Nigel Lawson Quotes

The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books - mine included - because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened.

Prime Minister Cameron says he wants to be the greenest government ever, but the definition of green is immature... I don't deny for a moment that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but there are so many other factors that affect climate. It is more complicated than the computer models that we are using. What the truth is, nobody knows.

My dad joined Langley in 1964 as a co-op student and retired in 2004 an internationally respected climate scientist.

They're not predicting global warming based on what's happened in the past; they're basing it on what their computer predictions say, and nothing more.

The only basis for even talking about global warming is the predictions spewed out by computer models. The only quote/unquote "evidence" of global warming is what models are predicting the climate and the weather will be in the next 50 to 100 years. Now, what those models spit out is only as good as the data that's put in, and it's an absolute joke. In terms of science, it's a total joke. There is no warming, global or otherwise!

If you have a temperature rise, if it's a problem in one area, it's beneficial in another area. But sea level is the real 'bad guy,' and therefore they [The IPCC] have talked very much about it. But the real thing is, that [sea level rise] doesn't exist in observational data, only in computer modeling.

We see something change in our climate and we blame ourselves ... I don't think we understand what happens. We can watch it happen on the (climate) models, we know it happens, but we don't know for sure how it happens.

I don't think there is any global warming. I don't see the statistical data for that.

Faced with the evidence, many deniers have started to admit that global warming is real, but argue that humans have little or nothing to do with it.

The basic scientific conclusions on climate change are very robust and for good reason. The greenhouse effect is simple science: greenhouse gases trap heat, and humans are emitting ever more greenhouse gases.

The science is clear that there is an increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. What is not clear from the science is how much of that increase is caused by human activity; and what also is not clear is what impact those increases have on the climatic cycle.

It's a pretty widely-accepted notion that the atmosphere is a ridiculously complex system, and the best we can do with our models is a rough approximation.

The basic science is very well established; it is well understood that global warming is due to greenhouse gases. What is uncertain is projections about specifics in the next few decades, by how much will the climate change.

The biologists have essentially been pushed aside. Al Gore's just an opportunist. The person who is really responsible for this overestimate of global warming is Jim Hansen. He consistently exaggerates all the dangers.

Computer modelling for weather forecasting, and indeed for climate forecasting, has reached its limits.

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

You always have to be worried about something that is considered a so-called 'scientific theory' that fits every scenario. Climate change, as they've defined it, can never be disproved.

You can't say for certain what will happen to the weather in the long term.

The climate has been changing since there was a climate.

Being at NASA and having the access to both computing capability and satellite observation capability is kind of the ideal research situation to try to understand global climate change.

I am saying that all predictions concerning climate are highly uncertain.

We have to be aware that the scientific community throws up tons of different hypotheses and at a certain point we'll find out who was right and who was wrong. But we have to go with the best information right now, which I would claim to be the IPCC reports.

I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.

I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact.

The best scientific evidence suggests temperatures are rising, and the best scientific evidence suggests man-made anthropogenic carbon emissions have some substantial thing to do with that. However, does that mean the trend will continue forever? We don't know.