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I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change. The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful.

James Lovelock

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James Lovelock
Age: 105
Beekeeper
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More quotes by James Lovelock

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All the modelling we do shows that the climate is poised on the jump up to a new hot state. It is accelerating so fast that you could say that we are already in it.
James Lovelock
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Nowadays if you're dependent on a grant - and 99% of them are - you can't make mistakes as you won't get another one if you do.
James Lovelock
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If you start any large theory, such as quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, evolution, it takes about 40 years for mainstream science to come around. Gaia has been going for only 30 years or so.
James Lovelock
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I'm not a pessimist, even though I do think awful things are going to happen.
James Lovelock
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NASA will send up a big sun shade that will be in orbit between the earth and sun and deflect 2 or 3 percent of the sunshine back into space. It would be cheaper than the international space station.
James Lovelock
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We need a more authoritative world...What's the alternative to democracy? There isn't one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.
James Lovelock
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No one who has experienced the intense involvement of computer modeling would deny that the temptation exists to use any data input that will enable one to continue playing what is perhaps the ultimate game of solitaire.
James Lovelock
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I've got personal views on the '60s. You can't have freedom without paying the price for it.
James Lovelock
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A billion could live off the earth 6 billion living as we do is far too many, and you run out of planet in no time.
James Lovelock
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The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time... it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising - carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.
James Lovelock
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We live at a time when emotions and feelings count more than truth, and there is a vast ignorance of science
James Lovelock
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Civilization in its present form hasn't got long.
James Lovelock
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Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor.
James Lovelock
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You mustn't take what I say as gospel because no one can second-guess the future.
James Lovelock
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By the end of this century, climate change will reduce the human population to a few breeding pairs surviving near the Arctic.
James Lovelock
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The Earth's population will be culled from today's 6.6 billion to as few as 500 million, with most of the survivors living in the far latitudes - Canada, Iceland, Scandinavia, the Arctic Basin.
James Lovelock
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There is little evidence that our individual intelligence has improved through recorded history.
James Lovelock
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The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books - mine included - because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened.
James Lovelock
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Just after World War II, this country led the world in science by every way you could measure it, yet the number of scientists was a tiny proportion of what it is now.
James Lovelock
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This programme to stop nuclear by 2020 is just crazy. If there were a nuclear war, and humanity were wiped out, the Earth would breathe a sigh of relief.
James Lovelock