by frog
Worldwatch Institute and Grist have joined forces to bring you a series on one of climate science’s early heroes – Jim Hansen. This is the guy whose tenacity brought the global warming topic back into the political arena at a time when conservatives simply did not want to hear it.
Theories of climate change first surfaced more than a century ago. But it was Hansen who forever altered the debate on climate change 20 years ago this month.
“It’s time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here,” Hansen told reporters.
Scientists first expressed concern about possible climate change more than a decade before Hansen’s testimony. The most-publicized report came from the National Academy of Sciences in 1977. It warned that average temperatures may rise 6 degrees Celsius by 2050 due to the burning of coal.
Around the same time, Hansen, a space scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, began studying the effect of greenhouse gases on climate. His first paper on the subject, published in the journal Science (PDF) in 1981, predicted that burning fossil fuels would increase global temperatures by 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.5 degrees Celsius) by the end of the 21st century.
Click the Grist link above for the full story in this first of a three part series.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by frog on Sat, June 21st, 2008
Tags: , climate change, global warming, hero, history, James Hansen, NASA
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
It’s good to know who we should string up first when the farce comes to an end. Isn’t it incredible the chaos that can be created by one silly idea!
We now have overpriced power, high petrol taxes, additional taxes possibly coming through ETS, countless glossy greenwash brochures, the aborted fart tax, the wasteful carbon offset industry, not to meantion every doom and gloom merchant coming out of the woodwork and beating us with the ‘repent or perish’ stick in every newspaper on the planet.
What a pointless waste of good human effort. Just think what all those scientists could have achieved if they had done something useful with their time. I just can’t wait until it all ends. Our children are going to have a good laugh over this, but I’m struggling to see the funny side at the moment.
At the time when his paper was published in the 70s, environmentalists were going on about global cooling and the next ice age. No doubt he was ridiculed when he came out with a paper saying we were all going to melt.
I was intrigued to hear of Al Gore’s involvement in the early 80s. Does that mean he didn’t just discover global warming after being rejected by the voters? Maybe he has more credibility than I thought. But doesn’t it make it harder to explain why he did nothing about global warming during his 8 years in power?
> Meanwhile, the United States in 1988 was suffering from a terrible drought. Wirth knew that if he arranged a hearing that drew a link between the present weather conditions and a trend of global warming, it would generate considerable media attention.
Aint that the truth. As I said above, this has become an incessant whine from the media. Hardly a day goes by without some kid melting an ice cube in the bath and proclaiming that we are about to be flooded.
I read my daughter the Chicken Little story tonight. It starts with ‘The Sky is Falling’ and ends with the fox making a nice meal of Chicken Little’s mates. Roll on fox is all I can say, the chicken is really starting to grate.
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Ah, there we go with the global cooling myth again. Yes, a scientist did put forth a paper in the seventies saying that we could trigger another ice age, but it wasn’t anywhere near a consensus, in fact it was less than a ‘minority’ view.
It is along bow to draw that AGW is responsible for our high power prices, fuel prices and taxes, etc. Where do you get such nonsense?
Just keep your head in the sand. Everything will be all right. Cue Tui advert.
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Hey Guys, Isn’t all this global warming and cooling stuff directly to do with what the Sun is up to. We just need to be responsible about cleaning our acts up without sending the country broke..
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That depends on who you listen to
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And who is credible
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There will be winners and losers, but it’s not about sending the country broke. It’s about transforming the economy into one that can withstand the end of the fossil fuel age and allow us to live comfortably within the natural boundaries of the planet. If we screw up, nature will just clean house and start over, as she does so efficiently with any other species that overshoots its balance.
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Fossil Fuel will never pass look at the Sun. Swamps, Bush fires, cooking etc we just need to use less of it.. yes we can show the bigger nations such as the Indians and Chinese, but will they listen.
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# pomadom Says:
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:48 am
> Hey Guys, Isn’t all this global warming and cooling stuff directly to do with what the Sun is up to.
no. NASA have had satellites measuring the energy from the sun continuously since 1978. Most of the warming has happened since then, and yet the satellites haven’t measured any increase in solar radiation that could account for that. it is true that the amount of energy coming from the sun varies a bit. It is at a low point at the moment, and yet the atmosphere is not as cold as at previous low points – in fact, it is as warm now as it was at the 1998 high point.
