Metaphors & SoundbitesType:quote
"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.
"...Climate change could have significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, and the ...
"It is the nature of the human species to reject what is true but unpleasant, and to embrace what is obviously false but comforting."
"I am a conservative Republican...I do not believe in wasting things...I do not believe in wasting natural resources or any resources that w ...
Renewables too expensive? Navy Secy. Mabus: "Every new technology is more expensive. What if we hadn’t started using computers because the ...
The Marines are quietly leading the way on efficiency and renewables.
"Our priority is to save lives by reducing the number of Marines ...
"People used to think the world was flat. Then others said it was a perfect sphere. Once we could accurately measure, it turns out they are ...
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, ...
"...I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait 'til oil and coal run out before we t ...
Just thermometers, indicating since the 1880 that the Earth is warming due to climate change.
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 ...
"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 ...
"Over Earth’s history, ocean life has recovered from numerous sudden extinction episodes by adaptation and evolution of new species, but the ...
"Even when nuclear power plants go horribly wrong, they do less damage to the planet and its people than coal-burning stations operating nor ...
"It's 3:23 in the morning, and I'm awake
because my great, great, grandchildren won't let me sleep.
...
”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 ...
"If you like buying oil from the Saudis, you'll love buying solar from the Chinese!"— Thomas Friedman
"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.
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 ...
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 ...
"It is not right to destroy the world God has given us. He created everything; as the Bible says, 'The God who made the world and everythin ...
"When I was six years old, there were conflicting theories about how babies were born. Somebody said a stork brought them. Another guy said ...
"The climate system is an angry beast, and we're poking it with sticks."
— Walter Broecker, the climate science pioneer who unco ...
All scientists are skeptics. The motto of UK's 350-year-old Royal Society is 'Nullius in verba,' Latin for "On the words of no one" or "tak ...
"Our children and grandchildren are going to be mad at us for burning all this oil. It took the Earth 500 million years to create the stuff ...
"2010 was the hottest and wettest -- don't Google that phrase, by the way -- year on record."—Bill Maher
"I am a pilot. I love flying in bad weather because you must trust the cockpit instruments. Up here, if you do not accept science, you die.— ...
"When it comes to climate change, true skepticism is two-sided. One-sided skepticism is no skepticism at all." —Michael Mann. ...
"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 ...
"'Coal = Jobs.' Yes, for lung doctors."—Thomas Friedman, New York Times Columnist
"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).
97 of 100 doctors recommend quick action to correct your child's serious abnormalities revealed by tests. One doctor says the child seems ...
"You don't have to believe in climate change to solve it. Everything we do to raise energy efficiency, will make money, improve security & ...
"We desperately want to believe that big problems are overblown or nonexistent. Whenever a group of people 'desperately wants to believe' s ...
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 ...
A straight-through tax can help to lower carbon emissions by reducing taxes on work (e.g. income tax and payroll tax) while increasing taxes ...
“The prospect of extreme climate change and its potentially devastating economic and social consequences are of great concern to the insuran ...
"At its core, global climate change is not about economic theory or political platforms, nor about partisan advantage or interest group pres ...
Climate change is "a significant investment risk for the foreseeable future".
"We will see it, our kids will live it, and there's a question of whether our grandkids will make it through or not."
"I have long supported a sharp reduction in payroll taxes, with the differences made up in CO2 taxes. We should tax what we burn, not what ...
Who doesn’t want economic investment? Who doesn’t want renewable sources of energy? Who doesn’t want cleaner air and water and a thriving ec ...
'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 ...
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 ...
“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 ...
Senator John McCain saw direct evidence of climate change when a Yukon elder presented him with a 4,000-year tomahawk freshly melted from th ...
"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 ...
"If you want to change the world for the better, first you have to change the story."
Evangelical Christians acknowledge that we live in God's world. Acting from love of God and Jesus Christ, Christians act to protect the natu ...
"To my free enterprise colleagues -- especially conservatives here -- (if) you think it's all a bunch of hooey, the Chinese don't." — conser ...
Future generations "will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted." —Pres. Theodore Roosevelt.
Why is climate action so important? Because there is no 'Planet B.'
"The word rival, after all, comes from 'people who share the same river.'"
Many wars are ignited by conflict over scarce resources ...
"I really, really deplore the politicisation and polarisation of this issue" [global warming]. "There are these increasingly unprincipled at ...
“While fossil-based prices are on a cost curve that goes up, renewable prices are on this march downward,” said Rick Needham, Google Directo ...
"The cheapest carbon to remove from the atmosphere, is the carbon we don't put there in the first place."
"This past month, I spent more beer & pistachios than I did on gas & electric. And I am not a big drinker. It’s amazing how much (solar) c ...
"The more people with visible tattoos who advocate for clean energy, the more success it will have in Washington. You win the tattooed vote ...
"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 not a democracy. It is a dictatorship. It is the evidence that does the dictating." - author John Reisman
"Science is so powerful that it drags us kicking and screaming towards the truth, despite our best efforts to avoid it."
"Don't look now, but that hoax just ate New Jersey."— Melinda Henneberger, Washington Post.
"Responsibility is a big Republican theme. Why should we not take responsibility for what we are collectively doing to the climate system?" ...
Replace your "ands" with "buts" or "therefores." It makes for better writing —Trey Parker, writer of South Park, on the art of storytellin ...
'(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 ...
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
"The fact that humans are causing climate change is good news. That means we can do something about it." - NASA scientist Robert Cahalan
As Earth's oceans warm and become more acidic, ocean creatures including pteropods are undergoing severe stress. They are harbingers of chan ...
"We have everything we need to face this urgent challenge. All it takes is political will. And in our democracy, political will is a renewab ...
"Past climate change is not a source of comfort. It's a cause for concern."— John Cook
"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.
“...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 ...
"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.
"Numbers numb, jargon jars, and nobody ever marched on Washington because of a pie chart. Stories get stored. And when you can change the st ...
'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. ...
"A million small things got us into this climate crisis, and millions of actions will get us out of it." - Patrick Gonzalez, climate scienti ...
"(To truly resolve climate change), there are no silver bullets, only silver buckshot." - Bill McKibben author & Founder of 350.org
"There is a great market opportunity for innovation. We going to go from green vs. gold to green = gold."—James Bradfield Moody.
"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 ...
"Mother Nature puts a time limit on how long we can dither and procrastinate" before taking action. "Several vulnerable elements in earth ...
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!
"A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus."—Martin Luther King.
Mark Twain famously said, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." It turns out that he was wrong. We have ...
Climate = what you expect. Weather = what you get. Variation: When travel, climate determines what you pack. Weather determines what ...
“Like the sinking of the Titanic, catastrophes are not democratic. A much higher fraction of passengers from the cheaper decks were lost. W ...
Wildfires dominate the headlines – but the media coverage focuses only on effects while ignoring a major cause. Talking about western wildfi ...
"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 ...
"Clean up Your Own Mess" -- Robert Fulghum
"Cleaning up after ourselves generally is neither easy nor fun, and we usually don't l ...
"Knowledge of the oceans is more than a matter of curiosity. Our very survival may hinge upon it.” President John F. Kennedy, Jr., March 196 ...
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and to do these other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that ...
“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 ...
What happens in the Arctic, doesn't stay in the Arctic. The rapid disappearance of sea ice cover can have consequences that are felt all ove ...
"It's not enough to care; we must link our concern to each other & act collectively...'1,000 stallions unconnected cannot move a baby carria ...
“It is no longer enough to love, feed, shelter, clothe and educate a child – not when the future itself is in danger. Being conscientious pa ...
Climate change is an emergency happening in slow-motion. (Variations: A slo-mo train wreck or catastrophe.)
(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 ...
"It may not be common sense, but if common sense were good enough, we wouldn't need science."
"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 ...
"The excess CO2 that is pumped into the air today will affect our planet for thousands of years into the future. I am not an alarmist, but I ...
"If we never have another tornado or hurricane, the increased threat of droughts, heat waves, floods and fires are enough for us to take act ...
"What do jet engines, computers, transistors, the internet, and the Global Positioning System (GPS) have in common? They all owe their exist ...
"Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up." - Dr. David W. Orr, Professor of Environmental Studies Program, Oberlin College, Ohio.
"Heat waves are the greatest weather related killer in the US. Each year, it kills more people than hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, blizzard ...
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.
"The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed ...
