James Hansen (1)Reseñas

The two stars are a bit generous. This book was part description of the factors affecting climate change, part political mémoir, part publication and presentation history with some personal commentary. I found the actual science interesting (and worrisome), but the political digressions distracted from it.

Indeholder "Chapter 1. The Vice President's Climate Task Force", "Chapter 2. The A-Team and the Secretary's Quandary", "Chapter 3. A Visit to the White House", "Chapter 4. Time Warp", "Chapter 5. Dangerous Reticence: A Slippery Slope", "Chapter 6. The Faustian Bargain: Humanity's Own Trap", "Chapter 7. Is There Still Time? A Tribute to Charles David Keeling", "Chapter 8. Target Carbon Dioxide: Where Should Humanity Aim?", "Chapter 9. An Honest, Effective Path", "Chapter 10. The Venus Syndrome", "Chapter 11. Storms of My Grandchildren", "Afterword", "Acknowledgments", "Appendix 1: Key Differences with Contrarians", "Appendix 2: Global Climate Forcings and Radiative Feedbacks", "Selected Sources", "Index".

En overraskende personlig bog skrevet af NASA's klimaekspert James Hansen. Han er overrasket over hvor sårbar planetens klima er og over hvor hurtigt en opvarmning kan ske. Hvis vi brænder alt fossilt kul af, så ender vi som Venus nr 2 i solsystemet.
Han ser sig selv som et Vidne, ikke som en Prædikant. Han beskriver sine egne erfaringer fra 2001-2009 og starter med sin 60 års fødselsdag. Eller rettere helt fra start og med sin første videnskabelige artikel, nemlig en observation af en måneformørkelse i marts 1963, som kom ni måneder efter et stort vulkanudbrud på Mount Agung.
I 2001 kommer han med i en Climate Task Force nedsat af præsident Bush. Han forklarer fænomener som Den Sydlige Oscillation og Climate Forcings. Og tidligere klimaændringer, fx Den Lille Istid og forklarer blandt andet med et lille 1-watts juletræ. I sig selv ikke ret meget, men hvis der brænder sådan et ekstra juletræ på hver kvadratmeter af Jorden altid, så kan der ske ting og sager. Han har nedjusteret sin egen fornemmelse for hvor meget co2 der er for meget. 350 ppm højst, tak!
En enkelt grad nedkøling stoppede engelsk vindyrkning. Præsidentens Climate Task Force er en form for cherry picking, hvor man har udvalgt folk, der siger noget, man gerne vil høre og så nogle naive videnskabsfolk, der tror at det er en ærlig debat.
James Hansen vender tilbage fra det andet møde i Climate Task Force og sætter sine studerende på sagen.
I mellemtiden sørger Dick Cheney og Bush for at stoppe det her forsøg på at tage fakta-baserede beslutninger.
Og fysikerne begynder at regne på forsimplede klimamodeller, hvor man fx tager en uændret jord og fordobler co2 koncentrationen. Det giver 4 watt pr m2 i forcing og en simpel Planck-model giver at Jorden så bliver 1.2 grader celsius varmere. Klimamodeller er ikke ret meget bedre, for de skal modellere helt uhyggeligt meget.
Metan og sod skal i hvert fald også tælles med.

Resten af historien er lige sådan. Politikerne lytter ikke (med undtagelse af Al Gore). Eller er købt og betalt af kul og olie industrien. Et godt bud på hvor det ender er en isfri jord med en havstigning på 75 meter.

3.5 stars

James Hansen was a scientist at NASA with a particular interest in climate change. This book explains what is happening with climate change and what needs to be done to stop the potentially devastating effects.

I was listening to the audio, and I think that made it a bit tougher for the science. I am interested, but listening to it was probably more dry than reading it, I'd guess. I've read a lot about it, anyway, but there were plenty of things I didn't know, either. I really didn't know much (anything?) about nuclear power, so that was an interesting chapter to me. What I really liked about the book, though, was the politics. Hansen was an insider, so it was especially interesting to read about that aspect. And he did talk about it quite a bit in the book. There are charts included in the book: with the audio came a pdf that you could open if you wanted to refer to those charts (and he would mention it in the audio when he was talking about one of those charts included in the pdf), which I thought was a good idea. Overall, I'll rate it good.½

This is the most important book of our time. Please read and take action to stop climate change.

