.We understand how the gulf stream works,we understand how the Grand Canyon was actually formed,we understand why black sand is found with gold. We understand why snowflakes are made the way they are ,we completely understand why there are droughts.How many of those NASA meteorologists and climate science boys have explained earth science. We can explain the process of rainbow propagation and genesis.We can explain why tornadoes have a phrase tornado alley connected with them. We can explain why certain areas get more or less weather processes propagated.We can explain why meteorites land only in certain areas.Those are the taskings of a grid scientist,and this one is now tasking.
Dear Tom Hughes,
Thanks for your comments. Perhaps you can assist me. Something is worrisome, but it is a concern I have for the Earth rather than the economy.
How much longer can we afford to stand by and allow the absence of necessary constraints on the gigantic scale and growth rate of the global economy to produce the increasing probability of a colossal ecological wreckage in the future?
If we keep doing what we are doing now, we will keep getting what are getting now, I suppose. Dire consequences could result from “staying the course” marked by the selfish, imperious choices of leadership to maximally expand the global economy, regardless of Earth’s limited capacity to support unlimited growth of big-business activity.
By relentlessly growing the global economy and letting it run its current course, come what may, we could unintentionally end up threatening the lives of our children, biodiversity, global ecosystems and the integrity of Earth.
What kind of a future do we intend for our children? If we keep doing what we are doing now, we could end up leaving our children a world that is unfit for human habitation. The integrity of the Earth and life as we know it could become dangerously undermined and irreversibly diminished by adamant efforts to endlessly expand the world’s interlocking national economies, to conspicuously argue for the unrestrained per capita consumption of scarce resources, and to continuously condone the unbridled increase of absolute global human population numbers on a relatively small, finite, noticeably frangible planet with the size and make-up of Earth.
Perhaps our leaders will consider how the unrestrained industrialization activities of the human species could become patently unsustainable in this wondrous planetary home God has blessed us to inhabit …........ and not to overwhelm, I suppose.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steve Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Mr. Steven, The commitee I am a member of has tasked the very questions you have concern for,and there are processes that have been discussed that reduce population without exploding everyone or poisoning them to death.There is a system designed by my committe that adjusts this paradigm that we all have been forced to endure.We are Earth Scientists and have designed a proper transportation system,a complete trash remediation system,a complete power plant remediation system,a soils remediation system,a process to assist our aquifers to clean themselves up, a system to reduce population properly as I stated.We work daily,but are constantly tasked against by the financial powers that be. They have taken our plans and drawings for the hydrogen propagation equipment to replace all coal plants in existence.They have taken our office money,so we cannot even afford a secretary,and our accounts had very large sums of money until they were illegally taken. As I am sure you are aware,there is a concerted effort to keep degrading our earth.Our information is so extensive as to the damages that have and are occuring every day,we are looked at as a threat to all corporate accounts,yet the processes designed by us engage them to do things different,and still stay whole,because we do look at the ramifications of setting down whole paradigms and task to make sure a process we reccomend does not destroy the ability of our work force to provide for their familie. We are fathers,BIG,BIG fathers and that is as far as I can take that statement with you.My committe has worked for 25 years to engage our hydrogen system ,and been beat severely about the head and shoulders to keep that quiet.We have screamed for over 80 years to not burn that coal.We know so much about earth history and Earth Science and the ramifications of the mercury in the coal being burned,we tear up when we have to discuss the difficulties we have trying to alert them enough to task them into action. Now we have our ocean at such a big risk to all of humanity from what 2 countries did to it in WW2 that a huge Marshall plan type operation of remediation is the only thing that may save us from having an un-inhabitable planet in 100 years.The situation is much more serious than you would ever hear in the news,of course.If Papas(Fathers) are allowed to task,we can clean up the improper processes.The science men who have not been informed of grid science information,as that is what we are also,grid scientists,will scream to the ends of their careers that we are heating this planet up with carbon emissions,and that is just not true.They must task themselves to take the lessons offered so they may understand the universes processes.They waste such valuable resources while Rome burns.The jet fuel in the air does more harm to the oxygenation of this planet than the cars and trucks,I assure you and our high speed train system we designed alleviates the oxygen balance problem.So you ask can I assist you? With information ,I assist. With information,You assist.Thank you for your concerns and efforts. Tom Hughes
Dear Tom Hughes,
You are kind to respond just as you have. It means a lot to me when a person speaks out loudly and clearly, as you are courageously doing, with an unvarnished willingness to say openly what is true, as you see it. Thanks for the great work you are doing. Keep going.
