farmdoc's blog post number 425

I respect Tim Flannery as a scientist. As I do James Lovelock (pictured). In Flannery’s review of Lovelock’s latest book The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning, in the June issue of The Monthly, he carefully establishes Lovelock’s credentials as ‘one of the world’s most respected scientists’. Thus Flannery takes Lovelock’s predictions seriously. So do I. So should everyone. Flannery’s review starts by warning us Lovelock’s book ‘…has an important message. In a few years, or a few decades at most, abrupt changes in Earth’s climate will begin, which will end up killing almost all of us and cause the extinction of almost all life on Earth’. ‘Important’ is an understatement! Lovelock says major climate change is inevitable. In his model, between 400 and 500 ppm of CO2, suddenly a small increase in heat or CO2 causes a sudden temperature rise – of a prodigious 9°C. The current atmospheric CO2 concentration’s 390 ppm. And adding the warming capacity of the other greenhouse gases to CO2’s, expressed as CO2 equivalent (i.e. CO2e) we’re now at 430 ppm CO2e – well into Lovelock’s danger zone. So Senator Fielding’s recalcitrance [1, 2] borders on negligence. And ditto the coal industry’s, so I understand the reason for this threat which politicians indignantly call ‘eco-terrorism’. Unless those same politicians take Lovelock’s predictions seriously – which they show no sign of doing – it is they who are eco-terrorists.