'Gaia' Scientist Admits Mispredicting Rate of Climate Change 744
DesScorp writes "James Lovelock, the scientist that came up with the 'Gaia Theory' and a prominent herald of climate change, once predicted utter disaster for the planet from climate change, writing '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.' Now Lovelock is walking back his rhetoric, admitting that he and other prominent global warming advocates were being alarmists. In a new interview with MSNBC he says: '"The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books — mine included — because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened," Lovelock said. "The climate is doing its usual tricks. There's nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now," he said. "The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that," he added.' Lovelock still believes the climate is changing, but at a much, much slower pace."
Change I believe in (Score:5, Funny)
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A frighteningly large number of people, apparently.
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WHO'S WITH ME!?
- you are 3 steps behind. How about having AC and heating and humidifiers and dehumidifiers running all the time at the same time?
Climatologists Agree (Score:5, Informative)
This pretty much brings James Lovelock into agreement the mainstream science, where the consensus prediction is for anthropogenic warming of at most a few degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. And hey, that's exactly what you're supposed to do when confronted with actual data, isn't it?
I'm still waiting for the deniers to do the same.
Re:Climatologists Agree (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a difference between agreeing the data is correct, and agreeing WHY it's like that.
I would probably agree that their data is correct and temperatures are rising.
Somehow linking that to humans, that's the REALLY controversial part and it's MUCH harder to provide fact in that case. Almost impossible. At least without a several-million-year-long scientifically controlled investigation (and, no, fossil records, ice-cores, etc. do NOT give us the reason, they give us some facts).
WHY Earth is heating is still completely unknown - why it's EVER heated has always been unknown. We don't even know what prompted ice-ages in the past and they were seriously major events. Thus, forming government policy or charging me indirectly via my tax for related green initiatives because "humans are warming the planet" is ludicrous at best.
Facts are easy to confirm or deny - and anyone who goes against them is usually an idiot. It's the WHY of the facts and the things that you CAN'T collect facts for - that's where science is made.
Re:Climatologists Agree (Score:5, Informative)
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> Don't be silly. Earth is warmer than its orbital position would indicate, so something is trapping solar heat.
Oh bullpoop. The Earth has been warmer than it is today and colder. And guess what, it's orbit has been pretty darned constant. The problem is somewhat more complicated and we are still discovering new variables every couple of years. They just recently started considering the effect of solar effects other than direct radiation and are finding it to be at least to the same rough scale as th
A non-credible source admits he is non-credible (Score:5, Insightful)
Lovelock makes a living out of making sensational, half-baked pronouncements and selling them as science. Good for him for admitting he was wrong, but that doesn't discredit any of the actual science.
Re:A non-credible source admits he is non-credible (Score:4, Insightful)
They did. Lovelock's "Gaia theory" approach has been greeted pretty skeptically by scientists, who've pointed out that in simple forms it's trivial, and in stronger forms it's unfalsifiable. The new-agey spiritual aspect of it hasn't been popular, either.
Here is a frequently cited 1989 paper [berkeley.edu] that describes it as "untestable, and if taken literally as a basis for research, potentially misleading... ill-defined, unparsimonious, and unfalsifiable".
Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, Lovelock was being overly alarmist. He also has no expertise in climate change prediction, so his guess is as good as yours. The fact that he's wrong doesn't mean that actual experts who've made less extreme predictions are also wrong.
Lovelock is a black-and-white kind of guy(*), who tends toward hyperbole. His Gaia hypothesis is the same way: he takes a small truth about negative feedbacks in Earth systems and blows it up into some huge quasi-religious theory of everything.
* Yes, that was a Daisyworld joke.
I would like to say what I said 20 years ago (Score:4, Informative)
Lovelock is a chemist, not a climatologist, and his hypothesis is clearly a chemists view. Also, no living organism supports Lovelocks theory; which shoots it in the foot. In other words: Natural selection would need a means of cross species reproductive communication.
Consensus of actual experts in the field did no agree with the pace of his predictions. Media loved it "FEAR NOW!" and Hollywood used is to spawn another round disaster movies.
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"Lovelock is a whacko, not a climatologist, and his hypothesis is clearly a whackos view."
Gaia "Scientist" (Score:3)
He's a Gaia "scientist". May as well cover "Creation Scientist Admits Earth May Be a Bit Older"...
MC
Alarmists have done harm for the AGW cause (Score:3)
However, liberals and Democrats (the primary voice of the AGW fight) will need to distance themselves from the climate extremists, scientologists, and alarmists, in order to gain any traction. I'll be ironic (considering my previous statement) and say no one likes polarization. Dimiss pseudo-science, even it 'agrees with' your cause.
I'm honestly ready to stop buying gas. I'm tired of $100/tank fillups, but hybrid's suck and public transportation isn't convenient. Unfortunately, investment into better options won't occur with high taxes and weak economy.
Climate change is the wrong argument (Score:5, Insightful)
People got alarmist over Global Cooling then Global Warming and then Climate Change when the first two didn't pan out by name at hyped levels. The biggest problem is that people are fighting the wrong fight, being too concerned about CO2 levels. These energies are well intentioned, however they are misplaced.
Climate change is inevitable no matter what we as a species do or don't do. We have a fossil record going back billions of years proving this, forces like plate [umass.edu] tectonics and changes from our own solar [scientificamerican.com] system or even supernova's [theregister.co.uk] all impact our climate.
People have forgotten their environmental basics and in their zeal have created a self feeding hype machine. Scheduled catastrophes kept turning out to be false alarms. The problem is that this is causing a loss of credibility in scientists and science. People need to be concerned about pollution, for the sake of fighting pollution.
Were spending so much time worrying about whether or not the concrete being poured for a windmill is going to have the proper carbon offset. As a result were forgetting about bigger things like rampant unregulated coal power plants in China and the smelting of old electronics by hand in Africa.
We need to get back to science, back to fighting pollution and away from the hype.
Re:Vindication (Score:4, Insightful)
Turning off the lights in the room you're not in is dismantling western civilization ?
