Comments from Richard S Courtney on “The End of Eden”
By Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 2, 2006; C01
HYPERLINK "http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/09/01/AR2006090101800.html?referrer=email" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/09/01/AR2006090101800.html?referrer=email
James Lovelock Says This Time We've Pushed the Earth Too Far
Lovelock is reported to have said;
"Our global furnace is out of control. By 2020, 2025, you will be able to sail a sailboat to the North Pole. The Amazon will become a desert, and the forests of Siberia will burn and release more methane and plagues will return."
These statements are fanciful beyond belief. There is no evidence to suggest – and no reason to believe – that North Polar ice will disappear, that the Amazon could become a desert and/or that Siberia’s forests will burn within the next 20 years. The statements derive from the assertion that man-made global warming exists and will become much stronger. But the claim that man-made global warming exists is merely an assertion: it is not evidence and it is not fact. And the assertion does not become evidence or fact by being voiced, written in words, or written in computer code. The fact is that any warming that may have happened during the last 100 years is within natural climate variability that has occurred in the past. And there is no indication that warming is increasing. Indeed, global temperature has not again reached the high it did in the El Nino year of 1998. And the assertion that “plagues will return” is simply stupid: AIDS is a plague in Africa, and the “return” of plagues would be a failure of medical facilities or an indication of climate conditions that previously enabled those plagues.
The report says;
“Now Lovelock has turned his attention to global warming, writing "The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity." Already a big seller in the United Kingdom, the book was released in the United States last month. (He will speak in Washington, at the Carnegie Institution, Friday at 7 p.m.) Lovelock's conclusion is straightforward.”
This is a complete explanation of Lovelock’s statements: he is hyping his book. Nobody sells a book by saying it contains nothing interesting or exciting.
The report claims:
Within the next decade or two, Lovelock forecasts, Gaia will hike her thermostat by at least 10 degrees. Earth, he predicts, will be hotter than at any time since the Eocene Age 55 million years ago, when crocodiles swam in the Arctic Ocean.
This is an extraordinary “forecast” that is pulled out of the air and is not supported by any understanding of climate or any climate model projection. It asserts that the global cooling of recent years will reverse and the Earth’s temperature will jump up “by at least 10 degrees” within “the next decade or two”. Simply, this is not a “forecast” but it is very poor science fiction.
The report says:
"There's no realization of how quickly and irreversibly the planet is changing," Lovelock says. "Maybe 200 million people will migrate close to the Arctic and survive this. Even if we took extraordinary steps, it would take the world 1,000 years to recover."
These assertions derive from Lovelock’s very extreme opinion of man-made global warming. And his opinions do not agree with reality. Two thousand years ago – in Roman times – the Earth was warmer than now. After that it was cooler than now throughout the Dark Ages. That cool period was followed by the so-called Medieval Warm Period when the Vikings farmed Greenland and an insect now constrained to the South of France inhabited York. Then the Earth cooled to the so-called Little Ice Age. The Earth has been warming out of the Little Ice Age for the 300 years since then. Around 1700, Londoners used to have “Ice Fairs” on the frozen Thames each year. The last Ice Fair was held in 1814, and the Thames has not frozen solid since. As I say above, the fact is that any warming that may have happened during the last 100 years is within natural climate variability that has occurred in the past. And that warming could be a completely natural recovery from the Little Ice Age that is similar to the recovery from the Dark Age cool period to the Medieval Warm Period.
Furthermore, the recent history of the estimated warming of the Earth does not agree with an assertion that human emissions were responsible for the warming over the last 100 years. The estimates of the Earth’s average surface temperature (mean global temperature: MGT) all show warming from before 1900 to 1940, then cooling from 1940 to 1970 with a further period of warming after 1970. The estimates show that most of the warming occurred before 1940 but 80% of the emissions were after that. Indeed, the start of the cooling period coincided with the start of the major emissions. Advocates of man-made global warming excuse this problem by attributing
(a) almost all the rise before 1940 to be an effect of the Sun,
(b) the cooling from 1940 to 1970 to be an effect of human emissions of aerosols, and
(c) the warming after 1970 to be mostly an effect of human emissions of greenhouse gases.
