GLOBAL WARMING QUOTES IV

quotations about global warming

Global warming quote

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


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


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

Tags: Margaret Atwood


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

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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 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


The planet will continue to cook.

PAUL KRUGMAN

Awake!, November 2011

Tags: Paul Krugman


There are very few objections to the theory as a whole; everyone in the scientific community agrees that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is on the rise, and almost everyone believes that it cannot help having some effect. To declare, as some editorialists have done, that the warming has not yet appeared and therefore the theory is wrong is like arguing that a woman hasn't yet given birth and therefore isn't pregnant.

BILL MCKIBBEN

The End of Nature


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


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


We don't have time to sit on our hands as our planet burns. For young people, climate change is bigger than election or re-election. It's life or death.

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ

Twitter, December 20, 2018


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

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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

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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


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

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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


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

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