MSNBC reports that the lack of temperature rise in the last 12 years has convinced environmentalist James Lovelock ( The Gaia Hypothesis) that the climate alarmism wasn’t warranted.
From his Wikipedia entry: Writing in the British newspaper The Independent in January 2006, Lovelock argues that, as a result of global warming, “billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable” by the end of the 21st century.
He has been quoted in The Guardian that 80% of humans will perish by 2100 AD, and this climate change will last 100,000 years. According to James Lovelock, by 2040, the world population of more than six billion will have been culled by floods, drought and famine. Indeed “[t]he people of Southern Europe, as well as South-East Asia, will be fighting their way into countries such as Canada, Australia and Britain”.
What he has said to MSNBC is a major climb down. MSNBC reports in this story:
James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too.
Lovelock, 92, is writing a new book in which he will say climate change is still happening, but not as quickly as he once feared.
He previously painted some of the direst visions of the effects of climate change. In 2006, in an article in the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, he wrote that “before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”
However, the professor admitted in a telephone interview with msnbc.com that he now thinks he had been “extrapolating too far”…
…
“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.
…
“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.”
This won’t sit well with many. McKibben has a whole movement based on alarm for example. Watch the true believers now trash him in the “doddering old man” style we’ve seen before.
hat tip to Steve Milloy at junkscience.com
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Zwick will have to add another address to his (rapidly expanding) database.
I agree with Cannoli. The guy’s always been a wacko. Getting wackos on your side isn’t what the scientific method is about.
If Al Gore came to his senses about AGW, it would neither support nor hurt the science.
There are plenty of consistently reasonable people (and an abundance of evidence) to make the case.
jayhd says:
April 23, 2012 at 12:43 pm
It appears Mr. Lovelock, at 92, has realized his mortality and is trying to make amends for the damage he has wrought before he dies. Sorry Lovelock, it’s too late for atonement. The misery and waste you and your ilk have caused in the name of “global warming” should ensure you a special place down below.
___________________________________
I am with you on that sentiment. People seem to forget the numbers of deaths caused by Lovelock, Ehrlich, Holdren, Mead and the other Malthusians and the Progressives like Jones, Mann, Hansen, Al GOre and Clinton.
And those deaths were only in the UK from cold. There are plenty of other deaths, like the children who starved because of a combination of bio-fuel, loss of farmland to “investors” and the commodities futures trading in food by Goldman Sachs and others. Food riots broke out in 30 countries following the deregulation in the US of trading on commodity indices, (US Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 – CLINTON) when commodities began to attract an influx of non-tradtional investors, such as pension funds and managed investment funds. Speculation drove food prices up until the 2008 price spike. About 3.5 million children under the age of five die from malnutrition-related causes every year despite no real food shortages (the food rots due to distribution problems/prices). Goldman Sachs’ estimated 2009 profits from its commodity index fund was $1billion dollars. http://www.christianaid.org.uk/images/hungry-for-justice.pdf and http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/arabic/article.cfm?articleid=2641
The situation above, just like climate, was due to more than one factor but the big players are the same group who want Cap & Trade. Goldman Sachs had been contracted to run the investment trading floor of the CHICAGO CLIMATE EXCHANGE (CXX) for example. http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/shorebank.php
“…because it looked clear-cut,…,” Lovelock said.
Wow. Amazing how far a naive conclusion can carry a preposterous claim.
This is how the precautionary principle works. Add a touch of noble cause, a dollop of argument from consensus, and perhaps a twist of appeal to authority, mix well, pour over freshly baked data, and wait for reality to rise.
Good for him! It takes courage to admit you were wrong, especially that wrong!
The climate science establishment seems to be split into two factions: human-hating hippies like Lovelock; and money-hungry grant chasers who hate capitalism. Not a single, independent, high-quality professional among them.
China backs down too, which is putting a spanner in Australia’s emissions trading scheme dream:
24 April: Business Spectator: China delays plans for carbon trading scheme
Further details on China’s plans for a carbon trading scheme undermine Labor’s contention that Australia’s carbon pricing plan was necessary because other countries, like China, are also taking tough action on climate change, according to a report by The Australian Financial Review.
The details suggest that China’s plan, which has been delayed, won’t see energy companies directly taxed under its carbon trading scheme.
