Fred Pearce
Fred Pierce is an environmental author and frequent contributor to New Scientist magazine.
Statements
"I have been on this beat for eighteen years now. The more I learn, the more I go and see for myself, and the more I question scientists, the more scared I get. Because this story does add up, and its message is that we are interfering with the fundamental processes that make Earth habitable. It is our own survival that is now at stake, not that of a cuddly animal or a natural habitat.
"Don't take my word for it. Often in environmental science it is the young, idealistic researchers who become the impassioned advocates. Here I find it is the people who have been in the field the longest--the researchers with the best reputations for doing good science, and the professors with the best CVs and longest lists of published papers--who are the most fearful, often talking in the most dramatic language. People like President George W. Bush's top climate modeler, Jim Hansen, the Nobel Prize-winner Paul Crutzen, and the late Charles Keeling, begetter of the Keeling curve of rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. They have seemed to me not so much old men in a hurry as old men desperate to impart their wisdom, and their sense that climate change is something special."
Excerpt from With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change. March 7, 2007.
References
Google Book Search: With Speed and Violence
List of Fred Pearce Books
Climate Change: Menace or Myth?