According to Michael McCarthy writing in The Independent today:
“The world has already passed the point of no return for climate change, and civilisation as we know it is now unlikely to survive, according to James Lovelock, the scientist and green guru who conceived the idea of Gaia – the Earth which keeps itself fit for life.
In a profoundly pessimistic new assessment, published in today’s Independent, Professor Lovelock suggests that efforts to counter global warming cannot succeed, and that, in effect, it is already too late.
The world and human society face disaster to a worse extent, and on a faster timescale, than almost anybody realises, he believes. He writes: “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.”
In making such a statement, far gloomier than any yet made by a scientist of comparable international standing, Professor Lovelock accepts he is going out on a limb. But as the man who conceived the first wholly new way of looking at life on Earth since Charles Darwin, he feels his own analysis of what is happening leaves him no choice. He believes that it is the self-regulating mechanism of Gaia itself – increasingly accepted by other scientists worldwide, although they prefer to term it the Earth System – which, perversely, will ensure that the warming cannot be mastered.
This is because the system contains myriad feedback mechanisms which in the past have acted in concert to keep the Earth much cooler than it otherwise would be. Now, however, they will come together to amplify the warming being caused by human activities such as transport and industry through huge emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2 ).
It means that the harmful consequences of human beings damaging the living planet’s ancient regulatory system will be non-linear – in other words, likely to accelerate uncontrollably.
He terms this phenomenon “The Revenge of Gaia” and examines it in detail in a new book with that title, to be published next month.”
What a different view to that of Patrick Moore! Patrick Moore, was quoted a few days ago (13th January) in The Honololu Advertiser suggesting global warming might be a good thing for Planet Earth. Sean Hau wrote :
“Global warming and nuclear energy are good and the way to save forests is to use more wood.
That was the message delivered to a biotechnology industry gathering yesterday in Waikiki. However, it wasn’t the message that was unconventional, but the messenger – Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore. Moore said he broke with Greenpeace in the 1980s over the rise of what he called “environmental extremism,” or stands by environmental groups against issues such as genetic crop research, genetically modified foods and nuclear energy that aren’t supported by science or logic.
Hawai’i, which is one of the top locations nationwide for genetically modified crop research, has become a focal point in the debate about the risks and value of such work. Friction between environmentalists and other concerned groups and the biotech industry surfaced most recently in relation to the use of local crops to grow industrial and pharmaceutical compounds. Last year that opposition halted a Big Island project planning to use algae for trial production of pharmaceutical drugs.
Zero-tolerance standards against such research by environmental groups delay developments that could help those with unmet basic needs, Moore said. Instead Moore called for compromise rather than confrontation on the part of the environmentalists.
“There’s no getting away from the fact that over 6 billion people wake up each day on this planet with real needs for food, energy and materials,” he told those attending a luncheon at a three-day Pacific Rim Summit on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy.
The event was sponsored by the Biotechnology Industry Organization. Sponsors included Dupont, Carghill and the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, which spent $15,000 to support the conference.
In direct opposition to common environmentalist positions, Moore contended that global warming and the melting of glaciers is positive because it creates more arable land and the use of forest products drives up demand for wood and spurs the planting of more trees. He added that any realistic plan to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and the emission of so-called greenhouse gases should include increased use of nuclear energy.”
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Any suggestions to navigate through this mine-field? What’s the most reasonable scientific perspective? One obvious distinction is Lovelock’s use of a holistic, complex dynamic systems scientific approach v’s Moore’s use of more traditional science: linear (reductionist) explanations.
By the way, what is the “common environmentalist position”? A lot of commenters are hanging on to old ‘leafy lefties’ and ‘anarchist activists’ mental constructs when it seems to be an issue of shifting sands!
Lovelock is also a supporter of nuclear power which is why I suspect we haven’t heard much about him from the pro-AGW side.
Depending on your viewpoint he isn’t an expert on climate ( I’ve read a lot of disparaging remarks about AGW sceptics who are scientists, on the basis that they weren’t specifically trained in climatology) so the rule has to apply both ways.
The whole concept of a “Gaia” sounds pretty unscientific and religious – the earth as a living organism???.
I don’t know who will claim him Jennifer!
Whether it is the imminent return of the Imam Mahdi (May God protect him), the Messiah or the second coming heralding the “End Times”, the religion of Eco also has its “End Times” as quantified by Flannery and Lovelock.
Same mindset but different means to arrive at the same “End Times”.
There is a reason we have the word “Lunatic”.
Jim, Lovelock has been getting a lot of airplay on both sides. Perhaps you should familiarise yourself with the details of his work before you dismiss it as unscientific. He uses ‘Gaia’ as short-hand to encapsulate his theory, he doesn’t claim that the Earth is a sentient being or anything gaga like that. If he used an unweildly acronym instead would he hold more credibility for you?
Do you accept the symbiosis theories of Lynn Margulis?
Do you accept that complex systems exist and have emergent properties?
If so, you accept some core theories that underpin the Gaia theory.
If not, you reject commonly held theories that feed into modern biology and climate change science, among others.
“lunatic” comes from the moon but his theory focuses on the planet. Perhaps you’d prefer to brand Lovelock as a “planetic” instead? But that excludes the moon and sun which he incorporates as influences on the earth, so we need to consider the whole Solar System. The whole system…. let’s brand him a “systemic” then. My dictionary says that ‘systemic’ is another word for systematic, which is the use of order & planning, methodical.
James Lovelock, systemic.
I don’t have any scientific objections to the earth being an organism.
What I have difficulty with is this organism affecting its environment, rather than reacting to external forces, and as a consequence, changing.
Louis thanks for outlining that. You would of course accept that organisms (in the normal sense of the word) can and do alter their chemical environment? And it follows that this can have consequences for other organisms? These consequences may lead to ecological or adaptive responses. And essential conditions for one species or community may be resources for another species or community. There you have intertwined forces and co-adaptation… extrapolate to the broader level and the biosphere is in a constant state of flux, influenced by external physical forces and by the activities of other life forms. eg early life created oxygen to which it had to adapt because when oxygen reached high concentrations it was a poison.
From the newspaper account:
“Professor Lovelock draws attention to one aspect of the warming threat in particular, which is that the expected temperature rise is currently being held back artificially by a global aerosol – a layer of dust in the atmosphere right around the planet’s northern hemisphere – which is the product of the world’s industry. This shields us from some of the sun’s radiation in a phenomenon which is known as “global dimming” and is thought to be holding the global temperature down by several degrees.”
