Sunday Times: Grandaddy of green, James Lovelock, warms to eco-sceptics

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7061020.ece

From The Sunday Times
March 14, 2010

Grandaddy of green, James Lovelock, warms to eco-sceptics

Charles Clover

Just occasionally you find yourself at an event where there is a sense of history in the air. So it was the other night at the Royal Society, when a small gathering of luminaries turned up to hear that extraordinary nonagenarian, the scientist James Lovelock.

They had all come: David MacKay, chief scientist at the Department of Energy and Climate Change; Michael Green, Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge; Michael Wilson, producer of the James Bond movies; Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum; and more. You knew why they had answered the Isaac Newton Institute’s invitation. They wanted to learn where one of the most interesting minds in science stood in the climate debate.

...

“I think you have to accept that the sceptics have kept us sane — some of them, anyway,” he said. “They have been a breath of fresh air. They have kept us from regarding the science of climate change as a religion. It had gone too far that way. There is a role for sceptics in science. They shouldn’t be brushed aside. It is clear that the angel side wasn’t without sin.”

...

He had. In the end, his message was that we should have more respect for uncertainties and learn to live with possibilities rather than striving for the 95% probabilities that climate scientists have been trying to provide. We don’t know what’s going to happen and we don’t know if we can avert disaster — although we should try. His sage advice: enjoy life while you can.

[bbinacan]

1. Interesting article

Thanks for posting.

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. You're welcome

(I thought it was interesting.)

[stuntcat]

2. "enjoy life while you can"

I'd have to live in denial :p

[Dogmudgeon]

3. Interesting knife twist

Like many climatologists who warn about global warming, he's polite to those he disagrees with.

But I think we all know what this is really about.

How should we be spending our money to prevent possible disaster? In Britain, says Lovelock, we need sea walls and more nuclear power. Heretical stuff, when you consider the vast amount that Europe plans to spend on wind turbines.

I even formated it in Satan Red.

And the blue on "sea walls"? I can't imagine too many AGW deniers thinking we'll need sea walls.

In the end, his message was that we should have more respect for uncertainties and learn to live with possibilities rather than striving for the 95% probabilities that climate scientists have been trying to provide. We don’t know what’s going to happen and we don’t know if we can avert disaster — although we should try. His sage advice: enjoy life while you can.

Respect uncertainties? Enjoy life?

The bastard!

--d!

[kristopher]

7. Respecting uncertainties is sound reasoning

It is also a prescription for NOT building more nuclear power since renewable energy sources are viable alternatives that can significantly reduce the uncertainties associated with a *clean* sustainable flow of energy for humanity.

A very good discussion:

...Traditional tools such as cost-benefit analysis rely on a "predict then act" paradigm. They require a
prediction of the future before they can determine the policy that will work best under the expected
circumstances. Because these analyses demand that everyone agree on the models and assumptions,
they cannot resolve many of the most crucial debates that our society faces. They force people to
select one among many plausible, competing views of the future. Whichever choice emerges is
vulnerable to blunders and surprises.
Our approach is to look not for optimal strategies but for robust ones. A robust strategy performs well
when compared with the alternatives across a wide range of plausible futures. It need not be the
optimal strategy in any future; it will, however, yield satisfactory outcomes in both easy-to-envision
futures and hard-to-anticipate contingencies.
This approach replicates the way people often reason about complicated and uncertain decisions in
everyday life. The late Herbert A. Simon, a cognitive scientist and Nobel laureate who pioneered in the
1950s the study of how people make real-world decisions, observed that they seldom optimize. Rather
they seek strategies that will work well enough, that include hedges against various potential outcomes
and that are adaptive. Tomorrow will bring information unavailable today; therefore, people plan on
revising their plans. ...

http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/INF/announce/web.../2005/.../sci_american_warrens.pdf

[jwirr]

4. I do not argue climate change with the people I know who are doubters.

I listen to what they have to say. Then I tell them that the results will tell us which way it is. However, when it comes to what we do about it I convince them that it is a good economic policy to go green. A new economy that is more self-sufficient than the oil economy. It defuses their arguments.

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. "the results will tell us which way it is"

[jpak]

8. Unfortunately, he was never "green", and hates environmentalists and the science establishment

and Gaia is bunk

[Odin2005]

11. Wrong.

[jpak]

12. no - right - He's hated the science establishment after they rejected the Gaia Hypothesis

yup

[Odin2005]

13. But he got the last laugh because the Gaia Hypothesis became accepted by many through the back door.

It was wasn't called "Gaia" by them.

[jpak]

14. nope - wrong again

Example - all the biotic feedbacks to global warming are positive - not negative - and will enhance - not mitigate - climate change.

If Gaia was valid, there would be negative feedbacks - and they ain't thar.

Oh yeah - there were all those AGU Chapman Conferences on Gaia...

the end

[bananas]

9. So uber-doomer Lovelock predicts a 1-2C change we can live with

“What would you bet will happen this century?” a mathematician asked him. Lovelock predicted a temperature rise in the middle range of current projections — about 1C-2C — which we could live with.

[Odin2005]

10. Lovelock is right on, as usual.