Maybe these two smoke from the same Bong
NASA Scientist: Put CEOs On Trial for Global Warming Lies
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
The heads of major fossil-fuel companies who spread disinformation about global warming should be "tried for high crimes against humanity and nature," according to a leading climate scientist.
Dr. James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, sounded the alarm about global warming in testimony before a Senate subcommittee exactly 20 years ago.
He returned to the topic Monday with a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., given to the Worldwatch Institute.
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"Special interests have blocked the transition to our renewable energy future," Hansen writes in an opinion piece posted on the institute's Web site. "Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil fuel companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, just as tobacco companies discredited the link between smoking and cancer. Methods are sophisticated, including funding to help shape school textbook discussions of global warming."
"CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of the long-term consequences of continued business as usual," Hansen continues. "In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature."
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Later in the day, Hansen appeared at an informal briefing on Capitol Hill with Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., head of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.
Hansen told Congress that the world has long passed the "dangerous level" for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and needs to get back to 1988 levels. He said Earth's atmosphere can only stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises.
"We're toast if we don't get on a very different path," Hansen, who is sometimes called the godfather of global warming science, told The Associated Press. "This is the last chance."
To cut emissions, Hansen said coal-fired power plants that don't capture carbon dioxide emissions shouldn't be used in the United States after 2025, and should be eliminated in the rest of the world by 2030. That carbon capture technology is still being developed and not yet cost efficient for power plants.
"We see a tipping point occurring right before our eyes," Hansen told the AP before a luncheon at the National Press Club.
"The Arctic is the first tipping point and it's occurring exactly the way we said it would."
Hansen, echoing work by other scientists, said that in five to 10 years, the Arctic will be free of sea ice in the summer.
Asked by a reporter about the feasibility of putting corporate CEOs on trial, Hansen dodged the question, stressing instead the need to take stronger measures against global warming.