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.
Showing posts with label Lovelock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lovelock. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Lovelock the Alarmist
Earth science guru and creator of the Gia hypothesis, James Lovelock, says his take on global warming was alarmist. And, on reading an op-ed piece Lovelock wrote for The Independent in 2006, he probably was. In it he envisioned global warming killing off almost all of mankind by the end of the century:
"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."
Yeah, the image of mankind being reduced to "a few breeding pairs" by 2100 due to global warming is over the top. Presumably Lovelock was out to make a point, perhaps frustrated by our inertia.
“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 pointed to Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” as other examples of “alarmist” forecasts of the future.
So has James Lovelock declared the "all clear" on climate change?
Asked if he was now a climate skeptic, Lovelock told msnbc.com: “It depends what you mean by a skeptic. I’m not a denier.”
He said human-caused carbon dioxide emissions were driving an increase in the global temperature, but added that the effect of the oceans was not well enough understood and could have a key role.
“It (the sea) could make all the difference between a hot age and an ice age,” he said.
He said he still thought that climate change was happening, but that its effects would be felt farther in the future than he previously thought.
“We will have global warming, but it’s been deferred a bit,” Lovelock said.
The scientific community, however, doesn't seem to share Lovelock's view.
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.”
NOAA reports its data in monthly U.S. and global climate reports and annual State of the Climate reports.
Its annual climate summary for 2011 said that the combined land and ocean surface temperature for the world was 0.92 degrees above the 20th century average of 57.0 degrees, making it the 35th consecutive year since 1976 that the yearly global temperature was above average.
“All 11 years of the 21st century so far (2001-2011) rank among the 13 warmest in the 132-year period of record. Only one year during the 20th century, 1998, was warmer than 2011,” it said.
Lovelock has neatly played into the hands of the denialist industry and the fossil fuelers. The old guy has now given them a powerful weapon to discredit climate science as "alarmist" and with the many billions of dollars at stake in the campaign to curb carbon emissions, they'll wring every once of doubt they can extract from his statement - or at least a few words of it.
Yet there have always been problems with those who take global warming in isolation, a favourite tactic of the denialist community. The warming is just part of man-made climate change and a host of interconnected challenges. Many of these are tangible, indisputable, some are even visible to the naked eye from space. Here's my list:
Desertification; deforestation; cyclical and protracted floods and drought; severe storm events of increasing frequency and intensity (the insurance industry will vouch for that); the depletion of natural resources and, in particular, the freshwater crisis (multinationals like Nestle and Vivendi will vouch for that one); species extinction and migration; disease and pest migration; overpopulation and population migration; sea level rise and coastal inundation and the basket of global security challenges including terrorism, arms races, nuclear proliferation, and even widespread food insecurity.
But, James Lovelock, is unquestionably right on one point. Global warming won't annihilate mankind. We have long reserved that privilege to ourselves.
Update:
The denialists haven't missed a beat pouncing on Lovelock's "alarmist" statement and transforming it into proof that all climate science is bogus. Some, like energy expert Andrew McKillop, denounce Lovelock as a total charlatan. Yet, toward the end of his screed, even McKillop acknowledges that climate change is already here.
The next stage is on us already. The breakdown of climate into random weather events, reversing the old one-liner that "Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get". No longer being able to expect anything predictable from climate only leaves weather to bet on. And we know how that is getting mightily unpredictable, and dangerous on all continents.
Put another way, we can have a pure and absolute zero change of so-called "average global temperatures", but the world's climate can become totally disturbed, with no easy way to remediate or mitigate the change from predictable, to random. Ever-growing evidence says we are in that random state now: what you thought was your regional climate no longer exists.
One immediate and direct result of this will be crop yields and harvest totals: these cannot be expected to hold firm, as farmers battle to decide when or if to plant and when to harvest, in a vastly more complex set of changing variables - which formerly ran together and were called "climate". Rainfall and cloud cover, already changing but given the pat one-liner "Global warming", will most surely and certainly get ever less predictable, with more negative consequences than the opposite.
"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."
Yeah, the image of mankind being reduced to "a few breeding pairs" by 2100 due to global warming is over the top. Presumably Lovelock was out to make a point, perhaps frustrated by our inertia.
