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James Lovelock Finally Walks Back His Absurd Doomism, But He Still Doesn’t Follow Climate Science JOE ROMM Apr 23, 2012 Famed scientist James Lovelock has always been in a category of one when it comes to global warming. See for instance my June 2009 post, “Lovelock still makes me look like Paula Abdul, warns climate war could kill nearly all of us, leaving survivors in the Stone Age.” That’s mostly because he doesn’t follow the scientific literature. Now that he has dialed back his doomism — alarmism is a wholly inadequate word for Lovelock’s (former) brand of unjustified hopelessness — the media and the deniers are just so excited. That’s especially true since Lovelock has now overshot in the other direction of climate science confusion and just keeps peddling nonsense. And so we have this MSNBC story: ‘Gaia’ scientist James Lovelock: I was ‘alarmist’ about climate change James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too…. “The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium….” He was wrong about his doomism before, he is wrong about Gore now, and he is apparently uninformed about basic climate observations (see “Breaking News: The Earth Is Still Warming. A Lot”). Indeed, even MSNBC feels compelled to note: 1
Asked to give its latest position on climate change, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a statement that observations collected by satellites, sensors on land, in the air and seas “continue to show that the average global surface temperature is rising.” The statement said “the impacts of a changing climate” were already being felt around the globe, with “more frequent extreme weather events of certain types (heat waves, heavy rain events); changes in precipitation patterns … longer growing seasons; shifts in the ranges of plant and animal species; sea level rise; and decreases in snow, glacier and Arctic sea ice coverage.” Duh. But Lovelock hasn’t been speaking sensibly on the climate for a long, long time. Back in 2007, he was saying this sort of thing: “By 2100, Lovelock believes, the Earth’s population will be culled from today’s 6.6 billion to as few as 500 million.” … To Lovelock, cutting greenhouse-gas pollution won’t make much difference at this point…. As I wrote at the time, Lovelock makes “you — or Al Gore or James Hansen or even me — look optimistic by comparison.” Memo to Lovelock: Gore never asserted billions would die or anything close to what you’ve been saying. And unlike you, he always believed — and still does — that it’s not too late. So if you finally admitted you were wrong, that’s awesome, but don’t try to claim you were just saying what others were. You weren’t. Not even close. In 2008, Lovelock was inspiring this kind of headline and story: We’re all doomed! 40 years from global catastrophe — and there’s NOTHING we can do about it, says climate change expert. … “By 2040, China will be uninhabitable.” Lovelock believes that the Chinese, because of their high levels of industrial activity, will be the first to suffer, with the death of all plant life. “So I think the Chinese will go to Africa. They are already there, preparing a new continent — the Chinese industrialists who claim to be out there mining minerals are just there on a pretext of preparing for the big move.” This kind of doomist nonsense is precisely why I’ve been critical of Lovelock here for many years. Yes 1 billion people will go to the one continent that can’t feed itself today and which will be Dust-Bowlifying and superhot. Seriously. 2
Now I know some readers may believe billions will die this century. I don’t. I do know some climate scientists and others who think that it is certainly possible billions will die if we are so self-destructive as to keep near the worst-case emissions scenario and the carbon cycle feedbacks and soil moisture projections are merely in the middle of their projected range (see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces”). But it’s not what I think is going to happen. I actually believe that even if we do let the deniers sucker us into another decade of delay, that we are still going to get WWII-scale serious about climate sometime in the 2020s and avert the worst-case scenarios — even if the feedbacks really start to kick in. I also believe that even if the bad-case scenarios kick in post-2040, the world is going to reorganize much of its activity to prevent billions of people from dying. Oh, yes, billions of people are going to needlessly suffer a great deal if the deniers triumph, but stopping billions from starving to death this century will be well within our capability even if we ruin a livable climate. That doesn’t mean we will definitely do what is needed, of course, but I am an optimist in this regard. I’m delighted that Lovelock has reversed his doomism. But until he actually reads the scientific literature, his thoughts on climate will continue to have no basis in science. NOTE: John Shanahan, Civil Engineer, Editor, website allaboutenergy.net. We see the world differently than James Lovelock and many global warming alarmists. Prior to use of fossil fuels, humanity had limited possibilities. The population and living standard stayed nearly the same for several thousand years. The population was controlled by privileged classes and heads of religions. Food production and natural resources were controlled by rulers. A lot of the population consisted of uneducated slaves, indentured servants and extremely poor. With advances brought on by fossil fuels, millions of people now live better than most upper-class people did even 500 years ago. Ordinary people today have education, plenty of food, heated and airconditioned homes and workplaces. Even the poor have secondhand designer clothing. Communications, information and all the functions of iPhones, the Internet and computers are found in most areas. Good health care is available to many. Transoceanic journeys are available to far more people than three hundred years ago. And they take hours rather than weeks or months. Along with advances brought on by fossil fuels came claims that they were bad for people, even evil. The major by-products of burning hydrocarbon fuels are water, H2O and carbon dioxide, CO2. The O coming from the air. Both molecules are essential for life. Alarmists ignore the water by-product and brand carbon dioxide a pollutant that they claim is causing catastrophic global warming and sea-level rise. Schools and universities teach that the world is going to soon experience catastrophic global 3
warming, climate change or climate disruption. They demand stopping the use of fossil fuels and using very dilute, unreliable wind and solar energy. That will cause drastic change as if the world has been overcome by some terrible virus. Wind and solar require vastly large areas than fossil fuel and nuclear plants and vastly more material must be mined because their energy density is so much less. The global warming alarmists ignore all this and push forward without rhyme nor reason. Nuclear power from uranium and thorium should be used everywhere possible to save fossil fuels for things that only they can do best. The following are photos of the world after nearly two centuries of using fossil fuels. Most everything is far better. What isn’t can be changed and made better. Extreme alarmists with no basis must be stopped from getting their way and destroying access to good living. The Danube River, Austria
Innsbruck, Austria and the Inn River
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Zurich, Switzerland looks much the same for fifty years. Living in the towns on Lake Zurich is a luxury enjoyed by many.
Versoix, Switzerland on Lake Geneva. Ice coated van caused by extremely cold air, the lake not frozen and high wind blowing water from the lake. Catastrophic manmade global warming?
Lake Lugano, Switzerland near Italy. James Lovelock predicts that Europeans will have to flee to Britain because of catastrophic man-made global warming. There are no signs requiring stopping use of fossil fuels and nuclear power and abandoning paradises in Europe. 5
At the same time, halfway around the world in the southern hemisphere is New Zealand. The climate there is glorious. We can have wonders of nature and modern living from fossil fuels and nuclear. Fifty years of alarms about man-made climate catastrophes are a hoax. Sorry Gaia and James Lovelock. No haya (Spanish - There is no) catastrophic man-made global warming!
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