Global dimming ended in 1985. Since 1985, there has been global brightening. He is basing his opinions on false premises.
run chicken little run.
to think that the human species will last on this planet forever is both arrogant and ignorant. the dinosaurs were around for 150 million years according to the fossil record. they had little or no impact on the state of the planet. look what happened to them.
the earth does have an effect on itself. what happens when volcanos spew tons of noxious gases into the air do to the enviroment. theres plenty of sulfur and other gases which are harmful to it that are released during an eruption. some of which could also be responsible for global warming.
Another psychotic greenie hysteric facing immenent extinction, list all the Lovelock prophecies that have come true;
1?
2?
3?
Lovelock claims that the organism known as Gaia has shaped the environment to suit its own requirements and that genes speak to the planet advising of the best environment for the cells (and genes) survival.
Anyway, our very own T Flannery poo poos Lovelocks cataclismic prediction and gives us his own insight;
“….Dr Flannery said the world still had “one to two decades” to take action to reduce global warming, despite Professor Lovelock’s warning that billions would die by the end of the century, and civilisation as we know it would be unlikely to survive.
”It seems to be that [Professor] LoveLock’s pessimism about things is due to the pathetic political response we’ve had from the US, Australia and some of the other polluting nations,” said Dr Flannery, who is director of the South Australian Museum and author of climate book The Weather Makers.
”I respect him immensely, and I can understand Lovelock’s pessemism, but I don’t agree with it. You just have to keep up hope….”
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/flannery-sets-deadline-to-save-world/2006/01/17/1137260034863.html
Tbyr,
I haven’t seen much of him at all but that doesn’t mean anything.
I didn’t dismiss his work as unscientific – his work as a chemist/medical researcher is presumably of a professional standard.
I said that the concept of the earth ( a rock which supports life) as a living organism sounded unscientific.
And yes – using an acronym which reflected the earth as a planet which supports life as opposed to an organism which regulated itself would seem more objective and less emotive.
If the earth is an organism then humanity is presumably some killer virus or disease which is threatening it?
This shifts the issue from science to morality it seems to me.
But that’s a lay person’s view admittedly!
Curious to note how much of the first comments were devoted to what pigeon hole Lovelock should fit into. What we need to look at is what evidence he has recently uncovered that has led him to his new conclusion that it is all too late. My guess is that there is none, other than the usual lack of endorphines exibited by pessimists.
But Lovelocks “prediction” of billions of deaths is a classic. Given that we are at the start of a new century, and that there are 6 Billion of us, then optically challenged freddy could foresee the statistical certainty that close to 6 billion of us will die before the end of the %$&*@# century.
And this is some sort of Guru?
If we were to forgo appeals to authority (X is an expert) and personal attack (Y is a shoddy chalatin, ot an Astroturfer, or paid by GP or TNC) and group label-tribalism (P is Right wing, Q is a Green-Lefty) we might get somewhere in these discussions much quicker.
Lovelock’s message of “too late” applies to us too – we are wasting a lot of internet minutes on red herrings.
I agree with Ian, we should ask what the evidence and where are the sources? In Jared Diamond lastest book, for instance, I couldnt find the sources mostly, while his earlier books were better.
Lovelock’s ideas also shouldnt be dismissed, even though they may be wrong- we can still learn from them.
It seems as if he’s saying IPCC are missing something – and I suspect one factor is solar variation plus there are several others.
This could mean that IPCC are over-rating CO2, or under-rating other factors such as terrestial feedbacks.
In any case Lovelock puts debate about IPCC on the table from the other flank – how can their predictions be “rock solid” and Lovelock be right too? Please explain.
Think,
We must be careful here – cause and effect. If an organism is changing its environment, is the organism reacting to a changed environment, or is the environment adapting to a changed organism?
As for the use “lunatic” it is known that lunar phases can affect some people physically, and it might be permissable to use this adjective to descrobe someone who has developed a “chicken little theory” as the result of a lunar influence.
Louis,
Although the Earth does receive much energy from space, we should not ignore the fact that Earth itself has an energetic molten core, which is, if the experts are to be believed, cooling. They say the Earth is shrinking, and tectonic plates shifting. So Jim Lovelock’s idea of climatic influence from the Earth itself is not so far fetched. The Earth’s own volcanic activity surely affects both atmospheric temperature (aerosols), and oceanic temperature (fumaroles). Just because Jim uses a rather poetic approach (Gaiea) does not mean he is wrong. I know some very boring, unpoetic disciples of scientism who are totally wrong, despite hundreds of publications in alleged learned journals. Remember what I said about leeks from Captain Fluellen?
detribe – “It seems as if he’s saying IPCC are missing something – and I suspect one factor is solar variation plus there are several others.
This could mean that IPCC are over-rating CO2, or under-rating other factors such as terrestial feedbacks.”
Except the IPCC is not missing the solar variation thing – from:
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/011.htm
“The Sun’s output of energy varies by small amounts (0.1%) over an 11-year cycle and, in addition, variations over longer periods may occur. On time-scales of tens to thousands of years, slow variations in the Earth’s orbit, which are well understood, have led to changes in the seasonal and latitudinal distribution of solar radiation. These changes have played an important part in controlling the variations of climate in the distant past, such as the glacial and inter-glacial cycles.
When radiative forcing changes, the climate system responds on various time-scales. The longest of these are due to the large heat capacity of the deep ocean and dynamic adjustment of the ice sheets. This means that the transient response to a change (either positive or negative) may last for thousands of years. Any changes in the radiative balance of the Earth, including those due to an increase in greenhouse gases or in aerosols, will alter the global hydrological cycle and atmospheric and oceanic circulation, thereby affecting weather patterns and regional temperatures and precipitation.”
There seems to be two schools of thought that stretch back in time; the pagan “we are a part of Nature and need to heed Nature” and the judeo-christian “because we are the more intelligent we can be the masters of the natural world and can use it to our benefit”.
“the usual lack of endorphines exibited by pessimists.”
Well put, Ian. Whether Lovelock is a lunatic or a guru, he’s clearly loopy.
Moore, on the other hand, seems like the type to give greenies a GOOD name. He’s made that mental step that seems so difficult for many greenies, namely that you can preserve something by utilising it.
Ender, I repect your point, but by “missing something”, and “under-rating” I mean that the 0.1% comment although accurate by itself may be an underestimate of the effect of the sun which could occur, for instance, from some part of the energy spectrum that vaies more that 0.1% eg solar-flares, magnetic field effect of sun-spots or what ever. I know already they mention it but whether they correctly interpret it is the question.
detribe – yes I agree – that is the 64 million dollar question.
