- 16 minutes ago
Ex-NASA Scientist James Hansen: There is a Clear Link Between Climate Change & Stronger Hurricane. https://earthclimate.eu/2017/09/01/expert-global-warming-made-hurricane-harvey-stronger/
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00As we turn to the world-renowned climate scientist Dr. James Hansen, he's been called the father
00:06of climate change awareness.
00:08In 1988, Hansen first warned about the dangers of climate change when he testified before
00:13Congress.
00:13At the time, he was NASA's top climate scientist.
00:16He would go on to become the nation's most influential climate scientist.
00:20Dr. James Hansen, welcome back to Democracy Now!
00:22You come to us in the midst of this catastrophe, unprecedented, historic, apocalyptic.
00:30These are all words that can also be used to describe climate change, climate chaos.
00:35But those links aren't being made.
00:38Can we make those links?
00:39Yeah.
00:40In fact, there are very clear links.
00:44Let me mention three of them.
00:45One of them is sea level.
00:47Sea level was stable for the last several thousand years.
00:50But with the beginning of changes in atmospheric composition caused by burning fossil fuels,
00:58mainly, the planet is getting warmer, and sea level has begun to go up because the ocean
01:04is getting warmer and because ice is melting.
01:06Well, on a global average, it's gone up by about 20 centimeters, which is about eight inches.
01:11However, it's not the same every place.
01:14Along the east coast of the United States and the Gulf Coast, it's larger than the global
01:18average.
01:19It's a good foot.
01:21So that's a significant contribution to the magnitude of the storm surges that drive the
01:27water onto Houston and the other regions.
01:31So that's one thing.
01:33Another is the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is increasing because the atmosphere
01:41is getting warmer.
01:43And therefore, the amount of water being dumped during these storms is larger because of the
01:51human global-made global warming, human-made global warming, which is now more than one
01:59degree Celsius.
02:01And the simple equations for how much water vapor is in the atmosphere as a function of temperature
02:08would be several percent.
02:10But in addition, the distribution of the storms that release the moisture is changing.
02:19We're getting more of the rainfall in extreme large events.
02:24So that's a significant factor.
02:26And then the third thing is the strength of storms.
02:32Thunderstorms, tornadoes, tropical storms all get their energy from the latent energy of water
02:39vapor.
02:40And because the atmosphere now holds more water vapor, the strength of those storms can be
02:45greater.
02:46And so, there are substantial human-made effects on these storms.
02:52It's not debatable now.
02:54These are all well-established facts.
02:57AMY GOODMAN So, what do you say to those who seem to be reading out of, well, a handbook
03:03we're very familiar with over the decades, the tobacco handbook?
03:06You can't say this particular cigarette caused your lung cancer.
03:10In the same way, can you say climate change caused this particular storm or hurricane?
03:17DR.
03:18You know, you can't say the location and timing of each storm is, of course, very chaotic.
03:24However, you know, there's even research that shows that the likelihood of the kind
03:31of event where we had here, where things stalled and we had continued rainfall for several
03:38days, the chance of that happening is actually probably increasing.
03:44That's a research topic now.
03:46But because the Arctic is warming faster than the planet, on average, it does affect the
03:53jet stream and the chance of having blocking events, where the storms stall.
04:00So, that is very likely also influenced.
04:05The chance of that happening has been increased by global warming.
04:12AMY GOODMAN Dr. Hansen, I'm from Houston.
04:14I've been watching the flooding.
04:16I've lived through the flooding.
04:18Many Houstonians remembered kayaking through their neighborhoods during a flood—during a
04:24flood just last year.
04:24AMY GOODMAN DR.
04:25And so, as you said, these seem to be much more frequent, these extreme weather events,
04:29for people, you know, whether or not they are climate change believers or climate change
04:35deniers.
04:35They're experiencing this.
04:36They're also experiencing the president coming down to the Gulf Coast Tuesday.
04:42And this is the same president that withdrew from the U.N. climate agreement, the Paris
04:47climate agreement.
04:48You've been watching that closely.
04:50What do you say to Trump and to—how we should move forward?
04:55He's withdrawn from the climate agreement, and yet we see the U.S. sort of diving headfirst
05:00into these extreme weather events.
05:01So, where should we go from here in that regard?
05:04REP.
05:04Well, I think we need to educate him about the fact that the actions that are needed to begin
05:12to reduce emissions rapidly actually make sense from a conservative standpoint.
05:16We need to make the price of fossil fuels honest by increasing—by including their cost to
05:23society.
05:24And if we do that gradually, it will actually improve the economy, create jobs, and do it
05:32in a way which is consistent with conservative ideas.
05:36So, there's really no reason.
05:38If he could just get educated about this, I think we could—you know, there are conservative
05:46thought leaders—James Baker III, George Shultz—who have—who recognize this, who understand
05:52this.
05:52And he's got to start to listen to these people.
05:55And we could actually move rapidly to reducing emissions.
06:00AMY GOODMAN, Dr. James Hansen, you're one of the top climate scientists in this country.
06:05But a couple years ago, you were also arrested—well, maybe because you're one of the top climate
06:10scientists.
06:11You were arrested protesting the Keystone XL pipeline.
06:15Now, when President Trump came into office, one of his first acts was to sign off on both
06:19the Dakota Access pipeline and the Keystone XL, saying he wants to revive this.
