Measuring Asia's Pollution Exports

NASA has quantified the amount of pollution that moves from East Asia to North America.

Atmospheric scientists have long known that air pollution travels vast distances and is a global phenomenon. Now researchers at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center have conducted the first-ever satellite-based measurements of pollution aerosols transported from East Asia to North America.

The researchers looked at four years of satellite data and found the amount of pollution arriving in North America to be equivalent to 15 percent of local emissions of the United States and Canada. It is "a significant number," says Hongbin Yu, an associate research scientist at the University of Maryland, in Baltimore, who is working at NASA Goddard and led the study.

"This means that any reduction in our emissions may be offset by the pollution aerosols coming from East Asia and other regions," says Yu. The new study will be published in April in the American Geophysical Union's Journal of Geophysical Research.

The study was conducted from 2002 to 2005, using measurements from a satellite instrument called the moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument measures the reflective solar radiation and emitted thermal radiation from the earth's surface and atmosphere.

The satellite-based instrument can look at 36 different wavelengths of the solar spectrum, and it does so with better spatial resolution than previous satellite instruments, says Lorraine Remer, a physical scientist and a member of the MODIS science team at Goddard.

For the study, the researchers measured the reflected solar radiation at seven different wavelengths. Being able to see different colors of the spectrum allows the researchers to differentiate the types of particles more accurately than the older sensors, says Remer.

"Some particulates are absorbing things like black carbon that come out of diesel exhaust, making it a black color," says Ronald Prinn, a professor of atmospheric sciences and the director of the Center for Global Change Science at MIT. "Particles that are produced from sulfur that comes from the burning of coal are very bright white. You can look at the multiple colors ... and get information about composition and density as well."

The instrument is able to distinguish between man-made pollution and naturally occurring particles based on size. Naturally occurring dust and sea salt are typically larger than aerosol particles emitted from combustion sources, forest fires, automobiles, and industry, says Remer.

The MODIS instrument works by scanning a broad swath of the earth--about 2,300 kilometers--and counting the number of photons it is receiving by turning them into electrical signals. The instrument can measure the entire earth in one day.

MODIS does a better job than aircraft instrumentation does because it can observe the earth all the time, capturing events that only happen occasionally and accumulating them over the whole year, says Richard Honrath, a professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Michigan Technological University, in Houghton. "We can only do continuous measurements at ground level, but then you only see events that hit the ground," he says.

The instrument also gets "spatial and time detail that one would never get from ground-based measurements, and it captures the entire pollution plumes rather than just having a few observing stations looking up," says Prinn.

NASA researchers drew two virtual lines at 20 degrees north to 60 degrees north, and they measured the optical effect of the particles as they crossed those lines, says Yu. Using software that he made, the researchers culled this data and mapped it to see globally where the pollution is located.

The researchers found that 18 teragrams--almost 40 billion pounds--of pollution is exported from Asia, and that 4.5 teragrams--10 billion pounds, or about 25 percent--reaches North America annually, says Mian Chin, an atmospheric scientist at NASA and a coauthor of the study. But the instrument measures the total atmosphere column and does not have the vertical structure, so it is unknown how many of the pollutants are at surface level, and how many are aloft in the atmosphere, says Chin.

Despite that uncertainty, the scientists say that it is the higher-altitude pollution that is probably most worrisome. "We think the pollution being imported to North America will impact the weather and climate; we don't expect any big impact on the air quality because particles from East Asia are exported at high altitude," says Yu.

"It is very difficult to lower pollution levels of man-made pollutants to extremely low levels because pollutants come in the air from other countries that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for example, cannot control," says Prinn. Agrees Honrath: "You have to consider the future industrial growth of Asia if you develop long-range plans for meeting air-quality goals in the United States."

source - Technology Review
photo credit - NASA

A NASA Q & A on Global Warming

Responsible NASA official: Dr. Michael D. King

On May 11, 2007, the Earth Observatory published Global Warming, a fact sheet outlining the basic principles behind the science of global warming. This follow-up article of questions and answers is based on questions from readers and other common questions about global warming. Many scientists and writers contributed to this article.

Q - What does NASA have to do with global warming?

