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
I'm probably the hardest head of the bunch (of nine commissioners),
With a fourth generation of nuclear power, you can have a technology that will burn more than 99 percent of the energy in the fuel. It would mean that you don't need to mine uranium for the next thousand years.
We need to send a message to Congress and the president that we want them to take the actions that are needed to preserve climate for young people and future generations and all life on the planet.
What is frustrating people, me included, is that democratic action affects elections but what we get then from political leaders is greenwash.
What really won that (decision in favor of Groton) was Rob Simmons, ... He did a phenomenal job.
To be playing in a threesome with Neil Armstrong and Clint Eastwood was pretty incredible, ... For Peggy and I to be part of that was pretty heady stuff.
Tipping points are so dangerous because if you pass them, the climate is out of humanity's control: if an ice sheet disintegrates and starts to slide into the ocean there's nothing we can do about that.
You have no time to do the science if you're talking to the media.
Imagine a giant asteroid on a direct collision course with Earth. That is the equivalent of what we face now [with climate change], yet we dither.
What we are doing to the future of our children, and the other species on the planet, is a clear moral issue.
The evidence for human-made climate change is overwhelming.
How long have we got? We have to stabilize emissions of carbon dioxide within a decade, or temperatures will warm by more than one degree... We don't have much time left.
We are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption.
Only in the last few years did the science crystallize, revealing the urgency - our planet really is in peril. If we do not change course soon, we will hand our children a situation that is out of their control.