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
As you get more global warming, you should see an increase in the extremes of the hydrological cycle - droughts and floods and heavy precipitation.
It has become very difficult for anyone to argue that observed global warming is natural variability. We have good reason for being able to say that the world will be warmer by about a quarter of a degree in the next decade. It's the same reason we had 10 years ago when we said that the 1990s would be warmer than the 1980s: The planet is out of equilibrium.
As species are exterminated by shifting climate zones, ecosystems can collapse, destroying more species.
If we fail to act, we will end up with a different planet.
The urgency derives from the nearness of climate tipping points.
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.
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.
Some Democrats deserve to be criticized.
We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life.
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.
What has become clear from the science is that we cannot burn all of the fossil fuels without creating a very different planet.
The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change.
I was lucky to grow up at a time when it was not difficult for the child of a tenant farmer to make his way to the state university.
The fact is fossil fuel carbon will stay in the surface climate system for millennia.