Michael E. Mann Quotes

Even a sheet of paper has two sides.

Back in the '70s - I remember the '70s: we were told there was global cooling. And everyone was told global cooling was a really big problem. And then that faded.

A pessimist and an optimist, so much the worse; so much the better.

I have on my bookshelf a series of books with opposite titles: 'The Alpha Strategy' and the 'Omega Strategy'; 'Asia Rising' and 'Asia Falling'; 'Free to Choose' and 'Free to Lose'; 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' and 'How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.' Visitors love the collection.

People see things in the opposite way that I do. There are places that spirit, soul and emotion reach.

If you start any large theory, such as quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, evolution, it takes about 40 years for mainstream science to come around. Gaia has been going for only 30 years or so.

Too often reporters covering scientific debates give fringe views equal weight in a misguided attempt to achieve balance.

This is a duty now. Pick up the phone and call me, particularly when your ideas differ from mine.

Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites.

Scientists and security experts will never come to a consensus about the risks of dual-use research in synthetic biology..

Donald Rumsfeld and Nelson Rockefeller were put on this planet to piss each other off.

I don't do formal debates, because formal debates where you have two people up on a stage in equal status, and each of them is given 20 minutes to give their point of view, and then 10 minutes for a rebuttal, or whatever, that creates the illusion that you really do have here two equal points of view of equal scientific standing.

There are two sides, at least, to most political questions, and a politician's impulse may be to believe that the same holds true for science. Certainly, there are disputes in science. But on the question of climate change, the divide is stark.

Just as I wouldn't expect a gynecologist to have a debate with somebody who believes in the Stork-theory of reproduction, I won't do debates with Young Earth creationists.

For me, there is a real line between something being the worst thing in the world and the best thing in the world.

What shocks me is people who have no expertise championing a view that runs counter to the mainstream scientific consensus.

One scientist will interpret data one way, another in another way. One scientist may feel that an experiment is valid, another feels it's invalid. That's why scientists have discussions and put forward their opinions in conferences and papers.

Science is really about individual experts reaching a consensus.

For some people, it's impossible to escape binaries.

Creationism, perhaps the most pernicious of the intellectual perversions now afflicting the American public.

Discord gives a relish for concord.

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.

Professors in every branch of the sciences, prefer their own theories to truth: the reason is that their theories are private property, but truth is common stock.

It seems to me that in the orbit of our world you are the North Pole, I the South--so much in balance, in agreement--and yet... the whole world lies between.

Among the authorities it is generally agreed that the Earth is at rest in the middle of the universe, and they regard it as inconceivable and even ridiculous to hold the opposite opinion. However, if we consider it more closely the question will be seen to be still unsettled, and so decidedly not to be despised. For every apparent change in respect of position is due to motion of the object observed, or of the observer, or indeed to an unequal change of both.