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The Prophet of Climate Change: James Lovelock



 
 
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Old October 25th 07, 01:04 AM posted to alt.global-warming,sci.environment,sci.space.policy,alt.sci.planetary
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Default The Prophet of Climate Change: James Lovelock

Tim Murphy wrote:
Oct 17, 200

Rolling Stone

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...james_lovelock

The Prophet of Climate Change: James Lovelock

One of the most eminent scientists of our time says that global warming is

irreversible and that more than 6 billion people will perish by the end

of the century

By

Jeff Goodell



At the age of eighty-eight, after four children and a long and respected

career as one of the twentieth century's most influential scientists,

James Lovelock has come to an unsettling conclusion: The human race is

doomed. "I wish I could be more hopeful," he tells me one sunny morning as

we walk through a park in Oslo, where he is giving a talk at a university.

Lovelock is a small man, unfailingly polite, with white hair and round,

owlish glasses. His step is jaunty, his mind lively, his manner anything

but gloomy. In fact, the coming of the Four Horsemen -- war, famine,

pestilence and death -- seems to perk him up. "It will be a dark time,"

Lovelock admits. "But for those who survive, I suspect it will be rather

exciting."

In Lovelock's view, the scale of the catastrophe that awaits us will soon

become obvious. By 2020, droughts and other extreme weather will be

commonplace. By 2040, the Sahara will be moving into Europe, and Berlin

will be as hot as Baghdad. Atlanta will end up a kudzu jungle. Phoenix

will become uninhabitable, as will parts of Beijing (desert), Miami

(rising seas) and London (floods). Food shortages will drive millions of

people north, raising political tensions. "The Chinese have nowhere to go

but up into Siberia," Lovelock says. "How will the Russians feel about

that? I fear that war between Russia and China is probably inevitable."

With hardship and mass migrations will come epidemics, which are likely to

kill millions. By 2100, Lovelock believes, the Earth's population will be

culled from today's 6.6 billion to as few as 500 million, with most of the

survivors living in the far latitudes -- Canada, Iceland, Scandinavia, the

Arctic Basin.

By the end of the century, according to Lovelock, global warming will

cause temperate zones like North America and Europe to heat up by fourteen

degrees Fahrenheit, nearly double the likeliest predictions of the latest

report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United

Nations-sanctioned body that includes the world's top scientists. "Our

future," Lovelock writes, "is like that of the passengers on a small

pleasure boat sailing quietly above the Niagara Falls, not knowing that

the engines are about to fail." And switching to energy-efficient light

bulbs won't save us. To Lovelock, cutting greenhouse-gas pollution won't

make much difference at this point, and much of what passes for

sustainable development is little more than a scam to profit off disaster.

"Green," he tells me, only half-joking, "is the color of mold and

corruption."

If such predictions were coming from anyone else, you would laugh them off

as the ravings of an old man projecting his own impending death onto the

world around him. But Lovelock is not so easily dismissed. As an inventor,

he created a device that helped detect the growing hole in the ozone layer

and jump-start the environmental movement in the 1970s. And as a

scientist, he introduced the revolutionary theory known as Gaia -- the

idea that our entire planet is a kind of superorganism that is, in a

sense, "alive." Once dismissed as New Age quackery, Lovelock's vision of a

self-regulating Earth now underlies virtually all climate science. Lynn

Margulis, a pioneering biologist at the University of Massachusetts, calls

him "one of the most innovative and mischievous scientific minds of our

time." Richard Branson, the British entrepreneur, credits Lovelock with

inspiring him to pledge billions of dollars to fight global warming. "Jim

is a brilliant scientist who has been right about many things in the

past," Branson says. "If he's feeling gloomy about the future, it's

important for mankind to pay attention."

Lovelock knows that predicting the end of civilization is not an exact

science. "I could be wrong about all this," he admits as we stroll around

the park in Norway. "The trouble is, all those well-intentioned scientists

who are arguing that we're not in any imminent danger are basing their

arguments on computer models. I'm basing mine on whats actually

happening."

When you approach Lovelock's house in Devon, a rural area in southwestern

England, the sign on the metal gate reads:

COOMBE MILL EXPERIMENTAL STATION

SITE OF NEW NATURAL HABITAT

PLEASE DO NOT TRESPASS OR DISTURB

A few hundred yards down a narrow lane, beside the site of an old mill, is

a white, slate-roofed cottage where Lovelock lives with his second wife,

Sandy, an American, and his youngest son, John, who is fifty-one and

mildly disabled. It's a fairy-tale setting, surrounded by thirty-five

wooded acres -- no vegetable garden, no manicured rosebushes. "I detest

all that," Lovelock tells me. Partly hidden in the woods is a life-size

statue of Gaia, the Greek goddess of the Earth, whom Lovelock named his

groundbreaking theory after.

Most scientists toil at the margins of human knowledge, adding

incrementally to our understanding of the world. Lovelock is one of the

few living scientists whose ideas have touched off not only a scientific

revolution but a spiritual one as well. "Future historians of science will

see Lovelock as a man who inspired a Copernican shift in how we see

ourselves in the world," says Tim Lenton, a climate researcher at the

University of East Anglia, in England. Before Lovelock came along, the

Earth was seen as little more than a cozy rock drifting around the sun.

According to the accepted wisdom, life evolved here because the conditions

were right -- not too hot, not too cold, plenty of water. Somehow bacteria

grew into multicelled organisms, fish crawled out of the sea, and before

long, Britney Spears arrived.

In the 1970s, Lovelock upended all this with a simple question: Why is the

Earth different from Mars and Venus, where the atmosphere is toxic to

life? In a flash of insight, Lovelock understood that our atmosphere was

created not by random geological events but by the cumulative effusion of

everything that has ever breathed, grown and decayed. Our air "is not

merely a biological product," Lovelock wrote, "but more probably a

biological construction: not living, but like a cat's fur, a bird's

feathers or the paper of a wasp's nest, an extension of a living system

designed to maintain a chosen environment." According to Gaia theory, life

is not just a passenger on Earth but an active participant, helping to

create the very conditions that sustain it. It's a beautiful idea --life

begets life. It was also right in tune with the post-flower-child mood of

the Seventies. Lovelock was quickly adopted as a spiritual guru, the man

who killed God and put the planet at the center of New Age religious

experience.

