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Composing Computer Programs To Solve Scientific Problems Is Like Writing Poetry. You Must Choose Every Word With Care And Link It With The Other Words In Perfect Syntax. There Is No Place For Verbosity Or Carelessness. To Become Fluent In A Computer Lnaguage Demands Almost The Antithesis Of Modern Loose Thinking. It Requires Many Interactive Sessions, The Hands-on Use Of The Device. You Do Not Learn A Foreign Language From A Book, Rather You Have To Live In The Country For Year To Let The Langauge Become An Automatic Part Of You, And The Same Is True For Computer Languages.

-James Lovelock

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Composing Computer Programs To

James Lovelock

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Composing Computer Programs To Solve Scientific Problems Is Like Writing Poetry. You Must Choose Every Word With Care And Link It With The Other Words In Perfect Syntax. There Is No Place For Verbosity Or Carelessness. To Become Fluent In A Computer Lnaguage Demands Almost The Antithesis Of Modern Loose Thinking. It Requires Many Interactive Sessions, The Hands-on Use Of The Device. You Do Not Learn A Foreign Language From A Book, Rather You Have To Live In The Country For Year To Let The Langauge Become An Automatic Part Of You, And The Same Is True For Computer Languages.

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There Aren't Just Bad People That Commit Genocide; We Are All Capable Of It. It's Our Evolutionary History.

I Would Only Have Been Too Pleased If Someone Had Asked Me For My Data. If You Really Believed In Your Data, You Wouldn't Mind Someone Looking At It. You Should Be Able To Respond That If You Don't Believe Me Go Out And Do The Measurements Yourself.

Life Does More Than Adapt To The Earth. It Changes The Earth To Its Own Purposes.

Perhaps The Single Most Important Thing That We Can Do To Undo The Harm We Have Done Is To Fix Firmly In Our Minds The Thought: The Earth Is Alive.

Nature Favors Those Organisms Which Leave The Environment In Better Shape For Their Progeny To Survive.

Evolution Is A Tightly Coupled Dance, With Life And The Material Environment As Partners. From The Dance Emerges The Entity Gaia.

The Entire Range Of Living Matter On Earth From Whales To Viruses And From Oaks To Algae Could Be Regarded As Constituting A Single Living Entity Capable Of Maintaining The Earth's Atmosphere To Suit Its Overall Needs And Endowed With Faculties And Powers Far Beyond Those Of Its Constituent Parts.

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Let's Make Hay While It Lasts.

It Just So Happens That The Green Religion Is Now Taking Over From The Christian Religion. I Don't Think People Have Noticed That, But It's Got All The Sort Of Terms That Religions Use. The Greens Use Guilt. That Just Shows How Religious Greens Are. You Can't Win People Round By Saying They Are Guilty For Putting (carbon Dioxide) In The Air.

I'm Not Religious, But I Put It That Way Because I Feel So Strongly. It's The One Thing You Do Not Ever Do. You've Got To Have Standards.

For Each Of Our Actions There Are Only Consequences.

The Oil Companies Regard Nuclear Power As Their Rival, Who Will Reduce Their Profits, So They Put Out A Lot Of Disinformation About Nuclear Power.

If A Power Station Were To Be Built Down The Road, I'd Prefer A Nuclear Plant Over An Oil Burner, And Definitely Over A Coal Burner. We Simply Have To Lessen Our Consumption Of Fossil Fuels.

Humans On The Earth Behave In Some Ways Like A Pathogenic Micro-organism, Or Like The Cells Of A Tumor.

By The End Of This Century, Climate Change Will Reduce The Human Population To A Few Breeding Pairs Surviving Near The Arctic.

The Inertia Of Humans Is So Huge That You Can't Really Do Anything Meaningful.

Sadly, It's Much Easier To Create A Desert Than A Forest.

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.

Science Always Uses Metaphor.

