Avail Yourself Storms Of My Grandchildren: The Truth About The Climate Catastrophe And Our Last Chance To Save Humanity Created By James Hansen Readily Available As Audiobook

passionate tour d'force from one of the world's foremost climate scientists, Hansen was chief climate scientists for NASA for many years, and has decided the issue has become so dire that he needs to speak out and warn people of the coming catastrophe.
In this book Hansen cites a lot of recent research to illustrate the current situation and how it has progressed in the last ten years.
Along the way you will learn a lot about climate science, Hansen punctuates the book with personal anecdotes about his career and about his grandchildren, for whom he is most worried.
One of the best books on climate change you'll find, oy vey.

The problem here is that this isn't a book about climate science, This is a memoir about Hansen's "experiences as a scientist interacting with policy makers" p, xi

You can see the approaching flaw, already, right

"On June,, I was a witness, an official witness, when I testified to a Senate committee chaired by Tim Wirth of Colorado.
. . " p. xv

"I was escorted from the briefing by David Halpern, a staff member in Marburger's OSTP, who commented that they would have another presentation the following week on the same topic by Richard Lindzen" p.
.

"I received a call from a reporter at national Public Radio NPR, The reporter had obtained a copy of a memo to NASA employees from Glenn Mahone, . . " p

"I decided to write a letter, . . "

"I began my lecture, . . "

"I met local resident, . . "

The actual science that is in the book six,
The description of the government processes around the science OH MY GOD MAKE IT STOP,

This is Hansen's big, fat I Fucking Told You So, and I do not begrudge him that, But it did not make for a engaging book, To say the least.

I wish this were better written because it's so important and from such an authoritative figure, However, it is hard to read and has skippable political reminiscence passages,
The latter can be summarised in one word censorship, both by the US administration and NASA muzzling their scientists.
This seems to surprise Hansen, He also has touching faith in informing the public, They don't care, James. They're only concerned with sitelinkStrictly Come Dancing and their pay cheques, Effective action will have to bypass them as well as government,
There is some meat: the distinction between climate forcings and feedback loops is a useful clarification, Forcings include CO, volcanoes, the Earth's axial tilt and precession the latter two driving the sitelinkPleistocene's recurrent ice ages.
Feedbacks include sitelinkArctic ice cover and hence the planet's albedo, This is what tips the climate rapidly between hot and cold, Recent news on that front should have the whole of humanity racing for the fire pumps,
This Generation Becalmed
In another section of the book Hansen keeps his thoughts about the legal system mercifully short but does title it "Obstruction of Justice".
I think he's being ironic: the Law has nothing to do with justice and, like government and the public, needs to be bypassed.

A book for the converted, alas, but I think I've already stated that more information isn't going to kick sitelinkindustrial civilisation out of its inertia anyway.
Witness, Preacher or Prophet

James Hansen tells us, “My role is that of a witness, not a preacher.
” In the lates he was one of the first major climate scientists to publicly state that anthropogenic global warming was a serious problem.
While the idea was not new, he was willing to draw firm conclusions from evidence that most other scientists did not consider to be sufficiently certain.
His predictions turned out to be reasonably accurate, Now he is trying to repeat this accomplishment, making even bolder predictions from less certain evidence, In this book we witness a distinguished scientist taking on the role of not just preacher, but prophet, going well beyond the majority of his colleagues in his view of the consequences of climate change.


The main storyline is Hansen's interactions with government, embedded with lengthy attempts to explain the underlying climate science.
His exploration of policy and interaction with government institutions is much better than his scientific explanations, To his credit, Hansen does not fit the usual environmentalist stereotype, He does not endorse voluntary poverty, nor does he think that conservation and renewable energy can provide the needed energy.
Instead, he thinks that nuclear energy is the only realistic option, He states, "The antinuke advocates are so certain of their righteousness that they would eliminate the availability of an alternative to fossil fuels, should efficiency and renewables prove inadequate to provide all electricity.
What if the utility executives are right, and we must choose between coal or nuclear for base load power Even if renewables are sufficient to produce the electricity needed by the United States, what about India and China.
It's one world, and we have to live with pollution from India and China, "

He rightly scorns "government greenwash" policies that pretend to reduce carbon dioxide production, Instead, he advocates "fee and dividend", better known as a carbon tax, All fuels that produce carbon dioxide are taxed, and the money is redistributed to the population, This avoids governmentknowsbest micromanagement of the energy sector, and gives incentives for industry and consumers to reduce carbon dioxide use.


He slams the capandtrade schemes favored by governments, which pretend to the public that someone else will pay the costs.
Governments, influenced by lobbyists, arbitrarily decide caps on emissions, The trade part will be controlled by the same people who brought us the banking crisis, They will make their fortune no matter what actually happens to carbon dioxide production,

Hansen does a surprisingly poor job explaining his profession, One would expect an introduction to teach the reader how the climate works, The usefulness of global average temperature, the meaning of climate sensitivity, the role of uncertainty should all be explained, There is none of this, or even any sense of the wonder and beauty of science, Instead he launches directly into rather technical dialog, interspersed with exhortations to the poor reader to pay attention, this is important.
I doubt the average reader will understand any of it, and will simply skip to Hansens conclusion of what it all really means.
It is unclear exactly who is the intended audience, The general public will appreciate the policy writing but will not be able to follow the science, Technical readers will not be impressed by the lack of references provided, which are mainly to his own papers, and not always published in peer reviewed journals.


As for the science itself, Hansen says that the best evidence for understanding climate is based on paleoclimate the study of the climates of the past.
He explicitly states that climate models cannot be used to determine climate sensitivity, which is the response of the climate to

changes in carbon dioxide levels.
In the chapter “A Visit to the White House” he estimates this climate sensitivity by comparing the difference in climate between the previous ice age and today.
This approach uses the Earth itself as a “computer model” which includes all the physics that affect climate, whether we presently understand them or not.
This is good, but then he does a quick calculation based on only two of the many feedbacks, to get a climate sensitivity ofdegrees for every doubling of carbon dioxide.


While this kind of technical detail may impress or intimidate the casual reader, one familiar with the subject knows that the value is reasonable but the precision is misleading.
Note that todays world is very different from that of the last ice age, Climate sensitivity is now lower because there is much less ice at low latitudes, which reduces a major feedback, It would be better to explain at a more basic level what an ice age is about, and what causes the transition to an interglacial climate like the one we are in now.
Demonstrate that small changes caused by variations in the Earths orbit led to large changes in climate, so changes we make to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may also have significant effects.
Then provide an appendix or decent references for someone who wants more detail, In this case the chapter summary did not even reference the relevant paper,

In “Dangerous Reticence” he talks about trying to publish his paper “Can We Defuse the Global Warming Time Bomb” in Scientific American, saying they wanted to change it to conform to the standard IPCC view.
Then he says, “with the papers extensive criticisms of the IPCC, there was no realistic change of publishing it in a regular scientific journal most of the likely referees for the paper were contributing authors of IPCC.
” This is exactly the same claim that global warming skeptics like to make, I do not know how much of a real problem there is with conformism in mainstream climate science, I think it is more likely that these works from both sides really fail to meet scientific standards, and whining about bias is a great excuse.
The chapter title refers to his perception that scientists are dangerously reticent to tell the public what they really know.
I suggest instead there is a benign reticence to publicly criticize a wellknown scientist who has lost his objectivity, knowing there is a legion of unscrupulous “skeptics” who will take advantage of anything to push their belief that climate change is not real.


The final two chapters not only describe a disaster, they are a disaster, In “The Venus Syndrome” he claims that burning all the available fossil fuels will cause a runaway greenhouse effect like on Venus.
This was based on a simulation with a an obsolete climate model, These models, as Hansen himself points out, are challenged to achieve what they are intended to, and cannot be relied upon to determine climate sensitivity.
But he then tortures the model by running it under conditions for which it was not designed to handle, Hansens claims have not been published in any peer reviewed journal, so they have little credibility, Those scientists who are experts in the field categorically state that a human induced runaway greenhouse effect is not possible.


