Previously, you may recall that Lovelock threw global warming under the bus. Now, he’s got another zinger the greens will be none to happy to hear in the middle of Rio+20. That “disturbance in the force” felt earlier today was the wailing and gnashing of teeth heard from eco-followers worldwide when they heard the father of Gaia say the much hated and maligned fracking process is “OK”.
I can’t wait to see how the Rommulans and McKibbenites spin this one.
Excerpts from the Guardian article by Leo Hickman:
Given that Lovelock predicted in 2006 that by this century’s end “billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable”, this new laissez-faire attitude to our environmental fate smells and sounds like of a screeching handbrake turn.
Indeed, earlier this year he admitted to MSNBC in an interview reported around the world with somewhat mocking headlines along the lines of “Doom-monger recants”, that he had been “extrapolating too far” in reaching such a conclusion and had made a “mistake” in claiming to know with such certainty what will happen to the climate.
But Lovelock is relaxed about how this reversal might be perceived. He says being allowed to change your mind and follow the evidence is one of the liberating marvels of being an independent scientist, something he has revelled in since leaving Nasa, his last full-time employer, in the late 1960s.
…
Having already upset many environmentalists – for whom he is something of a guru – with his long-time support for nuclear power and his hatred of wind power (he has a picture of a wind turbine on the wall of his study to remind him how “ugly and useless they are”), he is now coming out in favour of “fracking”, the controversial technique for extracting natural gas from the ground. He argues that, while not perfect, it produces far less CO2 than burning coal: “Gas is almost a give-away in the US at the moment. They’ve gone for fracking in a big way. Let’s be pragmatic and sensible and get Britain to switch everything to methane. We should be going mad on it.”
…
The reaction in Germany to Fukushima – which announced within weeks of the disaster that it was to shut down all its nuclear power plants by 2022 – particularly infuriates Lovelock: “Germany is a great country and has always been a natural leader of Europe, and so many great ideas, music, art, etc, come out of it, but they have this fatal flaw that they always fall for an ideologue, and Europe has suffered intensely from the last two episodes of that. It looks to me as if the green ideas they have picked up now could be just as damaging. They are burning lignite now to try to make up for switching off nuclear. They call themselves green, but to me this is utter madness.”
Nestled deep into an armchair, Lovelock brushes a biscuit crumb from his lips, and lowers his cup of tea on to the table: “I’m neither strongly left nor right, but I detest the Liberal Democrats.”
He delivers his mischievous bombshells with such rapidity and meekness that there is a danger one can miss the all-important clarification and context.
“They are all well-meaning, but they have mostly had little experience of power,” he adds. “The coalition has behaved disgracefully on environmental and energy policies. It would have been much better if they had been properly rightwing. I don’t mean something like Thatcher; that was a revolutionary Conservative government. Just a regular one. Our political system works because they tend to self-correct each other.”
…
The greens use guilt. You can’t win people round by saying they are guilty for putting CO2 in the air.”
He displays equal disdain for those who do not accept science on climate change: “They’ve got their own religion. They believe that the world was right before these damn people [the greens] came along and want to go back to where we were 20 years ago. That’s also silly in its own way.”
…
Read the full Guardian article by Leo Hickman here and his complementary article:
James Lovelock on shale gas and the problem with ‘greens’
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“Breaking ranks” is a sign of a mass movement’s decline.
Once the first brick is dislodged, the rest come out easier.
Etc.
First thing that hit my mind…..
Gaea must have felt his decision yesterday resulting in an earthquake that hit Afghanistan, where I work.
I slept through it.
Anyone who is willing to reconsider firmly held beliefs in the face of evidence is worthy of respect. Easier said than done to do.
Reblogged this on contrary2belief and commented:
Lovelock; The incomplete fool.
If this keeps up being given the Nobel won’t be a sign of the devil.
“I detest liberal Democrats.”
Sorry, but the right is war mongering crapolla right now also. At this point, people should feel ashamed if they tie themselves to either of these parties at this point. Romney vs. Obama?
Yeah, politics is a complete joke right now.
There is nothing wrong with liberalism when it’s not taken to the extreme that some have taken it.
Anyway, this man seems to be on his way to distancing himself from the greenies and probably man made Climate Change. There is always the chance he is trying to get attention. But probably not. I would guess it’s pretty darn hard for a 90 year old man to change his position in a real extreme manner. He probably doesn’t really want the negative attention that he will get from environmentalist. When you think about it that way, you have to assume that he doing this because of what he honestly believes.
Pokerguy,
I never claimed that “billions will die from man-made global warming” or made up mumbo jumbo religious pseudoscientific nonsense about “Gaia”. Does that make me a genius? No! Is that some kind of a fantastic achievement? Not at all!
But at least I am not such a complete fool as to go around publishing wild unsupported sensationalist claims. Claims that do not hold up to even superficial scientific scrutiny.
