Several posts on this site have mentioned a recent paper from James Hansen et al. -- Target CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim? (PDF) -- which argues that the official E.U. target of 550 ppm global atmospheric CO2 is far too high, and that anything over 350 ppm risks putting human beings in a world radically different than anything they've ever known.

The final version of the paper is now up, and there's been some good news coverage. For a good overview, see Ed Pilkington in The Guardian.

Juliet Eilperin at the Washington Post picks out the crucial part of Hansen's message -- "New Focus on Coal's Part in Warming" -- and pulls in backup from Gore:

Former vice president Al Gore said in an interview last week that he backs Hansen's approach, with one modification: Because carbon capture and storage technology is still not widely available, he said, "I think we ought to have a moratorium on any coal-fired power plant that doesn't have the capacity to capture carbon."

One thing that strikes me as rather ... odd is that Eilperin's story spends several 'graphs discussing an exchange of letters between Hansen and Jim Rogers of Duke Energy -- an exchange that occurred on Gristmill and, as far as I know, only on Gristmill. Yet the piece never links to either letter.

Guess Jack Shafer is onto something.