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James Hansen

James Edward Hansen (born March 29, 1941) is an American adjunct professor directing the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is best known for his research in climatology, his 1988 Congressional testimony on climate change that helped raise broad awareness of global warming, and his advocacy of action to avoid dangerous climate change. In recent years, he has become a climate activist to mitigate the effects of global warming, on a few occasions leading to his arrest.

Early life and education
Hansen was born in Denison, Iowa, to James Ivan Hansen and Gladys Ray Hansen. He was trained in physics and astronomy in the space science program of James Van Allen at the University of Iowa. He obtained a B.A. in physics and mathematics with highest distinction in 1963, an M.S. in astronomy in 1965 and a Ph.D. in physics in 1967, all three degrees from the University of Iowa. He participated in the NASA graduate traineeship from 1962 to 1966 and, at the same time, between 1965 and 1966, he was a visiting student at the Institute of Astrophysics at Kyoto University and in the department of astronomy at the University of Tokyo. He then began work at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in 1967.

Career
After graduate school, Hansen continued his work with radiative transfer models, attempting to understand the Venusian atmosphere. He later applied and refined these models to understand the Earth's atmosphere, and in particular, the effects that aerosols and trace gases have on Earth's climate. His development and use of global climate models has contributed to the further understanding of the Earth's climate. In 2009, his first book, Storms of My Grandchildren, was published. In 2012, he presented the TED Talk "Why I must speak out about climate change".

From 1981 to 2013, he was the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, a part of the Goddard Space Flight Center.

, Hansen directs the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions at Columbia University's Earth Institute. The program is working to continue to "connect the dots" from advancing basic climate science to promoting public awareness to advocating policy actions.

Hansen is representing his granddaughter as well as "future generations" as plaintiffs in the Juliana v. United States lawsuit, which is suing the United States government and some of its executive branch's positions for not protecting a stable climate system.

Research and publications
As a college student at the University of Iowa, Hansen was attracted to science and the research done by James Van Allen's space science program in the physics and astronomy department. A decade later, his focus shifted to planetary research that involved trying to understand the climate change on earth that will result from anthropogenic changes of the atmospheric composition.

Hansen has stated that one of his research interests is radiative transfer in planetary atmospheres, especially the interpretation of remote sensing of the Earth's atmosphere and surface from satellites. Because of the ability of satellites to monitor the entire globe, they may be one of the most effective ways to monitor and study global change. His other interests include the development of global circulation models to help understand the observed climate trends, and diagnosing human impacts on climate.

Studies of Venus

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, following his Ph.D. dissertation, Hansen published several papers on the planet Venus. Venus has a high brightness temperature in the radio frequencies compared to the infrared. He proposed that the hot surface was the result of aerosols trapping the internal energy of the planet. More recent studies have suggested that several billion years ago, Venus's atmosphere was much more like Earth's than it is now and that there were probably substantial quantities of liquid water on the surface, but a runaway greenhouse effect was caused by the evaporation of that original water, which generated a critical level of greenhouse gases in its atmosphere.

Hansen continued his study of Venus by looking at the composition of its clouds. He looked at the near-infrared reflectivity of ice clouds, compared them to observations of Venus, and found that they qualitatively agreed. He also was able to use a radiative transfer model to establish an upper limit to the size of the ice particles if the clouds were actually made of ice.

By 1974, the composition of Venus' clouds had not yet been determined, with many scientists proposing a wide variety of compounds, including liquid water and aqueous solutions of ferrous chloride. Hansen and Hovenier used the polarization of sunlight reflected from the planet to establish that the clouds were spherical and had a refractive index and cloud drop effective radius which eliminated all of the proposed cloud types except sulfuric acid. Kiyoshi Kawabata and Hansen expanded upon this work by looking at the variation of polarization on Venus. They found that the visible clouds are a diffuse haze rather than a thick cloud, confirming the same results obtained from transits across the sun.

The Pioneer Venus project was launched in May 1978 and reached Venus late that same year. Hansen collaborated with Larry Travis and other colleagues in a 1979 Science article that reported on the development and variability of clouds in the ultraviolet spectrum. They concluded that there are at least three different cloud materials that contribute to the images: a thin haze layer, sulfuric acid clouds and an unknown ultraviolet absorber below the sulfuric acid cloud layer. The linear polarization data obtained from the same mission confirmed that the low- and mid-level clouds were sulfuric acid with radius of about 1 micrometer. Above the cloud layer was a layer of submicrometre haze. Evidence published in the early 1980s showed that the clouds consist mainly of sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid droplets.

Global temperature analysis

The first NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) global temperature analysis was published in 1981. Hansen and his co-author analyzed the surface air temperature at meteorological stations focusing on the years from 1880 to 1985. Temperatures for stations closer together than 1000 kilometers were shown to be highly correlated, especially in the mid-latitudes, providing a way to combine the station data to provide accurate long-term variations. They concluded that global mean temperatures can be determined even though meteorological stations are typically in the Northern hemisphere and confined to continental regions. Warming in the past century was found to be 0.5-0.7 °C, with warming similar in both hemispheres. When the analysis was updated in 1988, the four warmest years on record were all in the 1980s. The two warmest years were 1981 and 1987. During a senate meeting on June 23, 1988, Hansen reported that he was ninety-nine percent certain the earth was warmer then than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements, there was a clear cause and effect relationship with the greenhouse effect and lastly that due to global warming, the likelihood of freak weather was steadily increasing.

With the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, 1992 saw a cooling in global temperatures. There was speculation that this would cause the next couple of years to be cooler because of the large serial correlation in the global temperatures. Bassett and Lin found the statistical odds of a new temperature record to be small. Hansen countered by saying that having insider information shifted the odds to those who know the physics of the climate system, and that whether there is a new temperature record depends upon the particular data set used.

The temperature data was updated in 1999 to report that 1998 was the warmest year since the instrumental data began in 1880. They also found that the rate of temperature change was larger than at any time in instrument history, and concluded that the recent El Niño was not solely responsible for the large temperature anomaly in 1998. In spite of this, the United States had seen a smaller degree of warming, and a region in the eastern U.S. and the western Atlantic Ocean had actually cooled slightly.

2001 saw a major update to how the temperature was calculated. It incorporated corrections due to the following reasons: time-of-observation bias; station history changes; classification of rural/urban station; the urban adjustment based on satellite measurements of night light intensity, and relying more on rural station than urban. Evidence was found of local urban warming in urban, suburban and small-town records.

The anomalously high global temperature in 1998 due to El Niño resulted in a brief drop in subsequent years. However, a 2001 Hansen report in the journal Science states that global warming continues, and that the increasing temperatures should stimulate discussions on how to slow global warming. The temperature data was updated in 2006 to report that temperatures are now 0.8 °C warmer than a century ago, and concluded that the recent global warming is a real climate change and not an artifact from the urban heat island effect. The regional variation of warming, with more warming in the higher latitudes, is further evidence of warming that is anthropogenic in origin.

In 2007, Stephen McIntyre notified GISS that many of the U.S. temperature records from the Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) displayed a discontinuity around the year 2000. NASA corrected the computer code used to process the data and credited McIntyre with pointing out the flaw. Hansen indicated that he felt that several news organizations had overreacted to this mistake. In 2010, Hansen published a paper entitled "Global Surface Temperature Change" describing current global temperature analysis.

Black carbon studies

Hansen has also contributed toward the understanding of black carbon on regional climate. In recent decades, northern China has experienced increased drought, and southern China has received increased summer rain resulting in a larger number of floods. Southern China has had a decrease in temperatures while most of the world has warmed. In a paper with Menon and colleagues, through the use of observations and climate models results, they conclude that the black carbon heats the air, increases convection and precipitation, and leads to larger surface cooling than if the aerosols were sulfates.

A year later, Hansen teamed with Makiko Sato to publish a study on black carbon using the global network of AERONET sun photometers. While the location of the AERONET instruments did not represent a global sample, they could still be used to validate global aerosol climatologies. They found that most aerosol climatologies underestimated the amount of black carbon by a factor of at least 2. This corresponds to an increase in the climate forcing of around 1 W/m2, which they hypothesize is partially offset by the cooling of non-absorbing aerosols.

Estimations of trends in black carbon emissions show that there was a rapid increase in the 1880s after the start of the Industrial Revolution, and a leveling off from 1900 to 1950 as environmental laws were enacted. China and India have recently increased their emissions of black carbon corresponding to their rapid development. The emissions from the United Kingdom were estimated using a network of stations that measured black smoke and sulfur dioxide. They report that atmospheric black carbon concentrations have been decreasing since the beginning of the record in the 1960s, and that the decline was faster than the decline in black-carbon-producing fuel use.

A 2007 paper used the GISS climate model in an attempt to determine the origin of black carbon in the arctic. Much of the arctic aerosol comes from south Asia. Countries such as the United States and Russia have a lower contribution than previously assumed.

Anthropogenic impact on climate

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is an international environmental treaty that has the objective of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.

In 2000, Hansen advanced an alternative view of global warming over the last 100 years, arguing that during that time frame the negative forcing via aerosols and the positive forcing via carbon dioxide largely balanced each other out, and that the 0.74±0.18 °C net rise in average global temperatures could mostly be explained by greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide, such as methane and chlorofluorocarbons. However, even then he wrote "the future balance of forcings is likely to shift toward dominance of CO2 over aerosols".

In 2003, Hansen wrote a paper called "Can We Defuse the Global Warming Time Bomb?" in which he argued that human-caused forces on the climate are now greater than natural ones, and that this, over a long time period, can cause large climate changes. He further stated that a lower limit on "dangerous anthropogenic interference" was set by the stability of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. His view on actions to mitigate climate change was that "halting global warming requires urgent, unprecedented international cooperation, but the needed actions are feasible and have additional benefits for human health, agriculture and the environment."

