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?
My whole interest is, how do you use evolution as an innovation engine? How does evolution solve new problems that life faces? And to have a system that can create a whole new chemical bond that biology hasn't done before, to me, demonstrates the power of nature to innovate.
We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World.
Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people.
Weapons of mass destruction violate more than individual lives - they cross international borders and jeopardize all people. They also drain resources that could be used instead for medicines, schools and other life-saving supplies. We must come together with even greater determination to prevent a WMD nightmare.
Without deductive logic science would be entirely useless. It is merely a barren game to ascend from the particular to the general, unless afterwards we can reverse the process and descend from the general to the particular, ascending and descending like angels on Jacob's ladder.
The nuclear approach I'm involved in is called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses waste uranium for fuel. There's a lot of things that have to go right for that dream to come true - many decades of building demo plants, proving the economics are right. But if it does, you could have cheaper energy with no CO2 emissions.
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