James Hansen
James Hansen
James Edward Hansenis an American adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. He is best known for his research in climatology, his 1988 Congressional testimony on climate change that helped raise broad awareness of global warming, and his advocacy of action to avoid dangerous climate change. In recent years he has become a climate activist to mitigate the effects of climate change, on a few occasions leading to his arrest...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth29 March 1941
CountryUnited States of America
If your child gets asthma, the fossil fuel industry doesn't pay. Or if there's a natural disaster, the bill is paid by the taxpayer, not the fossil fuel company.
I really think the Navy is wrong on this one.
Climate change is analogous to Lincoln and slavery or Churchill and Nazism: it's not the kind of thing where you can compromise.
Being at NASA and having the access to both computing capability and satellite observation capability is kind of the ideal research situation to try to understand global climate change.
In a way it's kind of my own moon landing, ... It's hard to top this. I don't think I can top it.
I'm probably the hardest head of the bunch (of nine commissioners),
In my three decades in government, I've never seen control of communications to the public so constrained. Communications from government scientists have never been so constrained.
Consider the perverse effect cap and trade has on altruistic actions. Say you decide to buy a small, high-efficiency car. That reduces your emissions, but not your country's. Instead it allows somebody else to buy a bigger S.U.V. - because the total emissions are set by the cap.
I've never seen such great support as you see from the folks in Texas. They really put their money where their mouth is.
They're a lot of fun to perform with. They're good guys to work with. They're helpful to work with. Any time you can work with a professional group, it's helpful.
It's not something you can adapt to. We can't let it go on another 10 years like this. We've got to do something.
For instance, they're using the economy as the reason not to consider taking action. I've been chastised for being a scientist saying we are damaging the economy in the long run. But you need to look at the broad problem. I think I'm free to do so and free to have my opinion.
This is an authorized biography, and a lot of readers may suspect that that means that it will treat Neil with kid gloves, ... That's not the case. Neil gave me complete freedom of interpretation and analysis. All he wanted to do was have input to make sure my facts were straight.
They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public.