In a 2004 presentation at the University of Iowa, Hansen announced that he was told by high-ranking government officials not to talk about how anthropogenic influence could have a dangerous effect on climate because it was not understood what 'dangerous' meant, or how humans were actually affecting climate. He described this as a Faustian bargain because atmospheric aerosols had health risks, and should be reduced, but doing so would effectively increase the warming effects from.

Hansen and coauthors proposed that the global mean temperature was a good tool to diagnose dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Two elements were identified as particularly important when discussing dangerous anthropogenic interference: sea level rise and the extinction of species. They described a business-as-usual scenario, which has greenhouse gases growing at approximately 2% per year; and an alternate scenario, in which greenhouse gases concentrations decline. Under the alternate scenario, sea levels could rise by 1 meter per century, causing problems due to the dense population in coastal areas. But this would be minor compared to the 10-meter increase in sea level under the business-as-usual scenario. Hansen described the situation with species extinction similarly to that of sea level rise. Assuming the alternate scenario, the situation would not be good, but it would be much worse for business as usual.

The concept of dangerous anthropogenic interference was clarified in a 2007 paper, finding that further warming of 1 °C would be highly disruptive to humans. An alternate scenario would keep the warming to below this if climate sensitivity were below 3 °C for doubled. The conclusion was that levels above 450 ppm were considered dangerous, but that reduction in non- greenhouse gases could provide temporary relief from drastic  cuts. Further findings are that arctic climate change has been forced by non- constituents as much as by. The 2007 paper cautioned that prompt action is needed to slow growth and to prevent a dangerous anthropogenic interference.

Climate model development and projections

Vilhelm Bjerknes began the modern development of the general circulation model in the early 20th century. The progress of numerical modeling was slow due to the slow speed of early computers and the lack of adequate observations. It was not until the 1950s that the numerical models were getting close to being realistic. Hansen's first contribution to numerical climate models came with the 1974 publication of the GISS model. He and his colleagues claimed that the model was successful in simulating the major features of sea-level pressure and 500mb heights in the North American region.

A 1981 Science publication by Hansen and a team of scientists at Goddard concluded that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would lead to warming sooner than previously predicted. They used a one-dimensional radiative-convective model that calculates temperature as a function of height. They reported that the results from the 1D model are similar to those of the more complex 3D models, and can simulate basic mechanisms and feedbacks. Hansen predicted that temperatures would rise out of the climate noise by the 1990s, much earlier than predicted by other researches. He also predicted that it would be difficult to convince politicians and the public to react.

By the early 1980s, the computational speed of computers, along with refinements in climate models, allowed longer experiments. The models now included physics beyond the previous equations, such as convection schemes, diurnal changes, and snow-depth calculations. The advances in computational efficiency, combined with the added physics, meant the GISS model could be run for five years. It was shown that global climate can be simulated reasonably well with a grid-point resolution as coarse as 1000 kilometers.

The first climate prediction computed from a general circulation model that was published by Hansen was in 1988, the same year as his well-known Senate testimony. The second generation of the GISS model was used to estimate the change in mean surface temperature based on a variety of scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions. Hansen concluded that global warming would be evident within the next few decades, and that it would result in temperatures at least as high as during the Eemian. He argued that if the temperature rose 0.4 °C above the 1950–1980 mean for a few years, it would be the "smoking gun" pointing to human-caused global warming.

In 2006, Hansen and colleagues compared the observations with the projections made by Hansen in his 1988 testimony before the United States Congress. They described the intermediate scenario as the most likely, and that real-world greenhouse gas forcing had been closest to this scenario. It contained the effects of three volcanic eruptions in the fifty-year projections. They found that the observed warming was similar to two of the three scenarios. The warming rates of the two most modest warming scenarios were nearly the same through the year 2000, and they were unable to provide a precise model assessment. They noted that the agreement between the observations and the intermediate scenario was accidental because the climate sensitivity used was higher than current estimates.

A year later, Hansen joined with Rahmstorf and colleagues comparing climate projections with observations. The comparison was done from 1990 through January 2007 against physics-based models that are independent from the observations after 1990. They showed that the climate system may be responding faster than the models indicate. Rahmstorf and coauthors showed concern that sea levels are rising at the high range of the IPCC projections, and that this was due to thermal expansion and not from melting of the Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets.

Following the launch of spacecraft capable of determining temperatures, Roy Spencer and John Christy published the first version of their satellite temperature measurements in 1990. Contrary to climate models and surface measurements, their results showed a cooling in the troposphere. However, in 1998, Wentz and Schabel determined that orbital decay had an effect on the derived temperatures. Hansen compared the corrected troposphere temperatures with the results of the published GISS model, and concluded that the model is in good agreement with the observations, noting that the satellite temperature data had been the last holdout of global warming denialists, and that the correction of the data would result in a change from discussing whether global warming is occurring to what is the rate of global warming, and what should be done about it.

Hansen has continued the development and diagnostics of climate models. For instance, he has helped in the investigations of the decadal trends in tropopause height, which could be a useful tool for determining the human "fingerprint" on climate. , the current version of the GISS model is Model E. This version has seen improvements in many areas, including upper-level winds, cloud height, and precipitation. This model still has problems with regions of marine stratocumulus clouds. A later paper showed that the model's main problems are having too weak of an ENSO-like variability, and poor sea ice modeling, resulting in too little ice in the Southern Hemisphere and too much in the Northern Hemisphere.

Climate forcings, feedbacks, and sensitivity

In 2000 Hansen authored a paper called "Global warming in the twenty-first century: an alternative scenario" in which he presented a more optimistic way of dealing with global warming, focusing on non-CO2 gases and black carbon in the short run, giving more time to make reductions in fossil fuel emissions. He notes that the net warming observed to date is roughly as big as that expected from non-CO2 gases only. This is because CO2 warming is offset by climate-cooling aerosols emitted with fossil fuel burning and because at that time non-CO2 gases, taken together, were responsible for roughly 50% of the anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming.

In a 2007 paper, Hansen discussed the potential danger of "fast-feedback" effects causing ice sheet disintegration, based on paleoclimate data. George Monbiot reports "The IPCC predicts that sea levels could rise by as much as 59 cm this century. Hansen's paper argues that the slow melting of ice sheets the panel expects doesn't fit the data. The geological record suggests that ice at the poles does not melt in a gradual and linear fashion, but flips suddenly from one state to another. When temperatures increased to 2 – above today's level 3.5 million years ago, sea levels rose not by 59 centimeters but by 25 m. The ice responded immediately to changes in temperature."

Hansen stressed the uncertainties around these predictions. "It is difficult to predict time of collapse in such a nonlinear problem … An ice sheet response time of centuries seems probable, and we cannot rule out large changes on decadal time-scales once wide-scale surface melt is underway." He concludes that "present knowledge does not permit accurate specification of the dangerous level of human-made [greenhouse gases]. However, it is much lower than has commonly been assumed. If we have not already passed the dangerous level, the energy infrastructure in place ensures that we will pass it within several decades."

In 2013, Hansen authored a paper called "Climate sensitivity, sea level and atmospheric carbon dioxide," in which he estimated climate sensitivity to be (3±1)°C based on Pleistocene paleoclimate data. The paper also concluded that burning all fossil fuels "would make most of the planet uninhabitable by humans."

In 2016, a team of 19 researchers led by Hansen published a paper "Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 °C global warming could be dangerous" describing the effect of meltwater from ice sheets on the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (slowing it or even stopping) and Antarctic bottom water formation. This would speed up ice sheet melting and sea level rise by increasing the water temperature at hundreds of meters depth, thawing ice shelves from below. And the cool fresh meltwater on the ocean close to Greenland and Antarctica leads to larger temperature difference between tropics and middle latitudes, what would enable storms as strong as in the last interglacial, the Eemian, whose evidence includes, among others, megaboulders on Bahamas.

In 2023, Hansen led a team of 18 researchers to publish a paper titled "Global Warming in the Pipeline." In it, Hansen et al. concluded that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would lead to an increase of 4.8 ±1.2°C, significantly above earlier estimates. His team also concluded that the decline in global aerosol emissions from air pollution will accelerate the rate of global warming, going from an increase of 0.18 °C per decade between 1970 and 2010 to an increase of 0.27 °C per decade after 2010, with the world passing the 1.5 °C threshold before the end of the 2020s and the 2 °C threshold before 2050 without significant changes. The paper also concluded that sea level rise will be greater than the IPCC estimates and one of the ocean's major circulation systems could collapse before the end of the century.

Analysis of climate change causation
Hansen noted that in determining responsibility for climate change, the effect of greenhouse gas emissions on climate is determined not by current emissions, but by accumulated emissions over the lifetime of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

By this measure, among major economies, as of 2009 the U.K. still had the highest cumulative per capita contribution to climate change, followed by the U.S. and Germany, even though the People's Republic of China currently produces the highest total annual emissions.

On public policy, Hansen is critical of what he sees as efforts to mislead the public on the issue of climate change. He points specifically to the Competitive Enterprise Institute's commercials with the tagline "carbon dioxide—they call it pollution, we call it life", and politicians who accept money from fossil-fuel interests and then describe global warming as "a great hoax." He also says that changes needed to reduce global warming do not require hardship or reduction in the quality of life, but will also produce benefits such as cleaner air and water, and growth of high-tech industries. He was a critic of both the Clinton and George W. Bush Administrations' stances on climate change. Addressing the potential effects of climate change, Hansen has stated in an interview in January 2009, "We cannot now afford to put off change any longer. We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead."

US Senate committee testimony
Hansen was invited by Rafe Pomerance to testify before the United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on June 23, 1988. Hansen testified that "Global warming has reached a level such that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming...It is already happening now" and "The greenhouse effect has been detected and it is changing our climate now...We already reached the point where the greenhouse effect is important." Hansen said that NASA was 99% confident that the warming was caused by the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and not a random fluctuation.

