James Lovelock - Warming On Pace For 8C Increase, On Track To Kill Billions

[hatrack]

THE earth has a fever that could boost temperatures by eight degrees celsius making large parts of the surface uninhabitable and threatening billions of peoples' lives, a controversial climate scientist said.

James Lovelock, who angered climate scientists with his Gaia theory of a living planet and then alienated environmentalists by backing nuclear power, said a traumatised earth might only be able to support less than a tenth of its current six billion people.

"We are not all doomed. An awful lot of people will die, but I don't see the species dying out," he told a news conference today. "A hot earth couldn't support much over 500 million." "Almost all of the systems that have been looked at are in positive feedback ... and soon those effects will be larger than any of the effects of carbon dioxide emissions from industry and so on around the world," he said.

EDIT

In London to give a lecture on the environment to the Institution of Chemical Engineers, he said the planet had survived dramatic climate change at least seven times. "In the change from the last Ice Age to now we lost land equivalent to the continent of Africa beneath the sea," he said. "We are facing things just as bad or worse than that during this century."

EDIT

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,20840548-5001028,00.html

[villager]

1. but, but... what about the "rapture" exemption?

n/t

[jgraz]

2. Yikes -- now *I* want to start pretending Global Warming doesn't exist!

Knave, fetch me my Hummer.

K&R

[mom cat]

3. Why do you think Bushco is buying 100,000 acres in the mountains of Paraguy?

He knows that global warming is real. He wants to survive but does not give a damn if you do.

[phantom power]

4. Only 9/10 of us are doomed. Not all of us.

When it comes to gloomy, Lovelock shows that I'm just an amateur.

[Odin2005]

5. 8C sounds a bit much.

I have a lot of respect for Lovelock, but an and 8C increase sounds unlikely, that would making thinks warmer then even during typical "hothouse" periods like the mid Cretaceous and early Teriary, 4C is more reasonable, (but still extremely serious).

[Nihil]

6. I think that is the straight projection ...

... that doesn't take into account the "self-correcting" side of the
problem - i.e., it assumes that there is no population die-off,
no reduction in energy demand through regression of civilisation
and no recovery by nature of abandoned sites, all of which reduce
the rate of temperature increase (and thus the upper limit).

The problem with "expecting" a mid-Cretaceous/early Tertiary level is
that these built up in a different fashion: the incredible "pulse"
in this event (on a geological timescale) is more likely to lead to
overshoot of the idealised steady-state temperature (which may well
be around 4C).

[Odin2005]

7. There could be a massive population die-off, or we could devise some sort of climate control.

both are very possible.

[Dead_Parrot]

8. I'd go for 6.5C...

I'm overly fond of waving this about:



Given the current average temp is about 15.5c, that would make a 6.5 degree hike to reach 22 - which seems to be the historic maximum.

The problem there is, I think the land is set warm a lot more than the sea: A 6.5C increase across the globe could well mean +10C or +12C in places like the continental USA.

I'd get some cold beers in, just in case. :)

[Odin2005]

9. Here's a better one: