[lbo-talk] Why Jamie Lovelock is so much gloomier than everyone else

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Mon Nov 2 16:42:57 PST 2009


http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23387?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Emailmarketingsoftware&utm_content=91965506&utm_campaign=November192009issue+_+uylutu&utm_term=AGreatJumptoDisaster

Volume 56, Number 18 · November 19, 2009

A Great Jump to Disaster?

By Tim Flannery

The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning

by James Lovelock

Basic Books, 278 pp., $25.00

James Lovelock: In Search of Gaia

by John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin

Princeton University Press, 262 pp., $24.95

The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive?

by Peter Ward

Princeton University Press, 180 pp., $24.95

The idea that Earth is a living thing goes back at least as far as

Plato, who according to Francis Bacon believed that the planet "was one

entire, perfect, living creature." But it was James Lovelock and his

colleague Lynn Margulis who, in the early 1970s, developed a testable

scientific hypothesis aimed at investigating Earth's lifelike

properties. Known as the Gaia hypothesis, it states that life on Earth

works to keep conditions at the planet's surface favorable to life

itself. In 2006 this led to Lovelock joining the likes of Louis Agassiz

and Charles Darwin in receiving geology's most prestigious prize--the

Geological Society's Wollaston Medal. In presenting the award the

society's president acknowledged that the Gaia hypothesis had "opened

up a whole new field of Earth Science study."

An albatross chick on Midway Atoll, raised on plastic that its parents

mistook for food from the polluted Pacific Ocean, September 2009;

photograph by Chris Jordan

The Gaia hypothesis has now evolved, according to Lovelock, into a

full-fledged scientific theory (in science hypotheses are held to be

untested ideas put forward to explain facts, while theories have been

tested and are generally considered true). Part of the testing came in

2001 when scientists from four international climate research programs

reasserted the hypothesis's basic tenets: (1) Earth "behaves as a

single, self-regulating system"; (2) "human activities are

significantly influencing Earth's environment"; (3) Earth's system is

complex and difficult to predict, and "surprises abound"; (4) the

system is characterized by "critical thresholds and abrupt changes";

and (5) Earth's system has "moved well outside the range of natural

variability exhibited over the last half million years at least." Yet

despite such support, the transformation of the hypothesis to the

status of a theory is still widely disputed.

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

The Gaia concept and climate change science are intimately connected,

and Lovelock has spent most of his career trying to understand the

consequences of increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the

atmosphere. In his latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final

Warning, he argues that Earth's system of self-regulation is being

overwhelmed by greenhouse gas pollution and that Earth will soon jump

from its current cool, stable state into a dramatically hotter one. All

climatologists acknowledge the existence of such climatic jumps--as

occurred for example at the end of the last ice age. But chaos theory

dictates that the scale and timing of such leaps are inherently

unpredictable, which means that they cannot be incorporated into the

computer models of Earth's climate system that such scientists use to

project future climate change. Yet this is precisely what Lovelock

attempts to do--using his own computer modeling--in The Vanishing Face

of Gaia. A new climatic jump, he concludes, will occur within the next

few years or decades, and will involve an abrupt increase in average

global surface temperature of 9 degrees Celsius--from 15 to 24 degrees

Celsius (59 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit). Such a shift, he contends, will

trigger the collapse of our global civilization and the near extinction

of humanity.

In contrast, the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental

Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was released in 2007, predicts a

likely rise of 2-3 degrees Celsius (4-6 degrees Fahrenheit) this

century. Lovelock argues that the IPCC projections are incorrect

because they do not include temperature jumps, yet as we've seen such

jumps are widely held to be impossible to model. He also points out

that data published subsequent to the IPCC's research cut-off point of

early 2005 show that their projections are too conservative. Support

for this view has come from a climate science summit held in Copenhagen

in March 2009 attended by 2,500 delegates, which concluded that "the

worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being

realised."

So what makes Lovelock think he can predict the timing and scale of

future climatic leaps? His findings are based on experiments conducted

with a simple kind of computer model that is used by climate scientists

to diagnose the accuracy of larger climate models. This revealed that

signs of climatic instability are likely to appear as the concentration

of CO2 reaches 400 parts per million (ppm). Then when CO2 reaches a

concentration of 400-500 ppm, the computer model predicts a sudden rise

in temperature of 9 degrees Celsius. But just before that major

temperature jump a strange thing happens--the temperature dips for a

few years. As Lovelock puts it, if his model

truly represents the Earth's response to increasing carbon dioxide,

it is scary because it implies that before the final jump to a

desert world, the climate will briefly become cooler again. This

warns that a cold summer, or even a series of them, is not proof

that global heating has ended.

Another way of putting it is that normal climatic variation will

precede Lovelock's 9 degree jump in temperature. This is hardly useful

as a predictive tool, and indeed Lovelock's approach to the problem

clearly will require further scientific corroboration before it is

accepted.

But if we assume Lovelock is right, how close might we be to the

temperature jump predicted in his model? Prior to the industrial

revolution, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was 280 ppm.

Today it's around 390 ppm. But the combined warming effect of all the

greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, if expressed in terms of the

warming potential of carbon dioxide, is around 430 parts per million.

If Lovelock's model is to be believed, the fatal jump could occur any

day. Because such an imminent climate shift would have grave

consequences, it would be rash to disregard his warning out of hand.

As we try to assess Lovelock's highly individualistic work and decide

whether his message is worth listening to, there is no better guide

than John and Mary Gribbin's James Lovelock: In Search of Gaia.

Essentially a dual biography, it deftly recounts in alternating

chapters the development of climate change theory and the life of

Lovelock himself.

<end excerpt>

The rest is pretty interesting reading too:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23387?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Emailmarketingsoftware&utm_content=91965506&utm_campaign=November192009issue+_+uylutu&utm_term=AGreatJumptoDisaster

Michael



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