Bill McKibben Quotes

Few scientists now dispute that today's soaring levels of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere will cause global temperature averages to rise by as much as nine degrees Fahrenheit sometime after the year 2000.

We know the surface temperature of the Earth is warming. It has risen by .6 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years. There was a warming trend from the 1890s to the 1940s, cooling from the 1940s to the 1970s, and then sharply rising temperatures from the 1970s to today.

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.

It's not the case that carbon dioxide drives temperatures. When you leave Ice Ages, it's the other way around: The temperatures go up first, and then carbon dioxide levels go up.

Even if we were to stop putting out greenhouse gases right now, we'd still face decades of warming.

We recognize that greenhouse gas emissions are one of the factors affecting climate change.

The climate is changing, but the question is how much - and to what extent human factors are contributing to that.

So far the earth has warmed about a degree Fahrenheit globally averaged. That doesn't seem like an enormous amount but it's unlike what we would have expected twenty years ago.

The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time... it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising - carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.

I have not been one who believed in the global warming. But I tell you, they are making a convert out of me as these blistering summers. They have broken heat records in a number of cities already this year and broken all-time records and it is getting hotter and the ice caps are melting and there is a build up of carbon dioxide in the air. We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels.

In Australia, average temperatures have risen almost one degree since 1910, and each decade since the 1940s has been warmer than the one before. That warming is real. Its consequences are real. And it will change our lives in real and practical ways.

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.

It has become very difficult for anyone to argue that observed global warming is natural variability. We have good reason for being able to say that the world will be warmer by about a quarter of a degree in the next decade. It's the same reason we had 10 years ago when we said that the 1990s would be warmer than the 1980s: The planet is out of equilibrium.

The evidence for human-made climate change is overwhelming.

The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium.

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.

You could warm Mars up, over time, with greenhouse gases.

The greenhouse effect is something you can observe experimentally - and most people have observed the greenhouse effect themselves, in greenhouses. Yes?

Those who deny human-caused climate change offer no compelling evidence to better explain the undeniable rise in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and global temperature.

The Arctic is a place that historically, during all preceding human history, has largely been an icy realm with an impact on ocean currents. That, in turn, influences the temperature of the planet. The Arctic is now vulnerable because of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, with a rate of melting that is stunning.

The latest scientific assessment has almost doubled the predicted rate of warming if no changes are made.

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

The question of whether or to what extent human activities are causing global warming is not a matter of ideology, let alone of belief. The issue is simply one of risk management.

Global warming is my personal experience.