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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.

James Hansen

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James Hansen
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: March 29
Astrophysicist
Environmentalist
Physicist
Professor
University Teacher
Denison
Iowa
James Hansen
James E. Hansen
James E Hansen
J. E. Hansen
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Hansen
Hansen J
Hansen J.
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Jim Hansen
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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.
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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.
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We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life.
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The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change.
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The fact is fossil fuel carbon will stay in the surface climate system for millennia.
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Some Democrats deserve to be criticized.
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What we are doing to the future of our children, and the other species on the planet, is a clear moral issue.
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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.
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I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change. No longer than a decade at most.
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As you get more global warming, you should see an increase in the extremes of the hydrological cycle - droughts and floods and heavy precipitation.
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It would be immoral to leave young people with a climate system spiraling out of control.
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The evidence for human-made climate change is overwhelming.
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Several times in Earth's history, rapid global warming occurred, apparently spurred by amplifying feedbacks. In each case, more than half of plant and animal species became extinct. New species came into being over tens and hundreds of thousands of years. But these are time scales and generations that we cannot imagine.
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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.
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'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.
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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.
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We are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption.
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The urgency derives from the nearness of climate tipping points.
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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.
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