Celebrated American climatologist James Hansen says governments around the world are not taking action that befits what he calls the current global emergency. Hansen told a nuclear industry conference that massive amounts of heat are being absorbed by the oceans, the daily equivalent of 400,000 atomic bombs like the one dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. That is going to have consequences, said the former NASA scientist, one of the first to recognize global warming in the 1980s. The situation is that we actually have an emergency and yet we are not acting as though we understand that, Hansen told the Canadian Nuclear Association annual conference. There is a real danger that we are going to hand our young people a situation that is out of their control, with enormous consequences. Yet despite his dire prognosis, Hansen argues a rapid revolution in energy production is possible, driven by the very capitalist system sometimes vilified by anti-oil campaigners. Putting a price on carbon, starting at 10 dollars a tonne and increasing to 100 dollars over a decade, would unleash market forces that would transform the energy market starting immediately, he said. Economics work better if prices are honest, said Hansen. The Columbia University professor has previously drawn the ire of senior cabinet ministers in the Harper government for his insistence that the Canadian oil sands need to stay in the ground as part of the global fight against climate change. Former natural resources minister, Joe Oliver, now the finance minister, blasted Hansen in 2013 for his exaggerated rhetoric and said the scientist should be ashamed of writing what Oliver called frankly nonsense. Hansen, for his part, was unconcerned about causing offence. He also took a poke Thursday at environmental groups for their blanket opposition to nuclear power, joking that their major pre-occupation appears to be turning off anti-nuclear donors.
Resource Portal for I2M Clients, Associates, and Geoscientists
Managed & Built by I2M Consulting, LLC | © 2010-
Managed & Built by I2M Consulting, LLC | © 2010-