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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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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
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More quotes by 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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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.
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The urgency derives from the nearness of climate tipping points.
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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.
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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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Some Democrats deserve to be criticized.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change.
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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
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We are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption.
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Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.
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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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We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life.
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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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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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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Planet Earth, creation, the world in which civilization developed, the world with climate patterns that we know and stable shorelines, is in imminent peril.
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