email response to James Hansen's article Bob:

I read with interest the words of James Hansen and I do appreciate you sending them to me. It reminds me of an old philosophy of action called, loosely, “tool theory.” It’s been around for a very long time, probably several centuries. Roughly it states that man (that includes both male and female) will try to use the tools he is mentally equipped and trained to use in efforts to solve any problem, say make a chair for example.. A carpenter will use hammers, saws, chisels, wood and nails to solve his problem and build the chair. A plumber, on the other hand, will try to use pipe, fittings, pipe wrenches etc to build a chair. A stonemason might use stone cutting tools to carve his chair out of stone, etc. I’m sure you get the idea.

Well, I think there is an application of another, similar as yet unnamed theory that could apply to certain popular concepts that catch the public’s notice and then take on a life of their own. “global warming,” is one of the newer ones while “civil rights” has been with us for quite a while. There are many others with more or less pizzaz. “Separation of church and state” “weapons of mass destruction” “the war on terror (drugs, poverty, ignorance etc.)” are others. Most will sooner or later take on political relevance which quickly distorts their reality and adds strong emotional fervor which can destroy any rational effort to study the problem or situation objectively and come up with realistic answers. Sometimes this is good–sometimes bad–either depending not on the realities of the situation, but on the political posture of those for and against any proposed solution. Often times the factual realities of the situation become completely obscured by all the rhetoric which seems must be divided into for and against– a black or white rendering of virtually every expressed opinion most of which are actually varying shades of grey. It seems we must take one or the other of two opposing positions– either you are against it or for it.

The current number one on the media hit parade is global warming which includes the opinion that our contribution of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is it’s cause and must be dealt with. In the minds and voices of the media, many politicians, and significant world celebrities, global warming is accepted as a proven fact, a serious danger to humanity, and a serious menace we must deal with. This has been so firmly established in the public’s collective mind by politicians and their media supporters worldwide that any kind of discussion of other possible causes of global warming, is summarily lumped into the, They’re against us and their wrong camp. This happens no matter how well documented by in-depth scientific studies, or supported by good scientific evidence that opinion may be.

It’s rather akin to a very old Chinese concept about proof of theories. They believed and stated, “Look only at data that supports the theory and ignore all data that does not.” This was actually a practice of early Chinese theorists. It may well have been one of the reasons why Chinese science fell by the wayside after a very significant start. The Chinese no longer think that way. I hope we don’t start to.

I read Al Gore’s book and found it filled with hype and emotional appeal, slick photos and charts that struck an emotional response, but much of the science is one sided and thinly supported. To me it seemed more a “Chicken Little” book, long on emotion-stirring depictions and short on objective data. Incidently, some of the “data” in the book, particularly that in graphs, is absolutely impossible and proveably so quite easily. I can see how it would appeal to those who want a simple direct answer and someone or something to blame for a causative factor that might or might not be relevant. James Hansen’s article does some of those same things. Incidently, I do not question their intent to help solve a perceived problem. I do question the technical accuracy of their statements. Are they provable scientific data, or are they skewed to persuade?
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Why We Can't Wait

by James Hansen (I’ve added my comments in bold italics)

There's a huge gap between what is understood about global warming by the relevant scientific community and what is known about global warming by those who need to know: the public and policy-makers. (Amen!) We've had, in the past thirty years, one degree Fahrenheit of global warming. (We actually had the same amount of cooling in a single year, 2007-2008.) But there's another one degree Fahrenheit in the pipeline due to gases that are already in the atmosphere. And there's another one degree Fahrenheit in the pipeline because of the energy infrastructure now in place--for example, power plants and vehicles that we're not going to take off the road even if we decide that we're going to address this problem. (His one degree is a very arguable figure that has been estimated at between 0.1 and 1.9 by others in various studies by scientists of varying degrees of expertise and with varying agendas. Greenhouse gasses are but one of several dozen significant factors affecting global climate. Most climatologists place a number of these ahead of atmospheric carbon dioxide as having the most significant effect. For example, water vapor in the atmosphere has between 10,000 and 40,000 times the heat capacity of cabon dioxide at double present levels. Variations in water vapor literally drowns any greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide. Day by day changes in atmospheric water vapor are thousands of times greater in greenhouse effect than any change in carbon dioxide we could conceive of. Still there is no doubt about man’s contribution having at least some effect.The question is, how much and is it significant enough to cause alarm. Pouring a cup of water into a fifty acre pond may raise the surface level, but significantly? )

The Energy Department says that we're going to continue to put more and more CO2 in the atmosphere each year—not just additional CO2 but more than we put in the year before. If we do follow that path, even for another ten years, it guarantees that we will have dramatic climate changes that produce what I would call a different planet—one without sea ice in the Arctic; with worldwide, repeated coastal tragedies associated with storms and a continuously rising sea level; and with regional disruptions due to freshwater shortages and shifting climatic zones. (These are wildly speculative warnings at best. When he says, “we” is he speaking only of America, or the whole world? If this is a problem it is a global problem and if human generated carbon dioxide is a major cause, we have just been moved into second place. China is now the one nation contributing the most carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. India, now in third place, is rapidly overtaking us. This is happening as we reduce our output while they are rapidly increasing theirs. So any real answer must be a global one that will work for and be shared by all nations. One big factor never mentioned is the effect of wholesale destruction of forests on the carbon dioxide balance. The burning to clear the land generates large amounts of CO2, more than all the worlds vehicles combined. Also, the removal of trees takes away one of the most efficient and effective systems to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Why don't we address that problem?)

I've arrived at five recommendations for what should be done to address the problem. If Congress were to follow these recommendations, we could solve the problem. Interestingly, this is not a gloom-and-doom story. In fact, the things we need to do have many other benefits in terms of our economy, our national security, our energy independence and preserving the environment--preserving creation. (My “A Convenient Solution” describes many such scenarios. Some very real and practical ones that can be put in place relatively quickly and with all the possible benefits he describes. These practical solutions address numerous real problems that pose far more dangers than atmospheric CO2.)

First, there should be a moratorium on building any more coal-fired power plants until we have the technology to capture and sequester the CO2. That technology is probably five or ten years away. (Can’t see anyone stopping the construction of coal fired power plants unless we go nuclear which, realistically, we will have to do sooner or later anyway. We have been searching for a practical method to sequester carbon dioxide emissions for years and don’t seem to be any closer to solving this knotty problem now than we were twenty years ago. I have been communicating with the MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment who have been trying to find a way to sequester carbon dioxide unsuccessfully for many years.) It will become clear over the next ten years that coal-fired power plants that do not capture and sequester CO2 are going to have to be bulldozed. (Will China do the same?) That's the only way we can keep CO2 from getting well into the dangerous level, (We really have only wild guesses as to what constitutes a dangerous level, but taking that as a given, it certainly wouldn’t do any harm to prevent further increases.) because our consumption of oil and gas alone will take us close to the dangerous level. And oil and gas are such convenient fuels that they surely will be used. (Who's he referring to? Most users of fossil fuels are located in countries where we can't tell people not to mine or use them) So why build old-technology power plants if you're not going to be able to operate them over their lifetime, which is fifty or seventy-five years? It doesn't make sense. Besides, there's so much potential in efficiency, we don't need new power plants if we take advantage of that. (Amen to potential! However, even with ultimate efficiency, carbon dioxide would still increase. What we really need is safe geothermal or fourth generation nuclear power. They are the only viable answers. France is building many new light water reactor power plants right now. Will we or China have the foresight to do the same? Or even better, develop geothermal power?)

