Quotes & Sayings About Climate Change And Global Warming

When historian of science Naomi Oreskes surveyed all peer-reviewed papers on climate change published between 1993 and 2003 in the world's leading scientific journal, Science, she found that there were 980 supporting the idea of human-induced global warming and none opposing it. — Donald R. Prothero

But here is the heart of the moral issue for many of us. Simply put, those around the world who have contributed least to global warming and climate change will be the most and first to be impacted by the consequences of it all. Sadly, it's an old story. We, the affluent, create the problem, and the poor pay the price for our sins. It is wrong, and it is a sin-ours. — Jim Wallis

At the simplest level, economics can better show us the consequences of our actions. Less simple are cases in which we don't have the knowledge to predict the full consequences. Global warming and climate change are examples. — Edmund Phelps

Certainly whatever climate change and global warming means, we've got a big issue here. Right now, this civilization or this period that we're in is probably going to need the resources off our planet, perhaps the resources from the asteroids, perhaps there will be some on the moon, perhaps some on Mars that we can utilize for our own uses here. — Edgar Mitchell

To be clear, climate change is a true 800 pound gorilla in the room. The effects of global warming threaten global environmental upheaval over the coming century. But for South Florida and the Everglades, it could be our death knell if urgent action is not taken. — Debbie Wasserman Schultz

What happened to Haiti is a threat that could happen anywhere in the Caribbean to these island nations, you know, because of global warming, because of climate change and all this. — Danny Glover

In economic terms, global warming is not merely an externality that we have failed to price in. The free market can only get us so far. This makes it a truly wicked problem, but it also gives us a more perfect moral clarity. We are not simply borrowing against our own future. For the most part, we are not our own victims. To rely on empathy to shape our response to climate change is often considered naive - the victims of warming are distant in space, distant in time, and the bullets are invisible - but I believe it is more naive to hope that we in the north will significantly cut emissions or consumption or give needed adaptation funding to distant countries because we personally feel threatened. In — McKenzie Funk

Entomologist Dr. Ovid Byron speaking to television journalist, Tina, who says, re. global warming, "Scientists of course are in disagreement about whether this is happening and whether humans have a role."
He replies:
"The Arctic is genuinely collapsing. Scientists used to call these things the canary in the mine. What they say now is, The canary is dead. We are at the top of Niagara Falls, Tina, in a canoe. There is an image for your viewers. We got here by drifting, but we cannot turn around for a lazy paddle back when you finally stop pissing around. We have arrived at the point of an audible roar. Does it strike you as a good time to debate the existence of the falls?" p.367 — Barbara Kingsolver

Earth has cooled since 1998 in defiance of the predictions by the UN-IPCC ... The global temperature for 2007 was the coldest in a decade and the coldest of the millennium ... which is why 'global warming' is now called 'climate change.' — Richard Keen

I've often heard it said that there's a consensus of thousands of scientists on the global warming issue and that humans are causing a catastrophic change to the climate system. Well I am one scientist, and there are many that simply think that is not true. — John Christy

We should stop the non-scientific, pseudo-scientific, and anti-scientific nonsense emanating from the right wing, and start demanding immediate action to reduce global warming and prevent catastrophic climate change that may be on our horizon now. We must not let the [Bush] Administration distort science and rewrite and manipulate scientific reports in other areas. We must not let it turn the Environmental Protection Agency into the Environmental Pollution Agency. — Edward Kennedy

If I believed a giant Platypus was coming to liberate humanity and save us all, it would still make more sense than the climate denial people do ... — Steve Merrick

I hope to contribute to a global warming of hearts and a climate change in human consciousness. — Q'orianka Kilcher

Many people have the impression that there is significant scientific disagreement about global climate change. It's time to lay that misapprehension to rest. There is a scientific consensus on the fact that Earth's climate is heating up and human activities are part of the reason. We need to stop repeating nonsense about the uncertainty of global warming and start talking seriously about the right approach to address it. — Naomi Oreskes

