Explore Quotes on Environment

Climate change is the world's greatest environmental challenge. It is now plain that the emission of greenhouse gases, associated with industrialization and economic growth...is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable.

We can't tell an electorate...when you have something like in excess of 300 million people without any access to electricity at all that you have to put a cap on this.

Climate alarmists believe in their own omnipotency, in knowing better than millions of rationally behaving men and women what is right or wrong, in the possibility to give adequate instructions to hundreds of millions of individuals and institutions and the resulting compliance or non-compliance of those who are supposed to follow these instructions.

Nobody...likes talking about enforceable international protocols and yet unless there is a real change in attitude, we have to contemplate those very unwelcome possibilities if we want the global economy not to collapse and millions, billions, of people to die.

I am afraid there are people who want to stop the economic growth, the rise in the standard of living (though not their own) and the ability of man to use the expanding wealth, science and technology for solving the actual pressing problems of mankind, especially of the developing countries.

I think we will work our way towards a position that says that having more than two children is irresponsible.

We called the Weather Bureau and found out what historically was the hottest day of the summer...So we scheduled the hearing that day, and bingo, it was the hottest day of record in Washington, or close to it...we went in the night before and opened all the windows...so that the air conditioning wasn't working inside the room.

Coral reefs, the rain forest of the ocean, are home for one-third of the species of the sea. Coral reefs are under stress for several reasons, including warming of the ocean, but especially because of ocean acidification, a direct effect of added carbon dioxide. Ocean life dependent on carbonate shells and skeletons is threatened by dissolution as the ocean becomes more acid.

...the possibility of circular reasoning arises-that is, using the temperature record to derive a key input to climate models that are then tested against the temperature record.

Global warming causes volatility. I feel it when I'm flying.

Coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick. It’s global warming. It’s ruining our country. It’s ruining our world.

Carbon dioxide pollution is transforming the chemistry of the ocean, rapidly making the water more acidic. In decades, rising ocean acidity may challenge life on a scale that has not occurred for tens of millions of years. So we confront an urgent choice: to move beyond fossil fuels or to risk turning the ocean into a sea of weeds.

On the whole, the evidence indicates that model trends in the troposphere are very likely inconsistent with observations.

It's terrible to have to say this. World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. This is so horrible to contemplate that we shouldn't even say it. But the general situation in which we are involved is lamentable.

I am unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate and how many children they think are appropriate.

In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report.

The IPCC doesn't do any research itself. We only develop our assessments on the basis of peer-reviewed literature.

...the computer models are very good at solving equations of fluid dynamics but very bad at describing the real world. The real world is full of things like clouds and vegetation and soil and dust which the models describe very poorly.

If I do an interview with [Holocaust survivor] Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?

I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns.

Perhaps the greatest scientific deception of the IPCC is the abuse and misuse of computer climate models. They allow them to make their reports and deliberations appear credible. They allow them to bamboozle the public because computer models are a complete mystery to most people.