Metaphors & SoundbitesType:metaphor
"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 ...
The National Academy of Sciences is the "Supreme Court" for science. Honest Abe created it 150 years ago to summarize "state of the art" sc ...
"Climate is percentage of long underwear vs. shorts in your closest. Weather is deciding to wear long underwear or shorts today."
Renewables too expensive? Navy Secy. Mabus: "Every new technology is more expensive. What if we hadn’t started using computers because the ...
Mitigation costs too much? This is like saying 'fixing the dodgy brakes on my car costs too much, so I'm going to ignore the problem.' ...
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, ...
If you thicken Earth's CO2 blanket, the planet gets warmer.
Variation: Add more blankets at night, and you overheat. Add more ...
"The evidence for climate change is not a house of cards, where you take one piece out and the whole theory falls apart. It's more like a mo ...
Some skeptics view climate science as a house of cards. You pull one card from the bottom and the whole thing collapses. But science is mo ...
"If 98 doctors say my son is ill and needs medication and two say, 'No, he doesn't, he is fine,' I will go with the ninety-seven. It's commo ...
"...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 ...
"Just as steroids make the baseball player stronger and increase his chances of hitting home runs, greenhouse gases are the steroids of the ...
"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 ...
"Over Earth’s history, ocean life has recovered from numerous sudden extinction episodes by adaptation and evolution of new species, but the ...
The most credible sources are the "grunts" working on the front lines of research -- drilling the ice cores, taking the measurements, crunch ...
The formula for false media balance is: Add one truth plus one lie, then divide by two.
Variation: Accuracy is not achieved ...
”Destroying a tropical rainforest and other species-rich ecosystems is like burning all the paintings of the Louvre to cook dinner."— Edward ...
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 ...
In climate communication, "We need to stop being Chicken Little and start being The Little Engine That Could." Less of 'the sky is falling ...
"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.
Saying "climate change happened naturally in the past, and therefore human's can't cause it" is like saying "forest fires occurred naturally ...
While it's hard to know how much global warming contributes to any single weather event, science tells us that we will see more and more ext ...
"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 Dinosaur Economy is an energy intense economy that relies primarily on fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas that are derived f ...
Who amongst us hasn't delayed opening a bill or bank statement, because we want to postpone reading the unpleasant news?
It will take generations to decarbonise the world's economies. When it's over for us, the next generation will have to pick up the baton and ...
"Do you consult your dentist about your heart condition? In science, as in any area, reputations are based on knowledge and expertise in ...
If the Arctic is warming, why was the winter of 2010 so cold?
The so-called Warm Arctic-Cold Continent Pattern is "kind of like le ...
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 ...
In earth's past, CO2 rise lagged temperature, so CO2 can't possibly cause global warming? This is like saying "'I saw a chicken lay an eg ...
"When I was six years old, there were conflicting theories about how babies were born. Somebody said a stork brought them. Another guy said ...
Claiming that 'Earth isn't warming, because 2008 was cooler than 1998' is like saying 'Spring isn't happening, because April 15th was cooler ...
"The climate system is an angry beast, and we're poking it with sticks."
— Walter Broecker, the climate science pioneer who unco ...
Think of hurricanes as a fire in a fireplace. Global warming isn't the spark but it is that extra log we are throwing onto that fire.
"2010 was the hottest and wettest -- don't Google that phrase, by the way -- year on record."—Bill Maher
Saying 'I hate government regulation, therefore global warming is a hoax,' is akin to saying 'I hate shots, therefore the flu doesn't exist. ...
For those who spend little time in greenhouses, perhaps we should call it "The Parked Car Effect." We all know what happens when you park ...
"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 ...
97 of 100 doctors recommend quick action to correct your child's serious abnormalities revealed by tests. One doctor says the child seems ...
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 ...
When you first arrive at the beach can you tell whether the tide is going in or out? No, not quickly: it would perhaps take you fifteen min ...
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 ...
Climate change is like one of those Hollywood disaster movies that pit obstructionists against ordinary people who become heroes. Those movi ...
Saying 'stopping the Keystone pipeline won't stop global warming,' is like a civil rights skeptic saying in 1960, 'Why Woolworth's lunch cou ...
There’s no “STOP” button. There’s no emergency brake. Think of our climate system as an enormous tanker with a world’s worth of momentum beh ...
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 ...
As renewable technologies jostle for position in the growing low carbon economy, commentators are asking 'Who is the fairest electricity gen ...
Positive feedback increases change in whatever direction that change is heading—so it's self-reinforcing. While riding a motorbike, what st ...
Many Earth systems behave like rubber bands, by not reversing smoothly down the same path that they were stretched along. This means that ma ...
Climate is about long term trends. Weather is short-term fluctuations.
Drawing conclusions about climate by looking at the we ...
Weather is short term and unpredictable, like ocean waves.