Without villyfing the man, previously Lovelock called for the use of nuclear power as a source of energy that would save the planet, something which the greenies rejected.
Greens rode home on the anti-nuclear card, where would Garrett be today if it wasnt for his high profile anti nuclear shot at politics?
Also the greens in Germany shared the political rostrum with Shroder’s Social Democrat Party, for a while at least.
Greeny political greed is responsible for the energy mess not “corporate greed”. Corporates would have made money if it was coal, uranium whatever.
rog, all of the other commenters here have explained their position well & I’m enjoying reading their comments.
Ian raises a valid point: we don’t know what, if any, new evidence lovelock has for claiming ‘doom’. Perhaps, being 86 yrs old, he wants to issue a wake up call before he pops his clogs. I don’t know. I do however think that the gaia idea has some merit, although it is a stretch for our understanding of how the world works. It may prove to have a good analogy in the overused ‘earth is flat’, ‘earth is round’ precedent. (I thought the gaia idea was new-age nonsense until I was finally persuaded to read the book.)
lovelock has apparently concluded that positive feedback loops are now magnifying climate change faster than previously thought due to recent record hot temps, melting ice & tundra etc plus the more significant role of global dimming. From the lovelock article:
“the expected temperature rise is currently being held back artificially by a global aerosol – a layer of dust in the atmosphere right around the planet’s northern hemisphere – which is the product of the world’s industry.
This shields us from some of the sun’s radiation in a phenomenon which is known as “global dimming” and is thought to be holding the global temperature down by several degrees. But with a severe industrial downturn, the aerosol could fall out of the atmosphere in a very short time, and the global temperature could take a sudden enormous leap upwards.”
detribe he seems to be saying that the IPCC is of a similar conclusion that warming is proceeding faster than anticipated & “in the IPCC’s next report, 2007, the timescale may be shortened”. You might be interested in the following:
“We found that aerosols actually have twice the cooling effect we thought,” said Nicolas Bellouin, a climate modeller at the Met Office. The consequence is that as air quality improves and aerosol levels drop, future warming may be greater than we currently think.”
One possibility is that while the latest study shows scientists have underestimated the so-called direct effect of aerosols reflecting the sun’s rays, they may have overestimated the indirect effect they have on cloud cover, meaning the overall error of climate models would not be serious.
Earlier this year, Peter Cox at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Winfrith, Dorset, warned that if the cooling effect of aerosols turned out to be greater, it could trigger faster global warming.
“It’s quite a bizarre thing, because the last thing you want to suggest to people is that it would be a good idea to have dirty air, but as far as climate change is concerned, that’s right. Everyone would be getting asthma, but the environment would be cooler.
“That said, the direct effects of air quality, particularly in urban areas, are so important to human health, that it would be crazy to think of anything other than health damage,” he said.
If the Met Office calculations are right, they suggest the atmosphere’s temperature is also more responsive to carbon dioxide than scientists believe.
“If the cooling influence of aerosols is larger, it implies that the warming from the carbon dioxide must be larger than we think to match the warming we’ve seen in the past 100 years.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1672444,00.html
December 22, 2005
I dont read the Guardian.
Davey Gam
You raise a very interesting point about the earth’s core, and its geodynamics which I won’t go into here in details.
Lovelock is anticipating a future catastrophe, the ending times, and thinks that humanity is causing it.
There have been past catastrophes of global extent, according to our ancestors but we dismiss those as myths.
I would suggest a careful re-examination of the ideas Immanuel Velikovsky documented in his various texts. He was a successful practising pyscholanalyst and a natural philosopher. Like all humans, perfection was absent and his blind spot was his inability to tolerate any change in Jewish chronology.
Velikovsky proposed many tests to falsify his theory of earth history. None of his tests failed.
There may well be another global catastrophe that wipes out another set of species on earth, but it cannot come from within the system, because that is essentially suicide.
What we are observing today of the earth’s geodynamics is interpreted through our paradigm of uniformitarianism and classical Newtonian physics.
We are now discovering this paradigm is flawed.
I would suggest getting a copy of Hogan’s book “Killing the Sacred Cow”, it comes out paper back this year, and study http://www.holoscience.com, the web site of physicist Wal Thornhill whom I know personally, and is not a crank in any sense of the word.
I would also look at http://www.thunderbolts.info site and its links. It is actually a firewall protecting many scientists who are experiencing the same fears that Gallileo had in his time.
Then they burnt dissidents on the stake. These
days they cut their funding, refuse to publish their papers or metaphorically immolate them by ad hominems.
Past catastrophes are acknowledged, not ignored, indeed the fossil records and other evidence we have of past large-scale catastrophes are compared to the rates of extinctions today and support the conclusion that species have very recently and are presently going extinct at significantly faster rates than they have previously, even during the previous 5(?) mass extinctions. (I’m not claiming that alone provides causal proof)
it wouldn’t be systemic suicide, as you describe it above Louis, unless it destroyed the entire system. Species can be lost but the system will survive if life, habitable conditions and mineral cycles persist. The more taxonomic diversity that survives, the greater the resilience of the system.
I doubt you would accuse lovelock of being uniformitarianism or following classical traditions. He is part of a pioneering movement make science less reductionist (although a number of different movements are trying transform modern science, among which physicists are prominent).
Much of the claimed scientific “consensus” on GW has come from biologists who have signed on wholesale for something about which they are generally ill-informed. Among geologists, meterologists and atmospheric physicists whose expertise is much more relevant, opinion is far from any consensus.
For a precise well reasoned argument that predicts global cooling over the next two decades leading to a little ice age level minimum around 2030 see:
http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/Calen/Landscheidt-1.html“>http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/Calen/Landscheidt-1.html”>http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/Calen/Landscheidt-1.html
The author, Theodor Landscheidt, is a highly respected solar & atmospheric physicist whose past predictions of a range of climatic events over the past two decades has been remarkably accurate.
Walter Starck
…………………….
POSTED FOR WALTER AS THIS BLOG WAS BLOCKING THIS COMMENT ON THE BASIS OF QUESTIONABLE CONTENT. SORRY WALTER.
Louis, to quote from your recommended site http://www.holoscience.com/synopsis.php?page=12
“Biological systems show evidence of communicating via resonant chemical systems, which may lend a physical explanation to the work of Rupert Sheldrake.”