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

We should be treating, I think, the whole issue of climate change and global warming with a far greater degree of priority than I think is happening now. — Prince Charles

Not only is the Kyoto approach to global warming wrong-headed, the climate change establishment's suppression of dissent and criticism is little short of a scandal. The IPCC should be shut down. — Nigel Lawson

Nevertheless, there is another threat on the horizon. I see this threat in environmentalism which is becoming a new dominant ideology, if not a religion. Its main weapon is raising the alarm and predicting the human life endangering climate change based on man-made global warming. — Vaclav Klaus

There are philosophical issues involved in that about choosing the right discount rate, the value, the future, and things like that which drive it. But its start with the premise that global warming is real and if you're a denier of that fact, then you're not going to find climate change mitigation policies to have particular appeal. — Brad Carson

When the Kyoto Protocol enters into the force tomorrow, the world will take a significant and long-awaited first step towards stemming global warming. Instead of stepping forward as the world leader on climate change, however, the Bush Administration is clinging to the role of world obstructionist. — Nancy Pelosi

We can be a lot smarter and more capable than a lot of the technology doubters and climate deniers assume. The people who dismiss concerns about global warming seem to be the pessimists who would rather give up than own up to the problems we have all created. The people who worry most about what we are doing to the planet are the optimists who believe we also have the intelligence - we, as a species, working together - to come up with powerful solutions to the problems we're working on that will change the world for the better. Which way of looking at the world is going to produce a Next Greatest Generation? Will it be the ones who give up, or the ones who get going? — Bill Nye

Greenhouse gas emissions and global warming are among humanity's most pressing concerns. Societal expectations on climate change are real, and our industry is expected to take a leadership role. — Ali Al-Naimi

And it wasn't just one warning. Eight years before the Panel on Climate Change's report, an assessment of global warming's impacts in New York City had also cautioned of potential flooding. "Basically pretty much everything that we projected happened," says Cynthia Rosenzweig, a senior research scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the cochair of the Panel on Climate Change and coauthor of that 2001 report. — Deborah Blum

If you think that climate change and global warming are hoaxes, then you are easily fooled. — Steven Magee

Knowledge empowers people with our most powerful tool: the ability to think and decide. There is no power for change greater than a child discovering what he or she cares about. (Speech about Global Warming read on the National Mall for the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, 2010) — Seymour Simon

I'm quite pessimistic about climate change. This is an urgent problem, and much of the world is only now waking up to the easiest part of solving - the realization that anthropogenic global warming is real. — Philip Kitcher

The response to my op-ed by global warming alarmists has been interesting. Former Vice President Al Gore has called me a "denier" and informs us that climate change is "a principle in physics. It's like gravity. It exists." Perhaps he's right. Climate change is like gravity - a naturally occurring phenomenon that existed long before, and will exist long after, any governmental attempts to affect it. — Sarah Palin

Climate change is a global problem. The planet is warming because of the growing level of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. If this trend continues, truly catastrophic consequences are likely to ensue from rising sea levels, to reduced water availability, to more heat waves and fires. — Malcolm Turnbull

If a problem is irreversible, is there still an ethical obligation to try to reverse it? — Chuck Klosterman

Humans aren't going to do anything in time to prevent the planet from being destroyed wholesale. Poor people are too preoccupied by primary emergencies, rich people benefit from the status quo, and the middle class are too obsessed with their own entitlement and the technological spectacle to do anything. The risk of runaway global warming is immediate. A drop in the human population is inevitable, and fewer people will die if collapse happens sooner. — Aric McBay

In fact, even the current administration now is releasing recent reports indicating that climate change is real, that global warming is occurring, that it is heavily influenced by man-made objects and that it is something we cannot ignore any longer. — Ron Kind

We live in a society where those that do the greatest damage to humanity and nature reap the greatest financial rewards. — Steven Magee

I believe global warming and climate change are real threats to our planet. — Andrew Cuomo

I'm convinced that after years of studying the phenomenon, global warming is not the real issue of temperature. That is the issue of a new ideology or a new religion. A religion of climate change or a religion of global warming. This is a religion which tells us that the people are responsible for the current, very small increase in temperatures. And they should be punished. — Vaclav Klaus

I believe in a world in which science is the key for supporting the
development of a happy future for humanity. So, I advocate for such a
situation in which scientists would speak louder. If science is silent, there is no way to solve high priority problems at a global level, such as: the gap between developed and undeveloped countries, poverty, limited energy resources, limited food and even drinking water (especially related to the population growth phenomenon), global warming and rapid climate
changes, etc. — Eraldo Banovac

The debate on climate change and global warming has been intensely polarized. A great deal of this 'noise' has clouded the very real and emerging issues that we as an industry and society need to address. — Johnny Chan

Climate change is the world's greatest environmental challenge. It is now plain that the emission of greenhouse gases, associated with industrialization and economic growth ... is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable. — Tony Blair

Was Superstorm Sandy caused by greenhouse warming of the planet? In a word, no. Individual storms arise from specific conditions in the atmosphere. Since records have been kept, hurricanes have varied in number and intensity each season with cycles going up and coming down. The temptation to attribute any specific weather event to global warming distracts us from considering and adopting adaptive strategies, such as improving and expanding irrigation for agriculture and the water supply for cities, that will serve us well when climate changes inevitably arrives on our doorstep. — E. Kirsten Peters

All cities do face similar, significant trends in the future ... most importantly global warming and climate change. — Cate Blanchett

I think we're in a global crisis of unprecedented scale, with global warming and climate change, and we don't have the solution using any of the separated structures that are attempting to solve these issues, whether it be the United Nations, or the global corporations. — Barbara Marx Hubbard

Science Class

Would you invent some irrational explanation for we lost souls that the glaciers aren't really melting at all, that they are and will remain just as they always have been? Some rationale that claims the whole climate change scenario is really just a satanic plot, concocted by liberal secular humanists to trick the world into thinking that the glaciers have been melting for twice as long as the Bible says the Earth has been around. — Diogenes Of Mayberry

I am flattered that Bob Carter should ask me to launch what I think is a significant new book on climate change. I have developed a very high regard for Bob in the years that I have known him. He has been a terrific and leading voice in combatting the scare mongering that we have all been subjected to on the theory of anthropogenic global warming. — Nick Minchin

I think we're going to find, with climate change and everything else, things like global warming and goodness knows what else and the cost of fuel for a start, that things are going to become very complicated. — Prince Charles

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of more than 2,500 scientists) has provided the world community with first class assessments of the soaring temperatures the world is facing, the devastating impacts of these rises and the ways in which we can try and avoid the worst effects of global warming. We now know climate change is real and the hand of humankind in this warming is becoming clearer and clearer. — Klaus Topfer

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

The theory of man-made global warming and climate change based on human greenhouse gas emissions is the greatest international scientific fraud ever perpetrated on the world's citizens! — John Casey

On Earth Day I made a commitment to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2000. And I asked for a blueprint on how to achieve this goal. In concert with all other nations, we simply must halt global warming. It is a threat to our health, to our ecology, and to our economy. I know that the precise magnitude and patterns of climate change cannot be fully predicted. But global warming clearly is a growing, long-term threat with profound consequences. And make no mistake about it, it will take decades to reverse. — William J. Clinton

Try as you might, you'll never be able to please an environmentalist. You can stop using coal to heat your house, you can stop throwing out bottles and cans, you can have every factory in Canada shut down and you can buy only organic gluten-free non-GMO food, you can give up your favorite station wagon for a weird electric hybrid, you can stop developing film and buy a never-ending cycle of digital cameras, you can give up your job at a refinery or mill, and they'll still get after you for not enjoying yourself while doing so. — Rebecca McNutt

When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories. — Freeman Dyson

Take Ron Paul. He appeals to a lot of progressives. He said on Fox, 'The greatest hoax I think that has been around for many, many years if not hundreds of years has been this hoax on the environment and global warming.' He doesn't provide any argument or evidence as to why he disregards the scientific consensus
just, I say so, period. With that attitude, you really are approaching the edge. — Noam Chomsky

I think the global warming debate is now pretty much over and people recognize the need associated with providing sources which do not generate the heat that is currently provided by fossil fuels. I concur that climate change is beginning to [have an] effect on our natural resources and that now is the time to take action. — Mitt Romney

The climate change debate is basically not about science; it is about ideology. It is not about global temperature; it is about the concept of human society. It is not about nature or scientific ecology; it is about environmentalism, about one - recently born - dirigistic and collectivistic ideology, which goes against freedom and free markets. — Vaclav Klaus

As we are being blunt, the fact is that Tony [Abbott] and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human caused global warming. As Tony observed on one occasion "climate change is crap" or if you consider his mentor, Senator Minchin, the world is not warming, its cooling and the climate change issue is part of a vast left wing conspiracy to deindustrialise the world. — Nick Minchin

The issue of climate change is one that we ignore at our own peril. There may still be disputes about exactly how much we're contributing to the warming of the earth's atmosphere and how much is naturally occurring, but what we can be scientifically certain of is that our continued use of fossil fuels is pushing us to a point of no return. And unless we free ourselves from a dependence on these fossil fuels and chart a new course on energy in this country, we are condemning future generations to global catastrophe. — Barack Obama

The retreat of the Arctic sea ice, the warming of the oceans, the rapid shrinking of the glaciers, the redistribution of species, the thawing of the permafrost - these are all new phenomena. It is only in the last five or ten years that global warming has finally emerged from the background "noise" of climate variability. And even so, the changes that can be seen lag behind the changes that have been set in motion. The warming that has been observed so far is probably only about half the amount required to bring the planet back into energy balance. This means that even if carbon dioxide were to remain stable at today's levels, temperatures would still continue to rise, glaciers to melt, and weather patterns to change for decades to come. — Elizabeth Kolbert

Today we're seeing that climate change is about more than a few unseasonably mild winters or hot summers. It's about the chain of natural catastrophes and devastating weather patterns that global warming is beginning to set off around the world.. the frequency and intensity of which are breaking records thousands of years old. — Barack Obama

Marx called Darwin a plagiarist and Malthus a fraud. Now all Marxists are Malthusian Darwinists. — A.E. Samaan

I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling in to their projects. I think we're seeing it almost weekly or even daily, scientists who are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change. — Rick Perry

To all my fellow Americans who simply insist on hangin' on to those guns ... Two things: 1) Enjoy 'em! 2) Please keep them hidden in a safe, secure place where the young 'uns can't get at 'em (I'd suggest the same place you keep the textbooks on evolution and global warming). — Quentin R. Bufogle

Global warming may be a 'crisis,' even 'the most pressing environmental problem of our time.' ... Indeed, it may ultimately affect nearly everyone on the planet in some potentially adverse way, and it may be that governments have done too little to address it. It is not a problem, however, that has escaped the attention of policymakers in the Executive and Legislative Branches of our Government, who continue to consider regulatory, legislative, and treaty-based means of addressing global climate change. — John Roberts

The winters were getting colder, starting earlier, lasting longer, with more snows than he could remember from childhood. As soon as man stopped adding his megatons of filth to the atmosphere each day, he thought, the atmosphere had reverted to what it must have been long ago, moister weather summer and winter, more stars than he had ever seen before, and more, it seemed, each night than the night before: the sky a clear, endless blue by day, velvet blue-black at night with blazing stars that modern man had never seen. — Kate Wilhelm

I think it's just yet another piece to cause confusion and I think that the 'so-called scientific debate' is very silly now - It's like a bunch of theologians arguing over how many angels you can stick on the head of a needle. When you've got a side that changes from global warming, global warming, global warming to climate change, which is intuitive - the climate has always been changing since the beginning of time - and then just begins to claim every answer is the correct answer, you often stand back, and I don't care who you are, you have to question as to what the real motive is in this. — Joe Bastardi