The Vanishing Face of Gaia

The Vanishing Face of Gaia PDF Author: James Lovelock
Publisher:
ISBN: 0465019072
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
A preeminent environmental scientist contends that it's too late to reverse global warming--and argues that mankind must prepare to adapt to a very hot future.

The Vanishing Face of Gaia

The Vanishing Face of Gaia PDF Author: James Lovelock
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141910429
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
James Lovelock described his previous book, The Revenge of Gaia, as 'a wake-up call for humanity'. Stark though it was in many respects, in The Vanishing Face of Gaia Lovelock says that even though the weather seems cooler and pollution lessens as the recession bites, the environmental problems we will face in the twenty-first century are even more terrifying than he previously realised. The Arctic and Antarctic ice-caps are melting very quickly, and water shortages and natural disasters are more common occurrences than at any time in recent history. The civilisations of many countries will be jeopardised and life as we know it severely disrupted. Almost all predictions of the likely rate of climate change have been based on estimates which professional observers in the real worldnow show are consistently underestimating the true rate of change. As a global community we continue to be fixated by conventional 'green' ideas which we believe will help save our world. Lovelock argues that only Gaia theory, which he originated over forty years ago, can really help us understand the crisis fully. The root problem is that there are too many people and animals for the Earth to carry. And there is in fact only one possible procedure which might bring a permanent cure for climate change, but we are unlikely to adopt it. 'Our wish to continue business as usual will probably prevent us from saving ourselves' says Lovelock, so we must adapt as best we can and try to ensure that enough of us survive to allow a more capable species to evolve from us. There could hardly be a more important message for humankind. James Lovelock has been an active and accurate observer of the Earth environment since the 1960s and was the first to find CFCs and other gases accumulating in the air. His Gaia theory provides insight into climate change in the coming century.This is his final warning.

Gaia

Gaia PDF Author: James Lovelock
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198784880
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
Gaia, in which James Lovelock puts forward his inspirational and controversial idea that the Earth functions as a single organism, with life influencing planetary processes to form a self-regulating system aiding its own survival, is now a classic work that continues to provoke heated scientific debate.

The Vanishing Face of Gaia

The Vanishing Face of Gaia PDF Author: James Lovelock
Publisher:
ISBN: 0465019072
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Get Book Here

Book Description
A preeminent environmental scientist contends that it's too late to reverse global warming--and argues that mankind must prepare to adapt to a very hot future.

A Rough Ride to the Future

A Rough Ride to the Future PDF Author: James Lovelock
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241961424
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
In A Rough Ride to the Future, James Lovelock - the great scientific visionary of our age - presents a radical vision of humanity's future as the thinking brain of our Earth-system James Lovelock, who has been hailed as 'the man who conceived the first wholly new way of looking at life on earth since Charles Darwin' (Independent) and 'the most profound scientific thinker of our time' (Literary Review) continues, in his 95th year, to be the great scientific visionary of our age. This book introduces two new Lovelockian ideas. The first is that three hundred years ago, when Thomas Newcomen invented the steam engine, he was unknowingly beginning what Lovelock calls 'accelerated evolution', a process which is bringing about change on our planet roughly a million times faster than Darwinian evolution. The second is that as part of this process, humanity has the capacity to become the intelligent part of Gaia, the self-regulating Earth system whose discovery Lovelock first announced nearly 50 years ago. In addition, Lovelock gives his reflections on how scientific advances are made, and his own remarkable life as a lone scientist. The contribution of human beings to our planet is, Lovelock contends, similar to that of the early photosynthesisers around 3.4 billion years ago, which made the Earth's atmosphere what it was until very recently. By our domination and our invention, we are now changing the atmosphere again. There is little that can be done about this, but instead of feeling guilty about it we should recognise what is happening, prepare for change, and ensure that we survive as a species so we can contribute to - perhaps even guide - the next evolution of Gaia. The road will be rough, but if we are smart enough life will continue on Earth in some form far into the future. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974, JAMES LOVELOCK is the author of more than 200 scientific papers and the originator of the Gaia Hypothesis (now Gaia Theory). His many books on the subject include Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979), The Revenge of Gaia (2006), and The Vanishing Face of Gaia (2009). In 2003 he was made a Companion of Honour by Her Majesty the Queen, in 2005 Prospect magazine named him one of the world's top 100 public intellectuals, and in 2006 he received the Wollaston Medal, the highest Award of the UK Geological Society.

