Al Gore’s not alone. Many scientists are fatigued by those who try to reframe climate change as a belief system, rather than the most rigorous of empirically researched endeavors. Here’s a look at what some of them are saying. 


“The public has to realize that when you see these lists of scientists who are skeptics or deniers, these are not scientists who have expertise in this field. Maybe some proctologist somewhere is against the government, and he’ll put his name on it. But the people who are actually doing the research and analyzing the data, their names don’t appear on these lists.”


—George Somero, National Academy of Sciences member and former Hopkins Marine Station director, who first began traveling to Antarctica in 1963


“So if you keep burning yourself on the stove over and over and over again, and you happen to notice that it is only when those little blue flames are out there, you’d be stupid not to put it together that those blue flames are hot and they’re burning you. So how long do we get burnt on the stove in order to be able to finally say, ‘Yes, this is the cause’? And if you are telling me, I don’t really know what the blues flames are, you’re just the gas salesman.”


—Steve Palumbi, scientist, author and director of Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station


“About 20 to 30 percent of all plant and animal species face the risk of extinction if temperatures increase by 2.2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s about 1 million species on this planet. If the thermometer rises to 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit, which incidentally is the path we are currently on, between 40 to 70 percent of all species will disappear. In my mind it is pure hubris to think that we can allow 30 to 70 percent of all species to go extinct without it having an enormous impact on human life.”


—Larry Schweiger, president and CEO 
of the National Wildlife Federation


“Absolutely climate change is happening. Climate change is really the biggest problem facing our oceans today. And our oceans are basically the life support system for the entire planet. So if our life support system crashes, we are in trouble.” 


—Sarah Mae Nelson, Monterey Bay Aquarium climate scientist


“The deniers are absolutely certain that the scientists are wrong. And they have a dark depiction that the scientists are in error and that they are in it for money or that they are secretly communists and it is all a plot. And they throw up all kinds of alternative explanations. But the one thing the deniers are absolutely certain of is that it couldn’t possibly be caused by the 90 million tons of global warming pollution that we are putting into the atmosphere every day. They’re certain of that.”


—Al Gore, The Climate Reality Project