The final chapter goes completely off the rails, including a hokey science fiction story about aliens coming to Earth to escape their ravaged planet, only to find the Earth wrecked by the human induced runaway greenhouse effect.
Then he asks people to indulge in the environmentalist version of greenwashing pointless demonstrations against coal plants and pipelines, This is great for making people feel they are “taking action” while ignoring the real work of building a sustainable energy system.


Several times in the book Dr, Hansen reports his encounters with his nemesis, atmospheric scientist Richard Lindzen of MIT, While they both agree on the basics of climate science, Lindzen soothes us with assurances about negative feedbacks such as reflective clouds or masses of warm moist air rising from the tropics, while Hansen scares us with methane time bombs and a runaway greenhouse effect.
In science it is useful to constantly challenge the current theories, But they both present their conclusions as revealed truth to their legions of uncritical believers, the deniers and the doomsters respectively.
Hansens unfortunate transition from respected scientist to prophet of doom is only going to further polarize the climate change debate.
Because Hansen does not clearly distinguish between his own and the mainstream view, and does not discuss uncertainty, the critical reader will have a hard time knowing what to believe.
This book is a lost opportunity to appraise the public on the current state of climate science,
In Storms of My Grandchildren, Dr, James Hansenthe nations leading scientist on climate issuesspeaks out for the first time with the full truth about global warming: The planet is hurtling even more rapidly than previously acknowledged to a climatic point of no return.


Although the threat of humancaused climate change is now widely recognized, politicians have failed to connect policy with the science, responding instead with ineffectual remedies dictated by special interests.
Hansen shows why President Obamas solution, capandtrade, which Al Gore has signed on to, wont work why we must phase out all coal and whyparts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a goal we must achieve if our children and grandchildren are to avoid global meltdown and the horrific storms of the books title.
This urgent manifesto bucks conventional wisdom including the Kyoto Protocol and is sure to stir controversy, but Hansenwhose climate predictions have come to pass again and again, beginning in thes when he first warned Congress about global warmingis the single most credible voice on the subject worldwide.


Hansen paints a devastating, alltoorealistic picture of what will happen in the near future, mere years and decades from now, if we follow the course were on.
But he is also an optimist, showing that there is still time to do what we need to save the planet.
Urgent, strong action is needed, and this book will be key in setting the agenda going forward to create a groundswell, a tipping point, to save humanityand our grandchildrenfrom a dire fate more imminent than we had supposed.
Hansen provides a fascinating description of his experiences at NASA and how climate change was dealt with by the Bush administration and the politics that came with the position.
He then turns to the science and discusses why it's so important to change course,

Don't expect all science, I wish there had been more too because he writes about the science so well and in layman terms.
It is not a textbook, it's a look into Hansens perspective and the motivations of his passion whilst providing the ready with a lot of great information on climate and the issues humanity is going to face as emissions of any magnitude continue.
"Greenwashing, expressing concern about global warming and the environment while taking no actions to actually stabilize climate or preserve the environment, is prevalent in the United States and other countries, even those presumed to be the "greenest.
"

"If the sun becomes brighter, it is a climate forcing that would tend to make earth warmer, A humanmade change of atmospheric composition is also a climate forcing, "

"The largest humanmade climate forcing is due to greenhouse gases, "

"What is clear is that humanmade climate forcings added in just the past several decades already dwarf the natural forcings associated with the Little Ice Age.
" The Little Ice Age ended inwhen New York Harbor and the River Thames frequently froze over

, . . and I'm only on page, Scary.

I didn't actually finish it it was a little heady for me, The book is very statistical and delves into the political and social aspects of climate change, Hanson testified before Vice President Cheney and other groups during the Bush administration to his frustration, Recommended for environmental students. It's on the new book shelf now, .