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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.

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
J E Hansen
J. Hansen
J Hansen
Hansen
Hansen J
Hansen J.
Hansen J. E.
Hansen JE
Jim Hansen
Climate
Descendants
Species
Inherited
Planets
Extinction
Leave
Elders
Nature
Fellow
World
Fellows
Drive
Planet
Desolate

More quotes by James Hansen

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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.
James Hansen
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We are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption.
James Hansen
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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.
James Hansen
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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.
James Hansen
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The five warmest years over the last century occurred in the last eight years.
James Hansen
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Money has too big an influence on our politics in Washington and somehow we need to do something about that.
James Hansen
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Adding CO2 to the air is like throwing another blanket on the bed.
James Hansen
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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.
James Hansen
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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.
James Hansen
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The evidence for human-made climate change is overwhelming.
James Hansen
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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.
James Hansen
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In view of the immense power of natural weather and climate fluctuations and the great buffering capacity of the Earth, especially the ocean, it is easy to be skeptical about whether small anthropogenic changes of atmospheric composition can have important practical impacts.
James Hansen
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I tend to be naive and gullible, I guess, but I try to believe that governments believe what they say.
James Hansen
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The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.
James Hansen
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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.
James Hansen
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...chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to [should] be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature [Hansen] accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.
James Hansen
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'Cap and trade' generates special interests, lobbyists, and trading schemes, yielding non-productive millionaires, all at public expense. The public is fed up with such business. Tax with 100% dividend, in contrast, would spur our economy, while aiding the disadvantaged, the climate, and our national security.
James Hansen
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The fact is fossil fuel carbon will stay in the surface climate system for millennia.
James Hansen
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As a government employee, you can't testify against the government.
James Hansen
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Because cap and trade is enforced through the selling and trading of permits, it actually perpetuates the pollution it is supposed to eliminate.
James Hansen