From Rupert Sheldrake: “…the only other independent scientific researcher Sheldrake can think of is James Lovelock”. http://www.sheldrake.org/articlesnew/heretic_Walljasper.html
In his work, Sheldrake draws on Lovelock’s Gaia theory. They are allies in trying to develop a more holistic science. Your mate’s website talks about a more “holistic” science that recognises that “stars give birth” and ‘Galaxies form families with identifiable “parents” and “children” ‘ and “We are hopefully connected with the power and intelligence of the universe.” It seems that you’ve pitched your tent on Lovelock’s green fields but you don’t want to pay to use the facilities.
Think,
Thornhill’s idea that stars give birth is essentially the same notion that unstable atoms eject a particle, (radio activity).
Lovelock believes that the ant on the elephant’s tail controls the elephant’s motions.
I would contend that the ant might have misinterpreted its observations.
And then Think,
While I might refer to Sheldrake’s ideas, that does not mean I endorse them.
As for Walter Starck’s comments on Landscheidt’s interpretation of the climate data, these I accept “provisionally” (you would need to read Steve McIntyre’s blog).
I would suggest another force is in play.
so louis, if the elephant was unstable because it was walking on uneven ground, causing it to shake its tail, thereby ejecting the ant, then it would be giving birth to the ant? Ok that was utterly silly and misrepresentative, as was your eg of the ant controlling the elephant.
You should admit that thornhill’s position does not contradict lovelock’s. Therefore introducing thornhill above, interesting as it was, did not substantiate a dismissal of gaia theory. perhaps you didn’t mean to dismiss it, perhaps you were just pursuing an associated tangent.
Think,
I have thought your thinks,
They are silly.
>Much of the claimed scientific “consensus” on GW has come from biologists who have signed on wholesale for something about which they are generally ill-informed. Among geologists, meterologists and atmospheric physicists whose expertise is much more relevant, opinion is far from any consensus.
Jen unfortunately, the science does not back your claim. Suggest you read:
“Expert Assessment of Uncertanities in Detection and Attrribution of Climate Change, 2002, Bull Amer Met Soc, 1317-1326” for example).
and
“The scientific consensus on climate change, Nature, 306, 1686” for a start.
Of course there are a handful of prominent sceptics, but a cursory glance of their public articles shows they have got just about everything wrong in the last two years – the MSU data does show warming, the models do not overestimate the tropospheric warming, and the hockey stick does stacks up, all be it with a few more wobbles than was shown by the first analyses produced 10 years ago, and no the world did not start a global cooling trend in 1998… The most recent arguments are reduced to… its been warmer before (well of course the earth’s surface was once molten), it will economically doom us (suggest reading “Avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, 2005, Climatic Change, 73, 227-238” for a science perspective on this), and the warming will be good for us. These arguments increasingly have nothing to do with climate, and everything to do with value judgments. If there was a serious debate about climate science, then surely there would be no need to shift the public discussion?
As with all communities their is a healthy debate, which in this case is centred on the future magnitude of warming which is openly represented in the science literature.
Despite this debate, you would be hard pressed to find a single practicing expert (let alone a significant minority) who does/do not accept the enhanced greenhouse effect, the reality of global warming, the inability to explain the last 50 years of warming without human influences, and the future direction of climate change.
David
Think says-
“If the cooling influence of aerosols is larger, it implies that the warming from the carbon dioxide must be larger than we think to match the warming we’ve seen in the past 100 years.
Thanks for mentioning aerosols Think. I’d like to point out that, logically, that carbon dioxide forcing being higher is not the only implication possible from this aerosol cooling revision to IPCC. It may be that some other forcing factor (such as solar effects) are involved to compensate for the higher actual aerosol cooling than used in the old IPCC model. The implication by the Guardian article makes is the assumption that CO2 is the ONLY possible explanation for the shortfall. Also it points to some adjustable fudge factor in the IPCC models, if there is a need to “adjust” upwards the contribution of CO2- this is exactly the way to miss detecting natural mechanisms that you are unaware of.
If the (missing) other factor was solar related, it would imply the direction of temperature change (or at least a major forcing factor ) could change by 2030 along the lines of Walter Stark’s comments.
This all goes say that remarks that Global warming science is “rock solid” (SMH) or that debate over AGW is finished (Quiggin) are really misguided, if only because of aerosols and methane.
David,
1. Regarding “my claims”, I was posting for Walter Stark as his comment had been blocked – have another look. The comment is from Walter.
2. What I did find interesting about the link is that in the final section, I think the author suggests average global temperatures will continue to decline except in El Nino years – and I think it was published/written in about 2002? … and last year was hottest on record.
Sorry Jen if I used the wrong name… actually sorry for using any name. I try never to play the person; it is the science and evidence that matters, not the poster.
David
Louis,
Thanks for pointing me toward Hogan’s ‘Killing the Sacred Cows’ – I will read it, because I rather like the sport of impaling sacred cows myself, even if they are sentient vertebrates (hope Andrew Bartlett is not reading this). I like your ant and elephant metaphor. In fact, I think science and public debate could learn from the Sufis, and use metaphors much more as a way of explaining the complex. Should ANZAAS have an annual “Best Scientific Metaphor Award”? Danger is that, like all models, metaphors can be dangerously simplistic.
Sorry, David, you were sounding plausible right up to when you said, “Of course there are a handful of prominent sceptics, but a cursory glance of their public articles shows they have got just about everything wrong in the last two years”. If there is one thing that should NEVER be done in questions of climate change it is to draw conclusions from data intervals as short as TWO YEARS. It blew your credibility right out of the water.
By the way, can anyone advise as to whether the climate modellers have factored in the impact of an increase in ocean area on climate.
The much heralded 25 metre increase in sea level, for example, would certainly re-connect a substantially enlarged Lake Eyre with the southern ocean. This estimated 7 million hectares would evaporate a minimum 140 million megalitres of water into the central Australian skies. I say a minimum because this does not include any re-evaporation from increased rainfall in adjacent areas. So the kind of hot dry winds that once fed the Ash Wednesday fires would then be much more humid from the 6mm midsummer evaporation rate. And it could certainly deliver the demanded extra 1.5 million megalitres of water to the Murray-Darling.
There are two similarly sized, extremely dry sub-sea level depressions in North Africa, one would eliminate the rain shadow that currently exists south of the Libyan Plateau while the other will do the same on the Tunisian/Algerian border.
Another small one would extend the Gulf of California some 300 km north to the Salton Sea, providing waterfront living to the residents of San Bernadino.
Collectively, they occupy an area of desert that is about a third the size of the Greenland ice sheet. And that means a very substantial increase in the world’s capacity for heat transfer.
And who knows, we may yet see rainforest again in Cunnamulla.
