Posted on 06/22/2012 10:54:05 PM PDT by grundle
Two months ago, James Lovelock, the godfather of global warming, gave a startling interview to msnbc.com in which he acknowledged he had been unduly “alarmist” about climate change. (Link: http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/23/11144098-gaia-scientist-james-lovelock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change?lite )
The implications were extraordinary.
Lovelock is a world-renowned scientist and environmentalist whose Gaia theory — that the Earth operates as a single, living organism — has had a profound impact on the development of global warming theory.
Unlike many “environmentalists,” who have degrees in political science, Lovelock, until his recent retirement at age 92, was a much-honoured working scientist and academic.
His inventions have been used by NASA, among many other scientific organizations.
Lovelock’s invention of the electron capture detector in 1957 first enabled scientists to measure CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and other pollutants in the atmosphere, leading, in many ways, to the birth of the modern environmental movement.
Having observed that global temperatures since the turn of the millennium have not gone up in the way computer-based climate models predicted, Lovelock acknowledged, “the problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago.” Now, Lovelock has given a follow-up interview to the UK’s Guardian newspaper in which he delivers more bombshells sure to anger the global green movement, which for years worshipped his Gaia theory and apocalyptic predictions that billions would die from man-made climate change by the end of this century. (Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/jun/15/james-lovelock-fracking-greens-climate )
Lovelock still believes anthropogenic global warming is occurring and that mankind must lower its greenhouse gas emissions, but says it’s now clear the doomsday predictions, including his own (and Al Gore’s) were incorrect.
He responds to attacks on his revised views by noting that, unlike many climate scientists who fear a loss of government funding if they admit error, as a freelance scientist, he’s never been afraid to revise his theories in the face of new evidence. Indeed, that’s how science advances.
Among his observations to the Guardian:
(1) A long-time supporter of nuclear power as a way to lower greenhouse gas emissions, which has made him unpopular with environmentalists, Lovelock has now come out in favour of natural gas fracking (which environmentalists also oppose), as a low-polluting alternative to coal.
As Lovelock observes, “Gas is almost a give-away in the U.S. at the moment. They’ve gone for fracking in a big way. This is what makes me very cross with the greens for trying to knock it … Let’s be pragmatic and sensible and get Britain to switch everything to methane. We should be going mad on it.” (Kandeh Yumkella, co-head of a major United Nations program on sustainable energy, made similar arguments last week at a UN environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro, advocating the development of conventional and unconventional natural gas resources as a way to reduce deforestation and save millions of lives in the Third World.)
(2) Lovelock blasted greens for treating global warming like a religion.
“It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion,” Lovelock observed. “I don’t think people have noticed that, but it’s got all the sort of terms that religions use … The greens use guilt. That just shows how religious greens are. You can’t win people round by saying they are guilty for putting (carbon dioxide) in the air.”
(3) Lovelock mocks the idea modern economies can be powered by wind turbines.
As he puts it, “so-called ‘sustainable development’ … is meaningless drivel … We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally can’t stand windmills at any price.”
(4) Finally, about claims “the science is settled” on global warming: “One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don’t know it.”
I thought the Sex Poodle was the godfather.
Lovelock was Don Corleone.
Gore was Fredo.
He says that wind power isn’t sustainable...I don’t know about that, because right now, the town I live in is totally running off of wind power.
A brand new coal powered plant was built, and fired up just a few months ago, but right now, it’s not in use. I don’t know why, just that it isn’t, and our entire city is being run off of the wind turbines.
The coal plant they built replaced a gas powered electric station, but officials decided the cost of natural gas was too high. They were purchasing electricity from California..during the brown-outs back a few years ago when Cali supposedly was short of electricity. It was cheaper to purchase the power than it was to generate our own.
Wind is good in some areas, but not in others. I’m told that the power and resources it takes to keep building the replacement wings is more than what the machines generate. In some areas, they are being abandoned.
I think that blaming humans for the heating is wrong. There are other factors involved from space itself. The global heating is occurring on planets within our solar system, also.
It’s good to see this man speaking up as well he should. But, the damage is done with regard to global heating, and it’s costs to the wallets of those who have been involuntarily divested of $$.
No. Just the idiot brother-in-law who always asks for handouts and got crappy grades in college.
Paul Ralph Ehrlich and the Population Bomb reduex
/
BTTT!
Surely this news will be proclaimed far and wide in the press and on the prime time TV news.
Bwahahaha! Perfect!
This is great stuff. Unfortunately, the train has left Lovelock and
is bearing down on Reno. In other words too much money, time
and political scamming has been invested by the envirosocialists
to heed the caution of an old founding guru.
Very few places on Earth have continuous winds. What does your city do when there are periods of little wind?
Without taxpayer subsidies we would not see any of these big wind farms that blight many countrysides.
Many beautiful Golden Eagles are being killed by wind farms in California, just to please the environuts.
The Wildlife Service estimates that at least 400,000 birds are killed each year by wind farms.
I disagree with a couple of his conclusions but the man is VERY wise.
