Talk:Global warming
Add topicLatest comment: 1 year ago by AnnetteCSteps in topic Climate Action as it's own Theme page
For and Against
[edit]It seems that global warming sceptics have been hard at work digging out quotations from the few scientists left who espouse their cause. Surely the number of quotations is less impressive than the evidence for global warming which seems to be growing almost every week.
- Possibly. But this is wikiquote, not wikievidence. Please feel free to add quotes espousing a different position! We love quotes, the more the merrier :) You'll notice the page points to wikipedia's page re:Global warming, where they attempt to collect verifiable facts into an encyclopedia article, which hopefully is NPOV. I'm certain they would also appreciate any help! ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 20:09, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
- Well, David Attenborough quoting CO2 level figures is listed as for. This quotation include just measurable facts, not a single hint that Mr. Attenborough is for or against and considers CO2 level X to be better than Y, or Y better than X. 212.77.105.136 13:41, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
Wikiquote has been gradually moving away from classifying quotes as For and Against in many articles. The situation in this particular article is a bit ludicrous: Some like it hot, but none of the quotes identified as for global warming is actually advocating for warmer weather. ~ Ningauble 16:54, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
- Conclusion of this discussion seems to be that "for" and "against" categories are not appropriate (WQ editor consensus is to not separate into "for" and "against" sections, ambiguity whether "against" means "against climate change" (who isn't?) or "against the evidence for anthropogenic climate change"). I moved quotes denying climate change to a separate article Climate change denial. ~ Peter1c (talk) 09:56, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
Unsourced
[edit]Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable and precise source for any quote on this list please move it to Global warming.
- There's a better scientific consensus on this than on any issue I know — except maybe Newton's second law of dynamics,
- D. James Baker, administrator of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
- Gordon Brown thinks you can solve climate change by changing your lightbulbs. I think you should solve climate change by changing the government.
- Global warming is not a prediction. It is happening.
- James Hansen
- Global warming causing climate change may be the ultimate issue that unites us all.
- Louise Burfitt-Dons,2008
- "Why try to change the future when the present is so bleak?"
- Santa Bush 11/09/2007
- "The answer to global warming is in the abolition of private property and production for human need. A socialist world would place an enormous priority on alternative energy sources. This is what ecologically-minded socialists have been exploring for quite some time now."
- Louis Proyect, Columbia University
- “If you asked me to name the three scariest threats facing the human race, I would give the same answer that most people would: nuclear war, global warming and Windows.”
- “While human-induced global warming is not going to turn present-day Earth into present-day Mars, global warming is dire enough that our most distinguished scientists recently concluded that as many as 1 million species on the planet could be extinct by 2050 if affairs do not change.”
- Jay Inslee
- “In fact, even the current administration now is releasing recent reports indicating that climate change is real, that global warming is occurring, that it is heavily influenced by man-made objects and that it is something we cannot ignore any longer.”
- Ron Kind
- “Global warming is not a conqueror to kneel before - but a challenge to rise to. A challenge we must rise to.”
- “Today, we can see with our own eyes what global warming is doing. In that context it becomes truly irresponsible, if not immoral, for us not to do something.”
- Joe Lieberman
- “Shame on us if 100 or 200 years from now our grandchildren and great-grandchildren are living on a planet that has been irreparably damaged by global warming, and they ask, 'How could those who came before us, who saw this coming, have let this happen?'”
- Joe Lieberman
- “When the penny drops to President Bush that global warming is really serious, they're going to be in trouble.”
- "Climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism."
- David King, UK government chief scientific adviser, January 2004.
- "Global warming is a serious threat. There is overwhelming evidence that increasing amounts of carbon dioxide [and other gases] are heating up the Earth's climate and that inaction could be disastrous. ... [I]n this case, doing what will earn respect and support around the world is also in our own best environmental and economic interests and is the right thing to do. Even if, despite all the evidence, one chooses to remain a skeptic on climate change, taking action today -- as an insurance policy -- is the only wise course of action. As the mercury rises, so does the need for a creative solution."
- Senator John McCain
- "The Greenland ice sheet is likely to be eliminated [within 50 years] unless much more substantial reductions in emissions are made than those envisaged [and will] probably be irreversible, this side of a new ice age."
- Jonathan Gregory, climatologist, University of Reading, April 2004
- "The absolutely best case scenario - which in my opinion is unrealistic - with the minimum expected climate change... we end up with an estimate of 9% [of all species] facing extinction."
- Chris Thomas, ecologist, University of Leeds
- "Our climate is warming at a faster rate than ever before recorded."
- NOAA Administrator D. James Baker April 18, 2000
- "Ignoring climate change will be the most costly of all possible choices, for us and our children."
- Peter Ewins, British Meteorological Office
- "The European records, being so long, make a convincing case that we're already seeing changes ... This is not like 'Centuries from now the ice sheets will melt.' This is 'In a few decades it will be dramatically different.' To me, that's alarming."
- Drew Shindell, NASA physicist, August 2006
- "You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to."