>Sorry, David, you were sounding plausible right up to when you said, “Of course there are a handful of prominent sceptics, but a cursory glance of their public articles shows they have got just about everything wrong in the last two years”
This is not based on observations, it is based on science published in the literature, and the identification of errors in the analyses underpinning the sceptics position. The “its been cooling since 1998” was killed off by 2005 which equalled 1998’s global temperature.
David
Hello Think,
I noted your quote from Peter Cox, that it may be a ‘good idea to have dirty air’. A few years back, two scientists (one physicist, one meteorologist) suggested that former widespread burning of vegetation by hunter-gatherers may have caused significant ‘dimming’. Much of this burning ceased with European expansion (guns and steel, but mostly germs) in the 1800s. Even King Louis of France (one of them, probably the worst since Louis the First) banned ‘ecobuage’ in the Pyrenees, Massif Central, and Brittany, to protect oak forests for ship-building (see Prof Steve Pyne’s books). I remember some research in Britain suggesting that slightly dirty air may give better immunity to asthma. I lived in Africa for more than a decade, and cannot remember an African child with asthma, despite exposure to wood smoke 24 hours a day – it kept the mosquitoes out of the hut. Aborigines certainly regard eucalyptus smoke as beneficial. I like a whiff of wood smoke. Is the obsessive urge for squeaky ‘clean air’ up a medical gum tree?
P.S. I should have said ‘up a medical, and climatic, gumtree.’
P.S. Medical, and climatic gumtree?
You missed the point, David, two years or even seven years is a totally inappropriate interval to be forming any conclusions on climate change. It may appear to be science but it aint.
Ian,
science is based on the evidence at hand. This evidence is unambiguous.
The science which has underpinned certain key sceptics in recent years has been entirely falsfied.
David
“Lovelock suggests that efforts to counter global warming cannot succeed, and that, in effect, it is already too late. I agree. As with anything else to do with nature the rate of this climate change will be exponential.
Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore is quite right too, “There’s no getting away from the fact that over 6 billion people wake up each day on this planet with real needs for food, energy and materials,”
Any one waiting for a bunch of scientists to prove either is a fool. Make your own observations as they did. We all have the same basic equipment to observe and ponder.
Otherwise ask the nearest old-timers who can keep their options open.
The recent history of this earth is written in various ways. We can all start with paintings and old photos. I looked also at old coastlines and caves. But it was in retracing postman’s tracks and old timber tramways hidden in the regrowth that I had my first real measurements of wear and tear then some recovery.
Even in death old trees tell a tale. With our eucalypts their form describes primarily the soil and the climate. Where giants once stood on my land they frequently left holes as the roots were torn out and hills where the buttress decayed. Reading the original forest a century or so later is an art not a science, so is reading a cave.
Both the forest giants and the cave people were long gone when I was a boy. My mentor also showed me how to spot a Stone Age tool hidden in the litter. We can each piece together a story from stone.
The truth about our extinction lay in all those fossils I found near by.
Davey; we are obsessed, particularly with ourselves.
Give your kids scope to have a mud bath in the back yard. Let your pet lick them all over afterwards. Don’t wash the snail track off your tomatoes. Smoke your river trout over gum leaves and clean the pan only once a month.
Although I am diagnosed as a latent asthmatic I sleep well with one cat on my pillow, one on my feet and one in the middle. In industry I worked with wood dust, fiber and smoke for years. So did many others but tobacco eventually killed a few of them.
When youth becomes allergic to many things including food beware. One of mine was a ring leader. We watched her skin and bone mates on beds in private hospital.
In the end their heads continually fell down. They probably died and their parents although in despair weren’t appreciated by staff who had learned to see beyond the obvious.
What did I do wrong?
Hi Davey, while smoke does discourage mossies, there are considerable efforts in Africa to deploy cheap DIY stove fixes and cleaner fuels because of the high health consequences of smoke exposure. (see quote below). We know that high levels of particulate matter causes health problems. Doctors can’t agree on the precise causes of asthma or why Aust has such a high incidence, so I dont think we can safely conclude anything about causal or mitigating factors for asthma.
detribe is right to point out that we probably don’t yet understand the counterbalance forces to the (recently realised) higher than expected dimming effect. As a general point on this discussion, this by itself doesn’t necessarily throw doubt on whether or not humans are forcing climate disruption, only on the interplay of contributing factors. The global issues and trade-offs are very complicated and the outcomes of specific actions to address climate disruption are hard for humans to judge (not that it’s an excuse for not doing anything). Seeing it’s a Lovelock thread, perhaps we should seed the planet, rooftops etc with white daisies (high albedo). Has anyone here read the Ages of Gaia?
EXTRACT: “However, more than 1.6 million people, primarily women and children, die prematurely each year worldwide (400,000 in sub-Saharan Africa) from respiratory diseases caused by the pollution from such fires, according to previous studies by the researchers.
The current study, published in the April 1 issue of the journal Science, concludes that by 2030, smoke from wood fires used for cooking will cause about 10 million premature deaths among women and children in Africa. By 2050, according to the report, smoke from cooking fires will release about 7 billion tons of carbon in the form of greenhouse gases to the environment. ”
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/03/31_africa.shtml
Davey, are you prepared to elaborate a little on how/what “science and public debate could learn from the Sufis”?
metaphors can help to communicate & disseminate an idea until they outlive their initial usefulness and create bounded thinking. It seems quaint today to read the metaphors for the human body that have progressed throughout history in line wth technological development.
That’s a very interesting and thoughtful comment Think. By the way throat damage from inhaled dust particles is a risk factor for meningococcal disease ,and epidemics of meniningococcal infections occur in northern Africa and are very serious; the smoke you mention might be part of this health risk too.
(Cigarettes in nightclubs too.)
Gee I wish Ian had been headmaster at my high school. I could have remembered the ream-outs with such pleasure. As an aggressive blast I give it 7/10 – a bit more venom would have been expected.
Anyway la-de dah
Having a bit of a Google one finds a certain web site attributed to none other Ian himself.
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/author.asp?id=3939
http://landholders.tripod.com/
And here we find a bit of info for the folks on the ranch which hold Ian in some regard (possibly for his roast greenie recipes).
http://landholders.tripod.com/id112.htm
Could have fixed Celcius I guess. We are talking about warming I think.
Anyway a good old cherry pick on one glacier hand picked from all the glaciers. CSIRO & greenie org are dead links. But the John DAly link works – I can hearing thoise duelling banjos starting to play.
Then we have a interview with Sallie
http://landholders.tripod.com/id108.htm
Warmth exaggerated, sun an explanation for warming, aerosol pollution not important, the satellites not showing warming, radiosondes, CO2 on plants, the scientists sold us ice ages stuff. “global cooling movement” !!
