Why would scientists dedicated to uncovering the truth about the natural world deliberately misrepresent the work of their own colleagues? Why would they spread accusations with no basis? Why would they refuse to correct their arguments once they had been shown to be incorrect? And why did the press continue to quote them, year after year, even as their claims were shown, one after another, to be false?

At a recent conference, a colleague told one of us that in IPCC discussions, some scientists have been reluctant to make strong claims about the scientific evidence, lest contrarians "attack us". Another said that she'd rather err on the side of conservatism in her estimates, because then she feels more "secure."

The same mentality that leads to environmental despoliation, environmental destruction, also leads to damage to people.

It's extremely hard to know what the economic consequences of any decision will be. And I'm not a, a, a financial analyst, so I, I generally don't try to make some kind of prediction about that.

Scientists should continue doing what they've always done, which is to understand the Earth as well as they can.

Scientific monitoring is going to be terrifically important, because whatever steps we take ... we will have to monitor those steps in order to know if they're actually working.

It really is a very radical call ... to reject materialism as our central value and to think about the sanctity of life and what that really means if we take it seriously.