University of Victoria climate sleuths have detected, for the first time, a human hand in the increasing fury of intense storms battering the Northern Hemisphere.

According to researchers, greenhouse gases generated by human activity have intensified heavy-precipitation events since 1950 across much of North America, Europe and Asia, increasing flooding and devastation.

“Human influence is more pervasive than just a response in surface temperature,” said the study’s senior author, Francis Zwiers, referring to the rise in global temperature due to greenhouse gases.

Human influence is now evident in the planet’s “hydrological cycle, and the behaviour of the hydrological cycle,” Zwiers said.

It has long been suspected that greenhouse gases are playing a role in the increasing intensity of storms and floods, but scientists have had trouble pinning it down. Both Zwiers’ team and another group in Europe say they have now come up with incriminating evidence.

I wonder whether – to some small degree – NASA is doing so as a way of getting back at a string of administrations that keep cutting back their ambitions. The Space Shuttle Program is ending; the future of the International Space Station is in doubt; Mars missions were an obvious non-starter when President Bush last proposed one.

Manned spaceflight might not be all that scientifically useful, but I bet it’s what the people at NASA enjoy doing best. Robots are annoying machines. I can’t imagine how frustrating it would be have have a multi-million dollar rover stuck on a patch of sand on Mars.

NASA may not get any new toys, but at least they have a way of hitting back at administrations full of people who think the world is 6,000 years old and who don’t want to spend money on anything exciting like a probe to Europa or a (potentially very useful) nuclear fusion reactor. They can help a prominent climate change activist (with science on his side) to remain prominent and get his message out.

[Update: 17 February 2011] I am also sure NASA keeps Hansen on board partly because they are professional scientists with integrity, and they resist having science distorted for political purposes. Even the higher level people in NASA have too much respect for science to just lie about it.

I can see why Hansen chose it. He has been working on climate change for years, while nothing has happened politically and the problem has started to look a lot worse scientifically. Given the lags in the system, we need to cut amazingly fast and deep. He must have hoped that the sub-title, from a sober scientist, would alarm people as much as they should be. (Or his publishing house chose it, to try and sell more copies…)

Unfortunately, I think the sub-title has the opposite effect on ordinary people. They see it immediately marking him out as someone who has stepped outside the box of ‘science’ (while still doing good scientific work) and become an advocate. Advocacy is entirely justified in this case, but people are naturally suspicious of it when they see it. I think people see the title when they are first handed the book and automatically weight their thinking against the author’s perceived bias when they start reading.

1. Phase out all coal fired power stations by 2030. Of course, you can still use coal if you sequester all the emissions, … good luck with that.

2. Undo 200 years of deforestation. We need to start this now, but it will take over 100 years and contribute a reduction of about 50ppm by 2150.

3. Reduce non-carbon dioxide forcings. Hansen is a little vague here, but the argument implies that pre-industrial levels are required.

Now, if the next sentence doesn’t hit like a shattering ice-shelf, then reread until it does. All three items are mandatory. This isn’t a smorgasbord where you pick what you want and ignore the rest. With countries around the world still building new coal power plants, the first todo is looking shaky. Fortunately the second and third are technically easier. We don’t need any new science or technologies but the politics are diabolical.

Concerted action to tackle climate change will happen only if the public demands it for the sake of future generations

James Hansen
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 August 2010 16.59 BST

What had become clear was that our planet is close to climate tipping points. Ice is melting in the Arctic, Greenland and Antarctica, and on mountain glaciers worldwide. Many species are stressed by environmental destruction and climate change. Continuing fossil fuel emissions, if unabated, will cause sea levels to rise and species to become extinct beyond our control. Increasing atmospheric water vapour is already magnifying climate extremes, increasing overall precipitation, causing greater floods and stronger storms.

Stabilising climate requires restoring our planet’s energy balance. The physics is straightforward. The effect of increasing carbon dioxide on Earth’s energy imbalance is confirmed by precise measurements of ocean heat gain. The principal implication is defined by the geophysics, by the size of fossil fuel reservoirs. Simply put, there is a limit on how much carbon dioxide we can pour into the atmosphere. We cannot burn all fossil fuels. Specifically, we must (1) phase out coal use rapidly, (2) leave tar sands in the ground, and (3) not go after the last drops of oil.

Actions needed for the world to move on to clean energies of the future are feasible. The actions could restore clean air and water globally. But the actions are not happening.

So far, my mother’s comment above has been the only detailed response. Zoom did mention reading the first hundred pages.

Dr. James E. Hansen is the person that has made it impossible for us to tell our grandchildren that we did not know what we were doing. He is awarded the Sophie Prize 2010 for his vital research, for his abilities to communicate his findings, and for his genuine and inspiring involvement for future generations.

Here’s why: In my office, I have a picture of a man testifying to Congress. He is haggard, with the look of someone under great strain. Behind him, engraved on the wall, is a quote from the book of Proverbs: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” The man in the picture is NASA climatologist James Hansen, best known for bringing the danger of global climate change to the attention of the modern world in the 1980s, and widely considered the planet’s leading climatologist.

As you’d expect, Hansen’s book contains enough charts and graphs to choke a rhino. And there’s plenty of science, lots of it illuminating, even to jaded climate geeks like me. For example: How do we predict what a world with higher CO2 concentrations would look like? Do we use computers to create climate models? That’s one method, certainly. But we can find even more accurate information about what a warmed world will look like if we go back in time and rummage through the geologic record. The information we find there is extremely accurate. It shows that when it was only 1 degree Celsius warmer on average than now, the seas were several feet higher. Just 1 degree makes that much difference.

The science is fascinating, especially when presented in the context of a 30-year effort to make our government understand the dire need for aggressive action. But in the end, Hansen’s book is about something else. It’s about how one should live a life; the book is as much about Hansen’s answer to this philosophical question as it is about climate change.

Hansen is, on one hand, a remarkable man with an exceptional intellect, perhaps a once-in-a-millennium, perfectly timed comet of a person, like a Muhammad Ali or a Jonas Salk. On the other hand, he’s an everyman plagued with the same traits of regret and disappointment with himself that the rest of us also share. In the 1970s, the world’s greatest climate scientist once froze up while giving an overhead slide presentation and had to simply sit down, humiliated. Then, after giving a talk to the Bush-Cheney White House, he agonized about whether he should have ignored the cooling effects of aerosols because it gave Cheney an “out,” enabling him and others to make the specious argument that aerosols somehow balance out the trillions of tons of CO2 emitted every year.

Whatever his demons, Hansen repeatedly forces himself to do what he believes to be the right thing. Over and over, he swears that after one last effort to connect sound science to the policy it should inform, he’ll go back to the lab. Fortunately for us, he never does; his conviction overrules his reticence. This month, Hansen publicly defended Tim DeChristopher, the student who faces jail time for bidding on oil leases, without any money, to prevent drilling.

In his own office, it turns out, Hansen has a picture on the wall too. This shot is of Jackie Robinson and the legendary 1950s Dodgers. I expect that picture must inspire him as much as his picture inspires me. Jackie Robinson, a fulcrum in another battle to save a piece of civilization, is known for doing the impossible: not just integrating baseball, but for stealing home base: the consummate statement of daring, and hope, and confidence, and of simply being alive.”

* James Hansen
* From: The Australian
* March 11, 2010 12:00AM

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 neighbouring 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 approach. Global emissions shot up faster than ever after its adoption. It is impossible to cap all emissions as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy.