| Quotes |
|
Miscellaneous short quotes on environmentalism, global warming and climate change
|
Ross Clark (journalist) |
“They have expended so much political capital on this, and have created
so many client jobs, quangos [semi-public administrative bodies
receiving government funding], agencies etc involved in pushing for net
zero, that none are going to be able to come forward in the near future
and say we made a big error.”
(on the net-zero activists) |
Feb 2024 |
| Craig Mackinlay (MP) | The optics of jetting from one international climate conference to the next to tell other people they should not be flying, driving and eating meat, is not one that will be sustainable when these policies really start to bite. | July 2021 |
| Peter Heller | "Wer Klimaschutz wirklich will und diesen auch noch als überaus dringlich ansieht, dem bleibt eben nur, das Fundament zu vernichten, auf dem unsere Freiheit und unser Wohlstand beruhen." |
link Dec 2017 |
| Sonja Margolina |
"Klimawandel ist ein hochidelologischer Begriff, der die Utopie der
Klimarettung zum Ziel des politischen Handelns und zum moralischen Gebot
erhoben hat". |
|
| Werner Kirstein | "Klimaschutz ist ein infantiler Aberglaube " |
link Nov.2017 |
| Freeman Dyson | "That is to me the central mystery of climate science. It is not a scientific mystery but a human mystery. How does it happen that a whole generation of scientific experts is blind to obvious facts?” |
link Oct 2015 |
| Bill Gates | "Poor countries ... desperately need cheap sources of energy now to fuel economic growth that lifts families out of poverty. They can't afford today's expensive clean energy solutions and we can't expect them to wait for the technology to get cheaper." |
link June 2014 |
| Richard Lindzen |
"Science
becomes a source of authority rather than a mode of inquiry. The real
utility of science stems from the latter; the political utility stems
from the former."
|
Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons 2013 |
| Dr. Wolfram Weimer | "Der deutsche Subventionsrausch frißt seine eigenen Kinder, denn die Pleite der deutschen Solarindustrie ist ein Paradbeispiel für die Folgen von Staatskapitalismus" |
Die Achse des Guten May 2013 |
| James Lovelock |
"We never intended a fundamentalist Green movement that rejected all
energy sources other than renewable" |
Canada
Free Press Dec 2012 |
| Michael Miersch | "Die Öko-Industrie kommt, die Natur geht" |
www.achgut.com link Jun 2012 |
| Willis Eschenbach | "Sustainability is a meaningless feel-good word used to justify whatever projects the authors are pushing this week" |
WUWT, Mar 2012 |
| Fred Hoyle, Sir | "It is also why those who have engaged in lurid talk over an enhanced greenhouse effect raising the Earth’s temperature by a degree or two should be seen as both demented and dangerous. The problem for the present swollen human species is of a drift back into an ice-age, not away from an ice-age.” | 1999, on CCNET |
| Charlie Martin | "All modeling efforts will inevitably converge on the result most likely to lead to further funding" |
Pajamas Media 30 Aug 11 |
| Christopher Booker | "But as the great global warming scare continues to fade away, the real problem is that our politicians have so much collective ego invested in this delusion that, even when hell freezes over, they will still find it impossible to admit they got it wrong" |
The
Telegraph 19 Jun 2011 |
| Freeman Dyson | "Unfortunately the global warming hysteria, as I see it, is driven by politics more than by science. If it happens that I am wrong and the climate experts are right, it is still true that the remedies are far worse than the disease that they claim to cure." |
The
Independent 25 Feb 2011 |
| Mad Ridley | "...the behemoths of bad news, such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and WWF, spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year and doom is their best fund-raiser" | 2010 Down wit Doom |
| John Ioannidis | "There is increasing concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims." | 2005 paper in PLoS Medicine |
| James Lovelock | “I think you have to accept that the sceptics have kept us sane — some of them, anyway... They have been a breath of fresh air. They have kept us from regarding the science of climate change as a religion. It had gone too far that way. There is a role for sceptics in science.” | The Times, 14Mar2010 |
| Lubos Motl |
"In other words, 90% of the salary of an average climate scientist in
the world is paid for him or her to say things that support the basic
thesis that multiplied the funding by ten - namely the statement that
there is a man-made climate change worth talking about or even a
dangerous one." "From the beginning, the IPCC had to be looking for a balance between the truth and their interest to survive. Recently, the survival got much more important than the truth." |
The Reference Frame, 15Mar10 |
| Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen | "Some university research units have almost become wholly-owned subsidiaries of Government Departments. Their survival, and the livelihoods of their employees, depends on delivering what policy makers think they want." | Memorandum to the Science and Technolgy Committee of the UK Parliamant. Feb 10 |
| Ken Hall | "Climate science is a unique scientific discipline where research begins at the conclusion and works backwards, selectively adopting (and manipulating) evidence to fit the conclusion. Where the hypothesis never changes, but the evidence changes instead to fit the hypothesis." | Comment in WUWT, Feb10 |
| Philip Stott | "At the moment, Met Office spokespersons sound extraordinary, bizarre even. They bleat out ‘global warming’ phrases like programmed robotic sheep" | From the blog "The Clamour of The Times" |
