Metaphors & SoundbitesTags:change
"What are going to develop that replaces Iowa?" — Bill McKibben responding to a conservative who thinks we can adapt to climate change.
A school bus goes up a hill, then down. The hilltop is the tipping point. Earth is the bus, but with no driver, just quarreling teenagers, ...
The climate system is like a rowboat. It has two stable states. "You can tip and then you’ll just go back. You tip it and just go back ...
"Think of Earth's climate as a drunk: When left alone, it sits; when forced to move, it staggers." —Dr Richard Alley.
The Dinosaur Economy is an energy intense economy that relies primarily on fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas that are derived f ...
China has succeeded in growing its economy and lifting more people out of poverty, while reducing its CO2 emissions per unit of GDP (carbon ...
"Global warming will very probably unleash unstoppable planetary forces. And they will not be gradual. The history of our planet’s climate s ...
Just as rebuilding your house in a week would cost far more than rebuilding it slowly, so hasty remodeling of the global energy system would ...
"You don't have to believe in climate change to solve it. Everything we do to raise energy efficiency, will make money, improve security & ...
If aliens came and damaged our planet, would you declare them 'persons' and give them money, or would you mobilize to fight them?
Saying 'stopping the Keystone pipeline won't stop global warming,' is like a civil rights skeptic saying in 1960, 'Why Woolworth's lunch cou ...
Positive feedback increases change in whatever direction that change is heading—so it's self-reinforcing. While riding a motorbike, what st ...
The longer global warming continues, the greater the risk of "waking the sleeping giants"—major feedbacks such as ice sheet collapse, methan ...
This is not Gen X, Y or Z. It is Gen U - the U-turn generation whose task is to see global emissions slow, and over the next 30-40 years, ...
When CC walks his dog, he moves in a straight line, but his dog, TC, tugs on the leash and wanders right and left. TC is Temperature Chang ...
Want your kids skiing down the bunny slope or the triple black diamond expert slope? This is our choice for reducing our global carbon emis ...
"Science is so powerful that it drags us kicking and screaming towards the truth, despite our best efforts to avoid it."
'If you dismiss all climate science as a hoax, I can’t help you. That’s between you & your beach house — and your kids, whose future you’re ...
Who knew? Power plants use 40% of U.S. freshwater supplies. How will they cope with a drier climate? Who will keep the lights on when the w ...
The faster Arctic ice melts and the more open sea is revealed, the more heat that becomes available to melt the remaining ice and heat up th ...
"Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced." -- James Baldwin
"If you question the numbers, just ask the plants."— Andy Extance, Simple Climate.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. If there is, you might get food poisoning.
"There is a great market opportunity for innovation. We going to go from green vs. gold to green = gold."—James Bradfield Moody.
"The last time climate change happened this fast was the Cretaceous (time of the dinosaurs) and the oil was being made then." - Stephanie C ...
The task of reducing carbon emissions seems enormous, but every journey starts with a single step. You can reduce your carbon emissions by i ...
Climate change increases the odds for extreme weather. Like playing Russian Roulette, while adding more and more bullets to a revolver. Yo ...
"If (Hurricane Sandy) was a criminal case, detectives would be treating global warming as a likely accomplice in the crime. - writer Andrew ...
In New York City, pumps at some sewage stations have been raised to higher elevations, and the city government has undertaken extensive plan ...
Alarmed by Hurricane Sandy’s destruction and the current drought? Warning: Mother Nature is now imposing ‘an extreme weather tax.’
In 2010, 37 governments spent $409bn on artificially lowering the price of fossil fuels, according to the International Energy Agency. This ...
“Climate change is a threat to our freedoms. If you're a Great Plains rancher or a farmer, your freedom is enormously constrained by the fa ...
What could be more futuristic than when the world listened with baited breath as astronauts talked to NASA control in Houston? Well, the fu ...
Little House on the Prairie families were resourceful and self-reliant. Today's smart power grids and solar PV will democratise electricity ...
Since 1950, the global percentage of dry areas has increased by about 1.74% of global land area per decade. That is 1.74% compounding intere ...
"The paleoclimate record shouts out to us that, far from being self-stabilising, the Earth's climate system is an ornery beast which overrea ...
"I do not want the government telling me what to do. But, the longer we wait, the worse this problem gets...then you are going to see a lot ...
It's hard to change habits, especially when the most harmful consequences lie in the distant future. Try convincing a teenager to stop smok ...
Continued release of greenhouse gases is like playing "Russian Roulette with the climate, hoping that the future will hold no unpleasant sur ...
"Once people understand climate protection puts money in your pocket, the political resistance will melt faster than the glaciers." - Amory ...
"Meanwhile China will keep eating our lunch on clean energy. What we need are politicians willing to make the tough—and often unpopular—dec ...
"When we look at the last 4 decades, we've seen 0.5°C global warming. Some people say, 'well that's not much!' Then I tell them to think o ...
Climate change is not a "cocktail hour curiosity." It is a very dangerous threat. Our climate system is an angry beast and we are poking i ...
"You never have 100% certainty in anything. If you wait for 100% certainty on the battlefield, something bad is going to happen." — Vice Ad ...
"A wait and see policy may mean waiting until it is too late." — 1979 National Academy of Sciences report, Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Sc ...
The 'Tropic of Chaos'; the band encircling the middle of the globe between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, where already-d ...
Sure, the climate always changes—just like asteroids have always hit the Earth. But does that mean that a big asteroid hitting the Earth tod ...
As the Arctic warms, so the northern continents at higher latitudes experience cold winters with heavy snow falls. It's rather like the frid ...