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In 1965 executives at Shell wanted to know what the world would look like in the year 2000. They consulted a range of experts, who speculated about fusion-powered hovercrafts and "all sorts of fanciful technological stuff". When the oil company asked the scientist James Lovelock, he predicted that the main problem in 2000 would be the environment. "It will be worsening then to such an extent that it will seriously affect their business," he said. "And of course," Lovelock says, with a smile 43 years later, "that's almost exactly what's happened." Lovelock has been dispensing predictions from his one-man laboratory...

James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too. Lovelock, 92, is writing a new book in which he will say climate change is still happening, but not as quickly as he once feared. He previously painted some of the direst visions of the effects of climate change. In 2006, in an article in the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, he wrote that “before this century is over...

If Canada’s “green” media — especially in the Parliamentary Press Gallery — demanded the same standards of accountability of themselves as they do of politicians, they would be killing entire forests right now apologizing to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Why? Because in sidestepping the economically suicidal stampede onto the green energy bandwagon which they relentlessly shilled for, Harper was right and they — along with the Liberals, NDP, Bloc and Greens — were wrong. Today, so-called “green” energy is in retreat all over the developed world, as taxpayers and consumers in countries that blindly raced into it are in open...

More than 40 years ago, American biologist Paul Ehrlich sketched a doomsday scenario for planet Earth in his book The Population Bomb. Adding more people to the planet would inevitably lead to mass starvation and ecological disaster. Since the publication of the book, the global population has nearly doubled but most of its gloomy predictions have not come true. However, this has not stopped its author from campaigning against further population growth, this time in Australia. As he prepared for a series of lectures to the Environment Institute at the University of Adelaide, Ehrlich warned that Australia was full. As...

In his first major interview since the climate-change emails scandal, James Lovelock says he is disgusted by the actions of some scientists, applauds 'good' climate sceptics, and warns that global warming could even lead to warAs you travel along the drive to James Lovelock's house, located in a remote, wooded valley on the Cornwall-Devon border, you pass a sign by a gated cattle grid. "Experimental station," it reads. "Site of a new natural habitat. Please do not trespass or disturb."Thirty years ago, Lovelock planted 20,000 trees to create the much more biodiverse habitat around his home. But you suspect that,...

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades. This is the stark conclusion of James Lovelock, the globally respected environmental thinker and independent scientist who developed the Gaia theory. It follows a tumultuous few months in which public opinion on efforts to tackle climate change has been undermined by events such as the climate scientists' emails leaked from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit. "I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a...

Just occasionally you find yourself at an event where there is a sense of history in the air. So it was the other night at the Royal Society, when a small gathering of luminaries turned up to hear that extraordinary nonagenarian, the scientist James Lovelock. They had all come: David MacKay, chief scientist at the Department of Energy and Climate Change; Michael Green, Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge; Michael Wilson, producer of the James Bond movies; Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum; and more. You knew why they had answered the Isaac Newton Institute’s invitation. They wanted to...

Europe's carbon trading scheme has proved to be "disastrous" and a "scam" in which companies have profited with no effect on emissions... The environmentalist James Lovelock — who developed the Gaia theory of the planet as a "living organism" — and the former environment minister, Michael Meacher, said... "In principle [carbon trading] is not a bad idea but in operation it's been disastrous. Business has frankly made billions out of artificial reductions of what is called hot air with absolutely no environmental benefit at all," said Meacher, singling out the ETS for being distorted by commerce. "Governments under pressure from...

It’s not a script for the next science-fiction thriller, but renowned British scientist James Lovelock is giving human civilization less than 32 years before all hell breaks loose because of the effects of global warming. Lovelock said the impact of climate change is irreversible regardless of what mankind does. “By 2040, the world population of more than six billion will have been culled by floods, drought and famine,” Sarah Sands of The Daily Mail (U.K.) wrote in an article published on March 22. “The people of Southern Europe, as well as South-East Asia, will be fighting their way into countries...

At the age of eighty-eight, after four children and a long and respected career as one of the twentieth century's most influential scientists, James Lovelock has come to an unsettling conclusion: The human race is doomed. "I wish I could be more hopeful," he tells me one sunny morning as we walk through a park in Oslo, where he is giving a talk at a university. Lovelock is a small man, unfailingly polite, with white hair and round, owlish glasses. His step is jaunty, his mind lively, his manner anything but gloomy. In fact, the coming of the Four Horsemen...

(LONDON) -- A series of giant pipes in the oceans to mix surface and deeper water could be an emergency fix for the Earth's damaged climate system, the scientist behind the Gaia theory said on Wednesday. James Lovelock, whose Gaia hypothesis that Earth is a living entity has fuelled controversy for three decades, thinks the stakes are so high that radical solutions must be tried even if they ultimately fail. In a letter to the journal Nature, he proposes vertical pipes 100 to 200 meters long and 10 metres wide be placed in the sea, so that wave motion pumps...

James Lovelock, godfather of the “Gaia” theory that the Earth’s biosphere is a single living entity, has weighed in on the fate of mankind under the threat of global warming, as well as other environmental maladies. In a January 16 Independent article, Professor Lovelock wrote “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." Professor Lovelock views himself as more than just a scientist with a theory. He is Mother Earth’s physician: “My Gaia theory sees the Earth behaving as...