Chris Gibson Quotes

The science linking the increased frequency and severity of extreme weather to the climate crisis has matured tremendously in the last couple of years.

Scientists will say we can't blame global warming for any single event. In a sense that's right, but the fact that the frequency and intensity of these events is increasing you can blame on global warming.

Scientists speak a certain language. Now there are regular extreme weather reports on the news. Hurricane Katrina was a huge connect-the-dot moment for a lot of people.

When I left school, I never wondered whether my apartment in New York was vulnerable to storm surges, but my three daughters have to consider the realities of extreme weather and how it may destabilize communities around the globe.

Climate is always evolving, and natural disaster have always existed.

In particular, Australia, because of its ancient geography, soil profile and distinctive weather patterns, is more adversely affected by climate variability than some other continents.

I have talked to people across the country struggling in the face of an altered climate. New Jersey homeowners are trying to rebuild after Superstorm Sandy. Miami government officials are trying to plan for rising seas and flooded streets. California farmers are trying to make it through the state's worst drought on record.

People are seeing the impact of climate change around them in extraordinary patterns of floods and droughts, wildfires, heatwaves and powerful storms.

Climate change is hugely exacerbated by changing patterns of how we choose to live, often in danger zones such as extremely vulnerable coastal zones - from New Jersey to the Philippines. This enormously increases the economic and human costs of hurricanes, rising seas and changing weather patterns.

We may achieve climate, but weather is thrust upon us.

Climate change is also clearly a matter of huge interest and concern for the scientific community.

Global warming creates volatility. I feel it when I'm flying. The storms are more volatile. We are paying the price in more hurricanes and tornadoes.

In the U.S. alone, weather disasters caused $50 billion in economic damages in 2010.

Some time this century, the day will arrive when the human influence on the climate will overwhelm all natural factors.'

From floods in Iowa and Nebraska to fires in California to hurricanes in Houston and Puerto Rico, we can no longer escape the fact that climate change is not happening in some far-off, distant future.

The climate is changing, but the question is how much - and to what extent human factors are contributing to that.

Climate change is not the fault of man. It's Mother Nature's way. And sucking greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is too limited a solution. We have to be prepared for fire or ice, for fry or freeze. We have to be prepared for change.

Politicians or pundits can distort or cherry-pick climate science any way they want to try and gain temporary influence with the public. But any serious industrialist who's facing 'climate exposure' - as it's now called by money managers - cannot afford to engage in that sort of self-delusion.

With a disaster like global warming, it's too late to worry about when it's looming except to figure out how to adapt to it.

Changes to weather patterns that move crop production areas around - we'll adapt to that. It's an engineering problem, and it has engineering solutions.

Global climate change has a profound impact on the survival and development of mankind. It is a major challenge facing all countries.

One thing most people would agree is that climate change would add further uncertainties to our already quite tight water supply situation in China.

Black Saturday reminded many Australians of what they know only too well: that of all the advanced economies, Australia is perhaps the one most vulnerable to climate change.

So it's mainly a question of helping the Third World overcome the effects of global warming.

Australia has suffered a decade of drought, epic floods, a Category 5 cyclone, and a plague of locusts. But just because Aussies have the biggest carbon footprint in the world, it doesn't mean they're stupid.