Renowned scientist James Lovelock gave a powerful speech in Toronto today. Lovelock argues persuasively that we are already headed to huge, irreversible temperature changes, which will massively disrupt human society and populations. These changes will be far greater and faster than those predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, just as actual changes in sea level, temperature and ice have repeatedly outstripped those predicted by the IPCC. And much, much greater than those predicted by Al Gore. How will people react? (Gwyn Dyer says, “Climate Wars”.)
In the face of this crisis, Lovelock calls for an urgent shift to energy conservation, renewables and nuclear energy, less meat consumption and a huge effort to create and bury charcoal. But even if we do all of these things, disruptive temperature rises are inevitable, likely in sharp jumps. Lovelock predicts food shortages and huge migrations to northern regions, such as Canada. It’s like the “phony war” in 1939, he says; everyone knows the disasters are coming, but no one is doing anything effective about it. When we do decide to act, we will bitterly regret these lost years.
The speech was organized by Corporate Knights.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi,
James Lovelock is certainly a character, and quite possibly right. In addition to his ideas that we are past the tipping point on climate change, he even says that the models used by the IPCC and others are invalid. The point I think he is making is that we need to go full speed towards energy efficiency and clean electricity, but how do you motivate people without a clear and present danger?
Climate change is still very intangible to the developed world, let alone the developing one. Just as WWII may not have been preventable, dramatic changes to the world's climate seem inevitable. But, there is no doubt that the world after WWII is dramatically better than the one before – perhaps the same will be true of energy production.
Cheers,
Jonathan
He is another of the doomsayers. They have always been wrong. Climate change during "this round" has been going on for 15,000 years and man is a bit player. What we need to do is prepare to adjust because we are not going to slow it or stop it. Peter
It certainly seems as though most people and governments have failed to appreciate what business-as-usual emissions would do, if extended from now to 2100. We would be facing temperature increases of about 5.5°C to 7.1°C, and a very real threat to the future of human civilization.
What is most remarkable is that people still haven’t come to appreciate that starting to mitigate now is a highly cost-effective way to stave off the threat, while capitalizing on co-benefits such as energy security and the transition to a sustainable energy base for society.
Beyond the Bailout … a Bigger Problem… and a Solution
March 2009 SLDI Newsletter – http://www.sldi.org/newService/SLDIMar2009.html
…As reported first in last month’s SLDI Newsletter, Lovelock believes that charcoal produced from biomass, known as “biochar,” is one of the only answers to climate change we have. He states, “There is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal…you can start shifting really hefty quantities of carbon out of the system and pull the CO2 down quite fast.” …Furthermore, the properties of biochar allow us to address three or four critical crises at once: the climate-change crisis, the energy crisis, and the food and water crises, because renewable bio-fuel is a by-product of the pyrolysis production process. Putting biochar in the soil not only fertilizes the soil, but also helps it to retain and purify water.
Your participation and comments are welcome.
Terry Mock
Executive Director
Sustainable Land Development International
http://www.SLDI.org
We are tampering with the system – the atmosphere and its temperature – that supports all our continuing to live.
The nay-sayers just want so badly to believe in business as usual. You can see it here in their posts. Yet they have no proofs, no data, no nothing. They just say things like "the doom sayers have always been wrong…" Not good enough for me to refute real scientists like James Lovelock.
Let's face it – we are a culture weened on feel-good out of hollywood. Everything always turns out to be OK in the end. This naive approach probably will cause us to be blind sided by sudden climate change when we have done nothing to prepare.
Dear Bill,
Thank you so much for your comment. If you are right, we have a bleak future.
Dianne
Jim Hansen came to Eugene Oregon last fall. At the end I said to him that, dire though the message he brings is, he is characterizing the situation less terribly and more optimisticly – how we can act now to improve the outcome – than James Lovelock is; who is stating basically that "the positive feedbacks are already in play," I said, and we've transitioning into a new hotter phase state. Hansen said, Lovelock, He is a good man. " But, he's old, and his ideas are not so good." Hansen did not know about Biochar. He spoke very well about fourth generation Nuclear plants to keep the electric grid base supply adequate, so the system won't crash, while stopping Coal Plants as the overwhelming priority. He said that the new nuclear plants will not have a Chernobyl type acciden,t or a Three Mile Island, while Coal itself Always has very bad pollution that harms (arsenic, mercury), risk assessment places major disaster on a par with a fire that burns down a city, while beyond that the Global Warming CO2 and Coal Plant problem is so important now that changes everything, he said the New Generation plants burn much more of the fuel, most of the fuel, and the waist has a shorter radioactive half life.
Lovelock's statements on Biochar are persuasive. Jim Hansen and Ranjendra Pachauri both make comments on eating less meat being the biggest individual action to take. In the Stewart Brand Book, Whole Earth Discipline, he writes that the U.S. is now getting a percentage of its electrical power from old Russian Bombs that are being recycled. This plow shears out of swords News not being publicized much. Cool, huh?
Down With Coal! Biochar for 350!