Lovelock is not an alarmist by nature. In his view, the dangers of nuclear

power are grossly overstated. Ditto mercury emissions in the atmosphere,

genetic engineering of food and the loss of biodiversity on the planet.

The greatest mistake in his career, in fact, was not claiming that the sky

was falling but failing to recognize that it was. In 1973, after being the

first to discover that industrial chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons had

polluted the atmosphere, Lovelock declared that the buildup of CFCs posed

"no conceivable hazard." As it turned out, CFCs weren't toxic to breathe,

but they were eating a hole in the ozone. Lovelock quickly revised his

view, calling it "one of my greatest blunders," but the mistake may have

cost him a share in a Nobel Prize.

At first, Lovelock didn't view global warming as an urgent threat to the

planet. "Gaia is a tough bitch," he often said, borrowing a phrase coined

by a colleague. But a few years ago, alarmed by rapidly melting ice in the

Arctic and other climate-related changes, Lovelock became convinced that

Gaia's autopilot system -- the giant, inexpressibly subtle network of

positive and negative feedbacks that keeps the Earths climate in balance

-- is seriously out of whack, derailed by pollution and deforestation.

Lovelock believes the planet itself will eventually recover its

equilibrium, even if it takes millions of years. What's at stake, he says,

is civilization.

"You could quite seriously look at climate change as a response of the

system intended to get rid of an irritating species: us humans," Lovelock

tells me in the small office he has created in his cottage. "Or at least

cut them back to size."

Lovelock's cottage in the woods is a world away from South London, where

he grew up with coal soot in his lungs, coughing and pale and

working-class. His mother was an early feminist; his father grew up so

desperately hungry that he spent six months in prison when he was fourteen

for poaching a rabbit from a local squires estate. Shortly after Lovelock

was born, his parents passed him off to his grandmother to raise. "They

were too poor and too busy to raise a child," he explains. In school, he

was a lousy student, mildly dyslexic, more interested in pranks than

homework. But he loved books, especially the science fiction of Jules

Verne and H.G. Wells.

To escape the grime of urban life, Lovelock's father often took him on

long walks in the countryside, where he caught trout by hand from the

streams and gorged on blueberries. The freedom and romance Lovelock felt

on these jaunts had a transformative effect on him. "It's where I first

saw the face of Gaia," he says now.

By the time Lovelock hit puberty, he knew he wanted to be a scientist. His

first love was physics. But his dyslexia made complex math difficult, so

he opted instead for chemistry, enrolling at the University of London. A

year later, when the Nazis invaded Poland, Lovelock converted to Quakerism

and soon became a conscientious objector. In his written statement, he

explained why he refused to fight: "War is evil."

Lovelock took a job at the National Institute for Medical Research in

London, where one of his first assignments was to develop new ways to stop

the spread of infectious diseases. He spent months in underground bomb

shelters studying how viruses are transmitted -- and shagging nurses in

first-aid stations while Nazi bombs fell overhead. "It was a hard,

desperate time," he says. "But it was exciting! It's terribly ironic, but

war does make one feel alive."

As a result of his research in the bomb shelters, Lovelock ended up

inventing the first aerosol disinfectant. A few years later, as a pioneer

in the field of cryogenics, he became the first to understand how cellular

structures respond to extreme cold, developing a means to freeze and thaw

animal sperm -- a method still in use today. "Thanks to Lovelock," says

biologist Lynn Margulis, "they don't have to send the entire bull to

Australia."

But Lovelock's most important invention was the Electron Capture Detector,

or ECD. In 1957, working at his kitchen table, Lovelock hacked together a

device to measure minute concentrations of pesticides and other gases in

the air. The instrument fit into the palm of his hand and was so

exquisitely sensitive that if you dumped a bottle of some rare chemical on

a blanket in Japan and let it evaporate, the ECD would be able to detect

it a week later in England. The device was eventually redesigned by

Hewlett-Packard: If Lovelock had retained the patent, he would have been a

rich man. "Jim has never cared much for money," says Armand Neukermans, a

Silicon Valley entrepreneur and old friend of Lovelock, "except to buy

himself freedom as an independent scientist."

As it turned out, Lovelock's invention roughly coincided with the

publication in 1962 of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which alerted the

world to the dangers of pesticides like DDT. By the time her book

appeared, scientists were already using the ECD to measure pesticide

residue in the fat of Antarctic penguins and in the milk of nursing

mothers in Finland, giving hard evidence to Carson's claims that chemicals

were impacting the environment on a global scale. "If it hadn't been for

my ECD," Lovelock says, "I think critics in the industry would have

dismissed the whole thing as wet chemistry -- 'Oh, you can't measure this

stuff accurately, can't extrapolate.' And they would have been right."

A decade later, Lovelock made an even more important discovery. In the

late 1960s, while staying at an isolated vacation house in Ireland, he

took a random sample of the haze that drifted into the area and found it

laced with chlorofluorocarbons. CFCs are man-made compounds used as a

refrigerant and as a propellant in aerosol cans -- a sure sign of man-made

pollution. If CFCs are in remote Ireland, Lovelock wondered, where else

might they be? Hitching a ride on a research vessel for a six-month voyage

to Antarctica, he used a jury-rigged ECD to detect the buildup of CFCs in

the atmosphere. But Lovelock failed to grasp the danger that they posed;

two other scientists won the Nobel Prize for correctly hypothesizing that

CFCs would burn a hole in the stratosphere, allowing dangerous levels of

ultraviolet light to reach the Earth. As a result, CFCs were banned. "If

Lovelock hadn't detected those CFCs," says Stanford University biologist

Paul Ehrlich, "we'd all be living under the ocean in snorkels and fins to

escape that poisonous sun."

