Agree
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(IPCC) Scientific Body formed by U.N.
Mostly Agree
Most of the global average warming over the past 50 years is very likely due to anthropogenic GHG increases and it is likely that there is a discernible human-induced warming averaged over each continent (except Antarctica).
Climate Scientist, Coined "Global Warming"
Agree
...the present cooling trend [as of 1975] will, within a decade or so, give way to a pronounced warming induced by carbon dioxide. By analogy with similar events in the past, the natural climatic cooling which, since 1940, has more than compensated for the carbon dioxide effect, will soon bottom out. Once this happens, the exponential rise in the atmospheric carbon dioxide content will tend to become a significant factor and by early in the next century...
Physics Professor, IPCC Lead Author
Agree
There's little doubt that humans are largely responsible for the warming that has occurred over the last few decades. And even more important, there's a certainty that if the greenhouse gases build up at current rates, that the Earth will warm over the century to levels that haven't been seen in a million years. Over the past ten years or so, so-called skeptics have raised a number of objections, but these have been knocked down by research scientists...
Physics Professor, IPCC Lead Author
Agree
I'm acting as a reviewer for the latest last little bit of the IPCC reports, and you actually do get to see this vast body of evidence in appallingly large detail (and massive amounts of trees have gone into it) and that's what you can't explain away. So it tends to be people who focus on one very tiny aspect and say there could be other causes, but when you look at the evidence as a whole or even a large part of it, then I don't think there's anything in these [skeptical] arguments at all.
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Physicist, Environmentalist, Writer
Agree
The science isn't settled -- it's unsettling, and getting more so every year as the scientific community learns more about the catastrophic consequences of uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions. The big difference I have with the doubters is they believe the IPCC reports seriously overstate the impact of human emissions on the climate, whereas the actual observed climate data clearly show the reports dramatically understate the impact.
US Energy Secretary, Nobel Laureate in Physics
Mostly Agree
There are stronger and stronger indications that global warming is happening, that it's caused by humans, and its consequences are looking more and more ominous. You can draw a parallel to the early days of [research into] cigarette smoking, the '50s and '60s, where scientists said, "Hey, there seems to be a link between lung cancer and cigarette smoking."
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Botanist, Writer, Nature Documentarian
Agree
I'm no longer sceptical. Now I do not have any doubt at all. I think climate change is the major challenge facing the world. I have waited until the proof was conclusive that it was humanity changing the climate. The thing that really convinced me was the graphs connecting the increase of carbon dioxide in the environment and the rise in temperature, with the growth of human population and industrialisation.
Scientist, Skeptic, Author
Agree
As an undergraduate in the 1970s, I learned (and believed) that by the 1990s overpopulation would lead to worldwide starvation and the exhaustion of key minerals, metals and oil, predictions that failed utterly. Politics polluted the science and made me an environmental skeptic. Nevertheless, data trump politics, and a convergence of evidence from numerous sources has led me to make a cognitive switch on the subject of anthropogenic global warming.
Economics Professor
Agree
CO2 is clearly way up (~30%) over 150 years, and rising fast, mainly due to human emissions. CO2 is denser than its been for a half million years. ... The match between recent warming and CO2 rise details is surprisingly close, substantially raising confidence that CO2 is the main cause of recent warming. ... This adds support for mitigation. ... It was mostly skeptics bending my ear, and skeptical arguments are easier to find on the web. But for now, the other side has convinced me.
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United States President
Agree
There may still be disputes about exactly how much we're contributing to the warming of the earth's atmosphere and how much is naturally occurring, but what we can be scientifically certain of is that our continued use of fossil fuels is pushing us to a point of no return.
US Secretary of State 2009-, Democrat
Agree
At the top of the world [the Arctic], you hear stories -- affirmed by decades of scientific investigation [on anthropogenic global warming] -- of changing weather patterns, melting ice, retreating glaciers, unprecedented wildfires, eroding coasts, and invasive species. You can see the evidence with your own eyes. There are no climate change skeptics inside the Arctic Circle.
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Environmentalist, Former U.S. Vice President
Agree
We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.
U.S. Senator, Republican
Agree
The world is already feeling the powerful effects of global warming, and far more dire consequences are predicted if we let the growing deluge of greenhouse gas emissions continue...
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Blogger, Author, Feminist
Agree
Calibrating historical weather trends is tricky stuff, and there are different conclusions from different measurements. But taken together, they all show a single, compelling trend: global warming. Global warming denialists are using exactly the same technique as creationists: zeroing in on relatively minor, technical, inside baseball disagreements about exact data to create confusion with the public that doesn’t understand science.
