Right! We need something non-air-polluting to power those high-speed trains!
more crickets
The IPCC is the authority on global warming, as answered in previous posts.
I’m betting that it won’t be too long before scientists realize that the tipping point is less than five years away.
That’ll happen in about 5 years if this article is to be believed.
I’m betting it’ll be less than two years.
As I understand Hansen (but having not read the study itself), I tend to agree with you. As the ABC News article says:
As the article notes, the IPCC considered various stabilization scenarios with the most stringent being attempting to stabilize the CO2 levels at 450ppm. Hansen is arguing that “CO2 exceeding 450 ppm is almost surely dangerous” and that he believes the upper limit for avoiding dangerous climate change “could well be much lower” than 450 ppm.
I don’t think anybody would disagree with Hansen that if we want to stabilize emissions at 450ppm or below, we have to start making significant changes essentially immediately. (CO2 levels are at 380ppm now and have risen from 320 to 380ppm just since ~1970.) Where some scientists wouldn’t necessarily agree with Hansen is that stabilization at levels this low is necessary to prevent dangerous climate change…But, of course, there is considerable uncertainty about this.
At any rate, I think it is important because it underscores the fact that uncertainty cuts both ways. I.e., many people use the fact that there is uncertainty to argue against taking almost any action (outside of voluntary ones)…because it might not be as bad as we expect. The article by Hansen and co-authors reminds us that uncertainty could also mean that it turns out to be worse. And, it is indeed a grand experiment to take the CO2 up to levels that the earth likely hasn’t seen for the something like the last ~20 million years!
I guess Hansen’s particular concern is that disintegration of the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets could occur more rapidly than modeling predicts. The IPCC essentially “punted” on this point in their latest report by giving an estimate of sea level rise by 2100 that explicitly excluded contributions due to the sort of dynamic ice sheet effects that Hansen is worried about because they felt the science on that issue just wasn’t at the point where they could make a good estimate of these effects.
By the way, I just found a link to the NASA news release. From there there is a link to the abstract of the actual article and, on that page, a link to a PDF of the article.
One gets the feeling this sense of hopelessness/helplessness is more pervasive than just the “anti-environmental movement PR.”
For instance, while I don’t consider Mr Gore particularly anti-environmental, his personal energy use at his home has risen about 13.5% since he published An Inconvenient Truth 2 years ago ( Al Gore's Home Energy Use | Snopes.com ), and is about 20x the national average…yeah I know about the green energy and the carbon offsets but if we all used that much energy we’d be way out of green energy and so far carbon offsets aren’t offsetting much other than consciences. And our US national energy use is by far the highest in the world already.
I have nothing against Mr. Gore but he is the poster child for why there is an attitude that we shouldn’t bother trying.
Anyway, I think the next progression is going to be “We shouldn’t bother trying and we should all get our share while the earth lasts.” Once the masses realize no-one else is making sacrifices, it’ll be a free-for-all.
(Now when the wealthy and powerful actually start shorting beachfront property, I’ll really think they are taking it seriously.)
“They” are never going to find a “scientifically wise policy for us to follow” because that policy is to live poor until green infrastructure is built out. Human greenhouse gas production for the next 50 years, practically speaking, is a function of wealth, and we are all wealthy and getting wealthier. 2,000 years ago the rich guy asked Jesus, “What must I do to be saved?” Jesus said, “Sell all you have and feed the poor.” The rich guy didn’t do it 2,000 years ago and we as a society won’t do it now. Plus the rest of the world is trying desperately to get rich too.
Which is as much as to say, the source of the problem is rich people. The globally rich like the average American cause much more of the problem per capita than the globally poor like, say, the average Bangladeshi. And the locally rich like Gore cause much more of the problem than the locally (comparatively) poor like you or me.
If wealth is truly incompatible with controlling anthropogenic climate change, ISTM that we have two choices. We can eat the rich—start a genuine, worldwide class war to destroy massive consumption and produce an equitably immiserated and impoverished global population—or we can live for today in a desperate attempt to acquire as much wealth as possible, and let the environment as we know it flame out unchecked.
Neither of those scenarios seems like a particularly pleasant prospect for our grandchildren. At present, I prefer to hope that emissions moderation is compatible with wealth rationally used, and try to think of feasible ways to combine them, rather than succumb to either despair or class-warfare savagery.
No I believe it’s Al Gore
At this point I just can’t care about global warming, or whatever you want to call it.
Sometimes I feel like I’m Jimmy Stewart and my posts are Harvey the invisible rabbit: only I can see them.
That’s a pretty goofy stance to take. Are you denying reality, just to make sure everyone knows just how much you dislike a politician?
Don’t forget-this is the organization that estimated the cost of the ISS-and was wrong by >1800%! I think waht NASA is really saying (to the Congress) : “please give us more money-we need to fund some greenhouse research”
As I say, their credibility is pretty low, at this point.
No, he did the intarwebs, silly.
Whereas this is just plain silly.
Look, this isn’t what some bureaucrats at NASA are saying. It is what Jim Hansen (along with his many co-authors on that paper) are saying. And, as Ralph Cicerone, the President of the National Academy of Sciences (and himself an atmospheric chemist) noted (in the first link in the first post by the invisible furt), “I can’t think of anybody who I would say is better than Hansen. You might argue that there’s two or three others as good, but nobody better.”
This, of course, does not mean that Hansen is always right about everything. But, it does make it kind of silly to dismiss his work because the government agency he works for has always vastly underestimated the cost of manned space flight and to imply that it is just a push to get more funding. [Besides which, I would guess that the fraction of the NASA budget devoted to studying climate change is pretty small potatoes. If NASA wants more money, they seem to get it much more effectively by proposing…or encouraging politicians to propose…boondoggles involving manned space flight than by proposing more funding for their earth science programs. Unfortunately, these boondoggles tend to starve out the funding for the NASA earth science and unmanned space programs that actually do good science.]
Just a reminder: The IPCC report that got so much news was a best-case prediction. In other words, wherever there was a uncertainty in the results (which, this being science, was everywhere), they published whichever end of the error bars were least dire. So when another study comes along now and gives worse predictions, that is not inconsistent with the IPCC’s report. In fact, it’s to be expected that further studies would show results worse than the IPCC’s, in at least some regards.
Paging Lex Luthor . . .
Both choices sound fun! 
I can’t wait until New York City has boat taxis. I want to get a Gibbs Aquada. 
Meanwhile, the head of NASA, Michael Griffin, says he’s not sure global warming is a problem.