If you type "gaia" and "religion" into Google, you'll get 2,360,000 hits

-- Wiccans, spiritual travelers, massage therapists and sexual healers,

all inspired by Lovelock's vision of the planet. Ask him about pagan

cults, though, and Lovelock grimaces -- he has no interest in soft-headed

spirituality or organized religion, especially when it puts human

existence above all else. At Oxford, he once stood up and admonished

Mother Teresa for urging an audience to take care of the poor and "leave

God to take care of the Earth." As Lovelock explained to her, "If we as

people do not respect and take care of the Earth, we can be sure that the

Earth, in the role of Gaia, will take care of us and, if necessary,

eliminate us."

Lovelock came up with the Gaia theory during a rough time in his life. In

1961, he was forty-one and working at a research center in London. It was

a good job, decent pay, plenty of freedom, but he was bored. He had four

kids at home, including John, who was born with a birth defect that left

him brain-damaged. In addition, Lovelocks mother -- cranky, demanding,

aged -- was driving him nuts. He smoked, he drank. Today, we'd call it a

midlife crisis.

One day, a letter from NASA arrived in Lovelock's mailbox, inviting him to

join a group of scientists who were about to explore the moon. He had

never heard of the space agency -- but within a few months he had dumped

his job, packed up the family and moved to America to join the space race.

Before long, though, he concluded that, scientifically speaking, the moon

wasn't a very interesting place. The real excitement was Mars. "With the

moon, the question was, is it safe for astronauts to walk on the surface?"

Lovelock recalls. "With Mars, the question was, is there life there?"

Lovelock's colleagues at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,

California, struggled to design instruments to test for life on the

Martian surface. Lovelock, as usual, took a different approach. Instead of

using a probe to dig up soil and look for bacteria, he thought, why not

analyze the chemical composition of the Martian atmosphere? If life were

present, he reasoned, the organisms would be obliged to use up raw

materials in the atmosphere (such as oxygen) and dump waste products (like

methane), just as life on Earth does. Even if the materials consumed and

discharged were different, the chemical imbalance would be relatively

simple to detect. Sure enough, when Lovelock and his colleagues finally

got an analysis of Mars, they discovered that the atmosphere was close to

chemical equilibrium -- suggesting that there had been no life on the

planet.

But if life creates the atmosphere, Lovelock reasoned, it must also, in

some sense, be regulating it. He knew, for example, that the sun is now

about twenty-five percent hotter than when life began. What was modulating

the surface temperature of the Earth, keeping it hospitable? Life itself,

Lovelock concluded. When the Earth heats up, plants draw down levels of

carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases; as it cools, the levels of

those gases rise, warming the planet. Thus, the idea of the Earth as

superorganism was born.

The idea was not entirely new: Leonardo da Vinci believed pretty much the

same thing in the sixteenth century. But Lovelock was the first to

assemble all the existing thinking into a new vision of the planet. He

soon quit NASA and moved back to England, where his neighbor William

Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, suggested that he name his theory

after Gaia, to capture the popular imagination. When established

scientific journals refused to touch his ideas, Lovelock put out a book

called Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. "The Gaia hypothesis," he wrote,

"is for those who like to walk or simply stand and stare, to wonder about

the Earth and the life it bears and to speculate about the consequences of

our own presence here." Gaia, he added, offers an alternative to the

"depressing picture of our planet as a demented spaceship, forever

traveling driverless and purposeless around an inner circle of the sun."

Hippies loved it. Darwinists didn't. Richard Dawkins, author of The

Selfish Gene, dismissed Lovelock's book as "pop-ecology literature."

British biologist John Maynard Smith went further, calling Gaia "an evil

religion." In their view, Lovelock's concept flew in the face of

evolutionary logic: If the Earth is an organism, and organisms evolve by

natural selection, then that implies that somehow the Earth out-competed

other planets. How is that possible? They were also troubled by Lovelock's

suggestion that life creates the condition for life, which seems to

suggest a predetermined purpose. In the minds of many of his peers,

Lovelock was dancing very close to God.

But that was not what Lovelock had in mind. Large systems, in his view,

don't need a purpose. To prove it, Lovelock and a colleague devised a

simple, elegant computer model called Daisyworld, which used competing

fields of daisies to show how organisms evolving under rules of natural

selection are part of a self-regulating system. As the model planet heats

up, white daisies thrive, reflecting more sunlight; that, in turn, lowers

the temperature, which favors black daisies. Working together, the flowers

regulate the temperature of the planet. The daisies are not altruistic or

conscious -- they simply exist and, by existing, alter their environment.

Daisyworld quieted some of the critics, but the scientific debate over

Gaia raged throughout the 1980s. Lovelock continued refining his thoughts

despite troubles in his personal life. His first wife, Helen, was in the

midst of a slow and painful decline from multiple sclerosis. Lovelock

himself had several major surgeries, including the removal of a kidney he

damaged in a tractor accident. He supported himself in part as a

consultant for MI5, England's top counterintelligence agency, where he

developed a method to monitor the movements of KGB spies in London by

using an ECD to track their vehicles. To Lovelock, working for the spy

agency was the equivalent of writing potboiler novels for a quick

paycheck. "It was enjoyable work, and it kept food on the table," he says

now.

Among scientists, Lovelock redeemed himself with a second book, The Ages

of Gaia, which offered a more rigorous exploration of the biological and

geophysical feedback mechanisms that keep the Earth's atmosphere suitable

for life. Plankton in the oceans, for example, help cool the planet by

giving off dimethyl sulfide, a chemical that seeds the formation of

clouds, which in turn reflect the sun's heat back into space. "In the

1970s, plenty of us thought Gaia was nonsense," says Wally Broecker, a

paleoclimatologist at Columbia University. "But Lovelock got everyone

thinking more seriously about the dynamic nature of the planet." Of

course, scientists like Broecker rarely used the word "Gaia." They prefer

the phrase "Earth system science," which views the world, according to one

treatise, as "a single, self-regulating system comprised of physical,

chemical, biological and human components." In other words, Gaia in a lab

coat.

Gaia offers a hopeful vision of how the world works. After all, if the

Earth is more than just a rock drifting around the sun, if it's a

superorganism that can evolve, that means -- to put it in a way that will

**** off biology majors and neo-Darwinists everywhere -- there is a

certain amount of forgiveness built into our world.