Many too many of our brothers and sisters have chosen to remain silent, even to the extent of adopting poses of hysterical blindness, willful deafness and elective mutism: the well-known and widely used “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” ploy.
Too many of our brothers and sisters have chosen to silently acquiesce, to stand by and allow the absence of necessary constraints on the gigantic scale and growth rate of the global economy to produce the probability of a colossal ecological wreckage in the future.
If our leaders keep doing what they are doing now, we will likely keep getting what are getting now. Dire consequences could result from “staying the course” marked by the selfish, imperious choices of the managers of the world’s political economy and their bought-and-paid-for politicians to maximally expand the global economy, regardless of Earth’s limited capacity to support unlimited growth of big-business activity.
By allowing soon to become unsustainable global economic activity to run its current course, come what may, we could unintentionally threaten the lives of our children, biodiversity, global ecosystems and the integrity of Earth.
What kind of a future do we intend for our children? If we keep doing what we are doing now, we could end up leaving our children with a world that is unfit for human habitation. The integrity of the Earth and life as we know it could become dangerously undermined and irreversibly diminished by adamant efforts to endlessly expand the predominant culture’s interlocking national economies, to conspicuously argue for the unrestrained per capita consumption of scarce resources, and to continuously condone the unbridled increase of absolute global human population numbers on a relatively small, finite, noticeably frangible planet with the size and make-up of Earth.
Perhaps our leaders, who are supposed to providing leadership, will consider how the unrestrained industrialization activities of the human species could become patently unsustainable in this wondrous planetary home God has blessed us to inhabit ….. and not to overwhelm.
Your work is vital. Thanks for all of it.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001.
You need more proof of this. Rich people wont switch to anything because they are smart. If they werent smart they wouldnt be rich. They are not going to stop selling oil cause some people say the Earths climate is going to change. First of all whats gonna happen that makes climate change so bad. Seccondl scientists do not have enough proof. Where I live we got a new record high for this month. The previous record was in the 1930s. What have you got to say to that. Also 100 parts per milliion more is not that much. Plus how do you know what it was before the industrial revolution. Someone measured it? All Empires ,like the Roman empire or the Byzantine Empire, didnt fall because of invasion from other people but from the corruption of peoples minds making them weaker and thus allowing enemies to defeat them. In the industrial revolution countries grew strong and powerfull and now they are slowing down. People are making stuff up. The American dollars are losing their value and the government cant even pay soldiers their insurance. Yeah people need to think before they start telling every body about global warming.
Dear Bob,
If the rich and famous people among us do not start expressing their concern for something other than their riches and privileges, then approaching global challenges could serve the purpose of helping them refocus their attention and change their behavior.
There can be no functioning global economy without adequate natural resources and global ecosystem services that only the Earth can provide. To believe that economic globalization can continue to expand much longer, let alone endlessly, in our relatively small, evidently finite and noticeably frangible planetary home is magical thinking of the first order. Such thinking is an embarrassment to anyone who values good science, sound reasoning and common sense.
The failure of the wealthy and politically powerful people in my not-so-great generation of elders to respond ably to the requirements of practical reality will soon be seen by our children as the worst example of a gross dereliction of duty in human history.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steve Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
What im saying is that to make people stop using fossil fuels you need about a couple quadrillion dollars which is way beyond anything that any government can earn in a 100 years. There is just not enough big evidence to convince someone with a huge amount of money to just give it up. If this is such a big problem why isnt the government doing anything about it. In fact I doubt any government is spending any money to stop global warming.