A - NASA employs the world’s largest concentration of climate scientists. NASA's mission to study Earth involves monitoring atmospheric conditions, global temperatures, land cover and vegetation, ice extent, ocean productivity, and a number of other planetary vital signs with a fleet of space-based sensors. This information is critical in understanding how Earth’s climate works and how it is responding to change. In addition to collecting information about the Earth, NASA also builds global and regional climate models to understand the causes and effects of climate change, including global warming. NASA shares its climate data and information with the public and policy leaders freely and in a timely manner. As part of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, NASA works with other agencies—including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and many others—to conduct research and to ensure climate science results are available to all users to address a broad range of societal needs.

Q - If Earth has warmed and cooled throughout history, what makes scientists think that humans are causing global warming now?

A - The main reason that scientists think humans caused warming since 1950 is that none of the natural processes that influence Earth’s climate have changed enough during that time period to explain the warming.

Over the past thousand years, temperatures have been preserved in natural records like tree rings, ice cores, and coral reefs. Many independent estimates of temperatures from these sources show that while global average surface temperatures varied, at no time were they warmer or did they climb more quickly than during the latter half of the 20th century. Three things can alter global temperatures over this short period: changes in the Sun’s activity, volcanic eruptions, and human emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols.

During the twentieth century, the average amount of energy coming from the Sun either remained constant or increased slightly. (See “Has the Sun been more active in recent years?” for more on that topic.) Major volcanic eruptions temporarily cooled temperatures by pumping reflective gases into the atmosphere. At the same time, the burning of fossil fuels pushed greenhouse gas levels higher than they have been for at least the past 700,000 years.

Laboratory experiments have shown that carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases absorb and re-radiate infrared energy, or heat, and satellite observations have shown that these gases have the same heat-trapping effect in the atmosphere. The dramatic rate of increase in greenhouse gases during the latter half of the 20th century matches the rate of temperature increase.

Even more telling is the way in which temperatures are rising. If the warming were caused by a more active Sun, then scientists would expect to see warmer temperatures in all layers of the atmosphere. Instead they have observed a warming at the surface and in the lower parts of the atmosphere and a cooling in the upper atmosphere. Something is trapping heat in the lower atmosphere, and that something is greenhouse gases.

Finally, scientists are almost certain that warming during the last 50 years was caused by human activity because models can’t reproduce the observed temperature trend without including a rise in greenhouse gases.

Q - Has the Sun been more active in recent years, and could it be responsible for some global warming?

A - Scientists are still debating whether or not the Sun’s activity increased during the latter half of the 20th century, but even the highest estimates of activity can’t account for the warming observed since about 1950. Studies do show that solar variability has significantly influenced past climate changes. For example, a decrease in solar activity is thought to have triggered the Northern Hemisphere’s Little Ice Age between approximately 1650 and 1850, when temperatures dipped low enough that rivers that don’t freeze in today’s human-warmed climate froze over.

Scientists use substitutes (proxies) like records of sun spots, which have been kept since Galileo’s time, or carbon in tree rings to estimate the amount of energy the Sun has sent to Earth. Though not perfect, these estimates give a rough approximation of how much the Sun’s activity has varied over time. Scientists are still debating over how reliable proxies are in determining the Sun’s past activity, but current estimates indicate that the Sun is probably now as active as or more active than it has ever been during the past 8,000 years.

A shorter, but more detailed record comes from NASA satellites, which have been recording the Sun’s activity from space since 1978. The measurements, however, come from six different satellites, each with its own bias. It is difficult to combine the measurements from these satellites into a single 25-year-plus record to get a trend of solar activity. Different scientific teams have attempted to create a continuous record from the satellite data. Each long-term record shows the rise and fall of two 11-year sunspot cycles, but they differ from one another in the average trend over the full period. When stitched together one way, the satellites seemed to record a slight increase in solar activity, but in other analyses, solar activity remained constant.

Regardless, even when scientists assume that solar activity is increasing based on proxy data and the satellite record, they can’t account for all of the warming observed at the end of the twentieth century. Climate models can only reproduce the warming observed since 1950 when a rise in greenhouse gases is built into the system.

Q - Haven’t satellites actually observed cooling temperatures in the lower atmosphere?

A - No. To monitor atmospheric temperatures, climate scientists rely on measurements taken by a series of satellites dating back to 1979. Because each satellite operated differently, scientists have disagreed about how to correct the data for errors and how to merge all the satellite data into a long-term record.

Different techniques used to merge the data resulted in different long-term temperature trends, not all of which showed the warming that climate models predicted should have occurred. Some early analyses even suggested that parts of the troposphere (lower atmosphere), where warming was expected, had cooled. The lack of an unequivocal warming trend in the troposphere was sometimes used to challenge both the reality of human-induced global warming as well as the reliability of climate models.

