sex, james lovelock, and the single man
Ooh, baby baby!
Reuters:
The earth has a fever that could boost temperatures by 8 degrees Celsius making large parts of the surface uninhabitable and threatening billions of peoples' lives, a controversial climate scientist said on Tuesday.
James Lovelock, who angered climate scientists with his Gaia theory of a living planet and then alienated environmentalists by backing nuclear power, said a traumatised earth might only be able to support less than a tenth of it's 6 billion people.
"We are not all doomed. An awful lot of people will die, but I don't see the species dying out," he told a news conference. "A hot earth couldn't support much over 500 million."
"Almost all of the systems that have been looked at are in positive feedback ... and soon those effects will be larger than any of the effects of carbon dioxide emissions from industry and so on around the world," he added.
Scientists say that global warming due to carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels for power and transport could boost average temperatures by up to 6C by the end of the century causing floods, famines and violent storms.
But they also say that tough action now to cut carbon emissions could stop atmospheric concentrations of CO2 hitting 450 parts per million -- equivalent to a temperature rise of 2C from pre-industrial levels -- and save the planet.
Lovelock said temperature rises of up to 8C were already built in and while efforts to curb it were morally commendable, they were wasted.
"It is a bit like if your kidneys fail you can go on dialysis -- and who would refuse dialysis if death is the alternative. We should think of it in that context," he said.
"But remember that all they are doing is buying us time, no more. The problems go on," he added.
[snip]
In the change from the last Ice Age to now we lost land equivalent to the continent of Africa beneath the sea," he said. "We are facing things just as bad or worse than that during this century."
"There are refuges, plenty of them. 55 million years ago ... life moved up to the Arctic, stayed there during the course of it and then moved back again as things improved. I fear that this is what we may have to do," he added.
Lovelock said the United States, which has rejected the Kyoto Protocol on cutting carbon emissions, wrongly believed there was a technological solution, while booming economies China and India were out of control.
My whole grad program is predicated almost entirely on Lovelockian Science, if Gaia Theory, et al, can be called as much.
But I hope that Lovelock is wrong wrong wrong on this. A number of his contemporaries (not peers, so much) say he may be overestimating the catastrophes in the years to come. Indeed, his prediction has me rethinking the green-left-indigenous approach to ecology I had more or less accepted as the path towards a cleaner, more democratic country (if not world), and I find myself, in a kind of existential dread, thinking this sort of thing is plausible (RS, via Truthdig):
Lowell Wood hooked up his laptop, threw his first slide onto the screen and got down to business: What if all the conventional thinking about how to deal with global warming was wrong? What if you could do an end run around carbon-trading schemes and international treaties and political gridlock and actually solve the problem? And what if the cost to get started was not trillions of dollars but $100 million a year—less than the cost of a good-size wind farm?
Wood’s proposal was not technologically complex. It’s based on the idea, well-proven by atmospheric scientists, that volcano eruptions alter the climate for months by loading the skies with tiny particles that act as mini-reflectors, shading out sunlight and cooling the Earth. Why not apply the same principles to saving the Arctic? Getting the particles into the stratosphere wouldn’t be a problem—you could generate them easily enough by burning sulfur, then dumping the particles out of high-flying 747s, spraying them into the sky with long hoses or even shooting them up there with naval artillery. They’d be invisible to the naked eye, Wood argued, and harmless to the environment. Depending on the number of particles you injected, you could not only stabilize Greenland’s polar ice—you could actually grow it. Results would be quick: If you started spraying particles into the stratosphere tomorrow, you’d see changes in the ice within a few months. And if it worked over the Arctic, it would be simple enough to expand the program to encompass the rest of the planet. In effect, you could create a global thermostat, one that people could dial up or down to suit their needs (or the needs of polar bears).
Indeed, Lovelock himself - who has gone on record touting the bennies of nuclear power - says dramatic-with-a-capital-"D" measures like the one Lowell Wood's selling may be the human species' only chance of survival.
At any rate, this cheery tidbit, as well as some reading I've been doing for teh thesis, has in all seriousness inspired me to flesh out a new pick-up line - well, actually, just "a" pick-up line, since I really don't have one to begin with. How's this for starters -
"James Lovelock says that an awful lot of people will die in the coming years...James Lovelock you say? You know Gaia Theory, right? No? Well let me get this next round..."
I'll keep you all apprised of my progress.
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