We could leave the coal in the ground, but will we? If we don't we could trigger a run-away green-house effect. Hansen is an atmospheric scientist and makes a compelling argument that we must phase out coal and leave the oil shale and tar sands alone.

It's over by the year 2525. By that year there will be nothing living on Earth larger than a bacteria. The oceans are now mist in the atmosphere. Aliens that left their far away worlds many years ago to visit Earth because they detected life here will arrive to find a mostly lifeless planet. They will leave in disgust- muttering, stupid earthlings. They ruined a perfectly good third rock from the sun. As far as doomsday scenarios go this one is as bleak as they come. No post apocalyptic survivors struggling against the odds. Everything's is toast, albeit soggy toast.

Storms is mainly a science book describing the science behind global warming. It can get detailed but Hansen is thorough. His career has been spent in developing and advancing the science. He is optimistic that changes can be made in time to prevent a lifeless Earth. He does believe that if every last hydrocarbon is burned for energy, including tar sands and shale oil, then the Earth will rebel and wipe us out. We might hold off the nuclear demons but fall to the greenhouse gas demons. 500 years at the most before this doomsday.

James Hansen is one of the scientists who first publicly spoke out about global warming in the late 80s. Hansen has done a lot of very important research that has been crucial to understanding the climate change issue. He's always been a quiet guy though, preferring to stick to science rather than publicly talk about global warming. But not anymore; as he says in the book, Hansen has been forced to speak out because of government greenwash and public misunderstanding of climate change. Not only that, the climate science has become much clearer in recent years; it is now clear that unless we, within a decade, change direction drastically, we are in danger of wiping ourselves off the planet. Hansen is not exaggerating. He decided to write the book for these reasons, and because he felt he owed it to his grandchildren. He didn't want them to wonder why he didn't speak out when he knew all of this.

Though Hansen does, of course, occasionally get into some really dense science in this book, overall it is very readable. He writes with an oddly casual tone, that makes the book feel rather personal- as if he is just sitting down and talking to you. He covers all the basics of climate change that people should know about; climate forcings, the exact difference between weather and climate, ice sheet collapse, feedback mechanisms that amplify climate change, sea level rise etc. But this book is also somewhat autobiographical; Hansen talks about his own personal experiences with the government and the increasingly political NASA under the Bush administration, as he refused to be censored. There is also, unsurprisingly, a lot about his grandchildren; this may be a scientific book, but it is also an intensely personal one, and it is Hansen's personal pleas for the world's grandchildren to be given a fair chance in life that are the most memorable part of the book.

One of the most haunting chapters is The Venus Syndrome, when Hansen discusses the possibility of runaway climate change ending life on Earth totally. He thinks that if we burn all fossil fuels, including things like the Canadian tar sands, this is a dead certainty. Hopefully other issues will get in the way of that occurring, and I'm pretty sure they will, but even the possibility of this occurring is a pretty frightening thought.

The most interesting chapter is An Effective Path- the solutions chapter. Here he explains what is so wrong with the cap-and-trade system that is touted around the world as being the best way to reduce emissions- it was this sort of scheme that was in the Kyoto Protocol and which Copenhagen was supposed to give us. Hansen's arguments against this are extremely compelling, as are his arguments for fee-and-dividend system, sometimes called a carbon tax- Hansen doesn't like this name as it implies that cap-and-trade isn't a tax, which it is, it's just a hidden one that gives no benefits to citizens.