- Movie critic Roger Ebert, on Al Gore's movie about global warming, June 2, 2006
- "...The United States is a quarter-century late in responding to global warming; serious climate change is already underway and requires action now, not later. There were warnings from the scientific community as early as 1979 and many in the 1980’s. We frittered away that chance to respond, and here is what we are up against now. If we want to avoid leaving a ruined world to our children, we are going to have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 60 percent globally and 80 percent in the United States and other developed countries, both by 2050. To do this, global emissions must peak about 2020 and decline steadily thereafter. Developed country emissions should already be declining. The United States is clearly on the wrong path. The Energy Information Administration projects that both U.S. coal use and carbon dioxide emissions are currently slated to increase by 40 percent by 2030."
- Gus Speth, dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, 2006
- "Unless we stop dumping 70 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every 24 hours, which we are doing right now … the continued acceleration of this pollution would destroy the future of human civilization."
- Al Gore, September 2006
- "In comparison to 10 years ago, now all countries recognize that climate change is an important issue, that we must continue Kyoto, that the time after 2012 must be in our sights and that we must do everything possible to improve energy efficiency and, at the same time, facilitate economic growth."
- German chancellor Angela Merkel, September 2006
- "Preventing the transformation of the earth's atmosphere from greenhouse to unconstrained hothouse represents arguably the most imposing scientific and technical challenge that humanity has ever faced. It is local, national and international. It will affect all of us as well as all our children."
- British environment minister David Miliband, October 2006
- "It used to be controversial whether smoking caused lung cancer, it used to be controversial wheter HIV caused AIDS. Now, there are a few mavericks who deny those things. In the case of climate change, I think the debate is going the same way in that there is a strong consensus that it is a serious matter."
- Lord Martin Rees, Royal Society president and Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, November 29, 2006
- "Greenhouse gases are a class of gases that can trap heat near Earth's surface. As they increase in the atmosphere, the extra heat they trap leads to global warming. This warming in turn places pressure on Earth's climate system and can lead to climate change."
- Tim Flannery, author of "The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth"
- "I want to tell them that France will always be by their side when they need it, but I also want to tell them that friendship means accepting that your friends may think differently and that a great nation such as the United States has a duty not to put obstacles in the way of the fight against global warming, but on the contrary to take the lead in this fight, because what is at stake is the fate of humanity as a whole. France will make this battle its primary battle"
- Nicolas Sarkozy, president of France, May 2007
- It is our judgement that climate change represents the largest single environmental challenge this century.
- "Global warmers predict that global warming is coming, and our emissions are to blame. They do that to keep us worried about our role in the whole thing. If we aren't worried and guilty, we might not pay their salaries. It's that simple."
- Kary Mullis, Winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- "The only people who would be hurt by abandoning the Kyoto Protocol would be several thousand people who make a living attending conferences on global warming"
- Professor Kirill Kondratyev, Russian Academy of Sciences 2003-10-12
- "The European Union and environmental advocacy groups use global warming hysteria to advance their own special agendas. The European Union recognizes any significant reduction in CO2 emissions by the United States will significantly reduce its economic output, thereby bringing it closer to the inferior output of European nations. Environmental advocacy groups work to stifle economic and industrial progress wherever they find it to inhibit the successful advancement of peoples in developing nations, inevitably making mankind a second class citizen of planet Earth.
- Dr. Jay Lehr, science director, The Heartland Institute, 2004-11-19
- "CO2 - Some call it pollution. We call it life."
- Competitive Enterprise Institute
Questionable relevance
[edit]- A change in our climate however is taking place very sensibly. Both heats and colds are become much more moderate within the memory even of the middle-aged. Snows are less frequent and less deep. They do not often lie, below the mountains, more than one, two, or three days, and very rarely a week. They are remembered to have been formerly frequent, deep, and of long continuance. The elderly inform me the earth used to be covered with snow about three months in every year. The rivers, which then seldom failed to freeze over in the course of the winter, scarcely ever do so now. This change has produced an unfortunate fluctuation between heat and cold, in the spring of the year, which is very fatal to fruits. From the year 1741 to 1769, an interval of twenty-eight years, there was no instance of fruit killed by the frost in the neighbourhood of Monticello. An intense cold, produced by constant snows, kept the buds locked up till the sun could obtain, in the spring of the year, so fixed an ascendency as to dissolve those snows, and protect the buds, during their developement, from every danger of returning cold. The accumulated snows of the winter remaining to be dissolved all together in the spring, produced those overflowings of our rivers, so frequent then, and so rare now.
- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1785 (Query 7, "Climate").
Climate Action as it's own Theme page
[edit]There was a suggestion that Climate Action quotes page be merged with Global Warming quotes page. I make the argument against it here https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Village_pump#Climate_Action_as_it's_own_Theme_page, because (need for a landing page, and so many quotes here plus for climate action...): but open to ideas. AnnetteCSteps (talk) 16:44, 17 July 2023 (UTC)