For Lovelock, this is a comforting idea. Consider his little spread in

Devon. When he bought the place thirty years ago, it was surrounded by

fields shorn by a thousand years of sheep-grazing. But to Lovelock, open

land reeks of human interference with Gaia. So he set out to restore his

thirty-five acres to its more natural character. After consulting with a

forester, he planted 20,000 trees -- alders, oaks, pines. Unfortunately,

he planted many of them too close together, and in rows. The trees are

about forty feet tall now, but rather than feeling "natural," parts of his

land have the look of a badly managed forestry project. "I botched it,"

Lovelock says with a grin as we hike through the woods. "But in the long

run, Gaia will take care of it."

Until recently, Lovelock thought that global warming would be just like

his half-assed forest -- something the planet would correct for. Then, in

2004, Lovelock's friend Richard Betts, a researcher at the Hadley Centre

for Climate Change -- England's top climate institute -- invited him to

stop by and talk with the scientists there. Lovelock went from meeting to

meeting, hearing the latest data about melting ice at the poles, shrinking

rain forests, the carbon cycle in the oceans. "It was terrifying," he

recalls. "We were shown five separate scenes of positive feedback in

regional climates -- polar, glacial, boreal forest, tropical forest and

oceans -- but no one seemed to be working on whole-planet consequences."

Equally chilling, he says, was the tone in which the scientists talked

about the changes they were witnessing, "as if they were discussing some

distant planet or a model universe, instead of the place where we all

live."

As Lovelock was driving home that evening, it hit him. The resiliency of

the system was gone. The forgiveness had been used up. "The whole system,"

he decided, "is in failure mode." A few weeks later, he began work on his

latest and gloomiest book, The Revenge of Gaia, which was published in the

U.S. in 2006.

In Lovelock's view, the flaws in computer climate models are painfully

apparent. Take the uncertainty around projected sea levels: The IPCC, the

U.N. panel on climate change, estimates that global warming will cause

Earth's average temperature to rise as much as 11.5 degrees by 2100. This

will cause inland glaciers to melt and seas to expand, triggering a

maximum sea level rise of only twenty-three inches. Greenland, according

to the IPCC's models, will take 1,000 years to melt.

But evidence from the real world suggests that the IPCC is far too

conservative. For one thing, scientists know from the geological record

that 3 million years ago, when temperatures increased to five degrees

above today's level, the seas rose not by twenty-three inches but by more

than eighty feet. What's more, recent satellite measurements indicate that

Arctic ice is melting so rapidly that the region could be ice-free by

2030. "Modelers don't have the foggiest idea about the dynamics of melting

ice sheets," scoffs Lovelock.

It's not just ice that throws off the climate models. Cloud physics are

notoriously difficult to get right, and feedbacks from the biosphere, such

as deforestation and melting tundra, are rarely factored in. "Computer

models are not crystal balls," argues Ken Caldeira, a climate modeler at

Stanford University whose career has been deeply influenced by Lovelock's

ideas. "By observing the past, you make informed judgments about the

future. Computer models are just a way to codify that accumulated

knowledge into automated educated bets."

Here, in its oversimplified essence, is Lovelock's doomsday scenario:

Rising heat means more ice melting at the poles, which means more open

water and land. That, in turn, increases the heat (ice reflects sunlight;

open land and water absorb it), causing more ice to melt. The seas rise.

More heat leads to more intense rainfall in some places, droughts in

others. The Amazon rain forests and the great northern boreal forests

--the belt of pine and spruce that covers Alaska, Canada and Siberia

--undergo a growth spurt, then wither away. The permafrost in northern

latitudes thaws, releasing methane, a greenhouse gas that is twenty times

more potent than CO2 -- and on and on it goes.

In a functioning Gaian world, these positive feedbacks would be modulated

by negative feedbacks, the largest of which is the Earth's ability to

radiate heat into space. But at a certain point, the regulatory system

breaks down and the planet's climate makes the jump -- as it has many

times in the past -- to a new, hotter state. Not the end of the world, but

certainly the end of the world as we know it.

Lovelock's doomsday scenario is dismissed by leading climate researchers,

most of whom dispute the idea that there is a single tipping point for the

entire planet. "Individual ecosystems may fail or the ice sheets may

collapse," says Caldeira, "but the larger system appears to be

surprisingly resilient." But let's assume for the moment that Lovelock is

right and we are indeed poised above Niagara Falls. Do we just wave as we

go over the edge? In Lovelock's view, modest cuts in greenhouse-gas

emissions won't help us -- it's too late to stop global warming by

swapping our SUVs for hybrids. What about capturing carbon-dioxide

pollution from coal plants and pumping it underground? "We can't possibly

bury enough to make any difference." Biofuels? "A monumentally stupid

idea." Renewables? "Nice, but won't make a dent." To Lovelock, the whole

idea of sustainable development is wrongheaded: "We should be thinking

about sustainable retreat."

Retreat, in his view, means it's time to start talking about changing

where we live and how we get our food; about making plans for the

migration of millions of people from low-lying regions like Bangladesh

into Europe; about admitting that New Orleans is a goner and moving the

people to cities better positioned for the future. Most of all, he says,

it's about everybody "absolutely doing their utmost to sustain

civilization, so that it doesn't degenerate into Dark Ages, with warlords

running things, which is a real danger. We could lose everything that

way."

Even Lovelock's friends cringe when he talks like this. "I fear he's

overdrawing our despair budget," says Chris Rapley, head of the Science

Museum in London, who has worked hard to raise international awareness of

global warming. Others are justifiably concerned that Lovelock's views

will distract from the rising political momentum for tough restrictions on

greenhouse-gas pollution. Broecker, the Columbia paleoclimatologist, calls

Lovelock's belief that cutting pollution is futile "dangerous nonsense."

"I wish I could say that wind turbines and solar panels will save us,"

Lovelock responds. "But I can't. There isn't any kind of solution

possible. There are nearly 7 billion people on the planet now, not to

mention livestock and pets. If you just take the CO2 of everything

breathing, it's twenty-five percent of the total --four times as much CO2

as all the airlines in the world. So if you want to improve your carbon

footprint, just hold your breath. It's terrifying. We have just exceeded

all reasonable bounds in numbers. And from a purely biological view, any

species that does that has a crash."

