Lovelock on climate change

[Guest guest]

British Scientist Lovelock Says it's Too Late To Reverse Global

Warming

 

 

By Staff

 

(EUNN) London - James Lovelock, 81, a Fellow of the Royal Society

and honorary visiting professor at Oxford University, says it is too

late for the world to turn around the damage that's been done to

Earth's climate and warned the leading nations to prepare for what

he called " living hell " as the earth's climate continues to grow

warmer.

 

Lovelock was responsible for the discovery of the global

distribution of nitrous oxide and of the chlorofluorocarbons, both

of which are important in the stratospheric chemistry of ozone.

 

If a lesser scientist made such a prediction they'd be ridiculed.

But Lovelock, now 81, has received a slew of environmental and

scientific awards and honours in the US, Europe and Japan.

 

Before this century is over, billions of us will die, and the few

breeding pairs of people who survive will be in the Arctic where the

climate will be tolerable, Lovelock maintains.

 

According to Lovelock, the world has already passed the point of no

return for climate change, and civilisation as we know it is

unlikely to survive.

 

The theory holds that the planet has a special way of regulating

itself, chemically and atmospherically, of keeping itself fit for

life, as if it were a great superorganism; as if, in fact, it were

alive.

 

 

 

 

Lovelock, who conceived the idea in the 1970s while examining the

possibility of life on Mars for Nasa, has been warning of the

dangers of climate change since major concerns about it first began

to surface nearly 20 years ago.

 

 

 

 

Now his concerns have reached a peak and have a new emphasis. Rather

than calling for further ways of countering climate change, he is

calling on governments around the world to begin large-scale

preparations for surviving.

 

" I think we have little option now but to prepare for the worst, "

Lovelock recently told western governments, " and assume that we have

passed the threshold. We will do our best to survive but sadly I

cannot see the US or the emerging economies of China and India

cutting back in time, and they are the main source of emissions. "