To help resolve the discrepancies, the U.S. Climate Change Science Program undertook a comprehensive review of surface and atmospheric temperature observations and trends. The group identified and corrected errors in early versions of satellite and weather-balloon data, and concluded “For recent decades, all current atmospheric data sets now show global average warming that is similar to the surface warming.”

Some uncertainties remain, however, particularly in the tropics. While all the long-term atmospheric data sets now show a warming trend, they do not all show the amplified warming (greater warming of the atmosphere than the surface) that models predict. According to the U.S. Climate Change Science Program report, this remaining uncertainty is most likely due to additional errors in the observational data sets that remain to be corrected and not to model errors.

Q - Are the ozone hole and global warming related?

A - The ozone hole and global warming are not the same thing, and neither one is the main cause of the other. The ozone hole is an area in the stratosphere above Antarctica where chemical reactions initiated by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) have destroyed ozone molecules. Global warming is the rise in average global surface temperature caused primarily by the build-up of human-produced greenhouses gases, mostly carbon dioxide and methane, which trap heat in the lower levels of the atmosphere.

There are some connections between the two phenomena, however. The CFCs that destroy ozone are also strong greenhouse gases. Although they are present in the atmosphere in very small concentrations (several hundred parts per trillion, compared to several hundred parts per million for carbon dioxide), CFCs account for about 13% of the total energy absorbed by human-produced greenhouse gases. The ozone hole itself has a minor cooling effect (about 2 percent of the warming effect of greenhouses gases) because stratospheric ozone absorbs heat radiated to space by gases in the atmospheric layer (the upper troposphere) below it. The loss of ozone means a small amount of additional heat can escape into space.

Global warming is also predicted to have a modest impact on the ozone hole. CFCs only destroy ozone at extremely cold temperatures, below -80 degrees Celsius (-112 degrees Fahrenheit). Greenhouse gases absorb heat at a relatively low altitude, warming the surface but cooling the stratosphere. The cooler the stratosphere, the more rapidly ozone should be destroyed, resulting in a slightly larger ozone hole.

Q - Are the unusual or extreme weather events in my area caused by global warming?

A - Individual weather events, such as Hurricane Katrina or the European heat wave of 2003, are caused by a combination of factors, and teasing out the blame owed to natural variability and human-caused global warming is difficult. Climate does not directly dictate specific weather events. Rather, climate sets up a range of possibilities and a “range of likelihoods” for weather events. As climate warms, heat waves, droughts, and severe storms will probably become more likely. But it is not possible to say that any individual heat wave, drought, or storm occurred solely “because of global warming.”

A good example of the complexity is the European heat wave of 2003, in which an estimated 22,000 to 45,000 heat-related deaths occurred in August. This heat wave resulted in part from a high-pressure system linked to clear skies and dry soils, which allowed more solar energy than normal to warm the land surface. Therefore, natural events beyond human control played a large role in this heat wave. However, a climate model that included human activities, such as land use and emissions, more accurately simulated the evolution of European climate than a climate model that only included natural influences such as volcanic activity and solar output. Therefore, both natural and human factors probably played a role.

Q - Are there natural processes that will amplify or limit global warming?

A - Yes. Changes in one part of the climate system trigger processes that may either amplify the initial change or counteract it. With a positive climate feedback, warming triggers a process that causes more warming. With a negative climate feedback, warming sets off a process that leads to cooling.

The most fundamental negative (cooling) feedback is that the Earth radiates heat into space based on its temperature. The relationship between temperature and radiated heat is such that an increase in temperature is accompanied by an even bigger increase in radiated heat. The feedback does not prevent temperature from rising, but it allows the Earth to return to an equilibrated (balanced) state.

The other key feedbacks are water vapor, snow and ice, and clouds. Warming temperatures increase the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. Because water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas, it amplifies warming. Decreases in snow and ice make the Earth less reflective to incoming sunlight, also amplifying warming. Changes in clouds may either amplify or limit global warming, depending on where (latitude and altitude) and when (time of year) changes occur. Nearly all climate models scientists use today predict that net cloud feedbacks will either be neutral or positive (warming), but such predictions are still uncertain.

Numerous other feedbacks also exist. Warmer temperatures may decrease the rate at which the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide. Global currents that distribute heat among the world’s oceans may change because of temperature and salinity changes. Expansion or contractions of global vegetation can influence the reflection and absorption of incoming sunlight, the flow of energy and moisture between the surface and the air, and the carbon cycle. With the exception of not knowing precisely how much humans will do to control greenhouse gas emissions in coming decades, feedbacks—especially cloud feedbacks—are the biggest source of uncertainty in predictions of future climate.