Plans to launch a national emissions trading scheme in 2015 have instead been delayed until at least 2016, according to the project’s top official….
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/China-delays-plans-for-carbon-trading-scheme-pd20120423-TMQ7B?OpenDocument&src=hp6
… that awkward moment when you wake up realizing you’re near the end of your time on earth, and your lasting legacy may be associated with the same folks who taught about the flat earth, the y2k bug …
Ah, you are referring to Jerry Falwell, perhaps? I thought so. And who would want to be associated with Falwell…
Which is only partly tongue in cheek. Warmism is a kind of religion. People derive the same kind of satisfaction from it that they do from religion. The debate is often couched in religious terms.
He still has wiggle room, though. Warming will happen, just not as catastrophically as he once imagined. It would be good to hear him acknowledge that it probably won’t be catastrophic at all.
rgb
oztomcd,
Actually, there are quite a few. Lindzen, Spencer, Deming and Christy come to mind, not to mention Watts, Eschenback, Tisdale, Rawls and many others. But as scientific skeptics they get very little funding compared with the alarmist clique.
Icarus62 says:
April 23, 2012 at 2:34 pm
The oceans constitute by far the largest proportion of the heat content of the climate system, and they show no sign of any decline in the rate of warming …
_______
Graph SST It is declining
GRAPH – Ocean heat content-0-700m, 1955-2010 based on Levitus. Heat content is now FLAT for the last seven years.
Accompanying article: Weak Warming of the Oceans 1955-2010 Implies Low Climate Sensitivity
I think someone who is nearing a century old, has a better perspective on “climate” as opposed to weather. Looking at 92 years of extremes in both directions would temper your viewpoint, and give the various cyclic changes a good run. Bravo for him for updating his opinion.
Berényi Péter says> 3. Current global sea ice extent
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/how-fake-skeptics-fool-themselves-part-infinity-sea-ice-version/
Your other points are wrong too.
ArndB says:
April 23, 2012 at 2:35 pm
“James A. Lovelock seems able to speak clearly without really knowing whether it makes sense or even worth, is providing support to the opposite of what are the facts, or is needed.”
Yeah, I noticed that too. On the other hand, he has several themes he stuck to: Population Bomb, Warmism since 1975, and Gaia.
I think what he really does is he throws crazy ideas into the public in interviews and publications, watches the feedback, and when it resonates, he delivers more of it. see
lenbilen at April 23, 2012 at 2:37 pm
above.
He might say in an interview that he wants democracy to be abandoned. If he gets positive resonance, he’d write books about the nondemocratic technocratic utopia. If he gets a backlash, he’d drop it.
This means that CO2 AGW alarmism sells so badly now that he drops it even though it was his staple since 1975.
The danger isn’t over, he just hasn’t realised but it has been the ‘wrong kind of not warming’.
/sarc off
A note on civility: I’ve noticed that at least some people have a tendency to reply to posts like this with the same, harsh and personal rhetoric often used by the worst of the (religious) warmist crowd.
With (I think) few exceptions, scientists and humans in general who accept the CAGW scenarios and propositions are doing their best — their viewpoints are honest and not dishonest. They may weight different pieces of research or sets of numbers differently than I would, and may even do things that (in my opinion) lead them to incorrect results and conclusions, but I suspect that most of them do so in good faith, not because they are participating in a global conspiracy to destroy the world. Indeed, most of them are probably largely misled by their perception that they are saving it, that their “guess” that we are all in trouble justifies minor sins bending the numbers to agree with their conclusion more strongly to convince the waverers. Yes, it is a religious sort of argument, but remember that many people who are religious are religious in good faith as well, however mistaken they are to believe in something like God or Jesus or Allah without anything like sound evidence or argument to back them up.
Unless somebody is making a specific profit from the argument — the priesthood in the case of real religion, or a certain class of scientist in the case of CAGW — perhaps we could do everyone the courtesy on both sides of the debate on WUWT of giving them the benefit of the doubt regarding their personal honesty. Just as it is inappropriate for warmists to call for pitchforks and torches to be applied to deniers by greater force to shut them up, it should be just as inappropriate for us to call for jail sentences or hellfire and damnation for the “sin” of being mistaken in good faith about the climate. Yes, there are dire consequences associated with incorrect choices for action, but people have to do the best that they can to make those choices with limited knowledge and ability, and even scientists (if they are wise) acknowledge that the problem is difficult enough that their own fondest beliefs could be mistaken — on either side. Nature will eventually show us the way, but in the meantime let’s try to be excellent to each other, shall we, and not call somebody a “doddering old fool” simply because they, for a time, were possibly mistaken.