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No, but the anti-consumer, anti-consumption attitudes most greenies have, is.
Re:Vindication (Score:5, Insightful)
"Most" is an utter lie. Maybe most of the ones you see on Fox are like that, but in reality most people who are interested in and concerned about anthropogenic climate change realize that we need to balance economic necessity and long-term conservation priorities, and we aren't even remotely beginning to do that. It's very convenient to paint the people who disagree with you as enemies of civilization, unfortunately it is completely dishonest and counterproductive.
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^ ironically, that's precisely the sort of banal oversimplification that you think you're mocking.
In point of fact, leaving room lights on where I live (Minnesota) for much of the year is actually MORE efficient than turning them off, at least so I was told by the guy that came to evaluate our home's energy efficiency. Further it provides point-heat in places of use, which is far more efficient than generally heating the whole structure an extra degree or two to keep everything comfortable.
Electric lights
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Turning off the lights in the room you're not in is dismantling western civilization ?
If that were all the "greenies" wanted, what was the "Cash for Clunkers" program all about? Why did Obama say that he would make coal power plants too expensive to build?
Model fits the data [Re:Vindication] (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, but Lovelock is a nut; he was on the alarmist edge. Always was. The "Gaia" model is a cool thing to talk to the public about, but it's not real science.
The mainstream climate scientists are not and have not been mispredicting the rate of climate change. If you look at the data from models from 1979 (the National Academy of Science study), or even the models from 1967 (the Manabe greenhouse-effect calculation)-- the actual data fits the model very nearly exactly.
The lesson to take home is that denying climate change is wrong, but exaggerating it is also wrong. Pay attention to the real scientists, and try not to give the fringe too much credance. Look at the data.
Re:Model fits the data [Re:Vindication] (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly right. Lovelock has finally realized what most climate scientists and ecologists have know for decades: Lovelock is out of his frickin' mind.
Re:Model fits the data [Re:Vindication] (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I read this as "Discredited Scientist Makes New Prediction!"
Re:Model fits the data [Re:Vindication] (Score:5, Informative)
The mainstream climate scientists are not and have not been mispredicting the rate of climate change. If you look at the data from models from 1979 (the National Academy of Science study), or even the models from 1967 (the Manabe greenhouse-effect calculation)-- the actual data fits the model very nearly exactly.
Here's a checkup [realclimate.org] on a Hansen prediction from 1981. I wouldn't call it near-exact, but still pretty good for a 30-year-old model of a very complicated set of things.
Speaking of graphs, I find this one [berkeleyearth.org] really scary, and would want to see it flatten out or drop for a good few years before I stop caring about my energy usage.
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Does that chart not already show it flatten out and drop a bit in the last decade?
At least that is what it looks like to me.
Or do you need to see it flatten out for a few decades instead of a few years?
Re:Model fits the data [Re:Vindication] (Score:4, Informative)
Speaking of graphs, I find this one [berkeleyearth.org] really scary, and would want to see it flatten out or drop for a good few years before I stop caring about my energy usage.
Just taking a quick gander at that particular graph, I notice that it covers 200 years of surface temperature. This brings a couple of points to my mind:
1) How accurate can we judge the entire planet's average temperature in the year 1800? The graph shows swings from year to year in the 0.2 C range. Can we really judge the average surface temperature of the planet with 0.2 degrees Celsius?
2) Also, the chart shows 200 years. This is a blip on the scale of climate science. If you look at the climate history on a much, much larger scale, you'll find that 200 years means nothing. For example, the chart on this [scotese.com] page shows that we are much cooler than the average. An sharp increase in average temps would help put us "right". Or this [longrangeweather.com] chart which goes back 4500 years, shows that we just came out of an ice age, so a temperature increase would be expected, and also negates your Berkely graph. Or, finally, this [c3headlines.com] page which shows a whole slew of charts, most of which show that we are in a cold period of climate history, and an increase in average temperature would get the earth back to the "normal" range.
Re:Model fits the data [Re:Vindication] (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry. Show me a model made between 1995 and 2010 that fits the observed data of the last decade. Not one single fits. They were enough for policy making though.
I hold nothing but skepticism for the people who say "scientific consensus!". Because for the Piltdown Man to turn from consensus to hoax it took 45 years. And many reputations of the people who said it was a hoax with it.
Of course now Lovelock is declared to be a nut, an extremist, on the alarmist edge. But before he was:
- elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974. He served as the president of the Marine Biological Association (MBA) from 1986 to 1990, and has been an Honorary Visiting Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford (formerly Green College, Oxford) since 1994. He has been awarded a number of prestigious prizes including the Tswett Medal (1975), an ACS chromatography award (1980), the WMO Norbert Gerbier Prize (1988), the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for the Environment (1990) and the RGS Discovery Lifetime award (2001). In 2006 he received the Wollaston Medal, the Geological Society's highest Award, whose previous recipients include Charles Darwin. He became a CBE in 1990, and a Companion of Honour in 2003.
Just like De-Stalinization, his own kind reject him now. So excuse me while I say, Lovelock, you son of a b****! Go to hell.
Re:Model fits the data [Re:Vindication] (Score:5, Informative)
No Model Fits This Data.
Sorry. Show me a model made between 1995 and 2010 that fits the observed data of the last decade.
The calculation done in 1967 by Manabe and Wetherald-- it's summarized in any textbook about atmospheric science. This was the first numerical calculation of the global greenhouse effect; their calculated response value is still near the center of the consensus value used today. Send me your email address and I'll send you a jpeg comparing the model and the data.
Not one single fits.
Incorrect. In fact, all of them fit, but I like to sue the Manabe calculation because it has the longest run of comparison of theory to experiment. The National Academy of Sciences study of 1979.
....Of course now Lovelock is declared to be a nut, an extremist, on the alarmist edge. But before he was:
[long list of completely irrelevant stuff]
Not a single thing you list has anything whatsoever to do with climate science. Nothing.