This is not to suggest, however, that Lovelock believes we should just

party while the world burns. Quite the opposite. "We need bold action,"

Lovelock insists. "We have a tremendous amount to do." In his view, we

have two choices: We can return to a more primitive lifestyle and live in

equilibrium with the planet as hunter-gatherers, or we can sequester

ourselves in a very sophisticated, high-tech civilization. "There's no

question which path I'd prefer," he says one morning in his cottage,

grinning broadly and tapping the keyboard of his computer. "It's really a

question of how we organize society -- where we will get our food, water.

How we will generate energy."

For water, the answer is pretty straightforward: desalination plants,

which can turn ocean water into drinking water. Food supply is tougher:

Heat and drought will devastate many of today's food-growing regions. It

will also push people north, where they will cluster in cities. In these

areas, there will be no room for backyard gardens. As a result, Lovelock

believes, we will have to synthesize food -- to grow it in vats from

tissue cultures of meats and vegetables. It sounds far out and deeply

unappetizing, but from a technological standpoint, it wouldn't be hard to

do.

A steady supply of electricity will also be vital. Five days after his

visit to the Hadley Centre, Lovelock penned a fiery op-ed titled "Nuclear

Power Is the Only Green Solution." Lovelock argued that we should "use the

small input from renewables sensibly" but that "we have no time to

experiment with visionary energy sources; civilization is in imminent

danger and has to use nuclear -- the one safe, available energy source --

now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet."

Environmentalists howled in protest, but for anyone who knew Lovelock's

past, his embrace of nukes is not surprising. At the age of fourteen,

reading about how the sun is powered by a nuclear reaction, he came to

believe that nuclear energy is one of the fundamental forces in the

universe. Why not harness it? As for the dangers -- radioactive waste,

vulnerability to terrorism, the possibility of a Chernobyl-like meltdown

-- Lovelock says it's the lesser of two evils: "Even if they're right

about the dangers, and they are not, it is still nothing compared to

climate change."

As a last resort, to keep the planet even marginally habitable, Lovelock

believes that humans may be forced to manipulate the Earth's climate by

erecting solar shades in space or building devices to strip huge

quantities of CO2 out of the atmosphere. Although he views large-scale

geoengineering as an act of profound hubris -- "I would sooner expect a

goat to succeed as a gardener than expect humans to become stewards of the

Earth" -- he thinks it may be necessary as an emergency measure, much like

kidney dialysis is necessary to a person whose health is failing. In fact,

it was Lovelock who inspired his friend Richard Branson to put up a $25

million prize for the Virgin Earth Challenge, which will be awarded to the

first person who can figure out a commercially viable way of removing

greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. As a judge in the contest, Lovelock

is not eligible to win, but he's intrigued by the challenge. His latest

thought: suspend hundreds of thousands of 600-foot-long vertical pipes in

the tropical oceans, put a valve at the bottom of each pipe and allow

deep, nutrient-rich water to be pumped to the surface by wave action.

Nutrients from the deep water would increase algae bloom, which would suck

up carbon dioxide and help cool the planet.

"It's a way of leveraging the Earth's natural energy system against

itself," Lovelock speculates. "I think Gaia would approve."

Oslo is Lovelock's kind of town. It's in the northern latitudes, which

will grow more temperate as the climate warms; it has plenty of water;

thanks to its oil and gas reserves, it's rich; and there's already lots of

creative thinking going on about energy, including, much to Lovelock's

satisfaction, renewed discussion about nuclear power. "The main issue

they'll face here," Lovelock tells me as we walk along Karl Johans Gate,

the citys main boulevard, "is how to manage the hordes of people that

will descend upon the city. In the next few decades, half the population

of southern Europe will try to move here."

We head down to the waterfront, where we pass Akershus Castle, an imposing

thirteenth-century fortress that served as Nazi headquarters during their

occupation of the city during World War II. To Lovelock, the parallels

between what the world faced then and what the world faces now are clear.

"In some ways, its 1939 all over again," he says. "The threat is obvious,

but we've failed to grasp what's at stake. We're still talking about

appeasement."

Then, as now, the lack of political leadership is what's most striking to

Lovelock. Although he respects Al Gore's efforts to raise people's

consciousness, he believes no politician has come close to preparing us

for what's coming. "We'll be living in a desperate world in no time,"

Lovelock says. He believes the time is right for a global-warming version

of Winston Churchill's famous "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil,

tears and sweat" speech he gave to prepare Great Britain for World War II.

"People are ready for this," Lovelock says as we pass under the shadow of

the castle. "They understand what's happening far better than most

politicians."

However the future turns out, Lovelock is unlikely to be around to see it.

"My goal is to live a rectangular life: long, strong and steady, then a

quick drop at the end," he says. Lovelock shows no signs of hitting his

own personal tipping point. Although he's had forty operations, including

a heart bypass, he still zooms around the English countryside in his white

Honda like a Formula One driver. He and Sandy recently took a monthlong

trip through Australia, where they visited the Great Barrier Reef. He's

about to start another book about Gaia. Richard Branson has invited him on

the first flight on the Virgin Galactic space shuttle late next year --"I

want to give him a view of Gaia from space," says Branson. Lovelock is

eager to go, and plans to take a test in a centrifuge later this year to

see if his body can withstand the G-forces of spaceflight. He shuns talk

of his legacy, although he jokes with his kids that he wants his headstone

to read, HE NEVER MEANT TO BE PROSCRIPTIVE.

Whatever his epitaph, Lovelock's legacy as one of the most provocative

scientists of our time is assured. And for all his gloom and doom, his

notion of the planet as a single dynamic system remains a hopeful idea. It

suggests that there are rules the system operates by and mechanisms that

drive it. These rules and mechanisms can be studied and, possibly,

tweaked. In many ways, Lovelock's holistic vision is an antidote to the

chaos of twentieth-century science, which fragmented the world into

quarks, quantum mechanics and untouchable mystery.

