James Hansen and where we are heading
James Hansen understands the Earth’s climate as well as any person alive, and his concern about where our climate is headed makes a must-read for everyone who cares about the world their grandchildren will inherit.
“Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity” is NASA climate change scientist Dr. James Hansen’s first book.
From the book:
“The present situation is analogous to that faced by Lincoln with slavery and Churchill with Nazism – the time for compromises and appeasement is over.”
“Humans are beginning to hammer the climate system with a forcing more than an order of magnitude more powerful than the forcings that nature employed.”
“Once ice sheet disintegration begins in earnest, our grandchildren will live the rest of their lives in a chaotic transition period.”
“After the ice is gone, would Earth proceed to the Venus syndrome, a runaway greenhouse effect that would destroy all life on the planet, perhaps permanently? While that is difficult to say based on present information, 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.”
“One suggestion I have for now: Support Bill McKibben and his organization 350.org. It is the most effective and responsible leadership in the public struggle for climate justice.”
Dr. Hansen is arguably the most visible and well-respected climate change scientist in the world, and has headed the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City since 1981. He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University.
Dr. Hansen greatly raised awareness of the threat of global warming during his Congressional testimony during the record hot summer of 1988, and issued one of the first-ever climate model predictions of global warming (see an analysis here to see how his 1988 prediction did.)
In 2009, Dr. Hansen was awarded the Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the American Meteorological Society, for his “outstanding contributions to climate modeling, understanding climate change forcings and sensitivity, and for clear communication of climate science in the public arena.”
focuses on the key concepts of the science of climate change, told through Hansen’s personal experiences as a key player in field’s scientific advancements and political dramas over the past 40 years.
Dr. Hansen’s writing style is very straight-forward and understandable, and he clearly explains the scientific concepts involved in a friendly way that anyone with a high school level science education can understand. However, some of his explanations are too long-winded, and the book is probably too long, at 274 pages. Nevertheless, is a must-read, due to the importance of the subject matter and who is writing it.
Hansen is not a fancy writer. He comes across as a plain Iowan who happened to stumble into the field of climate change and discovered things he had to speak out about. And he does plenty of speaking out in his book.
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