Sylvia Earle Quotes

It's Earth Day today. Let me tell you something about polar bears. They're endangered but you have to be careful because a polar bear is one of the few animals that will stalk a human. If you go to where polar bears live, it might stalk you and when you're on the plane going home, it might be behind you reading.

In 2007, I received a National Geographic Expeditions Council grant to go around the top of the world and talk to Arctic people about how they've been impacted by climate change.

The North Pole will be ice-free during summer in years to come, and that itself will put the Arctic Sea basin on a very high risk of... environmental disasters that might be there.

Some studies suggest that the Arctic Ocean may be ice-free by the end of the century.

The climate has been changing since there was a climate.

The Arctic is among the least understood places on the planet; however, we do know that its landscape is changing and evolving as quickly as cell phones and the Internet.

The undisturbed coastal plain is home to a wide variety of plants and animals and is the only wilderness sanctuary in North America that protects a complete range of the arctic ecosystem.

I think there is a degree of speculation that is satisfied the climate is changing.

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

Well, I think it's clear that the climate is changing. I think reasonable people can differ about how much and how rapidly. But I think it's clear that it's changing and it's clear that humans are a contributing factor.

We have no choice: we must protect Arctic ice, enable it to continue to act as an essential temperature regulator for the planet, avoid the catastrophic rise in sea levels that would result from the ice melt, and stop the disappearance of permafrost releasing irreversible quantities of greenhouse gases back into the atmosphere.

As Development Secretary, I have seen in the developing world that climate change there is not a theory, is not a future threat: it is a contemporary crisis.

There's one place, and one place only, to see polar bears in America. You have to travel to the country's northernmost point, the very apex of Alaska's North Slope, to the permafrost shores that stretch out on either side from the Inupiat town of Kaktovik.

The number of hypotheses and theories about climate change are numerous. Quite naturally they have caught the public attention, as any proof of past climactic change points to the possibility of future climate change, which inevitably will have significant implications for global economics.

It turns out that as the climate changes, the distribution of that water is changing very fundamentally. So now we have too much, too little, wrong place, wrong time. It's salty where it should be fresh; it's liquid where it should be frozen; it's wet where it should be dry; and in fact, the very chemistry of the ocean itself is changing.

To survive as a species on this planet, we're going to have to see ourselves as Earthlings.

Given enough time, polar bears might migrate off the Arctic ice, evolve darker coats, find a different diet, and thrive in a new, warmer climate. But if the ice on which they depend disappears in a few decades, they are likely to die.

If mountain gorillas are to survive and propagate, far more active conservation measures urgently need to be undertaken. The question remains, is it already too late?

Change or be changed, right? And what we mean by that is that climate change, if we don't change course, if we don't change our political and economic system, is going to change everything about our physical world.

We know the climate is changing. We don't know if it will be really bad or nearly apocalyptic. Both are within the realm of possibility.

We believe addressing the risk of climate change is a global issue.

Though Africa is not responsible for emitting greenhouse gases, it is suffering the consequences of climate change.

I play fictitious characters often solving fictitious problems. I believe mankind has looked at climate change in the same way, as if it were a fiction.

The climate is changing, and anyone who disagrees is, in my view, still in denial.

It will not be a surprise to you to learn I'm more interested in the future of the Arctic Circle than the future of the Arctic Monkeys.