James Lovelock: Reducing emissions could speed global warming - Telegraph

James Lovelock: Reducing emissions could speed global warming - Telegraph
James Lovelock has an unfortunate reputation as the Right's favourite ecologist- maybe because he favour nuclear power and doesn't see reduced bio-diversity as a particular problem. The founder of the Gaia Theory, well the man who most eloquently articulated that the planet is a single complex living organism, has a habit of comming up with radical, and sometimes counter intuitive proposals and ideas. His latest is that industrial pollution- of which CO2 is a major part- as well as producing green house gases also produces an effect which effectively blocks the suns light- a fact well known to anyone who remembers the 1970/80s campaigning against CFCs. He argues that a drastic cut in total industrial pollution by cutting out the blockers as well as the green house gases will in effect actually accelerate global warming.

It is a council of despair in someways, and Lovelock can be a little like that- the problem is so huge, the solution unpalatable- the result confusion and paralysed inaction. But that does not mean that his writing should be dismissed- he often raises spot on razor sharp critiques of green 'common sense', and offers difficult solutions- but the solution is not to dismiss him but look carefullya t his points and come up with as well thought out counter solutions.

For me Lovelock is like The Economist of the green movement- I read The Economist not because I agree with their disaster capitalism / privatised world approach but because they are always articulate and well argued, if my arguements do not stand up against them then it is time for me to go and research,re-think and re-model my thoughts.