Thread: Lovelock - it's too late so don't bother trying

James Lovelock has concluded we're already screwed so there's no point in recycling, conserving, or otherwise trying to reduce our impact on the planet. According to Lovelock:

China's interest in Africa is due to their secret plan to move the Chinese population to Africa when China becomes uninhabitable.

USians will move en masse to Canada (are the Canadians already building a fence?).

Britain's climate will become very pleasant, although the country will be bit smaller in area, and millions of Europeans and Africans will flock to Britain. (It has often been said the Isle of Wight is big enough for everyone. You may get the chance to find out if it's true.)

Bangladesh has had it.

Four fifths of the world's population will die because of desertification and other catastrophes.

We should not bother to conserve or recycle.

We should burn as much coal as possible (soot will cool the planet more than CO2 warms it).

And recycling, he adds, is "almost certainly a waste of time and energy", while having a "green lifestyle" amounts to little more than "ostentatious grand gestures". He distrusts the notion of ethical consumption. "Because always, in the end, it turns out to be a scam ... or if it wasn't one in the beginning, it becomes one."

In my opinion he's gone off his rocker. Even if we can't stop the damage, we can at least try to mitigate it somewhat, and besides, climate change isn't the only reason to try to live sustainably. Has he forgotten about the plastic in the ocean and the mercury from coal burning?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardia....climatechange[

That happens to be the most irrelevant pile of garbage I have ever heard. If we continue finding space exploration, we may be able to inhabit another planet, filtering the Earth's air. That is distant and complex though.

Althoguht I completely agree that this guy is off his rocker I do agree that humans have aklready lived the majority of their existence and if we don't do somethign soon the atmosphere, the majority of it not being from human occupation, will soon become intolerable.

Some say that the pollution is good. Apparently we are going to experience intense solar storms and the pollution will shield it.

Originally Posted by Skiyk

Some say that the pollution is good. Apparently we are going to experience intense solar storms and the pollution will shield it.

I'm not talkign about pollution I'm talkign about the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Look at my post in the 'ice age' thread and it will explain what I mean.

I am using pollution as a general term.

I see Roger Pielke Jr. has written a piece claiming the IPCC grossly UNDERestimates CO2 emissions and our ability to fix the problem is grossly OVERestimated by IPCC. In other words don't bother with wind farms, hybrids, CO2 sequestration, or turning off the lights because the only thing that will save us is brand new technology that hasn't been invented.

This is strange because Pielke has, up until now, been an AGW denier. What is his motive in switching sides here?

So that's Lovelock (once a socialist now free market libertarian) and Pielke (favorite of the conservative blogosphere). If another one pops up I'll suspect a vast right wing conspiracy.

Indeed! Andre, your cue!!!! :wink:

I wondered about Pielke as well. As near as I can figure (in order to make it all fit) he is still denying (perhaps man's influence rather than warming per se?) and as a denier of man's ability to influence climate is also of the opinion that man cannot influence climate. If you take my point.

But I couldn't be bothered to actually look up the details of his denier status and with what specifics of the anti-argument he earned his badge.

people sometimes tend to confuse the fact that people can influence climate with the assumption that they can control it - i have no doubts about the former, but i do have grave reservations about the latter

Originally Posted by Bunbury

I see Roger Pielke Jr. has written a piece claiming the IPCC grossly UNDERestimates CO2 emissions and our ability to fix the problem is grossly OVERestimated by IPCC. In other words don't bother with wind farms, hybrids, CO2 sequestration, or turning off the lights because the only thing that will save us is brand new technology that hasn't been invented.

This is strange because Pielke has, up until now, been an AGW denier. What is his motive in switching sides here?

So that's Lovelock (once a socialist now free market libertarian) and Pielke (favorite of the conservative blogosphere). If another one pops up I'll suspect a vast right wing conspiracy.

Actually they are trying to figure it out right now and they are making soem headway. I recently read an article that stated that if they add quite a bit of iron to the ocean floor it will draw in a lot of plankton to the area and this will cause the CO2 in the atmosphere to decrease substantially. However there are other types of gasses released into the atmosphere from this such as the types released when plankton dies which adversly affects the ozone layer so they have to figure otu some way to stop that before they continue with their ideas.

Originally Posted by BumFluff

Actually they are trying to figure it out right now and they are making soem headway. I recently read an article that stated that if they add quite a bit of iron to the ocean floor it will draw in a lot of plankton to the area and this will cause the CO2 in the atmosphere to decrease substantially. However there are other types of gasses released into the atmosphere from this such as the types released when plankton dies which adversly affects the ozone layer so they have to figure otu some way to stop that before they continue with their ideas.

as i've said somewhere else, the problem with big projects like the one you describe is that, if they go unexpectedly wrong, they do so in a big way

Originally Posted by marnixR

Originally Posted by BumFluff

Actually they are trying to figure it out right now and they are making soem headway. I recently read an article that stated that if they add quite a bit of iron to the ocean floor it will draw in a lot of plankton to the area and this will cause the CO2 in the atmosphere to decrease substantially. However there are other types of gasses released into the atmosphere from this such as the types released when plankton dies which adversly affects the ozone layer so they have to figure otu some way to stop that before they continue with their ideas.

as i've said somewhere else, the problem with big projects like the one you describe is that, if they go unexpectedly wrong, they do so in a big way

That's why there are so many against it. If it goes wrong we could completely decimate the planet.

as i've said somewhere else, the problem with big projects like the one you describe is that, if they go unexpectedly wrong, they do so in a big way

...which is known as The Law of Unintended Consequences.

Originally Posted by marnixR

Originally Posted by BumFluff

Actually they are trying to figure it out right now and they are making soem headway. I recently read an article that stated that if they add quite a bit of iron to the ocean floor it will draw in a lot of plankton to the area and this will cause the CO2 in the atmosphere to decrease substantially. However there are other types of gasses released into the atmosphere from this such as the types released when plankton dies which adversly affects the ozone layer so they have to figure otu some way to stop that before they continue with their ideas.

as i've said somewhere else, the problem with big projects like the one you describe is that, if they go unexpectedly wrong, they do so in a big way

They actually did that to test if iron was the limiting factor in microbial growth in oceans, and found that it caused rapid increase in cyanobacterial (plankton) growth (measured it with spectro from space). I think you would have to use an incredible amount of iron though for this to have any real affect though.