My Favorite Climate Change Quotes

From a long June 2014 report, updated September 18, 2015:

"In 1971, as a PhD student in ecology I joined an activist group in a church basement in Vancouver Canada and sailed on a small boat across the Pacific to protest US Hydrogen bomb testing in Alaska. We became Greenpeace.

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After 15 years in the top committee I had to leave as Greenpeace took a sharp turn to the political left, and began to adopt policies that I could not accept from my scientific perspective. Climate change was not an issue when I abandoned Greenpeace, but it certainly is now.
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There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years. If there were such a proof it would be written down for all to see. No actual proof, as it is understood in science, exists.

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states: 

“It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” 

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“Extremely likely” is not a scientific term but rather a judgment, as in a court of law. The IPCC defines “extremely likely” as a “95-100% probability”. But upon further examination it is clear that these numbers are not the result of any mathematical calculation or statistical analysis. They have been “invented” as a construct within the IPCC report to express “expert judgment”, as determined by the IPCC contributors.

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These judgments are based, almost entirely, on the results of sophisticated computer models designed to predict the future of global climate. As noted by many observers, including Dr. Freeman Dyson of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, a computer model is not a crystal ball. We may think it sophisticated, but we cannot predict the future with a computer model …"

                                          Patrick Moore, PhD
                                 Former member of Greenpeace

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“Twentieth century temperature changes show a strong    

 correlation with the Sun’s changing energy output”.
                           Sallie Baliunas, PhD
                   PhD in astrophysics from Harvard University

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“Today, we finally have the ice cores, ancient tree rings, and stalagmite analyses to document the 1,500-year climate cycle. We have the satellite readings on the sun’s variability. We’ve documented the atmospheric heat vent over “warm pool” of the Pacific. If we objectively list the strengths and weaknesses of the two concepts on the same page, the Greenhouse Theory looks woefully weak. The 1,500-year climate cycle looks much more convincing.”                                            

                              S. Fred Singer, PhD

                                                PhD in physics from Princeton University
                                                  and Dennis T. Avery
from page 229 of their book: “Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years”

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“Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early twenty-first century’s developed world went into a hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.”     

                            Richard S. Lindzen, PhD 

MIT Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, member of the National Academy of Sciences, and former lead author, U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

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“ … developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.”           

                          Ottmar Edenhofer (translated from German)

Professor of the Economics of Climate Change at the Technical University of Berlin, co-chair of Working group III of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Deputy Director and Chief Economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and Fellow of the Academy of Sciences in Hamburg, Germany. 

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“Environmentalism is an urban religion disconnected from nature, or rural life, or the realities of food and mineral production. This environmental religion is terrified of doubt, skepticism and uncertainty yet claims to be underpinned by science. … Like many fundamentalist religions, it attracts believers by announcing apocalyptic calamities unless we change our ways. … Logic, questioning or contrary data are not permitted.”          

                         Professor Ian Plimer 

                   (from page 463 and 464 of his book: “Heaven and Earth”)
Plimer was a two-time winner of Australia’s highest scientific honor, the Eureka Prize, and a professor in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Adelaide.

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The ECONOMIST magazine:

From an October 5, 2013 leader (editorial) on the latest report from the IPCC.
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Here's the entire first paragraph:

 "In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body of scientists, said the glaciers of the Himalayas could melt by 2035. This was complete fiction. It also said global surface temperatures would go on rising by about +0.2 degrees C. a decade for the next 20 years. They have been more or less flat since 1998. The IPCC has now issued its sextennial check-up on the health of the global climate. Why would anyone believe what they say?"  

Quote from later in the leader: 

"The decade-and-a-half to 2013 was unusual because it also saw a big rise in carbon-dioxide emissions, which, all things being equal, should have pushed up temperatures everywhere, and didn't."