ericgrimsrud

While New York City has the problem described below, the future of the City of Miami appears to be hopeless.  All of South Florida has two big problems.  The first is its remarkably flat and low topography.  Half the area that surrounds Miami is less than five feet above sea level.  Miami’s highest natural elevation is only about 12 feet.  With just three feet of sea-level rise, more than a third of southern Florida will vanish.  And note that we expect sea levels to rise from about three to six feet by the end of this century.

In addition, all of South Florida sits on a very porous limestone plateau. This means water moves easily through its underlying soil.  Therefore, the conventional sea walls and barriers that are envisioned for use in New York City will not be effective in Miami.

In short, the city of Miami and its multitude of high rise structures are doomed.  Miami is almost assured of suffering extreme damage during storms in this century and will most likely become  an underwater and abandoned “lost city” in the next century.  Within the coming decades, we can expect insurance for existing structures in Miami to become unaffordable and after those storms hit, cries for enormous levels of national relief, of the type provided to New Orleans after Katrina to New Jersey after Sandy are sure to follow. There will be no hope of either saving or recovering Miami, however.

At present, the words “climate change” are not allowed to be spoken in the State Houses of Florida in Tallahassee where deniers of the problem are in control.  Also within the city of Miami, it is unlikely that we will see a Mayor anytime soon the likes of Bloomberg in New York who will publicly acknowledge the problem. Therefore, if you happen to live in South Florida you might want to consider moving to higher ground ASAP.

For the full scope on this story see http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-the-city-of-miami-is-doomed-to-drown-20130620#ixzz2X0NGzxLY

I often wonder – when will the “rubber hit the road” with respect to massive impacts of climate change on our cities and infrastructure.  Few elected politicians “get it” and most of them prefer to either ignore the problem or make lame comments such as “we don’t know enough yet” (in spite of the fact that 97% of professional climate scientists say that we do know more than enough).  The Mayor the New York City provides an exception to that rule.  He does get it and is talking seriously about what his low elevation city must do to protect itself from rising sea levels and storms of increasing intensity.  “I strongly believe we have to prepare for what scientists say is a likely scenario,” Bloomberg said at a press briefing at the Brooklyn Navy Yard just before he laid out his 17-billion dollar project.  Wow! – finally a high level politician who really does “get it”.

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post provided the excellent summary included below of Mayor Bloomberg’s recent statements.  He paints a realistic and sobering perspective on this massive endeavor.  While reading it, consider also that the mayor’s proposed project would protect just one city.  Similar efforts would be required for all other cities of low elevation that want to protect its citizens from the ravages of rising sea levels and increasing storm intensities.  Given the magnitude of these undertakings, it does appear that the “rubber” is about to hit the road in some of our nation’s major urban areas.  Note also that these expensive, but essential measures would do nothing for the non-urban areas of low elevation that would be similarly impacted.

“Bloomberg’s race to protect NYC from climate change

By Dana Milbank, Published: June 11

The Mall has monuments to heroism, freedom and sacrifice. Pretty soon it will also have a monument to failure.

Drive on 17th Street NW, just south of Constitution Avenue, and you’ll see concrete footings, a mound of dirt and jersey barriers — all part of an oft-delayed project to build a floodwall to protect downtown Washington from a rising Potomac River.

The flood wall, and similar initiatives elsewhere, amount to tacit acknowledgments that the fight against climate change, the cause celebre of the environmental movement for more than a decade, has failed in its primary purpose. In the race to prevent disaster, it’s already too late.

Among climate-change activists, the realization is spreading that the combination of political inaction on greenhouse gases, plentiful new petroleum supplies and accelerating changes in weather patterns means there is no escaping more life-altering floods, droughts and fires. Although ongoing efforts to reduce carbon emissions could mitigate even worse catastrophe, momentum has shifted in part to preparing for the inevitable consequences of a warmer planet.

