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End is near indeed The Revenge of Gaia
The book alarms and the facts presented are so grim that you are forced to look at the environment around you with concern`85 and that is the intention of the author—to wake us up to the possibility of human extinction for some serious action to follow. Global warming has been an issue for a while, but nothing concrete has come of it even as the greens battle it out with political circles and at the global platform, with little impact. Lovelock is one of the leading scientist-environmentalist of the world with over 40 years of research; his study cannot be dismissed as an exaggerated risk account of a dying Earth by a prophet of doom. The Sun is getting hotter as it is aging and will continue to do so until it completely burns out in about a billion years. In its history of over three billion years, never has the Earth been this hot. The carbon dioxide content has increased manifold, in the face of which, the self-regulatory mechanism of the Earth to cool itself is failing. Methane (24 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas) leaks at various sources across the world have compounded the problem. Lovelock’s forecast for gaia—metaphor for the living Earth—is that since it has begun to lose much of its ability to regulate temperature, it will only continue to get hotter, disabling the ocean algal life that pumps down carbon dioxide that is being bombarded into the atmosphere in the name of sustainable development of the world. A carbon dioxide content of 500 ppm (parts per million) will render the ocean algae ineffective to pump down the gas. We’ve already touched the 380 ppm mark and in about 40 years, we would have reached the 500 threshold. Global climate would change drastically, as has been noticed in some regions, and as the ecosystems collapse around the world, extinction of all life forms is certain. The unprecedented heat wave in Central Europe in 2003 that caused the death of 30,000 persons due to hyperthermia is a case in point. Glaciers that reflect sunlight have been melting in Greenland and the Arctic basin. A 2.7`B0C increase in global temperature will accelerate the melting of the ice. The exposed dark areas of the sea and the Earth will absorb more heat, thereby hotting up the Earth even more. The Amazon rainforest, one of the greatest ecosystems of the world, is getting fragile with 20,000 sq km of the forest area shrinking every year. With a 4`B0C rise in temperature, this ecosystem will destabilise. Lovelock suggests that the damage may already be irreversible. Even if we have the political will—thus far absent—it is already too late to undo the damage. There may be just enough time for us to expedite measures to limit the harm that would come our way. Some workable but immediate suggestions thrown in the book include the installation of a giant sunlight-deflecting disc in space; use of minute stratospheric balloons, also for the same purpose; and the use of nuclear energy as opposed to renewable energy, which Lovelock says is inefficient and expensive. "We must conquer our fears and accept nuclear energy as the one safe and proven energy source that has minimal global consequences... it has the best safety record of all large-scale energy sources," he asserts. The book should be read and prescribed at all levels for the severity of the situation to register. If even this doesn’t shock us, what would?
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Our future is like that of
passengers on a small pleasure boat sailing quietly above the Niagara
Falls, not knowing that the engines are about to fail.