Mail it in, boys. It's over. I feel fine. http://www.newscientist.com/article...nce-to-save-mankind.html?full=true&print=true With his 90th birthday in July, a trip into space scheduled for later in the year and a new book out next month, 2009 promises to be an exciting time for James Lovelock. But the originator of the Gaia theory, which describes Earth as a self-regulating planet, has a stark view of the future of humanity. He tells Gaia Vince we have one last chance to save ourselves - and it has nothing to do with nuclear power Your work on atmospheric chlorofluorocarbons led eventually to a global CFC ban that saved us from ozone-layer depletion. Do we have time to do a similar thing with carbon emissions to save ourselves from climate change? Not a hope in hell. Most of the "green" stuff is verging on a gigantic scam. Carbon trading, with its huge government subsidies, is just what finance and industry wanted. It's not going to do a damn thing about climate change, but it'll make a lot of money for a lot of people and postpone the moment of reckoning. I am not against renewable energy, but to spoil all the decent countryside in the UK with wind farms is driving me mad. It's absolutely unnecessary, and it takes 2500 square kilometres to produce a gigawatt - that's an awful lot of countryside. What about work to sequester carbon dioxide? That is a waste of time. It's a crazy idea - and dangerous. It would take so long and use so much energy that it will not be done. Do you still advocate nuclear power as a solution to climate change? It is a way for the UK to solve its energy problems, but it is not a global cure for climate change. It is too late for emissions reduction measures. So are we doomed? There is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal. It would mean farmers turning all their agricultural waste - which contains carbon that the plants have spent the summer sequestering - into non-biodegradable charcoal, and burying it in the soil. Then you can start shifting really hefty quantities of carbon out of the system and pull the CO2 down quite fast. Would it make enough of a difference? Yes. The biosphere pumps out 550 gigatonnes of carbon yearly; we put in only 30 gigatonnes. Ninety-nine per cent of the carbon that is fixed by plants is released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by consumers like bacteria, nematodes and worms. What we can do is cheat those consumers by getting farmers to burn their crop waste at very low oxygen levels to turn it into charcoal, which the farmer then ploughs into the field. A little CO2 is released but the bulk of it gets converted to carbon. You get a few per cent of biofuel as a by-product of the combustion process, which the farmer can sell. This scheme would need no subsidy: the farmer would make a profit. This is the one thing we can do that will make a difference, but I bet they won't do it. you think we will survive? I'm an optimistic pessimist. I think it's wrong to assume we'll survive 2 °C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4 °C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. The reason is we would not find enough food, unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. It has happened before: between the ice ages there were bottlenecks when there were only 2000 people left. It's happening again. I don't think humans react fast enough or are clever enough to handle what's coming up. Kyoto was 11 years ago. Virtually nothing's been done except endless talk and meetings. I don't think we can react fast enough or are clever enough to handle what's coming up It's a depressing outlook. Not necessarily. I don't think 9 billion is better than 1 billion. I see humans as rather like the first photosynthesisers, which when they first appeared on the planet caused enormous damage by releasing oxygen - a nasty, poisonous gas. It took a long time, but it turned out in the end to be of enormous benefit. I look on humans in much the same light. For the first time in its 3.5 billion years of existence, the planet has an intelligent, communicating species that can consider the whole system and even do things about it. They are not yet bright enough, they have still to evolve quite a way, but they could become a very positive contributor to planetary welfare. How much biodiversity will be left after this climatic apocalypse? We have the example of the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum event 55 million years ago. About the same amount of CO2 was put into the atmosphere as we are putting in and temperatures rocketed by about 5 °C over about 20,000 years. The world became largely desert. The polar regions were tropical and most life on the planet had the time to move north and survive. When the planet cooled they moved back again. So there doesn't have to be a massive extinction. It's already moving: if you live in the countryside as I do you can see the changes, even in the UK. If you were younger, would you be fearful? No, I have been through this kind of emotional thing before. It reminds me of when I was 19 and the second world war broke out. We were very frightened but almost everyone was so much happier. We're much better equipped to deal with that kind of thing than long periods of peace. It's not all bad when things get rough. I'll be 90 in July, I'm a lot closer to death than you, but I'm not worried. I'm looking forward to being 100. Are you looking forward to your trip into space this year? Very much. I've got my camera ready! Do you have to do any special training? I have to go in the centrifuge to see if I can stand the g-forces. I don't anticipate a problem because I spent a lot of my scientific life on ships out on rough oceans and I have never been even slightly seasick so I don't think I'm likely to be space sick. They gave me an expensive thorium-201 heart test and then put me on a bicycle. My heart was performing like an average 20 year old, they said. I bet your wife is nervous. No, she's cheering me on. And it's not because I'm heavily insured, because I'm not. Profile James Lovelock is a British chemist, inventor and environmentalist. He is best known for formulating the controversial Gaia hypothesis in the 1970s, which states that organisms interact with and regulate Earth's surface and atmosphere. Later this year he will travel to space as Richard Branson's guest aboard Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo. His latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, is published by Basic Books in February.
