Green Drivel Exposed
By
Lorrie Goldstein
,Toronto Sun
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Two months ago, James Lovelock, the godfather of global warming, gave
a startling interview to msnbc.com in which he acknowledged he had been
unduly “alarmist” about climate change.
The implications were extraordinary.
Lovelock is a world-renowned scientist and environmentalist whose
Gaia theory — that the Earth operates as a single, living organism — has
had a profound impact on the development of global warming theory.
Unlike many “environmentalists,” who have degrees in political
science, Lovelock, until his recent retirement at age 92, was a
much-honoured working scientist and academic.
His inventions have been used by NASA, among many other scientific organizations.
Lovelock’s invention of the electron capture detector in 1957 first
enabled scientists to measure CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and other
pollutants in the atmosphere, leading, in many ways, to the birth of the
modern environmental movement.
Having observed that global temperatures since the turn of the
millennium have not gone up in the way computer-based climate models
predicted, Lovelock acknowledged, “the problem is we don’t know what the
climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago.” Now, Lovelock has
given a follow-up interview to the UK’s Guardian newspaper in which he
delivers more bombshells sure to anger the global green movement, which
for years worshipped his Gaia theory and apocalyptic predictions that
billions would die from man-made climate change by the end of this
century.
Lovelock still believes anthropogenic global warming is occurring and
that mankind must lower its greenhouse gas emissions, but says it’s now
clear the doomsday predictions, including his own (and Al Gore’s) were
incorrect.
He responds to attacks on his revised views by noting that, unlike
many climate scientists who fear a loss of government funding if they
admit error, as a freelance scientist, he’s never been afraid to revise
his theories in the face of new evidence. Indeed, that’s how science
advances.
Among his observations to the Guardian:
(1) A long-time supporter of nuclear power as a way to lower
greenhouse gas emissions, which has made him unpopular with
environmentalists, Lovelock has now come out in favour of natural gas
fracking (which environmentalists also oppose), as a low-polluting
alternative to coal.
As Lovelock observes, “Gas is almost a give-away in the U.S. at the
moment. They’ve gone for fracking in a big way. This is what makes me
very cross with the greens for trying to knock it … Let’s be pragmatic
and sensible and get Britain to switch everything to methane. We should
be going mad on it.” (Kandeh Yumkella, co-head of a major United Nations
program on sustainable energy, made similar arguments last week at a UN
environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro, advocating the development
of conventional and unconventional natural gas resources as a way to
reduce deforestation and save millions of lives in the Third World.)
(2) Lovelock blasted greens for treating global warming like a religion.
“It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from
the Christian religion,” Lovelock observed. “I don’t think people have
noticed that, but it’s got all the sort of terms that religions use …
The greens use guilt. That just shows how religious greens are. You
can’t win people round by saying they are guilty for putting (carbon
dioxide) in the air.”
(3) Lovelock mocks the idea modern economies can be powered by wind turbines.
As he puts it, “so-called ‘sustainable development’ … is meaningless
drivel … We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The
schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally
can’t stand windmills at any price.”
(4) Finally, about claims “the science is settled” on global warming:
“One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never
be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only
approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate
towards the truth. You don’t know it.”
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