Global Warming May Kill Billions This Century
If almost anyone other than James Lovelock issued such a warning about global warming, it would be labeled at best science fiction and at worst irresponsible and alarmist. But Lovelock has a formidable reputation as an environmental scientist and a stunning record of achievement, so when he says mankind has pushed the planet to the breaking point, it pays to listen.
Beyond the Point of No Return
Writing in The Independent and in his new book, “The Revenge of Gaia,” to be published next month, Lovelock says that current efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions
and mitigate the greenhouse effect that leads to global warming—including the Kyoto Protocol and the alternative Sydney Summit
—won't be enough to solve the problem. He says the only hope is for all nations to use their resources wisely to sustain civilization for as long as possible.
“We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma,” Lovelock writes. “She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences.”
Lovelock predicts that by the end of the century the temperature will rise 8 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit) in temperate regions such as Europe and the U.S., and 5 degrees Celsius in the tropics.
“Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth's surface we have depleted to feed ourselves,” Lovelock explains.
If Lovelock is correct, the outlook is grim for the human race, and for the planet.
"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," Lovelock writes.
Nuclear Energy May Be Key to Survival
According to Lovelock, there is still time to prevent such a disaster—although not much time—but he says the nations with the most power to halt the approaching devastation are also the ones doing the most to bring it about.
"Civilisation is energy-intensive and we cannot turn it off without crashing, so we need the security of a powered descent,” Lovelock writes. “Sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of emissions. The worst will happen and survivors will have to adapt to a hell of a climate.”
Lovelock is a leading thinker in envirnomental science whose holistic view of the planet sometimes puts him out of step with others in the environmental community. For example, Lovelock supports further development of nuclear energy as the only clean source of energy that can be developed in time to slow the effects of global warming and head off the disaster he believes is coming.
“We should be the heart and mind of the Earth, not its malady,” he says. “Most of all, we should remember that we are a part of it, and it is indeed our home.”
More information:
James Lovelock: The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years -- The Independent
Environment in crisis: 'We are past the point of no return' -- The Independent
Climate Change Will Kill Billions, Scientist Says -- The Independent
Comments
People are not getting the gravity of their situation. It’s quite simple when one thinks about it:
For millions of years, nature has been taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere — taking carbon out of circulation — and stashing it away, not only as trees, but also as enormous coal and crude-oil reserves under the earth. But since the discovery of the steam engine and the industrial revolution, mankind has been taking these carbon and hydrocarbon reserves and burning them. Every passing year, we thus undo the work of a few thousand years of nature. Humankind is now a rampant force of nature.
Our rising GDP and per-capita consumption is rapidly rising, and so the carbon footprint of each individual human-being on earth is doubling every 20 years or so.
As our population grows at a galloping pace — rising as much in 10 years as it did in the entire millennium between 1 AD and 1000 AD — the collective carbon footprint of humankind doubles every 10 years or so. In other words, the ‘weight’ or ‘impact’ of humankind on earth is doubling every decade.
The upshot of having more carbon-dioxide in the air than ever before in the last 650,000 years is: All that carbon dioxide is storing solar heat in the atmosphere. This increased heat energy will transform, and is already transforming into more kinetic energy as (i) more rapid evaporation and precipatation (ii) more frequent, widespread and powerful hurricanes (iii) a higher water-level in the oceans as the polar ice-caps melt, stronger waves and tidal movements, which will over the next decade require every human settlement and activity on the coastline including fishing villages, metros and ports to be relocated further inland.
Personally, I think we are in deep shit and blissfully unaware of it, like a guy who is falling from a skyscraper, but is heard saying as he whooshes past the 10th-floor window, “So far so good! Everything feels great!”
Our economies, which depend primarily on combustion, need to be urgently unhooked from combustibles and hooked onto alternative sources even if they are uneconomical at first. Energy from combustibles seems economical only because it does not take into account the environmental cost; in other words, such energy is environmentally ’subsidized’. However, such subsidies are no longer sustainable, and there is an enormous ‘natural deficit’ that has built up that needs to be balanced.
So we need to learn to consume solar energy, wind energy, tidal and hydro-electric or human-generated energy, even if it seems terribly uneconomical at first. Simultaneously, we need to learn to live with drastically lowered consumption.
We need to show at an indivudual level that we ourselves believe in our message. It is not very convincing for us to continue to go around in our big air-conditioned cars and sit in air-conditioned offices, air-conditioned homes and air-conditioned chambers of commerce.
We need to show our willingness to step down into less-stylish cars, or maybe even scooters, public transport etc. We need to send out a clear message by (1) scaling down our own usage of electricity by opening our windows and using ceiling-fans etc, (2) walking and bicycling as much as possible instead of taking motorised transport and (3) depending on non-energy consuming forms of recreation such as going for long walks or playing cards together.
To make a dent on the public consciousness, send out a clear message, and set off a mass movement, those of us who are aware of this problem and deeply concerned about it need to do something emblematic. How about something like dressing very simply and riding a bicycle to work (and everywhere else) one day of every week – something that is directly opposed to our increasingly ostentatious lifestyle?
