The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change presents very serious global risks, and it demands an urgent global response.
Nicholas SternRead
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.
Interpretation
Climate change is a universally accepted reality among scientists, and ignoring it is irrational.
Nicholas Stern emphasizes the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, arguing that it is not only a reality but one that must be acknowledged and addressed. He portrays the idea of disregarding climate change as not just misguided, but as a form of madness, urging society to take the environmental crisis seriously.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech at an environmental summit to emphasize the necessity of climate action.
The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change presents very serious global risks, and it demands an urgent global response.
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?
All models are wrong, and increasingly you can succeed without them.
Neither had Watt of the Steam engine a heroic origin, any kindred with the princes of this world. The princes of this world were shooting their partridges... While this man with blackened fingers, with grim brow, was searching out, in his workshop, the Fire-secret.
There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.
We all know that UFOs are real. All we need to ask is where do they come from, and what do they want?
In less than eight years "The Origin of Species" has produced conviction in the minds of a majority of the most eminent living men of science. New facts, new problems, new difficulties as they arise are accepted, solved, or removed by this theory; and its principles are illustrated by the progress and conclusions of every well established branch of human knowledge.
So, influenced by these advisors and this hope, I have at length allowed my friends to publish the work, as they had long besought me to do.
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