Climate change quotes

While looking for something else on Ye Olde Intertubes just a few minutes ago, I stumbled across the following gem:

Global Warming: Who Said What — and When:

It turns out Al Gore was hardly the first one to sound the alarm. Looking back nearly three decades, you can find prominent people warning the public about the danger of rising temperatures. But there have also been a number of skeptics.

Here’s a selection of quotes on climate change.

–Compiled by Beckey Bright

1979 “It is the sense of the scientific community that carbon dioxide from unrestrained combustion of fossil fuels potentially is the most important environmental issue facing mankind.”

–U.S. Department of Energy report, April 2

1988 “It is time to stop waffling so much and say the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.”

– James E. Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, testifying at a Senate hearing

1990 “There is broad agreement within the scientific community that amplification of the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect by the buildup of various gases introduced by human activity has the potential to produce dramatic changes in climate. Only by taking action now can we ensure that future generations will not be put at risk.”

–Statement by 49 Nobel Prize winners and 700 members of the National Academy of Sciences

1996 “We could wait 20 to 25 years to take action until scientific uncertainty is lessened.”

–William O’Keefe, former vice president of the American Petroleum Institute and chairman of the Global Climate Coalition, at a Cato Institute forum, June 28

1997 “There’s a better scientific consensus on this than on any issue I know — except maybe Newton’s second law of dynamics.”

–D. James Baker, former administrator of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, quoted in the Washington Post, Nov. 12

1998 “Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful.”

–Frederick Seitz, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, in a petition letter against the Kyoto Treaty

1998 “Contrary to the doomsday economic predictions of the fossil-fuel industry and its supporters, we can stem global warming without slowing the economy. The U.S. can meet the Kyoto target and save consumers money through common-sense energy use at home.”

–Alden Meyer, director of government relations for the Union of Concerned Scientists, quoted by Dow Jones News Service, July 23

2002 “With the disappearance of ice shelves that have existed for thousands of years, you rather rapidly run out of other explanations.”

–Dr. Theodore A. Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, quoted by the New York Times, March 20

2002 “The mainstream of some so-called environmentalists or politically correct Europeans isn’t the mainstream of all scientists or the White House. The world has been a lot warmer than it is now and it didn’t have anything to do with carbon dioxide.”

–ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond, in an interview with Chief Executive magazine, October

2004 “Climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism.”

–David King, U.K. government chief scientific adviser, quoted in the Independent, Jan. 9

2004 “Global warming — at least the modern nightmare vision — is a myth. I am sure of it and so are a growing number of scientists. But what is really worrying is that the world’s politicians and policy makers are not.”

–David Bellamy, British botanist and author, in a commentary for the Daily Mail, July 9

2005 “I think it’s crazy for us to play games with our children’s future. We know what’s happening to the climate, we have a highly predictable set of consequences if we continue to pour greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”

–Former President Bill Clinton, at the United Nations Climate Conference, Montreal, Dec. 9

2006 “Carbon dioxide: They call it pollution; we call it life.”

–Voice-over in an ad by the Competitive Enterprise Institute

2006 “The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already…. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can.”

–Prof. Stephen Hawking, in an ABC News interview, Aug. 16

2006 “I have not been one who believed in the global warming. But I tell you, they are making a convert out of me as these blistering summers…. We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels.”

–Pat Robertson, 700 Club, talking about the heat wave on Aug. 3

2006 “Unless we stop dumping 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the atmosphere every 24 hours, which we are doing right now…the continued acceleration of this pollution would destroy the future of human civilization.”

–Former Vice President Al Gore, at a news conference in Helsinki, Finland, quoted by Reuters, Sept. 5

2007 “The heavy condemnatory breathing on the subject of global warming outdoes anything since high moments of the Inquisition.”

–William F. Buckley Jr. in National Review, March 31

2008 “We don’t solve the problem just by wishing it away.”

–Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, at the Journal’s ECO:nomics conference, March 13