"Global Warming is SO Last Year" Admits Über Green Fearmonger
James Lovelock is the elderly, distinguished and much-revered (by Greenies, at any rate) British scientist who invented the Gaia hypothesis. (Think: that shimmery, healing tree thing in Avatar)
Here is what he wrote in 2006 about global warming:
We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics.
Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth's surface we have depleted to feed ourselves.
And:
We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.
But now, in a new book, a distinguished and revered British scientist has expressed doubt about the way "alarmists" including Al Gore and Australia's Tim Flannery have hyped up the dangers of global warming.
He writes:
It will also reflect his new opinion that global warming has not occurred as he had expected.
“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.
“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said.
“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising -- carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added.
He's quite right, of course. And the name of this wise realist?
Why, James Lovelock of course.
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Comments:
Feb '11
Re: "Global Warming is SO Last Year" Admits Über Green Fearmonger
James Delingpole:
before this century is over billions of us will die
Well, you can take that one to the bank. How many of the six billion we have now can expect to live another eighty-eight years? (And when he wrote it, it was ninety-four years.)
That goes together with "Every day, we are one day closer to dying."
Edited on April 24, 2012 at 1:54pmMay '11
Re: "Global Warming is SO Last Year" Admits Über Green Fearmonger
Pretty unusual admission, that. Ordinarily, being a lefty means never having to say you're sorry. Or even admit you were mistaken. Ozone layer, anyone? Nuclear freeze? Rehabilitation and short criminal sentences? Uncapped welfare? Do lefties even remember their positions on those issues?
Oct '10
Re: "Global Warming is SO Last Year" Admits Über Green Fearmonger
An infantilized generation, whether from a lesser country, or a formerly great Constitutional Monarchy or Republic, will live by it's emotions, which are an instrument played at virtuoso level by demagogues.
We have what we want. And we will never like it.
Dec '10
Re: "Global Warming is SO Last Year" Admits Über Green Fearmonger
What is the next great justification for governance of the many by the select few?
May '10
Re: "Global Warming is SO Last Year" Admits Über Green Fearmonger
Seems to me that if these jokers were serious they would be buying real estate in canada...
Dec '10
Re: "Global Warming is SO Last Year" Admits Über Green Fearmonger
Wintering in Nain, the new trend.
Dec '11
Re: "Global Warming is SO Last Year" Admits Über Green Fearmonger
I for one believe in Man Made Global Warming. I just don't know which man made it up?
Dec '10
Re: "Global Warming is SO Last Year" Admits Über Green Fearmonger
James,
Long ago in Graduate School I first became aware of Lovelock and Gaia. I was immediately nauseated. To overcome my sickened state I made a little joke. A joke which is still true. It's the special Lovelock recipe for what you have aptly named Uber Green Fearmongering.
Uber Fear Recipe
Take:
1 part Marx
1 part Malthus
1 part Jung
Mix rapidly and season with paranoia, misinformation, and total irresponsibility for the economic health of Western Civilization.
This recipe can ill serve billions on planet earth.
Regards,
Jim
Oct '10
Re: "Global Warming is SO Last Year" Admits Über Green Fearmonger
The King Prawn
Wintering in Nain, the new trend. · 2 hours ago
I heard that too, KP. All the Warmists are inane.
I'll be here all week, following 10 cents of course.
Sep '10
Re: "Global Warming is SO Last Year" Admits Über Green Fearmonger
James Delingpole:
Here is what he wrote in 2006 about global warming:
...
From doom to nothing is happening in six short years. That's quite a sharp turnaround. Lovelock risked whiplash.
It's hard to understand how someone can be so certain of his position, then reverse course so quickly. The case for anthropogenic climate change was never strong, but Lovelock's reasons for changing his mind are also weak. In short, the guy's a flake. But I guess you knew that.
Sep '10
Re: "Global Warming is SO Last Year" Admits Über Green Fearmonger
A brief Lovelock chronology:
2000: Homage to Gaia
2005: Gaia: Medicine for an Ailing Planet
2006: The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back
2009: The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning: Enjoy It While You Can
2010: "Democracy might have to be 'put on hold' to prevent climate change"
2012: Warming-schwarming, no big deal. [I'm paraphrasing.]
I was wrong, it didn't take six years. It's more like two.
Jul '11
Re: "Global Warming is SO Last Year" Admits Über Green Fearmonger
Love it.
Aug '10
Re: "Global Warming is SO Last Year" Admits Über Green Fearmonger
Wait a second, I thought we were sliding into a new Ice Age, accidentally kept warm enough for agriculture by the vast amounts of carbon we've been burning since the Industrial Revolution?
Danged scientists, if they can't do predictions better than a pirated copy of Microsoft Project, they should stop writing books.
Mar '11
Re: "Global Warming is SO Last Year" Admits Über Green Fearmonger
Whatever it is, it'll be some variant of "fairness".
Mar '11
Re: "Global Warming is SO Last Year" Admits Über Green Fearmonger
I notice that Dr Lovelock's PhD is in medicine, which explains why he is confused about Thermodynamics.
He's also a Fellow of the Royal Society. What does this say about the Royal Society?
Nov '10
Re: "Global Warming is SO Last Year" Admits Über Green Fearmonger
At the end of the MSNBC interview comes this revealing "quip":
[In the] “Revenge of Gaia,” published in 2006, he said he had gone too far in describing what the warming Earth would see over the next century.
“I would be a little more cautious -- but then that would have spoilt the book,” he quipped.
What exactly would be "spoilt" by drawing warranted, prudent conclusions?
It's an admission that the narrative tail wagged the scientific dog.
Now it's a source of retrospective mirth. He's in good company:
"'Shovel-ready' was not as, eh, 'shovel-ready' as we expected."
Edited on April 25, 2012 at 12:37amJun '10
Re: "Global Warming is SO Last Year" Admits Über Green Fearmonger
James, I heard Mark Lynas at a LongNow Foundation forum podcast recently. He also seems to be chastened about his radical past.
What do you think of Lynas? I'd love to know. He's for Nuclear power and dukes it out with gusto against the anti-GM (genetically modified food) crowd. And Lynas was one of the founders of the anti-GM Luddite hogwash in Europe!
I was quite impressed by his talk. Still believes in AGW but he's at least reasonable and educable.
I want to tell people like Lovelock that they have been duped by Marxists (ala Jim Gawron above) -- that's what happened and they need to realize how dangerous it is to allow the Marxists (yes, even with all their street theater cred and their rent-a-mob creativity) into the organization. Be warned: They won't help afterwards with the problems they cause.