dr. james hansen, welcome back to democracy now. come to estimates this catastrophe, historic, apocalyptic, these are all words that can be used to describe climate change, climate chaos, but those links are not being made. can we make those links? dr. hansen: yes, they are very clear links and we mentioned three of them. one is sea level. sea level was stable for the last thousand years but with the beginning of changes in atmospheric composition caused by burning fossil fuels mainly, the planet is getting warmer and sea level has begun to go up because the ocean is getting warmer and because ice is melting. on a global average it has gone up about 20 centimeters, about eight inches, however it is not the same every place. along the east coast and the gulf coast it is larger than the global average, a good foot. that is this significant contribution to the magnitude of the storm surges that drive the water onto houston and the other regions. that is one thing. another is the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is increasing bec

dr. hansen has written a book on this that i highly recommend, though it is probably not as bad as what someof the accounts have made it out to be, but we have always had that problem. the national security statement we have today is really only a product of that mid-1950's to the present. if you look at american wars prior to that, we are never really prepared for what we are facing. are learning these lessons, we are going up against guys that have been doing it for a wild, and they beat on us quite a bit before we figure it -- we are going up against guys that have been doing it for a while. >> [inaudible] that it met with a modicum of success, but it , not to me after that knowing what had really passed on -- am i right? dr. faulkner: the delimit a deal with in world war i -- do you go for a small offensive or limit your objective, grabbed a piece of terrain and hold it, or do you go for the breakthrough? what will happen around hill 60 in that same neighborhood is that type of precisely prepared set piece battle. you have the time, you bring up the forces, you studied the enemy. tunnels