Green Guru James Lovelock on Climate Change: ‘I don’t think anybody really knows what’s happening. They just guess’ – Lovelock Reverses Himself on Global Warming

Update: Another Prominent Scientist Dissents! Fmr. NASA Scientist Dr. Les Woodcock ‘Laughs’ at Global Warming – ‘Global warming is nonsense’ Top Prof. Declares – Asserts ‘professional misconduct by Government advisors around the world’ ]

Green Guru James Lovelock laments modern green movement: ‘We never intended a fundamentalist Green movement that rejected all energy sources other than renewable’

Green guru and geophysicist James Lovelock, considered one of the pioneering scientists of the 20th century, has officially turned his back on man-made global warming claims and the green movement’s focus on renewable energy. Lovelock conceived the Gaia theory back in the 1970s, describing the Earth’s biosphere as “an active, adaptive control system able to maintain the earth in homeostasis.”

In an April 2, 2014 BBC TV interview, Lovelock has come out swinging at his fellow environmentalists, accusing the new UN IPCC global warming report of plagiarizing his now retracted climate claims from his 2006 book ‘The Revenge of Gaia.’

“The last IPCC report is very similar to the (now retracted) statements I made in my book about 8 years ago, called The Revenge of Gaia. It’s almost as if they’ve copied it,” Lovelock told BBC Newsnight television program on April 3.

BBC interviewer Jeremy Paxman noted to Lovelock during the April 2 program:  “Sure. But you then, after publishing these apocalyptic predictions, you then retracted them.”

The newly skeptical Lovelock responded: “Well, that’s my privilege. You see, I’m an independent scientist. I’m not funded by some government department or commercial body or anything like that. If I make a mistake, then I can go public with it. And you have to, because it is only by making mistakes that you can move ahead.”

Lovelock dismissed the entire basis for global warming concerns in his BBC television interview. “Take this climate matter everybody is thinking about. They all talk, they pass laws, they do things, as if they knew what was happening. I don’t think anybody really knows what’s happening. They just guess. And a whole group of them meet together and encourage each other’s guesses,” Lovelock explained.

A UN Lead Author, Dr. Richard Tol, joined Lovelock this week in slamming the UN and had his name removed from the IPCC report. See: UN IPCC LEAD AUTHOR Dr. Richard Tol rips IPCC: ‘The idea that climate change poses an existential threat to humankind is laughable’

Other reactions to the UN report echoed Tol. See: Pre-Determined ‘Science’: Round Up of New UN IPCC Report: Human Extinction? IPCC at ‘beck and call’ of Govts – UN Officials Predicted Alarming Report Years Ago

Another prominent scientist also dissented this week: Freeman Dyson — the world-renowned mathematical physicist: ‘I have strong views about climate because I think the majority is badly wrong’

Just last week, Lovelock compared believe in man-made climate alarm to “‘religion.” See: Gaia inventor James Lovelock: ‘Environmentalism has become a religion, and religions don’t worry too much about facts’ – March 31, 2014

Back in 2006, Lovelock was a committed man-made global warmnig activist, promoting scary climate scenarios. See: Climate Shocker: Lovelock Predicted Global Warming Doom: ‘Billions of us will die; few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in Arctic where the climate remains tolerable & Gaia scientist Lovelock: ‘I was WRONG and alarmist on climate: a scientist: ‘I swore Earth should be frying by now’ — ‘In 2006 Dr. Lovelock predicted the Earth ‘would catch a morbid fever’ that would destroy six billion people – ‘the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable’

Lovelock has since reversed himself and now serves a vocal critic of the man-made global warming movement. — 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’

Lovelock: ‘We haven’t got the physics worked out yet…I think the public are right. That’s why I’m soft on the sceptics. Science has got overblown’ & 2010: Green Guru Lovelock Says Warmists ‘Scared Stiff’: ‘The great climate science centers around the world are more than well aware how weak their science is’

Lovelock has been very critical of the UN IPCC. In 2012, he slammed the UN climate panel as “a mess” and accused it of being “too politicised and too internalized.” See: 2012: 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 politicised & 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’

Lovelock also spared no criticism of the Climategate scnadal. See: Lovelock on Climategate: Scandal left him feeling ‘utterly disgusted’ — ‘Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science. I’m not religious, but I put it that way because I feel so strongly. It’s the one thing you do not ever do. You’ve got to have standards.’

