Metaphors & SoundbitesTags:human cause
"What are going to develop that replaces Iowa?" — Bill McKibben responding to a conservative who thinks we can adapt to climate change.
"Rising greenhouse gas emissions pose significant risks to society and ecosystems." — Exxon Mobil.
If you thicken Earth's CO2 blanket, the planet gets warmer.
Variation: Add more blankets at night, and you overheat. Add more ...
"Some say, 'Climate is always changing due to natural cycles. So it can't be us doing it.' That's like saying 'People die from natural cau ...
"If you don't know how to keep poisons out of somebody's water, or their air, how can you say you love your neighbor?" —Christian Environmen ...
"Nature favours those organisms which leave the environment in better shape for their progeny to survive" — James Lovelock
Saying "climate change happened naturally in the past, and therefore human's can't cause it" is like saying "forest fires occurred naturally ...
Think of CO2 in the atmosphere as water in a bathtub. If you partly open the drain and run the tap at the same rate, the water level stays ...
"Global warming will very probably unleash unstoppable planetary forces. And they will not be gradual. The history of our planet’s climate s ...
"Anyone who hears this: your job for the rest of your life is to make the impossible possible."—Dave Roberts (Grist).
"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?
What do a banana and a piece of coal have in common? Both are made of carbon and both provide us with energy. Coal stores carbon that was in ...
"At its core, global climate change is not about economic theory or political platforms, nor about partisan advantage or interest group pres ...
Human's aren't the first species to alter the atmosphere; that distinction belongs to cyanobacteria, (blue-green algae) which, some two bill ...
'Scientists say, when it comes to climate change, we need to manage what is unavoidable and avoid what is unmanageable.' — Thomas Friedman, ...
"This is, at the bottom, a moral issue; we have met the enemy and they is Shell." - Bill McKibben
We are not the radicals. Oil companies are the radicals. They are willing to alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere to make more ...
“It’s a bit like asking us to believe in Santa Claus after we have seen our parents putting the presents under the tree.” – Naomi Oreskes, P ...
"To do nothing when the situation is changing rapidly is not a conservative thing to do." — Spencer R. Weart from his book, The Discovery of ...
"To my free enterprise colleagues -- especially conservatives here -- (if) you think it's all a bunch of hooey, the Chinese don't." — conser ...
Fossil fuel industry is the only industry on earth throwing its waste out for free. If you run a restaurant, you have to pay someone to car ...
"Are we going to go down in history as the people who saved the bankers and let the biosphere go down?" —George Monbiot
"Responsibility is a big Republican theme. Why should we not take responsibility for what we are collectively doing to the climate system?" ...
'(Contrarians) seem “certain” the world’s scientists are wrong, and spewing 90 million tons per day of man-made (CO2) pollution into the atm ...
Reject climate change? "Make sure to say that very publicly, because I want our grandchildren to read what you said and what I said." - Bob ...
'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 ...
“...When it comes to climate change, it's the fossil fuels we insist on burning—particularly oil—that are the single greatest cause of globa ...
'No warming in 15 years' is like arguing your car is broken down because it hasn't moved in the 15 seconds while you stopped at a red light. ...
There is no such thing as a free lunch. If there is, you might get food poisoning.
"This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through...a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burn ...
"The last time climate change happened this fast was the Cretaceous (time of the dinosaurs) and the oil was being made then." - Stephanie C ...
Mark Twain famously said, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." It turns out that he was wrong. We have ...
To stay below the blood-alcohol limit, we should drink no more than six standard drinks. To keep world temperature increase below 2C we must ...
We burn fossil fuels a million times faster than nature created them. Sooner or later, we will run out. — inspired by Dr. Richard Alley on ...
Every day, beer is delivered to a restaurant in crates, and the driver takes away the empty bottles from the previous day in the same crates ...
“That’s a coffin with so many nails in it already that the hard part is finding a place to hammer in a new one.” — Geophysicist Ray Pierrehu ...
Think of it like a who-dun-it mystery. Scientists have identified all the "usual suspects" sun, aerosols, land over, volcanoes, etc. ...
(With climate change) “we will see a shorter snow season, but more intense individual snowfall events. – Dr. Michael Mann, Climatologist at ...
"We're in a giant car headed for a brick wall and everyone is arguing over where they want to sit." - David Suzuki
“Think of climate change as something that increases our risks of being unlucky. We need to prepare up front as we move into a warmer, hott ...
To declare 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 ...
"If (Hurricane Sandy) was a criminal case, detectives would be treating global warming as a likely accomplice in the crime. - writer Andrew ...
"Heat waves are the greatest weather related killer in the US. Each year, it kills more people than hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, blizzard ...
Alarmed by Hurricane Sandy’s destruction and the current drought? Warning: Mother Nature is now imposing ‘an extreme weather tax.’
There are only a few plausible explanations for changing climate. To be accepted as a robust explanation for global warming, Greenhouse Gase ...
That's about the only thing where you can get scientists to agree. Yet. . .The overwhelming majority of climate scientists accept that clim ...
"The earth itself is a spaceship. We had better keep an eye its air control system." - Roger Revelle, Director of the Scripps Institute of ...
“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 ...
"Under pressure from climate stress even the most robust constitutional democracy may find its character threatened. Faced with more stress ...
"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 ...
Continuing to burn fossil fuels in order to maintain the growth economy is like keeping on drinking to avoid a hangover.
"It's very easy right now to talk about climate change as... theoretical, to talk about the dirtiness caused by coal plants as...aesthetic" ...
"Once people understand climate protection puts money in your pocket, the political resistance will melt faster than the glaciers." - Amory ...
Global warming, like obesity, is an unanticipated consequence of prosperity.
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 ...
"(Climate Change) is ultimately an argument of humans vs. physics. It is not Republicans vs. Democrats, liberals vs conservatives, or envir ...
"Blaming La Nina for the record drought is like blaming the car engine for the speeding ticket. See what happens when the driver steps on th ...
"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 ...
Humans have overrun the planet to live in every ecosphere. We have had a dramatic impact on natural resources in every land we have colonise ...
"We are dependent on the natural world for the very air we breathe and every particle of food we eat. Many people, including me, would say w ...
In 1931, a book was published, "100 Authors Against Einstein." Albert Einstein's response: "If I were wrong, then one would be enough."
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 ...