Dr James Hansen: Assessing Dangerous Climate Change

“If we go another decade or two just charging ahead business as usual, then we leave people a possibly unsolvable problem.”

-James Hansen

Graphic: Climate Central
Graphic: Climate Central

 

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Retired NASA scientist Dr James Hansen published a new paper this week, entitled Assessing “Dangerous Climate Change”: Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature. Climate Central says:

The globally agreed upon political goal of limiting global warming to 3.6°F (2°C) above preindustrial levels would bring “potentially disastrous impacts,” and a far more ambitious plan to slash emissions of global warming gases is needed, according to a new study by an interdisciplinary group of scientists and economists. 

The study, published Tuesday in PLOS One, amounts to a rebuttal of a key finding from a recent U.N. climate report, that laid out a cumulative “carbon budget” for the world to follow in order to have at least a 66 percent chance of meeting the 3.6°F target. Read full article here.

Read Hansen’s full article here.