Naomi Oreskes Quotes

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

Naomi Oreskes

#2. As an independent source of authority and knowledge, science has always had the capacity to challenge ruling powers' ability to control people by controlling their beliefs. Indeed, it has the power to challenge anyone who wishes to preserve, protect, or defend the status quo.

Naomi Oreskes

#3. I think it is important for people to understand that there are real serious economic costs and real serious economic damages associated with inaction on climate change.

Naomi Oreskes

#4. When God made the planet, he made the plants, he made the animals, he made the Sun and the Moon, and he made us, and we're all interconnected, and when we disregard, disrespect, or damage any part of it, we do violence against creation.

Naomi Oreskes

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

Naomi Oreskes

#6. When we damage the environment, we damage everything we depend on.

Naomi Oreskes

#7. Did all of Singer's efforts to discredit mainstream science matter? When asked in 1995 where he got his assessments of ozone depletion, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, probably the most powerful man in Congress at the time, said, "my assessment is from reading people like Fred Singer."93

Naomi Oreskes

#8. The industry had realized you could create the impression of controversy simply by asking questions

Naomi Oreskes

#9. Scientists are scientists. They're not really in a position to speak clearly on the moral dimensions, and they're not really comfortable doing that.

Naomi Oreskes

#10. Most people have thought of ... climate change as a problem about the environment that is separate and distinct from problems of human wellbeing.

Naomi Oreskes

#11. 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.

Naomi Oreskes

#12. The philosopher Isaiah Berlin sagely pointed out, liberty for wolves means death to lambs.124

Naomi Oreskes

#13. 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.

Naomi Oreskes

#14. I think Pope Francis is our Pope Francis. I mean, the point of him is that he's a global leader, and he's trying, I think he's embracing that role.

Naomi Oreskes

#15. 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.

Naomi Oreskes

#16. A similar phenomenon developed with acid rain in the 1990s, as the media attended to the idea that its cause was still not established - more than a decade after that was no longer true - or the claim that it would cost more to fix than it was worth, which was unsupported by evidence.

Naomi Oreskes

#17. We don't survive without plants and animals because we rely on them, we rely on plants to put oxygen into the atmosphere, we rely on ... fish and crops and cows to eat.

Naomi Oreskes

#18. Yet again, unscientific claims were being circulated broadly, but the scientists' refutation of them was published where only fellow scientists would see it.

Naomi Oreskes

#19. What to do about climate change is political, it's social, and it's moral, which is one of the reasons the scientific community reached out to the Pope, to ask for his involvement in this issue.

Naomi Oreskes