If you want to get some idea of what much of the Earth might look like in 50
years’ time then, says James Lovelock, get hold of a powerful telescope or
log onto Nasa’s Mars website. That arid, empty, lifeless landscape is, he
believes, how most of Earth’s equatorial lands will be looking by 2050. A
few decades later and that same uninhabitable desert will have extended into
Spain, Italy, Australia and much of the southern United States.
“We are on the edge of the greatest die-off humanity has ever seen,” said
Lovelock. “We will be lucky if 20% of us survive what is coming. We should
be scared stiff.”
Lovelock has delivered such warnings before, but this weekend they have a
special resonance. Last week in Bangkok, Thailand, the world’s governments
finalised this year’s third and final report from the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) setting out how humanity might save itself
from the worst effects of climate change.
In it was a message of hope, albeit a faint one. The report set out a complex
mix of political, economic and technological solutions. If they all worked,
said the report, they could achieve huge cuts in the 25 billion tons of
carbon dioxide (CO2) released by humanity into the air each year, thus
keeping global temperature rises below 3C.
At the same time in Cologne, Germany, 4,000 sharp-suited bankers, lawyers and
financial traders at Carbon Expo 2007 were congratulating themselves on the
booming new markets in carbon credits that will, they boasted, save the
world as well as making them rich.
“I have a dream,” Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change, told the delegates. He set out his
belief that carbon trading will help stabilise greenhouse gas emissions and
aid developing countries by transferring £50 billion a year to these nations
from the First World to support green development.
For Lovelock, however, such dreams are dangerous nonsense on a par with a
drowning man clutching at straws. “It’s all ridiculous,” he sighed. “These
new markets do some good in that they generate wealth and keep these people
employed, but they and the IPCC are just raising false hopes. We have done
too much damage to the world and now it is changing too fast for us to make
much difference.”
Lovelock’s view is that the world has two stable states: the “icehouse”, when
ice covers both poles, sometimes extending far into lower latitudes in the
form of ice ages; and the “greenhouse”, when all the ice melts. Both have
already happened many times in the Earth’s history.
“Human outpourings of greenhouse gases have flicked the switch that turns the
world from its colder to its warm state – and it is probably too late to
stop it,” he said. “The warming impact of the carbon we have already
released is such that the Earth has taken over and our greenhouse gas
emissions are being amplified by nature itself.”
Lovelock believes that the transformation is happening far too fast for
humanity to tackle, especially in a world that remains committed to economic
growth and whose 6.5 billion population is predicted to reach more than 9
billion by mid-century.
For evidence, he points to Siberia where the melting of the permafrost,
already widely reported in scientific literature, will enable bacteria to
decompose organic matter that has accumulated in the soil over tens of
millions of years – potentially releasing billions more tons of CO2 “I have
just come back from Norway where the temperatures are even further above
normal than Britain’s. The climate is changing every year now. Everyone can
see it – as in this very warm April. By mid-century the heatwave [in Europe]
that killed 20,000 people in 2003 will be a cool summer by comparison.”
At first sight Lovelock’s predictions seem wildly at odds with the IPCC’s
reports, but in many ways the only difference is in the vividness of the
language. “The progressive acidification of oceans due to increasing
atmospheric carbon dioxide is expected to have negative impacts on marine
shell-forming organisms (ie corals) and their dependent species,” said the
IPCC report detailing the impacts of climate change – its careful language
draining the drama from a warning that vast tracts of the ocean may turn so
acidic that little life will be left in them.
It added: “At lower latitudes, especially seasonally dry and tropical regions,
crop productivity is projected to decrease for even small local temperature
increases (1-2C), which would increase risk of hunger.” What these measured
tones imply, warns Lovelock, is that millions – perhaps hundreds of millions
– of people living in equatorial lands will be forced from their homes, with
most of them heading northwards. “The world will face mass shortages of food
and water. That will lead to wars and the effective clearance of vast areas
of land as the deserts spread,” he said.
