Storms Of My Grandchildren (James Hansen)

[wtmusic]

Just finished this book, which I would recommend highly to my E/E friends who haven't already read it - an incredible source of information.

Some facts:

• In the ice age following the Eemian Period 70,000 years ago, Homo Sapiens was nearly driven extinct - only an estimated 1,000 breeding pairs survived (you're a closer relative of kristopher than you thought) :D (p. 39)

• Atmospheric aerosols (particulates), some of the most unhealthy components of air pollution but the easiest to scrub, mitigate global warming by reflecting sunlight into space (p. 98)

• In the spring of 2006 Bush appointees removed the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet" from NASA's mission statement (p. 136)

• The thermal effect of recent global warming is equivalent to moving south 35 miles each decade (p. 146)

and much more, including the inside dirt on the Bush administration's efforts to keep Hansen from speaking out. Just in case you weren't convinced that Bush, Cheney, et al are some of the greediest, vilest motherf*ckers on Earth.

http://www.stormsofmygrandchildren.com/

[Javaman]

1. Meh, I'm prepared. I'm buying tons of stock in water wings. nt

[wtmusic]

2. Since Manhattan will be underwater

be sure not to buy them on the NYSE. :scared:

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. Just a note on the word "factoid"

Although it's come to popularly be used to mean a briefly stated fact (I remember when CNN started putting "factoids" on the screen) that's not the original meaning of the word.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factoid

A factoid is a questionable or spurious—unverified, incorrect, or fabricated—statement formed and asserted as a fact, but with no veracity. The word appears in the Oxford English Dictionary as "something which becomes accepted as fact, although it may not be true." However, the word can sometimes mean, instead, an insignificant but true piece of information. In either formulation, factoids are potentially factual, just not self-evidently so.

Factoid was coined by Norman Mailer in his 1973 biography of Marilyn Monroe. Mailer described a factoid as "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper", and created the word by combining the word fact and the ending -oid to mean "similar but not the same". The Washington Times described Mailer's new word as referring to "something that looks like a fact, could be a fact, but in fact is not a fact".

Factoids may give rise to, or arise from, common misconceptions and urban legends.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/factoid
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/factoid?jss=0

[wtmusic]

4. Thank you

Corrected.

[prairierose]

6. Thank you for that...This is one of those words that drives me...

crazy because so many people think that they are facts.

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. The popular understanding of "factoid" is a good example of a "factoid"

Thanks to general misuse by "the media" (notably CNN) people have come to believe it means something it does not. ;-)

Of course, with time, this will become "the definition" and we'll simply be left with yet another ironic etymology.

[prairierose]

8. LOL..thanks for the chuckle....n/t

[IDemo]

11. Like the way we solved our problems by calling them "issues"

One of the most absurd kidnaps of a perfectly good word I've ever seen.

[starroute]

5. That "nearly extinct" claim is questionable

The claim comes out of DNA studies -- but more skeptical reviews have suggested that all the studies mean is that Homo sapiens was evolving rapidly, so we're all descended from the few thousand individuals who were most "modern" and not those who were still relatively archaoc.

Another article I saw recently pointed out that the same kind of DNA studies show an equally low number of human ancestors at every point over the last 1.2 million years. Again, it doesn't seem to mean that we've been an endangered species all that time, but that we've been evolving very quickly -- and leaving much of our genetic inheritance behind us as we do.

[Nederland]

9. Moving south 35 miles each decade?

Interesting. In other words, one hundred years of warming is like moving from Washington, DC to Atlanta, GA.

[wtmusic]

10. Basically

but the rate is expected to double by 2100. Of course it's northward in the southern hemisphere.

Species (which are capable of doing so) are migrating toward the poles at a similar rate. Polar bears are being pushed off the end of the world.

[Bigmack]

12. Bought it a while ago,

Am reading it, slowly, as there's a lot to absorb, but James Hansen CONTINUES to be one of my TRUE heroes in this strange and dangerous country. Thanks for this post, and here's hoping against hope that Storms of My Grandchildren moves to the best seller list! Not likely, I admit, but, alas, all too necessary. Or at least a national awareness of what he writes about is ALL TOO NECESSARY. Ms Bigmack

[Dover]

13. Any discussion in that book about weather modification?

Or what I like to call "Designer Weather".

I wonder how international efforts to manipulate the weather (regardless of intention) might be making things worse rather than better.

Well, they are having International Conferences discussing Weather Modification and Climate Change:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x147622

ICORG - Weather Modification and Climate Change -
http://www.icorg.org/html/int-work-symposium.htm


Hence our government's Weather Modification Laws:
http://www.rbs2.com/weather.pfd

And

The Weather Modification and Research Act of 2005
http://www.rense.com/general67/weather.htm
whose biggest proponent seems to be Rep. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas.

Not to mention the Weather Modification Association:
http://www.weathermodification.org/annual_meeting_2008call.htm

And it's big business. Here's just one company whose motto is - "When most people look up they see clouds. We see potential."
http://www.weathermodification.com/

..among many other examples.

[wtmusic]

14. Yes, Hansen is opposed to it for several reasons

but in essence his objections are similar to his objections to offsets and cap-and-trade: we're buying the right to continue business as usual, but paying for it with something that has no practical possibility of doing enough.

And, as you suggest, we may end up making an already precarious situation worse.

"Fee and Dividend", where a tax is placed on every carbon source then the money split up evenly and paid to every citizen, is a practical solution to the problem of climate change.

Finding the political will to do it is the hard part.