Second, and this is the hard recommendation that no politician seems willing to stand up and say is necessary: The only way we are going to prevent having an amount of CO2 that is far beyond the dangerous level is by putting a price on emissions. (Not so! Far better would be to change over to the practical type of nuclear/geothermal/renewable fuel program I have described. As a result, use of fossil fuels and the associated emissions would disappear. Besides, the price he mentions, in the form of taxes, would mostly find their way into the political pipeline so politicians would be all for them.) In order to avoid economic problems, it had better be a gradually rising price so that the consumer has the option to seek energy sources that reduce his requirement for how much fuel he needs. And that means we should be investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies at the same time. The result would be high-tech, high-paid jobs. And it would be very good for our energy independence, our national security and our balance of payments.

But a price on carbon emissions is not enough, which brings us to the third recommendation: We need energy-efficiency standards. That's been proven time and again. The biggest use of energy is in buildings, and the engineers and architects have said that they can readily reduce the energy requirement of new buildings by 50 percent. That goal has been endorsed by the US Conference of Mayors, but you can't do it on a city-by-city basis. You need national standards. The same goes for vehicle efficiency. We haven't had an improvement in vehicle efficiency in twenty-five or thirty years. And our national government is standing in court alongside the automobile manufacturers resisting what the National Research Council has said is readily achievable--a 30 percent improvement in vehicle efficiency, which California and other states want to adopt. (Increased efficiency will just not work in the long run because it only reduces emissions and could prove very costly. If atmospheric CO2 is a problem, stopping net emissions completely is the only viable, long range solution and my systems do just that.)

The fourth recommendation--and this is probably the easiest one--involves the question of ice-sheet stability. The old assumption that it takes thousands or tens of thousands of years for ice sheets to change is clearly wrong. The concern is that it's a very nonlinear process that could accelerate. The west Antarctic ice sheet in particular is very vulnerable. If it collapses, that could yield a sea-level rise of sixteen to nineteen feet, possibly on a time scale as short as a century or two. (This is no recommendation at all, but a description of a possible physical condition and its results. The complete melting of all the ice sheets in the world, arctic or antarctic, that are floating on the ocean will not cause any rise in the ocean level. That is a simple law of high school level physics. Only meltwater from ice in glaciers or that is otherwise supported by land masses will raise sea levels– ice such as that over central Greenland or Antarctica. I am much more concerned about the proven slowing of the gulf stream which is now flowing at less than half of what it did thirty years ago. Should it stop– as scientists believe it did during the so-called, “Little Ice Age,” Europe would experience a drop in temperatures that would bring northern Scandinavian weather to England and much of Europe. At the same time, Greenland would experience a substantial increase in its ice pack.)

The information on ice-sheet stability is so recent that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report does not adequately address it. The IPCC process is necessarily long and drawn out. But this problem with the stability of ice sheets is so critical that it really should be looked at by a panel of our best scientists. Congress should ask the National Academy of Sciences to do a study on this and report its conclusions in very plain language. The National Academy of Sciences was established by Abraham Lincoln for just this sort of purpose, and there's no reason we shouldn't use it that way. (There have been a great many studies of ice, ice flows, glaciers, ice shelves [floating ice fields] and the ice cap on Greenland and Antarctica. Many of these are described in detail in Nigel Calder’s book, “Miraculous Universe.” Why don’t we ask China to conduct such studies. They are now the largest contributor to atmospheric carbon dioxide and, unlike the US, they are rapidly increasing their emissions)

The final recommendation concerns how we have gotten into this situation in which there is a gap between what the relevant scientific community understands and what the public and policy-makers know. A fundamental premise of democracy is that the public is informed and that they're honestly informed. There are at least two major ways in which this is not happening. One of them is that the public affairs offices of the science agencies are staffed at the headquarters level by political appointees. While the public affairs workers at the centers are professionals who feel that their job is to translate the science into words the public can understand, unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case for the political appointees at the highest levels. Another matter is Congressional testimony. I don't think the Framers of the Constitution expected that when a government employee--a technical government employee--reports to Congress, his testimony would have to be approved and edited by the White House first. But that is the way it works now. And frankly, I'm afraid it works that way whether it's a Democratic administration or a Republican one. (Politicians and political appointees are much more likely to pursue a course that promotes their political careers than one that properly informs the public. Even the dedicated scientists in federal agencies are certainly more likely to promote results that secure or advance their careers than that inform the public of unpopular results. So is the naked truth ever divulged by these individuals? Show me a person with no position to hold on to or no agenda to adhere to and maybe I would agree that, barring conceptual errors, the real truth could be forthcoming. Every individual has his or her own personal agenda guiding even his scientific findings. Neglecting to mention a negative or a positive factor is a proven technique used to skew results to a desired conclusion.)

