WAXMAN: The climate bill, proposed by Waxman and Markey, is now getting support from scientists.
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A group of U.S. climate scientists is urging Congress to quickly pass a strengthened version of the House global warming bill, saying the legislation would provide a basis for stronger federal policies.
The letter [pdf] signed by 20 scientists says strong U.S. leadership is needed to avert a "rapidly developing global climatic catastrophe." The House climate and energy bill proposed by Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts offers a "powerful advance and must be enacted this year," it says, as a first step toward strong U.S. action.
"We're very encouraged that Congress is moving on legislation," said Michael MacCracken, chief scientist for climate programs at the nonprofit Climate Institute. "But a lot of what's happening in the discussions is that adjustments are being made, which is understandable, but in order to have an effect on climate we need to have really strong actions, and we don't want to just keep having it nibbled away."
The scientists also rebuked a widely held view that nations should strive to limit atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to 450 parts per million and limit the rise of global temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius.
"We and many others are of the view that these objectives are inadequate to sustain the integrity of global climate and to hold the risk of ruinous climatic change to an acceptably low level," the letter says.
Some scientists, including NASA climatologist James Hansen, have suggested that the world should cut atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to 350 parts per million -- below today's level of 385 ppm (ClimateWire, April 15). Hansen was not a signatory to this letter.
To achieve necessary cuts in greenhouse gas emission levels, the Waxman-Markey bill must be strengthened wherever possible and certainly not weakened before being passed into law, the letter says. And as Obama works to advance his health care reform agenda, the scientists are calling on the administration "to initiate an effort at least comparable in the area of climatic change."
Click here to read the letter.
Reprinted from Greenwire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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19 Comments
Add CommentHow does James Hansen figure that 350 ppm is the correct #? Maybe it's too high? Or too low?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow does he know? And why does he feel that the world should be bound by his guess?
To paraphrase someone on another website, why is it that if you believe the earth was created, literally, in six days, you are a religious zealot, but if you believe that when Jim Hansen woke up one day, and declared "350 ppm is the number, and the number shall be 350 which is not too, high, nor too low, but just right." then you are not a religious zealot, but the winner of a Nobel Prize?
The problem with the 'science' being used today in the argument/discussion on global climate change is that we are becoming a planet of sheep being led by psuedo-science as the final authority. I find it most amusing that a handful of scientists have this much sway with some of our most (putting this kindly) unusual political 'experts' who can't balance a budget but are always willing to wing it on something as landmark as this decision would be.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGlobal warming, of course, would be provable by the use of the multitude of climate-monitoring stations as seen throughout the U.S. and manned by the National Weather Service. However, to support my argument that psuedo-science is winning the day comes a stunning report by meteorologist Anthony Watts and his team of volunteers who visually inspected and photographed more than 850 of these 1,221 stations located throughout the U.S. They found that 89% of stations visited, nearly 9 of every 10, fail to meet the NWS's own siting requirements! With all of these failures being the basis for publicly decrying our global warming disaster, one wonders what is there about all this bad science that is driving people who should know better to climb on board such an implausible ride. I don't make this up---check out www.surfacestations.org for the entire story as seen through the eyes of skeptics with enough courage to step up and create the first-ever comprehensive review of the nuts and bolts of the NWS's data base on this subject---simply amazing!
To create global human policy based on emotion and hyperbola has always been the stuff of politicians. It's what they do. Sometimes they get it right, but oftentimes they simply act and hope the consequences don't get them kicked out of office. In my mind scientists, however, have always been members of a very special category of professionals who were painfully precise in their conclusions before they declared findings. It seems those days are gone---that there is no longer a solid line of accurate data needed before reaching conclusions.
Hopefully hard science wins the day on climate change/global warming. Otherwise it's very possible we and our kids and their kids will be fooling with Mother Nature in a science we still know very little about. An important hurdle yet to overcome is whether we humans are willing to admit that today we know only the questions.
#1, I cannot link to the letter. Anyone have access?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this#2, It says Hansen AND other scientists SUGGESTED 350. They never said that it is the only way. Why are you putting words in people's mouths? As if any one person could find good reason for an exact figure anyway. Plus, we used to be at 350, and things were working out fine then.
#3, Sucks about the placement of some of those sites. Luckily the heating trend is just as pronounced in the sites that don't sit on top of air conditioners, in satellite records, ocean buoy records, and countless proxies. That should give you enough to go on for hard science.
