James Hansen Quotes

People are seeing the impact of climate change around them in extraordinary patterns of floods and droughts, wildfires, heatwaves and powerful storms.

Our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change. The deadly European heat wave of 2003, the fiery Russian heat wave of 2010 and catastrophic droughts in Texas and Oklahoma last year [2011] can each be attributed to climate change. The odds that natural variability created these extremes are minuscule, vanishingly small. To count on those odds would be like quitting your job and playing the lottery every morning to pay the bills.

The climate dice are now loaded. Some seasons still will be cooler than the long-term average, but the perceptive person should notice that the frequency of unusually warm extremes is increasing. It is the extremes that have the most impact on people and other life on the planet.

Climate change brings increasingly frequent and severe weather patterns and this means more floods.

You'd see more floods like you've seen in Mozambique in 2000, you'd see more droughts like you saw in Kenya in the late 1990s, there would be a serious threat to the water flow down the Nile on which 10 countries depend.

In particular, Australia, because of its ancient geography, soil profile and distinctive weather patterns, is more adversely affected by climate variability than some other continents.

I grew up in Texas, but that was 20 years ago. Last year, in Fort Worth, they had hail the size of softballs. We're seeing more and more powerful storms, of all types, almost on a biblical level.

Global warming is actually a misnomer. It should be global extremes and global swings, because you add - as you add more energy into the atmosphere, it sloshes around. Energy doesn't simply uniformly warm up the planet. And that means droughts in one area, enormous snowstorms in another area, 100-year floods here, 100-year forest fires there.

The floods and fires and storms and droughts that Australia has suffered in the last few years have left no doubt in many Australians' minds about just how much is a stake in a super-heated world.

The increasing frequency of extreme weather events, droughts and floods is in line with what climate scientists have been predicting for decades - and evidence is mounting that what's happening is more severe than predicted, and will get far worse still if we fail to act.

Every day, it seems, a new extreme weather catastrophe happens somewhere in America, and the media's all over it, profiling the ordinary folks wiped out by forest fires, droughts, floods, massive sinkholes, tornadoes.

Everyone except the far right wing of the Republican Party realizes that oil, gas and coal burning are the main activities that have sent the climate into bigger floods, droughts, hurricanes, and El Ninos.

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.

The risks brought about by climate change are a major concern. It goes without notice—unless people find out that 12 of the last 13 biggest climatic disorders have occurred in the last 10 years.

Scientists speak a certain language. Now there are regular extreme weather reports on the news. Hurricane Katrina was a huge connect-the-dot moment for a lot of people.

At least 3,527 U.S. monthly records for heat, rain, and snow were broken in 2012. We can't let this continue unchecked, and we don't have to.

If there's horrible flooding in Pakistan or a horrible heat wave in Texas, we're no longer able to call it an act of God, or a natural disaster, or something like that, the way we could have through all of human history until 35 or 40 years ago.

The most blatant examples are increased power and frequency in hurricanes and the increased depth and frequency of heat waves.

Our climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it may be - given the devastation it is wreaking - should be enough to compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.

Today we're seeing that climate change is about more than a few unseasonably mild winters or hot summers. It's about the chain of natural catastrophes and devastating weather patterns that global warming is beginning to set off around the world.. the frequency and intensity of which are breaking records thousands of years old.

A hotter, moister atmosphere is an atmosphere primed to trigger disasters.

In the last two years 24 countries have set new all-time temperature records. We've seen flooding on an epic scale in every continent .

Global Warming Snowstorm Algore, paralyzing the upper Midwest two weeks before winter. Every time he shows up someplace, every time, it's almost comical, every time Al Gore shows up someplace there's either an outbreak of weather that is the exact opposite of what he's talking about, he never does seem to get embarrassed. That's why they stopped calling it global warming and now call it climate change so that virtually every perceived abnormality can be said to be caused by climate change.

The record rainfall and storm surges that have brought flooding across the UK are a clear sign that we are already experiencing the impacts of climate change.

We go on dating from Cold Fridays and Great Snows; but a little colder Friday, or greater snow would put a period to man's existence on the globe.