Climate Stability Quotes

The climate has been changing since there was a climate.

Commercial institutions, proud of their achievements, do not see that healthy living systems - clean air and water, healthy soil, stable climates - are integral to a functioning economy. As our living systems deteriorate, traditional forecasting and business economics become the equivalent of house rules on a sinking cruise ship.

We have an atmosphere that is roughly 21% oxygen. The rest of it is largely nitrogen. There's just enough carbon dioxide (CO2) to drive photosynthesis. That has been, throughout the history of our species, pretty stable. Until recently.

I'm not in favor of just taking short-term isolated situations and depleting our resources to keep our climate just the way it is today.

Clean air and water, a diversity of animal and plant species, soil and mineral resources, and predictable weather are annuities that will pay dividends for as long as the human race survives - and may even extend our stay on Earth.

We finally know where the red line for climate really is. After the rapid melt of arctic ice in the summer of 2007, our best scientists, led by NASA's Jim Hansen, went back to work and produced a series of papers showing that with more than 350 ppm (parts per million) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we couldn't have a planet "similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted."

The road to climate stability is straight and the solutions simple, and yet scientists, economists, industrialists and politicians are busy making them complicated

The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time... it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising - carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.

The climate has been changing. Of course it [has]. Evidence throughout history, [which] we can assess, especially during human history, shows there have been ups and downs. But the last ten thousand years have been relatively stable compared to now.

There's a lot of differing data [about global warming], but as far as I can gather, over the last hundred years the temperature on this planet has gone up 1.8 degrees. Am I the only one who finds that amazingly stable? I could go back to my hotel room tonight and futz with the thermostat for three to four hours. I could not detect that difference.

If we tackle deforestation in the right way, the benefits will be far-reaching - greater food security, improved livelihoods for millions of small farmers and indigenous people, more prosperous rural economies, and above all, a more stable climate.

The five-year mean global temperature has been flat for the last decade

We need the humbleness and clarity to see that our food, while benefitting from technological advances, has benefitted even more from free ecological resources: Cheap energy, lots of water everywhere, and a stable climate.

This is a truth that should be repeated like a mantra: to have any chance of a ful - filling life, we require not only clean air and a steady climate, but also an abundance of meadows and woodlands, rivers and oceans, teeming with life and the mass existence of other living creatures.

The environment, stabilizing the climate, needs urgent attention from all of us.

The most interesting thing about change in the environment is that for the most part the environment isn't changing.

Over and over, the economy has determined the extent of our response, but how much value does it place on breathable air, drinkable water, edible food and stable weather and climate? Surely the economy is the means to a better future, not an end in itself. Surely it must be subordinate to a rich, diverse ecosphere that sustains all life.

Through space-based climate studies, my colleagues and I have learned that a stable and comfortable climate is not something to take for granted.

Paleoclimatic records show clearly that the past 10,000 years, the Holocene, is a remarkably stable period in which we went from being a few hunters and gatherers to become more sedentary agriculture-based civilizations, which then moved us to the current populated modern era.

I think that an advanced planetary civilization will modify their own planets to be more stable, to prevent asteroid impacts and dangerous climate fluctuations.

The future of mankind is going to be decided within the next two generations, and there are two absolute requisites: We must aim at a stable-state society [with limited population growth] and the destruction of nuclear stockpiles. ... Otherwise I don't see how we can survive much later than 2050.

The choice is ours-yours and mine. We can stay with business as usual and preside over a global bubble economy that keeps expanding until it bursts, leading to economic decline. Or we can adopt Plan B and be the generation that stabilizes population, eradicates poverty, and stabilizes climate. Historians will record the choice, but it is ours to make.

You can go into caves, and they can maintain constant conditions of temperature and humidity over long periods of time, even though the outside temperature may be way above what it is inside the cave.

The value of biodiversity is that it makes our ecosystems more resilient, which is a prerequisite for stable societies; its wanton destruction is akin to setting fire to our lifeboat.

Global warming, you don't win it. It's this weird steady-state issue that's going to be with us for a few thousand years.