| Richard Lindzen | "If I, as an American, look at Europe, then I see a continent that does not care about terrorism, that Iran could become a nuclear power, that Islam is expanding. Instead, Europe worries about climate change. That is a form of societal stupidity." | Translation from an interview given to the Weltwoche (2007) |
| Atte Korhola | “Wen later generations learn about climate science, they will classify the beginning of 21st century as an embarrassing chapter in history of science. They will wonder our time, and use it as a warning of how the core values and criteria of science were allowed little by little to be forgotten as the actual research topic — climate change — turned into a political and social playground.” | Finnish professor, University of Helsinki, Environmental Change Research Unit. |
| Vaclav Smil | " ...forecasts are the mirror of our ignorance, not the embodiments of our understanding..." | from "Energy at the Crossroads", 2006 |
| John Reid | "..climate prediction, as it is carried out by those organisations which come under the aegis of the IPCC, is not science. It is a superstition similar to astrology or homeopathy" | from an excellent article in Quadrant online (Oct.2009) |
| Michel Rocard |
" Le principe c'est que... la terre est protégée de radiations
excessives du soleil par l'effet de serre, c'est à dire une espèce de
protection nuageuse, (euh)... enfin protection .....gazeuse, qui, dans
l'atmosphère, est relativement opaque aux rayons du soleil et quand nous
émettons du gaz carbonique ou du méthane ou du protoxyde d'azote -un
truc qu'il y a dans les engrais agricoles-, on attaque ces gaz. On
diminue la protection de l'effet de serre et la planète se transforme
lentement en poêle à frire. Le résultat serait que les arrières petits
enfants de nos arrières petits enfants ne pourront plus vivre. La vie
s'éteindra à 7-8 générations, ce qui est complètement terrifiant. Alors pour faire ça, il faut diminuer ce qu'on émet comme oxyde de carbone (sic !) et on a commencé à attaquer les grandes ....sources qui sont la production d'électricité et les productions comme les ciments etc..." |
This is M. Rocard's explanation of the greenhouse effect. He is a former French president, author of a report asking for a carbon tax ("taxe carbone") to be introduced in France to "save the planet". Loud laughing mandatory! [July 2009] |
| Benny Peiser | "Climate alarmism has turned into a Frankenstein monster that threatens to devour its own designers" | CCCnet, 04Sep09 |
| Robert Cess | “the [models] may be agreeing now simply because they’re all tending to do the same thing wrong. It’s not clear to me that we have clouds right by any stretch of the imagination.” (1997) | from Roy Spencer's blog |
| Maurizio Morabito | AGW could become (such) a consensual paradigm for an intellighentsia that has lost all hopes. | Blog |
| Richard Lindzen | ...the notion that climate is one-dimensional -- which is to say, that it is totally described by some fictitious global mean temperature and some single gross forcing a la increased CO2 -- is grotesque in its oversimplification | ICCC 2009. Full expose here. |
| Jeff Jacoby | ...for many people, the science of climate change is not nearly as important as the religion of climate change. | The Boston Globe: Where's global warming? |
| Gregg Easterbrook |
Predict catastrophe no sooner than five years hence but no later than
10 years away, soon enough to terrify but distant enough that people will forget if you are wrong. |
The "Law of Doomsaying": |
| Stephen
Ceci , Wendy M. Williams |
When scientists are silenced by colleagues, administrators, editors and funders who think that simply asking certain questions is inappropriate, the process begins to resemble religion rather than science. Under such a regime, we risk losing a generation of desperately needed research.”
|
Nature 457, p,
789,
|
| W. Hazeleger | In the past century the sea level has risen twenty centimeters. There is no evidence for accelerated sea-level rise. It is my opinion that there is no need for drastic measures. It is wise to adopt a flexible, step-by-step adaptation strategy. By all means, let us not respond precipitously. | KNMI,
Netherlands Dec 2008 |
| H
L Mencken *1980 +1956 |
The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule
it. |
|
| Joseph H. Reichholf | ...dass man sich eine kritische Position zum Mainstream nur leisten kann, wenn man selbst nicht mehr auf Forschungsmittel schielen muss. | Dec.2008 |
| Richard Lindzen |
What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world - that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison. |
Oct. 2008 |
| Richard Lindzen | The consensus was reached before the research had even begun | several years ago |
| Minister Hutton, UK | No coal plus no nuclear equals no lights. No power. No future. | Sep. 2008 |
| Nigel Lawson | Environmentalism is an unlimited license to intrude. | June 2008 |
| M. Maxeiner | Zu Ende gedacht, ist jedes Baby eine kleine Klimakatastrophe, es verbraucht nicht nur 5000 Windeln, sondern wird obendrein lebenslang CO2 ausatmen. Am klimafreundlichsten verhalten sich eigentlich die Toten. | July 2008 |
| G. Will | The green left preaches pessimism: Ineluctable scarcities (of energy, food, animal habitats, humans' living space) will require a perpetual regime of comprehensive rationing. The green left understands that the direct route to government control of almost everything is to stigmatize, as a planetary menace, something involved in almost everything -- carbon. | July 2008 |
last edited: 14 Feb 2024