Recently, someone emailed be a copy of a newspaper article about James Lovelock who has written a new, soon to be published book, The Revenge of Gaia. I don't think that too many people other than the Washington Administration doubt the reality of global warming, so I thought that some of you might like to read an excerpt from the article that apparently appeared in The Independent. It doesn't look good, folks.
His concerns have increased steadily since then, as evidence of a warming climate has mounted. For example, he shared the alarm of many scientists at the news last September that the ice covering the Arctic Ocean is now melting so fast that in 2005 it reached a historic low point.
Two years ago he sparked a major controversy with an article in The Independent calling on environmentalists to drop their long-standing opposition to nuclear power, which does not produce the greenhouses gases of conventional power stations.
Global warming was proceeding so fast that only a major expansion of nuclear power could bring it under control, he said. Most of the Green movement roundly rejected his call, and does so still.
Now his concerns have reached a peak - and have a new emphasis. Rather than calling for further ways of countering climate change, he is calling on governments in Britain and elsewhere to begin large-scale preparations for surviving what he now sees as inevitable - in his own phrase today, "a hell of a climate", likely to be in Europe up to 8C hotter than it is today.
In his book's concluding chapter, he writes: "What should a sensible European government be doing now? I think we have little option but to prepare for the worst, and assume that we have passed the threshold."
And in today's Independent he writes: "We will do our best to survive, but sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of [CO2] emissions. The worst will happen ..."
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.
4 comments:
Gulp! That doesn't sound good at all. 10C here in Mco this afternoon. What has happened to our winter? It seems evident, doesn't it? What will our children inherit? And their children?
scary reading!!
I'm no scientist, and haven't done much research, but a well respected local meteorologist says that this is not GW, but just the cycle that the earth takes now and then...'course, he missed on today's forecast.
Oh well....
I have read this article too. It seem all the Nero's of the World are fiddling while Rome burns. Politicians who only plan no more than 5 years ahead to reelection cannot deal with this. An economic system that demands economic growth every quarter is the problem along with our belief that technology can solve all problems.
Our grandchildren and great grandchildren will curse us for squandering which should have been their future. Kyoto is a sad effort of too little too late. Forty years ago, I attended a lecture when a scientist said we should be paying Brazil not to develop the Amazon. That was the time when some new drastic measures had to be taken. We were warned.
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