As for the doom that awaits us, Lovelock may well be wrong. Not because

he's misread the science (although thats certainly possible) but because

he's misread human beings. Few serious scientists doubt that we're on the

verge of a climate catastrophe. But for all Lovelock's sensitivity to the

subtle dynamics and feedback loops in the climate system, he is curiously

tone-deaf to the subtle dynamics and feedback loops in the human system.

He believes that, despite our iPhones and space shuttles, we are still

tribal animals, largely incapable of acting for the greater good or making

long-term decisions for our own welfare. "Our moral progress," says

Lovelock, "has not kept up with our technological progress."

But maybe that's exactly what the coming apocalypse is all about. One of

the questions that fascinates Lovelock: Life has been evolving on Earth

for more than 3 billion years -- and to what purpose? "Like it or not, we

are the brains and nervous system of Gaia," he says. "We have now assumed

responsibility for the welfare of the planet. How will we manage it?"

As we weave our way through the tourists heading up to the castle, it's

easy to look at them and feel sadness. Its harder to look at them and

feel hopeful. But when I say this to Lovelock, he argues that the human

race has gone through many bottlenecks before --and perhaps we're the

better for it. Then he tells me the story of an airplane crash years ago

at Manchester Airport. "A fuel tank caught fire during takeoff," Lovelock

says. "There was plenty of time for everybody to get out, but many of the

passengers wouldn't move. They just stayed there in their seats as they

were told to, and the people who escaped had to climb over them to get

out. It was perfectly obvious how to get out, but they wouldn't move. They

died from the smoke or burned to death. And an awful lot of people, I'm

sad to say, are like that. And that's what will happen this time, except

on a much vaster scale."

Lovelock looks at me with unflinching blue eyes. "Some people will sit in

their seats and do nothing, frozen in panic. Others will move. They'll see

what's about to happen, and they'll take action, and they'll survive.

They're the carriers of the civilization ahead."



=========


Hear hear.

Space colonization and extraterrestrial resources are the only answer.

For the United States of America, that entails the immediate cessation
of the NASA (National *Atmospheric* and Space Administration) VSE
(Vision for Space Exploration) ESAS (Exploration Systems Architecture
Study) architecture, and the embracing of ground started SSME (Space
Shuttle Main Engine) operations in an SSTO (Single Stage to Orbit
configuration, with the engines being returned to Earth in the nose cone
aeroshield, and the cryogenic tankage and residual fuel remaining in
orbit for space station and solar power satellite construction and
on-orbit refueling.

http://spacesolarpower.wordpress.com...-power-system/

Anything else is folly.
  #2  
Old October 25th 07, 01:34 AM posted to alt.global-warming,sci.environment,sci.space.policy,alt.sci.planetary
Bawana
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 44
Default The Prophet of Science Is ****: James Lovelock

[turd world dimmies lunacy snipped]

kunT wrote:

Space colonization and extraterrestrial resources are the only answer.

For the United States of America, that entails the immediate cessation
of the NASA (National *Atmospheric* and Space Administration) VSE
(Vision for Space Exploration) ESAS (Exploration Systems Architecture
Study) architecture,


That not gonna happen.
Got a plan B?

and the embracing of ground started SSME (Space
Shuttle Main Engine) operations in an SSTO (Single Stage to Orbit
configuration, with the engines being returned to Earth in the nose cone
aeroshield, and the cryogenic tankage and residual fuel remaining in
orbit for space station and solar power satellite construction and
on-orbit refueling.

http://spacesolarpower.wordpress.com...-power-system/

Yeah, I'm sure your proposals are on file with the proper government
authorities.

Anything else is folly.


God has a sense of humor.

  #3  
Old October 25th 07, 02:03 AM posted to alt.global-warming,sci.environment,sci.space.policy,alt.sci.planetary
kT
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5,032
Default The Prophet of Science Is ****: James Lovelock

Bawana wrote:
[turd world dimmies lunacy snipped]

kunT wrote:

Space colonization and extraterrestrial resources are the only answer.

For the United States of America, that entails the immediate cessation
of the NASA (National *Atmospheric* and Space Administration) VSE
(Vision for Space Exploration) ESAS (Exploration Systems Architecture
Study) architecture,


That not gonna happen.
Got a plan B?


Now that you mention it, I do. Several, actually.

Do you have any plan at all? We'd all love to hear it.

In fact, we've already predicted what your plan might entail.

and the embracing of ground started SSME (Space
Shuttle Main Engine) operations in an SSTO (Single Stage to Orbit
configuration, with the engines being returned to Earth in the nose cone
aeroshield, and the cryogenic tankage and residual fuel remaining in
orbit for space station and solar power satellite construction and
on-orbit refueling.

http://spacesolarpower.wordpress.com...-power-system/

Yeah, I'm sure your proposals are on file with the proper government
authorities.


As a matter of science, they are.

Anything else is folly.


God has a sense of humor.


What God would that be, there are so many to choose from.
  #4  
Old October 25th 07, 02:16 AM posted to alt.global-warming,sci.environment,sci.space.policy,alt.sci.planetary
john fernbach
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 33
Default The Prophet of Science Is ****: James Lovelock

On Oct 24, 9:03 pm, kT wrote:
Bawana wrote:
[turd world dimmies lunacy snipped]


kunT wrote:


Space colonization and extraterrestrial resources are the only answer.


For the United States of America, that entails the immediate cessation
of the NASA (National *Atmospheric* and Space Administration) VSE
(Vision for Space Exploration) ESAS (Exploration Systems Architecture
Study) architecture,


That not gonna happen.
Got a plan B?


Now that you mention it, I do. Several, actually.

Do you have any plan at all? We'd all love to hear it.

In fact, we've already predicted what your plan might entail.

and the embracing of ground started SSME (Space
Shuttle Main Engine) operations in an SSTO (Single Stage to Orbit
configuration, with the engines being returned to Earth in the nose cone
aeroshield, and the cryogenic tankage and residual fuel remaining in
orbit for space station and solar power satellite construction and
on-orbit refueling.

http://spacesolarpower.wordpress.com...build-a-space-...


