Hansen speaking in Adelaide, March 2010

NASA climate scientist James Hansen has been very busy lately, discussing climate change all over the world.  James Hansen is considered the U.S. voice of authority on climate change.  He still works for NASA, and soon NASA is getting a big infusion of money for climate change research – $2.4 billion. Below are two recent articles Hansen has written.  The second one is already widely distributed because it’s about President Obama and his leadership on climate change.

Most environmental groups do not agree with Hansen’s stand on nuclear power as a good option, (but some do).  He doesn’t talk about nuclear power a lot, but he does say it’s a good source of power to compete with renewable energy and that it has to be used. In his speech in Sydney he goes much further.   Another reason to republish the first article is that although this article appears on an Australian media website, it does not appear in American ones, at least not so far.  He wrote it while he was in Australia in March.

Only a carbon tax and nuclear power can save us

“It is clear that we have a crisis — a planetary emergency.” — Hansen, in his speech in Adelaide.

by Dr. James Hansen, reprinted from The Australian

AUSTRALIA will suffer if fossil fuel use continues unabated. Climate extremes will increase. Poleward expansion of the subtropics will make Australia often hotter and drier, with stronger droughts and hotter fires, as the jet stream retreats southward.

But when ocean temperature patterns bring rain, the warmer air will dump much more water, causing damaging floods. Storms will become more devastating as the ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland begin to disintegrate and cool the neighboring ocean, as I describe in [my book] Storms of My Grandchildren. Ice discharge from Antarctica has already doubled in the past five years.

Science has shown that preservation of stable climate and the remarkable life that our planet harbours require a rapid slowdown of fossil fuel emissions. Atmospheric carbon dioxide, now almost 390 parts per million, must be brought back to 350ppm or less. That is possible, with actions that make sense for other reasons.

But the actions require a change to business-as-usual. Change is opposed by those profiting from our fossil-fuel addiction. Change will happen only with courageous political leadership.

Leaders must draw attention to the moral imperative. We cannot pretend that we do not understand the consequences for our children and grandchildren. We cannot leave them with a situation spiralling out of their control. We must set a new course.

Yet what course is proposed? Hokey cap-and-trade with offsets, aka an emissions trading scheme. Scheme is the right word, a scheme to continue business-as-usual behind a fig leaf.

The Kyoto Protocol was a cap-and-trade [...]