According to science historian Spencer R. Weart, Hansen's testimony increased public awareness of climate change. According to Richard Besel of California Polytechnic State University, Hansen's testimony "was an important turning point in the history of global climate change." According to Timothy M. O'Donnell of the University of Mary Washington, Hansen's testimony was "pivotal," "ignited public discussion of global warming and moved the controversy from a largely scientific discussion to a full blown science policy debate," and marked "the official beginning of the global warming policy debate." According to Roger A. Pielke of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Hansen's "call to action" "elevated the subject of global warming and the specter of associated impacts such as more hurricanes, floods, and heat waves, to unprecedented levels of attention from the public, media, and policy makers."

Criticism of coal industry
Hansen has been particularly critical of the coal industry, stating that coal contributes the largest percentage of anthropogenic carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. He has called for phasing out coal power completely by the year 2030.

During his testimony before the Iowa Utilities Board in 2007, Hansen likened coal trains to "death trains" and asserted that these would be "no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species." In response, the National Mining Association stated that his comparison "trivialized the suffering of millions" and "undermined his credibility." Citing the reactions of "several people" and "three of his scientific colleagues" as his primary motivation, Hansen stated that he certainly did not mean to trivialize suffering by the families who lost relatives in the Holocaust and then apologized, saying he regretted that his words caused pain to some readers.

Mountaintop removal mining
On June 23, 2009, James Hansen, along with 30 other protesters including actress Daryl Hannah, was arrested on misdemeanor charges of obstructing police and impeding traffic, during a protest against mountaintop removal mining in Raleigh County, West Virginia. The protesters intended to enter the property of Massey Energy Company, but were blocked by a crowd of several hundred coal miners and supporters. Hansen said that mountaintop removal for coal mining "[provides] only a small fraction of our energy" and "should be abolished." Hansen called on President Barack Obama to abolish mountaintop coal mining.

After Hansen's arrest, New York Times columnist Andrew Revkin wrote: "Dr. Hansen has pushed far beyond the boundaries of the conventional role of scientists, particularly government scientists, in the environmental policy debate."

Hansen and about 100 other people were arrested in September 2010 in front of the White House in Washington, DC. The group was seeking a ban on mountaintop removal or surface mining.

Cap and trade
In 2009 Hansen spoke out against cap and trade, advocating instead what he believes would be a progressive carbon tax at source carbon as oil, gas or coal, with a 100% dividend returned to citizens in equal shares, as proposed by Citizens' Climate Lobby. He has made many appearances and talks supporting the work of CCL.

Retirement from NASA
Hansen retired from NASA in April 2013 after 46 years of government service, saying he planned to take a more active role in the political and legal efforts to limit greenhouse gases. The same month, the National Center for Science Education, an organization noted for defending the teaching of evolution in United States science classrooms, named Hansen as an advisor to support the extension of its area of concern into the teaching of climate change.

Keystone Pipeline
In a CBC interview aired in April 2013, as Canadian Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver lobbied in Washington, DC for approval of the Keystone pipeline extension intended to carry more synthetic crude oil from Canada's Athabasca Oil Sands to the Gulf of Mexico, Hansen forcefully argued against the use of these unconventional fossil fuels. According to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other energy organizations "there is more than twice as much carbon in the tar sands oil" than in conventional oil. Hansen argued that coal, tar sands, and tar shale should not be used as energy sources because of their carbon emissions and claimed that the completion of the Keystone pipeline would increase the extraction of oil from oil sands. He explained that the effects of climate change may not be apparent until the far future: "It's not the case where you emit something and you see the effect. We see the beginnings of the effect but the large impacts are going to be in future decades and that science is crystal clear … Effects come slowly because of the inertia of the climate system. It takes decades, even centuries to get the full response. But we know the last time the world was 2 degrees warmer, sea level was 6 meters or 20 feet higher." Hansen urged President Obama to reject the Keystone pipeline extension intended to carry more synthetic crude oil from Canada's Athabasca Oil Sands to the Gulf of Mexico. On February 13, 2013, Hansen was again arrested at the White House, along with Daryl Hannah and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., during a further protest against the proposed Keystone pipeline extension.

Proposed solutions
Recently Hansen stated his support for a revenue-neutral fee and dividend system to impose a price on carbon that returns the money collected from the fossil fuel industry equally to all legal residents of the United States. In an interview on CBC television on March 3, 2015, Dr Hansen stated "The solution [to climate change] has to be a rising price on carbon and then the really dirty fuels like tar sands would fall on the table very quickly. They make no sense at all if you look at it from an economic-wide perspective. If we would simply put a fee on carbon – you would collect from the fossil fuel companies at the source (the domestic mines or the ports of entry) and then distribute that money to the public, an equal amount to all legal residents, that would begin to make the prices honest. And that's what the economy needs in order to be most efficient. Right now the external costs of fossil fuels are borne completely by the public. If your child gets asthma, you pay the bill, the fossil fuel company doesn't. What we need is to make the system honest."

At the end of 2008, Hansen stated five priorities that he felt then President-elect Barack Obama should adopt "for solving the climate and energy problems, while stimulating the economy": efficient energy use, renewable energy, a smart grid, generation IV nuclear reactors and carbon capture and storage. Regarding nuclear, he expressed opposition to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, stating that the $25 Billion (US) surplus held in the Nuclear Waste Fund "should be used to develop fast reactors that consume nuclear waste, and thorium reactors to prevent the creation of new long-lived nuclear waste."

In 2009, Hansen wrote an open letter to President Obama where he advocated a "Moratorium and phase-out of coal plants that do not capture and store CO2". In his first book Storms of My Grandchildren, similarly, Hansen discusses his Declaration of Stewardship, the first principle of which requires "a moratorium on coal-fired power plants that do not capture and sequester carbon dioxide".

In March 2013, Hansen co-authored a paper in Environmental Science & Technology, entitled "Prevented mortality and greenhouse gas emissions from historical and projected nuclear power". The paper examined mortality rates per unit of electrical power produced from fossil fuels (coal and natural gas) as well as nuclear power. It estimated that 1.8 million air pollution-caused deaths were prevented worldwide between 1971 and 2009, through the use of nuclear power instead of fossil fuels. The paper also concluded that the emission of some 64 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent were avoided by nuclear power use between 1971 and 2009. Looking to the future, between 2010 and 2050, it was estimated that nuclear could additionally avoid up to 420,000 to 7 million premature deaths and 80 to 240 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

This paper elicited a critical response to Kharecha and Hansen's analysis, from an international group of senior academic energy policy analysts, including Benjamin Sovacool, M.V. Ramana, Mark Z. Jacobson, and Mark Diesendorf. They asserted that nuclear power needs large subsidies to be economically viable, and typically there are substantial construction delays and cost overruns associated with nuclear plants. Sovacool et al. also claim that Kharecha and Hansen's estimates of Chernobyl Disaster mortalities is very low, which biases their conclusions. All of these factors are said to make Kharecha and Hansen's article "incomplete and misleading". Kharecha and Hansen countered that all the data these scientists use to make their criticism, "lacks credibility".

In 2013, Hansen and three other leading climate experts wrote an open letter to policy makers, saying that "continued opposition to nuclear power threatens humanity's ability to avoid dangerous climate change." The reaction from anti-nuclear environmental groups (e.g. the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and Greenpeace) was negative, citing nuclear safety and security issues, and the economics of nuclear power plants.

Together with Michael Shellenberger, Hansen began touring the world in the late 2010s, providing evidence for the climatic benefits of nuclear energy and to bring attention to the $2 trillion the US has spent on "new renewables" that despite the cost have not even caught up to nuclear in annual electricity generation, an issue reflected in Germany and elsewhere.

Political interference at NASA
In 2006, Hansen alleged that NASA administrators had attempted to influence his public statements about the causes of climate change. Hansen said that NASA public relations staff were ordered to review his public statements and interviews after a December 2005 lecture at the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. NASA responded that its policies are similar to those of any other federal agency in requiring employees to coordinate all statements with the public affairs office without exception. Two years after Hansen and other agency employees described a pattern of distortion and suppression of climate science by political appointees, the agency's inspector general confirmed that such activities had taken place, with the NASA Office of Public Affairs having "reduced, marginalized or mischaracterized climate change science made available to the general public".

In June 2006, Hansen appeared on 60 Minutes stating that the George W. Bush White House had edited climate-related press releases reported by federal agencies to make global warming seem less threatening. He also stated that he was unable to speak freely without the backlash of other government officials, and that he had not experienced that level of restrictions on communicating with the public during his career.

Trials for energy company executives
In 2008 interviews with ABC News, The Guardian, and in a separate op-ed, Hansen has called for putting fossil fuel company executives, including the CEOs of ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal, on trial for "high crimes against humanity and nature", on the grounds that these and other fossil-fuel companies had actively spread doubt and misinformation about global warming, in the same way that tobacco companies tried to hide the link between smoking and cancer.

Arrest at 2011 demonstration
Hansen and 1,251 other activists were arrested at a two week long protest in August and September 2011, in front of the White House. Hansen urged President Obama to reject the Keystone pipeline extension intended to carry more synthetic crude oil from Canada's Athabasca Tar Sands to the Gulf of Mexico. On February 13, 2013, Hansen was again arrested at the White House, along with Daryl Hannah and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., during a further protest against the proposed Keystone pipeline extension.

Criticism
In June 2009, New Yorker journalist Elizabeth Kolbert wrote that Hansen is "increasingly isolated among climate activists." Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said that "I view Jim Hansen as heroic as a scientist.... But I wish he would stick to what he really knows. Because I don't think he has a realistic idea of what is politically possible, or what the best policies would be to deal with this problem."

