Answer to Climate Change: Let's Flee to Climate Controlled Cities

Let's Flee to Climate Controlled Cities

The Daily Bell

We should give up trying to save the world from climate change, says James Lovelock ...The scientist and inventor James Lovelock claims we should stop trying to save the planet from global warming and instead retreat to climate controlled cities ... Saving the planet from climate change is 'beyond our ability' and we should stop wasting time trying to tackle global warming, a leading scientist has claimed ... James Lovelock, who first detected CFCs in the atmosphere and proposed the Gaia hypotheses, claims society should retreat to 'climate-controlled cities' and give up on large expanses of land which will become inhabitable. – UK Telegraph

Since we haven't been able to create a carbon tax, let's move on to Plan B, which is putting people in small apartments in large cities. The alternative 'Net media is often portrayed as loony and conspiratorial by the mainstream media. But actually, it is the other way round.

In a more normal sociopolitical and economic environment, James Lovelock would be labeled what he is – a crank and a kook. But because he is a prominent climate alarmist and has obtained a variety of degrees, he is portrayed sympathetically, as a kind of wise man – at least by the mainstream media.

In fact, if wisdom is defined as the ability to hold contradictory views, then Lovelock is wise. And if wisdom is defined as weirdness, Lovelock is certainly knowledgeable.

Here's a quote of Lovelock from one of his books, Revenge of Gaia:

"A television interviewer once asked me, 'But what about nuclear waste? Will it not poison the whole biosphere and persist for millions of years?' I knew this to be a nightmare fantasy wholly without substance in the real world... One of the striking things about places heavily contaminated by radioactive nuclides is the richness of their wildlife.

This is true of the land around Chernobyl, the bomb test sites of the Pacific, and areas near the United States' Savannah River nuclear weapons plant of the Second World War. Wild plants and animals do not perceive radiation as dangerous, and any slight reduction it may cause in their lifespan is far less a hazard than is the presence of people and their pets...

I find it sad, but all too human, that there are vast bureaucracies concerned about nuclear waste, huge organizations devoted to decommissioning power stations, but nothing comparable to deal with that truly malign waste, carbon dioxide."

You see? Radiation is healthy but carbon dioxide – one of two life sustaining gases – is not. Good to know!

Lovelock is widely touted as the inventor of the Gaia hypothesis – which holds the Earth is a delicately balanced machine that sustains life through a variety of methods. Here is how Bibliotecapleyades.net puts it:

The Gaia Hypothesis proposes that our planet functions as a single organism that maintains conditions necessary for its survival. Formulated by James Lovelock in the mid-1960s and published in a book in 1979, this controversial idea has spawned several interesting ideas and many new areas of research. While this hypothesis is by no means substantiated, it provides many useful lessons about the interaction of physical, chemical, geological, and biological processes on Earth ...

The idea of the Earth acting as a single system as put forth in the Gaia hypothesis has stimulated a new awareness of the connectedness of all things on our planet and the impact that man has on global processes. No longer can we think of separate components or parts of the Earth as distinct. No longer can we think of man's actions in one part of the planet as independent.

But Lovelock has also written: "Life, or the biosphere, regulates or maintains the climate and the atmospheric composition at an optimum for itself."

You would think as someone who'd invented a theory having to do with how the Earth retains its natural balance, Lovelock would be relatively sanguine about hostile inputs. In fact, he's made a series of admissions over the inaccuracies of some of his more extreme predictions.

Here, from Wikipedia:

In an April 2012 interview, aired on MSNBC, Lovelock stated that he had been "alarmist", using the words "All right, I made a mistake," about the timing of climate change and noted the documentary An Inconvenient Truth and the book The Weather Makers as examples of the same kind of alarmism.

Lovelock still believes the climate to be warming although the rate of change is not as he once thought, he admitted that he had been "extrapolating too far." He believes that climate change is still happening, but it will be felt farther in the future. Of the claims "the science is settled" on global warming he states:

"One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don't know it."

So Lovelock admits he's been an alarmist and also that scientists can "never be certain about anything." Yet this article in the Telegraph seems to show that Lovelock is once again employing alarmist rhetoric. From the Telegraph article:

Lovelock, who has just published his latest book A Rough Ride To The Future, claims we should give up trying to save the world from climate change ... We should be 'strengthening our defenses and making a sustainable retreat.'

"We're reaching an age in history where you can no longer predict the future with any hope of success. We should give up vainglorious attempts to save the world. Britain is no longer a world power and we need to leave such schemes to the USA, Japan or China. We should spend our efforts adapting Britain to fight climate change."

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is expected to say the world will need a 'Plan B' because it is unlikely countries will reduce carbon emissions in time.

... Scientists said that by taking immediate steps to reduce carbon emissions over the coming decades, there could be a reduction in potential consequences by the end of the century. In his new book Lovelock writes: "We may have wasted valuable time, energy and resources by trying to grapple with climate change on a global scale ...

"If most of us lived in cities, as it seems we soon will do, the regulation of the climate of these cities might be far easier, more economic and safer option in a hot climate than the regulation by Geo-engineering of the whole planet."

This is a man who believes that high levels of radiation are considerably healthier than carbon dioxide ... who now believes that humanity's last, best hope is a series of urban bolt holes.

Sadly, despite his record, Lovelock's more extreme ideas will probably continue to get an airing in the mainstream press. In fact, we may be on track for a long debate over whether or not people should be forcibly removed to small apartments in specially developed, "climate controlled" cities in order to overcome the effects of "carbon pollution."

Conclusion

His views, especially his more hysterical ones, are obviously useful to the power elite and its foundering dominant social themes. For this reason, his opinions, however contradictory, will continue to be publicized.