I Suspect Any Worries About Genetic Engineering May Be Unnecessary. Genetic Mutations Have Always Happened Naturally, Anyway.

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.

By 2040, The Sahara Will Be Moving Into Europe And Berlin Will Be As Hot As Baghdad. Atlanta Will End Up A Kudzu Jungle. Phoenix Will Become Uninhabitable, As Will Parts Of Beijing (desert), Miami (rising Seas) And London (floods). Food Shortages Will Drive Millions Of People North, Raising Political Tensions.

We Rushed Into Renewable Energy Without Any Thought. The Schemes Are Largely Hopelessly Inefficient And Unpleasant. I Personally Can't Stand Windmills At Any Price.

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.

We Live At A Time When Emotions And Feelings Count More Than Truth, And There Is A Vast Ignorance Of Science

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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. The Climate Is Doing Its Usual Tricks. There’s Nothing Much Really Happening Yet. We Were Supposed To Be Halfway Toward A Frying World Now. The World Has Not Warmed Up Very Much Since The Millennium. Twelve Years Is A Reasonable Time. The Temperature Has Stayed Almost Constant, Whereas It Should Have Been Rising - Carbon Dioxide Is Rising, No Question About That.

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Climate Change Now Represents So Urgent A Threat To Mankind That The Only Way To Deal With It Is By Suspending Democracy.

Our Future Is Like That Of The Passengers On A Small Pleasure Boat Sailing Quietly Above The Niagara Falls, Not Knowing That The Engines Are About To Fail.

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Humans Are Too Stupid To Prevent Climate Change From Radically Impacting On Our Lives Over The Coming Decades.

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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.

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Second Guessing

So-called 'sustainable Development' Is Meaningless Drivel.

Sustainable Development

Composing Computer Programs To Solve Scientific Problems Is Like Writing Poetry. You Must Choose Every Word With Care And Link It With The Other Words In Perfect Syntax. There Is No Place For Verbosity Or Carelessness. To Become Fluent In A Computer Lnaguage Demands Almost The Antithesis Of Modern Loose Thinking. It Requires Many Interactive Sessions, The Hands-on Use Of The Device. You Do Not Learn A Foreign Language From A Book, Rather You Have To Live In The Country For Year To Let The Langauge Become An Automatic Part Of You, And The Same Is True For Computer Languages.

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One Pound Of Uranium Is Worth About 3 Million Pounds Worth Of Coal Or Oil.

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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.

I Know That To Personalize The Earth System As Gaia, As I Have Often Done And Continue To Do In This Book, Irritates The Scientifically Correct, But I Am Unrepentant Because Metaphors Are More Than Ever Needed For A Widespread Comprehension Of The True Nature Of The Earth And An Understanding Of The Lethal Dangers That Lie Ahead.

I'm A Scientist, Not A Theologian. I Don't Know If There Is A God Or Not. Religion Requires Certainty.

If There Is A God

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.

I Have Heard That The Saudi Arabians Are Paying Greenpeace To Campaign Against Nuclear Power. It Wouldn't Surprise Me At All.

Climatologists Are All Agreed That We'd Be Lucky To See The End Of This Century Without The World Being A Totally Different Place, And Being 8 Or 9 Degrees Hotter On Average.

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If It Hadn't Been For The Cold War, Neither Russia Nor America Would Have Been Sending People Into Space.

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China Will Soon Emit More Greenhouse Gases Than America, But Its Regime Knows If It Caps Aspirations There Will Be A Revolution.

There Is Little Evidence That Our Individual Intelligence Has Improved Through Recorded History.

You Never Know With Politicians What They Are Really Saying. And I Don't Say That In A Negative Way-they Have An Appalling Job.

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.

Imagine A Survivor Of A Failed Civilization With Only A Tattered Book On Aromatherapy For Guidance In Arresting A Cholera Epidemic. Yet, Such A Book Would More Likely Be Found Amid The Debris Than A Comprehensible Medical Text.

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