Lovelock’s reputation as a scientific seer was founded four decades ago when
he published his Gaia hypothesis. His idea, that the Earth’s chemistry,
climate and life were all closely linked into a kind of self-sustaining
system, is now received wisdom. It has become clear that the first life
forms on Earth transformed its early climate and atmosphere, generating the
oxygen that allowed life to evolve – eventually into us.
What’s more, that process continues. Oxygen is a reactive gas that would
vanish from the atmosphere were it not for the plankton, and plants that
keep topping it up.
Lovelock’s warnings may seem remote (and he hasn’t always been proved right)
but with Britain basking in record spring heat he says our scepticism about
the damage we can expect from global warming is understandable. “Britain and
Scandinavia are becoming green oases. In 2050 or soon after, most of the
world may be scrub and desert and most of the oceans will be denuded of
life, but temperatures here will remain very tolerable. The downside of that
is that we risk becoming like a lifeboat with millions of refugees trying to
settle here.”
He is not alone in predicting a huge northwards shift in human populations: in
his new book, How the World will Change with Global Warming, Professor
Trausti Valsson, an Icelandic academic, predicts how population centres will
move north.
“The Arctic ice cap is melting. When it goes it will open up new shipping
routes, new fishing grounds and new oil fields,” said Valsson. “The Arctic
Ocean will become the new Mediterranean with Siberia and Canada as the
centres for human culture and civilisation.”
Lovelock is fond of recounting how, on a recent lecture tour of America, he
was accosted by earnest academics seeking advice on whereabouts in Canada
they should buy their second homes.
Behind such comic anecdotes, however, lies the grim possibility that billions
of people face a miserable life and death as humanity finds a new
equilibrium with the Earth. At 87 Lovelock acknowledges that he is unlikely
to be one of them. His concern is for the generations represented by his
nine grandchildren. “What we have lived through, the 20th century, has been
like a great party. Adults now have had the best time humanity has ever had.
Now the party is over and the Earth is reckoning up.”
The book that propelled Lovelock to “hero†status was “Gaia†published in 1979 and written as a PR advert FOR the technology that has torn a hole in the fabric of the world. Lovelock’s book takes Mother Earth, which indigenous people have always known as a living entity and subverts her into ‘Gaia’ a shiny but ultimately false Greek goddess. In ‘Gaia’ Lovelock turns environmentalism on its head and asserts that the nuclear industry, chemical technology, fossil fuels are as natural as cow dung. All very clever - he even berated ecologists for trying to stop the Alaskan oil pipeline . He now berates the navajos for trying to stop futher uranium mines. Will Mother Earth forgive him?
marianne Birkby, milnthorpe, cumbria
When there is a total eclipse of the sun, the suns rays are blocked by the moon. The moon is 3,474 kilometres across, so why not place a reflective satellite 35 metres across at the roughly the same distance from earth but ensure it is always directly between earth and sun. This would then deflect one percent of the suns rays, reducing the temperare by the required four degrees. If the earth cooled or heated too much the orbit could be adjusted.
Rather than trying to reach a seemingly possible international agreement on carbon emissions, this would seem to be a practical solution.
I also suggest the operation of the reflector should be in the hands of Greenpeace and/or James Lovelock, as then the regulation of earths temperature would be their responsibility rather than them blaming us for it!
C Woodley, Oxford, UK
I have just been doing some quick calculations and worked out that us humans are burning 1 barrel of oil a day for each 2.5 square miles of the earths surface. We also burn more than that amount again of coal so I am just amazed that things are not even worse than they seem. Unfortunately judging by the comments of many of the "global warming is a myth" contributors it is unlikely we will do anything to stop the orgy of energy waste until it is too late. Why are these boneheads so intent on consuming so much fuel? Is it just because they cannott cope with a change to their lifestyles? Surely a civilised society would at least try to use a valuable finite resource for the benefits of all mankind rather than allowing it to be burnt for the short term pleasure of a few selfish idiots.
