GLOBAL WARMING QUOTES IV
quotations about global warming
For innovators who find safe and workable solutions to global warming, the rewards will be staggering.
FRED KRUPP
Earth: The Sequel
Global warming -- at least the modern nightmare vision -- is a myth. I am sure of it and so are a growing number of scientists. But what is really worrying is that the world's politicians and policy makers are not.
DAVID BELLAMY
Daily Mail, July 9, 2004
We need to start communicating is that this is a global struggle, and it's not about what is Sweden doing, and what is the U.S. doing -- it's about what are all of us doing, as one movement.
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ
attributed, Curious Earth, August 19, 2019
The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor.
POPE FRANCIS
Laudato Si, May 24, 2015
The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all.... A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system.... Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming.
POPE FRANCIS
Laudato Si, May 24, 2015
The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate once one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of carbon dioxide, trapped as hydrides on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect, and so global warming further. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can.
STEPHEN HAWKING
ABC News interview, Aug. 16, 2006
If we go back 20,000 years, a fair fraction of the world in the Arctic regions was covered by huge ice masses. That was the last glacial period. The temperature during that last glacial period was about four or five degrees Celsius less than today. And yet the environment was just radically different. Not that we're expecting such massive cooling to occur in the future. Quite the contrary. We expect warming of that order of magnitude to occur over the next few hundred years. If the difference between the Ice Age and the present was so large in terms of the physical environment, the vegetation, the amount of ice, the areas where people could live, the amount of rainfall, and so on, if there were such large differences between 20,000 years ago and now, and we anticipate similar differences--but in a different direction, the opposite direction--might occur over the next few hundred years, then I think that is cause for concern.
TOM M. L. WIGLEY
PBS interview
Yes, there is still much about global warming we have to learn and research should continue. But the longer we delay, the more CO2 will build up in the atmosphere. It stays there a long time. If we wait too long before acting, we will pass a point of no return and lock ourselves into centuries of global warming. We could pass one of those dangerous tipping points that could make life very difficult. It's a risk we shouldn't take.
JIM DIPESO
speech, May 1, 2003
I don't mean to imply that we are in imminent danger of being wiped off the face of the earth - at least, not on account of global warming. But climate change does confront us with profound new realities. We face these new realities as a nation, as members of the world community, as consumers, as producers, and as investors. And unless we do a better job of adjusting to these new realities, we will pay a heavy price. We may not suffer the fate of the dinosaurs. But there will be a toll on our environment and on our economy, and the toll will rise higher with each new generation.
EILEEN CLAUSSEN
speech, July 17, 2002
The messages are clear. First, global warming is not a future threat--it's the present reality, a menace not to our grandchildren but to our present civilizations. In a rational world, this is what every presidential debate would focus on.
BILL MCKIBBEN
Boston Globe, March 4, 2016
Avoiding a planet-changing global warming catastrophe is why we urgently need to transform the global energy system to a carbon-neutral one. The clock is ticking. Absent the fossil fuel greenhouse this transformation could be deferred to the 22nd century or later.
MARTIN HOFFERT
interview, Aug. 22, 2007
Despite the array of groups and organizations working on global warming, we are still missing a key element: the movement. Along with the hard work of not-for-profit lobbyists, environmental lawyers, green economists, sustainability-minded engineers, and forward-thinking entrepreneurs, it's going to take the inspired political involvement of millions of Americans to get our country on track to solving this problem.
BILL MCKIBBEN
Fight Global Warming Now
We have many advantages in the fight against global warming, but time is not one of them. Instead of idly debating the precise extent of global warming, or the precise timeline of global warming, we need to deal with the central facts of rising temperatures, rising waters, and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring. We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers are great. The most relevant question now is whether our own government is equal to the challenge.
JOHN MCCAIN
speech, May 12, 2008
The warnings about global warming have been extremely clear for a long time. We are facing a global climate crisis. It is deepening. We are entering a period of consequences.
AL GORE
speech at National Sierra Club Convention, Sept. 9, 2005
I have not seen Al Gore's movie.
DICK CHENEY
ABC interview, Feb. 23, 2007
A focus on technology development is actually one of the most prominent emerging ways to delay action on climate change, and it is being used widely on the national stage. Climate policy expert Joe Romm calls it "the technology trap": Using the mirage of new and better clean energy technology to stall, rather than foster, action on climate change. What's so dangerous about this trap is that it's based in a very wily approach promoted by Frank Luntz and other Republican strategists who point out that focusing on technology is the best way to sound like you care about global warming without actually doing anything about it.
AUDEN SCHENDLER
Getting Green Done
The bulk of scientists are pretty straight about saying this is a probability distribution. And right now our best guess is that we're expecting warming on the order of a few degrees in the next century. It's our best guess. We do not rule out the catastrophic 5 degrees or the mild half or one degree. And the special interests, ..... from deep ecology groups grabbing the 5 degrees as if it's the truth, or the coal industry grabbing the half degree and saying, "Oh, we're going to end up with negligible change and CO2's a fertilizer," and then spinning that as if that's the whole story--that's the difference between what goes on in the scientific community and what goes on in the public debate.
STEPHEN H. SCHNEIDER
PBS interview