Gaia's Lovelock abandons nuclear in favor of fracking

[kristopher]

James Lovelock: The UK should be going mad for fracking
Scientist James Lovelock is the man behind Gaia theory, and once predicted doom for our climate. He discusses nuclear (good), wind power (bad) and why fracking is the future

...

"Adapt and survive," he says, when asked why he has decided to move. After more than three decades living amid acres of trees he planted himself by hand, he and his wife Sandy have decided to downsize and move to an old lifeguard's cottage by the beach in Dorset. "I'm not worried about sea-level rises," he laughs. "At worst, I think it will be 2ft a century."

Given that Lovelock predicted in 2006 that by this century's end "billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable", this new laissez-faire attitude to our environmental fate smells and sounds like of a screeching handbrake turn.

Indeed, earlier this year he admitted to MSNBC in an interview reported around the world with somewhat mocking headlines along the lines of "Doom-monger recants", that he had been "extrapolating too far" in reaching such a conclusion and had made a "mistake" in claiming to know with such certainty what will happen to the climate.

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Nestled deep into an armchair, Lovelock brushes a biscuit crumb from his lips, and lowers his cup of tea on to the table: "I'm neither strongly left nor right, but I detest the Liberal Democrats."

...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jun/15/james-lovelock-interview-gaia-theory

See also:

James Lovelock on shale gas and the problem with 'greens'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/jun/15/james-lovelock-fracking-greens-climate

[NickB79]

1. "Out of the frying pan and into the fire" seems an apt observation here

Given that frack-gas is as damaging as coal with regard to global warming, you'd have to be mentally unhinged to embrace it in any way.

[kristopher]

2. "You'd have to be mentally unhinged" you say?

That's what people have been saying about his promotion of nuclear power for years - it is a demonstration of absolutely shitty analysis of the problem and solutions. I hope the shallow nature of his present thinking gives pause to those who have used him as their champion in the recent past.

[bananas]

3. k&r nt

[kristopher]

4. Take a look at how they are still trying to exploit him.

From the website of the nuclear industry lobbying group the Nuclear Energy Institute:
http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2012/06/james-lovelock-on-germanys-nuclear.html

[hunter]

5. So my friends, who is "exploiting" the anti-nuclear crowd?