James Hansen Quotes

We're running out of time.

The climate dice are now loaded. Some seasons still will be cooler than the long-term average, but the perceptive person should notice that the frequency of unusually warm extremes is increasing. It is the extremes that have the most impact on people and other life on the planet.

Imagine a giant asteroid on a direct collision course with Earth. That is the equivalent of what we face now with climate change, yet we dither.

We are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption.

If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO₂ will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm [parts per million] to at most 350 ppm... If the present overshoot of this target CO₂ is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.

It would be immoral to leave young people with a climate system spiraling out of control.

Global warming has already triggered a sea level rise that could reach from 6 metres (19.69 ft) to 25 metres (27.34 yards).

What we are doing to the future of our children, and the other species on the planet, is a clear moral issue.

How long have we got? We have to stabilize emissions of carbon dioxide within a decade, or temperatures will warm by more than one degree... We don't have much time left.

It's as certain that as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, we will just keep burning them.

What has become clear from the science is that we cannot burn all of the fossil fuels without creating a very different planet.

We have at most ten years—not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions.

Planet Earth, creation, the world in which civilization developed, the world with climate patterns that we know and stable shorelines, is in imminent peril.

Politicians think that if matters look difficult, compromise is a good approach. Unfortunately, nature and the laws of physics cannot compromise - they are what they are.

Recent warming coincides with rapid growth of human-made greenhouse gases. The observed rapid warming gives urgency to discussions about how to slow greenhouse gas emissions.

The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.

There is still time to act and avoid a worsening climate but we are wasting precious time.

Global warming isn't a prediction. It is happening.

Only in the last few years did the science crystallize, revealing the urgency - our planet really is in peril. If we do not change course soon, we will hand our children a situation that is out of their control.

Coral reefs, the rain forest of the ocean, are home for one-third of the species of the sea. Coral reefs are under stress for several reasons, including warming of the ocean, but especially because of ocean acidification, a direct effect of added carbon dioxide. Ocean life dependent on carbonate shells and skeletons is threatened by dissolution as the ocean becomes more acid.

The climate system is being pushed hard enough that change will become obvious to the man in the street in the next decade.

The five warmest years over the last century occurred in the last eight years.

The evidence for human-made climate change is overwhelming.

Interference with communications of science to the public has been greater during the current administration than at any time in my career.

I tend to be naive and gullible, I guess, but I try to believe that governments believe what they say.

If we fail to act, we will end up with a different planet.

Scientists will say we can't blame global warming for any single event. In a sense that's right, but the fact that the frequency and intensity of these events is increasing you can blame on global warming.

...the global surface albedo [surface whiteness] and greenhouse gas changes account for practically the entire global climate change.

The five-year mean global temperature has been flat for the last decade

Because cap and trade is enforced through the selling and trading of permits, it actually perpetuates the pollution it is supposed to eliminate.

We have to, in the next ten years, begin to decrease the rate of carbon dioxide emissions and then flatten it out. If that doesn't happen in ten years, we're going to be passing certain tipping points. If the ice sheets begin to disintegrate, what can you do about it? You can't tie a rope around an ice sheet.

The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change.

The last time the world was three degrees warmer than today-which is what we expect later this century-sea levels were 25m higher. So that is what we can look forward to if we don't act soon.

We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life.

Policy decisions on climate change are being deliberated every day by those without full knowledge of the science, and often with intentional misinformation spawned by special interests.

The 5-year mean global temperature has been flat for the last decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slow down in the growth rate of net climate forcing.

...99 percent confident that the world really was getting warmer and that there was a high degree of probability that it was due to human-made greenhouse gases.

As species are exterminated by shifting climate zones, ecosystems can collapse, destroying more species.

A level of no more than 350 ppm is still feasible, with the help of reforestation and improved agricultural practices, but just barely - time is running out.

Money has too big an influence on our politics in Washington and somehow we need to do something about that.

The fact is fossil fuel carbon will stay in the surface climate system for millennia.

We have at most ten years - not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions... We are near a tipping point, a point of no return, beyond which the built in momentum and feedbacks will carry us to levels of climate change with staggering consequences for humanity and all of the residents of this planet.

Adding CO2 to the air is like throwing another blanket on the bed.

As you get more global warming, you should see an increase in the extremes of the hydrological cycle - droughts and floods and heavy precipitation.

The question is not whether to close the parks, but how to accomplish this goal.

The carbon emissions from tar shale and tar sands would initiate a continual unfolding of climate disasters over the course of this century. We would be miserable stewards of creation. We would rob our own children and grandchildren.

Burning all the fossil fuels will destroy the planet we know, Creation, the planet of stable climate in which civilization developed.

Jail threats did not dissuade Martin Luther King - and intergenerational justice is a moral issue of comparable magnitude to civil rights.

Rising carbon price is essential to 'decarbonize' the economy - to remove the nation towards the era beyond fossil fuels.

As a government employee, you can't testify against the government.