Climate is long-term and predictable, like the tides.
Weather is like flipping a coin once. It is unpredictable. Climate is the average weather, measured over decades. It's like flipping a c ...
Human's aren't the first species to alter the atmosphere; that distinction belongs to cyanobacteria, (blue-green algae) which, some two bill ...
We are not the radicals. Oil companies are the radicals. They are willing to alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere to make more ...
With "Cradle to Cradle" design, every waste product is raw material for the next process.
The longer global warming continues, the greater the risk of "waking the sleeping giants"—major feedbacks such as ice sheet collapse, methan ...
The U.S. is sitting on a vast, untapped reserve of cheap, clean energy: the energy lost every day to leakage, outdated infrastructure and ...
Does the pre-historic lag between temperature and CO2 rise mean CO2 can't affect temperature? No. An auto turbocharger kicks in only afte ...
If you want to find the truth, hire a detective (or scientist). If you just want to win, hire a lawyer (or PR firm).
Recent sea level rise is mostly due to thermal expansion, the same reason that mercury -- or alcohol with red dye -- climbs in a thermometer ...
Keystone XL pipeline is not the most destructive. The worst pipeline runs from Wall St. to Capitol Hill, via K St. It gushes money, no ...
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, ...
100 years ago, Titanic's Captain Smith steamed ahead full speed, despite iceberg warnings. By time the fatal 'berg was visible, it ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Slowing emissions of carbon dioxide is somewhat like slowing credit-card spending and expecting your debt to shrink.
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 ' ...
"It should be possible to write about science in plain English, though asking a scientist to do that is like asking a cat to bark."— Dr. Ric ...
Question: "What is the single most important piece of evidence supporting global warming theory?" Answer: "What is the single strand th ...
"Science is so powerful that it drags us kicking and screaming towards the truth, despite our best efforts to avoid it."
Science denial and politicization occurs whenever some influential group sees a new discovery as threatening to their worldview, values, st ...
"Don't look now, but that hoax just ate New Jersey."— Melinda Henneberger, Washington Post.
In order to prevent climate change, the world has to switch from high-carbon, polluting, power generation; to new, low-carbon generating cap ...
If you can find a way to scientifically debunk climate change, you can be rich and famous. Just beware that many scientists before you have ...
Banks, insurers and big investors are beginning to price climate risk into their decisions. This will accelerate the shift to low carbon ene ...
Partial evidence can be very misleading. Remember the "blind men feeling an elephant" allegory? One feels a leg and says it's a tree. Anot ...
"Imagine if I was scolding my kids not to pee on the toilet seat while paying them per-dribble. I'm just saying."—David Roberts, Grist.
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 ...
There's no one "silver bullet" that can solve our energy and climate challenge in one shot. Instead, it's going to take a lot of little bu ...
By the 2040s, the entire North Pole will be open water in the summer, with no sea ice. This has terrible consequences for Santa Claus and h ...
When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like nails.
A corollary: Show me a problem that is obviously not "a nail" an ...
No doctor can tell us exactly how and when we'll die. But that doesn't invalidate the reality of mortality. We can be quite certain tha ...
What does "more intense precipitation" mean? It means that, in the immortal words of the Morton Salt Company, "When it rains it pours."
"To a patient scientist, the unfolding greenhouse mystery is far more exciting than the plot of the best mystery novel."—Dr. David Schindler
Models are unreliable. I agree -- they are often late for photo shoots, and sometimes never show up at all!
The task of reducing carbon emissions seems enormous, but every journey starts with a single step. You can reduce your carbon emissions by i ...
Wildfires dominate the headlines – but the media coverage focuses only on effects while ignoring a major cause. Talking about western wildfi ...
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 ...
"Carbon offsets...are like pushing your food around your plate to give the impression you've eaten it."
Blaming Exxon "is like blaming a raccoon for going through your trash. They’re simply responding to available opportunities." Their "multi ...
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 ...
Climate change is like a train: it starts slowly, but it’s awfully hard to stop once it gains a bit of momentum.
Using oil, coal, & natural gas for our energy is as if someone said, ‘let’s build a civilization on dinosaur bones.’ Somebody else says, ‘d ...
The world is in the grip of a rush to renewables. Dirty old King Coal can be excused for being tired and grumpy at times.
"Clean up Your Own Mess" -- Robert Fulghum
"Cleaning up after ourselves generally is neither easy nor fun, and we usually don't l ...
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 ...
Would you trust Joe Camel to teach science to your children? Even lifelong smokers don't want Joe near their kids. The tobacco industry pi ...
“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 ...
Have you ever stood on a beach and watched the tide coming in? The long-term trend (the water level steadily rising) is hidden behind sh ...
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. ...
Think of it like a who-dun-it mystery. Scientists have identified all the "usual suspects" sun, aerosols, land over, volcanoes, etc. ...