Perhaps the most vivid example of this came Tuesday afternoon, when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg rolled out his $19.5 billion plan to “prepare for the impacts of a changing climate,” with proposals ranging from coastal levees to the protection of hospitals. Last year, Bloomberg cited climate change as his main reason for endorsing President Obama’s reelection, praising Obama’s “major steps to reduce our carbon consumption.” But speaking Tuesday from a Brooklyn greenhouse damaged last fall by Hurricane Sandy, Bloomberg addressed the inevitability that rising temperatures and sea levels would bring even worse.

“By mid-century, up to a quarter of all New York City’s land area, where 800,000 residents live today, will be in the flood plain,” he said, and “40 miles of our waterfront could see flooding on a regular basis just during normal high tides.” We no longer have the luxury of ideological debate, he said. “The bottom line is we can’t run the risk.”

Andrew Light, a global-warming specialist at the liberal Center for American Progress, explained to me the recent shift toward efforts to adapt to climate change rather than merely seeking to prevent it. “We’re starting to see very strong evidence of climate-related extreme events happening sooner than we thought with only a 1-degree [Celsius] rise in temperature,” he said, “and a more refined science saying now that we will more than likely edge up to or cross the 2-degree threshold.”

Climate activists had long sought to limit the temperature rise to 2 degrees, but this now seems both impractical and insufficient. “Our best-case scenario now is we could delay by a couple of decades the point at which we cross the threshold,” Light said. This means that cutting carbon emissions is still important but that it’s also time to prepare for what’s coming.

Among the needed adaptations: floodwalls and expanded coastal wetlands, fortified subway systems, buried power lines, houses with detachable foundations, roads rebuilt on higher ground, drought-resistant crops and changes to hydroelectric facilities and nuclear power-plant cooling systems. States in the Southwest may need pipelines and desalinization plants for drinking water.

Low-lying and poorer parts of the world will have it much worse. But even in the United States, vast coastal areas — New Orleans, the Florida Keys and elsewhere along the Gulf of Mexico, North Carolina’s Outer Banks, parts of Long Island — eventually may need to be abandoned to higher seas. As a start toward depopulating those areas, the federal government may need to cut off disaster insurance.

Obama created an “Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force ” in 2009 to examine everything from agriculture to sewer system failures and public-health consequences, but much of the work remains theoretical. Bloomberg’s new plan, with 250 specific recommendations and a hefty price tag, puts climate-change adaptation into a more concrete realm.

The businessman-mayor called it “a battle that may well define our future for generations to come” and outlined changes to building standards, telecommunications, transportation and a dozen other areas.

“Waves that do reach our shore will find a strong line of coastal defenses, reinforced dunes and widened beaches, levees, floodwalls and bulkheads, and tide gates and surge barriers,” Bloomberg said. “New grade infrastructure will absorb water, it will divert it into higher-capacity sewers, and our critical systems will operate with less interruption throughout the storm and bounce back quicker if they do go down.”

Bloomberg spoke confidently, as if he were a general laying out a military plan. But he was really talking about limiting casualties. “

The relationship between climate change and weather is becoming increasingly understood.  One of the crucial links in that relationship is related to that river of air circling the northern hemisphere known as the jet stream.  Most of us have been wondering what has caused the weird weather patterns we have noted in recent years throughout the USA.  New understanding of the relationship between climate change and the jet stream does much to answer such questions and is very well explained in a  new U-tube video available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7EHvfaY8Zs

In order to help understand the contents of this video, let me first list its major points.

As the Earth has warmed up, temperatures in the Arctic regions have increased more than those nearer the Equator.  Thus the temperature difference between the Arctic and Equatorial regions has decreased.

The jet stream is powered by that temperature differential between the Arctic and Equatorial regions.  As that difference decreases, the jet stream changes – as described in the video.  One of those changes is that it then wanders farther north and farther south as it circles the Earth.   Another is that the intensity of the jet streams weakens and the specific location of this river of air changes more slowly.  Thus, existing weather patterns a given location tend to stay longer.

