Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am here now for the 128th time to urge that we wake up to the ugly changes that carbon pollution is wreaking on our climate. It is happening all around us, and it is happening right now, not in some far-off future. As humans we are terrestrial beings. We live on the land. So naturally we pay more attention to the experience where we live--things such as increasing average temperatures on the land and changes in extreme weather when it hits the land. We don't so much pay attention to what is happening in our warming and acidifying oceans. The oceans are a big deal in climate change. For decades the oceans have absorbed more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gas emissions. Of all the different places the excess heat goes, 93 percent is into the oceans. What we see in the atmosphere--the temperature changes we have already measured, the changes we are seeing in our habitat and what is happening to the western forest--all of that is less than the remaining 7 percent. A study published in the journal Nature Climate Change found that the oceans have absorbed as much energy just since 1997 as they had in the preceding 130 years--as much in 20 years, less than 20 years, as they had in the preceding 130 years.…”