Earth & Sky is a great resource. I find it difficult to see crazy/silly comments on its blog yet appreciate Steve Salmony’s fine responses which respect even those on or over the edge. These days I’m not that generous.
When Bob says, “Yeah people need to think before they start telling every body about global warming,” he’s speaking from a place of pain not evidence. The evidence is far and away on the side of global warming. It’s that evidence that Hansen is talking about. It’s not a guess, not a wish for destruction. To the contrary, Hansen is saying, “Look at the evidence. We are in danger. Let’s do something about it.”
What I think Bob has right is his point about what it will take to get people to change their ways. The affluent part of the world is addicted to the easy life they have that’s made possible by the burning of fossil fuels. It will take a huge effort to get them to change their ways. So let’s get started.
Dear Trinifar (and Deborah Byrd, Beverly Spicer and Bruce McClure),
All of you are doing great work. It seems to me that you are doing precisely what needs to be done in our time. Keep going. We are going to make a difference, one that makes a difference, for the sake of the children.
Trinifar, thanks for your kind words. Your intelligence and vision are uncommon, your efforts exemplary.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Somebody from John Hopkins wanted to put sulfates in the atmosphere. I couldn’t find that story again to post to it. But this is a good a place as any.
Doesn’t anyone watch NOVA on PBS?
They had a show on Global Dimming. There are so many suspended particulates ALREADY in the air that the sun’s rays are being reflected.
THIS MEANS THAT IF WE ARE CURRENTLY HEATING UP THAT THE PROBLEM IS EVEN BIGGER THAN PEOPLE THINK BECAUSE THERE IS A COUNTERBALANCING FORCE KEEPING IT FROM BEING EVEN HOTTER.
This means that particulates and gasses will have to be decreased SIMULTANEOUSLY. This is called homeostasis. The planet knows what to do and how to do it. James Burke warned that we were in for a roast in the 1990’s with his series After The Warming. I guess no one was listening to him then, either.
BUT THESE ARE ALL RED HERRINGS AND NOT THE PROBLEM.
I was really dismayed by the poor journalism I heard on Earth and Sky with the hairbrained suggestion that ADDITIONAL particulates could be put in the atmosphere to reflect EVEN MORE SUNLIGHT. The suggested compound was sulfates. Now, nothing stays up there forever (even asteroids) so if these sulfates get down into the oceans what will that do to the pH?
A text on photosynthesis stated that with the present rate of CO2 interaction with the oceans that they will go acidic in about 20 years, more phytoplankton will die, less carbon will be fixed, less oxygen produced and the problem will spiral out of control BECAUSE THERE IS NO PLAN FOR FIXING THE pH of the OCEAN.
This is the only problem people should be working on. If the ocean pH changes…
GAME OVER.
Hi Everyone,
I just wanted to address Bob’s comment about the Rich being smart. I used to think this for many years and spent quite a bit of time in self-reflection and critical analysis of why I could not generate the wealth of the Rich.
Ferdinand Lundberg in his book: The Rich and the Super Rich put my mind at ease when he outlined that the authors of the problems we face are all members of the same family. They are not smart – they are simply cunning, ruthless and criminal (not my words, Mr. Lundberg’s) These are the only reasons why they are rich. Hard work being rewarded is a myth to keep you reaching for the golden carrot on the stick. Mr. Lundberg said in no uncertain terms that smart people for the most part are never rich. One simple test for this is how many Nobel Prize winners, teachers, professors do you know who are billionaires?
I am sure that no one wants politics to taint science (in the lab or on message boards), but the fact that science is bought and controlled obviates any puritan views on that. The final point being that unless this power structure is dissolved then all of the problems that come as a result of it will never be resolved.
Thanks Joe for a refreshingly realistic point of view.
The great scientists among us are not to be found in any billionaires club.
