[Stoves] James Hansen at Bush CEQ 2001

[Traveller]

Within three months of George W Bush White House  (29 March 2001), James
Hansen was invited to the Global Climate Change Working Group (I am pretty
sure that was at the White House CEQ).

Attached is a fax from the NASA General Counsel Office, with pages jumbled
(text begins at page 4). Also see "clean text" of a Senate testimony later
on (May 2001) at http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/features/200105_senate/.
Not what you would expect to hear from Hansen.

Basically, George W. Bush parroted Hansen in June 2001. :-) Black carbon
and ozone are culprits; Kyoto is fatally flawed. (Besides, causing
firestorms in Afghanistan and Iraq didn't count in the IPCC inventories.)

Hansen's primary work behind this was a paper with Sato in PNAS 2000, where
they wrote,

"rapid warming in recent decades has been driven *mainly by non-CO2 GHGs*
such as CFCs, CH4, and N2O, *not by the products of fossil fuel burning,
CO2 and aerosols, the positive and negative climate forcings of which are
partially offsetting.*"

"assuming only that our estimates are approximately correct, *we assert
that the processes producing the non-CO2 GHGs have been the primary drive
for climate change in the past century*."

Then they proposed an "alternative scenario" for the first half of the 21st
century, where global warming is limited by reducing non-CO2 GHGs. "The
next 50 years is the most difficult time to affect CO2 emissions, because
of the inertia of global energy systems.. The essence of the strategy
is to *halt
and even reverse the growth of non-CO2 GHGs and to reduce black carbon
emissions. Such a strategy would mitigate an inevitable, even if slowing,
growth of CO2." *

In turn "A key feature of this strategy is its focus on air pollution,
especially aerosols and tropospheric ozone, which have human health and
ecological impacts. If the World Bank were to support investments in modern
technology and air quality control in India and China, for example, the
reductions in tropospheric ozone and black carbon would not only improve
local health and agricultural productivity but also benefit global climate and
air quality."

Anybody who has bothered to read radiative forcing graphs in IPCC reports -
in particular, those with 20-year GWP - and the literature on forcing by
"sectors", not just by species (before many species are coemitted), would
understand this readily.

Hansen then changed his views about CO2 as he grasped the scale of China
coal power growth. Even so, I don't think he ever got to the point of
calculating China's share in radiative forcing - if such calculations are
possible. Because China's coal power increased CO2 emissions but also
co-emissions of cooling species (SO2 and other aerosols). He wrote a paper
on China power some three years ago, but his data on SO2 controls in China
seemed to be shaky. I dug a little bit and gave up.

Still, to the extent that China coal power substituted direct inefficient
use of coal in all sectors of the economy, the net effect on warming as
well as Chinese health was welcome.

Why, Kirk Smith recently argued that near-term gains in north China's air
quality are to be found not in further control of power sector emissions
but in reducing the residential/commercial sector use of coal. (I am
writing from memory; please look up Smith's website or write to me
separately.)

I happen to think BACT approach to China's solid fuel use in residential,
commercial and small industrial sectors may be cheaper and quicker than
electrifying all in the next 20 years.

Let's see if President Clinton II is more enlightened that Professor Obama.


Nikhil
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