Clipping Board » Environmental Pollution & Change ─ How dirty the human heart is, how dirty the environment will be...
Update Date: 2009/02/26 09:01
(Reuters London 25th)
A renowned British climate scientist stated today that climate change will claim the majority of life on Earth by the end of this century, and it may already be too late for humanity to avert disaster.
James Lovelock, 89, famous for his "Gaia" theory that the Earth is a living organism, said today that rising temperatures will turn parts of the Earth into deserts, while other areas will suffer from flooding due to rising sea levels.
His apocalyptic theory predicts crop failures, droughts, and unprecedented mass deaths. As people living on a hot, barren Earth compete for increasingly scarce resources, the global population is expected to plummet from about 7 billion to 1 billion by 2100.
Lovelock told Reuters in an interview today: "Famine and lack of water will cause mass deaths, and the population could drop to 1 billion, or even less."
By 2040, the average summer temperature in European cities will rise to 43 degrees Celsius, similar to the heatwaves experienced in parts of Europe and Baghdad in 2003.
Lovelock said: "The land will gradually revert to being overgrown with shrubs and arid. You can see this as the Sahara Desert gradually extending into Europe, and not just Europe, the entire world will change in this way."
He also mentioned that efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide to mitigate the crisis may be doomed to fail. Central News Agency (translation)
Source: http:/ / tw. news. yahoo. com/ art……url/ d/ a/ 090226/ 16/ 1f3uc. html
Gaia Theorist: Climate Change Inevitable, Only 1 Billion Left by Century's End
(Reuters London 25th)
A renowned British climate scientist stated today that climate change will claim the majority of life on Earth by the end of this century, and it may already be too late for humanity to avert disaster.
James Lovelock, 89, famous for his "Gaia" theory that the Earth is a living organism, said today that rising temperatures will turn parts of the Earth into deserts, while other areas will suffer from flooding due to rising sea levels.
His apocalyptic theory predicts crop failures, droughts, and unprecedented mass deaths. As people living on a hot, barren Earth compete for increasingly scarce resources, the global population is expected to plummet from about 7 billion to 1 billion by 2100.
Lovelock told Reuters in an interview today: "Famine and lack of water will cause mass deaths, and the population could drop to 1 billion, or even less."
By 2040, the average summer temperature in European cities will rise to 43 degrees Celsius, similar to the heatwaves experienced in parts of Europe and Baghdad in 2003.
Lovelock said: "The land will gradually revert to being overgrown with shrubs and arid. You can see this as the Sahara Desert gradually extending into Europe, and not just Europe, the entire world will change in this way."
He also mentioned that efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide to mitigate the crisis may be doomed to fail. Central News Agency (translation)
Source: http:/ / tw. news. yahoo. com/ art……url/ d/ a/ 090226/ 16/ 1f3uc. html