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The Revenge of Gaia

The Revenge of Gaia
By James Lovelock, J. E. Lovelock

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Product Description

In The Revenge of Gaia, bestselling author James Lovelock- father of climate studies and originator of the influential Gaia theory which views the entire earth as a living meta-organism-provides a definitive look at our imminent global crisis. In this disturbing new book, Lovelock guides us toward a hard reality: soon, we may not be able to alter the oncoming climate crisis. Lovelock’s influential Gaia theory, one of the building blocks of modern climate science, conceives of the Earth, including the atmosphere, oceans, biosphere and upper layers of rock, as a single living super-organism, regulating its internal environment much as an animal regulates its body temperature and chemical balance. But now, says Lovelock, that organism is sick. It is running a fever born of the combination of a sun whose intensity is slowly growing over millions of years, and an atmosphere whose greenhouse gases have recently spiked due to human activity. Earth will adjust to these stresses, but on time scales measured in the hundreds of millennia. It is already too late, Lovelock says, to prevent the global climate from “flipping” into an entirely new equilibrium state that will leave the tropics uninhabitable, and force migration to the poles. The Revenge of Gaia explains the stress the planetary system is under and how humans are contributing to it, what the consequences will be, and what humanity must do to rescue itself.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #226816 in Books
  • Published on: 2006-07-03
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 208 pages

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The end is all but nigh for Mother Earth's inhabitants unless drastic measures are soon taken: that's the rueful prognostication delivered by Lovelock (Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth), intuitive originator of the theory that the world is a self-regulating system that, over the eons, has been able to sustain an equilibrium between hot and cold so as to support life. Now, propelled by global warming, Lovelock says, a tipping point has almost been reached beyond which the Earth will not recover sufficiently to sustain human life comfortably. Lovelock dismisses biomass fuels, wind farms, solar energy and fuel cell innovations as technologies unlikely to mitigate greenhouse gases in time to save the planet. Instead he sees nuclear energy as the only energy source that can meet our needs in time to prevent catastrophe. Chernobyl was a calamity, he notes, but nuclear power's danger is "insignificant compared with the real threat of intolerable and lethal heatwaves" and rising sea levels that could "threaten every coastal city of the world." Lovelock's pro-nuke enthusiasm, unexpected from one of the mid-20th century's most ardent environmental thinkers, is the well-reasoned core of this urgent call for braking at the brink of global catastrophe. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
British geophysicist Lovelock introduced the Gaia theory in the early 1970s, envisioning the biosphere as "an active, adaptive control system able to maintain the earth in homeostasis." Since then, Lovelock has expanded the Gaia concept to embrace "physical, chemical, biological, and human components," recognizing that organisms do change the environment, none more radically than humanity. Lovelock now describes Gaia as fighting for its very existence as a rapidly increasing human population threatens to upset the precise balance of forces the make the earth conducive to life. Lovelock looks beyond biodiversity (see E. O. Wilson's The Creation, p.19) to elucidate the functions of the polar ice caps, Amazon rain forests, and ocean currents, and then explains the causes and consequences of global warming. This is solid science, a practice Lovelock seems to abandon in his strangely irresponsible arguments for nuclear energy and against sustainable energy sources (see Helen Caldicott, p.15). In spite of its flaws, Lovelock's tough-minded presentation is a valuable contribution to the urgent debate over humankind's future. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Daily Telegraph
"His final testament about the catastrophe of global warming is probably the most important book for decades."

Customer Reviews

The Revenge of Lovelock - Me, Myself & I3
For all his impressive curriculum, Mr. Lovelock seems much more interested here in vindicating his achievements than in advancing his views on the future of Nature.

He has got some very interesting arguments and reasonings, but the value of the book is terribly depleted by his simplifications and deliberate obscuring of reality, if not worse. Such a well informed scientist must be aware of many of the mendacities he slips in his books (like his gross misinterpretation of mortality due to nuclear radiation statistics) but he seems to chose effect over truth, probably in the name of the greater good of Gaia.

What he doesn't like he rejects peremptorily. (wind mills breaking the verticality of air????) But only an Englishman would suggest to substitute synthetic stuff for real food. We know it doesn't make a hell of a difference in the Islands but what about us, the rest of humans.

The problem with this kind of illuminated scientists is that they are virtual dictators. They know better than the world and anyway, there's no time for discussion, so everybody do like I say. If I was wrong, well, there was nothing to loose, you were all doomed, anyway. And you will be better off with a few simplified facts I'll provide you with than having to think by yourselves.

Considering his shameless bragging about the importance of his doublessly great inventions, one is tempted to think that his pronuclear stance is only his way to be (even) more épatant.

Anyway, the book has rich food for thought and simplification does have some merits, so there go three stars for the short gentleman at the back yes, the one with the white hair.

Revenge of Gaia5
This book was bought for my husband. He liked it very much. He had borrowed it from the library and wanted his own copy.

Lovelock's Disease1
Bad science incorrect facts and statistics underpinned by the ludicrous Gaia hypothesis . Luckily I will be around to see that he will be as wrong about the nature , magnitude and likely future impacts of Global Warming as he was in the 1970's about Global Cooling . A complete waste of money !