Dr Hansen, who was one of the first scientists to warn of the dangers of global warming more than two decades ago, said that any deal reached at the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen would be a “disaster track” for the world.

He said it would be better for world leaders to rip them up and start over again.

Dr Hansen, the head of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said there should be no compromise, comparing the need to stand firm with Churchill’s stance against the Nazis and Abraham Lincoln’s opposition to slavery.

Dr Hansen is vehemently opposed to the carbon market schemes currently proposed, where permits to pollute are bought and sold.

They are seen by the EU and other governments as the most efficient way to cut emissions and move to a new clean energy economy.

Dr Hansen said he would prefer the talks to “not happen” because they were “a disaster track” for future generations.

“The whole approach is so fundamentally wrong that it is better to reassess the situation,” he said in an interview with The Guardian.

“If it is going to be the Kyoto-type thing then [people] will spend years trying to determine exactly what that means.

“This is analagous to the issue of slavery faced by Abraham Lincoln or the issue of Nazism faced by Winston Churchill.

He added: “On those kinds of issues you cannot compromise. You can’t say let’s reduce slavery, let’s find a compromise and reduce it 50 per cent or reduce it 40 per cent.”

Dr Hansen was also fiercely critical of Barack Obama, and Al Gore, who won a Nobel peace prize for his climate change efforts, saying politicians failed to meet, what he said, was the moral challenge of our age.

“We don’t have a leader who is able to grasp it and say what is really needed. Instead we are trying to continue business as usual,” he said.

His comments contradicted those made by a study lead by Lord Stern of Brentford, Britain’s leading authority on climate change, which said the UN summit was the world’s last chance to save the planet from “catastrophic” global warming effects.

Dr Hansen addressed the US Congress on June 23, 1988, where he warned of environmental damage being done by climate change, and called for radical steps to prevent its irreversible effects.

His comments came as the Copenhagen received a boost after India revealed a target to curb its carbon emissions.

This means that all four of the major emitters – the United State, China, EU and India – have now tabled offers on emissions.

A day earlier Australia dealt a major blow to any international deal on climate change by failing to introduce new laws to control pollution.

The defeat is also bad news on the international stage.

Any deal at Copenhagen will rely on the rich world agreeing to cut emissions so that the poor countries follow suit and temperatures are kept below 2C (3.6F).