Carbon Dioxide Quotes - Page 2

• How long have we got? We have to stabilize emissions of carbon dioxide within a decade, or temperatures will warm by more than one degree... We don't have much time left.

  James Hansen

  Long, Degrees, Temperature

  24 Copy quote

• The fundamental reason why carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is critically important to biology is that there is so little of it. A field of corn growing in full sunlight in the middle of the day uses up all the carbon dioxide within a meter of the ground in about five minutes. If the air were not constantly stirred by convection currents and winds, the corn would stop growing.

  Freeman Dyson

  Air, Wind, Atmosphere

  10 Copy quote

• The greenhouse effect of carbon-dioxide emissions does produce gentle warming if it is not counteracted by unpredictable natural phenomena, but it cannot be measured directly against the volume of such emissions.

  Conrad Black

  Doe, Natural, Volume

  4 Copy quote

• Carbon dioxide is unusual because it doesn't go through the usual three phases of matter, from solid to liquid to gas, but it goes straight from solid to gas. The volume of the gas is much greater than the volume of the solid. When a solid turns into a gas, we say it sublimes. The process is sublimation.

  Robert Winston

  Usual, Three, Phases

  4 Copy quote

• It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion. I don't think people have noticed that, but it's got all the sort of terms that religions use. The greens use guilt. That just shows how religious greens are. You can't win people round by saying they are guilty for putting (carbon dioxide) in the air.

  James Lovelock

  Christian, Religious, Winning

  "James Lovelock: The UK should be going mad for fracking". Interview with Leo Hickman, www.theguardian.com. June 15, 2012.

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• ...and his eyes were so green they could turn carbon dioxide into oxygen.

  Rainbow Rowell

  Eye, Oxygen, Green

  Rainbow Rowell (2016). “The Rainbow Rowell Collection: Eleanor & Park, Fangirl, Landline, and Carry On”, p.224, St. Martin's Griffin

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• If food was no longer obliged to make intercontinental journeys, but stayed part of a system in which it can be consumed over short distances, we would save a lot of energy and carbon dioxide emissions. And just think of what we would save in ecological terms without long-distance transportation, refrigeration, and packaging--which ends up on the garbage dump anyway--and storage, which steals time, space, and vast portions of nature and beauty.

  Carlo Petrini

  Distance, Thinking, Journey

  35 Copy quote

• In the Gaia theory air, water, and soil are major components of one central organism, planet Earth. What we typically think of as life - the plants and animals that inhabit the earth - has evolved merely to regulate the chemistry of the biosphere. Humans are insignificant participants, far less important to the life cycle than termites. Even the imbalance that we have created by adding massive quantities of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere may be brought back to acceptable levels by other organisms functioning in their capacity to correct excesses.

  David Easton

  Animal, Thinking, Air

  David Easton (2007). “The Rammed Earth House”, p.54, Chelsea Green Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Coral reefs, the rain forest of the ocean, are home for one-third of the species of the sea. Coral reefs are under stress for several reasons, including warming of the ocean, but especially because of ocean acidification, a direct effect of added carbon dioxide. Ocean life dependent on carbonate shells and skeletons is threatened by dissolution as the ocean becomes more acid.

  James Hansen

  Stress, Rain, Ocean

  12 Copy quote

• Alone among businesses, the fossil-fuel industry is allowed to dump its main waste, carbon dioxide, for free.

  Bill McKibben

  Business, Fuel, Waste

  "Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math" by Bill McKibben, www.rollingstone.com. July 19, 2012.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you've got more carbon dioxide.

  John Boehner

  World, Cows, Climate Change

  "NPR News" with David Greene and Renee Montagne, nhpr.org. May 24, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am troubled by the lack of common sense regarding carbon dioxide emissions. Our greatest greenhouse gas is water. Atmospheric spectroscopy reveals why water has a 95 percent and CO2 a 3.6 percent contribution to the 'greenhouse effect.' Carbon dioxide emissions worldwide each year total 3.2 billion tons. That equals about 0.0168 percent of the atmosphere's CO2 concentration of about 19 trillion tons. This results in a 0.00064 percent increase in the absorption of the sun's radiation. This is an insignificantly small number.

  Michael Myers

  Small Numbers, Years, Common Sense

  5 Copy quote

• The Kyoto theorists have put the cart before the horse. It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way round.

  Andrey Kapitsa

  Horse, Kyoto, Atmosphere

  5 Copy quote

• Global warming results not from the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but from an unusually high level of solar radiation and a lengthy - almost throughout the last century - growth in its intensity. It is no secret that when they go up, temperatures in the world's oceans trigger the emission of large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So the common view that man's industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations.

