I'm Interviewing James Hansen on Sunday. What Should I Ask Him?

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Friday December 15, 2023 · 11:51 PM PST

2023/12/15 · 23:51

As part of my weekly “Climate Chat” podcast, I’m interviewing climate scientist James Hansen on Sunday (December 17) at 10am Pacific. I want this interview to not be a typical climate science interview (that I typically do) that delves into the science and discusses the details. I’d like this discussion to be high-level and low-jargon so that it will be understandable by the widest audience possible.

Here is a link to the YouTube Live stream: https://youtube.com/live/8Ag3UVSrlhE

Please put your suggested questions in the comments below.

While my podcast was originally on Clubhouse (and I still stream to there), I have now moved to YourTube. You can listen/watch a select group of my previous interviews and discussions on my YouTube home page: www.youtube.com/...

I Asked ChatGPT4 to Explain Climate Change in the Voice of Shakespeare

dannym999

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Thursday March 16, 2023 · 4:41 PM PDT

2023/03/16 · 16:41

William-shakespeare-portrait-of-william-shakespeare-1564-1616-chromolithography-after-hombres-y-mujeres-celebres-1877-barcelona-spain-118154739-57d712c63df78c583373bb00.jpg

I asked ChatGPT4 to explain climate change in the voice of Shakespeare. The result is quite extraordinary:

Prithee, attend, thou gentle souls and wise,

To hear a tale of warming in our skies,

A change that doth the very earth beset,

And causeth all in sundry ways to fret.

In days of yore, when men didst burn with greed,

The blackened stone and ebon oils did feed

Their wanton lust for progress, wealth, and might,

Unwittingly they set a course for blight.

By burning these, they spewed into the air

A noxious gas, invisible yet fair,

This gas, which men doth call carbon dioxide,

A potent brew that nature doth deride.

Forsooth, this gas, with others of its kin,

Doth form a veil 'round all the world so thin,

That traps the sun's warm rays within its fold,

And causeth Mother Earth to sweat untold.

By slow degrees, the oceans and the land

Do feel the grip of this ungentle hand,

Which melteth ice and causeth seas to rise,

And storm and drought to plague our mortal lives.

Now, mark me well, dear friends, as I relate

The consequence of mankind's folly great:

The time is nigh when all that dwell on earth,

Must reckon with the cost of progress' birth.

To halt this change, we must our ways amend,

Turn from the path which leads us to our end,

Embrace the power of sun and wind and wave,

And strive, dear friends, our noble world to save.

James Hansen: There Is a Lot More Warming in the Pipeline

dannym999

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Sunday December 25, 2022 · 11:12 PM PST

2022/12/25 · 23:12

James Hansen speaking to Congress in 1988 — James Hansen warning Congress about climate change in 1988

While this is not holiday cheer, I thought everyone should know about the following recent climate change research.

James Hansen and 14 co-authors recently released a preprint (not yet peer reviewed) paper titled “Global Warming in the Pipeline.”

This is an important paper that makes a number of key points, but the bottom line is we must act immediately to address the climate crisis. Hansen uses the framing "human-made geoengineering of Earth’s climate must be rapidly phased out” to call for emissions elimination, Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) and Solar Radiation Management (SRM).

Hansen Newsletter Summary:

https://mailchi.mp/caa/global-warming-in-the-pipeline?e=a29768a646

Full paper PDF:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.04474.pdf

Here is a summary of some of the key points of this quite long (48 page) paper:

1. The Earth Climate Sensitivity (ECS) — the Earth’s short-term response to a CO2 doubling — is higher than previously assumed. Most scientists said it was ~3ºC, but Hansen et al now say it is 4ºC or more based on paleoclimate data. This means there is more warming “in the pipeline” than previously assumed.

2. While humans have increased atmospheric CO2 by 50% since the industrial revolution, the actual climate forcing from all the added greenhouse gases is now ~4W/m^2, which is equivalent to a doubling of CO2 (i.e., CO2e (including all greenhouse gases, not just CO2) is about 560 ppm).

3. Part of the current warming has been hidden by human-made particulate air pollution (aerosols), mainly sulfur. When North America and Europe started to reduce emissions after the introduction of clean air acts in the 1970's, regional and global warming became more pronounced. In the past decades China and global shipping slashed sulfur emissions through cleaner fuels and sulfur filter systems ('scrubbers'). There are clear signals from ground, ocean and satellite based observations that the rate of global warming has recently doubled, which needs to be taken into account in risk assessments.

4. Assuming today’s forcing (4 W/m^2) stabilizes and human-made aerosols are eliminated, when all feedbacks — including “long-term” feedbacks — play out, we are on track for about 10ºC warming and 6~7ºC if aerosols stay at today’s levels. This is a “scenario” and we still control our future, though we are on track to increase climate forcing from today’s 4 W/m^2.

5. If greenhouse gas forcing keeps growing at the current rate, it could match the level of the PETM mass extinction within a century. We are increasing climate forcing 20X faster than in the PETM so “long-term” feedbacks won’t take as long as in the paleo record (though some feedbacks will still be much longer than a human lifetime).

6. The paper concludes that we must: (a) implement a carbon fee and border duty (Fee and Dividend); (b) "human-made geoengineering of Earth’s climate must be rapidly phased out,” i.e., we must stop emitting greenhouse gases, remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and research and implement safe solar radiation management to counter the massive geoengineering experiment we are currently running; and (c) we must improve international cooperation to allow the developing world to grow using clean energy.

7. A companion paper will be coming out that addresses the near-term shutdown of the AMOC and associated “multi-meter” sea level rise on a century timescale.

I did a (2.5 hour) Clubhouse room on this subject recently with Leon Simons, one of the co-authors of the paper. You can listen to the discussion in your browser.

I'm Interviewing Will Wright, Creator of SimCity & TheSims, About Climate, Thursday @ 8pm PT

dannym999

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Thursday April 08, 2021 · 1:17 AM PDT

2021/04/08 · 01:17

I’ve started a “club” on ClubHouse called Climate Chat where we talk about all things climate including climate science, solutions and technology, policy, environmental justice, and climate communications.

While Will Wright is best known for SimCity, TheSims and Spore, he also developed SimEarth in 1990 and did a lot of research on climate for the project. In fact, James Lovelock of Gaia fame (and also saving the Earth from the ozone hole fame) collaborated with Will on SimEarth.

For those who haven't tried it yet, ClubHouse is an audio-only social network that has hundreds of “rooms” (i.e., conference calls) going on simultaneously on just about every subject (especially Bitcoin). There’s a lot of crap and self promotion going on, but there are some quality discussions as well. I like to think that Climate Chat fits that description. ClubHouse is invite-only and iPhone-only for now. If you download the app and put yourself on the waiting list, it might notify someone you know who is already on ClubHouse to let you in.

You can follow this link to get the app and link to the talk on Thursday, April 8 at 8pm Pacific:

clublink.to/...

Poll

16 votes Show Results

What's your favorite Will Wright game?

16 votes Vote Now!

What's your favorite Will Wright game?

Raid on Bungling Bay

0 votes

SimEarth

3 votes

SimAnt

0 votes

SimCity

7 votes

TheSims

6 votes

Spore

0 votes

Other/In Comments

0 votes

Is Carbon Capture a Moral Hazard or is Calling It So a Moral Hazard?

dannym999

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Tuesday March 02, 2021 · 10:19 AM PST

2021/03/02 · 10:19

Canadian company Carbon Engineering is building machines that suck carbon dioxide out of the air by pulling it through a fluid, where it can either be discarded or recycled to be used as fuel.

Trees do the same thing, but the fan machines would ideally be built in areas where you couldn’t plant trees, such as deserts, Popular Science reported. — An example of a Direct Air Capture (DAC) system

There has been lots of discussion on Twitter recently bashing carbon capture because it will supposedly restrict the deployment of renewables somehow. Mark Jacobson of Stanford seems to be adament about this.

I disagree but I understand where the sentiment comes from. Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) was originally proposed as a way to have “clean” fossil fuel power generation, mostly electricity generation. Fossil fuel companies (e.g., coal companies) supported this because it made it appear they were addressing the climate issue and, therefore, carbon capture research supported their “social license” to operate. It was a form of greenwashing.

But coal powered electricity production is no longer cost competitive with renewable power generation and adding CCS will only make coal less competitive. Natural gas (aka methane gas) is not far behind coal’s path.

So when faced with the option to add CCS to a coal or natural gas powered electricity plant, you should shut down the plant and replace it with wind and solar and storage (and storage equivalents such as demand-response).

So what should CCS be used for?

Poll

59 votes Show Results

Is carbon capture a moral hazard or is calling it so a moral hazard?

59 votes Vote Now!

Is carbon capture a moral hazard or is calling it so a moral hazard?

Carbon capture is itself a moral hazard

2 votes

Calling it so is a moral hazard

19 votes

Carbon capture and calling carbon capture a moral hazard are both moral hazards

3 votes

Neither carbon capture nor calling carbon capture a moral hazard are moral hazards

21 votes

None of the above

14 votes

Does McConnell WANT an Economic Crash?

dannym999

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Friday July 24, 2020 · 8:09 PM PDT

2020/07/24 · 20:09

I was thinking about why McConnell and the GOP would want to be seen as not supporting the millions of Americans who are unemployed due to the pandemic. Of course they don't care about them, but it seems like bad politics to appear not to care during this crisis.

Then I thought that perhaps they hope there will be an economic crash! If the GOP is resigned to losing this fall, why not saddle the Democrats with a horrible economy so they can spend their time out of power hammering those in power for the bad economy the GOP created. It’s not like I’m going out on a limb here! It’s the same playbook as 2008… and that worked well for them!

"Extremely Hot Summers" Now Happen 200X More Often Than 50 Years Ago [Updated]

dannym999

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Friday July 10, 2020 · 11:25 AM PDT

2020/07/10 · 11:25

Average Summer Temperature: Probability vs. Standard Deviations from 1951-1980 Mean

James Hansen has updated his “Bell Curve” paper to include the last decade (2009-2019). To me, these bell curves — that show the distribution of average summer (July to August) temperatures — are some of the most powerful climate change visualizations. These curves are not predictions and are not based on models… they show, just based on temperature readings, what has already happened. And they show that “Extremely Hot Summers” in the Northern Hemisphere (defined as an average summer temperature in a particular place that is more than 3 standard deviations (“3-sigma”) above its 1951-1980 mean) have gone from happening 0.1% of the time in 1951-1980 to 22.1% of the time in 2009-2019. That is over a 200X (20,000%) increase! Extremely Hot Summers went from happening once every thousand years to once every 5 years.

And this is not just a mathematical trick. It is the climate extremes that cause infrastructure to fail, droughts to be devastating, and life to be more challenging. It is an indication of what has already happened due to climate change.

dannym999

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Saturday October 25, 2014 · 8:03 AM PDT

2014/10/25 · 08:03

One of the problems with addressing climate change is that many people think it will be "too expensive" or that we will have to live in a cave. But there is a way to address climate change that will create millions of jobs and grow the economy while cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half. Here is a TEDx video of a talk I gave last month that explains "Fee and Dividend":

dannym999

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Sunday March 31, 2013 · 12:17 AM PDT

2013/03/31 · 00:17

Climate scientist James Hansen has published an article that explains the lack of warming in the past decade as well as the slowing of the uptake of CO2 in the atmosphere while the burning of fossil fuels has increased. Dr. Hansen describes two effects, both of which sound good at first, but in reality are "Faustian bargains" (deals with the devil). Read More

James Hansen: Less than 10 Years Left to Reduce CO2

dannym999

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Monday March 12, 2012 · 1:06 AM PDT

2012/03/12 · 01:06

Climate scientist James Hansen spoke at the TED conference last week and laid out the risks of continuing on our business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions path. He also offered a policy solution that will greatly reduce CO2 emissions in the next decade. Here are some of his key points:

- "Extreme events" like the Texas heat wave, the Moscow heat wave the previous year, and the 2003 European heat wave are now happening 25 to 50 times (not percent) more often than just 50 years ago. Therefore, he said, we can say with high confidence that these events were caused by global warming.

- Dr. Hansen said that while most predictions are for 1 meter (3 feet) sea level rise this century, he believes it may be much more -- as much as 5 meters (18 feet) -- if we keep burning fossil fuels.

- On the current path, many areas of the world may experience droughts worse than the Dust Bowl in just the next few decades.

I'm Interviewing James Hansen on Sunday. What Should I Ask Him?

I Asked ChatGPT4 to Explain Climate Change in the Voice of Shakespeare

James Hansen: There Is a Lot More Warming in the Pipeline

I'm Interviewing Will Wright, Creator of SimCity & TheSims, About Climate, Thursday @ 8pm PT

Is Carbon Capture a Moral Hazard or is Calling It So a Moral Hazard?

Does McConnell WANT an Economic Crash?

"Extremely Hot Summers" Now Happen 200X More Often Than 50 Years Ago [Updated]

How to fix climate change for free

Dual Deals With the Devil

James Hansen: Less than 10 Years Left to Reduce CO2

Already Too Late to Avoid Catastrophe by Only Reducing CO2 Emissions

Can CO2 warm the Earth if it's only 0.04% of the air?