James Hansen quotes

Adding CO2 to the air is like throwing another blanket on the bed. (James Hansen)
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
It's as certain that as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, we will just keep burning them.
James Hansen
Global warming isn't a prediction. It is happening.
James Hansen
What we are doing to the future of our children, and the other species on the planet, is a clear moral issue.
James Hansen
The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.
James Hansen
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
As species are exterminated by shifting climate zones, ecosystems can collapse, destroying more species.
James Hansen
The five warmest years over the last century occurred in the last eight years.
James Hansen
On a per capita basis, Britain is responsible for more of the carbon dioxide now in the atmosphere than any other nation on Earth because it has been burning it from the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
James Hansen
Talking nice about sun and wind and green jobs is just greenwash. (James Hansen)
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
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
Some Democrats deserve to be criticized.
James Hansen
I tend to be naive and gullible, I guess, but I try to believe that governments believe what they say.
James Hansen
Until the public demands otherwise, the policy makers will continue to serve their financiers.
James Hansen
The United States did not sign Kyoto, yet its emissions are not that different from the countries that did sign it.
James Hansen
What has become clear from the science is that we cannot burn all of the fossil fuels without creating a very different planet.
James Hansen
I have been described as the grandfather of climate change. In fact, I am just a grandfather and I do not want my grandchildren to say that grandpa understood what was happening but didn't make it clear.
James Hansen
The democratic process is supposed to be one person one vote, but it turns out that money is talking louder than the votes.
James Hansen
The evidence for human-made climate change is overwhelming. (James Hansen)
Jail threats did not dissuade Martin Luther King - and intergenerational justice is a moral issue of comparable magnitude to civil rights.
James Hansen
The fact is fossil fuel carbon will stay in the surface climate system for millennia.
James Hansen
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.
James Hansen
Money has too big an influence on our politics in Washington and somehow we need to do something about that.
James Hansen