Clive Stringer, Eggesford, Devon
I agree with Croucher: "Basically they are just supporting governments with new ways of restricting freedoms and taxing hard working populations. "
And they're trying to take away our SUVs too! Darn
socialist scumbags! Damn 'em all to hell!
Alan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USa
that oil and coal was put there for a reason to make the planet livable.By recolonsing the planet after the dinosaurs plants took in CO2 and released O2.They died along with animals and accumulated over millions of years to form carbon shells and then fossil fuels.They did it so mammals could have a chance of living.when we dug up those fuels/burned them and cut down the forests around us for greed etc. we were returning the earth to the once lifeless world after the astroid hit earth.We mutilplied too fast forgetting the basics of ecology and now the rest of the planet is paying.We need to build giant computer with ALL our history/knowledge and art in it for any race that picked up and understood the pioneer plauqe or for the next sapient species that arrives out of our own made extinction to learn from our mistakes.
Shane Nolan, Carlow, Ireland
Ben from Bedfordshire has it about right. Combine Peak Oil and Global Warming and we are done. And combine they will.
There are no real applicable answers given greed, prevalent economic forces, apathy, denial, disbelief.
Melting permafrost releasing methane will soon be the hammer driving it all. An enormous methane "burp" was part of one of the most thorough extinctions the planet has ever experienced.
Enjoy yourselves while you can.
Bob Schmidt, Tampa, Florida
Basically we have to understand that what we see and experience externally is correlated with what we are in our own minds. The old law of cause and effect takes place whether we like it or not. There are many ways to clean up the mess, but all of them arise from our understanding and our attitude. Thus we should encourage a deep change in our own attitude to how to live . People of good faith may recite the powerful Mantra of the Shurangama. Vegetarianism and the proteccion of habitat should be a must even in our little backyards. Giving up burning oil unless it is absolutely necessary.. Give up war, greed for money ,lust, gluttony, violence and stupidity. Sounds familiar to you ? We have to understand that the power of the mind is at the core of what happens.
External solutions if not supported by attitude change, are no solutions at all. Real solutions are born from the heart. Reality is more magic than science can yet understand. Lovelock is right, we need to set a new priority .
Ben Fernandez, Hagensborg, B.C. Canada
Climate change is not in question. It's happened many times, and will continue to happen. the 20th century was anomalously stable, maybe because the earth had come to some Gaia-like equilibrium with the right amount of O2 producing / CO2 consuming plants and ocean heat pump. Who knows?
Yeah, we may have forced change by pulling millions of years worth of Carbon out the ground and putting it into the air. The extent to which we're a potent enough force (as compared to the ellipticity of the earth's orbit around the Sun, e.g.) to have forced this change is, to me, in question. But does it really matter at this point?
Adapt or die.
Remote Exploit, seattle, WA
"Well Grounded Science"? That's oxymoronic. I doubt such a thing exists, especially regarding climate change. What is considered scientific fact is dynamic on a daily basis. We used the think the earth was flat so don't put so much faith in Science ...
Matt, BC, Canada
Check the average tempratures and environmental state that the Earth had during the Miocene epoch, when the world was on average 2 degrees hotter. Also check the last interglacial, a time when hippos wallowed in the Theames River. This might give a more accurate picture of a world 2-4 degrees warmer.
jason, sydney, australia
I've wondered for some time why many of the current generation of bright young people seem to be living for the moment, travelling the world while they can and there are still beautiful places to visit. Many are putting the idea of a future career on a back burner and not contributing to pensions for their old age.
Do they subconsciously know something? Could James Lovelock be right?
Pat, Somerset, England
While the energy powers that be have been very effective at casting doubt into the climate change issue, the fact remains that the climate is changing and whether or not we are the cause, we need to become prepared. I cannot argue with Dr. Lovelock, it’s in the geologic record for all to discern. 6.5 billion is too many people and our capitalistic global economy is based upon constant growth (which anyone with a basic understanding of arithmetic will tell you is absurd). However, I think there is hope that we or however many of "we" that are left can build a better society. We have to try.
Kamau Beno, San Antonio, USA/TX
If Lovelock is correct--if the IPCC is correct even--there is no objective hope for turning this thing around, even if the earth's powerful people wished to do so. They don't--and neither to the great majority of the earth's people. They want to play games of "let's pretend", instead.
Maybe this is a reasonable response, in a way. Merely applying the brakes would require a return to preindustrial technology, preindustrial lifestyles--for all of us.
What are the chances that this will happen? Zero.
Since the PTB and most of the world's people have no plan other than to "party on," the only option left for the rest is to make their own plans: Get some land and hope it's in the right place. Or try to establish "lifeboat" communities. Learn how to survive without technology. Buy hand tools and learn how to use them. And then you might have to wait 20 years to find out if you made the right call....
Sharon, odessa, missouri
"Fiddling with Figures..." states: "Lovelock’s warnings may seem remote (and he hasn’t always been proved right)." The author, Jonathan Leake, fails to note that when Lovelock has been wrong, he has usually underestimated the consequences. Lovelock's most famous error was predicting that the accumulation of Freons in the Earth's atmosphere would be harmless. Instead, they created the Ozone Hole. Almost no climate scientists realize that chaotic systems (remember "The Butterfly Effect"?) tend to be very sensitive to changes in long term energy input, more technically known as "forcing". This effect was first published by Edward Lorenz, famous for discovering the chaotic Lorenz Attractor, 1 year after he published the paper showing his attractor. The latter paper has been studiously ignored by climate scientists.
Gregory Markowski, Ph.D., Altadena, CA, USA
The global housing bubble is probably our collective response to what Lovelock sees as the inevitable. The most unsustainable areas continue to experience the fastest growth - marginal places like Las Vegas, Perth, Dubai, and of course, London. Instinct is drawing larger and larger numbers of us collectively toward these risky areas.
Just like the planet, the human species also functions like a superorganism. Simply put, the more stupid we act now, the quicker the die-off in the future will be, the less turmoil which result, the faster our species can bounce back.
stu mann, Rotorua, New Zealand
Dr. Lovelock probably understands more about our planet's physiological dynamics than any person, including:
*that climate has a discrete number of attractor states - ice age, interglacial & a hotter states (e.g., Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Max) - & that transitions - especially during heating - occur in decades, not centuries.
* that increases in global T even in the moderate ranges of IPCC projections, coupled with deforestation, will stress equatorial ecosystems beyond their capacity to maintain stability (simple plant physiology & enzyme kinetics).
Those asserting that "Flipping ... is ... far from certain" fail to understand system sciences & published studies (especially ice core work) grounded in systems sciences. To assert that Lovelock's predictions are "unfounded" is misleading & ludicrous.
Lovelock is not attempting to "paralyze the populace", but - as Trausti Valsson writes - to offer us "foreknowledge" so that we can plan for adaptation rather than wait for chaos
A~E, Eugene, OR
If that all sounds scary then imagine what will happen when oil runs out. We should be about dry by 2050. No oil = no food. Humanity will be cast back to the dark ages. Perhaps a fitting punishment for what we have all done? 6.5 billion people is about 5billion to many to be sustainable. It's not that hard to work out really - Sun provides energy which is stored up over 100s of millions of years (carbon is also filtered out of the atmosphere). We use it all up in a couple of hundred, (releasing stored carbon in the process) assuming someone will invent a perpetual motion machine. It's all quite amusing in a sad kind of way. Capitalism only speeds this up. Socialism was the best way after all. There is hope - Our leaders might just find another planet and continue their legacy - while we all perish!
Ben, Bedfordshire, England
So it is just his way of saying what is in the IPCC reports? Well nasty him! Maybe he should just speak a bit nicer so we don't get all worried.
John Lee, London, UK
Flipping the global climate system to a new attractor state is a distinct possibility but far from certain. Non-linear changes are occurring, but where they will take us is unknown. Rapid climate change is now expected, but how rapid remains to be seen.
The specificity of Lovelock's predictions are unfounded. Such changes within 50 years .... ?!
To address this very serious issue, we need motivation to act based on well-grounded science, not dire speculations that are more likely to parpalyze the populace.
DH, Eugene, Oregon
I think this man has lived long enough to know how different the world is from the time that he's lived. It's good to know about global warming. It's as real as it gets. It scares the crap out of me to think that 10 or 20 years from now it'll be hotter. I have lived 25 years of my life near the equator. I have felt how different the temperature feels. It's just been really hotter than it used too. We sould soon face a time when we can say, "playing in the sun all day", with our kids.
benmode, Manila, Philippines
The hubris with which Lovelock says this is breathtaking. His assumption that he has a sufficient understanding of the complexity of the planet to make a prediction like that is simply irresponsible.
Catastrophe-porn theorists like this are a dime a dozen at the moment, and despite Lovelock's undoubted contribution to the debate he should be ashamed of himself for promoting this schlock as a means of keeping his head above the parapet.
Simon Tanner, Sydney, Australia
Perhaps David and GG could explain where all of the billions of tons of fossil fuel carbon are going that we burn each year? But hey, we may as well just ignore the scientists from every country in the world because it is just a 'trendy theory' (like the theory of gravity, the theory of evolution, etc, etc.). Lets just carry on buying oil, gas and coal from anti-democratic dictatorships and not worry about what is going to happen to us once we have finished digging our hole.
Ralph, Scottish Highlands,
Lovelock may well be right because of all the stored methane and carbon deposits in the World and positive feedbacks kicking in to release them.I can only hope he's wrong,but ice cores have shown great dramatic shifts in Earth's climate before.
James, wellington, new zealand
I attended my first talk on global warming in 1982. During the years since then, I have listened to nay sayers, pseudo scientists and a host of others claiming it's all a joke or whatever. Spending a lot of the time living in Alaska I watched the glaciers melt, permafrost line move north, winters change, etc. Throughout it all, I remember one line from an article I read years ago: Each year a simple CO2 monitor registers higher. As my neighbor said recently, "it's all happened before". My response was, "yes" but where is the CO2 coming from this time if not from us". His response was silence. Animal populations increase beyond the capability of their environment to support them and they experience a massive die off. This time it's us.
Zeke Putnam, Bemidji, USA
What is the average person to do with this information?
I'm just a regular guy with a job. I use flourescent bulbs, I drive a small car, I bike to work when I can. It all seems like a drop in the bucket.
I don't make laws or otherwise have any mass influence over what others do.
When I read about how the world is doomed no matter what, all I can think of is, why should I even bother trying to make a difference? Why not live it up while I can.
Frank LaRosa, Madison, Wisconsin USA
I agree with those who concede that the causes of global warming are in question. I fear that even if we shut down the world's economies tomorrow and returned to the lifestyle of the 3rd century BC, we would still face the same catastrophe. Their is solid evidence that wholesale global extinctions that have occured over hundred's of millions of years have occured at regular intervals which follow the same pattern: sudden polar magnetic reversal triggering global volcanic eruptions, most of which occur under the oceans, causing rapid heating of the oceans leading to extreme precipitation and glaciation. Cooling is caused by surface volcanic activity leading to the equivalent of a nuclear winter. The oceans are getting warmer. But why? The U.S. northeast just had an extreme winter. Why? Glaciers inland are getting thicker while on the coast they're melting. For a good overview of a powerful, alternative theory read "Not by Fire but by Ice" by Robert Felix.