"The earth itself is a spaceship. We had better keep an eye its air control system." - Roger Revelle, Director of the Scripps Institute of ...
'First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.'
"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 ...
“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 ...
"Every major national science academy in the world has reported that global warming is real, caused mostly by humans, and requires urgent ac ...
"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 ...
Efficiency is simply "getting what you paid for." When you buy a light bulb, you pay for light; not waste heat.
Variation: Ef ...
"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 ...
"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 ...
"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt." -- Mark Twain
"Call Me Cleopatra, 'Cause I'm the Queen of Denial" -- country-wes ...
"...97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC [anthropogenic climate change] outline ...
Some skeptics conflate 'uncertainty' with 'ignorance'. This is the idea that because scientists are uncertain about some aspect [of climate ...
"It's very easy right now to talk about climate change as... theoretical, to talk about the dirtiness caused by coal plants as...aesthetic" ...
"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 ...
"Once people understand climate protection puts money in your pocket, the political resistance will melt faster than the glaciers." - Amory ...
"Those who work to prevent global warming are deeply conservative, insistent that we should leave the world in something like the shape we f ...
Saying ‘we won’t do anything until China does’ is like saying ’We won’t protect free speech until China does.’ — Senator Barbara Boxer, Cali ...
"Meanwhile China will keep eating our lunch on clean energy. What we need are politicians willing to make the tough—and often unpopular—dec ...
Cutting greenhouse gas emissions is like buying an insurance policy: we incur a cost to reduce a risk.
"People often ask if I believe in global warming. I now just reply with the question: 'Do you believe in gravity.'" — Neil deGrasse Tyson, ...
Ask a local farmer whether they have noticed any changes in the timing of growing seasons in the past few decades. Ask a local gardener if ...
"Before we start geoengineering we have to raise the following question: are we sufficiently talented to take on what might become the onero ...
“Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful” — George E. P. Box
"Skepticism is invaluable to the scientific method. But an honest skeptic can be persuaded by facts. These deniers are largely impervious to ...
"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 ...
A car with airbags costs more than a car without. Society decides how valuable those airbags are. Society can decide the value of renewable ...
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 ...
Global warming, like obesity, is an unanticipated consequence of prosperity.
"Of all sectors of society, agriculture is the sector most likely to be affected by changes in climate. Investment [in agricultural research ...
"People across the northern hemisphere are facing the fact that a warming planet doesn't get rid of winter ... now is a good time to remind ...
"(Climate Change) is ultimately an argument of humans vs. physics. It is not Republicans vs. Democrats, liberals vs conservatives, or envir ...
"It's getting warmer. Storms are getting stronger...and it's getting harder to say this is an accident of nature" — Dr. Stephen Schneider.
Whether you choose 'wait and see' vs. accept the doctor's recommendation for urgent surgery is a value judgment. Ignoring or resolving clim ...
"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 ...
'You can't wake a person who is pretending to sleep'—Oromo saying, Ethiopia
Weather gone wild. "It's been a crazy two years. WIth droughts, and floods, and tornadoes and heat waves."
"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 ...
'Or if the sun revolves around the earth?' Climate Scientist Michael E. Mann's response to the statement that climate change is a hoax.
"I have nothing more to do with oil. I am producing my own energy -- solar energy," Larry Hagman (the actor who played oil baron J.R. Ewing ...
- former Energy Secretary James Schlesinger responding the American addiction to fossil fuels and our inability to be energy independent
Martin Luther King “would say that we need to come together because this is our planet, and if we lose this, then all the other issues won’t ...
" 'Clean coal' represents a breakthrough —in the marketing of coal. But it does not represent a breakthrough in the burning of coal." ...
"There is this long, wonderful history of the human race written in blood. We have this tendency to just take what we want. And that's how w ...
"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 ...
Sign photographed on in the middle of Main Street, in Bison, Kansas on July 23, 2011 during the record-breaking drought.
In 1931, a book was published, "100 Authors Against Einstein." Albert Einstein's response: "If I were wrong, then one would be enough."
“Much of the impact of climate change will be felt through changing patterns of water availability, with shrinking glaciers and changing pat ...
"The popular term 'global warming' is a misnomer. It implies something uniform, gradual, mainly about temperature, and quite possibly ben ...
"To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy." — Jon Huntsman