Storms of My Grandchildren

The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe

By: James Hansen

Narrated by: John Allen Nelson

Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

In Storms of My Grandchildren, James Hansen - the nation's leading scientist on climate issues - speaks out for the first time with the full truth about global warming: the planet is hurtling even more rapidly than previously acknowledged to a climatic point of no return. Although Hansen was Al Gore's science adviser for the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, his recent data shows that our situation is even more dire today.

But politicians haven't made the connection between the policy and the science. Hansen shows why Gore's solution - cap and trade - won't work, why we must phase out all coal, and why 350 parts per million of carbon is a goal we must achieve in the next two decades if our children and grandchildren are to avoid global meltdown and the storms of the book's title.

This urgent manifesto bucks conventional wisdom (including the Kyoto Protocol) and is sure to stir controversy, but Hansen - whose climate predictions have come to pass again and again, beginning in the 1980s when he first warned Congress about global warming - is the single most credible voice on the subject worldwide.

Hansen paints a devastating but all-too-realistic picture of what will happen in the near future, mere years and decades from now, if we follow the course we're on. But he is also an optimist, showing that there is still time to do what we need to save the planet. Urgent, strong action is needed, and this book, released just before the Copenhagen Conference in December 2009, will be key in setting the agenda going forward to create a groundswell, a tipping point, to save humanity from a dire fate more imminent than we had supposed.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2009 James Hansen (P)2009 Tantor

Content - Excellent! Performance - Horr-i-ble!

Is there anything you would change about this book?

The narration. It's brutal.

How could the performance have been better?

If the...narrator would....speak in....complete sentences...without these awkward....pauses.

Do you think Storms of My Grandchildren needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

Eventually, yes. Global climate change data changes and the book should be updated with the most current information.

In Depth Look at our world by

In Depth Look at our world by author who takes the view that our grandchildren are important!
Has anyone tested the current ionosphere D' and F1 layers to see if they have changed i n depth over the years. I worked for the Federal Canadian atmospheric service in the 1950s testing earth radiation protection. More carbon dioxide makes radio transmission from the 'D' layer easier due to longer and more refraction of the RF energy. More 'D' layer energy gives earth extra heat. GREAT BOOK! Thanks James

Will we be the generation that turned a blind eye?

There is a gap between what those who study the details know, and what the public know. Although this book will not reach many of the latter, it will reach many on the fringe - it is therefore up to us to carry the banner and alert the sleeping masses to the facts: when we burn carbon we are playing with fire.
James Hansen carries the best credentials you could ask for: who else can say they predicted global warming in 1980? Of course this blessing is also a curse; critics can argue he is biased, and of course he is, but he is not delusional: he admits openly that models are far from good enough for us to rely on, but argues rather that the evidence of the past (paleoclimatology) gives a pretty good cause for concern. The risks are simply too great for "business as usual". Read this book and make up your own mind - afterwards, not before.

Essential Reading for All Mankind

Understanding this issue is critical to the survival of the species.

Hansen comes with impeccable credentials and has done a brilliant job of laying out the severity of the problem in terms that are both based in solid science and yet presented in a way that is approachable by a reader not trained as a scientist. He also avoids the trap many scientists get into of appearing dispassionate about matters of grave urgency. This is an ethically complicated choice for him, but I think he makes the right call. His presentation nicely separates science from emotion, but what he does in both areas is critical to a proper understanding of the issue.

Also, drilling down into a particular bit of detail, I have to say that I agree with him about the importance of the integral fast reactor (IFR) technology, and that he offers a particularly lucid argument for the importance of that. This is a widely misunderstood technology and he does a great job of clarifying some critical points.

Overall, it's an extremely good book, with a very good reader, and I heartily recommend it to anyone who even thinks they might be interested.

The most informative narative on Climate change

If you ever want to know all about the topic of climate change - this is it. The most detailed understanding of all aspects of CC including the political forces determined to delay doing anything about it. Only critisism is that there is a lot of reference to tables and graphs which are not available as part of the download. You can get the drift, but it would have been good to see the data. A must read/listen to every human being on the planet, because it going to affect every human on the planet.

