James Hansen Quotes

Adding CO2 to the air is like throwing another blanket on the bed.
James Hansen

Another, Bed, Air

After spending three or four years interacting with the Bush administration, I realized they were not taking any actions to deal with climate change. So, I decided to give one talk, and then it snowballed into another talk and eventually to even protesting and getting arrested.
James Hansen

Change, Give, After

As a government employee, you can't testify against the government.
James Hansen

Government, Against, Employee

As species are exterminated by shifting climate zones, ecosystems can collapse, destroying more species.
James Hansen

Destroying, Climate, Shifting

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

Through, Actually, Trade

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.
James Hansen

Change, Understand, Try

Climate change is analogous to Lincoln and slavery or Churchill and Nazism: it's not the kind of thing where you can compromise.
James Hansen

Change, Compromise, Slavery

Coal is responsible for as much atmospheric carbon dioxide as other fossil fuels combined and it still has far greater reserves. We must stop using it.
James Hansen

Far, Stop, Greater

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.
James Hansen

Car, Country, Small

Global warming isn't a prediction. It is happening.
James Hansen

Happening, Global, Prediction

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

Change, Fact, Clear

I tend to be naive and gullible, I guess, but I try to believe that governments believe what they say.
James Hansen

Try, Naive, Guess

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

Time, Difficult, Child

I've tried to be a straight scientist doing the science and reporting it as best I can.
James Hansen

Best, Science, Tried

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.
James Hansen

Child, Company, Natural

It's as certain that as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, we will just keep burning them.
James Hansen

Long, Energy, Keep

Jail threats did not dissuade Martin Luther King - and intergenerational justice is a moral issue of comparable magnitude to civil rights.
James Hansen

Justice, Moral, Rights

Money has too big an influence on our politics in Washington and somehow we need to do something about that.
James Hansen

Politics, Money, Big

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

Revolution, Nation, Earth

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

Growth, Slow, Recent

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.
James Hansen

Single, Blame, Sense

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

Time, History, Cannot

Some Democrats deserve to be criticized.
James Hansen

Deserve, Democrats, Criticized

Talking nice about sun and wind and green jobs is just greenwash.
James Hansen

Nice, Sun, Wind

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

Money, Person, Vote

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Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Scientist

Born: March 29, 1941

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