At 93, James Lovelock chose a curious moment to call himself an "alarmist" over global warming. Yes, he was a good bit over the top when he predicted mankind would be reduced to a "few breeding pairs" eking out a subsistence living in the Arctic by 2100. But a lot of his other statements simply fly in the face of a great deal of data and science that have been pouring in over the past couple of years.
For example, Lovelock says there's been no discernible warming during this 21st century. Yet governmental agencies responsible for monitoring warming show just the opposite. The combined land and ocean surface temperature has actually increased 0.92 degrees since 2000. The data for 2000 to 2011 puts each and every year among the 13th warmest in the 132-years on record.
Has Lovelock lost his marbles? I don't know.
The insurance industry world-wide certainly disagrees with him. The global consulting giant, KPMG, just released a report on global megaforces that is at odds with Lovelock. And then there's this report from two weeks ago by a Reuters market analyst, Gerard Wynn, canvassing "a clutch of recent studies" reinforcing evidence of man-made climate change. He cites this article in the journal, Nature. And this article from the British Meteorological Service's Hadley Centre. And this report published in Nature Geoscience that assesses global warming by 2050 to range somewhere between 1.4 to 3C. And updated temperature data from the Climatic Research Unit factoring in more than 450-additional weather stations from the Arctic released by Canada and Russia showing that contrary to earlier findings that 1998 was the hottest year on record since 1850, 2005 and 2010 were the hottest years. These data put an end to skeptic's claims that the planet hasn't been warming since 1998.
As all this research, data and facts keep pouring in, it's curious that Lovelock at this moment declares himself incredible, an alarmist. If, of course, that is what he actually said.
If his last book was alarmist that raises a great many questions. When did he realize his writings were misleading? What did he and his publisher decide to do about it? Why are they allowing such a misleading book to remain on sale? Why hasn't it been recalled? And, above all, why, if he has admitted he simply isn't credible, should anyone buy his new book soon to be released?
It seems Lovelock and his publisher have a lot of explaining to do.
3 comments:
Agreed. I was rather non-plussed to say the least.
He knows he will die before the climate starts killing us in large numbers. Obviously someone got to him and he chose to die of natural causes rather than by some gruesome means.
To be fair, Lovelock lost his marbles a long time ago.
He never showed much competence when it came to the climate.
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