In July 2009, New York Times climate columnist Christa Marshall asked if Hansen still matters in the ongoing climate debate, noting that he "has irked many longtime supporters with his scathing attacks against President Obama's plan for a cap-and-trade system." "The right wing loves what he's doing," said Joseph Romm, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. Hansen said that he had to speak out, since few others could explain the links between politics and the climate models. "You just have to say what you think is right," he said.

Honors and awards
Hansen was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1996 for his "development of pioneering radiative transfer models and studies of planetary atmospheres; development of simplified and three-dimensional global climate models; explication of climate forcing mechanisms; analysis of current climate trends from observational data; and projections of anthropogenic impacts on the global climate system." In 2001, he received the 7th Annual Heinz Award in the Environment (endowed with US$250,000) for his research on global warming, and was listed as one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in 2006. Also in 2006, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) selected James Hansen to receive its Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility "for his courageous and steadfast advocacy in support of scientists' responsibilities to communicate their scientific opinions and findings openly and honestly on matters of public importance."

In 2007, Hansen shared the US$1-million Dan David Prize for "achievements having an outstanding scientific, technological, cultural or social impact on our world". In 2008, he received the PNC Bank Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service for his "outstanding achievements" in science. At the end of 2008, Hansen was named by EarthSky Communications and a panel of 600 scientist-advisors as the Scientist Communicator of the Year, citing him as an "outspoken authority on climate change" who had "best communicated with the public about vital science issues or concepts during 2008."

In 2009, Hansen was awarded the 2009 Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the American Meteorological Society, for his "outstanding contributions to climate modeling, understanding climate change forcings and sensitivity, and for clear communication of climate science in the public arena."

Andrew Freedman wrote in The Washington Post that the Society had erred in giving Hansen the medal: "His body of work is not at issue... Rather, the problem arises due to the AMS' recognition of Hansen's public communication work on climate change."

Hansen won the 2010 Sophie Prize, set up in 1997 by Norwegian Jostein Gaarder, the author of the 1991 best-selling novel and teenagers' guide to philosophy Sophie's World, for his " key role for the development of our understanding of human-induced climate change."

Foreign Policy named Hansen one of its 2012 FP Top 100 Global Thinkers "for sounding the alarm on climate change, early and often".

In December 2012, Hansen received the Commonwealth Club of California's annual Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communications at a ceremony in San Francisco

On November 7, 2013, Hansen received the Joseph Priestley Award at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania "...for his work advancing our understanding of climate change, including the early application of numerical models to better understand observed climate trends and to project humans' impact on climate, and for his leadership in promoting public understanding of climate and linking the knowledge to action on climate policy." He delivered a lecture, entitled, "White House Arrest and the Climate Crisis," later that same day at Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium on the college's campus.

James Hansen was co-winner with climatologist Syukuro Manabe of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Climate Change category in the ninth edition (2016) of the awards. The two laureates were separately responsible for constructing the first computational models with the power to simulate climate behavior. Decades ago, they correctly predicted how much Earth's temperature would rise due to increasing atmospheric. The scores of models currently in use to chart climate evolution are heirs to those developed by Manabe and Hansen.

In June 2018, Hansen was named joint winner, with Veerabhadran Ramanathan, of Taiwan's Tang Prize. Hansen's prize had a total value of NT$25 million.

Publications
Over 160 publications have been authored by James Hansen. Since 2020, he has published observations and commentary at redgreenandblue.org, averaging approximately once per month.

title: James Hansen


text:
Kalmykia

Kalmykia, officially the Republic of Kalmykia, is a republic of Russia, located in the North Caucasus region of Southern Russia. The republic is part of the Southern Federal District, and borders Dagestan to the south and Stavropol Krai to the southwest; Volgograd Oblast to the northwest and north and Astrakhan Oblast to the north and east; Rostov Oblast to the west and the Caspian Sea to the east. Through the Caspian Depression, the Kuma river forms Kalmykia's natural border with Dagestan. Kalmykia is the only region in Europe where Buddhism is the predominant religion.

The Kalmykia republic covers an area of 76100 km2, with a small population of about 275,000 residents. The republic is home to the Kalmyks, a people of Mongolian origin who are primarily of Buddhist faith. The capital of the republic is the city of Elista.

Geography
The republic is located in Southern Russia, lying north of the North Caucasus. A small stretch of the Volga River flows through eastern Kalmykia. Other major rivers include the Yegorlyk, the Kuma, and the Manych. Lake Manych-Gudilo is the largest lake; other lakes of significance include Lakes Sarpa and Tsagan-Khak. The highest point of Kalmykia is 222 m high Shared, located in the Yergeni hills.

Kalmykia's natural resources include coal, oil, and natural gas.

Climate
The average January temperature is -5 C and the average July temperature is 24 C. Average annual precipitation ranges from 170 mm in the east of the republic to 400 mm in the west. The small town of Utta is the hottest place in Russia. On July 12, 2010, during a significant heatwave affecting all of Russia, an all-time record-high temperature was observed at 45.4 C.

Flora and fauna
The republic's wildlife includes the saiga antelope, whose habitat is protected in Chyornye Zemli Nature Reserve.

National Parks

 * Bamb Tsetsg Tulip Island

History

According to the Kurgan hypothesis, the upland regions of modern-day Kalmykia formed part of the cradle of Indo-European culture. Hundreds of kurgans can be seen in these areas, known as the Indo-European Urheimat (Samara culture, Sredny Stog culture, Yamna culture).

Some of the first recorded peoples to move into this territory were the Scythians and Sarmatians from the central Eurasian steppe, bringing their respective religious systems with them. Later on, all three major Abrahamic religions also took root, with the Khazar conversion to Judaism being a notable (if historically contested) episode in the religion's history. The Alans were a major Muslim people group, who faced the invading Mongols and their Tengrist practices, with some of the latter settling permanently. The later Nogais were Muslim, but were replaced by the contemporaneous Mongolian Kalmyks, who practice Tibetan Buddhism. With the annexation of the region by the Russian Empire, there was an influx of the East Slavic-speaking Christian settlers. Many religious institutions were suppressed in the wake of the Russian Revolution.

Kalmyk autonomy
The ancestors of the Kalmyks, the Oirats, migrated from the steppes of southern Siberia on the banks of the Irtysh River, reaching the Lower Volga region by the early 17th century. Historians have given various explanations for the move, but generally recognise that the Kalmyks sought abundant pastures for their herds. Another motivation may have involved escaping the growing dominance of the neighbouring Dzungar Mongol tribe. They reached the lower Volga region in or about 1630. That land, however, was not uncontested pastures, but rather the homeland of the Nogai Horde, a confederation of Turkic-speaking nomadic tribes. The Kalmyks expelled the Nogais, who fled to the Caucasian plains and to the Crimean Khanate, areas (at least theoretically) under the control of the Ottoman Empire. Some Nogai groups sought the protection of the Russian garrison at Astrakhan. The remaining nomadic Mongol Oirat tribes became vassals of the Kalmyk Khan.

The Kalmyks settled in the wide-open steppes – from Saratov in the north to Astrakhan on the Volga delta in the south and to the Terek River in the southwest. They also encamped on both sides of the Volga River, from the Don River in the west to the Ural River in the east. Although these territories had been recently annexed by the Tsardom of Russia, Moscow was in no position to settle the area with Russian colonists. This area under Kalmyk control would eventually be called the Kalmyk Khanate.

Within twenty-five years of settling in the Lower Volga region, the Kalmyks became subjects of the Tsar of Russia. In exchange for protecting Russia's southern border, the Kalmyks were promised an annual allowance and access to the markets of Russian border settlements. The open access to Russian markets was supposed to discourage mutual raiding on the part of the Kalmyks and of the Russians and Bashkirs, a Russian-dominated Turkic people, but this was not often the practice. In addition, Kalmyk allegiance was often nominal, as the Kalmyk Khans practised self-government, based on a set of laws they called the Great Code of the Nomads (Iki Tsaadzhin Bichig).

The Kalmyk Khanate reached its peak of military and political power under Ayuka Khan (ruled 1672–1724, khan 1690–1724). During his era, the Kalmyk Khanate fulfilled its responsibility to protect the southern borders of Russia and conducted many military expeditions against its Turkic-speaking neighbours. Successful military expeditions were also conducted in the Caucasus. The Khanate experienced economic prosperity from free trade with Russian border towns, with China, with Tibet and with Muslim neighbours. During this era, the Kalmyks also kept close contacts with their Oirat kinsmen in Dzungaria, as well as with the Dalai Lama in Tibet.

Russian Civil War

After the October Revolution in 1917, many Don Kalmyks joined the White Russian army and fought under the command of Generals Denikin and Wrangel during the Russian Civil War. Before the Red Army broke through to the Crimean Peninsula towards the end of 1920, a large group of Kalmyks fled from Russia with the remnants of the defeated White Army to the Black Sea ports of Turkey.

The majority of the refugees chose to resettle in Belgrade, Serbia. Other, much smaller, groups chose Sofia (Bulgaria), Prague (Czechoslovakia) and Paris and Lyon (France). The Kalmyk refugees in Belgrade built a Buddhist temple there in 1929.

Soviet period

In July 1919, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin issued an appeal to the Kalmyk people, calling for them to revolt and to aid the Red Army. Lenin promised to provide the Kalmyks, among other things, a sufficient quantity of land for their own use. The promise came to fruition on November 4, 1920, when a resolution was passed by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee proclaiming the formation of the Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast. Fifteen years later, on October 22, 1935, the Oblast was elevated to republic status, Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

In line with the policy of Korenizatsiya based on the concept of titular nations, the government of the Soviet Union adopted a strategy of national delimitation, while at the same time enforcing the Leninist principle of democratic centralism. According to Dorzha Arbakov, decentralized governing bodies were a tool the Bolsheviks used to control the Kalmyk people:

"... the Soviet authorities were greatly interested in Sovietizing Kalmykia as quickly as possible and with the least amount of bloodshed. Although the Kalmyks alone were not a significant force, the Soviet authorities wished to win popularity in the Asian and Buddhist worlds by demonstrating their evident concern for the Buddhists in Russia."

After establishing control, the Soviet authorities did not overtly enforce an anti-religion policy, other than through passive means, because it sought to bring Mongolia and Tibet into its sphere of influence. The government also was compelled to respond to domestic disturbances resulting from the economic policies of War Communism and the 1921 famine. The passive measures that were taken by Soviet authorities to control the people included the imposition of a harsh tax to close places of worship and religious schools. The Cyrillic script replaced Todo Bichig, the traditional Kalmyk vertical script.

On January 22, 1922, Mongolia proposed to migrate the Kalmyks during the famine in Kalmykia. Russia refused help; 71–72,000 Kalmyks died during the famine. Revolts erupted among the Kalmyks in 1926 and 1930 (on 1942–1943, see the next section). In March 1927, Soviet deported 20,000 Kalmyks to the tundras of Siberia and Karelia.

The Kalmyks of the Don Voisko Oblast were subject to the policies of de-cossackization where villages were destroyed, khuruls (temples) and monasteries were burned down and executions were indiscriminate. At the same time, grain, livestock and other foodstuffs were seized. In December 1927 the Fifteenth Party Congress of the Soviet Union passed a resolution calling for the "voluntary" collectivization of agriculture. The change in policy was accompanied by a new campaign of repression, directed initially against the small farming class. The objective of this campaign was to suppress the resistance of farming peasants to the full-scale collectivization of agriculture.

World War II
On June 22, 1941, the German army invaded the Soviet Union. By August 12, 1942, the German Army Group South captured Elista, the capital of the Kalmyk ASSR. After capturing the Kalmyk territory, German army officials established a propaganda campaign with the assistance of anti-communist Kalmyk nationalists, including white emigre, Kalmyk exiles. The total Jewish dead numbered between 100 and upwards of 700, according to documents held in the Kalmyk State Archives. The campaign was focused primarily on recruiting and organizing Kalmyk men into anti-Soviet militia units.

 * Kalmüken Verband Dr. Doll (Kalmukian Volunteers)
 * Abwehrtrupp 103 (Kalmukian Volunteers)
 * Kalmücken-Legion or Kalmücken-Kavallerie-Korps (Kalmukian Volunteers)

The Kalmyk units were extremely successful in flushing out and killing Soviet partisans. But by December 1942, the Soviet Red Army retook the Kalmyk ASSR, forcing the Kalmyks assigned to those units to flee, in some cases with their wives and children in hand.

The Kalmyk units retreated westward into unfamiliar territory with the retreating German army and were reorganized into the Kalmuck Legion, although the Kalmyks themselves preferred the name Kalmuck Cavalry Corps. The casualty rate also increased substantially during the retreat, especially among the Kalmyk officers. To replace those killed, the German army imposed forced conscription, taking in teenagers and middle-aged men. As a result, the overall effectiveness of the Kalmyk units declined.

By the end of the war, the remnants of the Kalmuck Cavalry Corps had made their way to Austria where the Kalmyk soldiers and their family members became post-war refugees.

Those who did not want to leave formed militia units that chose to stay behind and harass the oncoming Soviet Red Army.

Although a number of Kalmyks chose to fight against the Soviet Union, the majority by and large did not, fighting the German army in regular Soviet Red army units and in partisan resistance units behind the battlelines throughout the Soviet Union. Before their removal from the Soviet Red Army and from partisan resistance units after December 1943, approximately 8,000 Kalmyks were awarded various orders and medals, including 21 Kalmyk men who were recognized as a Hero of the Soviet Union.

On December 27, 1943, Soviet authorities declared that "many Kalmyks" were guilty of cooperation with the German Army and cited that as a justification to order the deportation of the entire Kalmyk population, including those who had served with the Soviet Army, to various locations in Central Asia and Siberia. In conjunction with the deportation, the Kalmyk ASSR was abolished and its territory was split between adjacent Astrakhan, Rostov and Stalingrad Oblasts and Stavropol Krai. To completely obliterate any traces of the Kalmyk people, the Soviet authorities renamed the former republic's towns and villages.

Post-war Kalmykia
Due to their widespread dispersal in Siberia, their language and culture suffered a possibly irreversible decline. Khrushchev finally allowed their return in 1957, when they found their homes, jobs, and land occupied by imported Russians and Ukrainians, who remained. On January 9, 1957, Kalmykia again became an autonomous oblast, and on July 29, 1958, an autonomous republic within the Russian SFSR.

In the following years, bad planning of agricultural and irrigation projects resulted in widespread desertification. On orders from Moscow, sheep production increased beyond levels that the fragile steppe could sustain, resulting in 1.4 million acres (5666 km2) of the artificial desert. To ramp up output, economically nonviable industrial plants were constructed.

After the dissolution of the USSR, Kalmykia kept the status of an autonomous republic within the newly formed Russian Federation (effective March 31, 1992).

Politics

The head of the government in Kalmykia is called "The Head of the Republic". After a reform in 2006 that made the governors of the federal subjects appointable by the President, the President of Russia selected a candidate for the Head of the Republic position and presented it to the Parliament of Kalmyk Republic, the People's Khural, for approval. If a candidate was not approved, the President of the Russian Federation could dissolve the Parliament and set up new elections. Since the reform was revoked in 2011, the Head of the Republic has been elected by a direct vote, the first such election happening in 2014. From 1993 to 2010, the Head of the Republic was Kirsan Nikolayevich Ilyumzhinov. He also was the president of the world chess organization FIDE until 2018. He has spent much of his fortune on promoting chess in Kalmykia—where chess is compulsory in all primary schools—and also overseas, with Elista, the capital of Kalmykia, hosting many international tournaments.

In the late 1990s, the Ilyumzhinov government was alleged to be spending too much government money on chess-related projects. The allegations were published in Sovietskaya Kalmykia, the opposition newspaper in Elista. Larisa Yudina, the journalist who investigated these accusations, was kidnapped and murdered in 1998. Two men, Sergei Vaskin and Tyurbi Boskomdzhiv, who worked in the local civil service, were charged with her murder, one of them having been a former presidential bodyguard. After prolonged investigations by the Russian authorities, both men were found guilty and jailed, but no evidence was discovered that Ilyumzhinov himself was in any way responsible.

On October 24, 2010, Ilyumzhinov was replaced by Alexey Orlov as the new Head of Kalmykia. Since September 2019 the acting President of Kalmykia is Batu Khasikov.

Since 2008, Anatoly Kozachko has been President of the Parliament, the People's Khural. The current Prime Minister of Kalmykia is Lyudmila Ivanovna. All the three top politicians belong to the Kremlin's "United Russia" Party.

The Kalmyk Nationalist Oirat-Kalmyk People's Congress has been convening since 2015 and supporting certain people in the People's Khural of Kalmykia elections, as well as pushing for political change inside Kalmykia. It is now part of the Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum, an organisation which advocates the dissolution of the Russian Federation.

Demographics
Population:

Life expectancy:

Vital statistics

 * Source: Russian Federal State Statistics Service

Ethnic groups
According to the 2021 Census, Kalmyks make up 62.5% of the republic's population. Other groups include Russians (25.7%), Dargins (2.8%), Kazakhs (1.7%), Turks (1.6%), Chechens (1.1%), Avars (1.0%), and Koreans (0.4%).

The population of Kalmyks in the Russian Empire, Soviet Union and Russian Federation:

Religion
Tibetan Buddhism is the traditional and most popular religion among the Kalmyks, while ethnic Russians in the country practice predominantly Russian Orthodoxy. A minority of Kalmyks practice pre-Buddhist shamanism or Tengrism (a contemporary revival of the Turkic and Mongolic shamanic religions). Many people are unaffiliated and non-religious.

According to a 2012 survey, 47.6% of the population of Kalmykia adhere to Buddhism, 18% to the Russian Orthodox Church, 4.8% to Islam, 3% to Tengrism or Kalmyk shamanism, 1% are unaffiliated Christians, 1% are either Orthodox Christian believers who do not belong to a church or are members of non-Russian Orthodox churches, 0.4% adhere to forms of Hinduism, and 9.0% follow other religions or did not give an answer to the survey. In addition, 8.2% of the population declared themselves to be "spiritual but not religious" and another 8% to be atheist.

Education
Kalmyk State University is the largest higher education facility in the republic.

Economy
Kalmykia has a developed agricultural sector. Other developed industries include the food processing and oil and gas industries.

As most of Kalmykia is arid, irrigation is necessary for agriculture. The Cherney Zemli Irrigation Scheme (Черноземельская оросительная система) in southern Kalmykia receives water from the Caucasian rivers Terek and Kuma via a chain of canals: water flows from the Terek to the Kuma via the Terek-Kuma Canal, then to the Chogray Reservoir on the East Manych River via the Kuma–Manych Canal, and finally into Kalmykia's steppes over the Cherney Zemli Main Canal, constructed in the 1970s.

The government of Kalmykia spends about $100 million annually. Its annual oil production is about 1,270,000 barrels.

Emigration and culture

The Kalmyks of Kyrgyzstan live primarily in the Karakol region of eastern Kyrgyzstan. They are referred to as Sart Kalmyks. The origin of this name is unknown. Likewise, it is not known when, why and from where this small group of Kalmyks migrated to eastern Kyrgyzstan. Due to their minority status, the Sart Kalmyks have adopted the Kyrgyz language and culture of the majority Kyrgyz population.

Although many Sart Kalmyks are Muslims, Kalmyks elsewhere, by and large, remain faithful to the Gelugpa Order of Tibetan Buddhism. In Kalmykia, for example, the Gelugpa Order with the assistance of the government has constructed numerous Buddhist temples. In addition, the Kalmyk people recognize Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama as their spiritual leader and Erdne Ombadykow, a Kalmyk American, as the supreme lama of the Kalmyk people. The Dalai Lama has visited Elista on a number of occasions.

The Kalmyks have also established communities in the United States, primarily in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The majority are descended from those Kalmyks who fled from Russia in late 1920 to France, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and, later, Germany. Many of those Kalmyks living in Germany at the end of World War II were eventually granted passage to the United States.

As a consequence of their decades-long migration through Europe, many older Kalmyks are fluent in German, French, and Serbo-Croatian, in addition to Russian and their native Kalmyk language. There are several Kalmyk Buddhist temples in Monmouth County, New Jersey, where the vast majority of American Kalmyks reside, as well as a Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center and monastery in Washington Township, New Jersey. At one point during the 20th century, there was a Kalmyk Buddhist temple in Belgrade, Serbia.

The word Kalmyk means 'those who remained'. Its origin is unknown but this name was known centuries before a large part of the Kalmyks moved back from the Volga River to Dzhungaria in the 18th century.

There are three cultural subgroups within the Kalmyk nation: Turguts, Durbets (Durwets), and Buzavs (Oirats, who joined the Russian Cossacks), as well as some villages of Hoshouts and Zungars. The Durbets subgroup includes the Chonos tribe (literally meaning "a tribe of the wolf", also called "Shonos", "Chinos", "A-Shino", or "A-Chino").

Kalmykia staged the 2006 World Chess Championship between Veselin Topalov and Vladimir Kramnik.

Most of the Republic of Kalmykia lies in the Caspian Depression, a low-lying region down to 27 m below sea level.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Kalmykia


text:
User talk:Grice

Goth Joy Division
Thanks for the excellent and sympathetic edit you made to the Joy Division article. I think you have captured my and the original editor's ideas very nicely. My experience was that lots of indie kids, who liked, say, Echo and the Bunnymen, Gang of Four maybe, Simple Minds, were also into JD, Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus, the Cult, whatever, but didn't do the style thing. So I think the article at least now reflects that pretty well. Thanks.Dr Zen 01:07, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the message. I think most "movements" in music tend to be constructed by the biz. Hey, there's nothing wrong with it. Young guys like to dress up and set themselves aside. Even punk became far more about style than music. You sound like you have much the same idea of it than I do. I'm sorry if you feel I mischaracterised you -- not my intention.Dr Zen 23:59, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

honestly.
how can you live with yourself? Ungtss 00:13, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Well, I've lived with much worse than myself. Grice 11:58, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:50, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Grice


text:
Belt

Belt or The Belt may refer to:

Apparel

 * Belt (clothing), a leather or fabric band worn around the waist
 * Championship belt, a type of trophy used primarily in combat sports
 * Colored belts, such as a black belt or red belt, worn by martial arts practitioners to signify rank in the kyū ranking system

Geology

 * Orogenic belt
 * Greenstone belt
 * A large-scale linear or curved array or belt of igneous rocks (e.g. Transscandinavian Igneous Belt)
 * A large-scale linear or curved array of mineral deposits (e.g. Bolivian tin belt)
 * Paired metamorphic belts

Mechanical and vehicular

 * Belt (mechanical), a looped strip of material used to link multiple rotating shafts
 * Conveyor belt, a device for transporting goods along a fixed track
 * Belt manlift, a device for moving people between floors in a building or grain elevator.
 * Seat belt, a safety device in automobiles and on the plane
 * Timing belt, part of an internal combustion engine
 * Serpentine belt, move accessories of a combustion engine.
 * Belt track, a type of track used on Caterpillar-style vehicles
 * Belt armor, a layer of heavy metal armor plated onto or within the outer hulls of warships
 * Belt (firearms), a type of ammunition used in light machine guns, like the M240 and Mk 48.
 * Steel belt, a type of conveyor belt

Places

 * Belt, North Holland
 * Belt, Montana, United States
 * Belt Parkway, a series of highways around New York City, United States
 * Danish belts, several straits in and around Denmark:
 * Great Belt
 * Little Belt
 * Fehmarn Belt
 * Any of several informally defined elongated regions of the United States and elsewhere
 * Belts, Yiddish name of Bălți, Moldova
 * Il-Belt, Maltese name of Valletta, Malta

Astronomy

 * Asteroid belt, a region of the solar system between Mars and Jupiter
 * Gould Belt, a partial ring of stars representing the local spiral arm to which the Sun belongs
 * Kuiper belt, a region of the solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune
 * Orion's Belt

People with the surname

 * Thomas Belt (1832–1878), English geologist and naturalist
 * Francis Walter Belt (1862–1938), Australian naval commander, lawyer, and explorer
 * Philip Belt (1927–2015), American piano builder
 * Brandon Belt (born 1988), American baseball player
 * Dustin Belt (born 1987), American musician, producer, and actor

Other uses

 * Belting (music), a singing technique
 * The Belt (film), a 1989 erotic drama film
 * The Belt (album), an album by In the Valley Below
 * Judas belt, a firework
 * Green belt, a policy and land use designation used in land use planning
 * Belt problem, a mathematics problem
 * Belt Supergroup, a group of Mesoproterozoic sedimentary rocks
 * Belt Publishing, an American publisher

title: Belt


text:
ECS

ECS may refer to:

Education

 * Education Commission of the States, in the United States
 * Engleside Christian School, in Alexandria, Virginia, United States
 * Etowah City School in Etowah, Tennessee, United States
 * Evangelical Christian School, in Memphis, Tennessee, United States
 * Evangelical Christian School (Fort Myers, Florida)
 * Evansville Christian School, in Evansville, Indiana, United States
 * Everett Christian School, in Everett, Washington, United States
 * Miss Edgar's and Miss Cramp's School, in Westmount, Quebec, Canada
 * School of Education, Communication and Society, King's College London, United Kingdom
 * School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, United Kingdom

Science

 * Electrochemical Society, a learned society
 * Embodied cognitive science
 * Endocannabinoid system
 * Equilibrium climate sensitivity
 * European Calcium Society

Technology

 * Amiga Enhanced Chip Set, a chipset used in several Amiga computers
 * eComStation, a computer operating system based on OS/2
 * Edinburgh Concurrent Supercomputer
 * EDNS Client Subnet
 * Elitegroup Computer Systems, a Taiwanese electronics firm
 * Emergency communication system
 * Enterprise cognitive system
 * Entity component system, a software architecture pattern
 * Environmental control system

Transport

 * Eccles Road railway station, Breckland, England (National Rail station code)
 * Empty coaching stock, in rail transport
 * Estuary Crossing Shuttle, a bus service in Oakland, California
 * Metrovagonmash Ečs, a Russian multiple unit used in the Prague Metro

Other uses

 * East Coast Swing
 * Écs, a village in Hungary
 * Ecuadorian Sign Language
 * European Solidarity Centre
 * Ecuadorian sucre, a former currency of Ecuador
 * Emerald City Supporters, a supporters' group for the Seattle Sounders soccer club
 * Entertainment Crew & Sport, a section of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, Australia
 * Esports Championship Series

title: ECS


text:
Olaf Petersen

Olaf Petersen may refer to:

 * Olaf Petersen, a character from Red Dwarf
 * Olaf Petersen (photographer) (1915–1994), New Zealand photographer
 * Olaf Wilhelm Petersen (1841–1909), Norwegian military officer and sports official

title: Olaf Petersen


text:
Bob Varsha

Robert August "Bob" Varsha (born April 21, 1951) is an American broadcast journalist who specializes in covering motorsports. He is best known for being the lap-by-lap commentator for Formula 1 and CART series races for ESPN, ABC Sports, and Speed Channel among others.

Early years
Varsha was born in Northport, New York, and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1973 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in foreign language. While attending Dartmouth, Varsha won varsity letters in cross country and track. He made the finals of the U.S. Olympic Trials marathon event twice, doing so while attending Emory University School of Law. Varsha won the inaugural Peach Bowl Half Marathon in 1980 at a time of 1:08:23.

Varsha practiced law in Atlanta, but his life took a different direction when TBS asked him to cover the Peachtree Road Race, which he headed as part of the Atlanta Track Club in 1980. He did so well that TBS offered him a part-time job. In 1986, Varsha joined ESPN, where he hosted the network's Formula One coverage as well many other international sports events including gymnastics, figure skating, track & field and 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Speed and Fox Broadcasting
In 1999, Varsha moved to Speed, then known as SpeedVision. In 2002 and 2003, Varsha was the host of Speed's Champ Car coverage. Rick DeBruhl took over Varsha's Formula One host chair for that period. In 2004, Varsha returned to his Formula One hosting duties. In 2004, Varsha was also a part-time host/narrator for Speed's coverage of the World Rally Championship, even reporting on-site from the WRC's inaugural event in Mexico. Varsha also commentated on the Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Auction on Speed Channel in Scottsdale, Arizona, Palm Beach, Florida, Orange County, California and Las Vegas, Nevada annually.

At the end of the 2012 Formula 1 season, it was announced that Speed and Fox would no longer present the entire live Formula 1 schedule for the United States market. Varsha, who was under contract to Speed, was quoted as saying that this merely represented "one single apex in a life of innumerable apices." Varsha was the lead broadcaster for the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship on Fox Sports 1 & Fox Sports 2 through the end of the 2016 season. He is also leader of the network's FIA World Endurance Championship coverage, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Varsha was the original studio host for the Formula E series on Fox Sports. Starting in the 2016-17 season, he joined the world feed as a host and continued this role in the 2017-18 season.

Other networks
CBS "borrowed" Varsha and other talent from Speed when they broadcast Champ Car races in 2002 & 2003.

Varsha was permitted by Fox to host three F1 races during the 2013 season for the NBC Sports Network (the three races that are on the same day as an IZOD IndyCar Series race—Malaysia, Belgium, and Korea—as regular lead host Leigh Diffey was also lead host on IndyCar broadcasts for NBCSN), which carried F1 in the United States until the end of 2017. In 2014, Varsha was again permitted to work with NBCSN's coverage, but NBCSN decided instead to have Varsha be lead broadcaster for the Verizon IndyCar Series races instead of Formula 1, where Diffey remained lead broadcaster for the entire season. In 2014, Varsha worked Carb Day, Pocono, and the Toronto IndyCar race weekends.

Varsha called the 2016 Belgian Grand Prix on NBCSN with Steve Matchett and David Hobbs filling in for regular F1 announcer Leigh Diffey who was ill. Varsha also covered for Diffey on NBCSN's coverage of the F1 Singapore Grand Prix on September 17, 2017, as Diffey was on assignment covering the IndyCar Series finale the same weekend.

Radio
In January 2002 Varsha joined Focus On Racing Radio, syndicated by Westwood One. The show originates from Memphis, Tennessee, but Varsha hosts from Atlanta, Georgia and from the Speed TV studios in Charlotte, North Carolina Varsha's co-host on the show is Forrest Goodman of Memphis, Tennessee. The radio program is delivered in a magazine-style format and features interviews with top drivers from all forms of motorsports. The show's slogan is "The Fastest Hour In Radio!"

Varsha was play-by-play radio announcer for the 2014 United States Grand Prix in Austin, Texas.

Personal life
Varsha's son, Matt, drove in the Star Mazda Series for most of 2006, but had to withdraw near season's end due to lack of financial backing.

In January 2020, Varsha revealed that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and would begin chemotherapy treatment.

title: Bob Varsha


text:
User:JFinigan

General info:

 * From New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
 * Age: 27

Interested in:

 * Vacuum tube technology, mostly radio related
 * Enterprise computer hardware, past and present
 * History of electrical power
 * History of technology in general
 * Beermaking
 * Industrial machine tools and Woodworking tools, past and present
 * Gardening, especially Succulent plants.
 * Development of technology during the Cold War.
 * Classical Music

title: User:JFinigan


text:
A+ (programming language)

A+ is a high-level, interactive, interpreted array programming language designed for numerically intensive applications, especially those found in financial applications.

History
In 1985, Arthur Whitney created the A programming language to replace APL. Other developers at Morgan Stanley extended it to A+, adding a graphical user interface (GUI) and other language features. The GUI A+ was released in 1988.

Arthur Whitney went on to create a proprietary array language named K. Like J, K omits the APL character set. It lacks some of the perceived complexities of A+, such as the existence of statements and two different modes of syntax.

Features
A+ provides an extended set of functions and operators, a graphical user interface with automatic synchronizing of widgets and variables, asynchronous executing of functions associated with variables and events, dynamic loading of user compiled subroutines, and other features. A+ runs on many Unix variants, including Linux. It is free and open source software released under a GNU General Public License. A newer GUI has not yet been ported to all supported platforms.

The A+ language implements the following changes to the APL language:
 * an A+ function may have up to nine formal parameters
 * A+ code statements are separated by semicolons, so a single statement may be divided into two or more physical lines
 * The explicit result of a function or operator is the result of the last statement executed
 * A+ implements an object called a dependency, which is a global variable (the dependent variable) and an associated definition that is like a function with no arguments. Values can be explicitly set and referenced in exactly the same ways as for a global variable, but they can also be set through the associated definition.

Interactive A+ development is primarily done in the Xemacs editor, through extensions to the editor. Because A+ code uses the original APL symbols, displaying A+ requires a font with those special characters; a font named kapl is provided on the web site for that purpose.

title: A+ (programming language)


text:
Slovene National Benefit Society

The Slovene National Benefit Society, known in Slovenian as Slovenska narodna podporna jednota, and by its Slovene initials S.N.P.J. is an ethnic fraternal benefit and social organization for Slovene immigrants and their descendants in the United States. Founded in 1904, it is headquartered in suburban Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA near Imperial. SNPJ publishes a newspaper, Prosveta.

Formation and growth
The SNPJ was formed in Chicago, Illinois on April 6, 1904, and held its first convention on April 9. The society was organized the result of a call in a Slovenian language newspaper for a new Slovenian benefit society. The founding twelve delegates represented nine independent Slovene groups with a total membership of 276. The organization was incorporated on June 17, 1907. The incorporation was delayed over a year because of an Illinois law which required fraternal benefit groups to have at least 500 members. In 1905 membership had grown to over 1,500 in 27 lodges. By only 1907 there were almost 4,300 members in 60 lodges. In 1917 the SNPJ, with 16,700 members in 360 lodges, had become the largest Slovene fraternal benefit society in the United States.

In the late 1960s the Society had 68,000 members. In 1979 it had 56,000 members in 350 lodges in twenty states.

In 1921, the SNPJ merged with the Slovene Workmen's Benefit Society, or SDPZ, (which had previously absorbed the St. Barbara Lodge and the Slovene Labor Benefit and Pension Union). This merger gave the SNPJ over 36,000 members in 374 lodges. In 1941 the Slovenian Progressive Benefit Society (SSPZ) merged with the SNPJ. The Lily Alliance merged with SNPJ in 1947. Just over twenty years later, in 1969, the Slovene Independent Benefit Society merged with SNPJ. Thirty-two years after that merger, in 2001, the Workingmen's Beneficial Society of Pittsburgh merged with SNPJ.

The first English speaking lodge, Pioneer Lodge 559 of Chicago, was chartered in 1925.

In 1961, all Canadian members were consolidated into a single lodge; in 1971 this lodge was transferred to the Croatian Fraternal Union.

The high point of individual memberships appears to have been in 1950, when SNPJ had 71,554 members. The high point of lodge membership appears to have been in 1946, when SNPJ was composed of 614 active lodges.

In 1995 the SNPJ had 47,764 members.

As of 2002 there were 42,299 members in 170 lodges.

The Society was founded on a "freethought" basis. This was because many of the founders felt that existing Slovene organizations were too closely tied to the church.

Organization
The local chapters of the Society are called "Lodges" and the supreme authority is the "National Legislative Body", which meets quadrennially. Between conventions the Society is run by a "National Board". In 1979 it was headquartered in Burr Ridge, Illinois, but now appears to have its central office in Imperial, Pennsylvania. The Lodges appear to be organized into numbered regions as well as local federations.

Benefits
Originally the Society offered a death benefit of $500 to males, with a $1 flat rate assessment. However, by the 1970s, the Society was a legal reserve fund insurance group. The Society sponsors scholarships and operates a recreation center for its members, among other activities.

Ritual
The Society has a ritual, but is not secret about it. The ritual included initiation rites, installation ceremonies for officers, an organizational pledge and burial rites. A prospective member must promise to be faithful to the Society's constitution, defend the reputation of the lodges, and bring no harm to the organization.

title: Slovene National Benefit Society


text:
Battle of Salamis (306 BC)

The naval Battle of Salamis in 306 BC took place off Salamis, Cyprus between the fleets of Ptolemy I of Egypt and Antigonus I Monophthalmus, two of the Diadochi, the generals who, after the death of Alexander the Great, fought each other for control of his empire.

Cyprus had been seized by Ptolemy, and was used as a base for operations against the Antigonid territories in Asia Minor and the Levant. In 306 BC, Antigonus sent his son Demetrius to invade the island, which was defended by Ptolemy's brother Menelaus. After landing on the northeastern part of the island, Demetrius marched to Salamis, defeated Menelaus in a battle, and laid siege to the city. This was the first time where Demetrius demonstrated his flair for siege warfare, which would later earn him the sobriquet Poliorcetes, "the Besieger". Nevertheless, Menelaus was able to hold off Demetrius' attacks until the arrival of reinforcements. Ptolemy led a large-scale rescue expedition in person, hoping to catch Demetrius between his own forces and those of Menelaus, sallying forth from Salamis. Demetrius took a calculated risk by leaving only a small force to impede Menelaus, and focusing the bulk of his forces against Ptolemy. The ensuing battle was a complete victory for Demetrius, who destroyed or captured much of Ptolemy's fleet and army. After the battle, Menelaus and his men surrendered, and the rest of Cyprus was captured by Demetrius. In the wake of this victory, Antigonus assumed the royal title that had been vacant since the murder of Alexander's underage son, followed by the other Diadochi soon after.

Background
During the wars of the Diadochi that followed the death of Alexander the Great, Ptolemy, who had seized control of Egypt, had taken over the island of Cyprus and used it as a base of operations against his rival Antigonus I Monophthalmus. From Cyprus, Ptolemy's forces were able to raid the coasts of Syria and Asia Minor, territories controlled by Antigonus. In early 306 BC, Antigonus resolved to remove this threat, and ordered his son, Demetrius, to capture the island. Demetrius at the time was in Greece, where he had in the previous year overthrown the garrison installed in Athens by the ruler of Macedon, Cassander. The city, along with neighbouring Megara, was restored to democratic rule, and allied itself with Demetrius. As a result, when Demetrius sailed from Athens in spring 306 to capture Cyprus, he was accompanied by 30 Athenian quadriremes.

Crossing the Aegean, Demetrius made for the coast of Caria, whence he called upon the Rhodians to join him, per the terms of their alliance with his father. The Rhodians, however, who maintained good relations with Ptolemy, refused. Going on to Cilicia, where he was reinforced with more troops, Demetrius then crossed over to Cyprus with an army of 15,000 infantry and 500 cavalry. This was accompanied by a fleet numbering 53 heavy ships — 7 heptereis, 10 hexereis, 20 quinqueremes — and upwards of 110 lighter vessels—triremes and quadriremes — although the exact numbers are somewhat unclear. He was opposed by Ptolemy's brother, Menelaus, who disposed of 12,000 infantry, 800 cavalry, and 60 ships.

Siege of Salamis and Ptolemy's arrival in Cyprus
Demetrius landed on the Karpasia Peninsula on the northeast of the island and established a fortified encampment, protected by a palisade and a moat. From there he began raiding the area, and captured the towns of Karpasia and Urania. Leaving his fleet there, he then marched on land against the city of Salamis. Menelaus confronted Demetrius in battle some forty stadia (about five miles) from the city, but his army of 12,000 infantry and 800 cavalry were defeated in a brief battle with heavy loss (1,000 dead and 3,000 captured according to Diodorus Siculus) and had to retreat behind its walls. Demetrius freed the captives and enrolled them in his army, but soon they tried to defect, so Demetrius sent them to his father in Syria instead.

Following the battle, Menelaus hastily made ready for a siege of Salamis, mounting catapults on the walls, and sent messengers to his brother for aid. Demetrius also began preparations for the first of the sieges that would earn Demetrius his later nickname of "Poliorcetes" ("the Besieger"): skilled craftsmen and large quantities of wood and iron were brought from Asia to begin constructing large siege engines, including two large battering rams encased in large canopies to protect them from missiles, and a massive, nine-level mobile siege tower or helepolis, equipped with catapults and ballistae on each level, operated by a crew of over 200 men. Demetrius then brought his fleet and siege train into action and assaulted the city. After a few days, Demetrius' machines opened a breach in the wall and his subsequent assault nearly proved decisive, and was only stopped by nightfall. During the night, Menelaus gathered flammable material and was able to set the largest siege engines on fire.

In the meantime, in response to his brother's appeals, Ptolemy himself had sailed from Alexandria at the head of his fleet. He arrived at Paphus, on the western coast of Cyprus, at the head of 140 warships, all quadriremes and quinqueremes, and of over 10,000 men on 200 transports. According to Plutarch, Ptolemy issued an ultimatum to Demetrius to leave Cyprus, while the latter countered with the offer that he would do so, if Ptolemy were to withdraw his garrisons from the cities of Sicyon and Corinth in Greece.

Ptolemy decided to try to make a night dash from Citium, round Cape Greko, to Salamis, hoping to surprise Demetrius and combine his fleet with his brother’s sixty ships so they could then outnumber Demetrius. Demetrius, however, informed of Ptolemy's arrival, took steps in order to prevent this from happening: he equipped his ships with missile-throwers, brought aboard his best troops as marines, and sailed his fleet to anchor just outside the harbour of the city, bottling up Menelaus in the harbour and interposing himself between the two enemy fleets. This meant that Demetrius took a calculated risk that he would be able to defeat Ptolemy before Menelaus could sail out of the harbour and attack him in the rear.

Naval combat before Salamis
As Ptolemy's fleet came into view of the city right after dawn on the day of the battle, they found Demetrius' fleet deployed and waiting for them. His fleet augmented to some 180 vessels with ships captured in Cyprus, Demetrius concentrated the bulk against Ptolemy, leaving only 10 quinqueremes under Antisthenes to blockade the narrow exit of the harbour of Salamis and prevent or at least delay Menelaus' intervention. Demetrius had gathered his best ships—the seven Phoenician heptereis, the Athenian squadron, and behind them 10 hexereis and 10 quinqueremes—on the left, under command of the admiral Medius of Larissa. Medius was apparently the actual overall commander of the fleet, although Demetrius himself was also present on the left wing on his flagship, a hepteres. His centre comprised the lightest vessels in his fleet, under the command of Themison of Samos and Marsyas of Pella, while the right was entrusted to Hegesippus of Halicarnassus and Pleistias of Cos, the chief pilot (archikybernetes, the second-in-command after Medius) of the fleet. Ptolemy quickly matched his fleet to mirror his opponent's dispositions: he ordered the transports carrying his army to fall back, and massed the largest ships of his fleet on his own left, which he commanded in person. As the historian Richard Billows writes, "the battle was in effect a race to see which of the two dynasts could first defeat the enemy's right wing and turn to attack the enemy's center", with the "added question of whether or not Menelaus would succeed in breaking out of Salamis in time to intervene".

According to Diodorus Siculus, who provides the fullest, and probably most reliable, account of the battle, when the two fleets were about three stadia apart, both Demetrius and Ptolemy raised the signal to attack (a gilded shield), and the two fleets charged each other. Diodorus describes the ramming and boarding actions, as well as the missile exchanges, that dominated the fight:

"[U]sing their bows and their ballistae at first, then their javelins in a shower, the men wounded those who were within range; then when the ships had come close together and the encounter was about to take place with violence, the soldiers on the decks crouched down and the oarsmen, spurred on by the signalmen, bent more desperately to their oars. As the ships drove together with force and violence, in some cases they swept off each other's oars so that the ships became useless for flight or pursuit, and the men who were on board, though eager for a fight, were prevented from joining in the battle; but where the ships had met prow to prow with their rams, they drew back for another charge, and the soldiers on board shot at each other with effect since the mark was close at hand for each party. Some of the men, when their captains had delivered a broadside blow and the rams had become firmly fixed, leaped aboard the ships of the enemy, receiving and giving severe wounds; for certain of them, after grasping the rail of a ship that was drawing near, missed their footing, fell into the sea, and at once were killed with spears by those who stood above them; and others, making good their intent, slew some of the enemy and, forcing others along the narrow deck, drove them into the sea. As a whole the fighting was varied and full of surprises: many times those who were weaker got the upper hand because of the height of their ships, and those who were stronger were foiled by inferiority of position and by the irregularity with which things happen in fighting of this kind."

- Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History

Demetrius himself won distinction for his bravery when Ptolemy's men boarded his flagship, "by hurling his javelins at some of them and by striking others at close range with his spear", despite being himself subject to "many missiles of all sorts". Of his three bodyguards, who tried to protect him with their shields, one was killed and the others severely wounded. The Athenians also fought with distinction, as Demetrius awarded 1,200 suits of armour to Athens from the spoils taken. In the end, both left wings proved victorious, but it was Demetrius who won the race: by the time Ptolemy turned to attack Demetrius' centre, he found the rest of his fleet already defeated and in flight. Menelaus' 60 ships meanwhile, under the command of Menoetius, managed to break through Demetrius' blockade, only to find the battle already lost.

Aftermath of the battle
Demetrius tasked Neon and Burichus with pursuing the defeated enemy and picking up the men from the sea, and returned in triumph to his camp. According to Diodorus, his fleet had only lost 20 damaged ships, all of which returned to service after repairs, while Ptolemy's fleet had lost 80 ships. More importantly, Demetrius' forces had captured fully 40 of Ptolemy's warships intact with their crews, as well as over a hundred of the transports with some 8,000 troops aboard. Plutarch goes further, claiming that Ptolemy managed to save only eight of his ships, and that 70 of Ptolemy's ships were captured. Among the numerous prisoners taken by Demetrius was the courtesan Lamia of Athens, who later became the mistress of Demetrius, as well as Leontiscus, one of Ptolemy's sons. Demetrius sent his flagship to Syria with Aristodemus of Miletus to report the victory to Antigonus.

Following his defeat, Ptolemy retreated to Egypt, and Menelaus was forced to surrender Salamis and its garrison, further increasing Demetrius' strength. Demetrius then moved to take over the rest of Cyprus, taking over the garrisons into his own army as well. According to Diodorus, the total strength added to his forces thus were 16,000 infantry and 800 cavalry. Despite their rivalry, the relationship between Ptolemy and Demetrius was characterized by a mutual respect and chivalrous conduct: after the Ptolemaic victory at Gaza in spring 312 BC Ptolemy had unconditionally released the captives and baggage train of Demetrius', a gesture reciprocated by Demetrius after his success at Myus in the next year. Demetrius honoured this after Salamis as well, immediately releasing Menelaus and other relatives and friends of Ptolemy who had been captured with their personal possessions. When Ptolemy recaptured Cyprus in 295 BC, and found Demetrius' mother and children at Salamis, he again reciprocated by immediately releasing them.

Impact
The victory at Salamis was used by Antigonus as a suitable pretext for his own proclamation as king (basileus), the Macedonian throne having lain vacant since the murder of Alexander IV of Macedon by Cassander in 309 BC. At the same time, Demetrius was raised to co-king alongside his father. Antigonus' assumption of the royal title was followed by an attempt to eliminate Ptolemy for good in a massive, but failed, invasion of Egypt in autumn 306, and then by the celebrated, but equally unsuccessful, Siege of Rhodes by Demetrius in 305–304 BC. Finally, in 302 BC the remaining dynasts—Ptolemy, Cassander, Seleucus, and Lysimachus—having in turn assumed the royal title themselves, allied against Antigonus and defeated him in the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC. Antigonus was killed, and his realm was broken up and divided among the victors. Demetrius survived the battle, and thanks to his large fleet managed to maintain control of a coastal and insular realm encompassing Cyprus, the Cyclades, Sidon, Tyre, Corinth, and the major cities of western Asia Minor. During the next years, Cyprus became a base of operations for Demetrius in the Levant, and for his imposition of control over Athens and southern Greece. During his absence in Greece, however, Ptolemy seized Cyprus in 295 BC.

The Battle of Salamis is proposed by modern scholars as one of three possible naval battles—along with the Battle of Amorgos (322 BC) and the Battle of Cos (261/255 BC)—that provided the occasion for the erection of the statue of the Nike of Samothrace.

title: Battle of Salamis (306 BC)