Simon Winchester Quotes

Some of us don't respect water. We waste it and pour it out. But a lot of disastrous stuff involves water. Tsunamis. Hurricanes.

The Bay of Bengal is hit frequently by cyclones. The months of November and May, in particular, are dangerous in this regard.

You can't vote that water out of the city of New Orleans.

Mr. Speaker, from hurricanes and floods in Latin America to earthquakes in Asia, natural disasters are increasingly becoming a regular feature of life for large numbers of people around the globe.

Nature did not gift us with a mighty Mekong like Thailand and Vietnam, with their vast and naturally fertile plains. Nature instead put our islands ahead of our neighbours in the path of typhoons from the Pacific.

Rising sea levels, severe draughts, the melting of the polar caps, the more frequent and devastating natural disasters all raise demand for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

I want to go to the Maldives before they sink, but just because it's the most beautiful place on earth.

The Maldives, a string of islands off the coast of India whose highest point above sea level is eight feet, may be the first nation to drown. In Alaska, entire towns have begun to shift in the loosening permafrost.

I think Tokyo is going to sink under water soon. All those stupid high-rise buildings will sink and maybe all the traffic will be gone. And everything will be peaceful and quiet.

What happened to Haiti is a threat that could happen anywhere in the Caribbean to these island nations, you know, because of global warming, because of climate change and all this.

Living on the Gulf Coast, we often have to go through dangerous situations, whether you're a child, an adult or a senior citizen.

You know, we lose more homes every year to flooding than we do any other event in America.

Blizzards, floods, volcanoes, hurricanes, earthquakes: They fascinate because they nakedly reveal that Mother Nature, afflicted with bipolar disorder, is as likely to snuff us as she is to succor us

Typhoon damage happens when they hit land, and as humans, we've decided to destroy mangroves and hurt coral reefs. If we don't have barriers, the devastation is worse, and that is scary.

Islands are going to suffer from climate change in very, very difficult ways. And it's not just Pacific islands. It's not just Puerto Rico.

Depending on how quickly you get ocean rise, you have people who live in river deltas [at risk]. Bangladesh is largely a river delta, and the rising sea level means that when storms come in, the human sanitation is backing up, the ability to farm, it's destructive-type situations like you saw in New Orleans with Katrina. You're increasing the frequency of that stuff in low-lying areas fairly dramatically.

We have seen levee breaks and flooding in the wake of storms, some of which have caused the loss of life, and USDA is ready to assist in any way we can.

Racism is a problem, economic inequality is a problem, not enough rock n' roll on the radio is a problem. But all those problems will become insignificant when the oceans rise in a way that threatens organised human activity.

All of us who lived outside of New Orleans were horrified and heartbroken by what we saw when Katrina hit, the floods that followed the hurricane that happened.

Here in New York, we are already seeing how climate change contributes to increasingly violent and extreme weather that has cost us dearly, in both damage and in lives.

The seas are rising, and millions of people are going to be affected by that - and already are. We have to make sure there's enough food, water, and air.

A lot of America is stressed by Mother Nature.

Typhoon Haiyan showed the entire world how vulnerable the Philippines as well as other developing countries are to natural disasters.

The impacts of extreme weather are already creating chaos.

Floods will become more serious and frequent in the Indo-Gangetic plains. Drought induced food and water scarcity will become more acute. South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and the small islands will be the worst victims.