Author of the Gaia theory says: Mankind can't save the planet!

Changing habits to try to save the planet is "a nonsense", according to one of the most respected environmental experts in the world, Briton James Lovelock, for whom the earth, if saved, will be by herself.

- "Trying to save the planet is silly because we can not do that. If saved, the Earth will save herself, which is what she always did. The most sensible thing to do is enjoy life while we can", said Lovelock in an interview to BBC.

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James Lovelock

Brief summary:
The 90 years old scientist, is the author of the Gaia Theory, that regards the planet as a superorganism in which all chemical, physics and biology reactions are interconnected and can not be analyzed separately.
Considered one of the "mentors" of the worldwide environmental movement, since the '70s, Lovelock is the author of controversial ideas such as protecting the use of nuclear energy as a way to restrict carbon emissions in the atmosphere and combat climate change. According to him, mankind didn't "deliberately decide to warm the world," but "pulled the trigger", inadvertently, to develop the civilization in the way we know it today.
"Thus, we put things in motion", he says, adding that the reactions that occur on Earth as a result of global warming, including the release of gases like carbon dioxide and methane, are more powerful to produce even more warming than the own human actions. It's like one unstoppable chain reaction.
Still according to him, the behavior of the climate is more unpredictable than we think and do not necessarily follow the model predictions made by scientists. At last the states that the search for renewable forms of energy is "a mixture of ideology and business", but without "good engineering practice behind it."

Full review (in portuguese)

Well guys, what do you think the Lovelock's statements are about??? Pure disappointment and bitterness of an old man in the edge of death, or a crystal raw naked understanding of an irreversible reality??
I regard the Gaya theory makes all sense and beyond it, we have many evidences that this planet is a "living organism" that reacts the aggressions of its "internal microorganisms" (us) that act like destructive parasites. It's seems that all these climate changes and geological disturbances, most likely are the way that Mother Earth produces her "antigens". According to Lovelock our civilization reached a no-return point, but I think he isn't totally right, once he doesn't consider the missing factor in this equation: The action and interaction of extraterrestrial intelligences in this planet.
Yeah, I know... now is the point where people here are saying "Oh no, here we go talk about aliens AGAIN...", but I really prefer to believe that, with the several increase of UFO sightings all over the world, people are NOT still thinking alien subject a "fantasy"... And when I say "UFO sightings", ain't referring to "zipping light dots far away in the sky, but gigantic non man made crafts, lately seen hovering in low altitude, above many urban centers.
Regarding that Earth is a rare pearl in this galaxy, a planet capable to support any sort of complex life forms, a world with abundance of environment resources, seems obvious that it calls total attention of foreign advanced intelligences, I mean alien civilizations. So, I ask you:

If Earth is indeed, a huge laboratory where ancient alien civilizations have developed genetic experiments along the eras, since far before the raise of the homo erectus, they will let this destructive chain reaction, go on?? They will just watch it or they will intervene??


[edit on 31-3-2010 by ucalien]

reply to post by ucalien


As he faces his own personal death he can more easily consider the death of the human species and, in fact, the death of life on Earth. We are in the 6th mass extinction and it's from human civilization but geologically speaking -- current life on Earth is just another day on the planet -- of 4 billion years or whatever. Life will evolve over again.

As for trying to "save the planet" -- I totally agree. I worked 10 years at Clean Water Action after I did 10 years of environmental activism on my own. I used to tell my coworkers"

"saving the planet" is the cause of the environmental crisis! Because the concept of "saving the planet" means that humans still think of themselves as outside of Nature and therefore able to control Nature.

As Lovelock points out the climate is more unpredictable than we realize. In fact the Gaia Theory is accurate but when it comes down to the nitty gritty not even the super computers can model ecology.

The book "Environmental Endgame" by Professor Robert Nadeau is good on this -- how quantum chaos is the current cutting edge model for ecology and needs to also be adopted for economics. But when the Economist reviewed Nadeau's book they didn't even mention the main subject -- quantum chaos science. And that's why economics is the "dismal science."

Civilization, despite all the fancy technology, is, at the core, still based on primitive accumulation -- the rape and plunder of ecology -- whether it's agribusiness run on oil or extraction industries (fish, mining metals) or sweatshops and even the computer industry has the highest rate of toxic waste dumps.

