Metaphors & SoundbitesTags:risk
"What are going to develop that replaces Iowa?" — Bill McKibben responding to a conservative who thinks we can adapt to climate change.
"It’s all a game of odds. We’ve never been here before. We just know two things: one, the CO2 we put into the atmosphere stays there for man ...
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, ...
A hundred years from now, looking back, the only question that will appear important about the historical moment in which we now live is the ...
"...History will not judge us by how much economic growth we achieve in the immediate years ahead, nor by how much we expand material consum ...
"Even small rises in sea level will have very big impact in some places, as storm surges hit coasts. If you raise the floor of a basketball ...
"Even when nuclear power plants go horribly wrong, they do less damage to the planet and its people than coal-burning stations operating nor ...
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 ...
"Nature favours those organisms which leave the environment in better shape for their progeny to survive" — James Lovelock
"We're headed toward this cliff, and instead of taking our foot off the gas we're stepping on the pedal."—Scott Mandia.
Take two breaths. Your second breath comes from phytoplankton, who produce 1/2 the world's oxygen. One more reason to protect oceans.
"Think of Earth's climate as a drunk: When left alone, it sits; when forced to move, it staggers." —Dr Richard Alley.
"We're driving in a car with bad brakes in a fog and heaing for a cliff. We know for sure now that the cliff is out there, we just don't ...
"The climate system is an angry beast, and we're poking it with sticks."
— Walter Broecker, the climate science pioneer who unco ...
"Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology and physics. That's all she is. You cannot sweet-talk her. You cannot spin her. You cannot tell he ...
Think of weather as a large die, with the number 6 signifying a violent storm. If you add dots to change the "1" to a "6," you've doubled y ...
"Global warming will very probably unleash unstoppable planetary forces. And they will not be gradual. The history of our planet’s climate s ...
"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?
Some people say ‘When you are sure about climate change, then we will do something about it.’ Suppose your doctor says ‘Well, I am very ...
Positive feedback increases change in whatever direction that change is heading—so it's self-reinforcing. While riding a motorbike, what st ...
“The prospect of extreme climate change and its potentially devastating economic and social consequences are of great concern to the insuran ...
"Last month, more than 70 European companies, including Ikea and Coca Cola, asked the European Union to aim for more ambitious carbon cuts." ...
Climate change is "a significant investment risk for the foreseeable future".
'Scientists say, when it comes to climate change, we need to manage what is unavoidable and avoid what is unmanageable.' — Thomas Friedman, ...
The longer global warming continues, the greater the risk of "waking the sleeping giants"—major feedbacks such as ice sheet collapse, methan ...
"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 ...
Why is climate action so important? Because there is no 'Planet B.'
“While fossil-based prices are on a cost curve that goes up, renewable prices are on this march downward,” said Rick Needham, Google Directo ...
97 doctors said you must have a tumor removed or it'll kill you. But you decided to follow the advice of 3 who said "Nah, it's just a shado ...
Living with increased CO2 in the atmosphere is like a rain shower on the highway. It doesn't necessarily cause a crash but it increas ...
I am skeptical we can keep burning fossil fuels with a business as usual mentality without harming the planet.
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 ...
Would you put your grandkids on an airplane that 97 of the top 100 aerospace engineers declared unsafe, because you heard the 3 others say ' ...
"Responsibility is a big Republican theme. Why should we not take responsibility for what we are collectively doing to the climate system?" ...
In order to prevent climate change, the world has to switch from high-carbon, polluting, power generation; to new, low-carbon generating cap ...
'(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 ...
Banks, insurers and big investors are beginning to price climate risk into their decisions. This will accelerate the shift to low carbon ene ...
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 ...
Climate change increases the odds for extreme weather. Like playing Russian Roulette, while adding more and more bullets to a revolver. Yo ...
"The odds that natural variability created these [recent weather] extremes are minuscule... To count on those odds would be like quitting yo ...
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 ...
Climate change is like a big tsunami, far at sea but headed our way. To get our families "off the beach" and to safety, we need to act now. ...
Climate change is an emergency happening in slow-motion. (Variations: A slo-mo train wreck or catastrophe.)
"Insurance companies don’t care if you believe in climate change or not: Your premiums are going up anyhow...home insurance premiums are goi ...
"We're in a giant car headed for a brick wall and everyone is arguing over where they want to sit." - David Suzuki
Some people ignore a suspicious lump in their body, hoping it will go away. When they eventually go to the doctor -- because of night sweat ...
“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 ...
"If ten people told you your house was on fire, you would call the fire department. You wouldn’t really care whether some of them thought th ...
Alarmed by Hurricane Sandy’s destruction and the current drought? Warning: Mother Nature is now imposing ‘an extreme weather tax.’
Extreme weather is not 'caused' by climate change, just like murder is not 'caused' by guns. But just as greater availability of firearms ma ...
"Science isn't "yes or no." Science is gradually reducing uncertainty. Consider gravity. We know gravity with a fairly high degree of und ...
“Is heart surgery preferable to a good diet? Of course not. Let’s go for the good diet.”—Bill Gates, on geoengineering.
"An obese, middle-aged man is running to catch a bus. Suddenly, he clutches his chest, falls to the ground and dies of a massive heart attac ...
“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 ...
"The world is perfectly on track to six degrees Celsius increasing the temperature, which is very bad news. And everybody, even school child ...
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 ...
"Under pressure from climate stress even the most robust constitutional democracy may find its character threatened. Faced with more stress ...
"Congressman, set aside climate change, you realize that...things I suggested will help us be a lot more resilient against terrorism or oil ...
It's hard to change habits, especially when the most harmful consequences lie in the distant future. Try convincing a teenager to stop smok ...
We're like the overweight patient that goes to the doctor and learns his cholesterol is too high. He doesn't die immediately—but until he ch ...
Who amongst us has not delayed opening a bank or credit card statement because we don't want to be reminded of the unpleasant news it contai ...
Telling the inhabitants of a coral that island that they're safe because sea level won't rise, is like a doctor telling a smoker, "stop worr ...
Continuing to burn fossil fuels in order to maintain the growth economy is like keeping on drinking to avoid a hangover.
Some skeptics conflate 'uncertainty' with 'ignorance'. This is the idea that because scientists are uncertain about some aspect [of climate ...
Increasing CO2 for plants is like giving athletes anabolic steroids: it may produce short-term weight gain, but often with long-term, negati ...
Saying that CO2 is "only a trace gas" is like saying that arsenic is "only" a trace water contaminant.
Continued release of greenhouse gases is like playing "Russian Roulette with the climate, hoping that the future will hold no unpleasant sur ...
Climate change will have major impacts on the availability of water for growing food and on crop productivity in the decades to come. Increa ...
Cutting greenhouse gas emissions is like buying an insurance policy: we incur a cost to reduce a risk.
"Before we start geoengineering we have to raise the following question: are we sufficiently talented to take on what might become the onero ...
"I wouldn’t characterize wanting to use the brakes on a foggy road as hysteria. Humanity is simply driving too fast for the conditions ahea ...
"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 ...
1.4 F of warming so far has led to 40% less Arctic ice mass, Western wildfires that now consume 6x more forest, more frequent big hurricanes ...
"(Climate Change) is ultimately an argument of humans vs. physics. It is not Republicans vs. Democrats, liberals vs conservatives, or envir ...
"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 ...
"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 ...
"The popular term 'global warming' is a misnomer. It implies something uniform, gradual, mainly about temperature, and quite possibly ben ...
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 ...