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3.0 out of 5 stars Provocative, cantankerous, thought-provoking, February 24, 2010
Dr. James Hansen is Director of the NASA Goddard Institute and one of America's most-respected climate scientists. He has written a truly remarkable book. It is wildly emotional, preening, posturing, self-righteous and self-indulgent. Much of the book is the unending story of how Objective Science, i.e. Dr. Hansen, is continually done wrong by Special Interests, i.e. everyone else on the planet. The Bush Administration tried to censor him, he says. The Obama Administration is trying to fool us into believing that it is acting effectively on global warming, when it is not, he says. The IPCC is wrong, on multiple, key points, he says. And everyone is trying to kill his grandkids, by not listening to his wisdom, which, if it is not listened to, will end life on planet Earth. (He brings up the "save my grandkids" motif about 20 times in the book. And he really does say that, if we do not stop global warming, it will end all life on Earth.)
In the course of the book, Dr. Hansen puts forward a number of remarkable arguments, of wildly varying levels of quality, which put him at odds with essentially everyone, on at least one major issue. Lets summarize.
(1) Remember the computer climate models upon which the Intergovernmenal Panel on Climate Change ("IPCC") bases most of its case in favor of Al Gore's theory? Junk, says Dr. Hansen. They do not prove a thing.
(2) With climate models thrown in the dustbin, how do we prove that increased CO2 is leading to dangerous levels of global warming? We do so via the pre-history of climate, says Dr. Hansen. As those of us familiar with this subject know, there have been many times in the far distant, prehistoric past when the climate was much warmer than it is today. When the climate was warmer, in the past, the CO2 level in the air was higher. BUT this pattern, previously was viewed as a problem for Al Gore, not a support. The problem is the time sequence. The evidence is clear that, in this past periods, temperature went up first, and CO2 went up second. Increased CO2 is caused by higher temperature, not the other way around. (Everyone agrees on why. If ocean water is warmer, it holds less CO2. Thus, heat up the ocean a bit, and lots of CO2 is released into the atmosphere.) A number of the scientists, who question global warming, point to this time sequence as strong evidence that increased CO2 does not make it warmer, but the other way around.
Dr. Hansen gets out of this box with a piece of Harry Houdini reasoning. Yes, he acknowledges increased temperature causes increased CO2. In the past natural episodes, the increased temperature had to have a natural cause, most likely increased solar radiation, changes in Earth tilt and so forth. BUT he says this were just the natural triggers. AFTER they warmed the Earth, this released CO2, and the increased CO2 then heat up the Earth further. SO, even though increased temperature came first, and increased CO2 came second, nonetheless increased CO2 heats up the climate and we are going to die.
A pretty slick piece of reasoning. Is there any empirical support for it? We know that increased heat leads to increased CO2, for the reason noted above. We know that, at a certain point, increased CO2 leads to increased temperature, via the greenhouse effect. Exhibit A is Venus, a planet with a 97% CO2 atmosphere, which is incredibly hot. We also know that, in Earth's atmosphere, CO2 is a trace gas, measured in parts per million. What we do now know -- or at least I do not know -- is, if the amount of CO2, as a trace gas, is increased, does this have any effect on the climate? It might; CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It also might now; CO2 is a trace gas, which presumably has little effect, since there is so little of it. What I would like to see is some empirical evidence, one way or the other. What is the factual basis for the claim that when CO2 is at less than 200 parts per million (pre-industrial) everything is fine, but when CO2 goes to 350 parts per million we all die? If Dr. Hansen has any empirical evidence supporting this claim, he does not discuss it in this book. Since I really want to know the answer to this question, I am going to go look up Dr. Hansen's technical articles to see if he cites any empirical evidence in them for this claim.
(3) Temperature does not seem to be going up much. Does this not mean that, either (a) the theory is wrong, or (b) we have plenty of time to adjust to a slow increase in temperature? Not at all, says Dr. Hansen. He argues that even rather slow changes are horribly dangerous. He argues for "tipping points." The idea is, once you reach a certain point, and the ice sheets of Greenland and Antartica start to collapse, then the warming cycle is self-reinforcing. You see, ice reflects sun back into space. If there is less ice, then more energy is absorbed and it gets warmer. In addition, frozen methane hydrates are released. In short, there are multiple feedback mechanisms which will will make any warming much worse. Thus, we have to be horribly worried about even small changes.
Does any of this make sense? I am not sure. The argument struck me as a great deal of qualitative, subjective, hand-waving with very little in the way of hard facts. But in this book, Dr. Hansen's whole premise is that we idiots will not understand the real science, so he has to water it down a great deal so that we dumb bells will have a chance of following his genius. He thus, routinely, does not give much in the way of supporting facts, and does not have either footnotes or detailed sources. So, maybe, there is a real empirical case for all of this stuff, somewhere in the technical literature. That empirical case, however, is not made in this book.
(4) Turning on his liberal allies with a growl, Dr. Hansen argues that most of what the liberals are doing is "greenwash," pretending to care about the problem while doing nothing of substance about it. He argues that cap and trade is an extremely bad idea. He argues that what we need instead is a tax on carbon.
(5) What is the solution? Hansen would like to believe that increased efficiency and "green" sources of energy will do the trick. He does not think so, however. Thus, he advocates for nuclear energy. He makes a very interesting argument for high-technology nuclear energy. According to him, new fourth-generation fast, breeder reactors solve the problems of the old nuclear plants. First and foremost, the fast breeders solve the problem of nuclear waste; they use the nuclear waste produced by the old nucs as fuel, and they do not produce any really dangerous waste themselves. Because the fast breeder reactors can burn nuclear waste, they solve two problems at one time. (a) We have plenty of fuel for them. (b) They get rid of the nuclear waste, which is presently the main problem with nuclear energy.
In short, if Dr. Hansen knows what he is talking about on this subject, then fourth-generation nucs are the magic bullet. They solve the whole problem. Does Hansen know what he is talking about on this subject? Well, as usual, he gives no footnotes and cites no sources. What Hansen says on this subject sounds good. I hope he is right. But, for all I know, he just made the whole thing up or is totally wrong.
A final word to Dr. Hansen, and those like him. Stop treating the reading public like idiots. Many of us actually check your sources. We read your footnotes. We know what a fact is and what an opinion is. I find it incredibly irritating for a major scientist, like Dr. Hansen, to give us one lecture after another on how the public is too dumb to understand science, and then to turn around and to give us this watered-down, footnote free, source-free discussion. Give us the science straight, once in a while, and you would be surprised how many of us are quite able to follow you.