Martin Rees Quotes

The debate's over. The people who dispute the international consensus on global warming are in the same category now with the people who think the moon landing was staged on a movie lot in Arizona.

There's a joke in the movie...it's got a fairytale ending, and this is a spoiler: Donald Trump does contract HIV. I think people are upset about that, mainly because they feel the reputation of AIDS has been destroyed by associating it with Donald Trump.

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

My relationship to the desecration of the earth was very theoretical and intellectual until I got sick. I could never watch anything about polar bears dying or the death of bees. There were certain things I knew I couldn't go near because they were too devastating. But I don't think until I got cancer did I get it in my body, what was happening to the earth. I finally went: "Oh! Earth! Organism!"

I think Donald Trump is a complete and utter buffoon and a cancer to our society.

I don't spend a huge amount of time fixated on climate denial because I don't think that their objections, though sometimes couched in science, are based in science. I think they're based in ideology. And I don't think there's anything you can do.

I don't think the science is clear of what percentage is man-made and what percentage is natural. It's convoluted, for the people to say the science is decided on this is really arrogant, to be honest with you.

In the United States of America, unfortunately we still live in a bubble of unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.

Uhh Gosh, I.. don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those, uhh, exaggerations.

I agree completely with Secretary Colin Powell, who said today this is an absurdity. And so I think the American people will know it's an absurdity. I have absolutely no concerns about it whatsoever.

I don't think you can pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere indefinitely and not have a reaction. But there are great scientists such as Freeman Dyson, one of the greatest physicists of the last hundred years, who has studied the question, who believes quite the opposite. The reason transnational action is so difficult is because the major problem with climate change is, A, that there is no consensus, and, B, that the economic cost is simply staggering. Reversing it completely might mean undoing the modern industrial economy.

Is there some magic wand they can wave on it and presto! - physics is overturned and carbon dioxide doesn't trap heat anymore? And when we see all these things happening on the Earth itself, what in the hell do they think is causing it? The scientists have long held that the evidence in their considered word is "unequivocal," which has been endorsed by every national academy of science in every major country in the entire world.

For everybody who thinks it's warming, I can find somebody who thinks it isn't.

They threaten me with lung cancer, and still I smoke and smoke. If they'd only threaten me with hard work, I might stop.

I did answer all of the questions put to me today, ... Nothing in my testimony in any way contradicted the strong denials that the president has made to these allegations, and since I have been asked to return and answer some additional questions, I think that it's best that I not answer any questions out here and reserve that to the grand jury.

I don't know anybody that I can think of who has contended that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons.

Not smoking enough will cause lung cancer! If anybody is getting a cancerous activity in the lung, the probabilities are that it's radiation dosage coupled with the fact that he smokes.

97 percent of the scientists who wrote articles in peer-reviewed journals believe that human activity is the fundamental reason we are seeing climate change.

Politicians and some of the scientists like to say that there's a consensus now on global warming or the science has been settled, but you have to ask them, what is there a consensus on? Because it really makes a difference. What are you talking about? The only consensus I'm aware of is that it's warmed in the last century. They completely ignore the fact that there's this thing called the Oregon petition that was signed by 19,000 professionals and scientists who don't agree with the idea that we are causing climate change.

Almost everywhere, climate change denial now looks as stupid and as unacceptable as Holocaust denial.

There are skeptics who do not come to their view because they have a source of income from carbon polluters. I don't mean to imply that they're all in that category at all. There are also those who are also not motivated by ideological resistance for any role of government. But I don't know of any arguments or any presenters of arguments that overturn the consensus that I think have gained any legitimacy.

"Smoking may cause fetal injury or premature birth." ... I found my brand. Just don't get the ones that say, "Lung Cancer."

I think being mediocre and in the middle would be the worst. It's more interesting to get strong reactions, and to have the mixture of people who get it and the people who don't get it. And to invite a dialogue.

From the cranberry cancer scare of the 1950s to the Alar-in-apples hysteria of the 1980s, from the "new ice age" of the 1960s to the "global warming" of the 1990s, environmental alarms almost always turn out to be false. Few non-political scientists fear ozone loss, global warming, or acid rain. These are just issues that some people hope to use to reorder the lives of the rest of us.

Having an energy conversation without talking about climate is like talking about smoking and not talking about cancer.