Thus, if a specific region of the USA or Canada finds itself south of  the jet stream at a given point in time, that region will be warmer than usual.  Conversely, regions that find themselves north of the  jet stream will be more strongly coupled to air masses to the north and, therefore, will experience lower temperatures.  Thus, as the jet steam wanders farther north or farther south  than it usually does, the weather in those regions below will become increasingly unusual.

From one year to the next, the jet stream can change its location so that very different types of seasons can be experienced one year to the next or even one month to the next.

All of this is superbly explained with pictures in the video, so please do have a look.

Sadly, there presently appears to be only one remaining reason to hope that our government might soon take strong action on the problem of climate change and that is that our President might have sufficient courage to make the enormous problem of climate change one of his highest priorities.  While I have written about this point previously, a recent opinion piece by Eugene Robinson also expresses this thought and does so very clearly and thoroughly.  Therefore, I will simply provide Robinson’s entire article below. Thanks Eugene – your thoughts are right on. Obama has an opportunity to effect the future of mankind, but it appears that he might have to go it alone with little support from other elected officials at least at the start.  As related in my book, his dilemma and challenge associated with it is much like that which faced Winston Churchill in the 1930’s, only far more important. Is it too much to hope that some 80 years later, we might again see a leader who clearly sees the greatest threat to human civilization and has the guts to address it?

“Eugene Robinson: Obama will have to go it alone on climate change

President Barack Obama should spend his remaining years in office making the United States part of the solution to climate change, not part of the problem. If Congress sticks to its policy of obstruction and willful ignorance, Obama should use his executive powers to the fullest extent. We are out of time.

With each breath, every person alive today experiences something unique in human history: an atmosphere containing more than 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide. This makes us special, I suppose, but not in a good way.

The truth is that 400 is just one of those round-number milestones that can be useful for grabbing people’s attention. What’s really important is that atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased by a stunning 43 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

The only plausible cause of this rapid rise, from the scientific viewpoint, is the burning of fossil fuels to fill the energy needs of industrialized society. The only logical effect, according to those same scientists, is climate change. The only remaining question — depending on what humankind does right now — is whether the change ends up being manageable or catastrophic.

Only someone who was ignorant of basic science — or deliberately being obtuse — could write a sentence such as this one: “Contrary to the claims of those who want to strictly regulate carbon dioxide emissions and increase the cost of energy for all Americans, there is a great amount of uncertainty associated with climate science.”

Oh wait, that’s a quote from an op-ed in The Washington Post by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Yes, this is the officially designated science expert in the U.S. House of Representatives. See what I mean about President Obama likely having to go it alone?

For the record, and for the umpteenth time, there is no “great amount of uncertainty” about whether the planet is warming or why. A new study looked at nearly 12,000 recently published papers by climate scientists and found, of those taking a position on the question, 97 percent agreed that humans are causing atmospheric warming by burning fossil fuels, which releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

The mechanism by which carbon dioxide traps heat is well understood and can be observed in a laboratory setting. If Smith and other deniers wish to create the impression there is an “on the other hand” argument to be made, they’ll need to come up with a radical new theory of physics.

Last I looked, there was no member of Congress named Einstein.

The greenhouse gases that we already have spewed into the air will linger for centuries; if we stopped all carbon emissions tomorrow, we’d still have to deal with the effects of climate change. The question is how bad it gets.

The United States no longer holds the distinction of being the biggest carbon emitter; we’ve been outstripped by China. Unilateral action in Washington to reduce emissions will have no significant effect on climate change unless there is similar action in Beijing. If the world’s two biggest economies were to act, it would be much easier to convince the rest of the world to come along.

There are signs that China, for its own reasons, may be ready. The activity responsible for most of China’s emissions— the burning of coal in power plants — shrouds Chinese cities in noxious pollution that the increasingly vocal middle class finds unacceptable. The government is talking for the first time about at least slowing emissions and perhaps capping them. Such a move would be huge.

While Congress was covering its ears and going “na-na-na,” Obama took a big and important step by raising fuel economy standards for automobiles. Now the president should direct the Environmental Protection Agency to complete work on a rule governing emissions from new power plants — and, more importantly, begin work on a rule limiting emissions at existing plants, including those fired by coal.