  Khabibullo Abdusamatov

  Ocean, Men, Views

  4 Copy quote

• The concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide has changed greatly since fossilized life began on Earth nearly 600 million years ago. In fact, there is only 1/19 as much CO2 in the air today as there was 520 million years ago. That high CO2 was hardly the recipe for disaster.

  Greg Benson

  Air, Years, Earth

  4 Copy quote

• Essentially, by 2050 we need all activities outside agriculture to be near zero carbon emitting if we are to stop carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere growing

  David Miliband

  Zero, Agriculture, Atmosphere

  4 Copy quote

• If it were only a few degrees, that would be serious, but we could adapt to it. But the danger is the warming process might be unstable and run away. We could end up like Venus, covered in clouds and with the surface temperature of 400 degrees. It could be too late if we wait until the bad effects of warming become obvious. We need action now to reduce emission of carbon dioxide.

  Stephen Hawking

  Running, Clouds, Waiting

  8 Copy quote

• Few scientists now dispute that today's soaring levels of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere will cause global temperature averages to rise by as much as nine degrees Fahrenheit sometime after the year 2000.

  Carl Sagan

  Average, Years, Atmosphere

  4 Copy quote

• I have not been one who believed in the global warming. But I tell you, they are making a convert out of me as these blistering summers. They have broken heat records in a number of cities already this year and broken all-time records and it is getting hotter and the ice caps are melting and there is a build up of carbon dioxide in the air. We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels.

  Pat Robertson

  Summer, Years, Ice

  "Pat Robertson: I’m ‘A Convert’ On Global Warming, ‘It Is Getting Hotter’". thinkprogress.org. August 03, 2006.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• [W]hen we look at the graphs of rising ocean temperatures, rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and so on, we know that they are climbing far more steeply than can be accounted for by the natural oscillation of the weather ... What people (must) do is to change their behavior and their attitudes ... If we do care about our grandchildren then we have to do something, and we have to demand that our governments do something.

  David Attenborough

  Attitude, Ocean, Grandchildren

  36 Copy quote

• The biggest gains, in terms of decreasing the country's energy bill, the amount of carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere, and our dependency on foreign oil, will come from energy efficiency and conservation in the next 20 years. Make no doubt about it. That's where everybody who has really thought about the problem thinks the biggest gains can be and should be.

  Steven Chu

  Country, Thinking, Years

  "Steven Chu, Obama's Point Man on Energy, Says Conservation Is "Sexy". Interview with Kent Garber, www.usnews.com. March 19, 2009.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some molecules - ammonia, carbon dioxide, water - show up everywhere in the universe, whether life is present or not. But others pop up especially in the presence of life itself. Among the biomarkers in Earth's atmosphere are ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons from aerosol sprays, vapor from mineral solvents, escaped coolants from refrigerators and air conditioners, and smog from the burning of fossil fuels. No other way to read that list: sure signs of the absence of intelligence.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Ozone, Air, Water

  4 Copy quote

• I don't think you can pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere indefinitely and not have a reaction. But there are great scientists such as Freeman Dyson, one of the greatest physicists of the last hundred years, who has studied the question, who believes quite the opposite. The reason transnational action is so difficult is because the major problem with climate change is, A, that there is no consensus, and, B, that the economic cost is simply staggering. Reversing it completely might mean undoing the modern industrial economy.

  Charles Krauthammer

  Believe, Mean, Thinking

  "Obama Is Average". Interview with Klaus Brinkbäumer and Gregor-Peter Schmitz, www.spiegel.de. October 26, 2009.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's no free lunch. If you want an industrial economy, you need energy. If you want energy, it will produce pollution. You can have it in two forms. You can have it dissipated in the atmosphere - like carbon dioxide - which then you cannot recover, or you can have the waste concentrated in one small space like nuclear. That is far easier to deal with. The idea that you can be able to create renewable energy at a price anywhere near the current price for oil or gas or coal is a fantasy.

  Charles Krauthammer

  Ideas, Two, Lunch

  "'Obama Is Average'". Interview with Klaus Brinkbäumer and Gregor-Peter Schmitz, www.spiegel.de. October 26, 2009.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's an appreciation for life generally, every bit of life, the smallest creature that lives in the intestines of termites that make termite life possible - to the leaves that turn out oxygen and grab carbon dioxide and with water make simple sugars that feed much of the world. I mean, these are everyday miracles.

  Sylvia Earle

  Appreciation, Mean, Simple

  "Big Thinkers on Evolution". "NOVA" Interview, www.pbs.org. October 6, 2009.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source