NASA tells Barack Obama Australia is destroying earth with coal emissions

AUSTRALIA'S use of coal and carbon emissions policies are guaranteeing the "destruction of much of the life on the planet", a leading NASA scientist has written in a letter to Barack Obama.
The head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Professor James Hansen, has written an open letter to Barack Obama calling for a moratorium on coal-fired power stations and the use of next-generation nuclear power.

In the letter he says: "Australia exports coal and sets atmospheric carbon dioxide goals so large
as to guarantee destruction of much of the life on the planet."

Prof Hansen said goals and caps on carbon emissions were practically worthless because of the long lifetime of carbon dioxide in the air.

“Instead a large part of the total fossil fuels must be left in the ground. In practice, that means coal,” he wrote.

“Nobody realistically expects that the large readily available pools of oil and gas will be left in the ground.”

Prof Hansen said that emissions reduction targets, like Kevin Rudd’s goal to cut emissions by a minimum of 5 per cent and up to 15 per cent by 2020, do not work.

“This approach is ineffectual and not commensurate with the climate threat,” he wrote of reduction plans.

“It could waste another decade, locking in disastrous consequences for our planet and humanity.”

Professor Hansen also works in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and has given testimony on climate change to the US Congress.

He said he wrote to Mr Obama as the incoming US president is in a position to instigate global change and "his presidency may be judged in good part on whether he was able to turn the tide (on climate change) - more important, the futures of young people and other life will depend on that".

He called for the end of coal plants that do not capture and store carbon dioxide and for funding for "fourth generation" nuclear power plants that could run on material now regarded as waste.

Tags: AUSTRALIA, NASA, Barack Obama, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, coal and carbon emissions, us president, life on the planet