'Gaia' scientist James Lovelock: I was 'alarmist' about climate change

[dm1333]

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/23/11144098-gaia-scientist-james-lovelock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change?lite

James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too.

Huh!

[vaskidmark]

My dire prediction that the sky would be a flaming ball of ooze when it fell on us failed to come true, so maybe I can salvage some of my reputation by saying perhaps I was a bit too extreme in my views?

Works for me.

stay safe.

[AJ Dual]

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/23/11144098-gaia-scientist-james-lovelock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change?lite

Huh!

Just the term "Climate Change" itself is a disingenuous hedge on the part of "their side" of the debate. "Global Warming" got dropped in favor of it as more and more data made them realize the whole warming part was looking increasingly iffy... at best.

And IMO it's a much more dangerous term, because well.. duh, the "climate" is always going to change. All sorts of historical, geological, and biological data suggests it does nothing but. Greenland was called "Greenland" because of the lush forests that grew on it's coastlines when the Vikings "discovered" it 1000+ years ago. There's evidence that the Sahara desert got it's start from early agriculture, and herded livestock.  Unlike (Man Made) Global Warming, where pretty concrete predictions about temperature were made, and risked being disproved within just a few years, "Climate Change" is the perfect vehicle for pushing "Watermelon Environmentalism" forever.

I do think a lot (some?) of the individual people involved in the Man-Made Global Warming fiasco were genuinely concerned, and may not have had larger goals of using it as a scare tactic and bully-pulpit to push socialism on a global scale. However, I've long held that goals, drives, and "evil" can be an emergent property of any larger system, government, or belief.

[Jamie B]

Groupthink.

[HankB]

I think there were probably some early Anthropogenic Global Warming researchers who genuinely were concerned about greenhouse gasses, but then a bunch of scammers - many with strong government ties - (cough - Algore - cough) realized that they could use government as a tool to swindle people out of $$$; it's a scam on a scale that makes Al Capone and Bernie Madoff look like two-bit hustlers on a street corner with a crooked game of three card Monte. (Notice how virtually every plan to address the horrors of AGW involves a transfer of $$$ from your pocket to someone else's?)