Obama can direct government agencies, including the military, to use more renewable energy. He can direct the EPA to regulate emissions of methane, an even more powerful greenhouse gas. He can continue to fund research into solar energy, despite criticism from Congress.

Obama will have to go it alone. Addressing climate change cannot be just a duty. It has to be his mission. “

In a previous post entitled, “James Hansen, the Jackie Robinson of Climate Change”, I described how we can expect to see increased personal attacks on the preeminent climate change scientist, James Hansen, now that he has retired from his day job as Head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City and will now be devoting all of his time to “bridging the gap” of understanding that exists between the world of science and the general public.  These attacks are entirely expected and are in accordance with the ancient adage, “kill the messenger”.  In this case, the smearing and personal attacks will be made by those who have absolutely no scientifically valid responses to the message itself – as you will see in this post.

Thus, this “game” is presently in full stride with respect to the proposed construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline which Hansen has strongly opposed for scientific reasons. In this post I will provide a clear example of this provided by a recent post run at what is possibly the most viewed AGW Denier’s blog in the world called Watts Up With That. Before reading further here please have a look at this WUWT post at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/27/hansen-unleashed-people-he-disagrees-with-are-neanderthals/   Be sure to read the entire post and to view the entire Video provided there of an interview with James Hansen and then please come back.

OK, now if you have done as I asked above, let’s consider some questions concerning what you just read and saw.  The bulk of Dr. Hansen’s remarks concerned specific scientific points associated with the AGW issue, did they not?  His comment were literally chock full of physical details concerning this environmental problem, were they not?  At the same time essentially all of the comments made by both the editors at WUWT and those reported to have been made by the Canadian Officials were of a personal nature directed at the messenger, were they not.  They did little more that suggest that Hansen is an “exaggerator”, did they not?  without explaining in any scientific terms whatever why they thought Hansen’s view was flawed.

You will also note that towards the end of the interview, the moderator presses Hansen to imagine why the representatives of the Conservative Party now in power in Canada are so hostile to him and his message.  Hansen responds by saying he believes that the ruling Conservatives of Canada are essentially in the “hip pocket” of the fossil fuel industries and that they have adopted what he calls “neanderthal” views of the science of climate change – that is, views are exceedingly out of date.  One only has to consider the report from the USA Academy of Science that I provided on another recent posts here at ericgrimsrud.wordpress.com, in order to understand why Hansen’s use of the word, neanderthal, is appropriate in this case.

So what is the headline of the WUWT post we have been studying here?  It is “Hansen unleashed: people he disagrees with are ‘neanderthals’.  That’s the best the Deniers can do in response to Hansen’s scientifically rich explanation of his position on the Keystone Pipeline – that is, make a big deal and headline out of one word Hansen used and furthermore to misrepresent even that tiny bit of the interview. What Hansen said in answer to the moderator’s question was that he considered the controlling Conservative government of Canada to have “neanderthal” views concerning the science of AGW and immediately added that he was not referring to the people of Canada, in general, or to anyone else.

What a waste of an opportunity.  Here we had a very focused discussion with someone who is generally considered to be the leading climate change scientist of the world, and what does the editor of WUWT come away with?  Hansen’s use of one word which effectively, if not politely, summarized a set of Canadians politician’s limited knowledge of the science associated with climate change.  The fact that the Canadian officials in question and the editors of WUWT did not even dare challenge Hansen’s characterization of their ignorance is telling.  As evidence for man-caused global warming continues to pile up, “Killing the messenger” appears to be the only game the Deniers know how to play.

In order to promote the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, an argument put forth by those in favor is that it will offer the USA independence from the whims of the dominant oil exporters in the Middle East and Venezuela.  The argument goes that since Canada is a “US-friendly” country, the oil flowing from it to the ports on the US golf coast will always be available to us when we are held hostage to high prices by the OPEC countries and Venezuela.  When one thinks this suggestion through, however, one quickly realizes that it is nonsense.