Yee haa !
Any balance for the readers – on the one hand but – nope – just quote non main-strream stuff.
Admit no other views exist. provide no critique to dismiss other views.
And interesting to as landholders have a lot at stake with climate change – and they’re very interested I hear – so you think they’d want to know what the risks are “on balance”.
So David can maybe add Sallie to one of his sceptics hit-list.
(Don’t you just love it when they come in spinner – !! Ian’s own site – hot diggity dog !
Can we eat the dog too?)
Thanks for reminding me, Phil. I am the Secretary of Landholders but can hardly claim it is my site, especially as it hasn’t been updated for more than 2 years.
But the reminder of John Daleys site is timely. You should check the work of Zbigniew Jaworowski at “still waiting for Greenhouse” http://www.johndaley.com His work on the unreliability of ice core CO2 data, and exposure of the blatant fudging of same by IPCC et al is most illuminating.
I guess you should also include the Friends of Science Society in Canada in the list of GH sceptics. I can’t help but recall some visiting eurosleaze claiming that there was only five in the world but, hey, whats a bit of misreporting when you’re into deep planet salvation.
Ian – well it said so on the internet so I thought it must be true:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/author.asp?id=3939
Blatant fudging by the IPCC – gee you’d better be able to back that up boyo ! John Daly indeed ! Bah humbug.
So who says we don’t have a sense of humor? This is our response to the announced “Celebrate Global Warming Day.” While we think anyone who dismises global warming as harmless is a certified diaperhead, even we can think of a few things to celebrate:
The Ten Best Things
about Global Warming:
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9. No more pesky weeds. In fact, no more pesky plants.
8. Nile Encephalitis: not just for Egyptians anymore.
7. Furnaces convert easily into tornado shelters.
6. Helsinki: the new Riviera.
5. Middle East oil producers feel right at home— everywhere.
4. Golfers only need a putter and a sand wedge.
3. For those who can’t get enough of global warming. One word: Venus.
2. Steaks, medium rare, on the hoof.
1. Three thongs and you’re dressed!
Brought to you by GardenEarth.com and the authors of DEAD MARS, DYING EARTH.
Please include this credit with copies. Thanks.
©2004 GardenEarth on SolarCafe, Inc., all rights reserved
http://gardenearth.com/topten.htm
For the sake of mankind; its time we stopped breeding the weaklings. “Life wasn’t meant to be easy”. Let’s move on
I see a lot of unauthorized crap repeated in these blogs. Sometimes skeptics dominate debate simply because others can’t use their own judgment on any issues. As I said before; go into a cave and think about your lot say with out the help of the www.
Softies can’t survive on their own, in this crowed world.
There are no short cuts either. Starting from scratch is a good way to lean however in one lifetime it’s necessary to look back through others to look forward with security.
Who do we trust? Not all salesmen and certainly not their media. Mothers may bee sometimes. But we don’t need to be mothered all our lives.
Stay fit mentally, especially on the net.
More importantly, your claim that “certain key sceptics” have falsified data is a very serious one, David.
The issue of falsification does not relate to data, but is a scientific term to mean the over turning of an hypothesis. In science it is not possible to prove something true, only to prove something false – this is called falsification. If a theory is falsified, then it becomes inconsistent with observations and should be rejected. Such a falsification has occured for the theories that the troposphere was not warming, that temperatures peaked in 1998, etc. Persistence of these theories has no place in science.
Theories that are incapable of being falsified are not science (an example might be that global warming is caused by the flapping of invisible fairy wings…).
A single observation is all it takes to overturn a theory – one circum-navigation of the earth is suffient to make it clear that the earth is not flat (one need not sit around for 2, 5 or 20 years).
The falsification of the sceptics theories does not mean that the global warming is correct – it only means that we are left scratching for alternatives. In addition, the global warming theory explicitely predicted that each of the sceptic theories would be falsfied… this is pretty strong evidence that the mainstream global warming is correct.
Of course, predictions of global warming due to the enhanced greenhouse effect date back 100 years, with detailed numerical model predictions dating back to the 1970s. These include “The effects of Doubling of the CO2 concentration on the climate of a general circulation model, J of Atmos Sciences, 1975, 32, 3-14”, and “Mans Impact on the Global Environment, MIT Press, 1970”, which contains the statment a projected 18 percent increase [in CO2] resulting from fossil fuel combustion to the year 2000 (320 ppm to 379 ppm) might increase the surface temperature of the earth 0.5C; a doubling of the CO2 might increase mean annual surface temperatures 2C – the observed warming was 0.45C.
Regards,
David
Sounds like barely co-herent corruption of language to me, David. Again I ask, which “key sceptics”? Phil, Take a look at Jaworowski’s paper at http://www.john-daly.com/zjiceco2.htm (per Warwick Hughes) for his explanation of the reasons why pre-industrial Co2 estimates from ice cores are understated and, consequently why the magnitude of Co2 flux has also been overstated. It includes the second last para which states;
“.. convincingly blamed the Mann et al. paper for the improper manipulation and arbitrary rejections of data. The question arises, how such methodically poor paper, contradicting hundreds of excellent studies that demonstrated existence of global range Medieval Warming and Little Ice Age, could pass peer review for NATURE? And how could it pass the reviewing process at the IPCC?”
Ian – you seem to have conventiently side-steped the twaddle on your “own” blog or blog “of your association”.
Might this seem to be a non-serious/political position? Are you going to take down this biased and also sometimes erroneous material or leave it there?
What has climate got to do with property rights. Probably heaps if they take your trees and don’t pay you. But that’s the joke you can’t see. “Thanks for the tree carbon – that gets Australia into the moral high ground re Kyoto – BTW have fun with the hot & dry conditions. Yours “sincerely”. “The Feds”. ” Your logic has made a strategically and logically incorrect association. They should be paying you what your tree carbon is really worth !!
Incidentally I don’t see David as doing anything other than defending the mainstream science against spurious scepticism. Where’s the political aspect?
P.S. I suspect Lovelock is probably depressed hanging around the Hadley Centre checking out the latest gloomy simulations. Probably needs to get out more. Not that that will change anything. Not sure about all this Gaia stuff myself interesting though it may be to debate.
Stoat has a worthwhile rant on the issue entitled:
” Lovelock: We’re all going to die ! ”
– with something for all of you.