Homage to Gaia

Homage to Gaia PDF Author: James Lovelock
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780198604297
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
One of today's most influential environmentalists tells the fascinating storyof his life as a self-made inventor and scientist.

Gaia

Gaia PDF Author: J. E. Lovelock
Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
ISBN: 0192862189
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
This classic work is reissued with a new preface by the author. Written for non-scientists the idea is put forward that life on Earth functions as a single organism.

Novacene

Novacene PDF Author: James Lovelock
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262539519
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 155

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Book Description
A fascinating new study from the originator of the Gaia Theory, “who conceived the first wholly new way of looking at life on earth since Charles Darwin” (Independent) One of the world’s leading scientific thinkers offers a vision of a future epoch in which humans and artificial intelligence unite to save the Earth. James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia hypothesis and the greatest environmental thinker of our time, has produced an astounding new theory about future of life on Earth. He argues that the Anthropocene—the age in which humans acquired planetary-scale technologies—is, after 300 years, coming to an end. A new age—the Novacene—has already begun. In the Novacene, new beings will emerge from existing artificial intelligence systems. They will think 10,000 times faster than we do and they will regard us as we now regard plants. But this will not be the cruel, violent machine takeover of the planet imagined by science fiction. These hyperintelligent beings will be as dependent on the health of the planet as we are. They will need the planetary cooling system of Gaia to defend them from the increasing heat of the sun as much as we do. And Gaia depends on organic life. We will be partners in this project. It is crucial, Lovelock argues, that the intelligence of Earth survives and prospers. He does not think there are intelligent aliens, so we are the only beings capable of understanding the cosmos. Perhaps, he speculates, the Novacene could even be the beginning of a process that will finally lead to intelligence suffusing the entire cosmos. At the age of 100, James Lovelock has produced the most important and compelling work of his life.

Scientists Debate Gaia

Scientists Debate Gaia PDF Author: Stephen Henry Schneider
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262194983
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
Leading scientists bring the controversy over Gaia up to date by exploring a broad range of recent thinking on Gaia theory.

The Vanishing Face of Gaia

The Vanishing Face of Gaia PDF Author: James Lovelock
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458755460
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Celebrities drive hybrids, Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize, and supermarkets carry no end of so-called ''green'' products. And yet the environmental crisis is only getting worse. In The Vanishing Face of Gaia, the eminent scientist James Lovelock argues that the earth is lurching ever closer to a permanent ''hot state'' - and much more quickly than most specialists think. There is nothing humans can do to reverse the process; the planet is simply too overpopulated to halt its own destruction by greenhouse gases. In order to survive, mankind must start preparing now for life on a radically changed planet. The meliorist approach outlined in the Kyoto Treaty must be abandoned in favor of nuclear energy and aggressive agricultural development on the small areas of earth that will remain arable. 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.

On the Destiny of Species

On the Destiny of Species PDF Author: Matthew Watkinson
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1848763069
Category : Evolution (Biology)
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Have you really accepted natural selection?For those who believe in conservation, On the Destiny of Species will not make comfortable reading. In fact, it will challenge you throughout because Life just isn’t as fragile as we have been led to believe.Yes, giant pandas are fragile, and yes, polar bears are fragile (relatively), and yes, even humans may be fragile, but Life isn’t about species; it’s about Life. It’s about pragmatic survival in a dynamic world.Conservation is a hot topic these days – Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the WWF have 10 million members between them – but after 30 years of research, the author has no doubt that Nature’s culling policy is ruthless for a reason, and that human emotion is at best misplaced and often specifically detrimental (as the domestic species clearly demonstrate).Published on the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species.