Risk, Stakes & Probability
Thinking about risk, what's at stake, and the odds of something bad happening.
”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 an angry beast, and we're poking it with sticks."
— Walter Broecker, the climate science pioneer who unco ...
"Science isn't "yes or no." Science is gradually reducing uncertainty. Consider gravity. We know gravity with a fairly high degree of und ...
"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 ...
Whether you choose 'wait and see' vs. accept the doctor's recommendation for urgent surgery is a value judgment. Ignoring or resolving clim ...
"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 ...
"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 ...
"Mother Nature puts a time limit on how long we can dither and procrastinate" before taking action. "Several vulnerable elements in earth ...
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 ...
Continued release of greenhouse gases is like playing "Russian Roulette with the climate, hoping that the future will hold no unpleasant sur ...
"It's 3:23 in the morning, and I'm awake
because my great, great, grandchildren won't let me sleep.
...
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. ...
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 ...
“The prospect of extreme climate change and its potentially devastating economic and social consequences are of great concern to the insuran ...
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 ...
"The world is perfectly on track to six degrees Celsius increasing the temperature, which is very bad news. And everybody, even school child ...
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 ...
"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 ...
Climate = the canvas on which 21st C history will be painted.
"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 ...
"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 wouldn’t characterize wanting to use the brakes on a foggy road as hysteria. Humanity is simply driving too fast for the conditions ahea ...
"Clean up Your Own Mess" -- Robert Fulghum
"Cleaning up after ourselves generally is neither easy nor fun, and we usually don't l ...
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 ...
The longer global warming continues, the greater the risk of "waking the sleeping giants"—major feedbacks such as ice sheet collapse, methan ...
"We're headed toward this cliff, and instead of taking our foot off the gas we're stepping on the pedal."—Scott Mandia.
It's hard to change habits, especially when the most harmful consequences lie in the distant future. Try convincing a teenager to stop smok ...
“Like the sinking of the Titanic, catastrophes are not democratic. A much higher fraction of passengers from the cheaper decks were lost. W ...
Climate change will have major impacts on the availability of water for growing food and on crop productivity in the decades to come. Increa ...
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 ' ...
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 ...
“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 ...
"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 ...
100 years ago, Titanic's Captain Smith steamed ahead full speed, despite iceberg warnings. By time the fatal 'berg was visible, it ...
Take two breaths. Your second breath comes from phytoplankton, who produce 1/2 the world's oxygen. One more reason to protect oceans.
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 ...
Climate change increases the odds for extreme weather. Like playing Russian Roulette, while adding more and more bullets to a revolver. Yo ...
"Nature favours those organisms which leave the environment in better shape for their progeny to survive" — James Lovelock
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 ...
"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 ...
Electric utility CEOs say they must burn coal to meet our energy demands. Sure, hungry kids want candy not vegetables. Yet, burning coal 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 ...
"The earth itself is a spaceship. We had better keep an eye its air control system." - Roger Revelle, Director of the Scripps Institute of ...
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 ...
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 ...
"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 ...
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, ...
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 ...
"We're in a giant car headed for a brick wall and everyone is arguing over where they want to sit." - David Suzuki
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 ...
Cutting greenhouse gas emissions is like buying an insurance policy: we incur a cost to reduce a risk.
"We will see it, our kids will live it, and there's a question of whether our grandkids will make it through or not."
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 ...
"You never have 100% certainty in anything. If you wait for 100% certainty on the battlefield, something bad is going to happen." — Vice Ad ...
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 ...
“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 ...
Why is climate action so important? Because there is no 'Planet B.'
'Scientists say, when it comes to climate change, we need to manage what is unavoidable and avoid what is unmanageable.' — Thomas Friedman, ...
Climate change is an emergency happening in slow-motion. (Variations: A slo-mo train wreck or catastrophe.)