Humanity faces 'revenge of Gaia'

LONDON - The world has already passed the point of no return for climate change, and civilisation is now unlikely to survive, according to the scientist who conceived Gaia theory - the Earth as a living, breathing organism.

In a profoundly pessimistic new assessment, Professor James Lovelock suggests that efforts to counter global warming cannot succeed, and that, in effect, it is already too late.

The world and human society face disaster to a worse extent, and on a faster timescale, than almost anybody realises, he predicts.

"Before this century is over, billions of us will die, and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable."

In making such a statement, far gloomier than any yet made by a scientist of comparable international standing, Lovelock accepts he is going out on a limb. But as the man who conceived the first wholly new way of looking at life since Charles Darwin, he feels his own analysis of what is happening leaves him no choice.

Lovelock says it is the self-regulating mechanism of Gaia itself which will ensure that global warming cannot be mastered.

This is because the system contains myriad feedback mechanisms which in the past have acted in concert to keep the Earth much cooler than it otherwise would be. Now, however, they will come together to amplify the warming being caused by human activities through huge emissions of greenhouse gases.

It means that the harmful consequences of human beings damaging the living planet's ancient regulatory system will be non-linear - in other words, likely to accelerate uncontrollably.

Lovelock's Gaia theory - once the domain of environmentalists - has become increasingly accepted by other scientists, although they prefer to term it the Earth System.

Lovelock terms his new feedback theory "the revenge of Gaia" and examines it in detail in a book with that title, to be published next month.

The professor examines how the whole control system of the Earth behaves when put under stress for his theory.

Lovelock, who conceived the idea of Gaia in the 1970s while examining the possibility of life on Mars for Nasa in the US, has been warning of the dangers of climate change since major concerns about it first began nearly 20 years ago.

He was one of a select group of scientists who gave an initial briefing on global warming to Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet at 10 Downing Street in April 1989.

His concerns have increased steadily since then, as evidence of a warming climate has mounted.

Last September it was revealed that the ice covering the Arctic Ocean is now melting so fast that in 2005 it reached a historic low point.

Two years ago he sparked a major controversy by calling on environmentalists to drop their long-standing opposition to developing nuclear power, which does not produce the greenhouses gases of conventional power stations and thus does not contribute to global warming.

Most of the green movement roundly rejected his call, and does so still.

Now his concerns have reached a peak - and have a new emphasis. Rather than calling for further ways of countering climate change, he is calling on Governments to begin large-scale preparations for surviving what he now sees as inevitable "a hell of a climate", likely to be in Europe up to 8C hotter on average than it is today.

In his book's concluding chapter, he writes: "We have little option but to prepare for the worst, and assume that we have passed the threshold."

Yesterday he said: "We will do our best to survive, but sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of emissions.

"We have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act.

"Each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can."

He said the world's Governments should plan to secure energy and food supplies in the global hothouse, and defences against the expected rise in sea levels.

The professor's bleak vision of what human civilisation could ultimately be reduced to through climate change is "a broken rabble led by brutal warlords".

Lovelock draws attention to one aspect of the warming threat in particular, which is that the expected temperature rise is currently being held back artificially by a global aerosol - a layer of dust in the atmosphere right around the planet's Northern Hemisphere - which is the product of the world's industry.

This shields us from some of the sun's radiation in a phenomenon which is known as "global dimming" and is thought to be holding the global temperature down by several degrees. But with a severe industrial downturn, the aerosol could fall out of the atmosphere in a very short time, and the global temperature could take a sudden enormous leap upwards.

His book advises humanity to develop "a guidebook for global warming survivors" aimed at the humans who would still be struggling to exist after a total societal collapse.

Written, not in electronic form, but "on durable paper with long-lasting print", it would contain the basic accumulated scientific knowledge of civilisation, much of it utterly taken for granted by us now, but originally won only after a hard struggle.

This would include such basic things as our place in the solar system, or the fact that bacteria and viruses cause infectious diseases.


EARTH AS A LIVING BEING: GAIA THEORY


Thirty years ago Lovelock conceived the idea that the planet regulated itself to keep itself fit for life - as if it were an organism itself.


The "biocybernetic universal system tendency" was renamed as the Gaia theory on the advice of Lord of the Flies author William Golding.


Lovelock theorised that the Earth possesses a planetary control system, founded on the interaction of living organisms with their environment, which has operated for billions of years to allow life to exist.


Research scientists, his original target audience, virtually ignored his theory, whereas the environmental movements took it up.


The scientific establishment has only slowly caught on to the theory.

- INDEPENDENT