These problems are worse now than I've seen in my thirty years in government. But they're not new. I don't know anything in our Constitution that says that the executive branch should filter scientific information going to Congressional committees. (Certainly this politically motivated implication intended to slam the executive branch is not born out by the facts.) Reform of communication practices is needed if our government is to function the way our Founders intended it to work. (How very true and nowhere is the need for such reform so evident as in the pronouncements of the liberal Democrats.)

The global warming problem has brought into focus an overall problem: the pervasive influence of special interests on the functioning of our government and on communications with the public. It seems to me that it will be difficult to solve the global warming problem until we have effective campaign finance reform, so that special interests no longer have such a big influence on policy-makers. (One group's “Special interests” are another group's "concerned citizens." They each mean different things to different people and as far as I can see, virtually all politicians are controlled to some extent by some “special interests” called "concerned citizens" by those who benefit from their efforts. That our federal employees at every level, appointed and elected, are beholden to this group or that is obvious to all but the dimmest lightbulb among us. “Follow the money” may be a good axiom in searching for mischief, but “follow the chain of power and influence” should certainly be another.)

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HoJo's comments

My own opinion: Unlike so many statements I hear repeated like a mantra by so many of those riding the global warming wave, (a movement that has taken on the virtual trappings of a religion) this is not the warmest period on the planet in historical times. For obvious reasons I hold the motives suspect of those who repeat that mantra without ever even acknowledging all of the other plausible causes of climate change, or that it is not now as warm as it was just a thousand years ago.

It is a well established fact that there was a period between about 600 and 1,100 CE that was much warmer than the present. During that time crops and plants were grown in Scandinavia that now only grow in central Europe. Also during the same period, the Norse colonized Greenland, grew crops, raised cattle and sheep and built homes and churches. Then very suddenly, they, their crops and animals disappeared completely– starved to death because the weather suddenly turned much colder. These are historial facts proven by studies of ice cores and seafloor sediment. Greenland today is still unable to support farming of any kind and none of the plants that grew in Scandinavia then are present now. This is all born out by studies of pollen grains in bogs where levels relate directly to the times when the pollen grains drifted through the air. This is quite an accurate and proven technique used for many years to date levels of buried materials.

Another important factor and one that is noticeably absent from Al Gore’s book, is that our measuring techniques have improved exponentially in both accuracy and detail in just the last few decades. All measurements of temperatures and temperature variations before about 1960 are based almost exclusively on indirect measurements and anecdotal evidence. They Are simplistic and questionable compared to the accuracy and in depth information now obtained by satellite and other technologies available in the digital age. Climate, global warming and global cooling (actually, a new ice age is now overdue) are far too complex with far too many variables to yield to our most sophisticated computers. When we are able to predict precisely where a hurricane is going to go and how strong it will become when it is merely a disturbance off the coast of Africa– then we may be able to say whether global warming caused by atmospheric carbon dioxide is a reality with some degree of certainty. Now, no matter how you look at it, to say that the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide is the responsible agent causing global warming in the manner it is being described by so many agenda driven spokespersons is Chicken Little at best.

All that being said, The growing shortage of petroleum based fuels coupled with their expanding use in China, India and other countries with rapidly expanding economies demands another easily transportable fuel system including portable power for trucks, busses , aircraft and personal transport. That a by-product of this system is the reduction or complete removal of carbon dioxide emissions is a bonus that should make virtually everyone happy.  ¶ 9:09 PM