He sounds like Rush Limbaugh. Glad he has the courage of his convictions
1. There is no such thing as renewable energy. Energy used is energy expended forever.We don’t renew sunlight or wind every morning. Every morning we use sunlight that was not generated yesterday, nor wind that blew yesterday.
2. For the forseeable future, ie, decades, the predominant energy used in the United States will be coal, oil, nuclear and natural gas. Solar, wind, biofuel, fuel cells will be only a very small fraction of the energy pie. We have enough oil, coal, and natural gas to last us 150-300 years into the future at current usage rates. Compare this to the peak oil and natural gas scares of 1975 and 1980, when all that was predicted was doomsday for both those fuels. We are finding more today than ever.
3. For the longer term future, the dominant energies in America are natural gas and nuclear. Oil and coal will be minor players, but not for another 40-50 years.
Nuclear will be small scale, linked plants—scalable in nature, most likely thorium plants so no meltdown is possible. These plants will serve 25,000 homes or so, and be linked in series if necessary for larger areas. Natural gas will be used in converting vehicle and trucks, and for heating for more homes. Natural gas will also be used for electical generation instead of coal in more and more applications.
Nuclear has no carbon emissions and natural gas very little compared to alternative carbon based fuels, therefore green energy and global warming fanatics’ heads will explode with increasing regularity as this is realized.
The biggest polluters of the air, the coal burning plants in China and India, are never addressed by the watermelon heads, in their global warming claculations. It is just the evil United States and Europe that must cut back emissions or the Earth will die. The present generation of greenheads will long be dead before this Earth “dies”.
4. The energy outlook for America has never looked brighter. We can become self sufficient if we expend the will to do so. We have not done so yet solely because of the US government since 1974—almost 40 years. We will be able to export energy and energy products(ie oil, lubricants and refined gasoline)and generate tremendous amounts of capital for our nation.
5. The whole electric car thing is a flash in the pan. While the hybrid technologies of the Toyota Prius type cars can be useful and make some economic sense, plug in electric vehicles will always suffer range limitations, and for now, they are essentially high priced coal powered cars that make no economic sense, taking about 29 years to break even on the additional costs over gasoline powered vehicles. In 1918, a Detroit Electric could get you about 40 miles on its battery. Today, the Chevy Volt, over 90 years later ,gets you about——40 miles in range before it switches over to gas. Dual fuel cars—natural gas and gasoline—will start appearing on the market in the 2013 model year. Plug in electric cars will become items of puzzlement in museums in the future as in “what were we they thinking?”
6. The amount of money the Obama Administration wasted on “green energy” is criminal, and it was deliberately directed to political operatives as slush funds, knowing full well these companies could never be economically “sustainable”. It was failure by a design with the sole purpose of providing a cover for the transfer of OUR money to certain individuals. The truth of all this will surface someday.
7. Your part this year in providing energy for your future is to engage people when they talk nonsense about energy and global warming, in order to stop the development of nuclear natural gas, oil and coal. Let the greenies go find an island somewhere and practice safe energy. In a few years they will be extinct. In the meantime we will be leading productive and comfortable lives thanks to our developed and abundant energy supplies.
I have to wonder, how big is your town? What kind of climate do you have? What is the overall population density within a 100 mile diameter of your town? How many windmills are there, how much land do they occupy, and how many birds do they purée annually? What effect do they have on other wildlife?
While wind power might be feasible in some areas (as long as you don’t care about birds), it isn’t a long-term solution for most areas. Here in heavily forested Maryland, the only place to put wind turbines is on the water. That’s problematic.
Dang exit82, you covered all the bases and summed it up nicely.
Lovelock’s invention of the electron capture detector in 1957 first enabled scientists to measure CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and other pollutants in the atmosphere, leading, in many ways, to the birth of the modern environmental movement.
And I would say another tool in the bag of wildly unproven tools used to further the “agenda”
And the name and location of this ‘magical kingdom’ is?????
Great post/ well said.
It has always been a created crisis to drive a political and economic model.
As he puts it, “so-called ‘sustainable development’ … is meaningless drivel … We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally can’t stand windmills at any price.”
Worse than meaningless drivel, it could be classed as a very very expensive deception. and that my friends is a criminal enterprise worthy of criminal prosecution for anyone invested in the scheme.
...and speaking of renewables a word that has been hijacked as a part of the big deception. Who is it that is the father of what is and isn’t supposedly renewable? My contention is the so called fossil fuels are just as renewable as wind or solar or any of the others so classed, and they are much cheaper, available, reliable, sustainable, and on and on.
Last but certainly not least, this: “One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don’t know it.”
is patent BEE ESS and begets the ability of the scientist, the man on the street, pick a person, to divorce themselves from reality, which is man CAN know and and indeed MUST know, that is what separates him from those and that over which God gave him dominion.
The bottom line could be this. Environuts are cowards, blaming one of God’s creations, instead of God himself, for the perceived careless and poorly planned construction of earth, which the father of us all provided for our habitation for as long as HE sees fit for it to remain such.
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