Quotes by James Lovelock - Page 2

We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally can't stand windmills at any price.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Energy
Renewable Energy
Schemes
Wind Turbines
Windmills
Stand
Hopelessly
Inefficient
Largely
Personally
Price
Renewable
Rushed
Unpleasant
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All the modelling we do shows that the climate is poised on the jump up to a new hot state. It is accelerating so fast that you could say that we are already in it.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Accelerate
Climate
Hot
Modelling
States
Jump
Poised
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Just after World War II, this country led the world in science by every way you could measure it, yet the number of scientists was a tiny proportion of what it is now.
James Lovelock / Scientist
War
Country
Numbers
Proportion
Tiny
World War Ii
Number
Led
Measure
Scientists
World War
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Climatologists are all agreed that we'd be lucky to see the end of this century without the world being a totally different place, and being 8 or 9 degrees hotter on average.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Average
Degrees
Different Place
Hotter
World
Agreed
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What we have lived through, the 20th century, has been like a great party. Adults now have had the best time humanity has ever had. Now the party is over and the Earth is reckoning up.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Adults
Humanity
Party
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If a power station were to be built down the road, I'd prefer a nuclear plant over an oil burner, and definitely over a coal burner. We simply have to lessen our consumption of fossil fuels.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Coal
Consumption
Down The Road
Fossils
Fuel
Nuclear
Oil
Plant
Prefer
Burner
Definitely
Simply
Fossil
Fossil Fuels
Fuels
Lessen
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The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books - mine included - because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Book
Cutting
Years
Included
Led
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The Earth's population will be culled from today's 6.6 billion to as few as 500 million, with most of the survivors living in the far latitudes - Canada, Iceland, Scandinavia, the Arctic Basin.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Environmental
Iceland
Population
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If you start any large theory, such as quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, evolution, it takes about 40 years for mainstream science to come around. Gaia has been going for only 30 years or so.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Evolution
Mainstream
Mechanic
Quantum
Quantum Mechanics
Theory
Years
Mechanics
Plate
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NASA will send up a big sun shade that will be in orbit between the earth and sun and deflect 2 or 3 percent of the sunshine back into space. It would be cheaper than the international space station.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Space
Cheaper
Earth
International
International Space Station
Nasa
Orbit
Percent
Shade
Sun
Sunshine
Deflect
Send
Space Station
Station
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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. The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Clever
Climate Change
Handle
Huge
Humans
Inertia
Meaningful
Situation
Thinking
Complex
Point
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Life clearly does more than adapt to the Earth. It changes the Earth to its own purposes. Evolution is a tightly coupled dance, with life and the material environment as partners. From the dance emerges the entity Gaia.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Dance
Entity
Environment
Evolution
Partners
Adapt
Life Earth More
Clearly
Coupled
Emerges
Material
Purposes
Tightly
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No one who has experienced the intense involvement of computer modeling would deny that the temptation exists to use any data input that will enable one to continue playing what is perhaps the ultimate game of solitaire.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Science
Data
Games
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We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Climate
Fool
People
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Imagine a survivor of a failed civilization with only a tattered book on aromatherapy for guidance in arresting a cholera epidemic. Yet, such a book would more likely be found amid the debris than a comprehensible medical text.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Science
Book
Epidemics
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There is no clear distinction anywhere on the Earth's surface between living and nonliving matter. There is merely a hierarchy of intensity going from the 'material' environment of the rocks and the atmosphere to the living cells.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Life
Cells
Rocks
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The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time... it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising - carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Should Have
Twelve
Years
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Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science. I'm not religious, but I put it that way because I feel so strongly. It's the one thing you do not ever do. You've got to have standards.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Data
Ghost
Holy
Holy Ghost
Sin
Standards
Literally
Strongly
The One Thing
Whatsoever
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One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don't know it.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Approach
Certain
Scientist
Taught
Each Time
Truth Hope Time
Nearer
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I would only have been too pleased if someone had asked me for my data. If you really believed in your data, you wouldn't mind someone looking at it. You should be able to respond that if you don't believe me go out and do the measurements yourself.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Believe
Data
Mind
Believe Yourself Your
Believe Mind Me
Believed
Respond
Measurements
Pleased
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Those who fail to see that population growth and climate change are two sides of the same coin are either ignorant or hiding from the truth. These two huge environmental problems are inseparable and to discuss one while ignoring the other is irrational.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Growth
Ignorant
Two Sides
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Our planet consists largely of lumps of fall-out from a star-sized hydrogen bomb. Within our bodies, no less than three million atoms rendered unstable in that event still erupt every minute, releasing a tiny fraction of the energy stored from that fierce fire of long ago.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Fall
Long Ago
Stars
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Gas is almost a give-away in the U.S. at the moment. They've gone for fracking in a big way. This is what makes me very cross with the greens for trying to knock it... Let's be pragmatic and sensible and get Britain to switch everything to methane. We should be going mad on it.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Britain
Gas
Pragmatic
Sensible
Big Way
Moment Me Way
Cross
Greens
Switch
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The entire range of living matter on Earth from whales to viruses and from oaks to algae could be regarded as constituting a single living entity capable of maintaining the Earth's atmosphere to suit its overall needs and endowed with faculties and powers far beyond those of its constituent parts.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Atmosphere
Viruses
Whales
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What I like about sceptics is that in good science you need critics that make you think: 'Crumbs, have I made a mistake here?' If you don't have that continuously, you really are up the creek. The good sceptics have done a good service, but some of the mad ones I think have not done anyone any favours.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Critics
Mistake
Continuously
Creek
Favours
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By 2040, the Sahara will be moving into Europe and Berlin will be as hot as Baghdad. Atlanta will end up a kudzu jungle. Phoenix will become uninhabitable, as will parts of Beijing (desert), Miami (rising seas) and London (floods). Food shortages will drive millions of people north, raising political tensions.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Atlanta
Europe
Moving
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I know that to personalize the Earth System as Gaia, as I have often done and continue to do in this book, irritates the scientifically correct, but I am unrepentant because metaphors are more than ever needed for a widespread comprehension of the true nature of the Earth and an understanding of the lethal dangers that lie ahead.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Book
Lying
Understanding
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We need a more authoritative world...What's the alternative to democracy? There isn't one. But 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 war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.