Yeah, I'm sure your proposals are on file with the proper government
authorities.


As a matter of science, they are.

Anything else is folly.


God has a sense of humor.


What God would that be, there are so many to choose from.


kT - How are your space colonization plans going to provide an escape
hatch for the more than 6 billion humans who are now living on
Earth?

Given the laws of physics, the pull of gravity and the cost of rockets
and rocket fuels, it's virtually a certain bet that they CAN'T.

You write that "anything" (except for space travel) is "folly." But
for 90% of more of the human species, it's insanity to believe that
space colonization will be an "answer" for anybody outside a rather
tiny scientific elite.



  #5  
Old October 25th 07, 02:20 AM posted to alt.global-warming,sci.environment,sci.space.policy,alt.sci.planetary
kT
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5,032
Default The Prophet of Science Is ****: James Lovelock

john fernbach wrote:
On Oct 24, 9:03 pm, kT wrote:
Bawana wrote:
[turd world dimmies lunacy snipped]
kunT wrote:
Space colonization and extraterrestrial resources are the only answer.
For the United States of America, that entails the immediate cessation
of the NASA (National *Atmospheric* and Space Administration) VSE
(Vision for Space Exploration) ESAS (Exploration Systems Architecture
Study) architecture,
That not gonna happen.
Got a plan B?

Now that you mention it, I do. Several, actually.

Do you have any plan at all? We'd all love to hear it.

In fact, we've already predicted what your plan might entail.

and the embracing of ground started SSME (Space
Shuttle Main Engine) operations in an SSTO (Single Stage to Orbit
configuration, with the engines being returned to Earth in the nose cone
aeroshield, and the cryogenic tankage and residual fuel remaining in
orbit for space station and solar power satellite construction and
on-orbit refueling.
http://spacesolarpower.wordpress.com...build-a-space-...
Yeah, I'm sure your proposals are on file with the proper government
authorities.

As a matter of science, they are.

Anything else is folly.
God has a sense of humor.

What God would that be, there are so many to choose from.


kT - How are your space colonization plans going to provide an escape
hatch for the more than 6 billion humans who are now living on
Earth?


It isn't, at least not right away. They'll still have to live on Earth.

It's not an escape plan, as I've explained to you many times before.

Given the laws of physics, the pull of gravity and the cost of rockets
and rocket fuels, it's virtually a certain bet that they CAN'T.


As evidences by our six landing on the moon.

You write that "anything" (except for space travel) is "folly." But
for 90% of more of the human species, it's insanity to believe that
space colonization will be an "answer" for anybody outside a rather
tiny scientific elite.


I've explained it to you before here, I'm not going over it again.
  #6  
Old October 25th 07, 03:33 AM posted to alt.global-warming,sci.environment,sci.space.policy,alt.sci.planetary
Bawana
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 44
Default The Prophet of Science Is ****: James Lovelock

On Oct 24, 9:03 pm, kT wrote:
Bawana wrote:
[turd world dimmies lunacy snipped]


kunT wrote:


Space colonization and extraterrestrial resources are the only answer.


For the United States of America, that entails the immediate cessation
of the NASA (National *Atmospheric* and Space Administration) VSE
(Vision for Space Exploration) ESAS (Exploration Systems Architecture
Study) architecture,


That not gonna happen.
Got a plan B?


Now that you mention it, I do. Several, actually.


Do they involve safety deposit boxes, multiple ID's, cash, gold and
guns?

Do you have any plan at all?


It's working and I'm working it.

We'd all love to hear it.


Pearls before swine.

In fact, we've already predicted what your plan might entail.


You'll get to space before that happens.

and the embracing of ground started SSME (Space
Shuttle Main Engine) operations in an SSTO (Single Stage to Orbit
configuration, with the engines being returned to Earth in the nose cone
aeroshield, and the cryogenic tankage and residual fuel remaining in
orbit for space station and solar power satellite construction and
on-orbit refueling.

http://spacesolarpower.wordpress.com...build-a-space-...


Yeah, I'm sure your proposals are on file with the proper government
authorities.


As a matter of science, they are.


I'm sure...

Anything else is folly.


God has a sense of humor.


What God would that be, there are so many to choose from.


Take your pick, fruitcake.


  #7  
Old October 25th 07, 03:38 AM posted to alt.global-warming,sci.environment,sci.space.policy,alt.sci.planetary
Bawana
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 44
Default The Prophet of Science Is ****: James Lovelock

On Oct 24, 9:20 pm, kT wrote:
john fernbach wrote:
On Oct 24, 9:03 pm, kT wrote:
Bawana wrote:
[turd world dimmies lunacy snipped]
kunT wrote:
Space colonization and extraterrestrial resources are the only answer.
For the United States of America, that entails the immediate cessation
of the NASA (National *Atmospheric* and Space Administration) VSE
(Vision for Space Exploration) ESAS (Exploration Systems Architecture
Study) architecture,
That not gonna happen.
Got a plan B?
Now that you mention it, I do. Several, actually.


Do you have any plan at all? We'd all love to hear it.


In fact, we've already predicted what your plan might entail.


and the embracing of ground started SSME (Space
Shuttle Main Engine) operations in an SSTO (Single Stage to Orbit
configuration, with the engines being returned to Earth in the nose cone
aeroshield, and the cryogenic tankage and residual fuel remaining in
orbit for space station and solar power satellite construction and
on-orbit refueling.
http://spacesolarpower.wordpress.com...build-a-space-...
Yeah, I'm sure your proposals are on file with the proper government
authorities.
As a matter of science, they are.


Anything else is folly.
God has a sense of humor.
What God would that be, there are so many to choose from.


kT - How are your space colonization plans going to provide an escape
hatch for the more than 6 billion humans who are now living on
Earth?


It isn't, at least not right away. They'll still have to live on Earth.

It's not an escape plan, as I've explained to you many times before.

Given the laws of physics, the pull of gravity and the cost of rockets
and rocket fuels, it's virtually a certain bet that they CAN'T.


As evidences by our six landing on the moon.

You write that "anything" (except for space travel) is "folly." But
for 90% of more of the human species, it's insanity to believe that
space colonization will be an "answer" for anybody outside a rather
tiny scientific elite.


