...99 percent confident that the world really was getting warmer and that there was a high degree of probability that it was due to human-made greenhouse gases.
James HansenRead
You can't tie a rope around the ice sheet. You can't build a wall around the ice sheets.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the impossibility of controlling or containing natural phenomena, such as climate change.
James Hansen's quote illustrates the futility of trying to impose artificial limits on the natural world, specifically in the context of climate change and environmental degradation. It suggests that like an ice sheet that cannot be constrained by a rope or a wall, our efforts to control or ignore the effects of climate change are ultimately ineffective. This serves as a reminder of the need for responsible stewardship of the environment rather than avoidance of the consequences.
Themes
Climate ChangeEnvironmentNatural PhenomenaStewardship
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a speech about the urgency of addressing climate change at an environmental conference.
More from James Hansen
All quotes βWe need to send a message to Congress and the president that we want them to take the actions that are needed to preserve climate for young people and future generations and all life on the planet.
James HansenRead
Coral reefs, the rain forest of the ocean, are home for one-third of the species of the sea. Coral reefs are under stress for several reasons, including warming of the ocean, but especially because of ocean acidification, a direct effect of added carbon dioxide. Ocean life dependent on carbonate shells and skeletons is threatened by dissolution as the ocean becomes more acid.
James HansenRead
Rising carbon price is essential to 'decarbonize' the economy - to remove the nation towards the era beyond fossil fuels.
James HansenRead
We have at most ten years - not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions... We are near a tipping point, a point of no return, beyond which the built in momentum and feedbacks will carry us to levels of climate change with staggering consequences for humanity and all of the residents of this planet.
James HansenRead
'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.
James HansenRead
Similar quotes
The image of Stephen Hawking - who has died aged 76 - in his motorised wheelchair, with head contorted slightly to one side and hands crossed over to work the controls, caught the public imagination as a true symbol of the triumph of mind over matter.
Roger PenroseRead
Shaped a little like a loaf of French country bread, our brain is a crowded chemistry lab, bustling with nonstop neural conversations.Imagine the brain, that shiny mound of being, that mouse-gray parliament of cells, that dream factory, that petit tyrant inside a ball of bone, that huddle of neurons calling all the plays, that little everywhere, that fickle pleasuredome, that wrinkled wardrobe of selves stuffed into the skull like too many clothes into a gym bag.
Diane AckermanRead
Go out and collect data and, instead of having the answer, just look at the data and see if the data tells you anything. When we're allowed to do this with companies, it's almost magical.
Steven LevittRead
The future depicted in a good SF story ought to be in fact possible, or at least plausible. That means that the writer should be able to convince the reader (and himself) that the wonders he is describing really can come true... and that gets tricky when you take a good, hard look at the world around you.
Frederik PohlRead
I would give absolutely nothing for the theory of Natural Selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent.
Charles DarwinRead
[Concerning] the usual contempt with which an orthodox analytic group treats all outsiders and strangers ... I urge you to think of the young psychoanalysts as your colleagues, collaborators and partners and not as spies, traitors and wayward children. You can never develop a science that way, only an orthodox church.
Abraham MaslowRead