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On Eve of UN Earth Summit, Green Guru Lovelock Slams UN IPCC & Greens: ‘Whenever UN puts its finger in it seems to become a mess’– ‘So-called sustainable development is meaningless drivel’

[Climate Depot salutes James Lovelock for the courage to publicly reverse himself on key issues as the evidence changes. Also, kudos to UK Guardian reporter Leo Hickman for excellent reporting.]

Climate Depot’s Round Up on James Lovelock:

On Eve of UN Earth Summit, Green Guru Lovelock Slams UN IPCC & Greens: ‘Whenever UN puts its finger in it seems to become a mess’ — ‘The green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion’ — James Lovelock: ”IPCC is too politicized & too internalized’ — On Green religion: ‘I don’t think people have noticed that, but it’s got all the sort of terms that religions use. The greens use guilt. You can’t win people round by saying they are guilty for putting CO2 in the air’

Green Guru James Lovelock: ‘So-called sustainable development is meaningless drivel’

Flashback April 2012: ‘Gaia’ scientist James Lovelock reverses himself: I was ‘alarmist’ about climate change & so was Gore! ‘The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago’Climate Shocker: In 2007, Lovelock Predicted Global Warming Doom: ‘Billions of us will die; few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in Arctic’

UK Guardian: ‘Scientist James Lovelock is the man behind Gaia theory, and once predicted doom for our climate’ — Lovelock ‘discusses nuclear (good), wind power (bad) and why fracking is the future Lovelock is relaxed about how this reversal might be perceived. He says being allowed to change your mind and follow the evidence is one of the liberating marvels of being an independent scientist’

Lovelock on Sea Level: ‘He & his wife Sandy downsized & moved to an old lifeguard’s cottage by beach. ‘I’m not worried about sea-level rises,’ he laughs. ‘At worst, I think it will be 2ft a century’

Lovelock On science:’Science is going down the drain terribly fast. It keeps dividing itself up into expertises and these expertises probably don’t know much about the others’— ‘I think in order to be a fully rounded person you have to learn to be a pro at one thing, but then you can become a generalist’ — ‘I think the most outrageous example of climate scientists getting it wrong and not admitting it was the 2007 IPPC report. They happily accepted the Nobel prize, but their sea-level rise estimates, according to that very important Science paper by Rahmstorf, were 100% wrong’

James Lovelock: ‘We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant’ — ‘I personally can’t stand windmills at any price. Hydro, biomass, solar, etc, have all got great promise, but they’re not available tomorrow, or even in 10 years’

Lovelock on climate models: ‘But they [climate scientists] still don’t put any of the living parts of the planet into the climate models’

Lovelock on Nuclear Energy: ‘It’s almost probably pointless to support nuclear now. The opposition to it now is just too powerful. It’s not rational opposition. It’s religious opposition’

Germany’s decision ‘to shut down all its nuclear power plants by 2022 – particularly infuriates Lovelock: Germany has ‘this fatal flaw that they always fall for an ideologue…’‘…and Europe has suffered intensely from the last two episodes of that. It looks to me as if the green ideas they have picked up now could be just as damaging’

Lovelock has ‘hatred of wind power (he has a picture of a wind turbine on the wall of his study to remind him how ‘ugly and useless they are’) — ‘He argues that, while not perfect, it produces far less CO2 than burning coal: ‘Gas is almost a give-away in the US at the moment. They’ve gone for fracking in a big way. Let’s be pragmatic and sensible and get Britain to switch everything to methane. We should be going mad on it’

James Lovelock on shale gas and the problem with ‘greens’: ‘Lovelock on “fracking”: Gas is almost a give-away in the US at the moment. They’ve gone for fracking in a big way’ — ‘This is what makes me very cross with the greens for trying to knock it: the amount of CO2 produced by burning gas in a good turbine gives you 60% efficiency. In a coal-fired power station, it is 30% per unit of fuel. So you get a two-to-one gain there straight away’

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