Recently, environmental activist and author James Lovelock has admitted to being a bit of an "alarmist" when it comes to global climate change. He also stated that Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is guilty of the same. In fact, Lovelock is currently writing a new book in which he will argue that climate change is still happening, but nowhere near the rate he predicted twenty years ago.
Lovelock's previous publication, an article in the UK's Independent newspaper in 2006, claimed that before the end of the century, billions of people will have died due to global warming. He believed the only tolerable climates would be those of the Arctic. At the time, he believed the threat to human life and our world as we know it to be inevitable. However, six years later, Lovelock is singing a different tune.
Based on predictions made at the turn of the millennium, it was thought that the Earth would continue to heat at an alarming rate causing massive biological extinctions and drastic changes to the natural world. In reality though, the temperature over the past twelve years has remained relatively constant with no signs of spiking dramatically in the near future. As a result, Lovelock is revising his claims to say that climate change is still occurring, but at a much more manageable rate.
Do you agree or disagree that people with opinions similar to the assertions of Lovelock and Gore are "alarmists"? If so, why? Nature is so unpredictable that it is impossible to tell if global temperatures will continue to rise at the same slow rate they are now. My concern with Lovelock revoking his previous claims is that people will no longer consider global climate change an imminent threat. As a result, our population may slow the "green" movement and abandon efforts to reduce carbon emissions and other harmful environmental practices. While I admire Lovelock for admitting he made a mistake, I hope he conveys that global climate change is still a major problem in our world today.
http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/23/11144098-gaia-scientist-james-lovelock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change?lite
I tend to think that it was a responsible move for Lovelock to scale back his predictions and assertions, however, I don't necessarily think his actions will lead people to abandon the thought that climate change is real and threatening. It might actually cause more people to get behind the thinking of people like Lovelock because the message becomes less extreme, and like the article points out, people can sometimes back away from something if it seems overly daunting or unbelievable. If Lovelock goes forward with a more conservative, yet pressing, prognosis for the issue of global warming, it might cause more people to fall behind him and take heed of what he is saying because they realize he is careful of what he says and is passionate about the issue. After all, science has told us that the actual temperature of the earth has been fairly consistent in the past few decades, and it will be less radical and perhaps more believable if the message is checked with some realism. But, I feel current carbon emissions need to most definitely be curbed into the future and I am glad to hear about people like Lovelock who are dedicated to proclaiming the message.
ReplyDeleteI think Lovelock's scaling back on his initial predictions could have both positive and negative consequences. The fact that he is revising his original findings indicates that he is serious about figuring out the truth about global climate change and addressing the problem. This could work both ways in terms of public perception, however. People could either see global climate change as a less pressing reality, or it could actually spur them to make more substantial "green" lifestyle changes. Scaring people into thinking that global climate change is an imminent disaster in the making might actually deter them from making lifestyle changes since it is so inevitable instead of making them want to make radical changes to lessen the effects as much as possible. I also think it's important to note that Lovelock didn't say that global climate change isn't an important or presently relevant issue. We must still make lifestyle changes in order to address the issue. Does anyone think that maybe the changes in his predictions could have something to do with the seemingly sudden onset of the green movement?
ReplyDeleteA large portion of the impact or lack thereof that Lovelock's statement will have on broader opinions about global climate change will really be dependent on how his statement gets framed in the media. This article does a pretty good job of explaining that Lovelock wasn't renouncing the idea of global climate change, but rather scaling back on some of his more alarmist claims. However, there are definitely quotes from him that could be taken out of context by reporters or political figures and used to undermine public opinion about climate change, so hopefully the more reasoned understanding of his words in this article wins out over the alternative. One point I found particularly important in the article was the idea that people may actually be more likely to work to reduce climate change if it seems fixable than if it seems hopeless. This argument resonates very well with me and in that sense Lovelock and other climate scientists may want to focus more energy on educating people about how much of a difference people can potentially make in reducing climate change instead of just spelling out doom for humanity.
ReplyDeleteI have an immediate negative reaction to the term “alarmist scientist”; I don’t see any point in using science to scare people, and I don’t think that it’s right to distort information or data in order to impel people to act. I do believe in global warming but most importantly I believe in obtaining the soundest scientific data possible to support that theory. In that case, I do think that skepticism is important – it helps us get closer to the truth. All alarmists do is make it harder for trustworthy information to reach the general public, allow doubts about climate change to linger, and prevent decisions from being made that could possibly slow global warming.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I’m not worried that Lovelock’s statement will cause people to put global warming on the backburner entirely. Quite frankly, I don’t expect that to happen; global warming has a firmly established seat at the “issues everyone cares about” table. No matter who says what, it’s not leaving the public’s conscious any time soon. Ultimately, whether or not it should be an immediate concern of ours doesn’t matter; people have already stepped back to take a good, long look at what we’ve done to the environment, and what we have found can’t be unseen.
I am not sure if this admission of a reversal of opinion does Mr. Lovelock credit or makes his assertions less convincing. His initial claims seem quite extreme, and I wonder if it is fair to establish them as parallel to Al Gore’s assertions. While I agree that nature is unpredictable, there are certainly trends from which projections can reasonably be made. I also think that there is a point when someone could be called an alarmist, (and perhaps claiming billions of deaths due to global warming meets that criteria). In making such bold claims, there is some value in that it draws attention to the issue, but it also holds the risk that the entire issue becomes something that the general population will then disregard as being unreasonable and unrealistic. It must be best to not make rash projections and stick as closely as possible to what is provable from concrete data; this gives something to back up claims and make the arguments more convincing, and avoids situations in which assertions must be retracted.
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