Once again I was recently of something I have heard all my life, that the smartest people in the world are the ones who manage the global political economy. That is the one of the most perncious notions I have ever been presented. The ‘geniuses’ who engineered the sub-prime mortgage mess, and made out like bandits and robber barons in the process, are paraded as our so-called “brightest and best.” That idea is an insult to the intelligence of most people. These clever wheelers and dealers are not the brightest, the best or the smartest. It appears that they are ingenious, shrewd and amoral.
Here and now, we are grasping the magnitude of the distinctly human-induced predicament now looming before humanity. Thanks to each and every one of you for opening and maintaining discussions of this kind.
Only the elites, their bought-and-paid-for politicians, talking heads in the mass media and other minions benefit from their carefully instilled idea that “silence is golden.” Yes, evidently, it does work for them, but unfortunately not for the billions of less fortunate people among us.
Keep going and keep speaking out, Joe. You exhibit the reality-oriented brightness and “smarts” we need today.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Hurray for Mr. Kunstler, My train system design would revolutionize the planet.My energy system would revolutionize the planet,my trash control system would revolutionize the planet and on and on it goes. Until we get rid of all of the foreign influences in our governing of the US,we will not win on any of these issues. How long have progressive people been beaten down? Mr. Gates,give me access to your foundations money and I will build you one hell of a Gates Memorial Rail System,philanthropy should wake up and change the paradigm,we dont need more parks and hospital wings Mr. Gates,we need visionaries with logic and the drive to enhance the system and at least get us into the new millenium,because we really are behind.
Dear Tom,
Thanks for your comments, especially the ones regarding your recognition that we need to “wake up and change the paradigm.”
If the family of humanity continues to choose overpopulating Earth; if we keep conspicuously overconsuming limited resources; and if we endlessly expand big-business activities and pollute the relatively small planet God blesses to inhabit, and not to ravage as we are doing now, then a good enough future for our children cannot be assured, can it?
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
Dear Friends,
One of the points I am feebly trying to make is simply this: the adamant and relentless pursuit of fossil fuel-based economic globalization, marked so starkly as it is by the rampant expansion of unbridled, large-scale business activities we are seeing overspread Earth in our time, could result either in impending ecologic calamities or economic disasters, or both, in these early years of Century XXI.
Always,
Steve
What I find particularly worrisome is the way powerful managers of economic globalization cannot see anything beyond accumulating wealth and hoarding resources for themselves, their bought-and-paid-for politicians and their many obscenely enriched minions.
The carefully and skillfully developed scientific evidence that the Earth “has a fever” and could soon become dangerously “overheated” is ignored and denied by too many current leaders who have unmet responsibilities to assume and undischarged duties to perform, for the sake of our children.
Rather than acknowledge and begin to address the global ecological challenges looming before humanity, these “economy first, last and always” leaders choose to forsake intellectual honesty and good science, to deny reality and, instead to pay ‘experts’ to spread disinformation and uncertainty so as to protect their money, power and privileges.
In Davos this week we continue to hear from educated denialists and naysayers who are evidently being forced by the good science presented at the Climate Change Conference in Indonesia to promote a pitiful “have the courage to do nothing defense” to buttress their “economic growth is all that matters” message. They advise us to keep growing the global political economy just as we are doing now. Only the growth of the political economy is championed.
Perhaps this duplicitous rear-guard action against consideration of necessary change in the artificial design and soon to be unsustainable, gigantesque structure of the global economy is perpetrated by representatives of the wealthy, the powerful, and others who find riches, power and privileges to flagrantly consume to be all that really matter, come what may for our children and coming generations, for biodiversity and the environment, for Earth as fit place for human habitation, and for the future of life as we know it.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
What if ideology is “blinding” denialists to the virtual mountains of good scientific evidence of global warming and climate change?
The astounding, clearly visible, pernicious impacts of human overconsumption and overproduction activities of 6 billion (soon to become 9 billion) human beings upon Earth’s environment and its body of resources are overpowering and soon to be patently unsustainable, I suppose.
How much longer can the relatively small planet we inhabit withstand the colossal ravage being dealt to it in our time by human hands?
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
The globalization of the “American Dream” is actually nothing more than a dream, is it not?