First, on the global market, there is only one price for a barrel of oil no matter where that oil comes from.  The oil that will come from the tar sands via the proposed Keystone pipeline will be worth no more or less than the oil being sold by the OPEC countries.  If Japan, for example, can buy oil from the Saudis at $80 per barrel and Canadian oil is available from our gulf coast refineries for $100 per barrel, Japan will buy its oil from the Saudis – just as the USA will also do.  In other words, the Canadian oil will then have to be priced at $80 in order to be sold to anyone.  Since the costs for both the production and environmental cleanup of the oil derived from tar sands will be much higher than that produced in the Middle East or Venezuela, the entire tar sands operation and its associated pipeline would then be losing money with every barrel it sells.  To allow a continuation of the tar sands operation, higher global prices will be necessary.  If that does not happen, the Keystone pipeline will then become a 4,000 mile long monument to the stupidity of man.

And next, what if the OPEC countries and Venezuela decide to raise the price of their exported oil to say $120 per barrel or even higher? Because of their great production capacities, this then would become the global price. The Canadians could not then simply offer their oil at a lower price, say $100.  If they did, their supplies would very quickly be depleted by subsequent sales to all corners of our oil-hungry planet and they would soon lose their limited on-demand supply and their leverage on the global price.  Thus, the Canadian price would more likely follow the new global price of $120 or higher and the Canadians would be justifiably pleased to see their many decades of investments in the tar sands finally begin to pay off.  And, of course, the USA would then also be paying the new higher price set by the dominant supplies of the world.

The only way the USA could get a better than global price for its oil needs is to isolate North American supplies from the global market.  That is, by getting a guarantee from Canada that all oil passing through the pipeline would, indeed, be directed only to North American customers.  But do you think for moment that would happen?  Canada, you recall, is not a part of the USA and makes its own decisions concerning its own welfare. Remember also that the Alberta tar sands project has been an exceedingly expensive undertaking for Canada for many decades and they have been well aware of the fact that it could become successful only if the price of oil became very high.  In essence the tar sands along with high oil prices has long been the proverbial “ace in the hole” wager for Canada. So is this suggestion of North American isolation realistic? Absolutely not!  If one needs literal proof of this, have a look at the video provided below showing an American Congressmen quizzing a Canadian representative for the Keystone Pipeline on exactly this point. It can be seen at:

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/28/1931401/joe-nocera-still-loves-keystone-xl-is-still-confused-about-the-basic-economics-of-oil-markets/

In summary, if the Keystone XL Pipeline is approved and built, the USA will serve only as a middleman in the transfer of Canadian oil to the word markets.  Unless Canada becomes a set of new northern states added to the USA, the claim that the Keystone Pipeline will ensure the USA  oil independence from the dominant suppliers of the word is a bogus one that is being put forward to promote a plan that is a very poor one anyway for other financial and environmental reasons.

If we want to become free from the influence of foreign oil markets, we must become free from oil itself. Allowing the Keystone pipeline to be built will slow that process and will inhibit wiser investments in other non-CO2 emitting forms of energy. Thus, the Keystone XL pipeline would actually makes us more dependent on oil markets and even more vulnerable to volatile price swings, and would thereby make our country more susceptible to the whims of other nations.

William L. Chameides, Ph.D., Dean of the Nichlas School of the Environment, Duke University, testified yesterday, April 25, 2013, before the Committee on Science, Space and Technology of the United States House of Representatives in a Hearing on Policy-Relevant Climate Issues.  Dr. Chameides’ himself has had a long and illustrious career in the field of atmosphere science and because of the clarity and credibility of his testimony, I recommend that everyone read it from beginning to end.

see http:/science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/HHRG-113-SY18-WState-WChameides-20130425.pdf

His testimony is essentially a summary of a report entitled America’s Climate Choices that was recently issued  by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences at the request of Congress. That report brought together more than 90 experts from around the USA to think collaboratively about the causes and consequences of climate change and the choices for responding.  The National Academy of Science was created in 1864 by President Lincoln in order to provide advice to Congress on scientifically-related subjects of great national importance.