Evidence is lacking for this convoluted story to excuse the disagreement of the emissions with the temperature history.
So, “1,000 years to recover” from what?
Furthermore, the report quotes Lovelock as saying;
"I'm an optimist," he says. "I think that after the warming sets in and the survivors have settled in near the Arctic, they will find a way to adjust. It will be a tough life enlivened by excitement and fear."
Now, if that is not merely poor science fiction, then what is?
But it could be thought that my comments are ‘sour grapes’ because the report says;
“Forty years later, talk of an interconnected planetary system is the lingua franca of Earth science. The queen has handed Lovelock a prize, Oxford has invited him to teach, and his small forest lab had more government contracts than he could handle. (In his lab, the octogenarian scientist follows few safety protocols save the dictates of self-preservation. "I can kill only myself; it's a splendid freedom," he says.)”
Lovelock lives and works in Devon while I live and work in the adjacent county of Cornwall. Lovelock is inundated with “government contracts” while the UK government gives me none. So, are my above observations mere jealousy? No, I am content to stick to real science and I leave government-sponsored scare campaigns to Lovelock and his ilk. Others try to excuse Lovelock’s behaviour, for example the report says;
"Maybe Jim thinks the world has gotten too comfortable with his theory," says Lee Kump, a prominent geologist at Penn State. "He sees Gaia treating us as a body does an infection -- it's trying to burn us out."
Perhaps, but all that income from the government is clearly not a problem for Lovelock.
And the report says Lovelock fosters his campaign with complete fabrications such as:
“Even the northern forests, those dark cool beauties of pines and firs, suffer. They absorb heat and shelter bears, lynxes and wolves through harsh winters. But recent studies show the boreal forests are drying and dying and inducing more warming.”
In fact, the northern forests are expanding and flourishing. Lovelock does not care about such matters of fact and reality. Indeed, he ignores complaints at his exaggerations and fabrications – with all that government money he can afford to – and the report says;
Lovelock nods, weary; he's heard this before.
"We like to think of Hurricane Katrina, or a killer heat wave in Europe, as a one-off," he says. "Or we like to think that we'll come up with a technological fix."
But drought, heat waves, cold snaps, frosts, warm periods, cool periods, and storms have always happened. They always will. And governments need to be ready for them. Governments should prepare for – not ignore – what may happen in the bad times. Assumption of global warming leads to preparation for warming and not cooling. But cooling would be a more severe problem than warming, and global temperature has not again reached the high it did in the El Nino year of 1998. In the past all sensible governments have been ready for all the things that may happen in the bad times. Now, some governments – including the UK government with support from Lovelock – are preparing for a more limited range of climate changes based on computer games that project only global warming. There is a severe risk in preparing for warming and not cooling. And there is most risk in preparing for neither but trying to control the climate of the planet instead. Choosing such limits has risks that can have expensive and disastrous outcomes.
Lovelock’s desperation to justify his silly assertions is revealed in the report when it says;
“Lovelock reminds you that the Mayan seers, to name another maligned bunch of doomsayers, were spot on. Their great civilization died of an environmental apocalypse.”
So, Lovelock admits that disastrous climatic changes have happened naturally in the past. But now he asserts that humans can – and are – altering the climate of the entire planet. This is not a justification for his silly assertions, but it is hubris.
And Lovelock’s silly science fiction is summed up in the report when it claims he says;
"People say, 'Well, you're 87, you won't live to see this,' " he says. ”I have children, I have grandchildren, I wish none of this. But it's our fate; we need to recognize it's another wartime. We desperately need a Moses to take us to the Arctic and preserve civilization.
But he claims the Arctic will be water with sailing boats on it. How will civilization continue on the boats? And we do not need another Moses but we do need to remember Joseph. Climate has always changed everywhere and it always will: this has been known since the Bronze Age when it was pointed out to Pharaoh by Joseph. Joseph told Pharaoh to prepare for the bad times when in the good times, and all sensible governments have adopted that policy throughout the thousands of years since then. Man-made global warming is not a problem that deserves attention from people or governments. The present interest in global warming and not cooling has high unnecessary costs and very high risks.
Richard S Courtney
2 September 2006