Warmly,
Krishnaraj Rao
http://friendlyghost.rediffiland.com
http://globalwarming.rediffiland.com
This is such a hoax! Stop and listen to yourself. We are not going to die – for all of history the earth has experienced trends of warming and cooling because of the complex cycles of the sun and stars.
This is simply a political movement that happens to control the media. People deserve the facts from reputable sources, such as the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, where the largest set of data regarding CO2 has been established. Here’s a sampling:
1) the temperature of the entire earth(taken from satellite) has not increased in 30 years. We are not talking about some tiny landmass in Antarctica. We are talking about the whole earth.
2)You are correct in saying that the Antarctic Peninsula has decreased in size. Does anyone know that in the west part of Antarctica, the ice sheet has thickened?!? The overall temperature of Antarctica (as a whole) has actually been decreasing since 1960!
3) Carbon dioxide produced by human activity is 3% of the carbon dioxide produced by other processes in the carbon cycle! Is that 3% really worth spending billions of dollars on when temperatures (of the whole earth, mind you) are not rising? In addition, when humans emit greenhouse gases, other gases are emitted that actually deflect light. (They make the earth colder!)
Those are the facts, folks. Breathe a sigh of relief because you are not going to die from “global warming.”
Coldly,
A person who knows and cares
P.S. Please stop trying to dictate what car I can drive. This is a free country I will drive the car that is safest for my family, which happens to be an SUV. Not a hybrid with the weight of a feather. Thank you.
we can’t play around with global warming
Coldly, you are blind not to see the disaster on earth.
Al Gore is a liar, 31,000 scientists – 9,000 with doctorate degrees in atmospheric science, climatology, earth science, environment and other specialties – have signed a petition rejecting global warming.
The list of scientists includes 9,021 Ph.D.s, 6,961 at the master’s level, 2,240 medical doctors and 12,850 carrying a bachelor of science or equivalent academic degree.
Global warming assumes that human production of greenhouse gases is destroying the Earth’s climate.
According to the petition, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing, or will in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.
Liberal writers like these are just helping to take money from your pocket and put it into Al’s pockets!
We HAVE 2 stand up & do something to save our lives…It’s as they say- it’s now or never!
part of it is carbon emmissions, but alot of it is the mass cutting dowm of trees and forest fires that is taking away the very thing that sucks carbon out of the air. I have heard that one of the solutions is to breed mass skools of plankton in the oceans that would suck carbon out of the air
aked now evrybody
its for real
09Feb09
Its ALL happened before. Thousands of times.
Mother Nature takes care of her own.
There was NO mercy for the dinosaur and there
will be NO mercy for anyone or anything else.
When the time comes, after our Mighty Sun
burns out ( 5 million years down the road )
…..what then!!!!!
Today everyone and his dog is a soothsayer.
Forever and Ever
Bob Loblah
I completely agree with Coldly.
The only blind people around are those who refuse to beeve global warming has nothing to do with anything man has done.
Krishnaraj posits a new and unique scenario: all the carbon ’stored’ in coal and oil is now being released into the atmosphere and is therefore contributing to what is breathlessly referred to ‘billions of deaths’.
So, what has man, since time immemorial been using to cook, and warm himself with?
Nuclear energy?
I’ve just finished shovelling heavy snow from my sidewalk. It’s almost April and the weather people are forecasting yet more snow and sub-zero temperatures. And I’m supposed to believe this abnormally long winter, the flooding in North Dakota and other places in the world is because of…man-made global warming.
Our celebrated Gaia scientist failed to corroborate his assertion that billions of people have died because of global warming. China and India have ‘contributed’ to this so-called catastrophe. Which makes me wonder why ONLY the USA is obliged to accept the Kyoto dogma. Is there a problem or not? If yes, why were India and China exempt? If not, will you environmentalists please leave us alone, get proper lives and stop forcing your pseudo-environmental religion on us.
Folks: as far as global warming is concerned, the only thing ‘man made’ is mass hysteria and fear mongering from which Al Gore and his tribe have made a very good living peddling.
Finally, a newsflash: We are now entering another climate change. The world is in the grasp of a mini ice age. We’re demonizing carbon at our own peril.
HL, you’re very right. Your observations & questions about Kyoto point out that The UN is merely attempting an effort of social/economic engineering and not trying to solve any (non-existant) climate problems.
its the wrath of our mother nature.
you should never mess with something that you do not know what the outcome will be. just don’t mess with the worlds own balance. those thing shouldn’t be messed with.
Those of you who don’t believe that human activity is not causing a problem with our world’s well being has certainly never laid eyes on a REAL PEER REVIEWED SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL. For goodness sakes, if any of you just took a couple of hours to do proper research on the subject you would come to find that there is 100% CONSENSUS on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. So PLEASE just do your research before spouting off a bunch of uninformed (and rather foolish) opinions based on untrusworthy sources. Do you really think that all this action to fight global warming is to line al gore’s pockets! GOOD FRIGGIN GRIEF PEOPLE, BE SERIOUS!