Thread: Green ‘drivel’ The godfather of global warming lowers the boom on climate change

Green ‘drivel’ The godfather of global warming lowers the boom on climate change

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.

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.

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.”

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/06/22/green-drivel


It is a religion to the Left. The entire progressive political philosophy is a pseudo-religion. This is why they hate the Right as infidels.

Observant Progressives cannot be reasoned with. They cannot be persuaded with evidence. Even the collapse of Greece and near collapse of the other
PIGS of the EU isn't enough for them to abandon the faith.


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Amazing admissions and brilliant insights. Many of us have said this for years. GW may be a verifiable fact but the dire implications of it have been
greatly inflated by the IPCC and quislings like Al Gore to gain power and money.

I have great regard for someone who can step back, take an impartial view and admit he was off the mark. Too bad there aren't more like him but the true GW believers, as Lovelock said, have the unthinking fervor of fundementalists.

Originally Posted by Yosh Shmenge

Amazing admissions and brilliant insights. Many of us have said this for years. GW may be a verifiable fact but the dire implications of it have been
greatly inflated by the IPCC and quislings like Al Gore to gain power and money.

I have great regard for someone who can step back, take an impartial view and admit he was off the mark. Too bad there aren't more like him but the true GW believers, as Lovelock said, have the unthinking fervor of fundementalists.

Indeed, we have.


I do to. I liked Hitch because he was honest enough to find fault with the Left at times.

More often though, people who have doubts are forced to leave the religion.

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Originally Posted by DonGlock26

Indeed, we have.


I do to. I liked Hitch because he was honest enough to find fault with the Left at times.

More often though, people who have doubts are forced to leave the religion.

_

Yep, that's why you must tow the line, talk the talk. Liberal, so called, journalist's are a great example of the "left religious zealots". They know if they stray, they will pay.

Weather changes ? WTF !! I'm shocked ...... dumbfounded !!
Where did I put my umbrella?

Only the minds of the self-centered Denialists (who simply what want cheap and easy energy at the expense of our children's lives) who can declare that Lovelock's feelings (that the major consequences of AGW are going to happen 50 years later than Lovelock originally thought) as a reason to stop trying to avoid the destruction.

Originally Posted by Yoshe Shmenge

Amazing admissions and brilliant insights. Many of us have said this for years. GW may be a verifiable fact but the dire implications of it have been greatly inflated by the IPCC and quislings like Al Gore to gain power and money.

Yeah, if you pick and choose the smallest parts of Lovelock's points to try to make it look like Lovelock has "changed his mind". That is FAR from the truth.

I can understand why some denialist deny. You can't trust either side.

I watched a program called Earth 2100 and if was full of lies and dire predictions.

Seek the truth...it is in the thermometer. The world is getting warmer and man is the cause.

Their little gathering in Rio is not going so well. They've refused to give non-governmental parties copies of their new and improved totalitarian plans for the planet. Totalitarian tiptoe.

Women are protesting against "green capitalism" as they realize it is really a scheme for the rich to shut down the standard of living of the non-elite and profit from their ignorance. They would rather the pointy-heads just exterminate them instead.

A bunch of rich elitists flying in on private planes, leaving a carbon footprint across the sky, telling the west to shutdown the middle class and developing nations not to develop.

Lovelock on Denialists in the same article:

Originally Posted by Lovelock

He displays equal disdain for those who do not accept science on climate change: "They've got their own religion. They believe that the world was right before these (*)(*)(*)(*) people [the greens] came along and want to go back to where we were 20 years ago. That's also silly in its own way."

Lovelock also suggests as a solution to global warming that we simply ALL move into cities and "air condition the cities" and let the planet go to hell. He simply ignores what we will eat.

If we all move into cities, they become the equivalent of a nest. Then another thought comes immediately from that: if that's the way the flow is going, don't stop it, let's encourage it. Instead of trying to save the planet by geo-engineering or whatever, you merely have to air-condition the cities.

....

It's so much cheaper to air-condition the cities and let Gaia take care of the world. It's a much better route to go than so-called 'sustainable development', which is meaningless drivel.""

But then he closes with a warning:

The human time constant is very slow. You don't get major changes in under 50-100 years, and climate doesn't wait for that."

This is absolutely HORRIBLE news for global warming cultists, as fear is all they have to sell.