The coal plants that will be built from 2005 to 2030 will release as much carbon dioxide as all of the coal burned since the industrial revolution more than two centuries ago.

Conservatives... are so opposed to government regulations that they are skeptical of anyone who identifies a problem that requires regulatory solutions - and they are inherently accepting of those who downplay such problems.

I've always believed that you should stick as closely to the science as possible. And my biggest advice to reporters has been, if you're doing a climate story, talk to climate scientists. The best climate stories are done by the people who talk to climate scientists.

As long as a handful of U.S. scientists, most receiving funds from the fossil fuel industry, get equal time with hundreds of the world's leading climate scientists, the public inevitably ends up with a misimpression about the state of our scientific understanding.

In 2003... the White House conspired with an oil-company funded think tank to block a major government scientific report that sought to spell out the dangers of climate change to Americans.

If our government won't spend the money to protect New Orleans sufficiently today, what are the chances we will spend the money to protect dozens of coastal cities post-2050, once everyone knows that sea levels will keep rising and intense hurricanes will occur relentlessly?

On moral grounds, I think that if you believe a certain outcome is a very possible outcome, you have an obligation to tell people that. With global warming, the probability of a bad outcome if we stay on our current emission trends is incredibly high. If you know a bad outcome is likely to happen, what right do you have not to communicate that? You go into a doctor's office, what are they going to do - not tell you the diagnosis?