Gaia Re Gaia
Proto-warmalist James Lovelock, originator of the “Gaia” theory of self-regulating planet spoiled by evil humans, is interviewed by a chick named “Gaia.” New Scientist: “One Last Chance to Save Mankind.” Better title would be “Gaia Wants You Dead And So Do The Warmalists.” Hot warmalist art after the jump. We’ll get to the interview in a sec. If you don’t mind I’ll warm it up. Here’s how it goes:
Gaia the resource user wants to know what can be done to save both Gaias, the planet one and herself, the rather hot in an earthy kind of way if airheaded human interviewer one. Cranky old codger Lovelock, a bit of a contrarian, hates windmills, likes some nukes, and wants to solve the CO2 thing by forcing farmers to burn their crops into charcoal and bury it … all of them, right now! Seems like a lot of effort when, according to him, Gaia is putting off 550 “gigatonnes” of carbon a year and we’re only putting in 30. Sounds like if Gaia has a problem with that, maybe Gaia needs to regulate her own Earth-sized ass. But this is the thing. Gaia’s answer, Lovelock says, is gonna be to kill 8 billion of us. Gaia the planet, not Gaia the dingbat interviewer. Irony-packed interview is an odd combination of common sense and utter wackadoo … guess which wins out … delightfully panicky and counter-warmal-intuitive in execution. Crusty old geezer snorts in derision at drastic measures to cork manmade carbon sources, and advocates drastic measures to stop deadly natural processes in their tracks. Yeah, I know, it’s weird. Greenie who believes in human-caused warming wants to solve it by subverting nature because, it turns out, nature is the arch-warmer of them all.
If it wasn’t so fundamentally idiotic, I’d be all for it. Scratch that. If it wasn’t such an utter waste of time and money, I’d be all for it.* Gaia’s New Scientist interview of Gaiaist Lovelock:
Your work on atmospheric chlorofluorocarbons led eventually to a global CFC ban that saved us from ozone-layer depletion. Do we have time to do a similar thing with carbon emissions to save ourselves from climate change?
Not a hope in hell. Most of the “green” stuff is verging on a gigantic scam. Carbon trading, with its huge government subsidies, is just what finance and industry wanted. It’s not going to do a damn thing about climate change, but it’ll make a lot of money for a lot of people and postpone the moment of reckoning. I am not against renewable energy, but to spoil all the decent countryside in the UK with wind farms is driving me mad. It’s absolutely unnecessary, and it takes 2500 square kilometres to produce a gigawatt - that’s an awful lot of countryside.
What about work to sequester carbon dioxide?
That is a waste of time. It’s a crazy idea - and dangerous. It would take so long and use so much energy that it will not be done.
Do you still advocate nuclear power as a solution to climate change?
It is a way for the UK to solve its energy problems, but it is not a global cure for climate change. It is too late for emissions reduction measures.
So are we doomed?
There is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal. It would mean farmers turning all their agricultural waste - which contains carbon that the plants have spent the summer sequestering - into non-biodegradable charcoal, and burying it in the soil. Then you can start shifting really hefty quantities of carbon out of the system and pull the CO2 down quite fast.
Would it make enough of a difference?
Yes. The biosphere pumps out 550 gigatonnes of carbon yearly; we put in only 30 gigatonnes. Ninety-nine per cent of the carbon that is fixed by plants is released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by consumers like bacteria, nematodes and worms. What we can do is cheat those consumers by getting farmers to burn their crop waste at very low oxygen levels to turn it into charcoal, which the farmer then ploughs into the field. A little CO2 is released but the bulk of it gets converted to carbon. You get a few per cent of biofuel as a by-product of the combustion process, which the farmer can sell. This scheme would need no subsidy: the farmer would make a profit. This is the one thing we can do that will make a difference, but I bet they won’t do it.
Do you think we will survive?
I’m an optimistic pessimist. I think it’s wrong to assume we’ll survive 2 °C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4 °C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. The reason is we would not find enough food, unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. It has happened before: between the ice ages there were bottlenecks when there were only 2000 people left. It’s happening again.
Dang, that’s a heck of a cull. Good thing it’s getting cooler.
It’s a depressing outlook.
Not necessarily. I don’t think 9 billion is better than 1 billion. I see humans as rather like the first photosynthesisers, which when they first appeared on the planet caused enormous damage by releasing oxygen - a nasty, poisonous gas. It took a long time, but it turned out in the end to be of enormous benefit. I look on humans in much the same light. For the first time in its 3.5 billion years of existence, the planet has an intelligent, communicating species that can consider the whole system and even do things about it. They are not yet bright enough, they have still to evolve quite a way, but they could become a very positive contributor to planetary welfare.
Sounds like Obama better order someone to draw up contigency plans to turn those all dead humans to charcoal and bury them quick, because 8 billion dead humans will put off a heck of a lot of carbon. And smell bad. Wait a minute. May want to get ahead of that curve. Turn them all to charcoal now, sort of like he did in Waziristan the other day, and stave off impending doom …
If you were younger, would you be fearful?