Q - What if global warming isn’t as severe as predicted?

A - If models are wrong about the severity of global warming, it is because Earth’s climate is either more or less sensitive to change than we think it is. The biggest source of uncertainty in our understanding of climate sensitivity is climate feedbacks. Feedbacks are processes that either limit or amplify climate change once an external factor like a rise in greenhouse gases initiates change. (See “Are there natural processes that will amplify or limit global warming?” for a more complete discussion.)

Some argue that there may be as-yet-unidentified feedbacks in Earth’s climate system that will regulate global warming (negative feedbacks). If this is the case, they contend, then we should not waste money trying to mitigate global warming. However, most scientists believe that if there are hidden feedbacks, they are just as likely to amplify warming (positive feedbacks). In other words, there is just as much chance that the models are underestimating the severity of future warming as they are overestimating warming.

Given the potentially catastrophic effects of global warming, uncertainty is not a good reason to delay action. If we do reduce emissions and climate change turns out to be less serious than predicted, we still benefit from our efforts. By switching to renewable energy sources like solar and wind, we can reduce our dependence on oil (a limited resource) and improve our air quality.

Q - Why is global warming a problem?

A - The cost and benefits of global warming will vary greatly from area to area. For moderate climate change, the balance can be difficult to assess. But the larger the change in climate, the more negative the consequences will become. Global warming will probably make life harder, not easier, for most people. This is mainly because we have already built enormous infrastructure based on the climate we now have.

People in some temperate zones may benefit from milder winters, more abundant rainfall, and expanding crop production zones. But people in other areas will suffer from increased heat waves, coastal erosion, rising sea level, and droughts. The crops, natural vegetation, and domesticated and wild animals (including seafood) that sustain people in a given area may be unable to adapt to local or regional changes in climate. The ranges of diseases and insect pests that are limited by temperature may expand, if other environmental conditions are also favorable.

The problems seem especially obvious in cases where current societal trends appear to be on a “collision course” with predictions of global warming’s impacts:

At the same time that sea levels are rising, population continues to grow most rapidly in flood-vulnerable, low-lying coastal zones across the globe;

The human population is large and growing, and it is more dependent on stable agricultural production than at any time in its history. Places where famine and food insecurity are greatest in today’s world are not places where milder winters will boost crop or vegetation productivity, but instead, are places where rainfall will probably become less reliable, and crop productivity is expected to fall;

The countries most vulnerable to global warming’s most serious side effects are among the poorest and least able to pay for the medical and social services and technological solutions that will be needed to adapt to climate change.

In its summary report on the impacts of climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated, “Taken as a whole, the range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time.”

Q - If we stabilized greenhouse gas emissions at today’s rates, would global warming stop?

A - No. Carbon dioxide levels are rising because we currently emit more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than natural processes like photosynthesis and absorption into the oceans can remove. Therefore, stabilizing emissions at today’s rates will not stop global warming: our carbon dioxide “deposits” would still exceed natural “withdrawals.” Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels would continue to increase, and temperatures would continue to rise. To stop global warming, we will have to significantly reduce not just stabilize, emissions in coming decades.

Q - If we immediately stopped emitting greenhouses gases, would global warming stop?

A - Not right away. The Earth’s surface temperature does not react instantaneously to the energy imbalance created by rising carbon dioxide levels. This delayed reaction occurs because a great deal of the excess energy is stored in the ocean, which has a tremendous heat capacity. Because of this lag (which scientists call “thermal inertia”), even the 0.6–0.9 degrees of global warming we have observed in the past century is not the full amount of warming we can expect from the greenhouse gases we have already emitted. Even if all emissions were to stop today, the Earth’s average surface temperature would climb another 0.6 degrees or so over the next several decades before temperatures stopped rising.

The time lag is one reason why there is a risk in waiting to control greenhouse gas emissions until global warming becomes worse or its effects more serious and obvious. If we wait until we feel the amount or impact of global warming has reached an intolerable level, we will not be able to “hold the line” at that point; some further warming will be unavoidable.

Q - What can we do about global warming?