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This guys videos are helpful – esp to those who just DON’T know what to think or believe
http://www.youtube.com/user/wonderingmind42
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kahikatea isn’t it a bit more complicated than that? i thought the sun claim was that sunspot activity (or reduced sunspot activity or something) caused a different type of radiation to reach us which heats the atmosphere more.
the trouble with these debates is that i’ve never really seen all the best claims of the rival points of view stacked up against each other & given an honest, rigorous analysis
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Hi Frog,
Looking forward to when global warming will be dismissed as a ‘minority view’ by environmentalists also. Let’s see: chlorine, DDT, pesticides, GM food, commercial farming, mercury, not enough mercury, power lines, cars, trucks, diesel, leaded petrol, cellphones, the warehouse, organic food and drink, and on and on and on – who can even keep track of it all. The whole thing is one big minority viewpoint, but the problem is that the joke is on us as we suffer for environmentalists’ cluelessness.
AGW (which I believe means global warming) is a scan and is not responsible for anything. Looking forward to a few more environmentalists admitting that also.
Environmentalists, on the other hand, are clearly responsible for ‘our high power prices, fuel prices and taxes, etc. ‘. Let me explain:
- but for environmentalists we would not have had the RMA, and would have been able to build more power stations
- but for envrionmentalists we would not have had the coal fire power ban, which is a ridiculous thing to have when you have 2000 years of coal in the ground? So much for peak oil, limited resources, worrying about our grandchildren, etc. 2000 years ago Jesus was wandering about.
- the cost of oil has a great deal to do with environmentalists. For example, environmentalists have been behind a bad on drilling in Alaska, and expanding drilling in the guld; these two things may have kept the USA as an oil exporter rather than importer, and increased world supply / reduced prices.
- even now environmentalists are campaigning against coal mining, thus pushing up the the price of coal
- but that isn’t even the bulk of it – the taxes on petrol are largely due to environmentalists, who argue that cars are big, bad and selfish. But for environmentalists we would have petrol at under $1.40 even now
It’s a pretty short bow to draw. It would be a long bow for an environmentalist to argue that all of these things just came to pass in the teeth of environmentalist opposition
PS My daughter asks why your mummy and daddy called you a frog, so now she knows what nicknames are.
PPS I would love to keep my head in the sand, but environmentalists keep kicking me up the bum!
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http://www.greatglobalwarmingswindle.com/index.html
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Its interesting to see both sides.. I an concerned about pollution and bad practice living. Been a Vegan Im doing my little bit to help emissions.
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# The Optimist Says:
June 22nd, 2008 at 6:26 pm
> – but for envrionmentalists we would not have had the coal fire power ban, which is a ridiculous thing to have when you have 2000 years of coal in the ground? So much for peak oil, limited resources, worrying about our grandchildren, etc. 2000 years ago Jesus was wandering about.
actually, we don’t have a coal fire power ban. We have a ban on the building of new coal fired power stations unless they can be presented as back-up generation. But all new coal-fired power stations can be construed as backup generation under the legislation, so we don’t really have a ban on building new coal-fired power stations at all.
With no environmentalists, we would have more coal-fired power stations. And those coal-fired power stations would emit lots of sulphur and cause brathhing problems and acid rain, because they would have no scrubbers to reduce sulphur emissions, just like in the Soviet bloc where environmental pressure groups were banned by law.
> – the cost of oil has a great deal to do with environmentalists. For example, environmentalists have been behind a bad on drilling in Alaska, and expanding drilling in the guld; these two things may have kept the USA as an oil exporter rather than importer, and increased world supply / reduced prices.
The amount of oil in the alaskan national wildlife refuge (the bit where drilling is banned) is not enough to provide for even 1% of the US’s current consumption, so its impact on prices would be almost zilch.
> – but that isn’t even the bulk of it – the taxes on petrol are largely due to environmentalists, who argue that cars are big, bad and selfish. But for environmentalists we would have petrol at under $1.40 even now
Actually, most of the fuel taxes we currently have were introduced to fund road building, road maintenance, traffic policing, traffic lights etc. It’s effectively a form of user pays.
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Hi kahikatea (I get it, a tree)
Good smack down, but I am back
> actually, we don’t have a coal fire power ban. We have a ban on the building of new coal fired power stations unless they can be presented as back-up generation.
