Quotes Archive: Climate Change
"It appears that we've crossed a threshold where the ocean can no longer buffer the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere."
Timothy Wootton, lead author of a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, regarding the unexpectedly fast acidification of the oceans.
"Their secrecy is off the charts."
University of Alaska professor Rick Steiner, who has a long fight with the Palin administration to see e-mail by scientists who Palin claimed supported her view that global warming caused no problems for polar bears. It turned out they told her the opposite.
"It takes great hubris to resurrect an issue the court has already definitely struck down. This is like a zombie movie ... their proposal to toss the Endangered Species Act over the cliff died, but now has somehow come back to life."
Patti Goldman, an attorney for Earthjustice, on the decision of the Interior Department to stop requiring federal agencies to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service on the effect on endangered species, and they are prohibited from considering global warming.
"Democracy works, but sometimes churns slowly. Time is short. The 2008 election is critical for the planet. If Americans turn out to pasture the most brontosaurian congressmen, if Washington adapts to address climate change, our children and grandchildren can still hold great expectations."
James Hansen, on the 20th anniversary of his testimony before Congress where he informed them global warming was now certain, and how little time remains to prevent catastrophes.
"We had the worst natural disaster in the history of this country Katrina, and there wasn't a drop of oil spilled."
Sen. Norm Coleman, proposing more offshore oil drilling. There was actually enough oil spilled to match the Exxon Valdez. Whether Coleman is lying, or ignorantly repeating Republican talking points, is unknown.
"The short version: Republicans in Congress, McCain included, have slashed the United States budget for wind energy since Carter was president, which is why McCain has to speak at a Danish turbine manufacturer instead of an American one."
Mother Jones reporter/blogger Jonathan Stein, noting that McCain made his climate change speech in a Danish wind turbine factory after repeatedly cutting funding for wind development here.
"This truly is the conference to nowhere."
University of Alaska researcher Rick Steiner, reacting to Republican state legislators' plans for a conference for global warming deniers. They determined the conclusion and are looking for scientists to fit it. Steiner keeps asking the state government for the research it keeps claiming it has but surprisingly can't find.
"According to both the 2001 and 2007 IPCC reports, neither Greenland nor Antarctica should lose significant mass by 2100. They both already are. Here again, the conservative nature of the IPCC process puts it at odds with observed empirical realities that are the basis of all science."
Physicist Joseph Romm, on how the IPCC reports on climate change, rather than being consensus reports, are actually conservative reports that downplay the problem.
"Short of sending Dick Cheney to Alaska to personally club baby polar bears to death, there's not too much that the administration can do that is worse for polar bears than oil and gas development in their habitat."
Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity, speaking about how the Bush administration is stalling listing polar bears as threatened, but is hurrying to open their habitat to oil and gas drilling. That's right, climate change is just too slow a method of habitat destruction.
"Subpoena these guys. Send the marshals out. Get them to tell us under oath. They are not going to get away with this. Sooner or later, we are going to uncover real corruption . . . that is dangerous to California and to the whole world."
California Attorney General Jerry Brown, telling Senate Environment Committee Chair Barbara Boxer to get after the EPA administrator and maybe the White House for illegally denying California a waiver to having stricter clean air regulations the the EPA.
"The ideology is simple: You don't put limits on greenhouse-gas pollution, because that might put limits on coal and oil - and that would hurt industry's performance. Everything else flowed from that."
Jeremy Symons, who represented EPA on Cheney's energy task force, on the disinformation campaign to confuse the public on climate change.
"I nearly fell off my chair."
NASA climate scientist James Hansen, reacting to the remarks of NASA administrator Michael Griffin, who said he's not sure anything should be done about global warming. Yes, he runs a government agency working on science. Only in the Bush administration.
"No, you're not making the rules. You used to when you did this [she held up her gavel]. You don't do this anymore. Elections have consequences."
Sen. Barbara Boxer chastising Sen. James Inhofe who was trying to bully her and Al Gore during hearings on global warming.
"The AEI is more than just a thinktank, it functions as the Bush administration's intellectual Cosa Nostra. They are White House surrogates in the last throes of their campaign of climate change denial. They lost on the science; they lost on the moral case for action. All they've got left is a suitcase full of cash."
Ben Stewart of Greenpeace, commenting on the American Enterprise Institute's offer of $10,000 to scientists who will write essays casting doubt on the IPCC report on climate change.
"If things aren't reversed, we will have passed the high-water mark for our Earth observations. This country should not be headed in this direction. . . . We need to know more, not less, about long-term aspects of climate change, about trends in droughts and hurricanes, about what's happening in terms of fish stocks and deforestation."
Richard Anthes of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research on the effects of cutbacks for Earth science projects in NASA and NOAA.
"It's from those air bubbles that we know for sure that carbon dioxide has increased by about 35 per cent in the past 200 years. Before that 200 years, which is when man's been influencing the atmosphere, it was pretty steady to within 5 per cent."
Dr. Eric Wolff of the British Antarctic Survey which has examined the oldest ice cores yet found.
"We have never seen natural variability on a global scale like we've had in the last 100 years."
Atmospheric physicist Michael Oppenheimer quoted in an article by the science writer of the Wall Street Journal (the news section, not the editorials) explaining in layman's terms how scientists know global warming is anthropogenic (non-layman's term for man-made).
"When scientific knowledge has been found to be in conflict with its political goals, the administration has often manipulated the process through which science enters into its decisions."
The Union of Concerned Scientists in a petition protesting against the acting president's habit of suppressing, censoring, or ignoring science that contradicts his policies.
"Next January, of course, could bring record cold. But Minnesota has been warming in both the short and long runs. For the Twin Cities, four of the five warmest winters since 1891 have occurred in the past 24 seasons. Four of the nine warmest have happened over the last nine winters, including this one."
Bill McAuliffe, Star Tribune reporter, on the effects of global warming on Minnesota, including much warmer winters, increased precipitation, and threats to native species like a seriously reduced moose population.
"Hundreds of cubic kilometers sounds like a lot of ice. But this is just the beginning. Once a sheet starts to disintegrate, it can reach a tipping point beyond which break-up is explosively rapid. The issue is how close we are getting to that tipping point. The summer of 2005 broke all records for melting in Greenland. So we may be on the edge."
Jim Hansen, the NASA scientist Bush tried to gag, on the seriousness of the threat we face from melting ice caps.
"One of the most surprising for David Barber, a sea ice specialist at the University of Manitoba, was the fact polar ice is melting at a rate of about 74,000 square kilometres each year - an area about the size of Lake Superior - and has been for the last 30 years."
Michelle Macafee reporting on the results of a global warming study conducted over three years by 120 scientists fmro 11 countries, and which raises again the question, what will it take for conservatives to admit the obvious?
"It's fair to say that it probably is the warmest since we have modern meteorological records. Using indirect measurements that go back farther, I think it's even fair to say that it's the warmest in the last several thousand years."
Drew Shindell of the NASA institute in New York City on 2005 being the warmest year in the last several thousand, and the five warmest years on record being in the last decade.
"Climate change is different when you come here, because you see the faces of people experiencing it. If you go to the people and listen to their stories and walk away with any doubt that something's going on, you're not listening."
US Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, who visited Alaska and saw first hand concrete effects of global warming.
"The debate is no longer whether there is a global warming signal. The debate is what are we going to do about it."
Tim Barnett, marine physicist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who analyzed 9 million ocean-temperature and salinity readings.
''In meetings, I'd ask if there were any facts to support our case. And for that, I was accused of disloyalty!''
Christine Todd Whitman, former head of the EPA, to author Ron Suskind on the day she resigned.
