James Hansen is the man! - Robb

He warned congress about global warming and climate change in 1988.

He's dealt with the Bush administration's attempts to muzzle him and the truth he speaks.

He has remained a shining light of rationality and scientific veracity attempting to illuminate our dire situation for over 20 years.

He continues to draw attention to the folly of coal fired power plants as well as the failure of the IPCC to call for strong enough steps towards mitigation of climate change and resultant sea level rise.

He maintains that the safe level of Co2 in the atmosphere is 350ppm. We are now at 385ppm.

Yesterday he told congress that Big Energy executives who have waged a war of disinformation and caused delay in dealing with this issue, much the same as the tobacco industry blurred the connection between cancer and smoking, should be put on trial for crimes against humanity.

This puts me in the difficult position of disagreeing with George Monbiot who agrees with Hansen on most things but not that these executives should be prosecuted. See his article at the Guardian. Read his book Heat.

People will die as a direct result of human caused climate change, they are already dying in the poorest countries on earth due to drought, a large factor in the conflict in Darfur, brought on by global warming. Hundreds of millions will be facing drastic water shortages, and the conflict this brings, as the himalayan glaciers disappear, likely by 2030. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's, thousands of Americans, and over a hundred Brits have died due to our lack of response to our addiction to oil. Had we accepted our impact on the climate through our burning of oil back in 1988 as James Hansen suggested, we would likely never have gotten involved in a war for oil.

Until the developed world accepts that it's levels of consumption are destroying the foundations human survival and culture rest on we will continue to kill. We are not likely to accept it as a people as long as we are subjected to the sustained campaign of disinformation driven by the big energy companies. Even the US intelligence agencies view climate change as a security threat as reported on NPR.

I agree with James Hansen on this one.