Global warming
For
- Global warming causing climate change may be the ultimate issue that unites us all.
- Louise Burfitt-Dons,2008
- "Why try to change the future when the present is so bleak"
- Santa Bush 11/09/2007
- "We simply must do everything we can in our power to slow down global warming before it is too late... The science is clear. The global warming debate is over."
- Arnold Schwarzenegger, bill signing ceremony for California's strict anti-emissions law, September 26, 2006. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15029070/
- "There's a better scientific consensus on this than on any issue I know -- except maybe Newton's second law of dynamics," said D. James Baker, administrator of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Man has reached the point where his impact on the climate can be as significant as nature's."
- Warrick, Joby. “Consensus Emerges Earth Is Warming – Now What?” Washington Post 12 Nov. 1997: A01.
- "The answer to global warming is in the abolition of private property and production for human need. A socialist world would place an enormous priority on alternative energy sources. This is what ecologically-minded socialists have been exploring for quite some time now."
- Louis Proyect, Columbia University
- ‘Since global warming Eskimos now have twenty different words for water.’
- John O'Farrell - This Is Your Life 2001
- “If you asked me to name the three scariest threats facing the human race, I would give the same answer that most people would: nuclear war, global warming and Windows.”
- Dave Barry
- "Gordon Brown thinks you can solve climate change by changing your lightbulbs. I think you should solve climate change by changing the government"
- Sian Berry Green Party of England and Wales Principle Speaker http://www.greenparty.org.uk/speeches/r=individuallink%3D79
- “While human-induced global warming is not going to turn present-day Earth into present-day Mars, global warming is dire enough that our most distinguished scientists recently concluded that as many as 1 million species on the planet could be extinct by 2050 if affairs do not change.”
- Jay Inslee
- “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
- “Global warming is not a conqueror to kneel before - but a challenge to rise to. A challenge we must rise to.”
- Joe Lieberman
- “Today, we can see with our own eyes what global warming is doing. In that context it becomes truly irresponsible, if not immoral, for us not to do something.”
- Joe Lieberman
- “Shame on us if 100 or 200 years from now our grandchildren and great-grandchildren are living on a planet that has been irreparably damaged by global warming, and they ask, 'How could those who came before us, who saw this coming, have let this happen?'”
- Joe Lieberman
- “When the penny drops to President Bush that global warming is really serious, they're going to be in trouble.”
- James Lovelock
- "At its core, global climate change is not about economic theory or political platforms, nor about partisan advantage or interest group pressures. It is about the future of God's creation and the one human family. It is about protecting both `the human environment' and the natural environment."
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops statement http://www.nccbuscc.org/sdwp/international/globalclimate.htm
- "Global warming is too serious for the world any longer to ignore its danger or split into opposing factions on it."
- Tony Blair, speech, Sept. 27, 2005
- "Climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism."
- David King, UK government chief scientific adviser, January 2004.
- "Global warming is a serious threat. There is overwhelming evidence that increasing amounts of carbon dioxide [and other gases] are heating up the Earth's climate and that inaction could be disastrous. ... [I]n this case, doing what will earn respect and support around the world is also in our own best environmental and economic interests and is the right thing to do. Even if, despite all the evidence, one chooses to remain a skeptic on climate change, taking action today -- as an insurance policy -- is the only wise course of action. As the mercury rises, so does the need for a creative solution."
- Senator John McCain
- "The Greenland ice sheet is likely to be eliminated [within 50 years] unless much more substantial reductions in emissions are made than those envisaged [and will] probably be irreversible, this side of a new ice age."
- Jonathan Gregory, climatologist, University of Reading, April 2004
- "The absolutely best case scenario - which in my opinion is unrealistic - with the minimum expected climate change... we end up with an estimate of 9% [of all species] facing extinction."
- Chris Thomas, ecologist, University of Leeds
- "Our climate is warming at a faster rate than ever before recorded."
- NOAA Administrator D. James Baker April 18, 2000
- "[W]hen we look at the graphs of rising ocean temperatures, rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and so on, we know that they are climbing far more steeply than can be accounted for by the natural oscillation of the weather ... What people (must) do is to change their behavior and their attitudes ... If we do care about our grandchildren then we have to do something, and we have to demand that our governments do something."
- David Attenborough, naturalisthttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5012266.stm?ls
- "When I was a boy in the 1930s, the carbon dioxide level was still below 300 parts per million. This year, it reached 382, the highest figure for hundreds of thousands of years."
- ""There is broad agreement within the scientific community that amplification of the Earth's natural greenhouse effect by the buildup of various gases introduced by human activity has the potential to produce dramatic changes in climate. Only by taking action now can we ensure that future generations will not be put at risk."
- Statement by 49 Nobel Prize winners and 700 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 1990
- "Ignoring climate change will be the most costly of all possible choices, for us and our children."
- Peter Ewins, British Meteorological Office
- "Brent Cross under a slate-grey sky on a Monday afternoon is enough to challenge the most optimistic and rational liberal. It focuses the mind on the waste, greed, and short-sightedness of our species: you wonder how we are going to survive the enormous changes that the 21st century undoubtedly has in store, the largest of which any sane mind knows is global warming."
- Henry Porter, UK Guardian July 16, 2006 http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1821498,00.html
- "The European records, being so long, make a convincing case that we're already seeing changes ... This is not like 'Centuries from now the ice sheets will melt.' This is 'In a few decades it will be dramatically different.' To me, that's alarming."
- Drew Shindell, NASA physicist, August 2006
- "You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to."
- Movie critic Roger Ebert, on Al Gore's movie about global warming, June 2, 2006
- "...The United States is a quarter-century late in responding to global warming; serious climate change is already underway and requires action now, not later. There were warnings from the scientific community as early as 1979 and many in the 1980’s. We frittered away that chance to respond, and here is what we are up against now. If we want to avoid leaving a ruined world to our children, we are going to have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 60 percent globally and 80 percent in the United States and other developed countries, both by 2050. To do this, global emissions must peak about 2020 and decline steadily thereafter. Developed country emissions should already be declining. The United States is clearly on the wrong path. The Energy Information Administration projects that both U.S. coal use and carbon dioxide emissions are currently slated to increase by 40 percent by 2030."
- Gus Speth, dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, 2006
- "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, talking about the heat wave on August 3, 2006
- "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."
- Professor Stephen Hawking - ABC News interview, August 16, 2006
- "Unless we stop dumping 70 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every 24 hours, which we are doing right now … the continued acceleration of this pollution would destroy the future of human civilization."
- Al Gore, September 2006
- "In comparison to 10 years ago, now all countries recognize that climate change is an important issue, that we must continue Kyoto, that the time after 2012 must be in our sights and that we must do everything possible to improve energy efficiency and, at the same time, facilitate economic growth."
- German chancellor Angela Merkel, September 2006
- "Preventing the transformation of the earth's atmosphere from greenhouse to unconstrained hothouse represents arguably the most imposing scientific and technical challenge that humanity has ever faced. It is local, national and international. It will affect all of us as well as all our children."
- British environment minister David Miliband, October 2006
- "It used to be controversial whether smoking caused lung cancer, it used to be controversial wheter HIV caused AIDS. Now, there are a few mavericks who deny those things. In the case of climate change, I think the debate is going the same way in that there is a strong consensus that it is a serious matter."
- Lord Martin Rees, Royal Society president and Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, November 29, 2006
- "Greenhouse gases are a class of gases that can trap heat near Earth's surface. As they increase in the atmosphere, the extra heat they trap leads to global warming. This warming in turn places pressure on Earth's climate system and can lead to climate change."
- Tim Flannery, author of "The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth"
- "One very simple truth about Global Warming is this, that it will spare nobody, however rich, mighty and powerful we think we are.... Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of the UK once said that without proper action now, the average global temperatures would rise by 2 degrees Celsius. Scientists estimate that the subsequent rise in the sea level would be enough to swamp a large proportion of Bangladesh in 30/40 years time. It would be a serious catastrophe for my country and for the whole region if much of the land in Bangladesh disappears under the sea. I become frightened to think that my grand children (when I touch them) will have no place to live on this planet earth. I really want to be sure that my grandchildren, and their children after them, will be able to enjoy the beauty of my country that I have enjoyed, and be able to have enough land to live, and enough land for food."
