James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has been one of the principal, scientifically grounded, voices warning about climate change, how fast it’s coming and how widespread will be the impacts. Among other things he has warned that the dire predictions of the UN’s IPCC report of this spring, are understating matters. In this recent paper, published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, with the help of several authors, he goes into some detail. If you’ve ever wanted to see what an actual scientific paper looks like, in contrast to the incredulous responses by types such as Senator James Imhofe, now’s your chance.

Climate change and trace gases

The short take is this:

Using paleoclimate data from ice borings and other samples from millions of years into the past it is clear that climate change can happen extremely fast. The speed of change is due to multiple “forcings” that feed into each other — from CO2 accumulation to Methane to the darkening of arctic ice from soot and higher temperature “pocketing”. The IPCC reports recently released and widely quoted as ominous understate the danger.

Present knowledge does not permit accurate specification of the dangerous level of human-made GHGs [Green House Gases]. However, it is much lower than has commonly been assumed. If we have not already passed the dangerous level, the energy infrastructure in place ensures that we will pass it within several decades.

We conclude that a feasible strategy for planetary rescue almost surely requires a means of extracting GHGs from the air. Development of CO2 capture at power plants, with below-ground CO2 sequestration,may be a critical element. Injection of the CO2 well beneath the ocean floor assures its stability (House et al. 2006). If the power plant fuel is derived from biomass, such as cellulosic fibres grown without excessive fertilization that produces N2O or other offsetting GHG emissions, it will provide continuing drawdown of atmospheric CO2.

Just in case you’ve misplaced it, here is your hand-dandy sea-level rise calculator and mapper. It’s hooked to Marin County here, but you can figure out how to estimate your own home town. Before you get too happy because your aerie is well above the danger zone, don’t forget the fields, factories and highways from which come your fresh veggies, clean water and TP….