GLOBAL WARMING QUOTES IV
quotations about global warming
one does come across this paradox: that people who are already convinced that the science has been done don't think more research is needed. And people who think that scientists are out not to give objective studies of how nature works but to push a preconceived idea that a climate catastrophe is looming oppose further research. And, so, for many scientists, to whom the need for further research is not simply self-serving but also obvious, because we see so clearly where the holes are in our present knowledge and where the uncertainties are in our model predictions, for us to find natural friends in the political spectrum who will share our sense that research is not only urgently required but actually rather cheap compared with the climate consequences of not doing it makes the political process bewildering and sometimes frustrating.
RICHARD C. J. SOMERVILLE
PBS interview
It's freezing and snowing in New York--we need global warming!
DONALD TRUMP
Twitter post, November 7, 2012
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
One very simple truth about Global Warming is this, that it will spare nobody, however rich, mighty and powerful we think we are.
MICHAEL S. BAROI
"Bishop of London to Lead Climate Change Service", Christian Today, November 3, 2006
It is true that there are still some who deny that global warming is taking place, or that it constitutes a serious problem. Others, while recognizing that global warming is occurring, do not accept that it results from human activities and hence effectively deny that action can be taken to combat it. The great majority of atmospheric scientists, however, now accept that man-made emissions--chiefly, but not only, of carbon dioxide--are aggravating the so-called 'greenhouse effect', thereby causing the world to warm up to what amounts to a dangerous extent.
BARRY HOLDEN
introduction, Democracy and Global Warming
The goal, the urgent necessity, is to reduce global warming pollution in the atmosphere enough to pull us back from the precipice before the changes in earth's ecosystems and weather patterns become so rapid and so vast that we will no longer be able to reverse the catastrophe.
FRED KRUPP
Earth: The Sequel
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
In 1896, a lonely Swedish scientist discovered global warming--as a theoretical concept, which most other experts declared implausible. In the 1950s, a few scientists in California discovered global warming--as a possibility, a risk that might perhaps come to pass in a remote future. In 2001, an extraordinary organization mobilizing thousands of scientists around the world discovered global warming--as a phenomenon that had measurably begun to affect the weather and was liable to get much worse. That was when we got the report from the termite inspector.
SPENCER R. WEART
preface, The Discovery of Global Warming
The size of our global warming problem requires a large-scale solution. To meet that challenge, a small group of scientists and entrepreneurs is pursuing what they call geoengineering.... Ideas include seeding the oceans in order to increase algae uptake of CO2, injecting chemicals into the upper atmosphere to cool the poles, blocking sunlight by making clouds more reflective, and stationing heat-deflecting mirrors in space. These schemes, however, are the scientific equivalent of a Hail Mary pass--to be pursued only after all other earth-bound solutions have failed. After all, tinkering with a complex system such as the biosphere can generate unintended consequences, and not necessarily positive ones.
BRIAN DUMAINE
The Plot to Save the Planet
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
I don't like being called a denier because deniers don't believe in facts. There are no facts linking the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide with imminent catastrophic global warming there are only predictions based on complex computer models.
DAVID BELLAMY
"The Global Warming Myth", Frontier Centre for Public Policy, November 21, 2007
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
Last night I watched the weather channel, as is my habit. Elsewhere in the world there are floods: roiling brown water, bloated cows floating by, survivors huddled on rooftops. Thousands have drowned. Global warming is held accountable: People must stop burning things up, it is said. Gasoline, oil, whole forests. But they won't stop. Greed and hunger lash them on, as usual.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Blind Assassin
Global warming must be seen as an economic and security threat.
KOFI ANNAN
interview, Jun. 23, 2009
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 various processes that lead to the end of nature have been essentially beyond human thought. Only a few people knew that carbon dioxide would warm up the world, for instance, and they were for a long time unsuccessful in their efforts to alert the rest of us. Now it is too late--not too late, as I shall come to explain, to ameliorate some of the changes and so perhaps to avoid the most gruesome of their consequences. But the scientists agree that we have already pumped enough gas into the air so that a significant rise in temperature and a subsequent shift in weather are inevitable.
BILL MCKIBBEN
The End of Nature
A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.
SARAH PALIN
Newsmax, Sep. 2008