List one single paper in which he contributes significant work to climate science. There aren't any. He's a colorful popularizer, but he's a biologist, not a climate scientist.
That's the whole problem-- people keep paying attention to popularizers and colorful characters and other people who have loud mouths. Ignore them. Pay attention to the actual science.
Re:Model fits the data [Re:Vindication] (Score:5, Insightful)
I couldn't agree more.
The problem is though, that people like Lovegood are very rarely called out on their crap. We have people (*cough* Al Gore *cough*) going around literally calling it a _crysis_. And what do we get from it? Politics. 'Action!'. But if anyone says that we ought to really just slow down (and even look at the data!), they get labeled a "denier" and all discourse is shut down.
> Look at the data.
Like... I dunno, maybe IPCC's claim that the Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035? But that turned out to be unreviewed speculation and the glaciers actually haven't lost any net ice over the decade... Oops!
Now, I don't mean to extrapolate that to saying all climate data as bunk, but I _do_ mean to use it as an example of how data can be flawed, interpretations can be flawed, and just plain human stupidity and bias can get in the way (which is the only way you can 'excuse' the above reporting of a media interview as a scientific finding). There is far more room for discussion than is presently allowed by the various groups looking to use climate change as a blank check for political gain, personal gain, or simply a cause to blindly fight for. I just wish people were even half as interested in calling out the alarmists as are the 'deniers'.
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Like... I dunno, maybe IPCC's claim that the Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035? But that turned out to be unreviewed speculation and the glaciers actually haven't lost any net ice over the decade... Oops!
You're still hanging on to that? Because that's really one of the very few significant errors that have ever been demonstrated. And for what it's worth, you know who found the error? Those damn crackpot scientists on the IPCC panel.
Now, I don't mean to extrapolate that to saying all climate data as bunk
Actually, that's exactly what you're saying. Stop beating around the bush. Otherwise, you wouldn't be pulling out a single data point to request opening up the discussion about AGW in general.
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> You're still hanging on to that?
The data I cited, specifically the _real_ finding, was only published in February. So please forgive me if I only cited one recent example in my quick post, and if I consider the scientific data more interesting than the IPCC panel admission of error.
> request opening up the discussion about AGW
Oh, I'm sorry... I didn't realize we didn't want discussion or anything. ...
Ah well, thanks for proving my point at least.
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> You're still hanging on to that? Because that's really one of the very few significant errors that have ever been demonstrated. And for what it's worth, you know who found the error? Those damn crackpot scientists on the IPCC panel.
The data I cited, specifically the _real_ finding, was only published in February. So please forgive me if I only cited one recent example in my quick post, and if I consider the scientific data more interesting than the IPCC panel admission of error.
You're missing the point.
The incorrect paragraph about the rate of glaciers melting was not in the IPCC working group one report, "The Scientific Basic of Climate Change;" it was in the working group 2 report on the effects of climate change. And, what exactly was the error? The error was not sourcing the report from the scientific literature, but taking data from a tertiary source.
The lesson here is, read the actual science , not the advocates or deniers or bloggers or politicians or special interest gr
What is the prediction? [Re:Model fits the data] (Score:3)
The mainstream climate scientists are not and have not been mispredicting the rate of climate change
Pardon my ignorance, exactly what *is* the mainstream prediction?
The currently published consensus (IPCC AR-4) is that climate change will be 2 to 4.5 C temperature rise per doubling of CO2, with a current best estimate of about 3 C (another source, Rahmstorf 2008, says 2.6 to 4.1 C, with most modeled results clustering around 3 C.)
If you want to turn that into a temperature prediction, multiply that by the log base 2 of your prefered prediction of carbon dioxide in the year you want to predict for (divided by the carbon dioxide in the year you take as baseline). The cl
Re:Vindication (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is where anti-AGW is at its most dishonest.
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Sorry, this doesn't vindicate climate denial at all. He's just one scientist who made kooky predictions and if you think he's at all important then you need a remedial course in logic. As a matter of fact, climate change has been occurring shockingly fast, faster than even the worst case scenarios were predicting (source http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/02/06/us-climate-canada-idUSTRE6145KP20100206 [reuters.com]). Due to a complete political failure to address the issue, an 11 degF rise in temperature is expected.
Re:Vindication (Score:5, Insightful)
What pisses me off are the people who think that wealth redistribution in the form of carbon-credit trading will do anything to solve the problem, if there really is a problem. Witness the latest insult by the UN that basically taxes the hell out of leading nations to support "green project" in third-world countries. There are ALWAYS sticky fingers in schemes like this. It would be one thing to require a leader nation to actually procure the solar plant equipment and set it up somewhere but that's not what they want. They just want the money.
That aside, if global catastrophe is such a big deal e.g. An asteroid is headed directly for Earth, every person is going to be affected in the same way therefore every person is equally responsible for dealing with it. There will be no "all animals are equal but some are more equal than others" here. So, by that logic, nobody gets a pass on carbon emissions. Nobody gets to buy their way out of it and no industry or enemy of the regime gets punished. Note that the carbon trading in commodities markets has be severely scaled back if not eliminated. Take money out of the equation and oh look, gee whiz, the problem isn't such a big problem anymore.
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Problem is the market forces types are the ones that said put a profit incentive into reducing reducing carbon emissions and then let the market take care of it. Me I would just rather have the EPA make rules about carbon emissions and then you meet them or go out of business. CAFE is the government mandating vechicle mileage and seems to have worked.
No one discusses the solutions [Re:Vindication] (Score:4, Insightful)
What pisses me off are the people who think that wealth redistribution in the form of carbon-credit trading will do anything to solve the problem,
Ah, but that's a very different question from the question of whether carbon dioxide emissions are affecting the climate... and it is a question that gets almost no discussion at all, because the people who think that carbon-credit trading is not a good idea don't address it, but instead argue that the greenhouse effect doesn't exist, or it exists but is saturated, or it exists but volcanoes emit more carbon dioxide than humans so it doesn't matter what we do, or the weather data is wrong, or the scientists who study the problem are all frauds, or the cosmic rays are changing the climate more then humans do, or solar activity has gone up recently, or solar activity has gone down recently, or some hithertofore unknown feedback mechanism cancels out the changes created by humans, or... every six months there's a new purported explanation for why human-generated carbon dioxide doesn't affect the climate. (Yes, I've heard all those arguments, and many more that make even less sense.)
