A Quote by James Hansen
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.
Related Quotes
'Goals' and 'caps' on carbon emissions are practically worthless, if coal emissions continue, because of the exceedingly long lifetime of carbon dioxide in the air.
Our leaders must get to grips with the huge risk that carbon dioxide emissions pose to the economy and the environment. As we know, carbon dioxide is a long-lived gas. It hangs around.
It's not the case that carbon dioxide drives temperatures. When you leave Ice Ages, it's the other way around: The temperatures go up first, and then carbon dioxide levels go up.
The idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you've got more carbon dioxide.
If we want to stabilize the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at some level - it really doesn't matter which level - you end up having to stop emissions virtually completely.
In an agreement with China, President Obama has already pledged to reduce America's net greenhouse-gas emissions by more than 25% by 2025. In return, China has agreed to 'peak' its carbon-dioxide emissions in 2030.
The greenhouse effect of carbon-dioxide emissions does produce gentle warming if it is not counteracted by unpredictable natural phenomena, but it cannot be measured directly against the volume of such emissions.
Some time ago we discovered the carbon cycle - a long-term set of chemical reactions that govern climates based on how much carbon is free in the atmosphere. At that point, it became clear that humans were affecting our environments far more profoundly than we realized. By releasing so much carbon and greenhouse gas into the environment, we're making long-term changes to every aspect of the natural world.
The models that have been constructed agree that when, as has been predicted, the level of carbon dioxide or its equivalent in other greenhouse gases doubles from pre-Industrial Revolution concentrations, the global average temperature will increase, and that the increase will be 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius or 3 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit... In Dallas, for instance, a doubled level of carbon dioxide and other gases like methane, would increase the number of days a year with temperatures above 100 degrees from 19 to 78 each year.
I am troubled by the lack of common sense regarding carbon dioxide emissions. Our greatest greenhouse gas is water. Atmospheric spectroscopy reveals why water has a 95 percent and CO2 a 3.6 percent contribution to the 'greenhouse effect.' Carbon dioxide emissions worldwide each year total 3.2 billion tons. That equals about 0.0168 percent of the atmosphere's CO2 concentration of about 19 trillion tons. This results in a 0.00064 percent increase in the absorption of the sun's radiation. This is an insignificantly small number.
Ocean acidification is caused by the ocean absorbing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the same carbon dioxide that is the primary cause of global warming, hence the nickname 'the other carbon problem.' As they do so, the oceans become more acidic with terrible consequences.
The dangers of carbon dioxide? Tell that to a plant, how dangerous carbon dioxide is.
Here's the problem - carbon dioxide doesn't contribute to smog and isn't a health threat. All of this is being done because some people believe carbon dioxide is causing global warming, and that preventing carbon dioxide from entering the air is the only answer. Never mind that there is still an ongoing scientific debate about global warming itself, and that some respected climate scientists believe that methane is a better target, California legislators have locked their sites on carbon dioxide.
If NASA were advancing a space frontier there would be challenges you've never seen before. You have to be creative and you have to patent some new idea. You get to Mars...well, how do we get the water from the soil? I gotta invent a new device that will do that. And the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, how can we use that? Can we breathe the oxygen from the carbon dioxide?
I think the deeper truth is that the Kyoto Protocols will not be followed by anyone really and that, in effect, nothing will be done to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions.
... those who are absolutely certain that the rise in temperatures is due solely to carbon dioxide have no scientific justification. It's pure guesswork.
Related Authors
Austin O'Malley Quotes
American
Scientist
Carl Sagan Quotes
American
Scientist
Charles Darwin Quotes
English
Scientist
E. O. Wilson Quotes
American
Scientist
Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes
German
Scientist
Isaac Asimov Quotes
American
Scientist
Jane Goodall Quotes
English
Scientist
Margaret Mead Quotes
American
Scientist
Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes
Lebanese
Scientist
Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes
American
Scientist
Richard Dawkins Quotes
English
Scientist
Stephen Jay Gould Quotes
American
Scientist
Steven Pinker Quotes
Canadian
Scientist
Sylvia Earle Quotes
American
Scientist
Thomas Huxley Quotes
English
Scientist
W. Edwards Deming Quotes
American
Scientist