The actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe—and would benefit the vast majority—are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets. ... It is our great collective misfortune that the scientific community made its decisive diagnosis of the climate threat at the precise moment when those elites were enjoying more unfettered political, cultural, and intellectual power than at any point since the 1920s.
~ Naomi Klein
Today we use 100 million barrels of oil every single day...There are no rules to keep that oil in the ground... the rules have to be changed... ~ Greta Thunberg
There is simply not enough time to wait for us to grow up and become the ones in charge... Unite behind the science, that is our demand. ~Greta Thunberg
Whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule. ~ Pope Francis
The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already.
~ Stephen Hawking

Global warming is the rise in temperature of Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its rising day by day

Quotes

A

  • I'm agnostic as to the causes. All I know is there is water where there once was ice.
    • Admiral Thad Allen, US Coast Guard, quoted in Smithsonian Magazine, March 2010.
  • We need to address climate change, we need to limit the temperature rise globally to the maximum extent but we cannot do it at the expense of keeping people in poverty and stopping their economic development.
  • When we look at the 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 … for our upcoming generation we have to do something, and we have to demand for government support.
  • Right now we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: climate change. If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.

B

  • 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.
  • Global warming is too serious for the world any longer to ignore its danger or split into opposing factions on it.
  • The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge.
  • 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.
  • Earth's oceans and land cover are doing us a favor. As people burn fossil fuels and clear forests, only half of the carbon dioxide released stays in the atmosphere, warming and altering Earth's climate. The other half is removed from the air by the planet's vegetation ecosystems and oceans.
    As carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continue their rapid, human-made rise past levels not seen for hundreds of thousands of years, NASA scientists and others are confronted with an important question for the future of our planet: How long can this balancing act continue? And if forests, other vegetation and the ocean cannot continue to absorb as much or more of our carbon emissions, what does that mean for the pace of climate change in the coming century?
  • "Today and for the past 50 to 100 years, the oceans and land biosphere have consistently taken up about half of human emissions," said Dave Schimel of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "If that were to change, the effect of fossil emissions on climate would also change. We don't understand that number, and we don't know how it will change in the future."
  • Global warming causing climate change may be the ultimate issue that unites us all.
    • Louise Burfitt-Dons, Humanitarian Campaigner, speech at Institute of Physics, London (June 2008).

C

  • The Coronavirus is serious enough but it's worth recalling that there is a much greater horror approaching, we are racing to the edge of disaster, far worse than anything that's ever happened in human history.... In fact there are two immense threats that we are facing. One is the growing threat of nuclear war, which has exacerbated it by the tearing what's left of the arms control regime and the other of course is the growing threat of global warming. Both threats can be dealt with but there isn't a lot of time... the corona virus is a horrible... can have terrifying consequences but there will be recovery, while the others won't be recovered, it's finished. If we don't deal with them we're done.
  • If men are to save this planet from the results of global warming they must do infinitely more than is planned to limit carbon emissions, and in a shorter period of time than is generally accepted as necessary. Men have been slow to recognize the dangers, and even now many refuse to take the problems seriously. Such attitudes, there is no doubt, put in jeopardy the future of planet Earth. At most, men have ten to fifteen years in which to establish a balance before irreparable damage is done.
    To achieve this goal, men must change dramatically the present way of life, and embrace simpler forms of living and working... few indeed realise the true scale of damage already done.
  • Apart from war, nothing so profoundly affects the future of all men as much as pollution... Daily, now, the climatic changes prove beyond doubt that the planet is sick and needs immediate and skillful care to re-establish equilibrium. Time is running out for men to halt the transformation which is being daily wrought on planet Earth. Every man, woman and child must play their part in the task. Time is, verily, running out. S.O.P. Save Our Planet!

F

  • Overall, the (new) paper is one more twig in the bundle of concerns that low-lying coastal cities, and especially Pacific islands, are highly vulnerable to this problem of sea-level rise, these Pacific islands have contributed almost nothing to the problem of global warming.
  • We are already facing growing catastrophes due to climate change. It is too late to avoid soaring temperatures, scarce water, and extreme weather. That ship has in many ways already sailed. The earth is going to be much less hospitable to human beings in the future.
  • 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.
  • The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule.
  • Two forces are emerging that will moot global warming. First, the end of the population explosion will, over the decades, reduce the increases in demand for just about everything. Second, the increase in the cost of both finding and using hydrocarbons will increase the hunger for alternatives.

G


  • Although there is enormous uncertainty about the exact progression of climate change, the direction of travel is entirely clear. This is a problem that demands coordinated global action. [...] A responsible government would be planning for this perfectly foreseeable outcome. Ours, however, is otherwise preoccupied.
  • And even though it has gone through this exhaustive 20-year peer review process with the 3,000 best scientists in the world unanimously endorsing it, every national academy of sciences in a developed country on this planet endorsing it, still, based on some radio talk show host or some odd orthogonal argument... 'Science magazine did a review of every peer review article for the previous ten years... None of them disagreed with this consensus.

H

  • 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.

I

  • We should not use all the known fossil energy if we would like to prevent the most serious climate change catastrophes. It does not make any sense to look for new oil from a fragile environment in the Arctic when we have to leave the known resources on ground.
    • Original Finnish: Jos ihmiskunta meinaa välttää pahimmat ilmastonmuutoksen vaikutukset, se voi IPCC;n tuoreen arvion mukaan päästä ilmakehään enää hiilidioksidimäärän joka vastaa vain pientä osaa tunnetuista fossiilisten polttoaineiden varannosta. Ei ole juuri mieltä etsiä enää lisää öljyä luonnoltaan haavoittuvalta Pohjoiselta Jäämereltä, kun tunnetuistakin varannoista valtaosa on jätettävä maahan.

J

  • I do think that climate change is occurring, that it is man-caused. One of the proposals that I think is a very libertarian proposal, and I'm just open to this, is taxing carbon emission that may have the result of being self-regulating. ... The market will take care of it. I mean, when you look at it from the standpoint of better results, and actually less money to achieve those results, that's what is being professed by a carbon tax.

K

  • We have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism. ... We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe—and would benefit the vast majority—are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets. ... It is our great collective misfortune that the scientific community made its decisive diagnosis of the climate threat at the precise moment when those elites were enjoying more unfettered political, cultural, and intellectual power than at any point since the 1920s.
  • The planet will continue to cook.

L

  • Prediction of the sufficiently distant future is impossible by any method, unless the present conditions are known exactly. In view of the inevitable inaccuracy and incompleteness of weather observations, precise, very-long-range weather forecasting would seem to be non-existent.
    • Edward Lorenz, “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow,” Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 20, Issue 2, March 1963, pp. 130-141.

N

  • 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.
    • 1990 statement by 49 Nobel Prize winners and 700 members of the National Academy of Sciences, as cited in Toxic Loopholes: Failures and Future Prospects for Environmental Law (Cambridge University Press: 2010), p. 174

O

  • Since global warming Eskimos now have twenty different words for water.
  • The world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, famine and mass displacement that will fuel more conflict for decades.
    • U.S. President Barack Obama, Awake! magazine November 2011, page 12.
  • 2014 was the planet’s warmest year on record. Now, one year doesn’t make a trend, but this does: 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all fallen in the first 15 years of this century. I’ve heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they’re not scientists; that we don’t have enough information to act. Well, I’m not a scientist, either. But you know what, I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA, and at NOAA, and at our major universities. And the best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we don’t act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration and conflict and hunger around the globe. The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security. We should act like it.
And that’s why, over the past six years, we’ve done more than ever to combat climate change, from the way we produce energy to the way we use it. That’s why we’ve set aside more public lands and waters than any administration in history. And that’s why I will not let this Congress endanger the health of our children by turning back the clock on our efforts. I am determined to make sure that American leadership drives international action.

P

  • Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change.
    • Rajendra K. Pachauri (2014), as cited in: Ganpat, Wayne G. (2014), Impacts of Climate Change on Food Security in Small Island Developing States. p. xxi
  • From the time the European invaders of North America established themselves and began keeping records, the bitter winters of the Little Ice Age become part of written history.
    From that point also, the natural history of northern North America began to deviate from its “natural” course. The continent was no longer isolated. The foreign invaders multiplied rapidly, destroying native ecosystems at an ever increasing rate. In time, the byproducts of technology began to poison earth, water, and air and have now begun to influence the climate. The measured responses of biosphere to climate, and of climate to astronomical controls have, for the foreseeable future, come to an end.
  • 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.

R

  • 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.

S

  • The Paris accord assumes that each government consults with its own country’s engineers to devise a national energy strategy, with each of the 193 UN member states essentially producing a separate plan... Global engineering systems require global coordination. ...Both the scale and reliability of... globally connected high-tech systems are astounding, and depend on solutions implemented internationally, not country by country.
  • The transition to renewable energy can be greatly accelerated if the world’s governments finally bring the engineers to the fore... I was recently on a panel with three economists and a senior business-sector engineer. After the economists spoke... the engineer spoke succinctly and wisely. “I don’t really understand what you economists were just speaking about, but I do have a suggestion... Tell us engineers the desired ‘specs’ and the timeline, and we’ll get the job done.” This is not bravado.... The next big act belongs to the engineers. Energy transformation for climate safety is our twenty-first-century moonshot.
  • 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.
  • No matter what lengths politicians, corporate interests and others take to avoid, downplay and obfuscate serious issues around environmental degradation and our economic system’s destructive path, we can’t deny reality. Studies show we must refrain from burning most fossil fuel reserves to avoid catastrophic warming. In little more than a century, the human population has more than quadrupled to seven billion and rising, and our plastic-choked, consumer-driven, car-obsessed cultures have led to resource depletion, species extinction, ocean degradation, climate change and more. It’s past time to open our eyes and shift to a more sensible approach to living on this small, precious planet.
  • Many solutions are being employed or developed, but not fast enough to forestall catastrophe. In Canada, we have federal and provincial governments hell-bent on expanding fossil fuel infrastructure and development to reap as much profit as possible from a dying industry and to satisfy the vagaries of short election cycles. The fossil fuel industry continues to receive massive subsidies, including a multi-billion-dollar taxpayer bailout for an American pipeline company, while clean energy receives far less support.

T

  • Many scientists... are... subject to such foolishness [eliminating outliers]... One flagrant example is... global warming... These scientists initially ignored the fact that these [high temperature] spikes, although rare, had the effect of adding disproportionately to the cumulative melting of the ice caps. ...[A]n event, although rare, that brings large consequences cannot be ignored.
    • Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (2001) Six: Skewness and Symmetry | Bull and Bear Zoology | Symmetry and Science
  • Today we use 100 million barrels of oil every single day...There are no rules to keep that oil in the ground... the rules have to be changed... For 25 years, countless of people have stood in front of the United Nations...asking our nations’ leaders to stop the emissions. But clearly this has not worked, since the emissions just continue to rise. So I will not ask them anything. Instead, I will ask the people around the world to realize that our political leaders have failed us, because we are facing an existential threat and there is no time to continue down this road of madness.

U

  • 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.

W

  • Man has reached the point where his impact on the climate can be as significant as nature's.
    • Joby Warrick, “Consensus Emerges Earth Is Warming – Now What?” Washington Post 12 Nov. 1997: A01.
  • Because the numbers are so small, we tend to trivialize the differences between one degree and two, two degrees and four. Human experience and memory offers no good analogy for how we should think about those thresholds, but with degrees of warming, as with world wars or recurrences of cancer, you don’t want to see even one.
    • David Wallace-Wells, "UN Says Climate Genocide Is Coming. It’s Actually Worse Than That." New York Magazine, October 10, 2018

See also

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