James Lovelock invented a device to measure ozone in the atmosphere and warned of the dire consequences of not taking action. So today the gases that caused it are in decline and mankind has been saved from that danger as the ozone hole closes only because politicians realised, they too would fry if they didn't.
Now having saved the planet once already , Lovelock went on and discovered Gaia, the now proven concept that living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a synergistic and self-regulating, complex system that helps to maintain and perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet.
But along came industrial man who has now nearly f*cked it all up.... again.
So now Lovelock warns that Gaia cannot handle the conditions man has created by re-releasing the locked up carbon buried in the fossil fuels we are now digging up and re-gasifying. The Gaia equilibrium that has made the planet habitable for higher life forms for billions of years has been upset. He points out that in response Gaia is now savagely clearing the decks to regain equilibrium:
"the scale of the catastrophe that awaits us will soon become obvious. By 2020, droughts and other extreme weather will be commonplace. By 2040, the Sahara will be moving into Europe, and Berlin will be as hot as Baghdad."
2018 .... in Athens, Greece, a fire killed 92 people; in Japan, a never ending cycle of heavy rains followed by brutal heat waves is claiming countless lives. This summer, massive wildfires have been burning in Sweden, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia and Germany. There are even wildfires in the Arctic. High temperature records have been shattered all around the globe, including in Death Valley, California, which set the record for the hottest month ever recorded on the planet, with 21 days over 120 degrees. This was quickly followed by the largest wildfires ever recorded in that state which are still ablaze.
Our world is aflame, sending ever more greenhouse gas skyward at at a time it is already overstaurated.
Locally QLD/NSW there is a severe drought, temps 2 -8 c above normal and a bleached reef.
The northern hemispheres arctic winter has been followed up with heat waves and deluges.
Meanwhile in the arctic all the old ice has melted leaving year old 2m thick ice covering half the usual area, a summertime slushy that could be completely gone in summer any year now. NOAA reports “Rarely have we seen the Arctic show a clearer, stronger, or more pronounced signal of persistent warming and its cascading effects on the environment than this year,” said Jeremy Mathis, director of NOAA’s Arctic Research Program - and that was 2016, its far worse now. Millions of square kilometres of snow and ice worldwide have melted meaning the sunlight is now absorbed rather than reflected back into space. This change in the planets thermal balance is now feeding off itself so that “Our future,” scientist James Lovelock has written, “is like that of the passengers on a small pleasure boat sailing quietly above the Niagara Falls, not knowing that the engines are about to fail.”
I believe, as with what happened with ozone, it is immanent that the worlds politicians, whose campaign finance comes from oil, gas and coal lobbies, will nevertheless soon be forced into action, declaring that burning fossil fuels is the clear and present danger to our civilisation that they are. The only way to replace mans energy needs and not destroy the biosphere without triggering a complete economic collapse is conversion to a Hydrogen economy empowered by wind and solar. In the next year or two the tiny baby steps towards hydrogen will turn into a stampede in a race for the very survival of civilisation as we know it.... simply because if we don't, it is now very clear to anyone who cares to look, that as a species, we are toast - within years, not decades.
GSL Price at posting:
17.0¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
