[Vision2020] 'Gaia' scientist James Lovelock: I was 'alarmist' about climate change

[Paul Rumelhart]

Perhaps now we can move towards a dialogue that doesn't involve scare 
tactics and exaggerations.

Paul


  'Gaia' scientist James Lovelock: I was 'alarmist' about climate change

By Ian Johnston, msnbc.com

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 
<http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/james-lovelock-the-earth-is-about-to-catch-a-morbid-fever-that-may-last-as-long-as-100000-years-523161.html>*, 
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 new book, due to be published next year, will be the third in a 
trilogy, following his earlier works, "Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is 
Fighting Back -- and How We Can Still Save Humanity," and "The Vanishing 
Face of Gaia: A Final Warning: Enjoy It While You Can."

The new book will discuss how humanity can change the way it acts in 
order to help regulate the Earth's natural systems, performing a role 
similar to the harmonious one played by plants when they absorb carbon 
dioxide and produce oxygen.

*Climate's 'usual tricks'*
It will also reflect his new opinion that global warming has not 
occurred as he had expected.

"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 climate is doing its usual tricks. There's nothing much really 
happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world 
now," he 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," he added.

He pointed to Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and Tim Flannery's "The 
Weather Makers" as other examples of "alarmist" forecasts of the future.

In 2007, Time magazine named Lovelock as *one of 13 leaders and 
visionaries in an article on "Heroes of the Environment 
<http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1663317_1663319_1669893,00.html>," 
*which also included Gore, Mikhail Gorbachev and Robert Redford.

"Jim Lovelock has no university, no research institute, no students. His 
almost unparalleled influence in environmental science is based instead 
on a particular way of seeing things," Oliver Morton, of the journal 
Nature wrote in Time. "Humble, stubborn, charming, visionary, proud and 
generous, his ideas about Gaia have started a change in the conception 
of biology that may serve as a vital complement to the revolution that 
brought us the structures of DNA and proteins and the genetic code."

Lovelock also won the U.K.'s Geological Society's Wollaston Medal in 
2006. *In a posting on its website, the society 
<http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/society/history/page2981.html>* said it 
was "rare to be able to say that the recipient has opened up a whole new 
field of Earth science study" -- referring to the Gaia theory of the 
planet as single complex system.

However Lovelock, who works alone at his home in Devon, England, has 
fallen out with the green movement in the past, particularly after 
saying countries should build nuclear power stations to help reduce the 
greenhouse gas emissions caused by coal and oil.

Asked if he was now a climate skeptic, Lovelock told msnbc.com: "It 
depends what you mean by a skeptic. I'm not a denier."

He said human-caused carbon dioxide emissions were driving an increase 
in the global temperature, but added that the effect of the oceans was 
not well enough understood and could have a key role.

"It (the sea) could make all the difference between a hot age and an ice 
age," he said.

He said he still thought that climate change was happening, but that its 
effects would be felt farther in the future than he previously thought.

"We will have global warming, but it's been deferred a bit," Lovelock said.

*'I made a mistake'*
As "an independent and a loner," he said he did not mind saying "All 
right, I made a mistake." He claimed a university or government 
scientist might fear an admission of a mistake would lead to the loss of 
funding.

Lovelock -- who has previously worked with NASA and discovered the 
presence of harmful chemicals (CFCs) in the atmosphere but not their 
effect on the ozone layer -- stressed that humanity should still "do our 
best to cut back on fossil fuel burning" and try to adapt to the coming 
changes.

Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the U.K.'s 
respected Met Office Hadley Centre, agreed Lovelock had been too 
alarmist with claims about people having to live in the Arctic by 2100.

And he also agreed with Lovelock that the rate of warming in recent 
years had been less than expected by the climate models.

However, Stott said this was a short-term trend that could be within the 
natural range of variation and it would need to continue for another 10 
years or so before it could be considered evidence that something was 
missing from climate models.

Stott said temperature records and other observations were "broadly 
speaking continuing to pan out" with what was expected.

He said there did need to be greater understanding of the effect of the 
oceans on the climate and added that air particles caused by pollution 
-- which cool the Earth by reflecting the sun's heat -- from rapidly 
developing countries like China could be having an effect.

On Lovelock, Stott said he had "a lot of respect" for him, saying "he's 
had a lot of good ideas and interesting thoughts."

"I like the fact he's provocative and provokes people to think about 
these things," Stott said.

Keya Chatterjee, international climate policy director of environmental 
campaign group WWF-US, said in a statement that it was "hard not to get 
overwhelmed and be defeatist" about the challenges facing the planet, 
but suggested alarmist talk did not help persuade people to act to 
reduce climate change.

"While the problem is becoming increasingly urgent, we've found that 
focusing on the most dire predictions does not resonate with the public, 
governments, or business. People tend to shut off when a problem does 
not seem solvable," she said.

"And that's not the case with climate change because we can still avoid 
its worst impacts. We know that we already have all of the technologies 
needed to slow climate change down.  We only lack the political will to 
go up against vested interests," she added.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading 
body on the subject, the world's average temperature has risen by about 
1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900. By 2100, it predicts it will rise by 
another 2 to 11.5 degrees, depending upon the levels of greenhouse gases 
emitted.

Asked to give its latest position on climate change, the National 
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a statement that 
observations collected by satellites, sensors on land, in the air and 
seas "continue to show that the average global surface temperature is 
rising."

The statement**said "the impacts of a changing climate" were already 
being felt around the globe, with "more frequent extreme weather events 
of certain types (heat waves, heavy rain events); changes in 
precipitation patterns ... longer growing seasons; shifts in the ranges 
of plant and animal species; sea level rise; and decreases in snow, 
glacier and Arctic sea ice coverage."

NOAA reports its data in *monthly U.S. and global climate reports* 
<http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/> and *annual State of the Climate 
reports* <http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climate/>.

Its annual climate summary for 2011 said that the combined land and 
ocean surface temperature for the world was 0.92 degrees above the 20th 
century average of 57.0 degrees, making it the 35th consecutive year 
since 1976 that the yearly global temperature was above average.

"All 11 years of the 21st century so far (2001-2011) rank among the 13 
warmest in the 132-year period of record. Only one year during the 20th 
century, 1998, was warmer than 2011," it said.

In the interview, Lovelock said he would not take back a word of his 
seminal work "Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth," published in 1979.

But of "Revenge of Gaia," published in 2006, he said he had gone too far 
in describing what the warming Earth would see over the next century.

"I would be a little more cautious -- but then that would have spoilt 
the book," he quipped.

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