"Our global furnace is out of control,” James Lovelock says.
“By 2020, 2025, you will be able to sail a sailboat to the North Pole. The Amazon will become a desert, and the forests of Siberia will burn and release more methane and plagues will return."
Lovelock the author of the Gaia theory, which holds that Earth acts like a living organism, has written a book on global warming,"The Revenge of Gaia.”
Support for his doomsday scenario comes from a new study of the Antarctic ice core by the British Antarctic Survey which shows that the rapid rise in greenhouse gases over the past century is unprecedented in at least 800,000 years.
Never in that time has carbon dioxide ever exceeded a 30 ppm increase in 1,000 years -- now carbon dioxide has risen by 30 ppm in the last 17 years.
"The rate of change is probably the most scary thing because it means that the Earth systems can't cope with it," Dr. Eric Wolff says.
Posted by Deck at September 5, 2006 05:08 PM