Climate System Quotes

Climate change - for so long an abstract concern for an academic few - is no longer so abstract. Even the Bush administration's Climate Change Science Programme reports 'clear evidence of human influences on the climate system.'

The idea that human beings have changed and are changing the basic climate system of the Earth through their industrial activities and burning of fossil fuels - the essence of the Greens' theory of global warming - has about as much basis in science as Marxism and Freudianism.

Contrary to popular accounts, very few scientists in the world - possibly none - have a sufficiently thorough, 'big picture' understanding of the climate system to be relied upon for a prediction of the magnitude of global warming. To the public, we all might seem like experts, but the vast majority of us work on only a small portion of the problem.

Anything greater than 350 of parts of carbon dioxide per million is more than the planet can safely deal with. It is what's overwhelming our climate system. Because we've been going up about three parts per million per year. And eventually, we will always be above 410, and then above 420, and above 430. We just keep pouring more carbon into the atmosphere.

The climate system is being pushed hard enough that change will become obvious to the man in the street in the next decade.

The global climate is a complex interactive system, with all kinds of nonlinear feedback loops.

It would be immoral to leave young people with a climate system spiraling out of control.

This is exciting, it is bold and it is absolutely necessary if we are to have any chance of stopping potentially catastrophic changes to our climate system.

By burning fossil fuels, we are already dumping 30 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year, which has a profound effect on the climate. So, like it or not, we're already messing with a system we don't understand.

The fact is fossil fuel carbon will stay in the surface climate system for millennia.