Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I would like to address some of the tropes that our climate deniers tend to use. I will go through a couple of those before our great senior Senator from the great State of Oregon gives his remarks. The first trope is: It is not warming. The ``it is not warming'' crowd will not even admit that the Earth is warming. Their favorite tactic is to point out the window during winter and say: Look at the snow on the ground. Climate change is bunk. That is not an adult argument. Under that theory, winter weather anywhere disproves climate change. Snowstorms are weather. Weather is not climate. Weather is a local phenomenon over extremely short timespans. Weather is what it is going to be like tomorrow. Weather is not climate. Climate is long-term weather trends over vast regions. This is not difficult to distinguish among adults. It is easy to make a joke about how cold it is and therefore climate change is bunk. But the vast majority of science disproves that assertion. Pointing out the window on a cold day and laughing about climate change is one of the most profoundly unserious things that otherwise good and responsible leaders in this Chamber do. Part of this country's greatness is our pragmatism. We see the world as it is and fix the things we can. For that, we need reliable information. When it comes to climate change, we have reliable information. We ignore it at our peril. For those who say the Earth is not warming, I would like to talk about thermometers.…”