Robert Lopez, Montebello,
only after the last tree is felled
the last fish caught
the last animal exterminated
and the last river poisoned......
after the last oil is burned
and the last bullet fired.....
only then will we realize
that we can't eat money.
Humanity, you can ignore global warming, overpopulation, Peak Oil, the surveillance state and the coming crash of the globalized economy if you choose....but at your own peril and that of your children.
Here in Texas, not 1 in 1000 has even an inkling of what may be in store for ALL of humanity....even with the Katrina disaster not 2 years old and the Iraq war going into year 5.....
America is finished....culturally, economically, competitively.....Finished!!! Only the infectuous momentum of our junk-culture keeps us living in the illusion of our self-taught supremacy.
But we will still pollute the earth and kill people for their resources until even the dumbest American can no longer push themself away from the glutton's table.
David Krongard, Sugar Land, USA Texas
There are no honeybees left, we had six inches of snow in mid April, spring came on overnight like a light switch being turned on yet all the flowers are blasted, and david croucher says that global warming is a 'trendy theory.'
I only have one disagreement with Mr. Lovelock. CO2 is not the real problem. When the Siberian tundra starts giving up its stored methane, we will be on Venus rather than Mars.
"Carbon traders" are frauds fiddling while Rome, and the rest of us, melts.
nrb, rochester, USA
No-one doubts that global warming is happening, and only non-climate scientists dispute the reason GG. Last time I checked, Mars is not earth, so we should expect things to happen differently there. In addition, since you don't listen to experts on climate, why you would listen to one telling you where you should live confuses me.
As for David Croucher, I personally would trust scientists who have spent most of their lives, entire carreers studying climate change somewhat more than your opinion. The idea that man-made causes are not the scientific consensus originate only from non-climate scientists who feel the need to stick their arm in for their own interests.
Richard, Edinburgh, Scotland
No-one doubts that global warming is happening; what is in dispute is the reason. Recent evidence from Mars of global warming there, where there is no evidence of current life-forms, seems to point to a natural phenomenon. It seems clear, therefore, that the only way forward is for scientific experts around the world to establish immediate programmes to instruct people how they should deal with the status quo in their own lives and in their own country. Examples: which cities are most at risk of disappearance by ocean-flood, and how to deal with it; which countries are soon likely to achieve temperatures over the threshhold of sustaining life? Etc. etc.
GG, Tarn et Garonne, France
This article is a long winded diatribe centering on an old man that speaks absolute rubbish.
He is in good company with the other scientists that predict doom and gloom for the planet earth, they are as clever as the old, earth is flat theorists.Basically they are just supporting governments with new ways of restricting freedoms and taxing hard working populations.
Global warming is nothing but a trendy theory, to describe the natural process of our planet's continuing adjustment of itself.
david croucher, Malaga, Spain
Lovelock may be right about impending doom for some, but nobody can really know what countries will flourish or even what the climate of various regions will be like. Lovelock may be a gifted scientist but he's no seer. Climatologists can barely predict weather more than 5 or so days out with any accuracy. Predicting entire seasons is hit or miss. Now we can predict the future climate of specific countries?
mc, willimantic, usa/connecticut
This guy thinks that the 20th century "has been like a great party." I don't think that WWII was a party for most of the millions that perished.
michael alao, fredericksburg, usa/virginia
Lovelock is right. He's the small boy standing on the bow of the Titanic and gesticulating at the iceberg ahead. We are the people ignoring him and continuing to party, confident the officers on deck know what they are doing. I'm starting a movement toward full participatory democracy. Under the unstoppable flood of humanity that is coming our way we will face decades and perhaps centuries of martial law. Who knows where that will lead. But we can avoid that if democracy is totally endemic in our societies. We can also develop the universal will needed to do amazing things, the will that is so lacking in our current system of democracy, which is so outdated having been designed in horse and buggy days.
Craige Cronin, Brisbane, Queensland/Australia