I don't think everyone takes the numbers he gives as gospel, and there is debate, but I think this notion would be widely embraced (by scientists at least.) His view of the decimation of humanity in this century seems a little far fetched to me. As long as there is profit in providing food, people will find a way to get it done, and climate change may free up whole new agricultural zones (or that seems logical to me at least.)
So why not do this? It seems it comes at a far cheaper price than Kyoto Protocol stuff. Or is that needed too even with this plan???
I really hate to be sounding like an antagonist to the global warming advocacy group. But looking at my utility bill which runs over $500/mo for each of the last two months, I'd much rather have the government focus on increasing energy efficiency and reducing energy cost.
Lol - why would increasing energy efficiency and reducing cost be inconsistent with global warming? It's the opposite that is true.
Wow! What the heck kind of energy are you running? I happily celebrated my lowest power bill since I moved into my new house in March of last year. That is more than my house payment.
I don't think you know what you are talking about, Sammy. If increasing energy efficiency and reducing cost go easily and absolutely hand in hand with preventing man-made global warming, nobody in the world will mock or oppose Al Gore's Nobel Peace endeavor.
Is wnes the parent of the OCP? Maybe you should close the garage door after Lil Curry and the bigwheel come in at the end of the day.
And that's the funny part of this whole debate. You're assuming that the market currently is perfectly efficient and has found the best outcome, but that's simply not the case If you factor in the true cost of fossil fuels, which includes the externalities of being dependent on the mideast, pollution, etc etc etc.... it's a no brainer that alternative energies are far more efficient on an economic cost basis (and probably, if you make the term long enough, on an accounting cost basis as well) Sure the startup costs are higher than the stauts quo, which causes short sighted people to rail against it, I mean the start up costs of ANYTHING are higher than the status quo, but there's a reason why people who have solar panels are able to reduce their annual power bills to a fraction of their usual cost, and save money if you amortize the installation of solar panels over the full period of use. Anyway Gore, among others, has made energy efficiency a central part of his agenda (particularly for buildings) and I beliieve Obama is a big fan of this as well and even has it in his (a lot of it has to do with replacing windows in buildings which are spectacularly inefficient on an energy basis)....I believe it's part of his stimulus plan. The Rocky Mountain institute is one of the leaders in this - they have saved companies millions of dollars annually by implementing more energy efficient building design...here is one of their case studies: http://bet.rmi.org/our-work/case-studies/rmi-case-studies
There is nothing unusual about my house, which is about 6-year old. In previous winters my thermostat was set between 65F - 68F and my average monthly utility bill (gas and electricity combined) was a little over $300. Not cheap, but acceptable. This winter the weather has been particularly harsh and I have a newborn at home. My thermostat is at 70F and I also have to run several heaters in some rooms where the temperatures are usually lower than elsewhere due to poorly designed air circulation and/or ventilation system.