Now all we need is for James Hansen to admit the carbon scare was all down to a drunken bet with Robert Heinlein which got out of hand.
Jeff Alberts says:
“Earth is not here for man, nor is man here for earth. We’re both just here, along with everything else.”
Ah yes.the arrogance of man, always thinking he “knows”….
yet inventing gods and idols to explain the unknown.
We have a VERY lot to learn !!!
It’s always Marcia, Marcia says:
June 15, 2012 at 7:10 pm
“The reaction in Germany to Fukushima – which announced within weeks of the disaster that it was to shut down all its nuclear power plants by 2022″
I believe they have shut them all down already.
The last big tsunami to hit Germany’s Baltic coast happened in — ummmmmm — never. Merkel must figure it’s overdue…
If the warmists keep on rejecting every one of their former stars when they come to their senses and admit they were wrong, then they will soon have nobody at all to ‘lead’ them.
Lomborg is now a ‘traitor’, Monbiot is distinctly quavery. Dear me. Still, I suppose they can still rely on good old Paul Ehrlich, who has never admitted he was wrong even after being comprehensively taken to the cleaners by Julian Simon in 1980-90….
We chemists often get it right.
Better late than never. Now, sir, please think on Thorium and it’ll make your nuclear pronouncements that much more credible too.
Brian – no, no, he detests Liberal Democrats – the UK’s third political party, not ‘liberal Democrats’ in the US sense.
The Liberal Party, for most of the 20th century, was the rump of what had been the progressive wing in British politics until the Labour Party adopted a more active position after its foundation in the early 20th century; the Social Democrats broke away from the Labour Party in the 70s/80s because they viewed it (not unjustly) as having become too statist. When the Social Democrats got nowhere, they formally merged with the Liberals to form the Liberal Democrats, who have been the “A Plague on Both Your Houses” party for the last two or three decades.
Following the LDs alliance with the (right wing) Conservatives since the last election, to give us our current “Coalition” government, expect them to become the “And Who Were They” party after the next election. The alliance was not a popular move in the LD ranks, who generally want to be seen as the “soft progressive” option, nor anywhere else.
Lovelock should read the summary of the Global Warming Scam (Chapter 9) in Deepak Lal’s book ‘Lost Causes’, just published, and he might become even wiser.
Excomunicate! Excomunicate! /sarc
Cynic in me: what were the Guardian motives for running this piece?
Throwaway test case? Easy for Grauniad to hype him up or shoot him down? We know Grauniad do not listen to certain viewers, or there would not be the stinky behaviour at CiF. So they must listen to others somewhere, who… what…? FTM… Gail Combs?
Apart from that, I applaud Lovelock still willing to change his mind and stand up for it, at 92.
How about inviting him for an interview / article here?
off topic (sorry mods) but on the Conservative Home website an article has appeared by some idiot sprouting rubbish on how great wind farms are. It is highly partisan and pretty much argues the complete opposite of what we know to be true about windfarms.
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2012/06/adam-bruce-contrary-to-popular-opinion-wind-energy-cuts-electricity-bills-and-boosts-economic-growth.html
someone please fisk it in the comments, I haven’t got time to rip it apart like I would normally do
Cheap, reliable and robust energy that North America gets in nat gas via fracking is a gift. Something to be thankful for.
It’s always Marcia, Marcia said on June 15, 2012 at 7:10 pm:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18468685
Also http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-06-16/japan-restarts-reactors/55631092/1 (source AP):
Japan does not give in to fear. The Japanese people can be very pragmatic. They need the energy now, it is breaking them to not have it, so they will have it.
And they are also mouthing future support of renewables with just enough lead time to note the crashing failure they’ve been elsewhere. They are looking to Germany, where large customers with contracts will see a 70% increase by 2025, smaller users like households who can’t negotiate discounts will see more. That’s pretty smart for politicians.
“Doom-monger recants”, that he had been “extrapolating too far”
Extrapolation, the downfall of many scientific predictions. It assumes that nothing will change.
Brian
Lovelock is commenting in the context of British politics.
In the UK a Liberal is someone who is a member of, or votes for the “Liberal Democrats” which is a political party. The “Lib Dems” as they are also known, are the minor partner to the “Conservative party” in the British coalition government.
The Grauniad’s Komment Macht Frei is even more rabid than usual. VERY few sensible comments but one (at No.3) from Nick Grealy is worth reading.
Nick isn’t a sceptic but his blog on Shale Gas is very well worth checking out:-
http://www.nohotair.co.uk/gas-guru-blog/shale-gas-2012/2549-the-uk-should-go-mad-for-fracking
Whatever the Grauniadistas say now, Lovelock was a God for them until very recently.
Now?
I do love the sound of greenie heads exploding in the morning!
[Note! This is not a death threat!]
@Brian
Lovelock didn’t say, “I detest liberal Democrats.”
What he actually said was:
The Liberal Democrats are a minority UK political party, currently in coalition government with the Conservatives. His later comment makes clear why he detests them: