GLOBAL WARMING QUOTES II
quotations about global warming
With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it.
JAMES M. INHOFE
speech in U.S. Senate, July 28, 2003
As best as can be determined, the world is now warmer than it has been at any point in the last two millennia, and, if current trends continue, by the end of the century it will likely be hotter than at any point in the last two million years.
ELIZABETH KOLBERT
The New Yorker, Apr. 25, 2005
Some of the scientists, I believe, haven’t they been changing their opinion a little bit on global warming? There’s a lot of differing opinions and before we react I think it’s best to have the full accounting, full understanding of what’s taking place.
GEORGE W. BUSH
presidential debate, Oct. 11, 2000
Global warming is indeed a scam, perpetrated by scientists with vested interests, but in need of crash courses in geology, logic and the philosophy of science.
MARTIN KEELEY
BBC News, Dec. 6, 2004
Most people have very busy lives and simply are not exposed to the real facts about what is happening. It’s much easier to pretend it’s not happening when you can’t see, on very short time scales, the actual impacts. Coupled with this psychological reality is the fact that society ‘is now’ rather than in the future. The inertia in the Earth System means that behavior today will have significant impacts tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, rather than being immediate. The most serious impacts of climate change today are not seen by most people in the western world as few venture into the developing world, or the poles, where most of the action is. This, coupled with the fact that is is rarely possible to directly link climate change to a specific event in a specific place, all helps to seed doubt into many minds. The final ingredient in this story is a tiny minority of people and organizations who deliberately provide disinformation and set out to confuse people, for their own ends. The coal and oil industries among others have repeatedly demonstrated their credentials in this area. The result is that normal intelligent people are confused, and rather than take on what seems to be a daunting challenge, will tend to walk away from the question.
NEIL HAMILTON
interview, Jul. 11, 2009
I want to stress that people have gotten an unfortunately weird view of global warming by listening to various people perhaps purposefully confuse the issue. What was really revelatory to me, as one of those people who was by no means an expert -- and I still don't consider myself a scientific expert -- is that we're not talking about a speculative thing. The notion that you put more CO2 up there and you get a warmer world is not debatable at all. This has been understood for a century now. Global warming is real. The only debatable issue is how warm it will get. That's really the only question. And, yes, it's complicated but everything that we've learned has tended to support the conclusion that the effects will be quite significant. What people ought to know is that there's nothing that's been learned that suggests, "Oh, don't worry about this."
ELIZABETH KOLBERT
NRDC interview
When we marvel at that blue marble in all its delicacy and frailty, and resolve to save the planet, we cast ourselves in a very specific role. That role is of a parent, the parent of the earth. But the opposite is the case. It is we humans who are fragile and vulnerable and the earth that is hearty and powerful, and holds us in its hands. In pragmatic terms, our challenge is less to save the earth from ourselves and more to save ourselves from an earth that, if pushed too far, has ample power to rock, burn, and shake us off completely.
NAOMI KLEIN
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
Many scales of climate change are in fact natural, from the slow tectonic scale, to the fast changes embedded within glacial and interglacial times, to the even more dramatic changes that characterize a switch from glacial to interglacial. So why worry about global warming, which is just one more scale of climate change? The problem is that global warming is essentially off the scale of normal in two ways: the rate at which this climate change is taking place, and how different the "new" climate is compared to what came before.
ANTHONY D. BARNOSKY
Heatstroke: Nature in an Age of Global Warming
Most meteorological research is funded by the federal government. And boy, if you want to get federal funding, you better not come out and say human-induced global warming is a hoax because you stand the chance of not getting funded.
WILLIAM GRAY
interview, Sept. 12, 2005
We are in a race against time. Newspaper and magazine articles, television specials, and film documentaries all predict a terrible future: global warming will bring to the world melting ice sheets, flooded coastal regions, powerful hurricanes, droughts, and dislocated populations. In a recent study, the Pentagon described the famine, widespread rioting, and even war we can expect as nations defend their dwindling food, water, and energy supplies.
BRIAN DUMAINE
The Plot to Save the Planet
It's not that the world hasn't had more carbon dioxide, it's not the world hasn't been warmer. The problem is the speed at which things are changing. We are inducing a sixth mass extinction event kind of by accident and we don't want to be the "extinctee", if I may coin this noun.
BILL NYE
interview, Big Think, August 7, 2014
We are no longer at the point of preventing climate disaster from happening entirely -- we are now at the point of minimising the damage. And as these floods and storms are here, I think more and more people are going to be willing to stand up for themselves.
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ
The Guardian, June 29, 2019
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
I have not been one who believed in the global warming. But I tell you, they are making a convert out of me as these blistering summers. They have broken heat records in a number of cities already this year and broken all-time records and it is getting hotter and the ice caps are melting and there is a build up of carbon dioxide in the air. We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels.
PAT ROBERTSON
700 Club, August 3, 2006
Global warming must be seen as an economic and security threat.
KOFI ANNAN
interview, Jun. 23, 2009
I have not seen Al Gore's movie.
DICK CHENEY
ABC interview, Feb. 23, 2007
Climate change is real, it is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating.
LEONARDO DICAPRIO
Oscar acceptance speech, 2016
For innovators who find safe and workable solutions to global warming, the rewards will be staggering.
FRED KRUPP
Earth: The Sequel
It's freezing and snowing in New York--we need global warming!
DONALD TRUMP
Twitter post, November 7, 2012
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