James Lovelock / Scientist
War
Feelings
Issues
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It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion. I don't think people have noticed that, but it's got all the sort of terms that religions use. The greens use guilt. That just shows how religious greens are. You can't win people round by saying they are guilty for putting (carbon dioxide) in the air.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Christian
Religious
Winning
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It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion. I don't think people have noticed that, but it's got all the sort of terms that religions use... The greens use guilt. That just shows how religious greens are. You can't win people round by saying they are guilty for putting (carbon dioxide) in the air.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Air
Carbon
Carbon Dioxide
Green
Guilt
Christian Religion
Religions
Round
Noticed
Putting
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Those of us who consider ourselves to be somehow involved in the birthing of a new age, should discover Gaia as well. The idea of Gaia may facilitate the task of converting destructive human activities to constructive and cooperative behavior. It is an idea which deeply startles us, and in the process, may help us as a species to make the necessary jump to planetary awareness.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Age
Ideas
Tasks
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Only rarely do we see beyond the needs of humanity, and he linked this blindness to our Christian and humanist infrastructure. It arose 2,000 years ago and was then benign, and we were no significant threat to Gaia. Now that we are over six billion hungry and greedy individuals, all aspiring to a first-world lifestyle, our urban way of life encroaches upon the domain of the living Earth.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Christian
Humanity
Years
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We are the intelligent elite among animal life on earth and whatever our mistakes, [Earth] needs us. This may seem an odd statement after all that I have said about the way 20th century humans became almost a planetary disease organism. But it has taken [Earth] 2.5 billion years to evolve an animal that can think and communicate its thoughts. If we become extinct she has little chance of evolving another.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Animal
Mistake
Taken
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What I tend to do is to wake about five in the morning-this happens quite often-think about the invention, and then image it in my mind in 3D, as a kind of construct. Then I do experiments with the image...sort of rotate it, and say, 'Well what'll happen if one does this?' And by the time I get up for breakfast I can usually go to the bench and make a string and sealing wax model that works straight off, because I've done most of the experiments already.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Imagination
Morning
Thinking
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We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened. The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now. The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time. The temperature has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising - carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Book
Cutting
Should Have
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The apologists for space science always seem over-impressed by engineering trivia and make far too much of non-stick frying pans and perfect ball-bearings. To my mind, the outstanding spin-off from space research is not new technology. The real bonus has been that for the first time in human history we have had a chance to look at the Earth from space, and the information gained from seeing from the outside our azure-green planet in all its global beauty has given rise to a whole new set of questions and answers.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Space
Technology
Real
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Composing computer programs to solve scientific problems is like writing poetry. You must choose every word with care and link it with the other words in perfect syntax. There is no place for verbosity or carelessness. To become fluent in a computer lnaguage demands almost the antithesis of modern loose thinking. It requires many interactive sessions, the hands-on use of the device. You do not learn a foreign language from a book, rather you have to live in the country for year to let the langauge become an automatic part of you, and the same is true for computer languages.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Learning
Book
Country
Writing
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I think that we reject the evidence that our world is changing because we are still, as that wonderfully wise biologist E. O. Wilson reminded us, tribal carnivores. We are programmed by our inheritance to see other living things as mainly something to eat, and we care more about our national tribe than anything else. We will even give our lives for it and are quite ready to kill other humans in the cruellest of ways for the good of our tribe. We still find alien the concept that we and the rest of life, from bacteria to whales, are parts of the much larger and diverse entity, the living Earth.
James Lovelock / Scientist
Wise
Our World
Thinking
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