Climate change is an emergency happening in slow-motion. (Variations: A slo-mo train wreck or catastrophe.)
Calling him [an oil lobbyist] a serious source on climate is like calling a fox a "serious" protector of the hen house.
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 ...
If 97 out of 100 oncologists advised you to remove a skin mole, would you listen to 3 oncologists saying the spot on your skin is benign? A ...
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 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 ...
I can't tell you when you'll die, but I can tell you the average age of death of people your age. That's how life insurance companies they ...
"If (Hurricane Sandy) was a criminal case, detectives would be treating global warming as a likely accomplice in the crime. - writer Andrew ...
Electric utility CEOs say they must burn coal to meet our energy demands. Sure, hungry kids want candy not vegetables. Yet, burning coal o ...
"How can a minuscule amount of CO2 cause global warming?" shout the sceptics! "Easily", is the response. Can't a bite from a tiny ins ...
It's the Olympics. USA has a chance to win gold in the Clean Energy Race event. Unfortunately, she is falling behind other countries.
Extreme weather is not 'caused' by climate change, just like murder is not 'caused' by guns. But just as greater availability of firearms ma ...
There are only a few plausible explanations for changing climate. To be accepted as a robust explanation for global warming, Greenhouse Gase ...
"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.
That's about the only thing where you can get scientists to agree. Yet. . .The overwhelming majority of climate scientists accept that clim ...
In 2010, 37 governments spent $409bn on artificially lowering the price of fossil fuels, according to the International Energy Agency. This ...
"The earth itself is a spaceship. We had better keep an eye its air control system." - Roger Revelle, Director of the Scripps Institute of ...
"Think of the atmosphere as a sponge. The hotter the air, the bigger your sponge, so it can hold more water. And when you squeeze it out, yo ...
"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 ...
Sound silly? So is saying, 'Because it is snowing today there cannot be global warming.'
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 ...
"The paleoclimate record shouts out to us that, far from being self-stabilising, the Earth's climate system is an ornery beast which overrea ...
As evaporation accelerates, dry areas get dryer and wet areas become wetter. Why? Because "what goes up must come down," but unfortunately ...
It is easier to argue for the existence of Santa Claus than argue against all the evidence of climate change.— a scientist at Washington Uni ...
Do you root for baseball players with lifetime .000 batting averages? This is like listening to the rare scientists who reject climate chan ...
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 ...
"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt." -- Mark Twain
"Call Me Cleopatra, 'Cause I'm the Queen of Denial" -- country-wes ...
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.
Saying a cold winter disproves long-term global warming is like the guy who wins two hands of poker and thinks he's figured out how to 'bea ...
Cold winter in Europe, but warm in Siberia. So this disproves AGW? That's like saying: 'My keys were in my jacket, now they're not. ...
Does a winter cold snap disprove global warming? That's like saying in April, "Don't tell me the days are getting longer. Look how da ...
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.
"CO2 causes more severe droughts and floods, which are very bad for plants. So saying that more CO2 will be good for plants is like t ...
"Let me address the argument that CO2 is benign because we exhale it. That's about as good an argument as saying a tsunami isn't dangerous ...
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the air is like the water level in a bathtub. If water pours in faster than it drains out, the level ...
Continued release of greenhouse gases is like playing "Russian Roulette with the climate, hoping that the future will hold no unpleasant sur ...
"This is like saying that if someone else drops more litter than you, then it's OK for you to drop litter."—Dr. Richard Milne
Cutting greenhouse gas emissions is like buying an insurance policy: we incur a cost to reduce a risk.
Better to adapt than mitigate? This is like saying 'It's better to smoke, get cancer, then spend years in chemo- and radiotherapy, than to ...
"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 ...
One man's personal choices tell you nothing about the validity of the science. It's like saying, "Louis Pasteur sometimes neglected to wa ...
A car with airbags costs more than a car without. Society decides how valuable those airbags are. Society can decide the value of renewable ...
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 ...
Whether you choose 'wait and see' vs. accept the doctor's recommendation for urgent surgery is a value judgment. Ignoring or resolving clim ...
When you've built a great wall of evidence it takes more than a brick coming loose to bring the whole lot down.
Saying global warming isn't real because last winter was cold and snowy, is like saying that spring's not happening because Friday was coole ...
"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 ...
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 ...
Imagine your radiologist pointing to a spot on your lung x-ray, which several top oncologists have agreed shows cancer.. Would you say, 'I ...
“Much of the impact of climate change will be felt through changing patterns of water availability, with shrinking glaciers and changing pat ...
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 ...
George W. Bush famously declared in his 2006 State of the Union speech that "America is addicted to oil."
As the Arctic warms, so the northern continents at higher latitudes experience cold winters with heavy snow falls. It's rather like the frid ...