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Neutral
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Climatology Professor, Former IPCC Lead Author
Neutral
Atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to increase due to the undisputed benefits that carbon-based energy brings to humanity. This increase will have some climate impact through CO2's radiation properties. However, fundamental knowledge is meagre here, and our own research indicates that alarming changes in the key observations are not occurring.
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Former Governor of Massachusetts
Neutral
I believe that climate change is occurring — the reduction in the size of global ice caps is hard to ignore. I also believe that human activity is a contributing factor. I am uncertain how much of the warming, however, is attributable to factors out of our control.
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Disagree
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Meteorologist
Mostly Disagree
I predict that in the coming years, there will be a growing realization among the global warming research community that most of the climate change we have observed is natural, and that mankind’s role is relatively minor.
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Head of NIPCC, Astrophysics Professor
Mostly Disagree
The gap between the satellite observations and existing theory is large enough to cast serious doubt on all computer-model predictions of future warming. Whatever the cause of the gap, we cannot rely on GCM (General Circulation Models) forecasts of future warming. (GCMs are not even consistent with each other; their temperature forecasts vary by some 300 percent.) Until GCMs become validated by actual climate observations, they should not be used as the basis for policy.
Particle Physicist
Mostly Disagree
[Sun and cosmic rays] will probably be able to account for somewhere between a half and the whole of the increase in the Earth's temperature that we have seen in the last century.
Physics Professor
Disagree
The atmospheric greenhouse effect is a well known natural phenomenon, mostly caused by atmospheric water vapour, that keeps our planet warm and habitable whereas (anthropogenic = human-made) global warming refers to a small extra greenhouse warming (0.5-1 C/33 C; 1-5 %) allegedly arising from an increase in atmospheric concentration of the minority greenhouse effect gas CO2 (carbon dioxide) – the later increase in turn possibly arising from fossil fuel burning.
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Astronomer
Mostly Disagree
By the mid-21st century the planet will face another Little Ice Age, similar to the Maunder Minimum, because the amount of solar radiation hitting the Earth has been constantly decreasing since the 1990s and will reach its minimum approximately in 2041.
Geologist, President of the Geological Society of India
Disagree
The causes of these changes are cosmogenic...
Botanist, Documentarian
Disagree
The link between the burning of fossil fuels and global warming is a myth. It is time the world's leaders, their scientific advisers and many environmental pressure groups woke up to the fact.
Geologist
Disagree
Personal beliefs on climate change and rising sea levels should be delayed until just one of the many predictions made since 1985 on the basis of carbon additions to the atmosphere comes true.
Marine Geophysical Professor
Disagree
With the complete discrediting of the ‘hockey stick’ curve of recent temperature change (McIntyre and McKitrick, 2003, 2005; Wegman, Scott and Said, 2006) that was the icon of their report, the IPCC case for dangerous human-caused warming now rests only on ambiguous anecdotal evidence, unvalidated computer models and misleading attribution studies (IPCC, 2007).
Geology Professor
Disagree
Most leading geologists, throughout the world, know that the IPCC's view of Earth processes are implausible if not impossible.
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Mining Engineer
Mostly Disagree
So far the signal of a discernible human contribution to global climate change has not emerged from this natural variability or background noise.
Petition
Disagree
There are no experimental data to support the hypothesis that increases in human hydrocarbon use or in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing or can be expected to cause unfavorable changes in global temperatures, weather, or landscape... ...We also need not worry about environmental calamities even if the current natural warming trend continues. The Earth has been much warmer during the past 3,000 years without catastrophic effects.
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Former Governor of Alaska (Republican)
Disagree
A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.
US Politician, Republican
Disagree
Let’s just go to a fundamental question. Carbon dioxide, Mister Speaker, is a natural byproduct of nature. ... [Yet] carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful! ... Human activity contributes perhaps three percent of the three percent. In other words, human activity is maybe 3 percent contributing to the 3 percent of carbon dioxide that’s in Earth’s atmosphere. It’s so negligible — it’s a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent — that it can hardly be — be quantified.
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Mathematician
Disagree
I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence, was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic. The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s... In science, empirical evidence always trumps theory, no matter how much you are in love with the theory.
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Christian Encyclopedia
Disagree
The Climategate emails and climate data have been the subject of intense debate, calling to question assumptions on anthropogenic (man-made) global warming; evidence revealed told the truth about man-made global warming: it's a fraud.
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Ambiguous or Flip-Flop
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Popular Magazine
Agree
Be worried. Be very worried. ...Pump enough CO2 into the sky, and that last part per million of greenhouse gas behaves like the 212th degree Fahrenheit that turns a pot of hot water into a plume of billowing steam.
Popular Magazine
Disagree
Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.
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