I've explained it to you before here, I'm not going over it again.


Lazy.

If you want to make it happen, you've got to sell it.

Or are you gonna finance it yourself?


  #8  
Old October 25th 07, 03:44 AM posted to alt.global-warming,sci.environment,sci.space.policy,alt.sci.planetary
kT
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5,032
Default The Prophet of Science Is ****: James Lovelock

Bawana wrote:
On Oct 24, 9:03 pm, kT wrote:
Bawana wrote:
[turd world dimmies lunacy snipped]
kunT wrote:
Space colonization and extraterrestrial resources are the only answer.
For the United States of America, that entails the immediate cessation
of the NASA (National *Atmospheric* and Space Administration) VSE
(Vision for Space Exploration) ESAS (Exploration Systems Architecture
Study) architecture,
That not gonna happen.
Got a plan B?

Now that you mention it, I do. Several, actually.


Do they involve safety deposit boxes, multiple ID's, cash, gold and
guns?


I try to avoid lawyers, based on experience.

Do you have any plan at all?


It's working and I'm working it.

We'd all love to hear it.


Pearls before swine.


In other words, your plan is keeping your truck's gas tank topped off.

In fact, we've already predicted what your plan might entail.


You'll get to space before that happens.


No doubt.

and the embracing of ground started SSME (Space
Shuttle Main Engine) operations in an SSTO (Single Stage to Orbit
configuration, with the engines being returned to Earth in the nose cone
aeroshield, and the cryogenic tankage and residual fuel remaining in
orbit for space station and solar power satellite construction and
on-orbit refueling.


http://spacesolarpower.wordpress.com...build-a-space-...

  #9  
Old October 25th 07, 03:59 AM posted to alt.global-warming,sci.environment,sci.space.policy,alt.sci.planetary
kT
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5,032
Default A NASA COTS Proposal

Bawana wrote:
On Oct 24, 9:20 pm, kT wrote:
john fernbach wrote:
On Oct 24, 9:03 pm, kT wrote:
Bawana wrote:
[turd world dimmies lunacy snipped]
kunT wrote:
Space colonization and extraterrestrial resources are the only answer.
For the United States of America, that entails the immediate cessation
of the NASA (National *Atmospheric* and Space Administration) VSE
(Vision for Space Exploration) ESAS (Exploration Systems Architecture
Study) architecture,
That not gonna happen.
Got a plan B?
Now that you mention it, I do. Several, actually.
Do you have any plan at all? We'd all love to hear it.
In fact, we've already predicted what your plan might entail.
and the embracing of ground started SSME (Space
Shuttle Main Engine) operations in an SSTO (Single Stage to Orbit
configuration, with the engines being returned to Earth in the nose cone
aeroshield, and the cryogenic tankage and residual fuel remaining in
orbit for space station and solar power satellite construction and
on-orbit refueling.
http://spacesolarpower.wordpress.com...build-a-space-...
Yeah, I'm sure your proposals are on file with the proper government
authorities.
As a matter of science, they are.
Anything else is folly.
God has a sense of humor.
What God would that be, there are so many to choose from.
kT - How are your space colonization plans going to provide an escape
hatch for the more than 6 billion humans who are now living on
Earth?

It isn't, at least not right away. They'll still have to live on Earth.

It's not an escape plan, as I've explained to you many times before.

Given the laws of physics, the pull of gravity and the cost of rockets
and rocket fuels, it's virtually a certain bet that they CAN'T.

As evidences by our six landing on the moon.

You write that "anything" (except for space travel) is "folly." But
for 90% of more of the human species, it's insanity to believe that
space colonization will be an "answer" for anybody outside a rather
tiny scientific elite.

I've explained it to you before here, I'm not going over it again.


Lazy.

If you want to make it happen, you've got to sell it.

Or are you gonna finance it yourself?


Well, there is a new COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services)
solicitation out there, since Kistler finally was identified as fraud :

http://prod.nais.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/ep...i?acqid=127496

Who they are trying to shake out of the woodwork with this, and how they
expect them to put a proposal together in 30 days, is beyond me, though.

We're talking about a quarter of a billion dollars here. If I could
match that from the private sector, I'm sure I could make it work.

The general idea is to split the NASA money between Pratt and Whitney,
for an SSME (Space Shuttle Main Engine) contract extension, on the
already existing one billion dollar SSME maintenance contract they have
through the end of the space shuttle program, and Boeing, for delivery
of a stretched five meter Orion Upper Stage, and use the private sector
money for the integration and launch of the SSTO (Single Stage to Orbit)
demonstration flight to the ISS (International Space Station).

This is an easily demonstrable system where America, NASA and the
investors cannot possibly lose. Now I just wasted 10 minutes talking to
a complete idiot, when I should have been working on this proposal.

You may download and fly my Orbiter simulation of this yourself.

I know you Harley guys, deep down, you're interested in this stuff.

Boeing appears to be too overly cautious for this sort of thing.

Perhaps Harley Davidson Corporation would be interested in it :-)
  #10  
Old October 25th 07, 04:05 AM posted to alt.global-warming,sci.environment,sci.space.policy,alt.sci.planetary
Bawana
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 44
Default The Prophet of Science Is ****: James Lovelock

On Oct 24, 10:44 pm, kT wrote:
Bawana wrote:
On Oct 24, 9:03 pm, kT wrote:
Bawana wrote:
[turd world dimmies lunacy snipped]
kunT wrote:
Space colonization and extraterrestrial resources are the only answer.
For the United States of America, that entails the immediate cessation
of the NASA (National *Atmospheric* and Space Administration) VSE
(Vision for Space Exploration) ESAS (Exploration Systems Architecture
Study) architecture,


That not gonna happen.
Got a plan B?


Now that you mention it, I do. Several, actually.


Do they involve safety deposit boxes, multiple ID's, cash, gold and
guns?


I try to avoid lawyers, based on experience.


Involuntary Commitment, Forced Drugging, Duress?
I hope this helps:
http://www.ftrbooks.net/psych/psychi...sabilities.htm

 




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