Concerning the climate change problem, the USA has some reason to be minimally proud of itself. As President Obama recently boasted, American emissions of carbon dioxide are now falling. This is for a variety of reasons including our increased use of alternate sources of energy, our rising auto efficiency standards, and the development of natural gas supplies which are displacing the dirtier, lower-energy forms of fossil fuels within our energy mix.  Just one of the reasons why we call coal and the tar sands the “dirty” forms of carbon is because their combustion results in much more carbon dioxide per energy unit gained than do gas and oil.

Note, however, how the USA is responding to an obvious follow-up question: what are we now going to do with our enormous reserves of low-grade dirty forms of fossil fuels? If our energy policies were motivated by the climate change problem, the answer would be clear – that is, they would be left in the ground. That is not what we appear to be doing, however. Instead we appear to be making great changes our infrastructure so that those low-grade fossil fuels can be sold and send to other countries, such as China, where they will then be burned and converted to carbon dioxide. With respect to the climate change problem, does it matter in the least bit if those fossil fuels are burned in other countries rather than our own? While I hope that most within the public domain knows the answer to that one – the correct answer, of course, is absolutely not.  The detrimental effects of using those dirty forms of carbon will be the same no matter where they are burned.

In my home state of Montana, for example, the natural gas  boom in neighboring North Dakota is enabling us to stop using our coal in our own power plants and instead ship it off to China via rail and sea port facilities that are now in the planning stages. Not content with increasing US and Canadian carbon exports by these old fashioned methods, President Obama appears ready to also approve the Keystone XL Pipeline that will enable Canada to supply the global markets with their very low grade of crude produced from the dirtiest fossil fuel of all, the tar sands.

Other developed countries of the world are also making “progress” along both of these lines. Australia, for example, recently introduced a carbon tax in order to reduce its own emissions of carbon dioxide and at the same time has plans for a series of “mega-mines” that would massively increase its coal exports to its Asian neighbors to the north. Even the UK, with its world-leading carbon targets, gives tax-breaks to encourage oil and gas recovery and, like the USA, increasingly relies on Chinese factories for its commercial goods – thereby indirectly supporting China’s reliance on American and Australian coal for needed power. So in a nutshell, what is happening in the developed countries mentioned above is that they are trying to reduce their own dependence on fossil fuels at home and while increasing that dependence and availability abroad. Why, one should ask, are we moving so forcefully along on this self-defeating path? As always, the answer is apparent – although it is illogical, there is a great deal of short term and immediate money to be made in doing it.

Consider again the example of my own fossil-fuel-rich State of Montana and its representation to the US Senate. Max Baucus was going to be up for reelection in the Fall of 2014 until he announced his impending resignation this week. To my knowledge, he was never even able to even discuss the obvious downsides of Montana’s coal exports to China and supported those exports without reservations. With Baucus stepping aside, it is generally thought that our former Governor Schweitzer will now run for that senatorial office in the Fall of 2014. While more progressive on many issues, Governor Schweitzer was even a greater cheerleader for the export of Montana’s coal and Alberta’s tar sands than Baucus. Just watch and see if Schweitzer will even acknowledgement and agree to discuss the obvious downsides of these dirty carbon exports – he is likely to continue to ignore them. In the past, it has been all too clear that both Baucus’ and Schweitzer’s mantra of “jobs, jobs, jobs” concerned primarily their own.

