ENVIRONMENT: Debate Shifts to Irreparable Change

Nothing can anger me more than the impending environmental destruction of our gorgeous, rare ecosphere (without which life will be a harsh hell in ways unimagineable) except the fact that IT COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED!

And nothing is a more clear indicator of the dangerous self-interests of corporate power--and the need to regulate and control that soul-less quest for power--than their owners concerted, long-term attack on and smearing of, the scientists and activists who have worked slavishly for the good of all in the name of the environment's preservation.

Debate on Climate Shifts to Issue of Irreparable Change: "'It's not something you can adapt to,' Hansen said in an interview. 'We can't let it go on another 10 years like this. We've got to do something.'

Princeton University geosciences and international affairs professor Michael Oppenheimer, who also advises the advocacy group Environmental Defense, said one of the greatest dangers lies in the disintegration of the Greenland or West Antarctic ice sheets, which together hold about 20 percent of the fresh water on the planet. If either of the two sheets disintegrates, sea level could rise nearly 20 feet in the course of a couple of centuries, swamping the southern third of Florida and Manhattan up to the middle of Greenwich Village.

While both the Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets as a whole are gaining some mass in their cold interiors because of increasing snowfall, they are losing ice along their peripheries. That indicates that scientists may have underestimated the rate of disintegration they face in the future, Oppenheimer said. Greenland's current net ice loss is equivalent to an annual 0.008 inch sea level rise.

The effects of the collapse of either ice sheet would be 'huge,' Oppenheimer said. 'Once you lost one of these ice sheets, there's really no putting it back for thousands of years, if ever.'

Last year, the British government sponsored a scientific symposium on 'Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change,' which examined a number of possible tipping points. A book based on that conference, due to be published Tuesday, suggests that disintegration of the two ice sheets becomes more likely if average temperatures rise by more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit, a prospect 'well within the range of climate change projections for this century.'"

(UPDATE--hat tip to AMERICABlog) :

The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.

Dr. Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions. "They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public," he said.

Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at the space agency, said there was no effort to silence Dr. Hansen. "That's not the way we operate here at NASA," Mr. Acosta said. "We promote openness and we speak with the facts."

He said the restrictions on Dr. Hansen applied to all National Aeronautics and Space Administration personnel. He added that government scientists were free to discuss scientific findings, but that policy statements should be left to policy makers and appointed spokesmen.

Mr. Acosta said other reasons for requiring press officers to review interview requests were to have an orderly flow of information out of a sprawling agency and to avoid surprises. "This is not about any individual or any issue like global warming," he said. "It's about coordination."

Dr. Hansen strongly disagreed with this characterization, saying such procedures had already prevented the public from fully grasping recent findings about climate change that point to risks ahead.