So can we count on envrionmentalists’ support for building 5 more coal fire power stations?
>With no environmentalists, we would have more coal-fired power stations.
Apparenrly not.
You then go on to say that coal fire power stations pollute. Of course they do, but as you say, not as badly as communist power stations. So if we build modern (non-soviet era) coal fire power stations, will environmentalists offer their support? Let’s us know.
> The amount of oil in the alaskan national wildlife refuge (the bit where drilling is banned) is not enough to provide for even 1% of the US’s current consumption, so its impact on prices would be almost zilch.
I believe it is about 10 billion barrels, which is 1/2 of current US reserves. It would have a big impact. Still with the price of oil so crazily high, even turning coal into petrol is viable. Did you know that Montana is excited because they reckon they have the equivalent of 1/4 of the middle east oil reserves sitting underground (as coal)?
There is oil, coal, gas, etc. everywhere, environmentalists need to get out of the way so we can extract it and reduce energy prices back to sensible levels.
>> – but that isn’t even the bulk of it – the taxes on petrol are largely due to environmentalists,
>Actually, most of the fuel taxes we currently have were introduced to fund road building, road maintenance, traffic policing, traffic lights etc. It’s effectively a form of user pays.
They may have been introduced that way, but they certainly are now a ‘naughty tax’.
In fact the more petrol taxes countries pay, the LESS is spent on roads. The UK is a case in point where I think about 40 billion pounds is collected in taxes and only 7 billion spent on roads. Yes you heard it right. And you wonder why the UK have become such a hole.
Note that our petrol tax has gone up by around 15 cents a litre (excluding GST which has of course doubled) since 2000. GST has doubled to 24 cents. Have the roads become better? Don’t bet on it.
All this time, Auckland’s transport problem has got worse and worse. Christchurch’s northern motorway project was cancelled, due partly to an environmentalist mayor.
Any time someone talks about building a better road, your arch-environmentalist Jeanette Fitzsimons wants the money spent instead on ‘public transport’. I note you don’t mention the massive sums spent my environmentalists on subsidising public transport enough to get people to put up with it. In ChCh we ratepayers pay half the fare every time anyone steps on a bus. How can I get someone else to pay half when I fill up my tank? How can I get bus users to pay their fare share of road costs?
BTW I am driving my wife’s tank at the moment. It is only a 3 litre turbocharged petrol, but it still uses plenty of petrol. I have to make up for all the little suzukis on the road. Not as much as this baby though…will they do right hand drive?
http://www.leftlanenews.com/cadillac-cts-v.html
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# The Optimist Says:
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:14 pm
> Hi kahikatea (I get it, a tree)
I was nicknamed Kahikatea because I was tall and skinny and crazy about native trees at the time.
> > actually, we don’t have a coal fire power ban. We have a ban on the building of new coal fired power stations unless they can be presented as back-up generation.
> So can we count on envrionmentalists’ support for building 5 more coal fire power stations?
No. We should have a coal-fired power station ban, but effectively we don’t.
> With no environmentalists, we would have more coal-fired power stations.
> Apparenrly not.
With no environmentalist pressure of any kind, Marsden B would probably have been converted to run on coal and opened for business. So, yes we would. As you said initially.
> You then go on to say that coal fire power stations pollute. Of course they do, but as you say, not as badly as communist power stations. So if we build modern (non-soviet era) coal fire power stations, will environmentalists offer their support? Let’s us know.
There is an argument in favour of opening new coal-fired power stations and closing older, less-efficient ones, if the alternative is keeping the old ones open. But in New Zealand with our good wind resources and room for improved efficiency in electricity use, it’s not worth it. New Zealand still has very low efficiency in electricity use, partly as a consequence of having the lowest electricity prices in the OECD.
and as for your point about modern, non-Soviet-era coal-fired power stations, my point was that that technology would never have been developed if it wasn’t for campaigns by environmentalists.
> > The amount of oil in the alaskan national wildlife refuge (the bit where drilling is banned) is not enough to provide for even 1% of the US’s current consumption, so its impact on prices would be almost zilch.
> I believe it is about 10 billion barrels, which is 1/2 of current US reserves. It would have a big impact.
current US reserves are irrelevantly small on a world scale. US reserves used to be big, but they’re nearly all used up now.
