World 'appeasing' climate threat

[Ivan Seeking]

"World 'appeasing' climate threat"

One of the UK's best-known scientists, Professor James Lovelock, says only a catastrophe will prompt the world to tackle the threat of climate change.
He says the global climate treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, is simply an attempt to appease a self-regulating Earth system.

Professor Lovelock thinks the Earth's attempts to restore its equilibrium may eliminate civilisation and most humans. [continued]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3766831.stm

I don't know much about this person and he sounds like a bit of a crackpot to me, but since I don't know I didn't want to judge. For this reason I am posting for your approval or not. Go get him Andre!

Here is a little about Lovelock

Lovelock was born in Letchworth Garden City. He studied chemistry at Manchester University before taking up a Medical Research Council post at the Institute for Medical Research in London.

In 1948 he received a Ph.D. in medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Within the United States he has taught at Yale, Baylor University College of Medicine, and Harvard University.

[edit]
Professional Career
A lifelong inventor, some of his inventions were adopted by NASA in their program of planetary exploration. It was while working for NASA that Lovelock developed the Gaia Hypothesis.

Lovelock is currently president of the Marine Biological Association, was elected a FRS in 1974, and in 1990 was awarded the first Amsterdam Prize for the Environment by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. An independent scientist, inventor, and author, Lovelock works out of a barn-turned-laboratory in Cornwall.


Lovelock was among the first researchers to sound the alarm about the threat from the greenhouse effect. His opinion is that "Only nuclear power can now halt global warming "[continued]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Lovelock works out of a barn-turned-laboratory in Cornwall.

This is the part that really scared me since I also work out of a barn-turned-laboratory. :surprise:

 

[Njorl]

This is the part that really scared me since I also work out of a barn-turned-laboratory. :surprise:

Unfortunately,I live on an old chickenfarm. I would kill for a barn-turned laboratory. My hunchback, however, doesn't mind the coop's low ceiling.

Njorl

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Unfortunately,I live on an old chickenfarm.

I would kill for an old chickenfarm! That's amazing.

 

[Andre]

Well, for starters, James Lovelock is the inventor of http://www.acad.carleton.edu/curricular/GEOL/DaveSTELLA/Daisyworld/gaia.htm and

http://www.acad.carleton.edu/curricular/GEOL/DaveSTELLA/Daisyworld/daisyworld_model.htm , however these very elegant ideas encouters some philosophical objections. It assumes for instance a desired endstate, whilst Nature has no goal. Gaia is a regulated ideal living world in which lifeforms that support this, will be thriving whilst lifeforms that oppose it, will perish. Hence Gaia could have been a "appeasing" bridge between science and religion but neither party seems to be interested in that.

With this background, the article makes perfect sense. Mankind is against Gaia and will be punished by global warming.

Anyway, the problem is that we have not even a beginning clue to what's happening to climate. It may be noticed for instance the warming trend of the preriod 1996-2003 seem to have been reversed. So the "CO2 is global warming" is very premature and it's far more easy to disprove it than to have it confirmed. Yet the over simplification - occam razor level is very appealing. Everybody can understand. So if you tell Lovelock that CO2 = global warming and he thinks you are right, well this is the obvious result.

But remember: a strong slogan (CO2=global warming) will kill 50 years worth of rational thinking.