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Post by coolplanet on Jul 25, 2014 23:30:35 GMT -5
I've been a huge fan of James Lovelock since I first read his works in the early 1980s. He has been an enormous influence on my thinking and this interview is the best I've come across. We need to listen to this wise man. What he has to say is of utmost importance to our very survival as a species.
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Post by northernexpat on Jul 26, 2014 1:16:42 GMT -5
This was a very interesting video and certainly gives you food for thought. There were things I never thought of before. There were some very scary predictions too. Considering this interview was done in 2007, and the world has warm even more rapidly in the last few years, I'm wondering what he thinks about the latest report on global climate change, which was very alarming. Heck, he thought we were at the point of no return then. We must be way past it now.
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Post by coolplanet on Jul 26, 2014 12:10:00 GMT -5
This was a very interesting video and certainly gives you food for thought. There were things I never thought of before. There were some very scary predictions too. Considering this interview was done in 2007, and the world has warm even more rapidly in the last few years, I'm wondering what he thinks about the latest report on global climate change, which was very alarming. Heck, he thought we were at the point of no return then. We must be way past it now. In 2009 Lovelock published 'The Vanishing Face of Gaia' which addresses things we must do to avert the worst case scenario. He explores ways we can remove carbon from the atmosphere - stimulating ocean plankton and making biochar on a mass scale, among others. But he ignores the most promising way to reduce CO2 levels: reforestation. Brazil recently became the world's leading CO2 remover simply by slowing down deforestation and letting forests grow back. Studies by scientists at the University of Virginia and Rutgers University have shown that reforestation of the America after 1492 - when tens of millions of aboriginal peoples died from plagues - caused the removal of so much carbon dioxide through photosynthesis that it triggered the Little Ice Age! For decades scientists and ecologists have been telling us that if we planted a trillion trees it would remove ALL the CO2 humans spew into the atmosphere every year. In 1987 Carl Sagan urged "reforestation on a grand scale" to fight global warming. Yet we continue to ignore this simple solution and wait for some technological fix that does not yet exist. |
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Post by northernexpat on Jul 26, 2014 16:22:02 GMT -5
I agree with you about the trees. I saw a special about Diana Bereford-Kroeger, who is called the 'tree whisperer'. Her knowledge of trees and the effects they have on reducing CO2 is very impressive. I fear though with all the fires up here in the Northwest Territories that are destroying our Boreal forest, it is going to have a major impact on climate change for the next 20 years as it takes a long time to grow a tree up here. We are suffering through the third year of a drought, the hottest summer I can remember, with over 200 fires currently burning, and no rain in sight. Due to the number of fires burning the fire crews have had to make a decision to only fight the fires that impact communities, while letting the fires in the boonies burn. The way things are going there won't be much left of our forest.
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