> There is oil, coal, gas, etc. everywhere, environmentalists need to get out of the way so we can extract it and reduce energy prices back to sensible levels.
Well, there is lots of coal. The world is actually currently close to the maximum possible extraction rate for oil and gas, which is why the price keeps going up. If you extract it faster, you get more left in the ground that you will now never be able to extract.
And burning that coal would of course make the problem of global climate change a lot worse. I know you don’t believe in global warming, but unfortunately it happens whether you believe in it or not.
> In fact the more petrol taxes countries pay, the LESS is spent on roads.
New Zealand has one of the lowest rates of petrol tax in the OECD. Are we getting more money spent on roads as a result?
> Note that our petrol tax has gone up by around 15 cents a litre (excluding GST which has of course doubled) since 2000. GST has doubled to 24 cents. Have the roads become better? Don’t bet on it.
No, but they have started some quite big road-building projects with the money, particularly in Auckland. When those projects are finished, will our roads be better? I don’t know, but I’m sure the people who designed and authorised those projects believe they will.
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Just breifly as it is bed time:
> Well, there is lots of coal. The world is actually currently close to the maximum possible extraction rate for oil and gas, which is why the price keeps going up. If you extract it faster, you get more left in the ground that you will now never be able to extract.
We can build new oil rigs and refineries. In fact we need to. But I believe that the price of oil will crash next year.
> And burning that coal would of course make the problem of global climate change a lot worse. I know you don’t believe in global warming, but unfortunately it happens whether you believe in it or not.
Not if isn’t true! I don’t believe in the tooth fairy any more (because I am one) but that doesn’t make it true.
Do you believe in God? Unfortunately God is there whether you believe in him or not.
Get a grip, man!
> New Zealand has one of the lowest rates of petrol tax in the OECD. Are we getting more money spent on roads as a result?
Yes, strangely. I should do a graph one day. The justification for higher petrol taxes is for environmentalists, not for building more roads.
Let me test this. We are going to add 20 cents to the price of petrol and use the money (plus another 20 cents from general tax) to build more roads. As an environmentalists are you more happy that the tax has done up, or more sad that more roads will be built?
> No, but they have started some quite big road-building projects with the money, particularly in Auckland. When those projects are finished, will our roads be better? I don’t know, but I’m sure the people who designed and authorised those projects believe they will.
The roads will be a lot better than if they didn’t do anything.
The UK tried not building any more roads because ‘building roads just encourages more traffic’. The last one I remember them building was the A4. It took 15 years to go from empty to gridlock. Those 15 years were bliss for people on the route.
Anyway, their policy failed, since it just made the roads worse and worse (along with assocated quality of life). Put it another way: how loud would environmentalists scream if we built a whole load of new roads and no one used them? Which would you prefer?
That wasn’t very brief…
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“communist power stations”
That’s a new one – is this a Marxist term?
Years ago I used to hear people blaming everything on ‘socialists’. The definition of ‘socialist’ seemed to be ‘anybody who does something I don’t like’. If the government taxed petrol, put in planning laws, did or don’t build something, it was bevause they were ‘socialists’. The Optimist seems to have substituted ‘environmentalist’ for ‘socialist’ but the basic argument is much the same.
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“The UK is a case in point where I think about 40 billion pounds is collected in taxes and only 7 billion spent on roads. Yes you heard it right. And you wonder why the UK have become such a hole.”
Are you seriously telling me that the problem with that blighted dump of concrete, broken down trains, underpasses, overpasses, motorways, roundabouts, carbon monoxide and grafittied pedestrian subways is that they don’t have enough roads? What do you want to do – tarmac over the whole bloody country and put it out of its misery?
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“communist power stations?
are they ‘fired’ using old/worn-out ‘communists’..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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as in..’bring out your old communists..!’..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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> Are you seriously telling me that the problem with that blighted dump of concrete, broken down trains, underpasses, overpasses, motorways, roundabouts, carbon monoxide and grafittied pedestrian subways is that they don’t have enough roads?
Not sure where trains comes in to it (I was talking about roads), but if you mean the problem with the UK is that is doesn’t have enough roads, then yes. It is pretty clear to anyone who visits for a few weeks, let alone lives there.
> What do you want to do – tarmac over the whole bloody country and put it out of its misery?