“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 pointed to Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” as other examples of “alarmist” forecasts of the future.
So has James Lovelock declared the "all clear" on climate change?
Asked if he was now a climate skeptic, Lovelock told msnbc.com: “It depends what you mean by a skeptic. I’m not a denier.”
He said human-caused carbon dioxide emissions were driving an increase in the global temperature, but added that the effect of the oceans was not well enough understood and could have a key role.
“It (the sea) could make all the difference between a hot age and an ice age,” he said.
He said he still thought that climate change was happening, but that its effects would be felt farther in the future than he previously thought.
“We will have global warming, but it’s been deferred a bit,” Lovelock said.
The scientific community, however, doesn't seem to share Lovelock's view.
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.”
NOAA reports its data in monthly U.S. and global climate reports and annual State of the Climate reports.
Its annual climate summary for 2011 said that the combined land and ocean surface temperature for the world was 0.92 degrees above the 20th century average of 57.0 degrees, making it the 35th consecutive year since 1976 that the yearly global temperature was above average.
“All 11 years of the 21st century so far (2001-2011) rank among the 13 warmest in the 132-year period of record. Only one year during the 20th century, 1998, was warmer than 2011,” it said.
Lovelock has neatly played into the hands of the denialist industry and the fossil fuelers. The old guy has now given them a powerful weapon to discredit climate science as "alarmist" and with the many billions of dollars at stake in the campaign to curb carbon emissions, they'll wring every once of doubt they can extract from his statement - or at least a few words of it.
Yet there have always been problems with those who take global warming in isolation, a favourite tactic of the denialist community. The warming is just part of man-made climate change and a host of interconnected challenges. Many of these are tangible, indisputable, some are even visible to the naked eye from space. Here's my list:
Desertification; deforestation; cyclical and protracted floods and drought; severe storm events of increasing frequency and intensity (the insurance industry will vouch for that); the depletion of natural resources and, in particular, the freshwater crisis (multinationals like Nestle and Vivendi will vouch for that one); species extinction and migration; disease and pest migration; overpopulation and population migration; sea level rise and coastal inundation and the basket of global security challenges including terrorism, arms races, nuclear proliferation, and even widespread food insecurity.
But, James Lovelock, is unquestionably right on one point. Global warming won't annihilate mankind. We have long reserved that privilege to ourselves.
Update:
The denialists haven't missed a beat pouncing on Lovelock's "alarmist" statement and transforming it into proof that all climate science is bogus. Some, like energy expert Andrew McKillop, denounce Lovelock as a total charlatan. Yet, toward the end of his screed, even McKillop acknowledges that climate change is already here.
The next stage is on us already. The breakdown of climate into random weather events, reversing the old one-liner that "Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get". No longer being able to expect anything predictable from climate only leaves weather to bet on. And we know how that is getting mightily unpredictable, and dangerous on all continents.
Put another way, we can have a pure and absolute zero change of so-called "average global temperatures", but the world's climate can become totally disturbed, with no easy way to remediate or mitigate the change from predictable, to random. Ever-growing evidence says we are in that random state now: what you thought was your regional climate no longer exists.
One immediate and direct result of this will be crop yields and harvest totals: these cannot be expected to hold firm, as farmers battle to decide when or if to plant and when to harvest, in a vastly more complex set of changing variables - which formerly ran together and were called "climate". Rainfall and cloud cover, already changing but given the pat one-liner "Global warming", will most surely and certainly get ever less predictable, with more negative consequences than the opposite.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Mankind - Too Stupid to Survive Climate Change?
James Lovelock seems to have thrown in the towel on mankind. Four decades ago Lovelock introduced the theory of Gaia, the Earth functioning very much like an organism. He is considered a luminary of the global warming movement.
In a recent Guardian interview, Lovelock took the opportunity to praise 'legitimate' climate change skeptics, to upbraid some aspects of the scientific community, and, as always, to advocate the need for adaptation to what's coming instead of wasting time and resources on arresting global warming itself. This time he went so far as to suggest global warming is the sort of existential danger that may require the suspension of modern democracy:
...We need a more authoritative world. We've become a sort of cheeky, egalitarian world where everyone can have their say. It's all very well, but there are certain circumstances – a war is a typical example – where you can't do that. You've got to have a few people with authority who you trust who are running it. And they should be very accountable too, of course.
