Arctic Quotes - Page 2

• She was riding a bear! And the Aurora was swaying above them in golden arcs and loops, and all around was the bitter Arctic cold and the immense silence of the North.

  Philip Pullman

  Silence, Riding, Aurora

  Philip Pullman (1995). “Northern lights”

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• We need to save the Arctic not because of the polar bears, and not because it is the most beautiful place in the world, but because our very survival depends upon it.

  Lewis Gordon

  Beautiful, Survival, Needs

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• In Alaska, the beaches are slumping so much, people are having to move houses. In Tuktoyaktuk, the land is starting to go under water. The glaciers are melting and the permafrost is melting. There are new species of birds and fish and insects showing up. The Arctic is a barometer for the health of the world. If you want to know how healthy the world is, come to the Arctic and feel its pulse.

  Sheila Watt-Cloutier

  Beach, Moving, Alaska

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• How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow
  Into the arctic regions of our lives,
  Where little else than life itself survives.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Age, May, Littles

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, J. D. McClatchy (2000). “Poems and Other Writings”, p.627, Library of America

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• Before we left, Grandmother talked a lot about the arctic night we would fly through. 'Isn't it a mystical word, "arctic"? Pure and quite hard. And meridians. Isn't that pretty? We're going to fly along them, faster than the light can follow us... Time won't be able to catch us.

  Tove Jansson

  Grandmother, Night, Light

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• In 50 years, no one will care about the fiscal cliff or the Euro crisis. They'll just ask, "So the Arctic melted, and then what did you do?"

  Bill McKibben

  Euro Crisis, Years, Cliffs

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• 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.

  Sylvia Earle

  Ocean, Impact, Atmosphere

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• Nature confounds her summer distinctions at this season. The heavens seem to be nearer the earth. The elements are less reserved and distinct. Water turns to ice, rain to snow. The day is but a Scandinavian night. The winter is an arctic summer.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Summer, Nature, Rain

  Henry David Thoreau (1992). “The Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.108, Rowman & Littlefield

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• A half-century after racing the Russians to the moon, the U.S. is barely suiting up in the international race to secure interests in the Arctic.

  Rick Larsen

  Leadership, Nature, Science

  "America Is Losing The Competition For The Arctic". Interview with Deb Reichmann, www.businessinsider.com. January 01, 2014.

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• For the first time in history, my community has had to use air conditioners. Imagine that, air conditioners in the Arctic.

  Sheila Watt-Cloutier

  Air, Community, Use

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• The arctic loneliness of age.

  Silas Weir Mitchell

  Loneliness, Age

  Medical proverbs by F.H. Garrison, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine October: 979 - 1005 (1928)

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• We deeply regret that some Senators are still willing to do Big Oil?s bidding, and we now turn to the House where the Arctic drilling scheme should be dead on arrival. Americans are clamoring for a clean Congress and a clean energy plan, but sadly they were shortchanged on both today.

  Carl Pope

  Regret, Oil, House

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• The Arctic is a highway. The tree limit, the scarcity of trees, freed people to walk. Particularly in the wintertime. Which connected people physically, communicatively. And mythically. The long nights of winter free people to tell. And to listen.

  Nils-Aslak Valkeapaa

  Winter, Night, Long

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• For as long as I can remember, I have loved snow and ice. As a result, I have spent most of my life exploring the Arctic region. These journeys have brought such joy and beauty to my life that I have dedicated myself to helping preserve these wonderful frozen places. More than ever before, I am driven to share my passion for the Arctic, a region whose health and stability have far-reaching consequences for us all.

  Lonnie Dupre

  Passion, Journey, Ice

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• Canada regards herself as responsible to all mankind for the peculiar ecological balance that now exists so precariously in the water, ice and land areas of the Arctic archipelago. We do not doubt for a moment that the rest of the world would find us at fault, and hold us liable, should we fail to ensure adequate protection of that environment from pollution or artificial deterioration.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Ice, Land, Water

  Pierre Trudeau during House of Commons Debate, October 24, 1969.

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• Stories are compasses and architecture, we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Ice, Sea, Stories

  Rebecca Solnit (2013). “The Faraway Nearby”, p.5, Granta Books

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• Moss grows where nothing else can grow. It grows on bricks. It grows on tree bark and roofing slate. It grows in the Arctic Circle and in the balmiest tropics; it also grows on the fur of sloths, on the backs of snails, on decaying human bones. ... It is a resurrection engine. A single clump of mosses can lie dormant and dry for forty years at a stretch, and then vault back again into life with a mere soaking of water.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Lying, Years, Circles

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2013). “The Signature of All Things”, p.169, A&C Black

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• I think that I was slightly naive. I thought that if I showed people the beauty of the Arctic and the beauty of the polar bears that they would care so much that they would stand up and try to make a change.

  Lewis Gordon

  Thinking, People, Trying

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• I am shocked, truly shocked. I was in Siberia a few weeks ago, and I am now just back in from the field in Alaska. The permafrost is melting fast all over the Arctic, lakes are forming everywhere and methane is bubbling up out of them.

  Katey Walter

  Lakes, Alaska, Melting

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• If substantial methyl hydrate melt begins to occur in the Arctic Ocean basin, then the (carbon) accelerator will be jammed, and there will be nothing we can do to cut the speed of climate change.

  Mark Lynas

  Ocean, Cutting, Climate

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• There is a river in the ocean. In the severest droughts it never fails, and in the mightiest floods it never overflows. Its banks and its bottom are of cold water, while its current is of warm. The Gulf of Mexico is its fountain, and its mouth is in the Arctic Sea. It is the Gulf Stream.

  Matthew Fontaine Maury

  Ocean, Science, Sea

  Matthew Fontaine Maury (1855). “The Physical Geography of the Sea”, p.25

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• Every [Alaskan] has witnessed climate change over the past fifty years. Our winters are warmer, our summers are longer, and our Arctic Village shores, once protected by sea ice are eroding.

  Ray Metcalfe

  Summer, Winter, Past

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• The Old Religion, as we call it, is closer in spirit to Native American traditions or to shamanism of the Arctic. It is not based on dogma or a set of beliefs, nor on scriptures or a sacred book revealed by a great man. Witchcraft takes it's teachings from nature, and reads inspiration in the movements of the sun, moon, and stars, the flight of birds, the slow growth of trees, and the cycles of the seasons.

  Starhawk

  Stars, Book, Teaching

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• The polar bear for many has become a living symbol of the dangers of global warming. The powerful kings of the arctic are finding their habitat shrinking.

  Sam Champion

  Kings, Powerful, Shrinking

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• The close relationships between the abrupt ups and downs of solar activity and of temperature that I have identified occur locally in coastal Greenland; regionally in the Arctic Pacific and north Atlantic; and hemispherically for the whole circum-Arctic, suggesting that changes in solar activity drive Arctic and perhaps even global climate.

  Willie Soon

  Climate, Temperature, Coastal

  "It's the Sun, stupid!: New direct evidence demonstrate that changes in solar activity influence climate". Essay by Willie Soon, March 9, 2009.

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