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Clarke's three laws - #1 in action

A perfect example of Clarke's First Law: 1.When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. From the UK Guardian:

James Lovelock: Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change
Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades. This is the stark conclusion of James Lovelock, the globally respected environmental thinker and independent scientist who developed the Gaia theory.

It follows a tumultuous few months in which public opinion on efforts to tackle climate change has been undermined by events such as the climate scientists' emails leaked from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit.

"I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change," said Lovelock in his first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last November. "The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful."

One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is "modern democracy", he added. "Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while."

Boy howdy -- talk about being so wrong on so many different levels... If there was a strong indication of Anthropogenic Global Warming (which there is not -- our impact is very weak when superimposed on natural cycles and solar output), it would be the democratically governed nations that would be in the forefront of solving the problem. As our current crop of congressmen are finding out, a motivated general public is a force to be reckoned with. Nations with a more socialistic or communist government will be simply ignoring the plight of their constituents as the waters rise. Look at China when they built the Three Rivers dam - villages split up with 'Party Leaders' being given cushy houses and the commoners being left to fend for themselves. As for calling 'Climate Change' a 'complex situation' -- damn straight it is a complex situation; it is so complex that we are not able to model it. Our current crop of models cannot hindcast -- give them the last 200 years of meteorological data and they do not come up with anything approximating todays climate. If they are this bad, how can we rely on them to forecast the climate of ten years from now. Hey Dr. Gaia -- time to shut your yap and ride off into the sunset. You had your fifteen minutes of fame back in the 1960's. Move on. Posted by DaveH at March 30, 2010 10:31 AM | TrackBack