James Hansen’s Storms of my Grandchildren

The Scientific is Political and Personal: NASA Scientist James Hansen Reaches Out in Storms of My Grandchildren

In June 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen testified to the U.S. Senate that global warming was underway and humans were a factor. As Hansen recounts in Storms of my Grandchildren, he thought U.S. politicians would do the logical thing: begin scaling down the use of fossil fuels and transitioning to alternative sources of energy. Over twenty years later the U.S. has yet to do either, even as climate change is occurring more rapidly and violently than many had predicted. Frustrated and alarmed, this book is Hansen’s scientific, political, and personal meditation on the issue, spliced with images of his grandchildren to remind us exactly what climate change is really about.

The book begins with Hansen’s discussion of climate change science and his reports to U.S. and world politicians, eventually leading to his frustration that his research and findings were so often drawn upon selectively for political purposes, such as former Vice President Dick Cheney focusing on the role of soot in global warming as a way to potentially downplay the role of carbon dioxide, which is the main contributor. Such inside peeks into politics and power based on Hansen’s first-hand accounts is interesting and illuminating. Even more interesting is learning about the history of the world’s climate from one of the top scientists in the world on the issue, whose calculations on climate change have proved remarkably accurate again and again.

Then again, this book suggests that Hansen has so often been accurate because he is so meticulous with his research. This means he will often interrupt really interesting discussions of the earth’s climate with really banal discussions about particularities of data, like accounting for both evaporation and ice sheets when calculating the ratio of oxygen-16 to oxygen-18 within ocean sedimentation to determine past ocean temperatures. I hope there’s no quiz at the end. And such discussions are often spliced with phrases that amount to, “I know this is boring, but…” which is almost always the surest way to bore someone. Hansen, however, does this for a reason: he wants you to know exactly what data he is working with and how he arrived at his conclusions – how he knows what he knows.

Further, such careful consideration is the only way to know what to expect on such an important issue as the future of our climate. And it does not look good. Like the majority of scientists involved in climate research, Hansen is particularly alarmed at the prospect of setting loose into the atmosphere the vast stores of methane hydrates within melting glaciers, which is believed to be the cause of a 5°C rise in global atmospheric temperature and cascade of species extinctions 55 million years ago. Even more disconcerting to Hansen is the potential that such events could act as a catalyst to runaway warming and lead, eventually, to an atmosphere like Venus, so saturated with carbon dioxide its surface can melt lead.

Just how many more emissions could we let off before reaching such runaway warming? Hansen points to several signs that we are already on the verge, and that continued “business-as-usual” fossil fuel use will most certainly tip us over, quite possibly within the next few decades. Calculating the degree of climate forcings on the planet, Hansen argues we need to not only begin reducing fossil fuel consumption, but get back to a carbon dioxide level of 350 parts per million (ppm), down from our present (and steadily growing) 387 ppm.

How? Looking at various government and agency estimates of how many fossil fuels remain (an issue with little consensus, to say the least, with many arguing we may have already passed global peak oil production), Hansen determines that what oil and conventional gas remains is largely out of U.S. hands, but that runaway warming could be prevented by phasing out coal use, particularly since coal is more abundant and has a higher carbon output than oil or gas. To do so, Hansen calculates that we must half emissions by 2020, and phase out coal emissions entirely by 2030.

Hansen then describes his attempts to get world leaders to phase out old coal plants, a process that went about as well as his attempts to get them to recognize climate change, and his frustration with their inaction and greenwashing. Hansen therefore decides to take his own action, and gets arrested for protesting mountaintop removal, the practice of literally blowing the tops off mountains to more “efficiently” dig out the coal inside. He takes faith in the people and communities who have worked so hard to help stop the new fleet of over 100 conventional coal plants proposed by the second Bush Administration, a little-known, national grassroots movement described in Ted Nace’s Climate Hope. At various points, Hansen calls out politicians on their empty promises and backpedaling, and it’s refreshing to see a scientist who accepts that the fight to save our climate has become – however sadly – an intensely political one, even as he chastises himself for not being “objective” when he does so (note to the physical scientists from a social scientist: NOT speaking up does not make you objective, although it certainly makes you ineffectual).

In the end, it is Hansen’s personal reflections that make this book so interesting: it is not just a detailed discussion of climate science, it is the personal journey of a scientist who begins applying the same calculations to politicians and their energy policy that he does to climate, and doesn’t at all like what he sees. He understands almost better than anyone what inaction would mean, and this is not an option for him, because of his grandchildren. This is the common thread of humanity that Hansen is trying to draw upon in this book, and even though we may live in an age where such pleas are too often mocked, this is one we should definitely heed.

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