Thus, the USA has become a “dirty carbon pusher” somewhat akin to a drug dealer who does not use the harmful substances himself but does his best to promote a dependence in others. In the case of dirty carbon pushing, however, what the USA is trying to do is even more reprehensible than the role of the drug dealer. In dirty carbon pushing, the harm done by the users of this addictive element is equally shared by all others on the planet including the seller. Unfortunately, it appears that the 30 pieces of silver the US, Canada, and Australia are about to collect as short term payoffs for these irresponsible acts against humanity will be sufficient to close the deals.  I am once again reminded of something Mark Twain once said: “no one ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the public” – and, I will add, that of the officials they elect.  With the upcoming retirement and replacement of some long time Senators who no longer appear to have any wiggle room with respect to their commitments to the business-as-usual forces of America, maybe we can hope that far better perceptions of the basic physical realities of our now overcrowded planet will finally emerge within the new blood that hopefully begins to flow into those vacated positions of power.

These are three separate and very important questions that have different and commonly misunderstood answers.  Therefore, in this post, I will try to explain each of them.  Additional details concerning them have been provided recently by a post on 19 April 2013 by Andy Skuce at skepticalscience.com as well as in the literature articles referenced there.

First, is the global warming caused by CO2 emissions irreversible?  Unfortunately, on any time scale of relevance to existing human civilizations, the answer to this question is “no”, the warming we cause is not reversible.   There are two reasons for this.  One is that even if we stopped all man-causes CO2 emissions today, it would take about 200 years for today’s elevated level of atmospheric CO2, approaching 400 ppm, to naturally decay down to a level of about 340 ppm, a level we had in 1980 – still much higher than the preindustrial level of 280 ppm. Yes, it takes a long time for the extra biological carbon we put into the Earth’s carbon cycle to dissipate into stable geological reservoirs of carbon such as limestone.  And yes, it will take about 200 years to undo the CO2 increase we have caused over the last 30 years.

In addition, the heating of the Earth is delayed by the huge thermal inertia of our oceans, and the timescale of that delay just happens to be nearly equal to the rate of CO2 decay just described.  Thus, these two slow processes described above go in opposite directions and tend to cancel each other’s effect so that the Earth’s temperature will remain approximately constant after that envisioned point in time when all anthropogenic CO2 emissions have been eliminated.  Then, of course, what has taken a long time to warm up (the oceans primary) also takes a long time to cool off.  Putting all of this together, the warming we have created to date is approximately what we are stuck with in the future.  That is, the temperature change that has been caused up to present is already set and is not reversible.

Secondly, is warming by CO2 unstoppable?  Fortunately, the answer to this question is “yes”.  As explained above, if all man-caused CO2 emissions were stopped today, the additional warming caused by this specific greenhouse gas would be stopped.   Due to the two opposing effects described above, the temperature of the Earth would be remain unchanged at the present level for many centuries.

Lastly, is warming by CO2 inevitable?  Another way this question is commonly put is “is there additional warming already in the pipeline” – that will play out no matter what we do?  The answer to this question must be broken into two parts.  If one is referring only to the scientific factors involved, the answer is fortunately “no”, additional warming is not inevitable.  As explained above, future warming can be stopped by stopping all of mankind’s emissions of CO2.  Thus, in a scientific only sense, there is no additional warming already in the pipeline.

We also know, however, that we will not be able to eliminate today or even within the next year all future emissions of CO2. Therefore, at least some and probably a lot of future warming by CO2 is inevitable.  The magnitude of that future warning depends entirely on the amount of fossil fuels presently residing in all of the reserves of the world that  will eventually be delivered to the energy markets of the world where they will be burned and converted into CO2.

In summary, we do not necessarily have to despair about the inevitability of future global warming.  The amount of warming “already in the pipeline” is something we have control over – that associated with man’s intended use of fossil fuels in the future.  The more fossil fuels we leave in the ground, the better.   Unfortunately, mankind’s use of fossil fuels for energy production is increasing, not decreasing, thereby making more future warming inevitable – if appropriate actions to cut off our addition to fossil fuels are not taken.

Therefore, as has always been the case, man-kind will reap what he sows.  Hopefully, this post explains both why this adage applies to the subject of climate change and what can be done to minimize future damage associated with the steadily increasing levels of CO2 in our atmosphere.

