|
|
"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
|
Climate change alarmist realizes he was wrong, but for the wrong reasons
|
|---|
| Parent(s) |
Issue
|
| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Apr 25, 2012 03:49pm |
| Logged |
0
|
| Category | Commentary |
| Author | John Timmer |
| News Date | Wednesday, April 25, 2012 09:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | James Lovelock is an interesting character. He has a medical degree and has successfully designed a number of scientific instruments, but he's probably most famous for some of his big ideas, which range from specific geoengineering proposals to the Gaia concept, which proposes that the planet's geology, biology, and atmosphere interact in a complex, self-regulating system.
In recent years, his attention has turned to climate change and, unfortunately, he's largely decided to skip brushing up on science before making grandiose predictions. After having suggested that the human population on Earth would be whittled down to a handful of survivors this century, he's now backed away from these claims—and has gotten nearly as many things wrong in the process of doing so.
But Lovelock is now working on a new book, and that's caused him to revisit these predictions. In an interview at MSNBC, he correctly recognizes that his earlier predictions were alarmist, but he apparently did not realize why he had gone so wrong. Rather than actually talking to the people who study the climate for a living, he's just decided that, since his own predictions didn't come to pass, nobody must know what's going on. "The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing," Lovelock told MSNBC. "We thought we knew 20 years ago." Later on, he claims that "we were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now."
In short, Lovelock's predictions never reflected the scientific consensus and, whatever prompted him to revise them, it didn't seem to involve talking to anyone who actually knows climate science. |
| Share |
|
|
2¢
|
|
| Article | Read Full Article |
|
| Date |
Category |
Headline |
Article |
Contributor |
|
|