A great book on this is "Ecological Imperialism" by Professor Alfred Crosby -- or else "Monocultures of the Mind" by Dr. Vandana Shiva. Humanity wasn't always like this --- the Bushmen culture is the first 90% of human history! And the Bushmen were peaceful and sustainable, relying on trance dance healing as their main form of reality. There's a few thousand Bushmen still living traditionally but it's dying off fast.

reply to post by ucalien


As for the extraterrestial hypothesis on ufos I recommend you watch this new expose by Michael Schratt

www.youtube.com...#

Schratt proves that UFOs are military. He doesn't dismiss extraterrestials but says there's no evidence. Meanwhile it has been proven the military lies about extraterrestrial aliens -- promoting them to justify further military spending.

We got $60 billion a year in black budget military spending.

Primitive cultures across the planet have lived for thousdands of years before the modern 21st century. They survived so long because as someone said they learned to live WITH nature not above her. Look at our society and the world................it's such a disgusting silly place. I mean it's a joke! Look at how much plastic crap we produce as a society and how much of that plastic will be around in 100 years. LMAO! Of course we can't save the planet.............but it's the only home we have.......so we should always have hope.

I had a post about this guy last year when he had / has a solution for carbon.... Of course he said it would never get implemented because of the Cap and Trade Scam that all of our bankers and politicians want to implement.

Not a hope in hell. Most of the "green" stuff is verging on a gigantic scam. Carbon trading, with its huge government subsidies, is just what finance and industry wanted. It's not going to do a damn thing about climate change, but it'll make a lot of money for a lot of people and postpone the moment of reckoning. I am not against renewable energy, but to spoil all the decent countryside in the UK with wind farms is driving me mad. It's absolutely unnecessary, and it takes 2500 square kilometres to produce a gigawatt - that's an awful lot of countryside.

What about work to sequester carbon dioxide?

That is a waste of time. It's a crazy idea - and dangerous. It would take so long and use so much energy that it will not be done.

Do you still advocate nuclear power as a solution to climate change?

It is a way for the UK to solve its energy problems, but it is not a global cure for climate change. It is too late for emissions reduction measures.

So are we doomed?

There is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal. It would mean farmers turning all their agricultural waste - which contains carbon that the plants have spent the summer sequestering - into non-biodegradable charcoal, and burying it in the soil. Then you can start shifting really hefty quantities of carbon out of the system and pull the CO2 down quite fast.

Would it make enough of a difference?

Yes. The biosphere pumps out 550 gigatonnes of carbon yearly; we put in only 30 gigatonnes. Ninety-nine per cent of the carbon that is fixed by plants is released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by consumers like bacteria, nematodes and worms. What we can do is cheat those consumers by getting farmers to burn their crop waste at very low oxygen levels to turn it into charcoal, which the farmer then ploughs into the field. A little CO2 is released but the bulk of it gets converted to carbon. You get a few per cent of biofuel as a by-product of the combustion process, which the farmer can sell. This scheme would need no subsidy: the farmer would make a profit. This is the one thing we can do that will make a difference, but I bet they won't do it.

Do you think we will survive?

I'm an optimistic pessimist. I think it's wrong to assume we'll survive 2 °C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4 °C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. The reason is we would not find enough food, unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. It has happened before: between the ice ages there were bottlenecks when there were only 2000 people left. It's happening again.

I don't think humans react fast enough or are clever enough to handle what's coming up. Kyoto was 11 years ago. Virtually nothing's been done except endless talk and meetings.
I don't think we can react fast enough or are clever enough to handle what's coming up

It's a depressing outlook.

Not necessarily. I don't think 9 billion is better than 1 billion. I see humans as rather like the first photosynthesisers, which when they first appeared on the planet caused enormous damage by releasing oxygen - a nasty, poisonous gas. It took a long time, but it turned out in the end to be of enormous benefit. I look on humans in much the same light. For the first time in its 3.5 billion years of existence, the planet has an intelligent, communicating species that can consider the whole system and even do things about it. They are not yet bright enough, they have still to evolve quite a way, but they could become a very positive contributor to planetary welfare.

How much biodiversity will be left after this climatic apocalypse?

We have the example of the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum event 55 million years ago. About the same amount of CO2 was put into the atmosphere as we are putting in and temperatures rocketed by about 5 °C over about 20,000 years. The world became largely desert. The polar regions were tropical and most life on the planet had the time to move north and survive. When the planet cooled they moved back again. So there doesn't have to be a massive extinction. It's already moving: if you live in the countryside as I do you can see the changes, even in the UK.

If you were younger, would you be fearful?

No, I have been through this kind of emotional thing before. It reminds me of when I was 19 and the second world war broke out. We were very frightened but almost everyone was so much happier. We're much better equipped to deal with that kind of thing than long periods of peace. It's not all bad when things get rough. I'll be 90 in July, I'm a lot closer to death than you, but I'm not worried. I'm looking forward to being 100.

Are you looking forward to your trip into space this year?

Very much. I've got my camera ready!

Do you have to do any special training?

I have to go in the centrifuge to see if I can stand the g-forces. I don't anticipate a problem because I spent a lot of my scientific life on ships out on rough oceans and I have never been even slightly seasick so I don't think I'm likely to be space sick. They gave me an expensive thorium-201 heart test and then put me on a bicycle. My heart was performing like an average 20 year old, they said.

I bet your wife is nervous.

No, she's cheering me on. And it's not because I'm heavily insured, because I'm not.

www.facebook.com...

[edit on 31-3-2010 by infolurker]

reply to post by ucalien


I agree with him about the ''EARTH Being a superorganism'' but, I dont think we're that doomed. Yeah, we've damaged our planet, but I think we'll find a way of adapting to the changes as long as their not to inhospitable to us. Or if we manage to colonize our solar system.
But then again, with Earth saving its self... Well... That'll just be another extiction event that will give a new form of life to evolve over a few million years.
I hate refering to Movies, but when that fella in the Matrix catogrise's us humans as bacteria, I dont think he's not that far off the truth.

I wonder what type of life form's may evolve millions of year's after humanity's demise?

This planet isn't doomed...

The whole agenda isn't about saving planet earth, its saving this civilisation at this time on earth.

If we made toxic every ocean, cut down every tree and re-engineered every plant, and then we killed ourselves off, within 10,000 years this planet will be back full if life and doing just fine.

I'm not a firm believer in the save the planet idea, because as humans are greedy, power hungry and devious the only agenda we are supporting is to fill up the pockets of elite for their children, and to create more and more powerful organisations for control.

[edit on 31/3/10 by multichild]

reply to post by drew hempel

"saving the planet" is the cause of the environmental crisis! Because the concept of "saving the planet" means that humans still think of themselves as outside of Nature and therefore able to control Nature.

Ain't saying that men must try to control Nature, but I'm sure that the amount of money and human resources spent to develop weapons, IF used to create technologies to REVERSE the damages, could at least improve our relationship with the planet.

reply to post by drew hempel

It's a foolish to think that UFOs are ONLY US military black projects. It's typical of north-american arrogance. UFOs ever were seen by ancient civilizations. The hindus reported the "Vimanas", the babylonians and egyptians reported the "chariots of gods"... Aliens have been exploring this solar system since millions of years ago.

reply to post by infolurker

Regardless alien interference. Lets assume we are by our own, I do believe that the current science could develop technologies to reverse environmental damages. The problem is that the financial and human resources are used by the super power nations, to produce mass destruction weapons, 'cos most of current wars are related to control of oil industry. If we don't clean this mess, the "planetary organism" will wipe us off, in order to save future life forms.

reply to post by drew hempel


Very good post. You deserve at least 500 stars.

Thank you for sharing your most intellegent post.

reply to post by ucalien


i dont see why Gaia wouldnt want us to help her while we could atleast? make it easiser on her when she calls us back? and if we are realizing that we have done wrong she may forgive us and save us to help her still unlike in the past witch we probaly did but did realize we did wrong but just did what this guy is sugjesting and just lived while we could...i think if gaia was going to cleanse herself she would want help from one of her most flourishing children...its like when your on a video game where you respawn you see a guy and you know you cant beat him but you do your best so when you come back to him its much easier to do because you know what you did wrong and what you did right.