I met James Hansen several decades ago, and remember him all the back to  1988 when he first testified in Congress .  This was six years after I had left the U. S. Senate, a time period when global warming was an issue of importance only to a very few scientists.  I am on his mailing list, and this morning received his views on  The Venus Syndrome and Runaway Climate . Paper starts with: Mars, Venus and Earth   are the Goldilocks planets – too cold, too hot, and just right. These planets reveal how a planet’s surface temperature depends on atmospheric gases as well as the planet’s distance from the Sun. The physics is energy balance: a planet sends back to space, as (infrared) heat radiation, the energy in sunlight that it absorbs. Absorbed solar energy depends simply on the Sun’s irradiance, ⁱ   the planet’s distance from the Sun, and the fraction of incident sunlight that the planet absorbs (the remainder being reflected). The surface temperature is then ...

 I yesterday ended my posting with: Thus, all three points of view by Hanson, Horning and Mikiluna are wonderful and necessary, but hardly sufficient for real action.  What is the solution?  The FIRE, which will come.  Anything better?  Sure, the world truly committing to do something about climate warming.  Will this occur.  I think not.  So what?  The FIRE, a global crisis somewhat evocative of the James Baldwin's warning.   Hope I'm wrong . Then we are more and more learning that the leaders of some countries will not even bother showing up in Glasgow for the climate change talks.    Chinese President Xi Jinping will not attend the COP26 summit .  He went to the Paris Agreement session.   For a while   Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison   also wasn't planning to come.  However, while he now is going, he indicated that he might not be able to agree to anything because his country has n...