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James Hansen on irreversible climate change, fee and dividend and the fossil fuel industry

Climate Research

The potential for Dr. Hansen and our group to communicate with decision makers and the public depends on maintaining our high scientific reputation and productivity. That is one reason it is important for us to continue to be at the forefront of climate research.

However, there is a more fundamental reason: good policymaking depends on a good realistic understanding of the science. This is illustrated well by current paper (Assessing “dangerous climate change”: Required reduction of carbon emissions to protect young people, future generations and nature), in which we make a persuasive case that the popular target of limiting CO2 emissions to 1000 GtC (fossil fuel emissions through 2012 are 370 GtC) would actually be a prescription for disaster. Clearly this issue needs to be understood soon, before reality makes the larger emissions inevitable.

One of the strengths of Dr. Hansen’s research has been an ability to recognize the significance of new research opportunities when they arise and move quickly to interpret their significance...

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Climate Data

Our aim is to help people understand global climate change — and how the factors that drive climate are changing.

We start with climate diagnostics — people are usually most interested in climate change itself. But cause-and-effect analysis requires also data on climate forcings (which drive climate change) and feedbacks (which amplify or diminish climate change)...

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Access our Climate Science web page for all data & figures

Featured Publication

Global warming in the pipeline

James E. Hansen
Makiko Sato
Leon Simons
Larissa S Nazarenko
Isabelle Sangha
Pushker Kharecha
James C. Zachos
Karina von Schuckmann
Norman G. Loeb
Matthew B. Osman
Qinjian Jin
George Tselioudis
Eunbi Jeong
Andrew Lacis
Reto Ruedy
Gary Russell
Junji Cao
Jing Li

Heat stored in the Earth system: where does the energy go?

Karina von Schuckmann
Lijing Cheng
Matthew D. Palmer
James Hansen
Caterina Tassone
Valentin Aich
Susheel Adusumilli
Hugo Beltrami
Tim Boyer
Francisco José Cuesta-Valero
Damien Desbruyères
Catia Domingues
Almudena García-García
Pierre Gentine
John Gilson
Maximilian Gorfer
Leopold Haimberger
Masayoshi Ishii
Gregory C. Johnson
Rachel Killick
Brian A. King
Gottfried Kirchengast
Nicolas Kolodziejczyk
John Lyman
Ben Marzeion
Michael Mayer
Maeva Monier
Didier Paolo Monselesan
Sarah Purkey
Dean Roemmich
Axel Schweiger
Sonia I. Seneviratne
Andrew Shepherd
Donald A. Slater
Andrea K. Steiner
Fiammetta Straneo
Mary-Louise Timmermans
Susan E. Wijffels