“Climate can reach points such that amplifying feedbacks spur large rapid changes. Arctic sea ice is a current example.... the Arctic soon will be ice-free in the summer [and] more ominous tipping points loom.”
- Dr. James Hansen
briefing before United States Congress
June 23, 2008
As America’s leading authority on global warming (and arguably the top mind on the subject living anywhere in the world today), Dr. James Hansen has a very difficult job. He wears many hats, many of them tilted to the side of a crusader. As the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen is the top mind on the climate crisis on the payroll of the government of the United States.
As an adjunct professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, Dr. Hansen must inspire the next generation both to act on the climate crisis now and prepare for its worst repercussions. Of course, he also must continue to sound the alarm to his countrymen (and every person on Earth willing to listen) about a problem we have created, climaticide, the killing of the climate on the only planet we have.
To wit, during the last week in June, Dr. Hansen gave something of a mini book tour in Washington, DC for his latest PowerPoint presentation, Global Warming 20 Years Later: Tipping Points Near. He spoke before the Green Apple Festival, the National Press Club and the United States Congress.
At each appearance, he laid the truth bear, he was correct about global warming 20 years ago, during his early career at NASA, and the governments of the industrialized world, including the United States, have squandered a priceless opportunity to initiate key reforms.
A sobering assessment of the analyses which occurred during those two decades reveals that OSAC, NASA and many other government agencies were quite worried about global warming even as the official policy of the White House and others was, more study. In fact, as you may know, all the way back in 2001, the Pentagon held a symposium related to the national security implications of global warming. Its title? Naval operations in an ice-free Arctic. What’s more, just recently, the US Intelligence Committee, of which the Pentagon is an active, contributing member, released a report. Its title? The National Security Implications of Global Climate Change Through 2030.
So, you see, plenty of people who claim to have doubts about humanity’s role in climaticide are smart enough to hedge their bets and prepare for the worst. That’s all this environmentalist asks: believe it or disbelieve it. Either way, stop the obstructionism.
Ironically, the James Hansen global warming testimony before Congress twenty years ago said something along the same lines, at least to the citizens seated in the gallery. Climaticide is coming. We can stop it but only if we act now. We did not act so now we have another layer of variables in the equation.
Next time, I will share with you the anthropological consequences of our inaction. They are chilling but have one benefit: they are the truth.
photo courtesy of: Roger Braithwaite, University of Manchester (UK)
Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line
Corbett Kroehler
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