Top NASA Climate Scientist Favors Capitol Climate Action

Global warming deniers and conservative politicians have fallen into a frenzy after Dr. James Hansen recorded a video in support of the upcoming Capitol Climate Action, a well-coordinated act civil disobedience coming up this Monday.

“If he wants to have a demonstration concerning global warming, coming to the Capitol is not a right choice,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-CA. “The bottom line is if Hansen wants to protest global warming, he should go to the National Cathedral and take it up with God rather than going to Capitol Hill.”

But NASA is defending Hansen’s right as a private citizen to engage in the campaign.

“He’s doing this as a private citizen on his own time and there’s nothing wrong with that,” said NASA spokesman Mark Hess. “There’s nothing partisan here. You don’t give up your rights to free speech by becoming a government employee.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/PPCFx1fMBeI&hl=en&fs=1]

Via: Fox

5 thoughts on “Top NASA Climate Scientist Favors Capitol Climate Action”

  1. Dr James Hansen is my hero, but he is misguided in his mission for a moritorium on coal-fired power plants. Fortunately, there are two emerging technologies that can profitably convert CO2 from coal-fired power plants into fuel:

    “Powered only by natural sunlight, an array of nanotubes is able to convert a mixture of carbon dioxide and water vapour into natural gas at unprecedented rates. Such devices offer a new way to take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into fuel or other chemicals to cut the effect of fossil fuel emissions on global climate, says Craig Grimes, from Pennsylvania State University, whose team came up with the device. Although other research groups have developed methods for converting carbon dioxide into organic compounds like methane, often using titanium-dioxide nanoparticles as catalysts, they have needed ultraviolet light to power the reactions. The researchers’ breakthrough has been to develop a method that works with the wider range of visible frequencies within sunlight. The team found it could enhance the catalytic abilities of titanium dioxide by forming it into nanotubes each around 135 nanometres wide and 40 microns long to increase surface area. Coating the nanotubes with catalytic copper and platinum particles also boosted their activity. The researchers housed a 2-centimetre-square section of material bristling with the tubes inside a metal chamber with a quartz window. They then pumped in a mixture of carbon dioxide and water vapour and placed it in sunlight for three hours. The energy provided by the sunlight transformed the carbon dioxide and water vapour into methane and related organic compounds, such as ethane and propane, at rates as high as 160 microlitres an hour per gram of nanotubes. This is 20 times higher than published results achieved using any previous method, but still too low to be immediately practical. If the reaction is halted early the device produces a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen known as syngas, which can be converted into diesel. “If you tried to build a commercial system using what we have accomplished to date, you’d go broke,” admits Grimes. But he is confident that commercially viable results are possible. “We are now working on uniformly sensitising the entire nanotube array surface with copper nanoparticles, which should dramatically increase conversion rates,” says Grimes, by at least two orders of magnitude for a given area of tubes. This work suggests a “potentially very exciting” application for titanium-dioxide nanotubes, says Milo Shaffer, a nanotube researcher at Imperial College, London. “The high surface area, small critical dimensions, and open structure [of these nanotubes] apparently provide a relatively high activity,” he says.” –“Sun-powered device converts CO2 into fuel,” NewScientist.com

    “Still as ambitious as ever, (Craig Venter) just announced at the TED conference: “We have modest goals of replacing the whole petrochemical industry and becoming a major source of energy, we think we will have fourth-generation fuels in about 18 months, with CO2 as the fuel stock.” What’s this fourth-generation fuel he’s talking about? Biofuel alternatives to oil are third-generation. The next step is life forms that feed on CO2 and give off fuel such as methane gas as waste, according to Venter.” –“Geneticist Craig Venter Wants to Create Fuel from CO2,” TreeHugger.com

    Nanotubes or 4th generation fuel production, both potential clean coal technologies that convert CO2 into fuel profitably. On the other hand, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is unfeasible:

    Vaclav Smil, an energy expert at the University of Manitoba, has estimated that capturing and burying just 10 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted over a year from coal-fire plants at current rates would require moving volumes of compressed carbon dioxide greater than the total annual flow of oil worldwide — a massive undertaking requiring decades and trillions of dollars. “Beware of the scale,” he stressed.

  2. argh, my post wound up on some nasa thread and that 9:12 post ^ was replying to that mixup. this site is screwy maybe, lol.

  3. well tofupup you can have your opinion, albeit wrong and uneducated, but don’t try to portray it as fact-based.

    The FACT is that many of the vick dogs have gone on to lead very normal pet lives and some are now extraordinary service animals.

    I wonder how you think you can speak for why anyone decided anything about the faron puppies? are you really an h$u$ ‘officer’ hiding that agenda here?

    just because you read that some pups might have been getting too aggressive with each other doesn’t mean ALL 90 or so were. it’s likely that the h$u$ made much ado about a couple of isolated incidents since that is their modus operandi.

    that’s the point here: evaluate the individuals not just the (negative media and h$u$) image. that’s how it should have been all along, not just now that the “humane” society has advocated and importuned thousands of dogs and all the major breeder’s operations destroyed in just the LAST FEW YEARS!

    your comments smack of AR hype – “real gamebred pitbulls”? lol. remember, not all labradors retreive, even those that do aren’t usually fool-proof and plenty of rat terriers would rather sit on the couch than go to ground.

    try to keep those FACTS in mind when you make these sweepingly innaccurate analogies.

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