James Hansen, a prominent American scientist, said today that if Canada fully develops the Alberta tar sands, it will be "game over for the climate."
In an opinion piece in the global edition of The New York Times, Hansen wrote:
Global warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves "regardless of what we do."
If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.
Canada's tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now.
That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.
Hansen went on to say:
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 280 parts per million to 393 p.p.m. over the last 150 years. The tar sands contain enough carbon -- 240 gigatons -- to add 120 p.p.m. Tar shale, a close cousin of tar sands found mainly in the United States, contains at least an additional 300 gigatons of carbon. If we turn to these dirtiest of fuels, instead of finding ways to phase out our addiction to fossil fuels, there is no hope of keeping carbon concentrations below 500 p.p.m. — a level that would, as earth's history shows, leave our children a climate system that is out of their control.
We need to start reducing emissions significantly, not create new ways to increase them. We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The government would not get a penny.
This market-based approach would stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick winners or losers. Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices. Not only that, the reduction in oil use resulting from the carbon price would be nearly six times as great as the oil supply from the proposed pipeline from Canada, rendering the pipeline superfluous, according to economic models driven by a slowly rising carbon price.
Hansen, the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has been a pioneer in developing models of global climate change. His testimony to the US Congress in 1988 is widely considered the beginning of public awareness of global warming.
Crawford Kilian is a contributing editor of The Tyee.
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Fiat lux
1 year ago
We have to remember that the
We have to remember that the Tar Sands, as every good true blue "conservative" knows, are "wealth creation", and absolutely necessary to supply our great "trading partners" with bitumen, so the we can purchase the goods they produce so they bring our money back to buy up our country.
Just ask any good "conservative" and they'll tell you that the Tar Sands are an important part of the "growth" and the GDP, and there's no such thing as climate change. It is all a socialist conspiracy to hinder "wealth creating economic development"
Ed Deak.
caber1
1 year ago
And you thought they cared.
Humans are toast. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
The train is rolling forward at an incredible rate, being driven by politicians of every party and affiliation and by the corporations who own them and make them dance.
I see their insane smiles as they push the throttle harder and harder. And as that train mows down the lives of all in their way it never ceases to amaze me how we just watch and say, "oh well, sucks to be them ", because "them" is us and we will all eventually be run over by the train.
Steve Hetherington
1 year ago
caber1 is wrong
with respect to you caber1 there is no train that cannot be stopped.I know it seems to be the end of this great country but do not buy into that.We are Canadians for crying out loud and to throw in the towel to this piece of shit PM is unthinkable.We just need to find a way to join forces to stop him---laws be damned.What we lack now is a leader----an organized start---then watch hell break lose on this crazy man and his ilk---We are not done---Harper is
freebear
1 year ago
I agree with caber1, but will fight the Ba_tards!
But I want to be one of many, not a few as I have been for the last 20 years!
Skywalker
1 year ago
Harper's blind luck.
We were very lucky that Harper never had a majority before. His was just dumb luck. Now we know and those who naively voted for his majority can share the blame. The polls are showing the trend away from the conservatives and I expect that to continue for another three years.
When things get bad enough, people will respond. It is tragic that we have to wait for things to get really bad but that is just how it is. All we can do is keep the fires burning under him. If all is lost then we will not "go quietly into that good night".
Harper actually believes that the planet will not be destroyed. After all, "God promised Noah" in some myth about a world flood. He will be gone to his reward with a few directorships but he will be gone one day just like Mulroney - hated and despised.
judycross
1 year ago
Hansen does it again!
"Hansen tells us that global warming will cause a semi-permanent drought in the west and in Texas. He also tells us that global warming may cause a semi-permanent El Nino.
One minor problem – El Nino normally causes unusually wet conditions in the west and in Texas.
He appears to have mutually exclusive apocalyptic visions running around inside his head. This is normally called paranoid schizophrenia.
If the Pacific is cold, the west is dry. If the Pacific is warm, the west is wet. Both at the same time isn’t an option."
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/inside-hansens-disordered-mind/
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/hansen-covering-his-tracks-in-iceland/
plebe
1 year ago
On the one hand we have James
On the one hand we have James Hansen, NASA scientist, backed by nearly all the professional scientific societies on the planet and a veritable mountain of evidence in support of the theory that current and future global warming is caused by the anthropogenic emissions of CO2.
On the other hand we have JudyCross, who Ctrl-Cs + Ctrl-Vs Steven Goddard blog posts.
I know where I'd put my money.
OwlRol
1 year ago
Options?
Ah Judy, you sure like generalities and simplistic logic to make your case, (while you berate those who don't agree with you).
Trouble is that can be often inaccurate.
"If the Pacific is cold, the west is dry. If the Pacific is warm, the west is wet."
Sloppy.
It's the trade winds in the tropical Horse Latitudes (either side of the Doldrums or ITCZ (Intertropical Convergence Zone) wich seasonally shift north and south near the equator, that push the warm surface waters westward, allowing deeper, colder, nutrient rich waters to surface along the west coast of Peru and such. But even these get pushed westward, toward Indonesia under strong Trades influence.
Our latitudes may or may not be affected by such shifts because our temperate latitudes are influenced by the prevailing westerlies that push currents eastward rather than westward, sometimes cold and sometimes warm, many factors are involved.
It's not nearly as simple as you wish to make it.
"El Nino normally causes unusually wet conditions in the west". "Normally" is a key word because we've had dry El Nino's that affected some parts of that huge multi-region of the "West" differentially.
The last 2 winter seasons (not the 2010 Olympic spring) have been La Nina influenced, the opposite of El Nino.
Using your logic, these 2 past years should have been dry.
The Lower Mainland had pretty close to normal precipitation, but ask any BC coastal winter resort operator and they'll rave about the record snowfalls during these 2 La Nina years. If we have rapid snowpack melt, flooding, especially along the Fraser river could be heavy.
But you said that should happen during an El Nino, not its opposite.
"Both at the same time isn’t an option." Really? Only in simplistic logic.