There is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, if we take strong action now.
Nicholas SternRead
The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change presents very serious global risks, and it demands an urgent global response.
Interpretation
Climate change poses significant global risks that require immediate action.
In this quote, Nicholas Stern emphasizes the urgent and serious nature of climate change as a pressing global issue backed by solid scientific evidence. He calls for a prompt and coordinated response from the global community to address the risks posed by climate change, highlighting the collective responsibility to mitigate its impacts.
In practice
During a climate conference, this quote can be used to highlight the urgent need for policy changes.
There is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, if we take strong action now.
The basic scientific conclusions on climate change are very robust and for good reason. The greenhouse effect is simple science: greenhouse gases trap heat, and humans are emitting ever more greenhouse gases.
Those who say that climate change doesn't exist are being understood as the flat-earthers that they are, as the people who deny the link between smoking and cancer, as the people who denied the link between HIV and AIDS.
If you look at all the serious scientists in the world, there is no big disagreement on the basics of this... it would be absolute lunacy to act as if climate change is not occurring.
This [climate change] is potentially so dangerous that we have to act strongly. Do we want to play Russian roulette with two bullets or one?
Do politicians understand just how difficult it could be, just how devastating rises of 4C, 5C or 6C could be? I think, not yet
The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests.
It's important that everyone realizes how much scientists still don't know.
The fact remains that, if the supply of energy failed, modern civilization would come to an end as abruptly as does the music of an organ deprived of wind.
Sometimes the probabilities are very close to certainties, but they're never really certainties
It's quite literally true that we are star dust, in the highest exalted way one can use that phrase. ...I bask in the majesty of the cosmos. I use words, compose sentences that sound like the sentences I hear out of people that had revelation of Jesus, who go on their pilgrimages to Mecca.
When you look at the calculation, it's amazing that every time you try to prove or disprove time travel, you've pushed Einstein's theory to the very limits where quantum effects must dominate. That's telling us that you really need a theory of everything to resolve this question. And the only candidate is string theory.
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