Revenge of Gaia

James,

Thank you for the link as I would have missed this otherwise. I agree with Lovelock. People are too damn selfish to care, presumably they think they will be long gone before things get realy bad but their children and children's children wont be. What a great legacy. Since you posted this thread this morning there have been a number of replies on the football threads but this is the first reply to yours as if bloody football matters at all. Weve lost the plot and the planet imo.

Erik

Erik,

That's interesting what you say.

A couple of things puzzle me about the concept of global warming and how much it can be controlled.

Given the age of our planet, our records of temperatures and weather trends are totally insignificant. If the history of earth can be represented by one 24 hour day, the period we would be using to base our calculations on would amount to micro-seconds - wouldn't it?

Also, there is evidence that at one time or another our planet has been unsustainably hot, and ice age cold well before human life was around.

Don't get me wrong, I'm against waste or unnecessary use of resources as a matter of principle. But I'm also against scaring everyone half to death and making the remainder feel wretched about living their lives the way they wish to lead them.

I don't think selfishness can come into it with countries who have already enjoyed a share of world resources dictating to others that things have changed, and the same rules don't apply.

If you see what I mean.

Basically the book states that even if we could magically turn off all carbon out put, we still have 1000 years plus to get the earth back to 'normal'

Preciesly what normal is, doesn't get mentioned which I feel is important as we have evidence that it has gone through many changes.

Personally I think we are in the middle of another one, and humans are so vain as to believe they have any thing to do with it or any control over it. The guy sounded a little bit mad TBH.

Well said garyi. I did think no one had replied cos most think he's barking!

Like David Bellamy, I do think Lovelock has gone a bit off his 'wocker'. I

Atomkraft? Nej tack!

His biggest mistake was to call his (sensible) ideas about the Earth & the ecology 'Gaia'. It instantly linked it with 'spirituality' rather than the hard science the book was actually based on. He should have called it 'Musings on a planetary-wide organic and inorganic self sustaining feedbak-based system'. He might have sold a few copies then....



Stephen

Time scale is the whole issue and short-term problems is all anyone will ever care about. As far as the planet is concerned, all we're talking about is a shift in population for some of the species occupying it. This has always been the case. Who says the humans deserve to survive?

Quite. Maybe humans have a duty of care that the activities we undertake minimises impact on the other species on the planet, and to our future selves, but far too much of the 'OMGsavetheWorld'ism is actually about people wanting to save their comfortable existences. That's notsomething we have an automatic right to, though we, posting here, have lucked into it by accident of birth location.

PS This is not to say I'm not for conservation and looking for the best use of resources!

I agree about the name Gaia etc... la, la...

But I thought the actual 'Climate Change Panel' interview was pretty interesting - the wide ranging group of eminent scientists were chosen to challenge Lovelock, but all but one seemed to broadly support most of what he was hypothesising, albeit that they thought he was resorting to hyperbole to some degree - forcefully made comments for impact/dramatic effect, to get the point home.

In other words, all were agreed that the situation is rather more serious than a few token windmills, switching off your Naim between listening sessions, and installing solar-heated baths... (Lovelock was in fact entirely in favour of middle-class gestures such as these, but in the grand scale they are gestures.)

James

I would agree with that, but equally the guy did admit towards the end of the interview that he only had a thing against windmills because they risked making his beloved views less nice.

In other words he was not totally honest and impartial. I guess we need lots of different views both from those that say nothing is happening right up to this guy, who lets not forget is saying that billions will be dead by the end of the century and those that survive will be living in the Arctic.

Its possible he is mad, I want the best for my kid but if his prediction is true, then fuck it, I am leaving my HIFI on and recommending to my kid not to have kids.

End.

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
I would agree with that, but equally the guy did admit towards the end of the interview that he only had a thing against windmills because they risked making his beloved views less nice.

In other words he was not totally honest and impartial. I guess we need lots of different views both from those that say nothing is happening right up to this guy, who lets not forget is saying that billions will be dead by the end of the century and those that survive will be living in the Arctic.

Its possible he is mad, I want the best for my kid but if his prediction is true, then fuck it, I am leaving my HIFI on and recommending to my kid not to have kids.

End.

I'm not sure he said that his only reason against windmills was because they spolied his view...

I am not in favour of Nuclear, and my wife was on the anti-Sizewell business.

But I think it was a fair point to say that, as a method of power generation, you need umpteen windmills per mile from Land's End to John O'Groats to produce the same amount of power as one nuke.

That was the more serious part of what he was saying about windmills - even allowing for improvements in the technology, which he factored into his comments.

Perhaps the real problem is the hyperbole to grab people's attention masking the serious stuff underneath, which the Climate Change Panel pretty much agreed with - and that the situation is more serious than the pretty tokenistic approach we've had so far.

Don't think you've got to tell your children not to have children (a bit extreme?) - just to learn Russian/Siberian.

James

I tend to rather like what windmills do to the landscape, there's a wonderfully striking farm as one comes into Scotland on the A68 (a much more scenic route, incidentally, for anyone one taking the trip, and not much slower, than the A1).

I have, in the past, lived a few miles down the coast from Sizewell and have never been that bothered by it. That said, I do think that the only question to which nuclear power is the answer is: what is the most short-sighted, dangerous and expensive energy policy we can come up with.

I do think there is a tendency within the environmental movement to want to have their cake and eat it: i.e. you can't have fossil fuels because they pollute but you can't have wind either because it ruins the landscape or causes trouble for birds.... and so on.

Personally, I would have thought the solution was reasonably simple (and could be enacted without public subsidy) and that would be to gradually, say over the next 50 years, ramp up to 100% the proportion of energy that companies are required to source renewably - guaranteeing a market would thus make the industry more economic (i.e. banks would be keener to lend to allow companies to start up). It would surely also make Britain a capital of green energy which could mean a nice windfall as the rest of the world will surely want such technologies in the future.

regards, Tam

Further evidence of the truth of the Gaia theory...

As we know, PB lives at the North Pole and just look at the lush, temperate greenery on the tundra outside his igloo.

http://forums.naim-audio.com/eve/forums?a=tpc&s=6701938...952969407#8952969407

See, skeptics, in the Arctic, you in fact get a nice temperate climate and a top flight Naim system on which to play your reindeer records...

James