It does not matter if you believe in climate change caused by humanity or not. What I believe everyone can agree on is; we need high paying jobs and we need to stop paying big bucks for energy. Now is the time to exploit space power and resources. Sunlight is available in high Earth orbit 24/7, 365 days a year. We have had the technology since the late 60s to transmit via microwave all the energy we could ever use, to Earth, from orbit. The material for constructing the space end of the system is available on the near Earth asteroids and the Moon. We the people need the government to fund the project just as the government funded World War II. Our survival as a people with liberty was threatened by mad men with weapons during WWII. Today our survival is threatened by mad men with oil. If we as a people shrink from the task at hand we will lose our liberty.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKudos to SciAm for once again linking a file which is kept behind locked doors. Good job.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHey shoshin and Donone, you who criticise Hansen's considered opinion. Tell us what level of scientific education you have achieved so we can weigh up the pertinence of your remarks in terms of your qualifications...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLink suddenly works. Thanks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiseco-steve:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf I said I had a Ph.D would you genuflect? If you would then you have no concept of science.
That would depend on what the Ph.D was in. In this case, atmospheric science would lend you some credibility, whereas underwater basket weaving, not so much. They don't just toss those out for fun on a daily basis.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut after seeing your comments on other articles, eco-steve has good ground to ask you where your information is coming from.
Further, at the very least, we could compare your knowledge base to the signatories of the letter. I've met a few of them, know their sources, and would tend to believe anything they pertaining to their life's interest over Shoshin, who we know nothing about.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the interest of transparency, I am working on my PhD in atmospheric science.
loopseyl;
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the interest of transparency, as you put it, does your thesis contain a research topic or aspect which pre-supposes AGW? If so did your thesis advisor slide that in just to make sure funding was available?
Maybe that's my problem; I don't much care about other people's degrees. Some of the smartest people I've met have Ph.D's and some of the dumbest ones as well. And the smartest ones are the first to say that you don't need to be smart to get a Ph.D.
I'm more interested in whether what they say makes sense, is testable, verifiable and falsifiable. So far the AGW crowd has failed to show me anything compelling. I've heard histrionics, bullying, appeals to authority, explanations that make no sense and political garbage.
I would dearly love to see James Hansen or one of his colleagues publish a paper on how AGW could be wrong. I spent most of my post-grad research efforts attempting to disprove my thesis, not prove it, and I don't understand why they don't do the same.
As I've said in previous posts, AGW does not get a free pass. It must earn it. And if my or anyone else's level 0f education sways you, then you need to sharpen up your science skills as science is no respecter of authority.
In preventing a "runaway global warming" catastrophe, 350 ppm. is actually a very conservative decrease in necessary levels. Until the emergence of modern man & agriculture, the average range of atmospheric CO2 concentrations during greenhouse phases never exceeded about 285 ppm (as many can guess, greenhouse phases experienced the highest concentrations of atmospheric CO2) in the preceding 2 million+ years (Bill Ruddiman of UVA has spent years doing research on the effects of human agriculture [& the emergence of advanced civilization] in the last 8,000 years on global climate). I live in Salt Lake City, and average CO2 concentrations caused by our winter inversions can push our CO2 levels up to 600 ppm. If we are ever to see 'natural' levels of CO2, we would not only have to drop down to AT LEAST 280 ppm, we would have to desist our agricultural yields & literally cut the Earth's total population down to less than 5 million people. Since these options are clearly not feasible, 350 is a pretty loose criteria level, considering our circumstances in geologic time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor educational references, I just graduated with two B.S. degrees in Environmental Science & Geography.
My thesis is related to AGW in the sense that both involve the atmosphere, clouds specifically. But apart from that, it's not at all involved. Funding is federal and intended specifically for researching methods to improve cloud representation in all kinds of models. Since there is some element of cloudiness in climate models, there is some relation, but in about the same way that deciding where to put a grocery store is related to farming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's all well and good, but you still miss my point. I have no reason to listen to anything you say if you're an exxon executive or someone who's never touched the data. While they certainly indicate that the person knows something about something, I don't particularly care about degrees either, but in this forum, it's helpful to know who you're talking to.
Everyone I know in this field is also mainly interested in seeing that what they say makes sense, is testable, verifiable and falsifiable. And everything that I have used to understand AGW is completely devoid of histrionics, bullying (never seen it happen), appeals to authority (never would accept if it did happen), explanations that make no sense (duh) and political garbage (never factors in). At some point, you've got to have something to back up your statement. Like when you ask for funding. If the evidence is not there, it's over.
Depending on how you define colleagues, that paper you're looking for is out there. There are many that discover a new phenomenon and right away state that the idea does not immediately sync with climate change. Stuff like that doesn't just get thrown in a drawer, it gets analyzed like crazy, especially since there are so many trying so very hard to discredit AGW. Unfortunately, they have tons of supporting evidence to deal with that Hansen and colleagues have turned up. Where is this free pass???
Of course, you still have not identified yourself in any way.
James Hansen has discredited himself as a radical. His views are irrelavant. Maybe someone can help me with my numbers...man puts out 27 billion tons of CO2/year, but there is already 3,600 billion tons naturally in our atmosphere. So we put out 0.75% of all CO2. Water vapor and clouds are the greatest green house gas/effects at up to 90%, leaving 10% for CO2, MH4, NOx, fluorocarbons, SO2, SF6, O3 and a few others. Of that 10%, 1-2% is due to the 3,600 billion tons of CO2 and we account for 0.75% of that? Yes, CO2 has risen from 350 to 385 ppm from the early 60's as seen by the "Keeling" graph on Mauna Loa NOAA station(its in my back yard). But we are only a few thousand years out of the last "ice age". So as the earth warms up,due to solar activity, the respiration of the earth's biomass increases, releasing more CO2...rather than man driving his SUV, and his CO2 increasing in the atmosphere, causing the earth's temp to rise?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's best to treat everything he says as suspect because
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisa) he wants it too badly to be objective, and
b) the evidence doesn't bear him out anyway.
loopsyel;
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI see... If I was an executive from an oil company, then my views are immediately suspect.... and if I'm James Hansen, then I'm OK.
Nice that to know that you have an open mind.
And nice of you to admit that you have a vested interest in Climate Industrial Complex, even though you think for some reason that you don't.
Two issues create cognitive disonance for me wrt to AGW:
1. The heat content of the ocean shows no increase. This falsifies the AGW hypothesis as it is impossible for the planet to be warming when the ocean shows no sign of it.
2. The incremental effect of heat trapping of CO2 is miniscule. 80% of the heat trapping effect occurs from 0 to 20 ppm. After that the effect drops like a rock. From 350 to even 700 ppm, the effect is minimal. For someone like Hansen to ignore this simple fact of physics is inexcusable and state that 350 ppm is the "right" number is cause to dismiss him as a warmermonger.
3. The "positive feedback loop" or "tipping point" scenarios are pure fiction. The only places they exist is in computer programs and grant applications.
And asking me to post my credentials is again, the appeal to authority. So you have to decide, either authority means something to you or it doesn't. I got over that scientific god-head long ago, maybe you need to give it a try.
Shoshin : If Hansen is so incompetent, how come he occupies such a prestigious and reponsable post?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiseco steve:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUsing your logic George Bush should have been a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon.
But you raise a good point, maybe Bush really was misunderestimated.
Given the history of the oil industry's involvement in the dialogue and the location of their most obvious interests, it is same to assume that they are immediately suspect, yes. And who cares about Hansen? Like he's the well from which all information flows or something. Take Hansen, his views, and all of his work out of the equation, and there is still warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI will assert again that I have no vested interest. If someone were to actually find evidence against AGW that disproves it completely tomorrow, nothing happens to me. There are still clouds to study, I could study the MJO, I could study tornadoes. It doesn't matter. My funding and my livelihood are not entrenched in global warming.
But the fact remains, you're not worth listening to if you don't know what you're talking about.
First off, you're a little suspect because you have "two issues" but list three. How's that for cognitive dissonance?
Second, you don't know what you're talking about. Wherever you heard that the ocean was not warming was not a data-based source: http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/ipcc_ocean_heat.gif
Third, it's already been stated that there is no "right" number, that Hansen's choice is incredible conservative (daniiikaaa). You are right that the radiative effect of CO2 is logarithmic, though. The first 80% get us from 255K to where it's comfortable for preindustrial life. The other 20, while comparably small, is not insignificant, nor of geographically uniform effect. It has a larger radiative forcing effect than direct solar radiation and collective methane, ozone, and CFCs. But you already knew that...
Fourth, positive feedbacks and tipping points occur all the time in a geological sense. They are the crux of the ice age/interglacial process, but you already knew that, too..
I'm sure that you are trying to argue finer points than you actually are. But for some reason, you stop at a point that tries to make scientists look like they've missed something elemental. It's hilarious that people think this stuff has been overlooked. What do you think they've been doing for the past 40 years?
So rather than identify your credentials, identify your source of information. That is an appeal to knowledge. Your degree can mean nothing if you want.
Side note, no one would have ever granted (as it was in his case, unearned) Bush such a position for 28 years. Clearly, Hansen has earned his position and the respect that is required to keep it. We'll have to see if his arrest will have any impact on that.