Ecoversity Readings: Books of Note: Storms of My Grandchildren, by James Hansen

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Ecoversity: Recent Books of Note

Storms of My Grandchildren, by James Hansen

Storms of My Grandchildren
The truth about the coming climate catastrophe and our last chance to save humanity
James Hansen
James Hansen, dean of US climate scientists, first warned the world of the danger of radical climate change due to CO2 emissions a generation ago; he considers himself a scientist and 'not a communicator' and hoped that his research would be enough to motivate necessary policy changes. A few years ago he decided he had to do more, and he has been speaking out ever since. "Storms of My Grandchildren" is his first book, and as the title implies, represents his effort to set the record straight in a comprehensive way on the question of human-caused climate change, and deliver a blunt warning to us about our future on Earth.
Hansen's book is a review of the relatively short but lively history of climate science and the growing recognition- and denial- of the dangers of the use of fossil fuels. It is also a call to arms beyond political boundaries and especially the boundaries of what is deemed 'practical'. His critique of "cap and trade" as a policy response is devastating and convincing (he favors a carbon fee at the source), and he denounces the posturing, and double-dealing of polluters as well as the half-hearted and half-witted efforts of compromised NGOs.

Venus, once covered in water, now
has a surface temperature of 890° F.

In a chapter titled "The Venus Syndrome", Hansen looks at the case of Venus, whose own runaway greenhouse effect left it baked and desolate a long time ago, and explores where on the curve of our own climate forcing might lie our point of no return, where catastrophic runaway warming is initiated here on Earth. Hansen's fear is not so much of a 3° or 6° rise in global temperature, as that rising atmospheric CO2 brings us ever closer to Earth's point of no return.

Hansen frequently uses the phrase "if we burn all the fossil fuel" instead of, for example, 'if we don't stop burning fossil fuels'. They mean of course the same thing, but his formulation has the advantage of spotlighting the total carbon injection, and then modeling the resulting climate forcing and climate change.

Bottom line: If we burn all the fossil fuels, the ice sheets will melt entirely, raising sea levels by 250 feet, the warmer seas triggering the massive release of the methane hydrates, setting the stage for the runaway greenhouse.

"After the ice is gone, would Earth proceed to the Venus syndrome, a runaway greenhouse effect that would destroy all life on the planet, perhaps permanently? While that is difficult to say based on present information, I've come to conclude that if we burn all reserves of oil, gas and coal, there is a substantial chance we will initiate the runaway greenhouse. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale, I believe the Venus syndrome is a dead certainty."
Video: Hansen talks about "Storms of My Grandchildren"
'Storms' website / 'Storms' at Amazon

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