A - It is not NASA’s mission to develop strategies or public policies for controlling global warming, but rather, to provide the scientific information that decision makers need to understand global warming and to assess the impact of strategies to mitigate it. Science tells us that to control global warming, we must reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. Controlling emissions is a large, complex, and potentially expensive problem that no single strategy will solve. On the other hand, the costs of uncontrolled global warming will probably also be significant. Putting existing scientific and technological strategies into place and developing new ones can stimulate the economy, and will also generate significant near-term benefits in public health through air pollution reduction.

Among the many scientific and policy organizations who are working on the global warming challenge is the Carbon Mitigation Initiative, a university and industry partnership based at Princeton University. The group has laid out strategies that are based solely on existing technologies. Used in combination over the next 50 years, these strategies would keep the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from more than doubling the pre-industrial level. (Many scientists believe doubled carbon dioxide levels will cause a dangerous interference with the climate.) The strategies fall into four broad categories:

Increase the energy efficiency of our cars, homes, and power plants while lowering our consumption by adjusting our thermostats and driving fewer miles;

Capture the carbon emitted by power plants and store it underground;

Produce more energy from nuclear and renewable fuels—solar, wind, hydroelectric, and bio-fuels;

Halt deforestation and soil degradation worldwide, while reforesting more areas.

Some of those strategies will have to be put into place by governments and industry, but individuals can also do a lot on their own. On average, individual Americans emit 19 tons of carbon dioxide annually while driving our cars and heating our homes—more than people in any other country. If we can reduce our personal emissions by just 5 percent, total U.S. emissions would drop by 300 million tons, the total emissions of any one of a number of entire countries! That reduction could be easily achieved by replacing appliances and light bulbs with more efficient ones, planning our automobile trips more carefully, driving more fuel-efficient cars, and so on. By learning about global warming, by communicating with elected officials about the problem, and by making energy-conscious decisions, individuals will play a meaningful role in what must be a global effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Q - Where can I learn more about global warming?

A - The Earth Observatory features many articles and satellite images and data about climate change:

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the scientists and writers who contributed to these responses.

Scientists

Robert Cahalan, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
G. James Collatz, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Anthony Del Genio, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Andrew Dessler, Texas A&M University
Forrest Hall, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Michael Mann, Pennsylvania State University
Paul Newman, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
William Patzert, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Gavin Schmidt, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Brian Soden, University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science
Tom Wigley, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

Earth Observatory Writers

David Herring
Rebecca Lindsey
Holli Riebeek
Michon Scott
Robert Simmon

LINK TO THE SOURCE PAGE

Scientist James Hansen Responds to NASA Data Controversy

"Fox, Washington Times, and their like have gone bananas over a flaw discovered in the computer program that produces global temperatures at GISS each month. They have even managed to get Congress and NASA Headquarters involved. Now we know what mom meant when she said "don’t make a federal case out of it." Hey, what is really going on here?

The said computer program is rerun every month as new meteorological station data and new satellite sea surface temperature data are reported. The program produces a global surface temperature field using an analysis scheme documented by Hansen et al. (2001)

The flaw affected temperatures only in the United States (by about 0.15°C) and only in 2000 and later. We corrected the flaw in the program, thanked the fellow who pointed it out, and thought that was the end of it.

How big an error did this flaw cause? The effect on the global temperature record is invisible.

The effect on U.S. average temperature is about 0.15°C beginning in 2000. Does this change have any affect whatsoever on the global warming issue? Certainly not, as discussed below.

What we have here is a case of dogged contrarians who present results in ways intended to deceive the public into believing that the changes have greater significance than reality. They aim to make a mountain out of a mole hill. I believe that these people are not stupid, instead they seek to create a brouhaha and muddy the waters in the climate change story. They seem to know exactly what they are doing and believe they can get away with it, because the public does not have the time, inclination, and training to discern what is a significant change with regard to the global warming issue.

The proclamations of the contrarians are a deceit, but their story raises a more important matter, usufruct. It is the most important issue in the entire global warming story, in my opinion. The players in the present U.S. temperature story, we scientists included, are just bit players. The characters in the main drama are big fish, really big fish. But before we get to that matter, I need to expose how the deceit works.

Instead of showing the impact of the flaw in our analysis program via a graph as a scientist would do (and as would immediately reveal how significant the flaw was), they instead discuss ranking of temperature in different years, including many false statements. We have thus been besieged by journalists saying "they say that correcting your error caused the warmest year to become 1934 rather than a recent year, is that right!?"

Hardly. First of all, many journalists had the impression that they were talking about global temperature. As you can see from Figure 1a, global warming is unaffected by the flaw. This realization should be enough to make most journalists lose interest, as global warming refers to global temperature.

