NASA's Hansen Explains Decision to Join Keystone Pipeline Protests

What an idiot!

I take Dr. Hansen with a grain of salt.  That he believes his cause is with out doubt.  However, I have a list of scores of scientists, his scientific peers, from global centers of excellent, who hold, with equal vigor, that he is wrong.  None work for fossil fuel interests.

I am not a scientist.  I am an engineer, with a score of nukes and two score fossil fuel power plants in my experience, a handful of degrees and Professional Engineering licenses, and decades assessing advanced energy technologies.  I am as certain about mankind's desparate need for carbon combustion as he is opposed to it.  Without combustion energy, billions will die.  Mankind needs the exothermic energy exploitation of carbon combustion for survival.  There are no substitutes; all "green" energies cost too much for base loaded supply.  This situation will exist for generations.  I have forgotten more about the economics of electric generation than he will ever learn.  He is not an engineer.

Dr. Hansen's livelihood is assured.  His theater, being arrested at the White House, is risk free.  If he trully believes in his cause, he should risk arrest in Tiananmen Square Beijing, China, or some place where political demonstrators carry real risk.  There are millions of livelihoods supported by coal usage, in my country, which have been destroyed by his politics.  They, and it, not he, have my empathy.

Here's what I don't get.  I have mounds of respect for Hansen and McKibben and I believe climate change is the definitive challenge of our generation.  I understand Hansen when he says we must leave some of this stuff in the ground.  I think extracting from the tar sands is bad for humanity, and I join them in protesting it in that regard.  But my problem is that if we, the U.S., don't take the oil, then Alberta and the companies extracting it will just figure out another way to get it to the world market.  It will wind up on a big tanker for China, even worse from a climate change perspective, and we will not have lessened our dependence on oil from less friendly nations.  That's where it breaks down for me.  McKibben told me something about the First Nations won't allow a pipeline west, suggesting that the U.S. rejecting the pipeline would have a greater effect on the project than I surmised.  But I'm having a hard time buying it.  And no one is really talking about it.  Link me to the First Nation chief who says it won't go thru his land, and show me that there are no alternative routes to get the oil to the world market.  If, by the State Dept saying no, we can stop the development altogether, then I'm all for it.  But I just think we're forcing them to get it to market elsewhere, at a net loss for fighting climate change.

There are numerous problems with the West Coast route: first, there are many First Nations people working against pipelines through their territory, and there are tribes filing court challenges  to enforce their sovreignty.  For example, this article about a JUly 2011 Canadian Supreme Court decision: Halalt First Nation v. British Columbia (Environment) - First Nations Alert - July 2011 (http://www.bht.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=864&Ite...) on a law firm’s Web site.  Terrain is also an issue.

Then, too, there is the reality that the United States cannot tell what to do within its own borders.  However, the Keystone XL pipeline would send tar-sands oil in as direct a route as possible to Texas, where it would be refined and sold overseas to the highest bidder.  Is that, led by TransCanada, not even headquartered in this country, a project for which we want to put our Midwestern environent, including farmland, pasture, the Nevada Sand Hills, and the Ogalalla Aquifer, proivder of drinking water to more than 2 million people and irrigation for much of our farmland, at risk?  No, keep your dirty oil money—find someone else to take environmental risks for your profit.

Immigration to the US is largely a matter of economics in the sending countries. Until the US backs improved work conditions and social opportunities in those nations, that stream will continue. It has little to do with open or closed borders. The US has "closed" borders now, albeit short of an Iron Curtain. Let's hope no one actually builds an iron curtain across our frontiers; such policies reflect internal shifts that are completely against the principles of our Constitution and its Enlightenment origins. We have to yield our adamant self-interest and soften it with concern for the people (and not just business elites) around the world who are affected.

But that's a separate issue, against the comment that it is somehow directly tied to the environmental problems of climate change. As for climate change and migration, you can bet that coastal flooding and other problems will dislocate tremendous numbers of people in the future. These migrations will be internal (within national borders) and external (across national borders). The potential for political violence in the world's future is exponentially higher than now. That includes people moving from the US coasts to interior high ground.

The US needs to acknowledge the good science and overcome its very business-friendly denialism that something is up, or that it has anything to do with human activities. As the emitters of 25% of the greenhouse gases, our burden is vastly greater than any other country's, barring perhaps China and Europe as a whole. This requires long-term thinking, not short-term planning based on quarterly profits statements.

So let me be the first "environmentalist" you've encountered (and I'm not the only one) who has thought a lot about immigration and climate change. You happen to make an inappropriate and prejudiced tie between current migration and climate issues (such as those raised by the Keystone XL pipeline and Canadian tar sands). The appropriate connection lies in the likely disruptions from the effects of warming, including environmental refugees and resulting political catastrophes.

Enviornemtalists are the ones trying to keep the Southern Illegals out. They know that the main diet of them is beans and beans cause methane release and we know what that does. For them to get a visa they would have to have Bean-o as a carbon credit.

Hansen, if you are concerned stop traveling except by foot or horse back. If you are concerned invent something to replace oil, magnets or something. Your the brain. If you are interested could you stop shooting those ships thru the sky to outer space for nothing.

Lets stop NASA for outerspace stuff and get them working on problems here. We can not just stop the world and everyone sit around breathing great air.

Is climate change happening? - Yes!

Is climate change man-made? - No!

James Hansen is a fool.

What is a fool? A fool is one who knows better but pretends otherwise!

God help us all!

Typical bullshit from an all caps moron, I think you just showed us all who the real fool is.

MY WORDS ARE BIGGER THEREFORE I MUST BE RIGHT!

That's one of the major problems, people are waiting for god to help us. The early trains, cars and airplanes were dismissed as fads and contraptions that would never work out. Wind, solar, Hydrogen, it's there to be used and perfected. But the oil barons are standing in the way!

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/18/dr-james-hansens-growing-financial...

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This makes me question his true motives....

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'Speaking out for what is right' is not the same thing as 'Saying what you are paid to say'.