By denying that a possible problem even exists, the discussion of solutions ends up being completely one-sided. No one critiques carbon-credit trading, because the people who would do so are spending their efforts denying that the science.
if there really is a problem.
See? You can't even complete a single sentence before you start suggesting the greenhouse effect isn't real.
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I would prefer a straight tax on carbon over cap and trade, but cap and trade demonstrably worked with SO2, so is it really rational to be so worked up about it now?
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What pisses me off are the people who think that wealth redistribution in the form of carbon-credit trading will do anything to solve the problem
It pisses you off? Should that persuade me, or think you are just angry and ranting?
It's no coincidence that the angry people are the climate change deniers and the anti-tax Birch Society. It's just old-fashioned populist manipulation; they are being used.
if global catastrophe is such a big deal e.g. An asteroid is headed directly for Earth, every person is going to be affected in the same way therefore every person is equally responsible for dealing with it. There will be no "all animals are equal but some are more equal than others" here. So, by that logic, nobody gets a pass on carbon emissions.
* Those who emit carbon should be responsible for cleaning up their own mess, not redistribute the costs to everyone else. That includes industries (e.g., oil) and countries (e.g., the United States, by far the largest emitter over history). Why should I
Climate change impacts are not equal (Score:5, Insightful)
You are wrong in fact and wrong in logic.
The impact of climate change is not equal. The poor live disproportionately in vulnerable areas. This is true not just for climate change, but for environmental disasters in general. It is mostly the poor, not the rich, who live on the deforested hillsides that collapse in landslides. It is mostly the poor, not the rich, who live in flood-prone areas. It is mostly the poor, not the rich, who make a living from dry and marginal soils susceptible to droubt. And it is the poor who lack the resources to cope when the water dries up, when food prices rise, when hit by torrential rains or brush fires. Global warming is not like an asteroid. It will not wipe out all life. But it will create great suffering, and that suffering will fall disproportionately on the poor. That is your error in fact.
Your error in logic is your claim of equal responsibility. If you and I are in a car crash, are we equally responsible because we both suffer the same loss? Even though I was speeding, talking on my cell phone and weaving in traffic while you were driving predictably and defensively, but were unable to avoid me when I suddenly swerved in front of you? Of course not. Responsibility results from the actions we take and the choices we make. We in the developed countries have produced most of the emissions and reaped most of the benefits. We are far more responsible for climate change than the peasants of India or Mexico or Bangladesh. Responsibility flows from actions, not consequences.
People who aren't climate scientists (Score:3)
"Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?"
The guy's not a climate scientist by profession or education. He's as useless as the Heartland Institute. Even now he's getting basic facts wrong.
>we still aren't sure whether it is us or a natural cycle we don't undertstand,
Isotope ratios and measurements show that we're producing the CO2, and the pattern of warming (colder stratosphere, warmer nights, less longwave radiation escaping to space) matches causation by CO2.
Re:Vindication (Score:4, Interesting)
Lovelock's climate change, the stuff he predicted 30 years ago and which he's now saying was inaccurate, was the stuff of bad science fiction movies and bears very little resemblance to the actual predictions made by climate scientists. No serious climate scientist has ever predicted 90% of the worlds surface being uninhabitable. Compared to his predictions, the less than 1 degree C rise in temperatures we have seen is "nothing much", the problem is that 1 degree C is more than enough to screw up all kinds of stuff. It's just not enough to drive humanity to the brink of extinction like he predicted two decades ago.
Re:Vindication (Score:5, Informative)
How did this make the front page of Slashdot??? James Lovelock is not a Climate Scientist, he's and an independent scientist and environmentalist who is famous for the Gaia Hypothesis [wikipedia.org] a half-scientific half-philosophical metaphor for understanding Earth's biosphere. There is no reason anyone should give this man any credibility when it comes to speaking on the subject of Climate Change projections.
Do you know who is qualified to speak on this subject? James Hanson, and a 1981 paper [thedgw.org] he published in a peer-reviewed journal attempted to project the rise in temperatures over the next 30 years. Those projections still managed to underestimate the observed rise in temperatures by 30 percent [realclimate.org] and even the worst case scenario of those projections managed to underestimate the observed trend.
So no. You are not vindicated. You have demonstrated that you have no understanding of how science works, elevating the opinion of someone speaking outside their realm of expertise over the peer-reviewed published research of an expert with over three decades working inside the subject of climate change.
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This guy is saying the sort of things that have been getting me downmodded here on slashdot for years.
Global Warming/Climate Change may or may not be happening. But if it is it ain't happening at anything like the rate that would justify dismantling civilization over, we still aren't sure whether it is us or a natural cycle we don't undertstand, etc. And he doesn't go there but I will: too many politicians with a preexisting anti-civilization (Western industrial captialism based ccivilization that is...) bias glommed onto AGW with the willing consent of a lot of brand name scientists, thereby (rightly) harming the public's trust of all science.
Have you ever considered the possibility that you got downmodded because you conflate acceptance of man-made global warming with "an attempt to dismantle civilization"?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Interesting)
You clearly didn't work in the cooling business. To them, they sky WAS falling, and it was falling on them. Until they found a replacement (which was more expensive and less efficient, but legal). Dismantling is a very harsh word.
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Insightful)
You clearly didn't work in the cooling business. To them, they sky WAS falling, and it was falling on them. Until they found a replacement (which was more expensive and less efficient, but legal). Dismantling is a very harsh word.
And I'm sure if the cooling business had its way, we'd still be arguing about CFCs and have a massive, inexplicable hole.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why's that? Not many people would stop using refrigeration just because the coolant is more expensive. The cost of coolant is a relatively small factor in most Americans' lives.
