President 'has four years to save Earth' - Observer

[Eugene]

Source: The Observer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/18/jim-hansen-obama">President 'has four years to save Earth'
US must take the lead to avert eco-disaster

Robin McKie in New York
The Observer, Sunday 18 January 2009

Barack Obama has only four years to save the world. That is the stark assessment
of Nasa scientist and leading climate expert Jim Hansen who last week warned only
urgent action by the new president could halt the devastating climate change that
now threatens Earth. Crucially, that action will have to be taken within Obama's
first administration, he added.

Soaring carbon emissions are already causing ice-cap melting and threaten to
trigger global flooding, widespread species loss and major disruptions of weather
patterns in the near future. "We cannot afford to put off change any longer," said
Hansen. "We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have
only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America
must take the lead."

Hansen said current carbon levels in the atmosphere were already too high to
prevent runaway greenhouse warming. Yet the levels are still rising despite all
the efforts of politicians and scientists.

Only the US now had the political muscle to lead the world and halt the rise,
Hansen said. Having refused to recognise that global warming posed any risk at all
over the past eight years, the US now had to take a lead as the world's greatest
carbon emitter and the planet's largest economy. Cap-and-trade schemes, in which
emission permits are bought and sold, have failed, he said, and must now be
replaced by a carbon tax that will imposed on all producers of fossil fuels. At
the same time, there must be a moratorium on new power plants that burn coal -
the world's worst carbon emitter.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/18/jim-hansen-obama

[Aviation Pro]

1. Earth has been around for 4,000,000,000 years....

...President Obama may have four years to save the human race, but I think the Earth will stick around for a while longer.

[Lint Head]

2. Until it is consumed by a dying sun.

:dem:

[Aviation Pro]

3. In about 5,000,000,000 years.....

...I think we'll have other issues by then (such as how are we going to dry out Europa to get some sort of land mass).

[Dogmudgeon]

4. Much sooner than that, I fear

The Sun is slowly increasing its output -- though far too slowly to have anything to do with global warming. But it's fast enough that in about 800 million years, the Earth will be too hot to support life.

Mars should be okay for about another 500 million years, but the output of the full red giant phase of the Sun may be required to warm up Europa.

Buy why worry? The world is going to end during the 2012 Christmas Shopping Season, anyway.

--p!
Ho-ho-ho!

[nam78_two]

5. True.nt

[GliderGuider]

6. Let's not let a a colloqualism distract us from the fearsome truth

Carping about the use of the shorthand "save the world", while not at the same time acknowledging the real issue being put forward does a great disservice to us all.

Hansen's message is that we are so close to the precipice of irreversible change that one president's term has become the crucial period. In that short time the tipping points will accumulate to such an extent as to make climate stabilization a lost dream.

We all know that the rocks of the earth are not under threat -- the world that needs saving is our own, and that of all the life that shares this delicate drop of blue.

Four fucking years -- this is what it has come down to.

[excess_3]

7. the US is not the whole world .n/t