Jun 27 2007
Hansen - How Can We Avert Dangerous Climate Change?
Taken from How Can We Avert Dangerous Climate Change?, arXiv:0706.3720v1 [physics.ao-ph].
Abstract: Recent analyses indicate that the amount of atmospheric CO2 required to cause dangerous climate change is at most 450 ppm, and likely less than that. Reductions of non-CO2 climate forcings can provide only moderate, albeit important, adjustments to the CO2 limit. Realization of how close the planet is to “tipping points” with unacceptable consequences, especially ice sheet disintegration with sea level rise out of humanity’s control, has a bright side. It implies an imperative: we must find a way to keep the CO2 amount so low that it will also avert other detrimental effects that had begun to seem inevitable, e.g., ocean acidification, loss of most alpine glaciers and thus the water supply for millions of people, and shifting of climatic zones with consequent extermination of species.
Here I outline from a scientific perspective actions needed to achieve low limits on CO2 and global warming. These changes are technically feasible and have ancillary benefits. Achievement of needed changes requires overcoming the spurious argument that developed and developing countries have equivalent responsibilities, as well as overcoming special interests advocating minimalist or counterproductive actions such as corn-based ethanol and liquid-fuel-from-coal programs.
This paper is almost entirely composed of testimony given before the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, United States House of Representatives on 26 April 2007. There is a very good sections on sea level rise, and its consequences. Also, I was pleasently surprised to see a section on “sky islands” and how they are affected by global warming. He also put forth a four point plan on how to reduce the effects of global warming:
- First, we must phase out the use of coal and unconventional fossil fuels except where the CO2 is captured and sequestered. There should be a moratorium on construction of old-technology coal-fired power plants.
- Second, there must be a rising price (tax) on carbon emissions, as well as effective energy efficiency standards, and removal of barriers to efficiency. These actions are needed to spur innovation in energy efficiency and renewable energies, and thus to stretch oil and gas supplies to cover the need for mobile fuels during the transition to the next phase of the industrial revolution ‘beyond petroleum’.
- Third, there should be focused efforts to reduce non-CO2 human-made climate forcings, especially methane, ozone and black carbon.
- Fourth, steps must be taken to ‘draw down’ atmospheric CO2 via improved farming and forestry practices, including burning of biofuels in power plants with CO2 sequestration.
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6 Responses to “Hansen - How Can We Avert Dangerous Climate Change?”
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Hansen is quite alarming. Sea level is not going to rise dramatically. Global climate change is normal. CO2 has been as high as 400 ppm in 1942 and it was followed by a thirty year cooling period. Common sense is required because a major disfunction is occurring. The UN IPCC has serious flaws from the internal constraint to the so-called executive summary. Google Ernst-George Beck for a summary paper on 180 years of CO2 chemical analyses and read it. You will find no correlation between science and the IPCC CO2 statements. It would appear the books have been cooked and Hansen is either a fool or a fraud, and he’s certainly not constrained by science. Relax, the planet is fine.
You probably meant Ernst-Georg Beck. In any case, the analysis is wrong. For those interested, this is what Beck’s CO2 graph looks like:
Several nobel chemists participated in the analyses that Beck has compiled. Your response appears to be ad hominem, not based on scientific dialogue. Am I misunderstandig your use of the graph?
In any case, measurements in nature are regionalised variables, useful only locally. The single point on the volcano Mauna Loa could be flawed by proximity to an erupting volcano that is a major CO2 source or perhaps the rise is due to urbanisation of the Hawaiian pinapple culture. Pineapple farming absorbs CO2 and the industry is in decline.
These are all simple hypotheses beyond the scope of the IPCC. Their agenda appears to be to bring a rapid halt to the carbon based economy, a disaster for underdeveloped nations globally. That’s my hypothesis.
Relax, the planet is fine
Having looked at the criticism of Beck on Real Climate, I cannot give any credit to old synoptic data that is taken from open systems other than the direct measurements of the CO2 content of the atmosphere. Beck compiles atmosphere. That the data do not fit the theory or model is a problem of interpretation and IPCC hypothesis not a problem of the raw data.
The IPCC and the reference you link contains several circular arguments that do not fit inconvenient climate history (more data that do not fit the models).
Ice core, for a simple example, is an open system for a period of time ranging from decades to centuries as firn converts to ice. The ice that forms expands as it does so and the increase in volume and decrease in density is a trap for ambient atmosphere AT THE TIME OF PHASE CHANGE - an open system that is corrupted as the phase transformation swings back and forth numerous times over the elapsed time from snow to ice. In other words “ice sucks”.
The ice core interpretations have the same fatal flaw as the Mann Hockey stick. The data inconveniently do not display the Little Ice Age or the Medieval Warm Period. Greenland was populated and the migrants starved due to climate changes not displayed in ice core that is cited by the IPCC! That is INCONVENIENTLY not science.
When the facts change, scientists change their models immediately. Climate models TODAY are GIGO.
Most of your response if conveniently off topic with respect to Beck and CO2. Since you obviously didn’t read RealClimate closely enough, I’ll quote part of it here.
CO2 concentrations near large emissions sources, such as cities, inherently have large spatial heterogeneity. As shown above, even in one city, the CO2 concentrations vary by over 100ppm. Needless to say, this isn’t a real signal. There was no large jump (or fall) in CO2 concentration between when the smallest and largest measurements were taken. All the Beck graph shows is that there are large spatial gradients in the lower atmosphere.
This is why it’s important to have measuring stations where there is no influence from emissions sources… how about an island in the middle of the ocean? See also, Rabett Run and how closely the CO2 measurements from Mauna Loa follow the in-situ measurements in the high atmosphere - where they are most important.
“loss of most alpine glaciers ”
Surely Mr Hansen must know of the work of Six et al. (2001) -PIGB-PMRC Lettre n,15, 2003)showing that from 1967-1997, the mean ice balance of 9 studied alpine glaciers is in phase opposition with the mean ice balance of 7 studied Scandinavian glaciers, the North Atlantic Oscillation following closely the behaviour of the Alpine glaciers.
Moreover it is extremely well documented that Romans could cross swiss mountains without encountering much problems from alpine glaciers…
Finally knowing that China is now surpassing the USA for CO2 emissions and since we are supposedly facing a global problem, using per capita data makes only a political point, certainly not a scientific one.