On the other hand, AGW proponents want us to change transportation, construction, agriculture, etc, making almost everything in life more expensive. So you've got increased costs in many areas, plus legislation that often comes off as petty or patronizing. I mean, a tax on plastic grocery bags? And the point is to get all those evil
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Insightful)
Why's that? Not many people would stop using refrigeration just because the coolant is more expensive. The cost of coolant is a relatively small factor in most Americans' lives.
On the other hand, AGW proponents want us to change transportation, construction, agriculture, etc, making almost everything in life more expensive. So you've got increased costs in many areas, plus legislation that often comes off as petty or patronizing. I mean, a tax on plastic grocery bags? And the point is to get all those evil oil users to change their behavior and be more good and eco friendly.. that's a far bigger role for government than I'm comfortable with.
Everything that should have been more expensive to begin with. I don't know where people get off thinking they can spend 5% of their income on food when throughout history it required practically 100% of their labor. How about spending 25%. I really don't care about people's corporate propaganda induced need for "small government". If it wasn't for government regulation and unions, you'd be working 7 days a week, breathing foul air, drinking very filthy water and God even knows what else. Left to its own devices, business is pretty nasty and only out for one thing: profit at *any* cost. The bastards need more regulation, not less.
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know where people get off thinking they can spend 5% of their income on food when throughout history it required practically 100% of their labor.
This is because agricultural productivity was so much lower in the past. It's not that food is artificially cheap today – it's that food is much cheaper and easier to produce now due to advances in technology. Mechanization, chemical research (fertilizers) and more recently biotechnology have all dramatically increased how much food you can get out of an acre of land, and decreased how much labor you need to put in to get it. Just 100 years ago, farmers were about 31% of the workforce in the United States. Nearly one of three Americans was a farmer. Today it's one-tenth that and yet we are producing far more food than ever before.
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, because a large (massive) government that heavily controls industry is soooo much better for the environment. *cough*China*cough*USSR*cough*.
HA shows how little you know about government and industry. The reason China has such filthy industry is unregulated capitalism and lack or regulation enforcement. Has nothing to do with the SIZE of government, simpleton. The problems with the USSR had nothing to do with the SIZE of government and the government had nothing in common with socialism, contrary to populat opinion. In fact, the propagandists in the USSR wanted its citizens to think they were living in socialism because the people there (rightly) wanted it. It was really totalitarian. That all worked out well for the propagandists in the US who wanted us to think socialism sucks, so they could point at the USSR and say "Look, that's an example of socialism". Same propaganda for different purposes. Pick up a book someday.
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Insightful)
AGW proponents want us to change transportation, construction, agriculture, etc, making almost everything in life more expensive.
It's odd that so few /.ers seem to know this, but "going green" is actually much cheaper than business as usual. Amory Lovins has been demonstrating this for decades already. RMI [rmi.org] makes most of its money by consulting with the likes of 3M, IBM, the Pentagon, etc. on how to save TONS of money by investing in efficiency.
It's time to put this myth to bed, once and for all. Going "green" is NOT more expensive, it's actually much cheaper. And this is why more and more companies are ALREADY investing in this area.
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, there are lots of things that are both better for our environment, and saves money. Those are not the things that the parent is talking about. The parent is talking about the bad ideas that get wrapped up with the good ones. A large part of the problem for the "green' folks is that they don't recognize this, and keep proposing bad ideas. So, yes. Going "green" IS more expensive if you are going to use the "environmentalist's" definition.
We see the same bad language being used with "Climate Change". Of course the climate is changing. It always has, and always will. What we see is that the AGW alarmists like to use that definition to get everyone to admit that "Climate Change" is happening, and then change the definition of "Climate Change" to "The world is burning up because someone drove to the store instead of riding a bike".
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You clearly didn't work in the cooling business. To them, they sky WAS falling, and it was falling on them. Until they found a replacement (which was more expensive and less efficient, but legal). Dismantling is a very harsh word.
And I'm sure if the cooling business had its way, we'd still be arguing about CFCs and have a massive, inexplicable hole.
Actually, the cooling industry for many enterprise systems was very happy they got to retool entire cooling systems as it made them tons of money.
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Insightful)
You clearly didn't work in the cooling business. To them, they sky WAS falling, and it was falling on them. Until they found a replacement (which was more expensive and less efficient, but legal). Dismantling is a very harsh word.
And I'm sure if the cooling business had its way, we'd still be arguing about CFCs and have a massive, inexplicable hole.
Actually, the cooling industry for many enterprise systems was very happy they got to retool entire cooling systems as it made them tons of money.
It's funny, isn't it? A lot of change works that way. Big money fights it and fights it, and then profits significantly when they finally concede. Think safety regulations in cars. The big auto makers fight every new regulation that comes their way, and then when they're forced to do it, they immediately work to make a selling feature out of it over their competition who don't rate nearly as well in the rating system that they didn't want in the first place.
A few years ago, the IIHS celebrated their 50th birthday by doing a head-on collision between a 1959 Chevy BelAir and a 2009 Malibu [youtube.com]. Chevrolet has certainly had their lean years, but in general, it's a multi-billion dollar corporation which has managed to turn nearly every regulation to their advantage. There's no reason to think that stricter fuel standards and alternative fuel requirements couldn't see the same level of success over the next 50 years.
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Insightful)
Where does all this "dismantle civilization" stuff come from? Changing power sources is dismantling civilization?
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Insightful)
Where does all this "dismantle civilization" stuff come from? Changing power sources is dismantling civilization?
That, Little Johnny, is what we call "over-the-top hyperbolic rhetoric spawning from extremist zealots."
Typically, when someone starts screaming that this or that will lead to the end of civilization as we know it, you're best off to just keep on truckin' by...
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Funny)
I do not think that means what you think it means.
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Insightful)
What amuses me about this is the total lack of irony or self-awareness.
Like, say, the irony of accusing me of directing my comment at a single individual, whereas the text of it does not distinguish a particular philosophy, thus indicating that it applies to extremists of all philosophies, then subsequently falling into an extremist rant yourself? Here, this should help: http://abcteach.com/directory/reading_comprehension/ [abcteach.com]
Hehe yeah, you sure did turn that around on him didn't you? Sure, if you had a solid position you could have falsified what he said, argued against his reasoning, etc., but hey who has time for all of that? Just cut corners, be intellectually lazy, take a shortcut, fail to admit he made a point because you don't have the integrity, or all of the above?
Just say "well Criminal A is a robber and you might think that's bad, but Criminal B is a murderer so obviously Criminal A didn't do anything wrong!" Or if you point out some of Obama's stupidity and someone doesn't like that, they just have to mention some of Bush's stupidity and that magically makes what Obama did ok!
Do you have any idea how fucking infantile that is and how absurd it is for you to think you're making a point here?
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize that the term "global warming" implies that it is global right? The sea ice in the Arctic has indeed been on a decline in the satellite era, however, during that same time period, the sea ice in the Antarctic, you know, at the other end of the planet, has been increasing. uh oh.
That doesn't even cover the fact that there is plenty of anecdotal evidence from various sources which predate the satellite era which suggest that there has been as little or even less ice in the Arctic as there is now. Uh oh.
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Where are you getting your info from? If it's from Fox News you might want to read deeper into the issue. Yes it's growing but.... [nationalgeographic.com] there's a lot more to the story!
This myopic view that global warming is supposed to have the same effect everywhere at the same time is disheartening and counter to the discussion that the vast majority of conservationists are trying to have, which is better use of our resources which is actually good for everybody in the long run. I am saddened that people haven't learned fro
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Informative)
however, during that same time period, the sea ice in the Antarctic, you know, at the other end of the planet, has been increasing. uh oh.
First of all, it's important that people know what "sea ice" is and its not. It *is* frozen sea water, which in the Antarctic mostly melts in the summer. It is *not* the permanent Antarctic ice sheets, which originate in glaciers (land ice, not sea ice, even though it is on the sea). The ice sheets are losing about 40 gigtons of mass per year[5].
Second, the gain in sea ice in the Antarctic is tiny, and it is not the result of atmospheric temperature decreases. There has been an increase in Antarctic atmosphere temperatures [1], accompanied by a stronger winds blowing cold surface water to the northwest which produces the increase in winter sea ice extent [2]. In the lee of the Antarctic Peninsula, which blocks this surface movement, there has been a dramatic decrease in sea ice [3]. Another factor is that slightly warmer surface temperatures can actually lead to an increase in ice extent by reducing the salinity of water near the edge of ice-formation[6].
Overall, the changes in polar sea ice are consistent with models predicting CO2 induced global warming [2][4], and in any case land ice is a much better indication of antarctic temperature changes, and that has being lost; if the small sea ice increases we've been seeing were due to cooling, we would see an equilibrium or gain in land ice.
CITATIONS:
[1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7228/abs/nature07669.html [nature.com]
[2] http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/faq/#wintertimeantarctic [nsidc.org]
[3] http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/quickfacts/seaice.html [nsidc.org]
[4] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/278/5340/1104.short [sciencemag.org]
[5] http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010EGUGA..12.6127I [harvard.edu]
[6] http://psc.apl.washington.edu/zhang/Pubs/Zhang_Antarctic_20-11-2515.pdf [washington.edu]
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Informative)
> Changing power sources is dismantling civilization?
If there isn't anything to change to it is. And there currently isn't. Name one potential source that could replace fossil fuels and I'll show you a source the same greens are already trying to deem unacceptable. Lets review:
1. Nuke. Do I even have to go there? Even if we perfect fusion the greens will still wet themselves over the notion of power from anything with the N word attached.
2. Hydro. Disrupts Gaia. Harms fish reproduction and prevents 'healthy' rivers. And there is some point to their arguments. If nothing else our attempts at dams for flood control have certainly had a mixed record of success.
3. Wind. Assume it could actually produce enough energy. (Work with me here.) NIMBY is already rampant, greens are up in arms because when you fill square mile after square mile with windmills birds die. Who would have thunk it?
4. Solar. Makes sense as a source of off-grid energy but will never compete on a cost basis. And that is if you ignore the horrid ecological side effects of making the panels. And again, now that there are plans to actually cover over mile after mile of desert with the things the usual suspects are aghast.
5. Geothermal. Causes earthquakes.
6. Biofuels. Will cause widespread famine long before providing a noticable fraction of world energy production. Take the recycled plant waste, switchgrass on land unusable for more productive use but don't plan on it being anything but a boost. Not a primary source.
And if I have left your pet alternative energy source off this list be assured that it won't work either. It is great for soaking up grant money, deploying on a small scale to give egoboo to celebs but the second someone things it can be produced at a profit the downside will become clear.
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Insightful)
So because fringe enviro-kooks have a problem with anything other than reverting to bronze-age living nothing is viable. Nuke, wind, solar, plus hydro and geothermal where they won't cause too much harm should be fine. And don't forget tidal.
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Insightful)
Japan has just finished turning off all nuclear power over a "disaster" that proved just how safe modern nuclear can be. Wind, hydro, tide .. these are all bullshit: they will never matter in the big picture, they'll feelgood measures that's don't actually accomplish anything large scale, just like most green initiatives.
Solar is different. There's plenty of solar power. But current solar-electric panel are still bullshit (I drive past the Soylendra buildings every day). Solar-thermal remains viable (just heat a working fluid so that it pushes a turbine). Solar thermal can be baseload if you supplement with natural gas for the cloudy days. California did a plant like that - it was great, and 90% of power came from solar overall. It was shut down, due to concerns by the environmentlists.
And where's the actual proof that CO2 does harm? We're still in an Ice Age. We're still in an interglacial period that has lasted thousands of years longer than they usually due. When the climate reverts to the long-term norm, all of Canada and most of Europe and the old USSR states will be covered by glaciers, a far worse fate than the seas rising a few meters. Even if mankind's CO2 release actually matters (and we don't understand the usual mechanism by which CO2 falls significantly every 100k years, so we don't know that it matters), do we want the climate to be warmer or colder than its likely to become without us?
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Informative)
Japan has just finished turning off all nuclear power over a "disaster" that proved just how safe modern nuclear can be
And this is why no one takes you or your kind seriously.
#1 Japan didn't turn off all nuclear. For one, it would take far longer than a few months to do so. For two, they're taking them offline for security checks. They plan on bringing them back online. It just so happens that there will be a period of time when no nuclear plant will be online.
#2 Solar panels work great. I have em, and they cut my bill in half. You mean they can't replace coal by themselves by tomorrow? SHocking. They must be useless and tossed out.
#3 One solar thermal plant wasn't built because the company didn't want to immediately fork over the money to alleviate environmental concerns brought on by the government. You should know better, considering you seem to live in the Bay Area.
#4 Even if we are in an ice age (and we really aren't), that doesn't matter one lick. What matters is that there are drastic changes coming to our civilization, which has been built according to the climate variations of the past 300 years. That's going to cost money.
#5 And the rest of your arguments are just total nonsense (long-term norm? glaciers in Europe? a few meters of oceans rising is not a problem?)
Seriously, I'd love to hear a good argument about a) why AGW isn't real, and b) why we shouldn't worry. Instead, I get the worst Monday Morning quarterbacking possible.
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"Modern"? That plant was built in the 60s.
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Interesting)
According to wikipedia, Portugal produces 52% of its energy from renewable sources, with a combination of hydro, solar, wind and geothermal. [wikipedia.org] Do you see 52% of the energy produced in a country with a population of 11 million as "all bullshit" and a failure to "actually accomplish anything large scale"?
Re: (Score:3)
And where's the actual proof that CO2 does harm? We're still in an Ice Age. We're still in an interglacial period
Fail. Temperature changes aren't spontaneous, they happen for a reason. Mostly because of changes in atmospheric composition.
When the climate reverts to the long-term norm...
It won't. Not unless the atmosphere somehow starts losing greenhouse gases. This is very unlikely given all the power stations, cows, cars, etc that are busy belching it out like there's no tomorrow.
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:4, Insightful)
> #1 Japan didn't turn off all nuclear. For one, it would take far longer than a few months to do so. For two, they're taking
> them offline for security checks. They plan on bringing them back online.
If you seriously think they will ever go back online you aren't paying attention. Nope, the lights just went out over there for good. Germany is shutting their nuke down. Frace would if they weren't so utterly dependent on them, and being French and just electing a Socialist government I still wouldn't bet a lot on them still having nukes a decade out.
> #2 Solar panels work great. I have em, and they cut my bill in half.
Nope. Take the government subsidies out of photoelectric and you wouldn't have bought them. Because the total value of the electricity derived from one over it's normal service life doesn't equal the TCO of the equipment. Large scale solar is close to net positve vs fossil fuel and will eventually get there but the greens are already mobilizing against the large scale installations that are required to generate useful quantities of electricity.
> #3 One solar thermal plant wasn't built because the company didn't want to immediately fork over the money to alleviate environmental concerns..
Probably because they realized the money would tip the project to uncompetitive, or because they realized that paying off this group would not solve the problem, the lawsuits would be endless until they abandoned the project. Alleviating 'environmental concerns' are like achieving diversity, there is no way to actually do it but you can waste an unlimited amount of time and money trying.... or relocate to a more friendly climate.
#4 Even if we are in an ice age (and we really aren't), that doesn't matter one lick.
Actually, if we are heading into an Ice Age there probably isn't anything we can do about it. WIth the current state of Climate Science we probably can't say and with the politics in it no sane person should trust it anyway.
> What matters is that there are drastic changes coming to our civilization, which has been built
> according to the climate variations of the past 300 years. That's going to cost money.
Considering that the only longterm constant in the environment is change that is almost certainly true. Whether it is going to change in the ways predicted by AGW theory, whether it will change BECAUSE of the influence of man, which influences but doesn't determine the BIG question of whether we can control the changes are all pretty open questions at this point.
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#2 Solar panels work great. I have em, and they cut my bill in half.
You cut your bill in half by dipping into your neighbours' pockets. Over here in Ontario, the provincial power company used to pay you $0.80/kWh for any power produced by your solar panels that you feed into the grid. At the same time they charged you only $0.06/kWh for the power from the grid. Guess how they make up the difference. Solar panels, unfortunately, can't stand on their own right now. When they do, it'll be great.
Seriously, I'd
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> And don't forget tidal.
You mean forget the horrid ecological cost to vital spawning grounds for (whatever blah blah).
> So because fringe enviro-kooks have a problem with anything...
Yup, because they are the, to a high enough percentage to ignore the outliers, the exact same set of people who are pushing AGW. Whether AGW is true or not doesn't really matter either. It is just one weapon all leading to the same result. In the 1970's it was Global Cooling. Same policy prescriptions. When the Soviet
Re: (Score:3)
The big problem with all of the aforementioned alternative energy sources is that none of them, even nuclear, can come close to providing the 160 exajoules of energy per year currently gotten from oil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil#Definition_and_energy_equivalents). All of them work, if you're willing to accept a civilization that uses about 14.3% of the energy used now. On the plus side, you can still do a lot with 14.3%. On the negative side, yeah, you do sort of have to re-organize civi
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Insightful)
Our current civilization is built upon the ability to have relatively cheap and dense energy.
Currently nothing comes close to hydrocarbon based fuels in these areas. That is not even taking into account all the non energy uses for hydrocarbons.
Drugs, and Materials. Make all oil disappear tomorrow. You will see a very harsh dismantling.
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The non-energy uses of hydrocarbons can continue (although fossil-sourced fertilizers should probably be the first to be phased out). Grid power and most cars don't need fossil fuels, switch those off of it and go from there.
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Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:4, Insightful)
Right now, yes, but nuclear can provide the base load (comes from the ground but doesn't release fossil CO2 into the air) and a range of renewables can do the rest. Then over time we can shift to less nuclear and more renewable as the tech matures.
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:4, Insightful)
Where does all this "dismantle civilization" stuff come from? Changing power sources is dismantling civilization?
No. ELIMINATING power sources is dismantling civilization. We could gladly change power sources. Unfortunately, none exist.
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There are no alternative power sources? Better not tell all those countries using nuclear and renewable...oh but wait because the nuttiest eco-kooks have a problem with all energy sources that means they're not a real option while what's currently in place is, the theme that keeps coming up in this discussion.
Nuclear is great for keeping my computer running and keeping my house cool. Unfortunately, nuclear does nothing that will get me to work. And yes, eco-kooks are doing everything they can to block nuclear energy. How many new nuclear power plants have been licensed and built in the past 20 years?
Re: (Score:3)
Nuclear is great for keeping my computer running and keeping my house cool. Unfortunately, nuclear does nothing that will get me to work.
What about stuff that runs on electricity: trams, railway, subway, electric cars?
Also, given enough energy, we can make synthetic gasoline.
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2008/01/nuclear-synfuel-economy.html [blogspot.com]
How many new nuclear power plants have been licensed and built in the past 20 years?
88 new grid connections in the last 20 years, 73.3 GW total.
It is obvious that this build rate could very easily be at least 10 times higher.
http://pris.iaea.org/Public/WorldStatistics/OperationalByAge.aspx [iaea.org]
Re: (Score:3)
This is the reason that the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference was such a spectacular failure. The proposed fix was a massive wealth transfer to "most vulnerable" developing countries under the supervision of the UN. No way developed countries were going to let the UN imposed taxes on them, and developing countries that were not identified as most vulnerable wanted a bigger piece of the pie.
Maybe that doesn't count as dismantling civilization, but the One World Government guys tried to use AGW as a
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Informative)
As glad as I am we got rid of CFCs, it's actually a bit of a funny story where things went from there. The replacement chemicals for CFCs are greenhouses gasses over 4,000 times more potent than Carbon Dioxide. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/19/AR2009071901817.html [washingtonpost.com]
Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score:5, Informative)
No one is saying that.
What is being said is that climate is incredibly complicated.
What we know for sure is that we do not know. They were not a little bit off here. They were way off the mark.
Not because they are stupid. Not because they want to lie.
There was a TED talk on this. Where we think we can understand things that are really way too complicated for our brains to ever understand.
Luckily he does also point out that just because we can not truly understand something does not mean we can not solve it.
Everyone should watch this [ted.com] TED talk.
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We didn't dismantle civilization to get rid of CFCs... we just got rid of the McDLT.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There are (hopefully) experiments on the effects of CFCs on O3 molecules, that made us come to the conclusion that CFC damages the ozone layer. That was simple in my opinion. AGW/ACC on the other hand is far from being simple. I for one am very sceptical about the pace and the amount of global warming happening because of humans.
Uh, the science of AGW is so simple that it has been known since the 19th century. It's way simpler than the effect of CFC's on the ozone layer.
Re: (Score:3)
I think (and I could be wrong; it's been a while since I read on this) that the posited mechanism is that CO2 absobs more heat before it re-radiates it than many other chemicals. That would then imply that more energy would be trapped in the system (though I'm unclear on whether it's latent heat, and thus doesn't change the temperature of the system, or sensible heat, though I'd guess the latter), rather than being radiated out of the system into space. There is really very little question about CO2 being a
Re:But the sky is still falling, right?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Conversely: Anthropogenic global warming would very convenient for all the scientists researching it, as it brings in tons of research money, therefore it must exist, and be ridiculously powerful.
People keep making this assertion over and over like it is proven fact, but nowhere have I ever seen any proof that there is substantial economic incentive for any given scientist to come out in support of global warming theory. In fact, the most likely Nash equilibrium if they were to game it would be to have half of them come down on either side of the issue so that they could use the debate to fuel research dollars. That is absolutely nothing like what is happening.
The thing is that GW as a whole is being exaggerated by both sides one way or the other, and I fear not enough unbiased info is being collected either way.
Okay, let's pretend that there is a bunch of bias like you are talking about. What portion of the 90+% of climatologists who purport to believe AGW is a real and dangerous thing do you think are being manipulated? Can you pick a high enough number to convince anybody that we shouldn't at least be highly concerned without also picking a number so high that it would be impossible without a massive global tinfoil-hat conspiracy?
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You know what would bring in REAL cash? As in, prizes, accolades, grant money beyond your wildest dreams? Proving that everyone is wrong about AGW. If there is money in AGW research, it is in proving it is wrong, not in proving what everyone knows.
Re: (Score:3)
Exactly! Follow the $$$ and you'll see all these scientists folks living high on the hog, flashing their bling as they drive past in their Corollas and Preludes.
Re:Can I get my money back now? (Score:4, Informative)
I may not be so well informed on this, but I don't believe Mr. Lovelock took any of your tax money for climate or weather science. For starters, he lives in Great Britain, and is a British citizen. According to the Google.
But if you're paying taxes in Great Britain, he still hasn't taken any of your money. Mostly he just writes books. There's no public subsidy for what he does, and very little science involved. He's essentially a crank.
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Thank you for using the term "statist" so early in your post so I could stop reading it early on and automatically dismiss you as a crackpot.
Re: (Score:3)
As I posted elsewhere, it's important to distinguish between what serious climate scientists are saying (which lines up with your post) and what Lovelock was forecasting: he predicted near-total annihilation of the human race, and the Earth rendered uninhabitable except for the poles.
Re:Insert socially-engineered title here. (Score:4, Funny)
They are growing, but at a much slower rate than you predicted.
[Alarmist]
Re: (Score:3)
Yawn. Not that old chestnut again.