Climate Risks Quotes

A hotter, moister atmosphere is an atmosphere primed to trigger disasters.

The risks brought about by climate change are a major concern. It goes without notice—unless people find out that 12 of the last 13 biggest climatic disorders have occurred in the last 10 years.

As this body of knowledge has evolved, a much more critical job for researchers and scientists has evolved into explaining and educating policy makers and the public to the risks of global warming and the possible consequences of action or of no action.

East and Gulf Coast states are at risk of hurricanes; prairie and other central and southern states are constantly threatened by tornados; and western states commonly face damaging droughts. Extreme weather does not discriminate by American geography.

Despite all the progress climate scientists have made in understanding the risks we run by loading the atmosphere with CO2, the world is still as addicted to fossil fuels as ever.

By speeding the transition to cleaner energy, we can improve the lives of billions of people, while also reducing the risks we face from a changing climate.

Climate change is one of the issues I worry most about because its impacts are enormous. But they're gradual, they're not immediate.

We can look back through ice-core data and see over 800,000 years, relationships between carbon dioxide and the temperature of the world. So those people who deny the importance of climate change are just wasting their time. They're also being diversionary because if we don't act the risks are enormous.

Deliberately modifying the earth's atmosphere would be a desperate gamble with significant risks. Yet the more likely climate change is to cause devastation, the more attractive even the most perilous attempts to mitigate those changes will become.

Looking back, I underestimated the risks. The planet and the atmosphere seem to be absorbing less carbon than we expected, and emissions are rising pretty strongly. Some of the effects are coming through more quickly than we thought then.

We now have the economics confirming that not only is climate action required to reduce climate risks, but that it is vital to building long-term, sustainable economic growth.