Lovelock has questioned the entire scientific basis for man-made climate change alarm. Climate Depot began reporting on Lovelock’s conversion away from climate fears in 2010 as he began reconsidering the alleged ‘settled science.” See below for Climate Depot’s reporting on the evolution of James Lovelock’s climate views.

Lovelock on climate change science: 

Inquisitr News, 2 April 2014: Influential scientist, inventor, and environmentalist James Lovelock is having some second thoughts about the whole climate change thing. In the context of a doom-and-gloom United Nations climate science report, Lovelock, 94, described the environmental movement as becoming “a religion, and religions don’t worry too much about facts.”

Green Guru James Lovelock says ‘we don’t know what the climate is doing’ and ‘The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet’ — But warmist Michael Mann says ‘frankly I see [Lovelock] largely as just coming back into the fold of mainstream thinking’

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’

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 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’

SHOCK: UK Green Guru James Lovelock Reconsiders Warming Views?!: Lovelock: Man-made Carbon Emissions ‘Have Saved Us from A New Ice Age’ — Lovelock: ‘I hate all this business about feeling guilty about what we’re doing. We’re not guilty’ — ‘We haven’t learned the lessons of the ozone-hole debate. It’s important to know just how much you have got to be careful’ — ‘According to Dr Lovelock’s Gaia theory, the earth is capable of curing itself. ‘A planet that is effectively alive can regulate itself and its composition and climate,” he said’

James Lovelock on Ozone hole science: ‘We should have been warned by the CFC/ozone affair because the corruption of science in that was so bad…’ ‘Something like 80% of the measurements being made during that time were either faked, or incompetently done’

Global warming guru admits he was wrong about climate change: ‘He admits that speaking in more reasonable terms ‘would have spoilt the book.’

2010 Shock: Green Guru Lovelock warms to skeptics! ‘The skeptics have kept us sane…They have kept us from regarding climate science as a religion. It had gone too far that way’

Enviro Guru James Lovelock Admits Obvious: ‘Peer-review process can be exceedingly prejudiced and exert censorship even’

Green Guru James Lovelock Admits the Obvious: ‘Everybody might be wrong. Climate change may not happen as fast as we thought, and we may have 1,000 years to sort it out’

MSNBC April 23, 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’ — More MSNBC article excerptsLovelock pointed to Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” as other examples of “alarmist” forecasts of the future…”The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said. “The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said. “The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added…Asked if he was now a climate skeptic, Lovelock told msnbc.com: “It depends what you mean by a skeptic. I’m not a denier.” He said human-caused carbon dioxide emissions were driving an increase in the global temperature, but added that the effect of the oceans was not well enough understood and could have a key role. “It (the sea) could make all the difference between a hot age and an ice age,” he said. ‘I made a mistake’ As “an independent and a loner,” he said he did not mind saying “All right, I made a mistake.” He claimed a university or government scientist might fear an admission of a mistake would lead to the loss of funding.”

Even more surprising is the fact that Lovelock is now actively campaining against renewable energy sources such as wind power and is very pro-nuclear  calling them “silly.”

Lovelock on Energy: 

Green Guru James Lovelock laments modern green movement: ‘We never intended a fundamentalist Green movement that rejected all energy sources other than renewable’ – Feb. 2013 — Lovelock: ‘I am an environmentalist & founder member of the Greens but I bow my head in shame at the thought that our original good intentions should have been so misunderstood & misapplied. We never intended…nor did we expect the Greens to cast aside our priceless ecological heritage because of their failure to understand that the needs of the Earth are not separable from human needs’

Green ‘drivel’: The godfather of global warming James Lovelock lowers the boom on climate change hysteria — Lovelock: ‘So-called ‘sustainable development’ … is meaningless drivel … 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.’