- Michael S. Baroi, Anglican Bishop of Bangladesh http://www.cinews.ie/article.php?artid=2850
- "I want to tell them that France will always be by their side when they need it, but I also want to tell them that friendship means accepting that your friends may think differently and that a great nation such as the United States has a duty not to put obstacles in the way of the fight against global warming, but on the contrary to take the lead in this fight, because what is at stake is the fate of humanity as a whole. France will make this battle its primary battle"
- Nicolas Sarkozy, president of France, May 2007
- Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity, and it is the world’s most vulnerable populations who are most immediately at risk. The actions of the wealthiest nations—those generating the vast majority of greenhouse gases—have tangible consequences for people in the rest of the world, especially in the poorest nations.’
- Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor of New York
http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2007-2008/quotes/
- Still, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn’t it politics as usual? Yes, it is — and that’s why it’s unforgivable ... Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an “existential threat” to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole -- but the existential threat from climate change is all too real. Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is.
- Paul Krugman, New York Times, June 28, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/opinion/29krugman.html
Against
- "All this concern with the effects of global warming is another manifestation of being politically correct"
- Lord Young of Graffham, in a letter to The Times, 28th Nov 2000.
- "Global warmers predict that global warming is coming, and our emissions are to blame. They do that to keep us worried about our role in the whole thing. If we aren't worried and guilty, we might not pay their salaries. It's that simple."
- Kary Mullis, Winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- "The problem we are faced with is that the meteorological establishment and the global warming lobby research bodies which receive large funding are now apparently so corrupted by the largesse they receive that the scientists in them have sold their integrity. "
- Piers Corbyn, Weather Action bulletin, December 2000.
- "The only people who would be hurt by abandoning the Kyoto Protocol would be several thousand people who make a living attending conferences on global warming"
- Professor Kirill Kondratyev, Russian Academy of Sciences 2003-10-12
- "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 2004
- "The European Union and environmental advocacy groups use global warming hysteria to advance their own special agendas. The European Union recognizes any significant reduction in CO2 emissions by the United States will significantly reduce its economic output, thereby bringing it closer to the inferior output of European nations. Environmental advocacy groups work to stifle economic and industrial progress wherever they find it to inhibit the successful advancement of peoples in developing nations, inevitably making mankind a second class citizen of planet Earth.
- Dr. Jay Lehr, science director, The Heartland Institute, 2004-11-19
- "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."
- Dr Martin Keeley, Visiting Professor in Petroleum Geology, University College London, 2004-12-06. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4066189.stm BBC
- "CO2 - Some call it pollution. We call it life."
- Competitive Enterprise Institute
- Sea levels have been rising steadily since the peak of the last Ice Age about 18,000 years ago. The total rise since then has been four hundred feet...For the last 5,000 years or so, the rate of rise has been about seven inches per century.
The Medieval and Roman warmings, with their intervening cold periods, present a huge problem for the advocates of man-made global warming. If the Medieval and Roman occurred warmer than today - without greenhouse gases, what would be so unusual about modern times being warm as well?
The temperatures at the North and South Poles are lower now than they were in 1930. The Antarctic Peninsula, the finger of land pointing north towards Argentina (and the equator) has been getting warmer...The other 97 percent of Antarctic has been cooling since the mid-1960s.- S. Fred Singer,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer Distinguished Research Professor, George Mason University, and Dennis Avery,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Avery Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, co-authors Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Yearshttp://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/st279.pdf (February 2007)
- Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.
- "Global Warming" represents the last gasp of so-called "scientific progressivism", a mass of pitifully transparent falsehoods being employed to justify reducing mankind under the absolute despotism of "experts", the obvious implication being that we can’t even breathe responsibly. Environmentalism, Gaianism, is a religion on the basis of which — illegally under the First Amendment — public policy is being generated. Exhaling carbon dioxide is Original Sin, a reliable source of unlimited power and wealth to a Parasitic Class of politicians, bureaucrats, and cops with which our civilization now finds itself infested.
- L. Neil Smithhttp://www.bigheadpress.com/lneilsmith/?p=173
About
- "(Israel) undermines the international community's reaction to global warming"
- Clare Short, British MP and former Secretary of State for International Development. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/09/the_world_again_turns_to_jews.html