Earth Equity News

Global Warming: Beyond the Tipping Point. By Michael D. Lemonick, SciAmer, September 25, 2008. "The world's most outspoken climatologist argues that today's carbon dioxide levels are already dangerously too high. What can we do if he is right?... James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has been circulating a preprint of a journal paper saying that the outcome is likely to turn out worse than most people think. The most recent major report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 projects a temperature rise of three degrees Celsius, plus or minus 1.5 degrees -- enough to trigger serious impacts on human life from rising sea level, widespread drought, changes in weather patterns, and the like. But according to Hansen and his nine co-authors, who have submitted their paper to Open Atmospheric Science Journal, the correct figure is closer to six degrees C... Hansen and his co-authors lay out a possible strategy (for addressing the Climate Crisis). 'The only way I can see of doing it,' Hansen says, 'is, first of all, to cut off emissions from coal entirely by 2030.' Coal, he points out, is the single biggest fossil-fuel reservoir of carbon, and because it is only burned in power plants, not as transportation fuel, 'it can be captured at just a few sources rather than millions of tailpipes.' To push coal-based carbon emissions down to zero, he and his colleagues suggest, the world has to agree that, starting right away, no new plants will be built unless they have the capability to capture waste CO2 before it leaves the smokestack. At the same time, existing plants will either have to be retrofitted with capture technology or phased out by 2030. A second major effort, the authors say, would involve massive reforestation of areas that have been denuded of trees."