We all know the “Jackie Robinson Story” and for those who have not yet learned it, there is a new movie just out telling it once more.  So all I need to relate here are a few summary points concerning Robinson’s life.  He was, of course, the first man to break the color barrier in the Major Leagues of Baseball in 1947. He then had a spectacular career with the Brooklyn Dodgers becoming one of America’s very best players.  Prior to all of this, he had an excellent background in sports winning letters in four different sports at UCLA and excelling in track and field events.  Throughout his tenure in the major leagues of baseball, however, he was subjected to every sort of personal abuse and discrimination imaginable including death threats.  Those who did not like what he stood for did their very best to find flaws in both his athletic performance and his personal character.  Jackie Robinson’s character was as impeccable as his performance, however.  He and his life-long spouse led personal lives that we not only irreproachable but exemplary.   Thus, they stood their ground quietly but steadily against the flood of racial bigotry that was directed their way.  With the advantage of 20/20 hindsight, the impact of Jackie Robinson’s career is now clear.  He helped initiate a movement that broke down the color barriers in major sectors of American life.  In another sense, he opened our eyes to some of the realities of life which had been obscured by ignorance, bias, and bigotry.  All of this from a person who came from a simple rural setting in Georgia.

So who is this other James Hansen fellow that reminds me of Jackie Robinson – relative to Robinson he is a virtual unknown within the public domain.  First, let me point out the main difference between these two men.  To my knowledge, James Hansen has never been an accomplished athlete of any sort (my apologies to James if I am wrong there).  He has always been a scientist.  After explaining that difference, however, I could then relate much of Hansen’s life simply by drawing a parallel to everything I just said above about Jackie Robinson.  Hansen also came from a humble rural background (in Iowa) and moved on to develop his god given talent in the field of physics at the University of Iowa.  Like Robinson, he then moved up into the big leagues of his profession in his late 20’s, securing a position at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City which he held for 46 years serving as its Director for the last 30 years until his retirement last week.  By the 1980’s he had become an authority on the subject of the Earth’s climate and sounded one of the very first alarms before a Senate committee in 1988 concerning the warming of Earth that is being caused by our increasing levels of greenhouse gases. Since then he has remained one of the very best players on that field and has committed his life to the further understanding of climate change.  While still at the top of his profession at age 72, Dr. Hansen has now decided to retire from his position at Goddard in order to devote all of his attention to communications with the general public on the subject of climate change.

Like that of Jackie Robinson, the life of James Hansen has been made unusually challenging by that ever present force that exists in any society and is best described by the adage, ”if you don’t like the message, kill the messenger!”  While Robinson’s clear message was “the black man is the equal of the white man”, Hansen’s has been “man-caused global warming is rapidly causing changes to our planet that are incompatible with existing forms of human civilization”.  While most of us acknowledge that responding to Hansen’s message might prove to be inconvenient for many of us, the general public would very probably accept and respond to it if it were not for the mixed and confused messages they are daily bombarded with by powerful Business-as-Usual forces of the world.  Many of these forces, whose very existences might indeed require that no major changes be made, have drawn a bull’s eye on the leading messenger of the climate change problem and will continue to do their best to destroy the credibility of James Hansen.   Now that Dr. Hansen has given up his governmental post, he will be able to speak his mind much more freely within the public domain.  Therefore, we can expect to see the personal attacks on him and his message to be greatly increased.

So will Hansen be able to break down the “climate change” barrier that presently exists within the USA and elsewhere?   I don’t know.  Unlike the Jackie Robinson Story, this one is still in the middle chapters.    Just like the racial barrier, the climate change barrier is a very tough one that was many years in the making.  In any case, I recommend that we all go see “The Jackie Robinson Story” in order to better appreciate the real leaders among us.  Only a few, it seems, in each generation are willing and able to effectively confront the worst angels of our nature.  Within the next decade, I entirely expect that a movie entitled “The James Hansen Story” will be in our theaters.   Whether or not it also has a happy ending depends on the number of fans he acquires.  So please do keep an eye out for this man and what he says and does.  In this case, the future welfare of all races depends on it as well as the entire “ballgame” of organized human endeavors.