Pirate's Cove

Let’s see: Climahysterics and Bush haters around the USA and the world have whined about Bush pulling the US out of the Kyoto Protocol, which we were never in to start with, of course, and now we have one of the Climahysterics favorite loons saying this

Current approaches to deal with climate change are ineffectual, one of the world’s top climate scientists said today in a personal new year appeal to Barack Obama and his wife Michelle on the urgent need to tackle global warming.

With less than three weeks to go until Obama’s inauguration, Prof James Hansen, head of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, asked the recently appointed White House science adviser Prof John Holdren to pass the missive directly to the president-elect.

Hansen lambasts the current international approach of setting targets to be met through “cap and trade” schemes as not up to the task. “This approach is ineffectual and not commensurate with the climate threat. It could waste another decade, locking in disastrous consequences for our planet and humanity,” the Hansens wrote.

Got that? A primo climahysteric has called all the current schemes a complete waste of time.

He provides three ideas for fixing “climate change” (they can’t call it global warming anymore, what with temps being flat or going down, especially when it was NASA and Hanson who got caught cooking the books for October temperature data)

Hansen advocates a three-pronged attack on the climate problem – all measures he has promoted before. First, he wants a moratorium and phase-out of coal-fired power stations – which he calls “factories of death” – that do not incorporate carbon capture and storage.

“Coal is responsible for as much atmospheric carbon dioxide as the other fossil fuels combined, and its reserves make coal even more important for the long run,” the Hansens wrote.

Second, he proposes a “carbon tax and 100% dividend”: a mechanism for putting a price on carbon without raising money for government coffers. The idea is to tax carbon at source, then redistribute the revenue equally among taxpayers, so high carbon users are penalised while low carbon users are rewarded.

Finally, Hansen wants a renewed research effort into so-called fourth generation nuclear plants, which can use nuclear waste as fuel. “In our opinion [fourth generation nuclear power] deserves your strong support, because it has the potential to help solve past problems with nuclear power: nuclear waste, the need to mine for nuclear fuel, and release of radioactive material.”

I’m not a big coal fan, not because of CO2, but, face it, it really is dirty, not to mention the danger to coal miners. I’m all for his idea with nuclear plants, which is the point where most climahysterics and progressives are saying “no freakin’ way!” His 2nd idea sounds like a big 3 card monte scheme.