Political Quotes

“this is my ``Time to Wake Up'' speech No. 159. In giving these speeches, I have come to realize that some of my colleagues seem to have a hard time wrapping their heads around the basic understanding of climate change. Some of President Trump's Cabinet nominees seem to have the same problem. They say the scientific community is split on the issue. It is not. They say the climate has always been changing. Not like this, it hasn't. They say we can't trust projections and complex computer models. But overall, they have actually been right. And, of course, they have the notorious ``I'm not a scientist'' dodge. Well, if a colleague doesn't understand this, then perhaps he ought to trust the scientists at NOAA and at NASA, at our National Labs, and at universities in Rhode Island and across the country--the scientists whose job it is to understand this. I must say, in addition to trusting the scientists, I also trust Rhode Island fishermen who see the changes in their traps and nets and our shoreline homeowners watching the sea steadily rising toward their homes. You don't need fancy computer models to see the ocean changes already taking place; you just need a thermometer to measure rising temperatures, basically a yardstick to measure sea level rise or a simple pH kit to measure the acidification of our oceans. Let's look at ocean acidification.…”