Stoat url is http://mustelid.blogspot.com/
Post of 16/1/2006
Hello Think,
My Sufi suggestion was not meant to be profound. Simply that Sufi teaching (as I understand it, which isn’t all that well) makes use of vivid metaphors to teach unsophisticated audiences. One I like is the ant and rug story. I’m sure you know it. A larger view can be a revelation. I don’t think there is any risk of bounded dogma in that.
Some scientists do tend to be blinkered (I know some!), and despise history as ‘anecdotal’, even when it is essential to the proper practice of their own discipline – the ‘white coat syndrome’.
I have read that both Aesop and St. Francis of Assisi were influenced by Sufi teaching.
Scientists (climatic, ecological, nuclear, whatever) may find metaphors more useful for communication than eye-glazing statistics – that’s all.
Although I incline to the Patrick Moore climate view, rather than Jim Lovelock’s, I think Jim’s Gaiea idea may be a Sufi approach, and that’s why many people find it appealing. Gestalt over linear logic? Having had a brief correspondence with him, some years ago, I would not be surprised to find that he knows about Sufism. Gestalt can, of course, be wrong, but it has served us well, in general, in our evolution.
Don’t worry, Phil, we have been dealing with the joke for some time now. It started long before our worst ever conservative environment minister, some forgetable, dehydrated little turd from Melbourne, wrote to Beattie with an offer to poison the social and political landscape for two or three generations at least. And the community will ultimately pay. I heard of one guy who went out the night it was all announced and blew the crap out of his Bilby colony. People react to injustice in their own way and there are a lot of folk waiting for a lighning strike so they can sit on the porch and watch it all go. It is a bit like the persecuted servant who ensures his hated master’s meals always have a bit of gob or urine in it.
If only a quarter of all the Greenhouse projections actually occur then there won’t be too many forests in Qld that survive without the goodwill and active protection of their owners. And the community will have the environment they deserve.
OK – this is progress – we’ve got to the point (If not quite colloquially). I’m glad it’s just you and me down the back of the shed here and nobody else is listening.
So the issue is how do we sensibly progress this debate in a new adminstration (eventually) and bring the suburbanites along with us otherwise it’s gonna get worse. I think it’s tragic you’ve ripped off for your carbon (the new plant methane story withstanding confirmation).
Poor little Bilbys. So cute. So endangered. Did they eat any BTW?
Davey, it is is so nice that you like the ant & rug story, even if you cant remember it.
As for Sufis, what the hell are they? Is their envirommental rhetoric positive?
The world needs more people like you.
Davey thanks for that.
ants & rugs notwithstanding, Louis’ claim that “Lovelock believes that the ant on the elephant’s tail controls the elephant’s motions” is misrepresentative. Funnily enough though, the social behaviour of ants forms a decent, simplified parallel for Gaia theory. Scientists observing the behaviour and interactions of ants (reductionist approach) can’t figure out how they organise themselves so efficiently and effectively. But when they take a more holistic approach, considering the total system and model the behaviour they observe in ants, then when there’s a sufficient number of ants, an emergent property is a successfully organised ant colony. Although you might not call an ant intelligent the system itself behaves intelligently. (before anyone dismisses social insects as extreme left-wing lunatics, ha, recall that they have queens :).
Hi Ian
Today I went browsing on “landholders” Please don’t be offended but I wondered how relevant it was now as your claim it hasn’t been updated for some time.
Given that I said in a previous post we find a lot of unauthorised crap on the www. regarding many things including climate change I was deliberately looking again at the sceptic Daly on sea level (John Daly indeed!), but I found other questionable stuff including an outline on bushfires.
Since I frequently review the literature on bushfires these days I wondered where that lot came from. Don’t get me wrong though, it reads well but I am certain none of us have a good handle on that issue in particular.
For many years I have likewise been concerned over our forest practice. The 20/20 vision and the RFA process has been a pet subject particularly since one of our own got involved with the national survey of reserves for the federal minister.
Needles to say any concept of ‘tree pulling’ is like a red rag to a bull.
I value trees as opposed to scrub in many ways including providing substantial buffers to fires and other climate driven events. Trees in a mosaic of growth stages hold this place together.
So who authorise what in regard to the way forward with the keepers of the bush?
Cheers
Taz – I commonly find lots of old myths buried on contrarian climate change sites. Of course let he is who is without sin in updating/weeding/deleting their own web site cast the first stone. For example if the satellite tropospheric warming story has changed (which it has) the sites should be updated. Typically they are not. It is an ongoing problem. The only way around to compare and contrast, look for alternative views and ask an expert if you know any. Science changes – new things happen.
Rog,
Sufism is a mystic branch of Islam – probably pre-Islamic in fact. I think Sufi means ‘wool’, because, at one time, they wore woollen cloaks – probably polyester now. There are dozens of websites about them, many nonsense, but don’t dismiss them too glibly. The ant and rug story is so well known, I thought that the erudite readers of this blog would not need it spelt out.
However, imagine a small ant struggling through the fibres of a rug. It may notice that some fibres are red, some black, some white etc. (Wait for it, I bet a zoologist will tell me that ants are colour blind). If the ant were lifted, say, two metres above the rug, it may then see that the fibres have a clear pattern – a revelation through taking a bigger picture, or better vantage point, or a more holistic view.
A lot of ecologists, working with small quadrats, are a bit like the ant struggling through the fibres. It has been suggested that ‘physics envy’ is a factor in hampering ecological advance – too mechanistic, sometimes pseudo-mathematical.
Before dismissing mysticism, remember that Isaac Newton had a mystic (Rosicrucian) side. I believe Cambridge University destroyed a lot of his papers on his death, to avoid embarrassment, or even blasphemy. However, Newton said that his ideas often came as a gestalt (he didn’t use that word, of course), and he then backtracked for a proof. Many of us in research work the same way, even if at a humbler level.
Hope this helps.
Hello Think,
Are you aware of the ‘self-organising’ principle, suggested in 1714 (or 1705?) by Mandeville, in the ‘Fable of the Bees’? I am finding that it is highly relevant to bushfire behaviour in a mosaic, or palimpsest. It may relate to Gaia.
If I read his politics correctly, Rog may be interested too, since Mandeville was an intellectual predecessor of Adam Smith, and the Nobel Laureate economist Friedrich Hayek, who was, of course, a great inspiration to Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. The ‘free market’ is, supposedly, self-organising … well, up to a point, Lord Copper (Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh?).
Even if I don’t agree with Jim Lovelock’s gloomy prognosis on climate, from my brief contact with him, I think he is a warm, decent, interesting human, and a very good cook. To dismiss him as a crank would be shabby behaviour. Science needs intuitive leaps. Even if some land in a bog, others will lead us onto the ‘sunlit uplands’ (W. Churchill, who was also a bit cranky?).
