
THE financial crash may help sales of James Lovelock‘s second volume on Gaia. If it happened to the economy, why not to climate? Both systems are “complex and non-linear and can change suddenly and unexpectedly”, he writes. He lacks confidence in climate models with their smoothly rising curves of global temperature up to 2100, and instead anticipates a sudden flip to a state 5°C as hot.
Since it is too late to prevent this, we must think about how to adapt and act fast. The best chapters concern survival strategies, such as energy and food options for the UK, which will become a “lifeboat” for environmental refugees.
Published simultaneously, , an authorised biography of Lovelock by John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin, demonstrates well how Gaia has overcome its main critics to become part of a distinguished historical tradition of serious if controversial science.
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The Vanishing Face of Gaia
Allen Lane