LOVELOCK, James. Only 0.5 billion to survive climate holocaust

Dr James Lovelock, Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) is one of the UK’s and the World’s most eminent climate scientists. He is famous for his Gaia Hypothesis (mutually interacting physical world and biological feedbacks affecting atmosphere and climate) and for his invention of the electron capture detector which ultimately assisted in discoveries about the persistence of CFCs and their role in stratospheric ozone depletion (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock ).

Dr James Lovelock re very few surviving this century (June 2009) : “If we can keep civilization alive through this century perhaps there is a chance that our descendants will one day serve Gaia and assist her in the fine-tuned self-regulation of the climate and composition of our planet. We have enjoyed 12,000 years of climate peace since the last shift from a glacial age to an interglacial one. Before long, we may face planet-wide devastation worse even than unrestricted nuclear war between superpowers. The climate war could kill nearly all of us and leave the few survivors living a Stone Age existence. But in several places in the world, including the U.K., we have a chance of surviving and even of living well. For that to be possible, we have to make our lifeboats seaworthy now.” [1].

Dr James Lovelock, quoted by interviewer (November 2007): “By 2100, Lovelock believes, the Earth's population will be culled from today's 6.6 billion to as few as 500 million, with most of the survivors living in the far latitudes -- Canada, Iceland, Scandinavia, the Arctic Basin.” [2].

Dr James Lovelock re fewer than 1 billion surviving this century and in answer to the New Scientist interviewer question “Do you think that we will survive”( January 2009): “I'm an optimistic pessimist. I think it's wrong to assume we'll survive 2 °C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4 °C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. The reason is we would not find enough food, unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. It has happened before: between the ice ages there were bottlenecks when there were only 2000 people left. It's happening again. I don't think humans react fast enough or are clever enough to handle what's coming up. Kyoto was 11 years ago. Virtually nothing's been done except endless talk and meetings.” [3].

[1]. James Lovelock, “Climate war could kill nearly all of us, leaving survivors on the Stone Age”, Guardian, 29 June 2009: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/29/climate-war-lovelock .

[2]. Jeff Goodell, “The Prophet of climate change”, Rolling Stone, 1 November 2007: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16956300/the_prophet_of_climate_change_james_lovelock .

[3]. Gaia Vince, “One last chance to save mankind”, New Scientist, 23 January 2009: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126921.500-one-last-chance-to-save-mankind.html?full=true .

James Lovelock (FRS, atmospheric gas analysis and proposer of the Gaia thesis) (2006) “We are not all doomed. An awful lot of people will die, but I don’t see the species dying out... A hot Earth couldn’t support much over 500 million” (James Lovelock quoted in “Scientist says global warming will ‘kill billions'”, The Scotsman, 2006 and in David Spratt, “At 4^oC of warming, would a billion people survive? What scientists say” , Climate Code Red, 18 August 2019: http://www.climatecodered.org/2019/08/at-4c-of-warming-would-billion-people.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ClimateCodeRed+%28climate+code+red%29 ).