Hansen Says Tar-Sands Oil Makes Climate Change Unsolvable
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Exploiting oil and gas trapped in tar sands and shale threatens to make climate change “unsolvable,” said James Hansen, the former NASA scientist who raised concerns about global warming in the 1980s.
Conventional reserves of oil, gas and coal already have more carbon embedded in them than is safe to burn without causing “dangerous” levels of warming beyond a rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since industrialization, Hansen told a U.K. panel of lawmakers today.