I think we’ve heard that line before. Just to give you one example, the M25 (ignoring junctions) takes up about 6 km2 of land, not much more than the space between the avenues in central ChCh. They could double the width of all motorways in the UK and it wouldn’t make the slightest noticeable difference to the amount of green space.
Have you ever flown over the UK?
This single argument is perhaps responsible for 80% of the traffic misery in the UK. Thankfully it has been proved to be a silly scare tactic by environmentalists and the road building programme has restarted. Whether they will ever catch up is debatable.
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Did I say communist power station? I must have meant neo-marxist, or something. Please feel free to correct my Marxist terminology; unlike many environmentalists I don’t see the world wholly in his terms
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# The Optimist Says:
June 23rd, 2008 at 7:48 pm
> Did I say communist power station? I must have meant neo-marxist, or something. Please feel free to correct my Marxist terminology; unlike many environmentalists I don’t see the world wholly in his terms
I initially brought up the issue, but I probably should have said dictatorships rather than specfically communist countries. The problem of very dirty coal-fired power stations is characteristic of dictatorships of all kinds, not just communist ones. It stems from dictators banning the environmental pressure groups and independent media that would campaign to clean them up.
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The Optimist: “Let’s see: chlorine, DDT, pesticides, GM food, commercial farming, mercury, not enough mercury, power lines, cars, trucks, diesel, leaded petrol, cellphones, the warehouse, organic food and drink, and on and on and on – who can even keep track of it all. ”
The evidence is there Optimist. It’s called science. I don’t blame you if you didn’t learn it at school, the NZ education systems leaves a lot to be desired. Perhaps you’d like to be the a guinea pig for all those listed hazards?… I sure don’t.
You would sooner destroy Alaska for ‘progress’ ‘productivity’ or whatever the hell you call it, instead of choosing an alternative and saving Alaska for the world’s generations of children to come to visit and be in awe of.
You are also the only person I have encountered who targets environmentalists outside of paid individuals.
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>> The Optimist: “Let’s see: chlorine, DDT, pesticides,…
> The evidence is there Optimist. It’s called science. I don’t blame you if you didn’t learn it at school
I prefer to call it environmentalism. You can call it 5th form science if you like – it seems that all they teach in school these days is environmentalism. If we saved all the species the curriculum currently advocates for, there wouldn’t be any room for humans.
> I initially brought up the issue, but I probably should have said dictatorships rather than specfically communist countries. The problem of very dirty coal-fired power stations is characteristic of dictatorships of all kinds, not just communist ones. It stems from dictators banning the environmental pressure groups and independent media that would campaign to clean them up.
Go capitalism! (I think this is what you mean?)
Or in longer form, isn’t it wonderful how we have such clean air, we can afford efficient cars, we can afford to use oil rather than coal, we can afford clean coal fired power stations? How about environmentalists start celebrating this, and getting out of our way while we grow richer so we can afford an even better life?
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“if you mean the problem with the UK is that is doesn’t have enough roads, then yes. It is pretty clear to anyone who visits for a few weeks, let alone lives there.”
I lived there for a few years and it was pretry clear that the place desperately needed investment in public transport to make it more like the nicer parts of Europe.
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The Optimist says:
“it seems that all they teach in school these days is environmentalism.
If we saved all the species the curriculum currently advocates for, there wouldn’t be any room for humans.”
He and others of similar views now dominate on this forum.
Am I the only one who believes that the time is long overdue for frogblog to be reclaimed by the many with a genuine interest in the Green and green issues who have “quietly disappeared” over the last few months?
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I agree Eredwen – the amount of posturing and name-calling by people who quite clearly are not interested in discussing the long-term survival of the planet is very off-putting
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> > I initially brought up the issue, but I probably should have said dictatorships rather than specfically communist countries. The problem of very dirty coal-fired power stations is characteristic of dictatorships of all kinds, not just communist ones. It stems from dictators banning the environmental pressure groups and independent media that would campaign to clean them up.
> Go capitalism! (I think this is what you mean?)
Go Democracy! and Go Free Speech! would be more accurate. There are examples of capitalist countries like Taiwan and Mexico which had the same problems, also because they banned environmentalist groups and the media from drawing attention to these problems. The People’s Republic of China is broadly capitalist these days (even though it’s ruled by a government that still calls itself ‘the communist party’), but it has the same pollution problems, because it doesn’t allow the free media or environmental groups that would lead protests to improve the situation.
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