I’m just saying, which of us lives in a house that contains no structural glass in our worldview to the point where we can afford to not only throw stones, but do so in a hostile way that if anything will discourage people from changing their mind even as evidence mounts that they are wrong.
I don’t even really like the term “warmist” or “denier” or “skeptic” in the debate. The labels are useful for identifying people by the approximate camps in which their belief set lies, but at this point one needs a half dozen labels to include “lukewarmists”, “deniers of the GHE itself”, and so on at ever finer levels of detail. At the very least, civilized discussion should avoid most of the childish pejoratives, don’t you all think?
I, for one, am thrilled that yet another reasonable person has changed their mind, at least to the tune of knocking a bit of “C” off of CAGW. It is direct evidence that they are fundamentally honest and hence fundamentally not deserving of tar and feathers, be they real or metaphorical.
If only Mann, Gore, Hansen and a few others of the camp that really are religious CAGW “believers” with a “cause” — to more or less directly quote from some climategate letters their own words, not mine — could be so honest and reasonable. If only the entire debate were made civil and open on both sides.
In the meantime, remember that the basic principle of skepticism is to view even your own beliefs with a healthy dose of doubt, let alone those of others. We could all be wrong. The CAGW crowd could be right. The next fifty years might well prove it conclusively. The real question is: given the evidence and arguments available today what is it best to believe.
Personally, I think the answer is: Real GHE, negative feedback, solar effect (unproven) dominant, multiple non-Markovian lagged timescales contributing through the vast thermal reservoir of atmosphere, land and sea to the dynamics, with albedo modulation a much larger and more important factor than CO_2 (and one with a well-known long time scale positive feedback pathway to glaciation that is, apparently, still blocked by unknown factors but which could at any time revive to bring back the ice.
But I could be wrong. That’s why I keep studying and keep re-examining the evidence instead of pretending that I already understand it well enough to prove anything.
rgb
rgb
The mark of a true scientist is someone who can change their mind about an hypothesis after examining the data. Do you suppose we’ll be hearing anything like this from either Mann or Hansen? Probably not. They’ve got too much skin in the game.
Of course not.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/23/an-ocean-of-overconfidence/
The “problem is” you are, in the vernacular of your own country, a tosser. Why is it that the uk once the bastion of rationalism from Edinburgh to London has fallen hook and line for the AGW. Is it the cult of celebrity reflected on “post modern” fools like Lovelock and idiots in the press. If it “feels” right it must be true.
wmconnolley says:
tamino, seriously?
You are Boring.
So an admitted fanatic,scare-monger,pschyopathic nut-case,who has directly/indirectly caused the deaths of millions, says he was wrong. Big doddly whoop. It does not take a big man to admit a mistake(or woman). Just an HONEST one. It seems some here are falling for hero worship of Lovelock like some for Manson! Sad. The man should be in jail and/or a pysch ward.
And Gail Coombs @ur momisugly 1445 nails it.
Ah, I see Mr. Connolley is back. He must have resolved the issues with his funders.
William Abbott on April 23, 2012 at 10:01 am said:
Truth and data are stubborn things. What else can you do but climb down if you have a shred of honesty about you? Al Gore is right, the debate is over.
———-
I second that.
Alvin on April 23, 2012 at 10:09 am said:
They are progressives, it’s what they do. As soon as they see they have gone too far, they slow down to allow the balance of power. Then they go nuts again to push the Fabian Socialist agenda.
———
Can I extrapolate from that that when non-progressives go to far they just keep on going to far. And then they go nuts trying to go even further still.
SteveSadlov on April 23, 2012 at 10:40 am said:
It is a testament to the force of Gaia that mere humans cannot control the climate!
———-
Well if the Gaia thing were true it would simply mean that the human race gets trimmed back to somewhere around 19th century levels. Not that I believe the Gaia thing,