But it can't happen in a modern democracy. This is one of the problems. What's the alternative to democracy? There isn't one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.
...I don't know enough abut carbon trading, but I suspect that it is basically a scam. The whole thing is not very sensible. We have this crazy idea that we are setting an example to the world. What we're doing is trying to make money out of the world by selling them renewable gadgetry and green ideas. It might be worthy from the national interest, but it is moonshine if you think what the Chinese and Indians are doing [in terms of emissions]. The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful.
...I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change. We're very active animals. We like to think: "Ah yes, this will be a good policy," but it's almost never that simple. Wars show this to be true. People are very certain they are fighting a just cause, but it doesn't always work out like that. Climate change is kind of a repetition of a war-time situation. It could quite easily lead to a physical war. That's why I always come back to the safest thing to do being adaptation. For example, we've got to have good supplies of food. I would be very pleased to see this country and Europe seriously thinking about synthesising food.
The problem I always have with Lovelock's approach, and those of many in the science community, is that they tend to address global warming in isolation rather than incorporate it into the mix of manmade threats facing our species. As Maude Barlow points out, the looming global freshwater crisis is easily as dire a threat to mankind as global warming. Add to these the host of lesser but contributing problems such as desertification, resource depletion, species extinction, air,land and water contamination - and others - and the real nature of the problem we're facing begins to emerge.
I'm absolutely convinced that none of these problems, not one, can be solved in isolation of the others. They all must be solved for there to be a meaningful solution to any of them. Only by approaching them holistically will we identify the common threads that run through each and all of them. Only in recognizing the commonalities will we be able to shape the approaches we need to tackle them en masse.
Unfortunately I find myself agreeing with Lovelock that garden-variety democracy may be too flawed, too clumsy to meet these challenges or to prevent them from spreading beyond our control. The fact is we have no solutions to any of them, not even one.
Realize this. You are today standing on the cusp of what will become a world of rapidly accelerating change. Our ability to control that change is slipping through our fingers. It won't be global warming but the freshwater crisis that will hit first and it will hit us extremely hard and very soon. This is a danger that will be here, full blown, within 15-years if not sooner.
You may think of water in the context of what comes out of your taps on demand. You may think of water problems as a blight experienced in the poorer corners of the world. If so, you need to take a hard look at what's happening just next door, in the backyard of our immediate neighbour. Here's a glimpse from Maude Barlow excerpted from her book "The Global Water Crisis":
"...Florida is in trouble. The state's burgeoning population, with a net influx of 1,060 people every day, relies almost entirely upon its dwindling groundwater sources for its water supplies. To keep its fast-spreading lawns and golf courses green, the sunshine State is sucking up groundwater at such a rate that it has created thousands of sinkholes that devour anything - houses, cars and shopping malls... ..California has a twenty-year supply of freshwater left. New Mexico has only a ten-year supply. Arizona is out: it now imports all of its drinking water. ...scientists and water managers throughout the American Midwest and Southwest are saying that it is more than drought: major parts of the United States are running out of water. In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency warns that if current water use continues unchecked, thirty-six states will suffer water shortages within the next five years."
What passes for political leadership of any stripe in Canada never acknowledges these matters much less opens them for discussion with the Canadian public. At best they make some tangential reference usually accompanied by a meaningless bromide. Do they think Canada will be immune to the fallout from America's crises? Are they simply afraid to mention these matters lest that negatively impact their personal political aspirations? Harper certainly is, Ignatieff too. Layton simply takes a free ride on their silence. Unfortunately we'll all pay dearly for their political cowardice.
In a recent Guardian interview, Lovelock took the opportunity to praise 'legitimate' climate change skeptics, to upbraid some aspects of the scientific community, and, as always, to advocate the need for adaptation to what's coming instead of wasting time and resources on arresting global warming itself. This time he went so far as to suggest global warming is the sort of existential danger that may require the suspension of modern democracy:
...We need a more authoritative world. We've become a sort of cheeky, egalitarian world where everyone can have their say. It's all very well, but there are certain circumstances – a war is a typical example – where you can't do that. You've got to have a few people with authority who you trust who are running it. And they should be very accountable too, of course.
