Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades. This is the stark conclusion of James Lovelock, the globally respected environmental thinker and independent scientist who developed the Gaia theory.
It follows a tumultuous few months in which public opinion on efforts to tackle climate change has been undermined by events such as the climate scientists’ emails leaked from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit.
“I don’t think we’re yet evolved to the point where we’re clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change,” said Lovelock in his first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last November. “The inertia of humans is so huge that you can’t really do anything meaningful.”
One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is “modern democracy”, he added. “Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.”
This isn’t going to end well.
Found by David Guaraglia.
Bobbo, re: “I see no proof of global warming, just best evidence for. We should stop adding co2 for a variety of reasons, not just AGW. I agree, all solutions have to be cost effective and doable/effective==not a c’mon for the next huge financial scam.”
… That would be included in exactly how I feel.
I marvel at how in spite of the ‘science’ of global warming being openly exposed as a fraud, people just boldly (or is it indifferently?) continue to address this phony problem. Furthermore, has anyone ever heard or read a report about global warming that included CO2 measurements? Not that those numbers would be any more reliable given that the temperature numbers were phony, but if you’re going to perpetuate a fraud shouldn’t you at least be industrious enough to put up some fake CO2 stats?
We’ll all be happily killing one another by the stadium-full over dwindling oil supplies long before Global Warming should ever come to the forefront as a concern.
Remember boys and girls, there are no seatbelts on Darwin’s bumper car.
Hi ho!
Democracy is not destroying the Planet, It is CAPITALISM AND NEVER-ENDING “GROWTH” !!! Capitalism is driving the “Intelligent” humans to BULDOZE THE ENTIRE PLANET FOR “PROFIT” !!! But as the Bible says: “What profit a man if he wins the world, but loses his soul?” ….
#44,
very true..
But I like:
“A dog dont *SPIT* in its own yard”
Once its out of site, WE DONT give a Dam.
Except that the PILE is getting mighty high.
most of the problem, comes with PACKAGING..and the corps like the CHEAP stuff, insted of a Paper bag/box…
Chemicals are another problem..
CHEAP is the main concern of Corps. NO MATTER the cost.
There’s nothing wrong with capitalism. It just needs to be kept on a leash… forced to follow reasonable rules of conduct.
Capitalism gets ugly when greedy, selfish, unthinking consumers pay them to be that way.
I read a great article in Discover a few years ago about waterslides. It’s point was that it’s impossible for us to accurately predict how water is going to behave on its way down the slide. There are so many variables and the system is so chaotic that they literally build the slides by trial and error.
I’ve always loved Chaos Theory and it’s fascinating to me how often it appears to be left out of the discussion of complex systems. We can’t accurately model water going down a 50 foot slide, yet climate scientists claim to be able to predict global climate trends 50 years from now with startling specificity? To believe that our understanding of climate is derived by anything other than trial and error is simply delusional.
But even if we were to concede that scientists can make accurate climate predictions, everyone seems to be ignoring the human system. Humanity as a system is equally, if not more so, complex and dynamic than global climate. I won’t pretend to be able to predict the state of humanity 50 years from now, but I’ve made a few observations that I believe are pertinent. We are nearly unilaterally awful about predicting even our own future, we seem to consistently and dramatically underestimate our capacity for change and adaptation, and as the wise Dr. Ian Malcolm would say, “Life always finds a way.” So even if the worst predictions of global warming end up being true, I suspect that we aren’t going to be laying around on the beach waiting for rising sea levels to drown us all.
In conclusion, I think pollution is bad, global warming is probably going to continue regardless of what we do, and people will deal with it. Some places will become more amenable to life and some areas will become less so. Humanity, and the planet in general, will respond accordingly. I’m personally stoked about a return to a more Cretaceous-ish climate.
JCD stated what I meant, but more clearly. The Earth is a big dog and she can just shake off the fleas if she wants to!
Never give any form of government a power you would not give to your worst enemy.
SEE he is an eco-fascist.
All will conform to our ideology!
This is why he is so worshiped by all the dehuminists, rolling stoners, masturpators out there.
One fact that is rarely raised in the debate is:
The Earth is starved of CO2. It evolved C4 plants (or C3 I can’t recall) which are the grass derivatives et al, to be able to concentrate the scare resource due to 4 billion years of eating it. It sacrifices a portion of the sunlight energy, given sufficient water to do so.
Don’t you think that this eating potential is a huge negative feedback system that any idea of carbon sequestoring is just plain stupid. Any thought alone these lines comes across the inconvenient-to-alarmists Earth carbon cycle
Please promote rational thought!
#37–Yakimura==I find your “type” of posting quite distressing. Very well written, but total BS.
Chaos theory has nothing to do with building water slides. Its effect is indistinguishable from no effect at all. If you study Chaos Theory you should know that and stop presenting a false expertise.
You make exactly the same GROSSLY over simplified equation with the “adaptability” of the human species. We adapt to fewer food calories being available by dieing off. We adapt to population displacement by going to war. Silly to “think” some gross results are not TOTALLY PREDICTABLE, like water goes downhill, simply because some tiny eddy at the edge can’t be predicted.
Too much education, not enough common sense.
#51—take a wild guess why C4 is not often raised in this debate. Go ahead. Guess.
#51 you are very close…
BUT, hwy not substitute, our presence with OXYGEN???
Find a way to crate a REVERSE process to make the SAME(sci has proven it) and you could rule the world..
It’s not warmer than average. It was below freezing and snowing yesterday. It’s May 9th for crying out loud!
The Earth is getting colder, not warmer, just like they said it would way back in the 70s before they changed their minds and said it was getting warmer.
Open up your window and stick your head out side. It ain’t warm. It’s pert near sub-arctic with a blistering near windless air tranquility and mid day temps down in the upper 50Fs on their way back to the low to mid 30Fs or between 1-3C.
The world, as a whole, fared much better under the measurably warmer period of the 9th through 12th centuries, when grapes were grown in England, and even Greenland and well before [i]their[/i] now famous glacier melted in 1919 but the knowledge of such only recently mass publicized in a cult movie popular with the leftist sub-counterculture.
It’s really dangerous to give one only reason to put democracy on hold.
Germany thought Hitler was a not too bad solution for just a few years, “just till things go well again”.