"Gaia" Hypothesis developer predicts a world of hurt
James Lovelock's prognosis for our future is dim. Based on his awareness and understanding of the earth, he predicts that our world is sick (not dying) and that we are in for a world of hurt (sorry for that pun, but it was so good I had to use it twice). This news meshes well with the announcement that we passed the oil peak at the end of last year. According to Ken Deffeyes (Emeritus (I think) at Princeton), we will never produce as much oil as we did on December 16, 2005. Considering that the Iraqi fields are well below full production, I wonder if that isn't premature, but the observation that production rose by .8% while demand grew by 3% last year is pretty worrisome.
Sometimes I indulge in some serious extrapolation of how bad things could get, and believe me, they could get pretty bad. But I don't think they will (although I have doubts that its going to be smooth). My current reassurance is the slack in our system with regard to efficiency and conservation. We are currently so wasteful with our energy and full usage. I've heard such stats as the one that if everyone ran their vehicles with proper tire pressure, we'd save as much gasoline as we could produce from the Arctic Reserve we want to drill. Electricity is highly wasted and while its true that oil doesn't produce much of our electricity, in general we can improve our usage enough to extend the downslope after the peak (whenever it happens) and reduce demand. This will give us a little breathing room to implement alternatives.
Some think that it is too late to do anything about global warming and that its past the tipping point. Regardless of the accuracy of that belief, we still need to do what we can to get off the dead-end path of polluting, non-renewable resources and begin developing a sustainable energy infrastructure. It's pretty simple.