But what if you are a chauvinist and only care about temperature in the United States? Did correcting the flaw in the program change the time of calculated maximum temperature to 1934? No. If you look at our 2001 paper, and get out your micrometer, you will see that we found 1934 to be the warmest year in the United States, by a hair, of the order of 0.01°C warmer than 1998, the same as the result that we find now. Of course the difference in the 1934 and 1998 temperatures is not significant, and we made clear in our paper that such years have to be declared as being practically a dead-heat.

Usufruct. The deceit behind the attempts to discredit evidence of climate change reveals matters of importance. This deceit has a clear purpose: to confuse the public about the status of knowledge of global climate change, thus delaying effective action to mitigate climate change. The danger is that delay will cause tipping points to be passed, such that large climate impacts become inevitable, including the loss of all Arctic sea ice, destabilization of the West Antarctic ice sheet with disastrous sea level rise later this century, and extermination of a large fraction of animal and plant species (see "Dangerous", "Trace Gases", and "Gorilla" papers).

Make no doubt, however, if tipping points are passed, if we, in effect, destroy Creation, passing on to our children, grandchildren, and the unborn a situation out of their control, the contrarians who work to deny and confuse will not be the principal culprits. The contrarians will be remembered as court jesters. There is no point to joust with court jesters. They will always be present. They will continue to entertain even if the Titanic begins to take on water. Their role and consequence is only as a diversion from what is important.

The real deal is this: the ‘royalty’ controlling the court, the ones with the power, the ones with the ability to make a difference, with the ability to change our course, the ones who will live in infamy if we pass the tipping points, are the captains of industry, CEOs in fossil fuel companies such as EXXON/Mobil, automobile manufacturers, utilities, all of the leaders who have placed short-term profit above the fate of the planet and the well-being of our children. The court jesters are their jesters, occasionally paid for services, and more substantively supported by the captains’ disinformation campaigns.

Court jesters serve as a distraction, a distraction from usufruct. Usufruct is the matter that the captains wish to deny, the matter that they do not want their children to know about. They realize that if there is no ‘gorilla’, then usufruct is not an important issue for them. So, with the help of jesters, they deny the existence of the gorilla. There is no danger of melting the Arctic, of destabilizing the West Antarctic ice sheet, of increasing hydrologic extremes, more droughts and stronger forest fires on one hand and heavier downpours and floods on the other, threats to the fresh water supplies of huge numbers of people in different parts of the globe. "Whew! It is lucky that, as our jesters show, these are just imaginary concerns. We captains of industry can continue with business-as-usual, we do not need to face the tough problem of how to maintain profits without destroying our legacy in our children’s eyes."

I am puzzled by views expressed by some conservatives, views usually expressed in vehement unpleasant ways in e-mails that I have been bombarded by in the past several days. It is a bit disconcerting as I come from a moderately conservative state, and I consider myself a moderate conservative in most ways. It is puzzling, because it seems to me that conservatives should be the first ones standing up for preserving Creation, and for the rights of the young and the unborn. That is the basic intergenerational issue in global warming and the headlong use of fossil fuels: the present generation is, in effect, ripping off future generations.

Is it possible that conservatives have been too quick to support the captains of industry? If we allow industry to continue on a path of denial, to focus on their short-term profits, to deny the rights of our children, grandchildren and the unborn, if the planet passes climate tipping points, will we not share in the infamy, the infamy of the captains of industry?

It seems to me that the present situation, with only minimalist actions to mitigate global climate change, reflects, at least in part, the "success" of the disinformation campaign that the captains of industry have at least tolerated, and, in some cases, encouraged and supported. Of course Nature will, eventually, reveal the truth, but there is potentially great harm in the disinformation, because it increases the likelihood that we will pass climate tipping points.

The captains of industry are smarter than their jesters. They cannot pretend that they are unaware of climate change dangers and consequences for future generations. It is time for the captains of industry to rethink their positions. I do not mean, time to polish their image with marginal investments, ‘green’ advertisements, and other public relations gimmicks. I mean, time to consider how they will function as we move toward a cleaner world ‘beyond petroleum’, to invest in approaches that will help take us from here to there, and to begin to move smartly in that direction.

There is still time to avert the most dramatic climate effects, if we promptly begin to address both CO2 and non-CO2 climate forcings. But just barely" - Dr. James Hansen

Excerpts from: The Real Deal: Usufruct & the Gorilla