Apocalyse shortly! - Lovelock

Last October the prognosticator carried Apocalypse shortly? We should know next by next summer.

It was prompted by the disquieting discovery in the dying days of the last Arctic summer of the unprecedented release of methane in large quantity from the Arctic sea floor, and attempted to distill the grave implications resulting.

James Lovelock's latest thoughts on the matter are simpler. They come from an interview carried in the Irish Times of 16 April under the title The genial prophet of climate doom.

Why? Because for Lovelock, it is not a question of if. It is now a certainty.

Along with most climate scientists and specialists in the region, in the case of the Arctic ice the debate is no longer of whether it will endure, merely one of when. From there the process is inevitable:

'Within 30 years, he believes, the Arctic’s floating summer sea ice will all be melted. The polar caps will no longer reflect sunlight back into space and, instead, the ocean will absorb sunlight, heating up. The permafrosts in northern Canada and Siberia will thaw out, releasing carbon dioxide (CO2). At the same time, the tropical forests, which play a critical role in taking CO2 from the atmosphere, will die out. Global temperatures will rise by between five and six degrees in a short period of time, rendering most of the world uninhabitable for the vast majority of mankind.'

'“It is out of our hands. When the floating ice finally melts, it will be the equivalent of nearly all of the CO2 we have put in the atmosphere to date, so the earth begins to join in the act of global heating, doing it in a big way,” he says. “The earth is already moving to its hot stage. The hotter it gets, the faster it goes – and we can’t stop it.”'

'The problem, as Lovelock sees it, is that we have trashed the planet, destroying ecosystems and pumping harmful levels of CO2 into the air. The damage is already done.

'The temperature rises will be permanent, he predicts, and Gaia will adjust. Life will survive, but there is no guarantee that human beings will.'



'He pours scorn on the idea that climate change can be reversible.'

Quite rightly he points out that geoengineering - the concept that we can somehow fix climate change using technology, in essence manage both the planet and its climate - is an absolute conceit and utter folly.

'He pours scorn on the idea that climate change can be reversible.'

We only have to look objectively at our present predicament to see that.

'“I think humans just aren’t clever enough to handle the planet at the moment. We can’t even handle our financial affairs. The worst possible thing that could happen is the green dream of taking charge and saving the planet. I’d sooner a goat as a gardener than humans in charge of the earth,” he says.'

Odd, though, that he attributes that aspiration to the green lobby, as it seems misplaced. Perhaps a small portion of it. But most green solutions are based on living more ecologically and closer to the Earth.

The proponents of geoengineering are those still wedded to technology as the be all and end all (possibly quite literally) of life. In other words those who somehow remain able to believe that the industrial and economic system that has put us on the very brink is miraculously also to be our saviour.

Part of this is a naive and misplaced faith in the powers of science and technology to develop such a solution and on a scale totally unprecedented by orders of magnitude, and to do so perfectly, first time, without any prior testing. That is quite a belief.

But the main reason it is favoured is because it is the ideal recipe for the maintenance of that system as it is - massive investment in new technologies offering a bonanza for all concerned: stockbrokers and financiers; scientists, engineers, designers; manufacturers, materials suppliers; real estate; engineering and construction companies. So the perfect economic stimulus on a planetary scale, just when it is considered so desperately needed.

That is what swings the enthusiasm and support. The system marches on triumphant and unaltered. All predicated on the madness that economic well-being is paramount. Or at least on a par with having a future. Strange kind of thinking, really.

Here is where it has got us so far:

'QUITE THE MOST dire of his predictions is that the human race will be reduced in numbers to around one billion people by the end of this century. The biggest problem, he believes, is that there are just too many of us. Simply by existing, we and our lifestock [sic] account for a quarter of all man-made CO2 emissions.'

Yet like all good stories, this one still manages to surprise by reconciling things against all odds in a happy ending:

“I lived through the second World War and I thought it was exciting even though I was a pacifist. Life is going to be the opposite of boring. Young people will not regard the catastrophe in the same way as our generation will do.”

So there you go.

In closing, for James Lovelock's sake, we should note one error. The Gaia theory is not 'that the world is itself a living organism.' It is that the biosphere behaves in a manner analogous to a living organism in acting to sustain optimal conditions for the continuation of life on the planet. He is not well enamoured with that New Age interpretation.

Lovelock's scientific Gaia theory is by now thoroughly proven. The process it describes is what we have thoroughly derailed by our energy profligate ways of living.

What price a future?


For those wanting more, here is a review of both his latest book and his biography by John and Mary Gribbin which were published simultaneously in February.