But it can't happen in a modern democracy. This is one of the problems. What's the alternative to democracy? There isn't one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.
...I don't know enough abut carbon trading, but I suspect that it is basically a scam. The whole thing is not very sensible. We have this crazy idea that we are setting an example to the world. What we're doing is trying to make money out of the world by selling them renewable gadgetry and green ideas. It might be worthy from the national interest, but it is moonshine if you think what the Chinese and Indians are doing [in terms of emissions]. The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful.
...I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change. We're very active animals. We like to think: "Ah yes, this will be a good policy," but it's almost never that simple. Wars show this to be true. People are very certain they are fighting a just cause, but it doesn't always work out like that. Climate change is kind of a repetition of a war-time situation. It could quite easily lead to a physical war. That's why I always come back to the safest thing to do being adaptation. For example, we've got to have good supplies of food. I would be very pleased to see this country and Europe seriously thinking about synthesising food.
The problem I always have with Lovelock's approach, and those of many in the science community, is that they tend to address global warming in isolation rather than incorporate it into the mix of manmade threats facing our species. As Maude Barlow points out, the looming global freshwater crisis is easily as dire a threat to mankind as global warming. Add to these the host of lesser but contributing problems such as desertification, resource depletion, species extinction, air,land and water contamination - and others - and the real nature of the problem we're facing begins to emerge.
I'm absolutely convinced that none of these problems, not one, can be solved in isolation of the others. They all must be solved for there to be a meaningful solution to any of them. Only by approaching them holistically will we identify the common threads that run through each and all of them. Only in recognizing the commonalities will we be able to shape the approaches we need to tackle them en masse.
Unfortunately I find myself agreeing with Lovelock that garden-variety democracy may be too flawed, too clumsy to meet these challenges or to prevent them from spreading beyond our control. The fact is we have no solutions to any of them, not even one.
Realize this. You are today standing on the cusp of what will become a world of rapidly accelerating change. Our ability to control that change is slipping through our fingers. It won't be global warming but the freshwater crisis that will hit first and it will hit us extremely hard and very soon. This is a danger that will be here, full blown, within 15-years if not sooner.
You may think of water in the context of what comes out of your taps on demand. You may think of water problems as a blight experienced in the poorer corners of the world. If so, you need to take a hard look at what's happening just next door, in the backyard of our immediate neighbour. Here's a glimpse from Maude Barlow excerpted from her book "The Global Water Crisis":
"...Florida is in trouble. The state's burgeoning population, with a net influx of 1,060 people every day, relies almost entirely upon its dwindling groundwater sources for its water supplies. To keep its fast-spreading lawns and golf courses green, the sunshine State is sucking up groundwater at such a rate that it has created thousands of sinkholes that devour anything - houses, cars and shopping malls... ..California has a twenty-year supply of freshwater left. New Mexico has only a ten-year supply. Arizona is out: it now imports all of its drinking water. ...scientists and water managers throughout the American Midwest and Southwest are saying that it is more than drought: major parts of the United States are running out of water. In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency warns that if current water use continues unchecked, thirty-six states will suffer water shortages within the next five years."
What passes for political leadership of any stripe in Canada never acknowledges these matters much less opens them for discussion with the Canadian public. At best they make some tangential reference usually accompanied by a meaningless bromide. Do they think Canada will be immune to the fallout from America's crises? Are they simply afraid to mention these matters lest that negatively impact their personal political aspirations? Harper certainly is, Ignatieff too. Layton simply takes a free ride on their silence. Unfortunately we'll all pay dearly for their political cowardice.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Lovelock Coming to Toronto
He's one of the foremost environmental scientists of our era, the man who literally sounded the alarm and drove the debate on global warming. Dr. James Lovelock himself is coming to Toronto on May 26 for a lecture sponsored by Corporate Knights. Tickets are $75. Details at the Corporate Knights web site - www.corporateknights.ca.
Lovelock will be explaining the thesis of his latest book "The Vanishing Face of Gaia."
Lovelock will be explaining the thesis of his latest book "The Vanishing Face of Gaia."
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