From the Guardian, where I find it surprising they actually printed it:
Scientist behind the Gaia hypothesis says environment movement does not pay enough attention to facts and he was too certain in the past about rising temperatures
Environmentalism has “become a religion” and does not pay enough attention to facts, according to James Lovelock.
The 94 year-old scientist, famous for his Gaia hypothesis that Earth is a self-regulating, single organism, also said that he had been too certain about the rate of global warming in his past book, that “it’s just as silly to be a [climate] denier as it is to be a believer” and that fracking and nuclear power should power the UK, not renewable sources such as windfarms.
Speaking to the Guardian for an interview ahead of a landmark UN climate science report on Monday on the impacts of climate change, Lovelock said of the warnings of climate catastrophe in his 2006 book, Revenge of Gaia: “I was a little too certain in that book. You just can’t tell what’s going to happen.”
…
Lovelock’s comments appear to be at odds with dire forecasts from a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Monday, which leaked versions show will warn that even small temperature rises will bring “abrupt and irreversible changes” to natural systems, including Arctic sea ice and coral reefs.
Asked if his remarks would give ammunition to climate change sceptics, he said: “It’s just as silly to be a denier as it is to be a believer. You can’t be certain.”
more here: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/30/james-lovelock-environmentalism-religion
Older and wiser.
What a joke. The ‘believers’ have turned this GW bunk into a religion. It’s also called Idol Worship.
The confessions of an old and regretful man…what a pity.
He will be denied by the movement.
I deny it’s silly to be a denier.
James Lovelock has a lot to offer. He will remain influential for a long time because he said many more true things than false.
“Earth is a self-regulating, single organism..”
Hey, he’s closer to my belief than I thought. Willis’s thermostat hypothesis pitches self-reguation, too.
“(IPCC) will warn that even SMALL temperature rises will bring “abrupt and irreversible changes” to natural systems”
In 5 years I suppose that will become the dangers of eensy weensy temperature rises. One almost has to feel a little sad to see such a comedown and pathetic fallback position of these once swashbuckling new world order dark knights, if it weren’t for the dire real agenda behind CAGW politico-science. Japan will know they made the right decision to kill Kyoto when they hear this. Steven Harper in Canada has been hated by Europeans for rejecting the nonsense. Now they will hate him more for being right. Mann’s best offense in his law suits is to see if he can hurry them up before CAGW is in autopsie and the game is over.
Pity people don’t recognise the subtle difference between “the Earth is like a self regulating organism” and “the Earth is a self regulating organism”; the later cause people to anthropomorphize and even deify the planet.
I question everything. Even my skepticism. ;->
I just cannot believe the comments in that Guardian article.
Are people really that uneducated?
God help us all.
Another one of Manbearpig’s heroes that he’ll label senile by the end of the week.
Environmentalism has been co-opted by the Left. It is now simply a tool to beat Western culture into giving up its prosperity. It stopped being about the environment decades ago.
Lovelock’s change of tone would be more impressive had his Gaia hypothesis been viewed by more than a handful of scientists as anything other than a vaguely useful metaphor for interactions within the biosphere (a term that predated his Gaia by a century).
If it’s silly to be either a believer or a denier, then I suppose it’s sensible to be a skeptic.
Magma says:
March 30, 2014 at 7:06 pm
That’s all you can do, eh Magma? Marginalize anyone who disagrees with you (even if they are former “cause-mates”.
Apparently you are also unaware of classic literature.
“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts”
Sorry mod. meant to post under my own name.
Obiwan K says:
March 30, 2014 at 7:27 pm
“That’s all you can do, eh Magma? Marginalize anyone who disagrees with you (even if they are former “cause-mates”.
Apparently you are also unaware of classic literature.”
Don’t know what your beef with “Magma” is, fictional superhero; but let’s remind everyone that Lovelock was one of the ur alarmists about CO2, and extremely useful for the globalists control freaks. He was probably keen on a career as prophet for the superstitious, which he achieved.