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’

Green Guru Lovelock: ‘Europe’s massive use of wind as a supplement to baseload electricity will probably be remembered as one of great follies of 21st century’

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’

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’

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’

#

The global warming movement continues to lose scientists, many formerly with the UN IPCC.

More Than 1000 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims – Challenge UN IPCC & Gore

Top Swedish Climate Scientist Says Warming Not Noticeable: ‘The warming we have had last a 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all’ – Award-Winning Dr. Lennart Bengtsson, formerly of UN IPCC: ‘We Are Creating Great Anxiety Without It Being Justified’

‘High Priestess of Global Warming’ No More! Former Warmist Climate Scientist Judith Curry Admits To Being ‘Duped Into Supporting IPCC’ – ‘If the IPCC is dogma, then count me in as a heretic’

German Meteorologist reverses belief in man-made global warming: Now calls idea that CO2 Can Regulate Climate ‘Sheer Absurdity’ — ‘Ten years ago I simply parroted what the IPCC told us’

UN Scientists Who Have Turned on the UN IPCC & Man-Made Climate Fears — A Climate Depot Flashback Report – Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” – UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.

‘Some of the most formidable opponents of climate hysteria include politically liberal physics Nobel laureate, Ivar Giaever; Freeman Dyson; father of the Gaia Hypothesis, James Lovelock — ‘Left-center chemist, Fritz Vahrenholt, one of the fathers of the German environmental movement’

Flashback: Left-wing Env. Scientist Bails Out Of Global Warming Movement: Declares it a ‘corrupt social phenomenon…strictly an imaginary problem of the 1st World middleclass’

Watch Now: Climate Depot’s Morano on Canadian TV with Charles Adler: ‘Warmist James Lovelock recants — Warmist movement cooling — Morano: ‘This is a man, a premier guru of the Left. He joins a long list of people who used to be believers and no longer are…The left is getting the message that global warming is doing them [political] harm’

UK Daily Mail on Lovelock’s climate recant: ‘The admission comes as a devastating blow to proponents of climate change who regard Lovelock as a powerful figurehead’

The global warming campaigner are not happy with Lovelock. See: Warmists’ throwing Lovelock under the bus! Alarmists Now Trying To Disown Their High Priest James Lovelock — Warmist caught trying to have it both ways on Lovelock: ‘The usual attempt to rewrite history. Three years ago the same author was worshiping at the alter of Gaia’

#

Via: http://www.thegwpf.org/james-lovelock-nobody-really-knows-

Date: April 4, 2014

BBC Newsnight

James Lovelock on BBC Newsnight: ‘I don’t think anybody really knows what’s happening’

[…] James Lovelock: Take this climate matter everybody is thinking about. They all talk, they pass laws, they do things, as if they knew what was happening. I don’t think anybody really knows what’s happening. They just guess. And a whole group of them meet together and encourage each other’s guesses.

Jeremy Paxman: That latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change did suggest that there was something inevitable about climate change, that it had already begun and that we had to adjust to it. All of these things are true, are they not, as far as we know?

James Lovelock: Absolutely, that is true, the last [IPCC] report is very similar to the statements I made in my book about 8 years ago, called The Revenge of Gaia. It’s almost as if they’ve copied it.

Jeremy Paxman: Sure. But you then, after publishing these apocalyptic predictions, you then retracted them.

James Lovelock: Well, that’s my privilege. You see, I’m an independent scientist. I’m not funded by some government department or commercial body or anything like that. If I make a mistake, then I can go public with it. And you have to, because it is only by making mistakes that you can move ahead.

Jeremy Paxman: It follows from that, does it not, that this panel on climate change which has, as you point out, vested interests involved, may be just as likely or even more likely to make mistakes?

James Lovelock: That would be a lot of hubris on my part to say that, but it is possible.

Full interview on BBC Newsnight

#

Share: