James Hansen, one of the United State’s leading climate scientists and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has produced a new book called ‘Storms of My Grandchildren – The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity’ (Bloomsbury Books).
Hansen did research early in his career on the planet Venus, a perfect example of atmospheric carbon dioxide heating a planet – the greenhouse effect. Now he has written a book detailing his struggle over the last 20 years to convince the US government and the American public that climate change is indeed a serious challenge for the future. He offers the fruits of four-plus decades of inquiry and ingenuity and sketches in the science of climate change.
“Humanity treads today on a slippery slope,” he writes. “As we continue to pump greenhouse gasses into the air, we move onto a steeper, even more slippery incline. We seem oblivious to the danger – unaware how close we may be to a situation in which a catastrophic slip becomes practically unavoidable, a slip where we suddenly lose all control and are pulled into a torrential stream that hurls us over a precipice to our demise.”
Hansen asserts that “we the People” are the world’s last chance; Kyoto, Copenhagen, and President Obama, though a science advocate, are not sufficient. Effective change will only happen when the U.S. government gets the message from the people that they support the tough choices that are needed to be taken now that won’t provide a payoff until years down the road.
Hansen blames the big money in politics for a lot of the evasion and denial that goes on.
He talks a lot about his two grandchildren as the book is about their future, and all our grandchildren’s future. He writes: “Storms of my grandchildren – when will these hit with full force? Already the air holds more water vapor than it did a few decades ago. The strongest of the storms that derive energy from water vapor – including thunderstorms, tornadoes, and tropical storms – are becoming stronger, and the associated winds and floods are becoming more extreme.
“But qualitatively different storms will occur when the ice sheets disintegration is large enough to damp high-latitude ocean warming or even to cause regional ocean cooling, while low latitudes continue to warm. Global chaos will ensue when increasingly violent storminess is combined with sea level rise of a meter or more. Although ice sheet inertia may prevent a large sea-level rise before the second half of the century continued growth of greenhouse gases in the near term will make that result practically inevitable, out of our children’s and grandchildren’s control.”