1975 `Endangered Atmosphere’
Conference: Where the Global
Warming Hoax Was Born
searchterms Meade
Mead, Schneider, Holdren and Lovelock
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/highlights/Fall_2007.html
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/GWHoaxBorn.pdf
I observed years ago that global warming folks are extremely similar to fundamentalists – they behave in a very similar fashion and likewise believe in a future catastrophe, brought on by human sins (emitting CO2, in this case). It all goes to show that some humans feel the strange need to
label others as sinners and predict a dim future for all mankind, unless their beliefs are adopted by others. I’ve never observed so clearly an example of such a continuing, illogical streak of human nature. God may not be apart of their religion,but Nature certainly is. And Nature is their God and has somehow been tranformed into a benevolent being, which is quite a stretch.
“Asked if his remarks would give ammunition to climate change sceptics, he said: “It’s just as silly to be a denier as it is to be a believer. You can’t be certain.””
Either he wasn’t asked about skeptics but about deniers, and the Guardian changed the wording of their own question for their article to appear a little less appalling; OR Lovelock automatically equates the words skeptics and denier, which would indicate severe brain rot; not unlikely given his career as chief alarmis; from which he now tries to backpedal.
I find the person truly disgusting.
If you call non-believers “deniers”, you’ve got yourself a religion, and the dissenters are more properly called heretics. Heretics used to be burned at the stake, but in these more enlightened times they are just denied government grants and tenure.
The Guardian also published an article about James Lovelock on 31 May 2010.
[Extract:] .. “Who knows? Everybody might be wrong,” he says. “I may be wrong. Climate change may not happen as fast as we thought, and we may have 1,000 years to sort it out.”
The comments after that article were interesting, particularly one that was quoting Mr Lovelock :-
“This is what Lovelock said about global warming …”
“I have seen this happen before, of course. We should have been warned by the CFC/ozone affair because the corruption of science in that was so bad that something like 80% of the measurements being made during that time were either faked, or incompetently done on computer models. I remember when the Americans sent up a satellite to measure ozone and it started saying that a hole was developing over the South Pole. But the damn fool scientists were so mad on the models that they said the satellite must have a fault. We tend to now get carried away by our giant computer models. But they’re not complete models. They’re based more or less entirely on geophysics. They don’t take into account the climate of the oceans to any great extent, or the responses of the living stuff on the planet. So I don’t see how they can accurately predict the climate.”
“If you look back on climate history it sometimes took anything up to 1,000 years before a change in one of the variables kicked in and had an effect. And during those 1,000 years the temperature could have gone in the other direction to what you thought it should have done. What right have the scientists with their models to say that in 2100 the temperature will have risen by 5 deg. Celsius?”
“The great climate science centres around the world are more than well aware how weak their science is. If you talk to them privately they’re scared stiff of the fact that they don’t really know what the clouds and the aerosols are doing. They could be absolutely running the show. We haven’t got the physics worked out yet. One of the chiefs once said to me that he agreed that they should include the biology in their models, but he said they hadn’t got the physics right yet and it would be five years before they do. So why on earth are the politicians spending a fortune of our money when we can least afford it on doing things to prevent events 50 years from now? They’ve employed scientists to tell them what they want to hear.”
The article is still on the Guardian website here :-
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/may/31/hay-festival-climate-change-debates
Yes, environmentalism is religion. And Romans 1:25 seems apropos: 1:25 “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.”
I think it comes under the heading of: Be careful what you wish for…it might come true.
Kindest Regards
I don’t loose any sleep over being a climate infidel.
Mkelley said:
March 30, 2014 at 7:46 pm
…Heretics used to be burned at the stake, but in these more enlightened times they are just denied government grants and tenure.
————
Give them a little more time and a little more power and they will be back to burning heretics at the stake.
Maybe during obama’s next term.