Dr. James E. Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Science, arrived at Cornell U. Monday to discuss the imminent reality of climate change. Hansenhas spent the last 30 years studying the reality of humans’ impact on climate change.
The lecture comes after the publication of Hansen’s first book in 2009, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About The Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity.
“If that title doesn’t get your attention, I don’t know what will,” said Prof. Frank DiSalvo, chemistry and chemical biology and director of the Cornell Center for a Sustainable Future, as he introduced Hansen.
Hansen originally gave his lecture, entitled “Global Climate Change: What Must We Do Next,” after the Copenhagen Climate Conference failed to achieve its goal of climate change mitigation. However, Hansen said that this failure did not disappoint him, as the goals of the agreement would not have been enforceable and would only have resulted in another wasted ten to fifteen years.
Hansen highlighted the large knowledge gap between scientists and the public, and he described how America’s reliance on fossil fuels will leave problems for future generations. Such behavior contradicts the universal traditions of parental sacrificing, Hansen said.
The idea that his grandchildren will inherit the planet that Hansen and other living humans leave behind motivates him to make changes, Hansen said.
“I [don’t] want my grandkids to say that grandpa understood what was going on and he didn’t try to make it clear,” he said.
“We’ve reached a point where if we don’t begin to get on a different course in the next several years, we’re going to pass some tipping points. The reason this can happen is because the climate system has great inertia,” Hansen said. “It takes the climate system time to begin to respond to the forces that humans are applying to it, but once it does respond, it can go past tipping points where the dynamics of the system begin to take over and changes proceed out of our control.”
But Hansen said there are limitations on the effects of personal conservational steps, and real change must occur through targeting fossil fuel policy and carbon pricing.
“We could get back below 350 [parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere], especially with the help of improved forestry and agricultural practices which can be used to help store [carbon dioxide] in the forest and the soil. So it is technically feasible to do this, and it makes sense,” Hansen said. However, as oil reserves around the world are tapped and new coal factories are built, policy makers are not adhering to pledges to reduce global warming emissions, he added.
“There is a huge gap between the reality and the rhetoric … It’s basically business as usual,” Hansen said.
Hansen said an across-the-board carbon fee should be created in America, with the money being returned to the public — which he said is both beneficial to local economies and acceptable in the international community.
However, Hansen differs significantly from many large environmental organizations, which push for the creation of a cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
“The big environmental groups … are supporting the cap-and-trade approach. But you look at it and you see that it is not going to be that effective,” Hansen said. “They say it might be imperfect but the train has left the station. Well, actually nothing has left the station here.”
“Boy, these big organizations have become part of the problem,” he said.
Hansen is no stranger to controversy. One introductory speaker at Monday’s lecture, Prof. David Wolfe, horticulture, highlighted how Hansen risked his career as a government employee under the Bush administration when his research was censored. Hansen also has recently reversed his previously anti-nuclear position and now supports fourth generation nuclear energy, which burns past today’s nuclear power’s 99 percent efficiency.
Touching on the title of his book, and on the critics who suggest he created the artificial notion of global warming through the name “Grandfather of Global Warming,” Hansen referred to pictures of his two grandchildren throughout his lecture. He cited the birth of his first grandchild as the reason he came back to the public forum after retreated into his scientific studies in the 1990s.