Less compelling are his words on alternative energy. Well, only a little bit less; Hansen for the most part knows the facts about clean energy. He recognises that 'clean coal' is not a legitimate solution, and is being used by governments to make it look like their doing something, when in fact there are many technological issues with clean coal, and it will likely never get off the ground- or at earliest, 2040, which is rather late. He also recognises that renewable energy is generally not capable of providing baseload electricity needs, due to its intermittent nature. This is all good stuff, though much more can be found elsewhere explaining why clean coal and renewable energy are insufficient to run industrial civilisation in its current form.

The big problem is Hansen's bit on nuclear energy, which can be best described as cornucopian. He talks about the potential of the speculative fourth generation nuclear power plants, which are said to be able to use 99% of the energy from uranium (as opposed to current nuclear power plants, which use very little and the rest comes out as nuclear waste), to supply electricity for thousands of years with current supplies of uranium. I didn't know anything about this at the time of reading, so I was thoroughly absorbed by it all. Then I went away and read about 4th generation nuclear, or breeder reactors, more; turns out test ones have been made in some countries, and there are a hell of a lot of technological issues that have to be overcome for it to ever be possible, and we don't have time for those to be sorted out. Hansen is cautious in his support of nuclear energy, due to the fact that 4th generation nuclear power plants haven't been made yet, but I feel he gives too much of an impression that this is the answer to all of our problems, which it really isn't.

Aside from that, Hansen has written a very good book. It is an effective introduction to climate change, and is good for those looking for an update of the science too. Certainly worth reading.

Having heard James E. Hansen speak I have nothing but admiration for this accomplished scientist who has single-handedly taken on communication of the URGENCY of climate change. His is such an important book; read him or Bill McKibbon's Eaarth above all others.

Storms of My Grandchildren has its strengths and weaknesses. It is comparable to Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth (the book) with a mixture of autobiography, history, science and evangelism. It is strongest in its technical explanations of how we know what we know, and Hansen's personal accounts of historic events, like his run-ins with Bush-era censors. Hansen for me has more credibility than most, I tend to trust him. Although most of the book is about the science and explaining how we know it, in the end he says the problem now is one of politics and to support 350.org as the best political action group.½

The content of this book is great, even though it's hard to get through. If you read it conscientiously, as I did, there is a lot of technical stuff and terms which I hadn't encountered elsewhere -- like "climate forcings." So this isn't just your rehash of "An Inconvenient Truth."But if you stick with it, it's really educational and motivational. He talks about the possibility of a runaway greenhouse effect in which the Earth essentially turns into a planet like Venus. He talks about resistance, and it's clear that he's in favor of resistance, though he doesn't discuss this in great depth. Money quote: "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." I'm giving it 5 stars instead of 4 because I'm not sure I could have done a better job explaining the technical stuff. I think I might have, if you gave me access to James Hansen and a couple of months full-time to work on it, so it might rate only 4 stars, but I'm not sure, so it gets the benefit of the doubt. [BTW, a good web site for climate skeptics can be found by a Google search on "How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic" by Coby Beck.:]

Interesting hyothesis and some serious data analysis. Bit to much about the workings of the USA politics but I can understand that there is some serious side to the lobbyists attempts to keep this from the world. It is scary that the agenda is so far from the forefront of the world awareness now - get some spin guys on this quick Id say. It is far too important to be swept away. My advice is to read the last chapter and use scanning techniques. There is a fair bit of heavy lifing with the data in the book for the reader trying to get an overview grasp of the issues. Made me wonder though and vry concerning. worth it

Reticence. Reluctance to contradict authority. I liked this book. He was able to make some clear analogies in understanding climate forcing, especially the analogy of the 1 watt christmas tree bulb. The charts and graphs were a little hard to understand on their own. Until a few years ago when I saw a train of coal, I had no idea that most of the country was getting their energy from burning coal. It is an absolute crime that we haven't built the fourth-generation nuclear power plants. They are safer than the old nuclear power plants in use around the country, and they use the old radioactive waste as fuel. The public needs to better informed. I thought he did a good job of explaining absolutely everything, but he still sounded timid. It seemed like a soft call to warning on an issue that is seriously running out of time. -KA