The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning

by James Lovelock

Overview

The global temperature is rising, the ice caps are melting, and levels of pollution across the world have reached unprecedented heights. According to eminent scientist James Lovelock, in order to survive an assault from her dependents, the Earth is lurching ever closer to a permanent “hot state.” Within the next century, we will almost certainly be forced to give up many of the comforts of western living as supplies are threatened. Only the fittest—and the smartest—will survive.

A reluctant jeremiad from one of the environmental movement’s elder statesmen, The Vanishing Face of Gaia offers an essential wake-up call for the human race.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786746347
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	04/14/2009
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	376 KB
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

James Lovelock is the author of more than two hundred scientific papers and the originator of the Gaia Hypothesis (now Gaia Theory). In September 2005, Prospect magazine named him as one of the world’s top 100 global public intellectuals. He lives in Louceston, England.

Table of Contents

Forward Martin Rees xiii

Acknowledgments xvii

1 The Journey in Space and Time 1

2 The Climate Forecast 35

3 Consequences and Survival 71

4 Energy and Food Sources 99

5 Geoengineering 139

6 The History of Gaia Theory 159

7 Perceptions of Gaia 187

8 To Be or Not To Be Green 205

9 To the Next World 229

Glossary 251

Further Reading 259

Index 263

Editorial Reviews

Lovelock (The Revenge of Gaia) presents evidence of a dire future for our planet. The controversial originator of Gaia theory (which views Earth as a self-regulating, evolving system made of "organisms, the surface rocks, the ocean and the atmosphere" with the goal "always to be as favorable for contemporary life as possible") proposes an even more inconvenient truth than Al Gore's. No voluntary human act can reduce our numbers fast enough even to slow climate change." Nevertheless, human civilization has a "duty to survive" in the few safe havens-the far north and south, islands like Great Britain and Tasmania-free from the drought that will overtake most of the Earth. While Lovelock's propensity to ramble is disconcerting, his predictions are persuasive-although some readers will be appalled by his contention that democracy may need to be abandoned to appropriately confront the challenge. (May)

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Publishers Weekly

In his sixth book on Gaia, the eminent 91-year-old British scientist who originated the Gaia Theory to explain the interconnectedness between our planet's climate and life takes an elegiac tone and cosmic perspective in predicting our near future. Challenging the scientific consensus of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he believes it is too late to reverse global warming. We must accept that Earth is moving inexorably into a long-term "hot state." Most humans will die off, and we must prepare havens like northern Canada, where some climate refugees can survive. Lovelock rejects the results of climate computer modeling when they clash with scientific observation. For example, he points out that sea levels are rising significantly faster than models predicted. Lovelock advocates solar thermal and nuclear power as the best substitutes for burning fossil fuels, and he suggests emergency global geoengineering projects that might cool the planet. But Lovelock also avows today's ecological efforts are futile. This is a somber prophecy written with an authority that cannot be dismissed. Recommended for all academic and public libraries.
—David Conn

Library Journal

Los Angeles Times
“Lovelock is a plain and simple writer, and his prose has a natural grace that makes this book a pleasure to read despite its depressing thesis.”

Science
“[The Vanishing Face of Gaia] seems to arise from frustration that society hasn’t been roused by the wake-up call of [The Revenge of Gaia]…. [It] has an elevated sense of urgency – stimulated in part by observations that anthropogenic influence and Earth’s response are accelerating at a pace that exceeds the projections of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.”

Leonardo Reviews (International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology)
“Almost everyone today has glimpsed the abyss of extinction, but few have gazed into it as unflinchingly as Lovelock.… [He] gathers the knowledge of a lifetime to transcend the bounds of scientific discourse and sound a warning about matters of the greatest urgency.”

The New York Review of Books
“[An] idiosyncratic book…. James Lovelock has told it as he sees it…and at ninety he has nothing to lose, while readers, however skeptical, have much to gain.

From the Publisher