President Obama, we’re running out of time

‘We have only four years left to act on climate change – America has to lead’

by Robin McKie, Science Editor
The Observer
Published Sunday, January 18 2009

Click here to read this rare interview with Jim Hansen in New York, where ‘the grandfather of climate change’ explains why President Obama’s administration is the last chance to avoid flooded cities, species extinction and climate catastrophe.

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Today is January 21, and this morning after the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, we are filled with hope. We are certain this deliberate and intelligent man has and will bring great changes to his country and that this will have a positive effect on our entire world. Many millions of people have given him their love and trust, and we know he will do the best he can to save us from the financial crisis, create green jobs for Americans and hopefully, begin to bring an end to continuing resource wars.

But at this time, we should pause to listen to another man, deliberate and intelligent as well. He has something of supreme importance to say to his new President and to all of us.

Jim Hansen is the World’s best known and most highly respected climatologist. He has been warning us of the threat of global climatic disruption for 20 years. Three years ago in December of 2005 he said  ‘we have only a decade left to act in time to prevent unstoppable global warming.’ In February 2006 he gave in interview on NPR’s On Point saying that ‘time is running out. That we are now on the verge of the biggest planetary climate change in half a million years. That without action in this decade we may reach a tipping point that will make the earth, what he called, “a different planet”.’

But that was before the catastrophic summer Arctic sea-ice melt in 2007 and 2008. Global climatic disruption is increasing much faster than anticipated only a few years ago. A tipping point has now been passed, and unless we take immediate action to reduce greenhouse gases and bring global temperature down, the accelerating melting of the ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica, which is now taking place at an alarming rate, threatens to increase sea levels by one or two metres over the century, enough to inundate cities and fertile land around the globe.

President Obama speaks to us of developing green energy sources and he has put together an excellent team of science and envionment advisors. Lacking, however, is a sense of real urgency. He must stop talking of ineffectual solutions such as cap and trade and put a moratorium on any new coal-fired plants until carbon capture and sequestration can be developed. And this may take precious years we no longer have.

No more talk of distant targets, Mr. President. We must stop emitting any more carbon into our atmosphere as quickly as possible, and then bring the level of carbon dioxide down to a safe level, below 350 parts per million. The very real possibility of runaway climate change far surpasses the present economic crisis. That’s how bad it is.

However as Jim Hansen says, “we may have passed a tipping point, but we haven’t passed the point of no return.’ (From his Bjerknes Lecture at the American Geophysical Union meeting, December 17, 2008
Climate Threat to the Planet: Implications for Energy Policy and Intergenerational Justice)

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The climate in figures

• The current level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 385 parts per million. This compares with a figure of some 315ppm around 1960.
• Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that can persist for hundreds of years in the atmosphere, absorbing infrared radiation and heating the atmosphere.
• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s last report states that 11 of the 12 years between 1995-2006 rank among the 12 warmest years on record since 1850.
• According to Jim Hansen, the nation responsible for putting the largest amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is Britain, on a per capita basis – because the Industrial Revolution started here. China is now the largest annual emitter of carbon dioxide.
• Most predictions suggest that global temperatures will rise by 2C to 4C over the century.
• The IPCC estimates that rising temperatures will melt ice and cause ocean water to heat up and increase in volume. This will produce a sea-level rise of between 18 and 59 centimetres. However, some predict a far faster rate of around one to two metres.
• Inundations of one or two metres would make the Nile Delta and Bangladesh uninhabitable, along with much of south-east England, Holland and the east coast of the United States.