Well, even you yourself acknowledge the initial costs of various energy-efficient apparatus -- be it insulation of a house, furnace, heater, etc -- can be expensive. Actually, the options of these niceties are set arbitrarily much higher by the builder and the suppliers, making them look more like luxuries, rather than necessities.
Unfortunately this is doomed to be a very frustrating issue to deal with for the foreseeable future, largely because of the self-serving extremists on either end of the spectrum. It’s going to take some work to weed through this kind of stuff to get to the good information, but I think it’s work we have to do. I do believe there is a significant chance that man is causing global warming, and that the consequences could be severe, and therefore that we should be doing things to address the potential problem. As it turns out, we are also running out of fossil fuels, and this means that a lot of our efforts will be aimed at solving two problems at once. If we do get to a point where we believe there is a real potential for major short term damage from global warming then we’ll need to look at short term solutions, however. To that end I think we should be doing more research on thing like seeding the high level atmosphere with partials and materials that reflect block sunlight. We know that when major volcanic eruptions occur, like Krakatoa or Pinatubo, they eject material into the upper atmosphere which has an immediate long lasting impact on global temperatures. If we understood this process better we could probably duplicate it and bring the temperature of the earth down a degree or two in a very short period of time. We may even be able to target this at certain areas, like the polar ice cap. This is not a long term solution, of course, but it is a short term life-preserver type solution. Technology that would allow us to scrub CO2 directly from the atmosphere is also improving. http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/09/30/carbon.html There are even proposals to recombine this captured CO2 with hydrogen to produce carbon neutral hydrocarbons. I couldn’t find a link quickly but it’s out there if you want to search for it. To sum up, contrary to the wailings of those who like to stroke their egos by standing on soapboxes and declare doom and gloom, there are promising short term solutions for the problem of global warming if we get to the point where we feel we need to take drastic action quickly, and there are many longer term solutions that have the added advantage of also addressing the problem of our diminishing supply of hydrocarbons.
wnes must not be in Houston. Anyway, energy efficiency would be a good idea, but I don't think the govt can bail you out of your high bill.
sure the initial cost of changing is higher but over the life of it it pays for itself .... my company (which is huge) has a goal of reducing its carbon emissions by 50% by 2013....they're doing this to save money, not to lose money.
Why not cut CO2 emissions where is creates profits/reduces costs And not where it raises costs. Back in 1991 when the climate change issue was starting to surface the majority of scientists being asked by the UN to work on this used data to attribute global temp change to sun flares (spots). By the time the UN got to Kyoto in 1997 they had made it a huge political issue which drives scientific funding. Once you get the $$$$ of scientific funding tied to an issue expect the science to follow. Today the sun flares are ignored by scientists and global temp are controlled by man. That is written in scientific scripture which is infallible. I don't know anything about it myself, but I believe everything I read on the internet
I haven’t read the paper yet, but for those who are interested here it is. Carbon neutral hydrocarbons http://www.ucalgary.ca/~keith/papers/103.Zeman.2008.CHNCs.e.pdf
How big is your house? If I remember correctly you live in Ohio. I live in Minnesota and my energy bills have never gotten near $500 and have very rarely gotten over $250. I live in a 110 year old house, about 1,000 s.f, keep my thermostat around 68 to 70 and also use a space heater every now and then in the bedroom. I redid my roof last year and even with a very cold and snowy winter this year my total energy bills aren't topping $150 a month. You should do an energy audit on your house, see about increasing insulation, check your windows for infiltration and get your furnace cleaned and tuned. Are you using oil to heat your house?
The problem with global engineering solutions like increasing reflective particles in the atmosphere is that we don't know what the long term affects of those are. When CFC's were first widely used no one knew that they would diminish the Ozone layer and we're already essentially running a massive experiment on the climate by pumping in lots of CO2 and other gasses. Trying to fix the climate by tampering with the atmosphere more might lead to somethign even more serious.