No, I have been through this kind of emotional thing before. It reminds me of when I was 19 and the second world war broke out. We were very frightened but almost everyone was so much happier. We’re much better equipped to deal with that kind of thing than long periods of peace. It’s not all bad when things get rough.
The old guy’s pretty cavalier about all that death and destruction, for someone who is so eager to save the world. Past is prologue, and Lovelock’s bio suggests he had a pretty comfy war. University of Manchester, where Jerry may have dropped a couple of bombs on his head, and after 1941 … the Blitz had eased off by then … the National Institute for Medical Research in London. Very exciting. No Dunkirk, no Normandy, no Ardennes. No Changi Prison, no Death Railway. No Stalingrad or Auschwitz either … which would be better points of comparison for what he’s predicting. Rolling Stone reports the Quaker convert was busy shagging nurses while other guys and gals were tied up with all that messy dying and killing people business, eating rats and sawdust, all that:
… when the Nazis invaded Poland, Lovelock converted to Quakerism and soon became a conscientious objector. In his written statement, he explained why he refused to fight: “War is evil.”
Lovelock took a job at the National Institute for Medical Research in London, where one of his first assignments was to develop new ways to stop the spread of infectious diseases. He spent months in underground bomb shelters studying how viruses are transmitted — and shagging nurses in first-aid stations while Nazi bombs fell overhead. “It was a hard, desperate time,” he says. “But it was exciting! It’s terribly ironic, but war does make one feel alive.”
You know something, while Gaia — the dingbat, not the venerable planet — is panicking about impending doom, I bet that old goat’s been thinking the whole time, “I might get laid again.” He may even be eyeing Gaia … the loonie warmalist, that is, not the muddy space rock Iowahawk once described as the “ultimate MILF.” Here she is, with a devilish little come-hither thing going on:
This here also purports to be Gaia, from Facebook, all geared up for a New Age war.
Not a bad looking warmalist. Women and guns, always hot. Warm, anyway. Memo to Gaia, try it with a bikini and a real gun next time.
This one also popped up in the “Gaia Vince” image search but I think it’s some Italian model.
* Turning chaff into charcoal might be useful if we needed charcoal, but burying it? You know, what we need to do is convince the warmalists that if they start, say, building highways across Afghanistan and kill any jihaids they run into, it will slow Gaia’s release of CO2 and save mankind. I dunno. Anyone else have any thoughts on useful tasks we could put them to? Anyone got a ditch that needs digging, something like that?
Topics: impending doom!, warmalism
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:54 am on Saturday, January 24, 2009
4 Responses to “Gaia Re Gaia”
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January 24th, 2009 at 11:33 am
The idea of turning agricultural waste into what they call “biochar” and burying it is not a bad one, and in fact is being explored as possible way to increase agricultural yields. The idea comes from the discovery of “terra preta” (black earth) in the Amazon area, which was created by burning plants & trees by prehistoric peoples, and allowed farming where the soil would otherwise not support it. The only problem is that attempts to duplicate it have not been successful yet. Unlike real terra preta soil, the benefits are lost quickly, after only a few harvests.
As for the rest of it? LOL
January 24th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Lovelock is a hypocritical old fool, pining for his youth, where war and sex made him feel alive (how can a pacifist find war “exciting”? The mind boggles). As he has neither close at hand (I can’t see him going into Waziristan just to get bombed, and he couldn’t get laid in Las Vegas with $1000, let alone in Taliban controlled areas). he fantasizes about the near extinction of the human race.
How sweet. Maybe Lovelock might demonstrate that “biochar” technique on himself. For Mother Gaia™ of course.
January 24th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
I don’t for one minute doubt the sincerity of the Quakers’ belief in pacifism. But a sudden “conversion” such as Lovelock’s can almost always be attributed to extreme cowardice.
The man has no problem with “culling” 8 billion people because he fancies himself one of the 1 billion survivors. Too smart to die, don’t you know.
May his kind be the first to go when the end comes.
January 25th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
I am a conservationist, with credentials that meet or exceed those of most “Greens”. I know many, many “Greens” here in NYC who have never set foot outside the city. I have spent many days hiking the Appalachian Trail, cleaning it, maintaining natural sites, donating to the Nature Conservancy (which uses the market to save land), etc. I DO NOT want to see the government get involved.
Why? Because the government is supposed to NOT INSTITUTE A STATE RELIGION. And Green worship is a religion, for lack of a better word. I am also a businessperson with a background in physics. The general concept behind man made global warming is absurd and without solid basis of fact.
Gaia is hot. And if hotness was a good reason to pay attention to someone, then she’d be the queen of the world. Unfortunately for her, being hot and being moderately inquisitive seems to be antithetical. She doesn’t question her position, as many of us do. I am always concerned about whether I am right or wrong - she is so convinced she is right, she has failed to read the outright absurdities of Lovelock’s statements. He’s a loon!
Loons are what drive the Green initiatives - they are so convinced of their correctness, it’s hard for their supporters to question them. They are very convincing. Sometimes even I get worried and have to scurry to check facts. Inevitably, of course, like Al Gore, they prove to have a basis in insanity rather than fact.
Still, if Gaia shows up and wants a date…I’m always up for a good MILF shake.