James Hansen Quotes

We're running out of time.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change. No longer than a decade at most.

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

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

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

Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.

The danger is that the compromises and special interests inherent in Kyoto-style targets and cap-and-trade will be accepted because of bureaucratic momentum.

The urgency derives from the nearness of climate tipping points.

Coal is the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on our planet.

If we drive our fellow species to extinction, we will leave a far more desolate planet for our descendants than the world we inherited from our elders.

The United States did not sign Kyoto, yet its emissions are not that different from the countries that did sign it.

'Goals' and 'caps' on carbon emissions are practically worthless, if coal emissions continue, because of the exceedingly long lifetime of carbon dioxide in the air.

The greatest danger hanging over our children and grandchildren is initiation of changes that will be irreversible on any time scale that humans can imagine.