06:26Can you talk about the connection of pipelines like these to what we're seeing right now
06:31in Texas?
06:33JAMES HANSEN- Well, yeah, exploiting the tar sands makes no sense at all, because they're
06:40very carbon-intensive.
06:41It takes a lot of energy to get that stuff out of the ground and then to refine it, to
06:46make
06:46it usable.
06:46So, it doesn't make any sense for us to develop those, because what the science shows is we're
06:54going to actually have to extract some of the excess carbon out of the atmosphere.
06:59So to go to all this expense to find a new way to get more of it to put in
07:04the atmosphere
07:04just doesn't make any sense economically or scientifically or in any way.
07:11So that's basically the connection.
07:14AMY GOODMAN- And it will be interesting, Dr. Hansen, and I don't know if you have any
07:19final comment on this about moving forward.
07:21We've seen Trump recently rescind Obama regulations of how to build federal projects and to take
07:29climate change projections into account, for example, rising sea levels, flood projections.
07:35Those are no longer in place.
07:37Houston is going to go through a major rebuilding effort right now, and, in fact, a large swath
07:42of the Texas Gulf Coast.
07:44Do you have any thoughts on what needs to be in place there as they move forward?
07:48Well, it doesn't make sense to build a lot of infrastructure on coastlines unless we can
07:56stabilize sea level.
07:58And that's going to be a very hard task.
08:00So, yeah, we have to be aware of what's going on, because we do need to take actions to slow
08:07down climate change.
08:08But it's going to take time.
08:10You know, we have not yet felt the full impact of the gases that are already in the atmosphere,
08:16just because of the delays in the system.
08:20It takes decades for the ocean to warm up and for ice sheets to melt.
08:25So there's consequences for young people that are already built into the system.
08:30That's why young people have filed a lawsuit against the Trump government, to try to get
08:36them to take the actions that are needed.
08:37AMY GOODMAN, And we're going to talk about that with you, and we're going to post online
08:41at democracynow.org, that children's lawsuit.
08:46Also, Energy Transfer Partners, that owns Dakota Access Pipeline, has just sued Rainforest Action
08:52Network and Greenpeace, talking about them as eco-terrorists who hindered their building
08:57of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
08:59Can you comment on this?
09:01And just today in the news, in Wisconsin, six people arrested after one person locked themselves
09:06to a piece of heavy machinery to stop the construction of the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline, Poe's line
09:11carried tar sands from Alberta, Canada, to a terminal on Superior, Wisconsin, facing resistance
09:16from indigenous leaders and others?
09:18JUAN GONZÁLEZ- Well, I'm helping some of these people who have been arrested by trying
09:23to help them in their defense, to try to get them not penalized for what they've done, because
09:32they're just trying to draw attention to what is crazy policies.
09:36But I think the main thing that most people should be doing is not locking themselves to
09:43pipelines, but trying to influence the democratic process.
09:48You know, we can't—there's the organization Citizens' Climate Lobby, which is now more
09:53than 300 chapters in the United States and more than 75,000 members.
09:59And they're talking to their congresspeople, writing letters to the editor.
10:03And I think that's the most effective thing that most people can do.
10:07Those few people who are going out and locking themselves to the pipeline, well, I'll try to
10:13help them in their—when they go to court.
10:17But it's hard to win those cases.
10:19AMY GOODMAN- And you, yourself, got arrested, feeling this strongly about it.
10:22AMY GOODMAN- I wanted to ask, if you have a final comment for the media, if you've
10:27been watching the networks—and, again, I'm not talking about FOX, that so often parrots—
10:31AMY GOODMAN- —the line of the administration.
10:33JUAN GONZÁLEZ- Yeah.
10:33AMY GOODMAN- —but I'm talking about those that are considered the oppositional media,
10:36the networks—
10:37AMY GOODMAN- —CNN and MSNBC.
10:38Almost not a mention.
10:39JUAN GONZÁLEZ- It's shocking, because it's not a case of scientists disagreeing.
10:45It's clear.
10:46The things that I mentioned are well understood by the scientific community.
10:51And the media should be reporting on that.
10:53AMY GOODMAN- Dr. James Hansen, we're going to speak to you after the show about the children's
10:57lawsuit that your own granddaughter is involved with, as you are.
11:00Dr. James Hansen, the former top climate scientist at NASA from 81 to 2013, head of the NASA Goddard
11:07Institute for Space Studies, now the director of climate science awareness and solutions
11:12at Columbia University's Earth Institute.
11:14This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.
11:19We hear a lot about the Red Cross now being in Houston.
11:22What does that mean?
11:24We'll look at the Red Cross.
11:26Stay with us.
11:27AMY GOODMAN- I'm weary of the waste of the world.
11:34Be weary of the waste of the world.
11:40I'm weary of the waste of the world.
11:51I'm weary of the waste of the world.
11:53Yeah.
11:54I'm weary of the waste of the world.
11:56I'm weary of the waste of the world.
11:57I'm weary of the waste of the world.
12:03I'm weary of the waste of the waste of the waste of the waste of the waste of the waste
12:09of
12:09waste of the waste of waste of waste of waste of waste of waste of waste of waste of waste
12:10of waste of waste of waste.
12:23Weary by so long.