Absolutely Essential!

If you have any interest in the issue of global warming, which we all should, this book is MANDITORY reading!

Read him before you rant about him!

In the early part of the 21st Century few figures have been as respected, and simultaneously reviled, as Jim Hansen.

Perhaps only his colleague Michael Mann has surpassed him as a target of the so-called climate 'skeptic' community - many of whom, sadly, fail to live up to their self-assumed name.

Many would have you believe that the man is a fanatic, an environmental extremist, a zealot - even a scientific incompetent and/or fabricator of facts!

Can I suggest that if you give this book a fair hearing - literally in the case of the audiobook - you simply cannot justly hold these claims to be true.

That Hansen is a sincere man is undoubtable. That he presents a compelling case for recognising the risks we are collectively running in conducting a radical experiment on the one atmosphere we possess is also beyond dispute.

Hansen, director of NASA'a Goddard Institute of Space Studies, has been doing this for a long time, and is one of the pioneers of the field of climatology, and is certainly the first internationally-known advocate of the phenomenon we know as Global Warming.

Certainly one can argue with some of his prescriptions; though a rapid phase-out of our reliance on coal can hardly be questioned if we accept the evidence, whether we should embrace nuclear power or adopt a tax-and-dividend strategy - as opposed to the market mechanism of cap-and-trade (now, ironically, opposed by many 'Free Traders', who tend to deny the reality of anthropogenic climate change) - will remain much more open to debate.

But these are exactly the points we should be discussing in the face of such a crisis, and nobody is a greater authority on the predicament that we are in than Hansen himself.

Hansen presents himself, convincingly, as a centrist, small 'c' conservative type of fellow, who really would be quite happy to just do the Science and avoid the abrasive scrutiny of the limelight, were it not for the fact that he feels he owes his grandchildren a livable future.

He presents the dangers graphically and clearly. He has concluded that 350 ppm of atmospheric CO2 is the maximum safe target - this, Dear Reader, is already well surpassed, and receding further into the distance with every day that passes. This suggestion of Hansen's has been the inspiration for Bill McKibben's climate action group, 350.org.

Beyond 350ppm we enter dangerous waters indeed. Hansen is certainly the most prominent qualified authority to warn of the most dire consequences, with regard to future sea-level, extreme weather events - the eponymous 'storms' - and even runaway feedback mechanisms leading to genuinely catastrophic consequences.

One can only hope things will never be that bad - but we ignore such voices, merely because what they are saying triggers our defensive 'that could never happen to me (or my children!)' reflex, at our peril.

The excursion into a short, pedagogic science-fiction story based on a future hyper-warmed Earth towards the end of the book constituted the only really jarring note in the story itself for me.

I also found the reading by John Allen Nelson to be mildly jarring - rather too uninflected for my taste, and somewhat monotonous.

But neither of these mild reservations is sufficient to mar my enthusiastic endorsement of this audiobook.

Excellent read

Dr. Hansen did a great a job explaining the mechanisms of global warming and its dire consequences. He does not only give very thorough explanation of the science of global warming, which is hard to find even in scientific literature at times, also discusses the role of politics on global warming. He is one of the very few people who can tell the story of global warming from start to this day, he did a great job. I should warn you though this is not very easy read/listen, scientific explanations would take some time to absorb fully.

Finally, he also wrote a short sci-fi story related to global warming at the end of the book which I enjoyed greatly.

A must read for anyone especially young people.

Terrifying, and terrific

Hansen is the country's most devoted and respected climate scientist. I expected a dry book but it's got humor and personal touches in the middle of all this frightening and factual information. Very listenable, (although I wonder sometimes if the narrator is pronouncing words correctly). If you are someone who ever thinks about the future and what awaits your children, this book is for you. It should probably be mandatory reading in schools. Climate change is without a doubt the biggest issue of this century.

Read it! Then research the details.

I have never read/heard of such an account of government corruption, censorship, and blaten propaganda.

This is a MUST READ, and I look forward to contacting the author.

Thank you for changing my life!