Davey i agree with what you say on lovelock, my position too although i haven’t eaten his cooking, just his words.
I have heard of it – I’ll add your recommendation to my future readig list! I’ve read a more modern take on self orgn + complexity eg Brian Goodwin
Davey, the problem is that just because someone is a nice person, has nice teeth, sings well, good cook, great raconteur etc doesnt necessarily mean he is right.
Einstein had some pretty good ideas and some wacky ones too. This is what he wrote (remember this was after the Russian revolution and during the era of Stalin). Think about his views on technological progress – he would have been down on computers, medical science, solar cells etc like a ton of bricks.
“Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers’ goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before.
This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow-men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual.
The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?”
Hi Phil
Thanks for your response. New things should happen on www sites that claim some authority on any position. Seriously; I question experts too after years of experience in dealing with a wide range of practical problems in measurements and applications of science.
But my post was directed at some land holders and their attitudes to trees in their “natural” environment after silently watching the intrusion of mono culture crop farming in a variety of landscapes, none the least those my home state.
In comments elsewhere I refer to things I learned from ABC regional radio like ‘contour’ farming practices for dairy farmers under “young”: farmer awards, also talks by ABC legends Peter Cundall, Bill Mollison and Bert Farquhar.
Bert conceived the idea decades ago he could till large tracts of marginal grazing country with a hand full of worms. I will never forget how incredulous his apprentice was in his job of delivering seeded clods (worms) in a trailer to remote corners of this large property. But I recall Bert saying on air the key to success with worms was not using industrial fertilizes other than lime rock chips.
Bill Mollison of Permaculture fame “turned his attention from wildlife to humans, and how they behaved in their man-made jungle- after ten years of teaching, was fed up and frustrated with the academic system”.
Peter is the sort of bloke we can easily meet here and there chatting about the richness of everyone’s organic gardens.
We all go back a long way in understanding the opportunity for a fresh start.
For some reason Jennifer’s blog won’t let me post the ABC links
so it’s a social democracy you’re after then rog. Which do you consider the best national model to date that you’d like to emulate?
oh derr on me, you were quoting, but not aligning with the pro-socialism position?
Taz, the contour farming thing was tried decades ago, P A Yeomans was a great advocate, its about as useful as tits on a bull.
His son is following on the trade and has also branched out into conpiracies of men in black suits, aliens and other exotic creations.
Bill Mollison is not a legend.
Peter Cundall is an excellent and entertaining motivator.
I have met with these bio dynamic gurus and they are without a doubt a bunch of charlatans.
Today Rudolph Steiner would be regarded as a public nuisance. Nobody seriously still believes in fairies.
rog; matey, where has your show been all this time then?
Now I reckon we have the odd sod round this blog that hasn’t grown a decent spud or sprout in years
money freaks
Playing Russian roulette with World climates based on oil and coal company PR claims that the gun is probably empty, is just plain silly. Reality, observation, common sense and even overwhelming scientific opinion says, time and luck is running out fast. Global warming has to be fixed now.
………………………..
The solution to global warming need not and should not involve requiring Western society to go on some energy starvation diet.
I maintain in my book PRIORITY ONE Together We Can Beat Global Warming that we can keep our high standard of living. We can have as many cars as we want and they can be as big as we desire. Our affluent society can be even more affluent. Because fundamentally we are not short of anything, energy or raw materials, and we never will be. For us to continue, and to continue to improve our health and wealth and standard of living the only things we must change is our support for countries and industries that mine and sell fossil carbon based materials.
(Both PRIORITY ONE and also STRAIGHT TALKING On Ending Global Warming, which is a summary of the book’s concepts are freely available at http://www.yeomansplow.com.au )
There are just four requirements to end cancerous climate change.
FIRST We remove the current excess carbon dioxide from our atmosphere that our use of fossil carbon materials have added. We use plants to extract it, and then turn it into masses of soil organic matter – and so produce rich healthy productive soil. We do this by switching to organic type agricultural practices. Recognize that past soil fertility losses in the Great Plains contributed as much carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as came from all the cars Detroit ever built. We simply reverse that process.
SECOND For our mobile transport – cars trucks busses and airplanes, we switch totally to ethanol and biodiesel – produced from sugarcane and grains, and oil palms and oil seeds. Both these biofuels are economically practical and utterly feasible.
Tropical Africa could fuel Europe and Asia. Brazil could easily fuel the Americas – both north and south. America imports its petroleum fuel. So too it can import its biofuels. (And subsidize its local farmers if it wishes.) To make all this happen we must demand the elimination of all taxes and all excises on biofuels and we must set a minimum petroleum oil price of something over $60 per barrel so oil interests can not continue to juggle the oil market to kill biofuel development.
THIRD For large-scale industrial power generation we must accept, weather we like on not, the reality that nuclear energy is our only feasible option – and it’s safer and it’s unbelievable abundance.
Nuclear energy admittedly, is a highly emotive subject. In my book PRIORITY ONE I describe and catalogue the history and the motives behind the creation of the well funded, and vociferous anti-nuclear movement. I also demonstrate that moderate levels of nuclear radiation, (just like sunlight) are a noticeable health benefit and actually increase longevity.
FOURTH Sadly, we can no longer trust the motives of all too many environmental movements. To maintain the sale of oil fuels, petrochemicals and agrochemicals, global warming issues have to be consistently and systematically defused. It is logical and astute public relations to fund, to infiltrate and then influence and modify the aims and objectives of all major environmental movements (and governments).
If the end result of some environmental campaign results directly or indirectly in the increased sales of fossil fuels or agrochemicals, they should not be supported nor trusted. Patric Moore was one of the founders of Greenpeace. However he now believes we should adopt nuclear energy. So Greenpeace vilify him. Another example, throughout Australasia, the giant BP Oil Company was run by Greg Bourne. He moved sideways and now runs the World Wide Fund for nature, the WWF – the one with the Panda logo.
“—-but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time”
Global warming is happening now and is already proving enormously expensive in life and property and decreased living standards. It’s frightening, and it’s much worse than we are ever encouraged to believe. Being convinced is not enough. We all must convince others.
Allan Yeomans
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Is there any really serious critism of Lovelocks January 16 prognosis of catastophic results of unchecked global warming? And , is there any possibility that great minds can foresee mechanisms in addition to photosynthesis, to remove large quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere?. I dont have the answers as I was primarily trained as a lawyer until I quit that profession and tried to become a sustainable gardener.