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The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning
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$ 11.70
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| Item Number |
1371920 |
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Item Description...
The global temperature is rising, the ice caps are melting, and levels of pollution across the world have reached unprecedented heights. According to eminent scientist James Lovelock, in order to survive an assault from her dependents, the Earth is lurching ever closer to a permanent “hot state.” Within the next century, we will almost certainly be forced to give up many of the comforts of western living as supplies are threatened. Only the fittest—and the smartest—will survive. A reluctant jeremiad from one of the environmental movement's elder statesmen, The Vanishing Face of Gaia offers an essential wake-up call for the human race. |
Item Specifications...
Pages 278
Dimensions: Length: 1" Width: 5.5" Height: 8.5"
Weight: 0.66 lbs.
Binding Softcover
Release Date Apr 27, 2010
ISBN 0465019072
EAN 9780465019076
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Availability 18 units.
Availability accurate as of May 30, 2012 03:54.
Usually ships within one to two business days from La Vergne, TN.
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Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | A kind of third party view of global warming Dec 30, 2009 |
This book is a curious and interesting blend of insights that sometimes resembles a rambling set of memories of a 90-year old man and at other times resembles the wise reflections of a scientist that no longer has any vested interests in being careful or political. This book will probably be of interest to those who are looking for insights on global warming. However, in that sense, this is a difficult book to categorize. On the one hand, Lovelock seems to espouse many of the doubts that global warming skeptics hold such as the inability of climate models to make accurate predictions, the religion-like nature of global warming belief and the fact that carbon reduction schemes are more economic opportunities than realistic ways of preventing global warming. On the other hand, Lovelock is even more pessimistic about global warming than what is usually portrayed as the official stance of global warming researchers. Not only does he believe global warming is happening, he believes it is happening more quickly and to a bigger degree than official estimates admit. Along the way, he shows a good deal of respect for some of the more well-known climatologists such as James Hansen, Stephen Schneider and Wallace Broecker.
Lovelock's perspective, of course, comes from his espousal of the idea of Gaia, or in other words, that the Earth is a living system that self-regulates. This book, once again, covers some of the history of this perspective as well as implications of it. Many of these are interesting to read and provide a different way of looking at both global warming and environmental issues in general. Lovelock's basic outlook here is that global warming is happening, that it is basically unstoppable at this point and that we need to start thinking in terms of how we will adapt to live in a world that is much warmer and has much less habitable and productive land. He envisions certain areas being like lifeboats that support a much reduced population.
This book provides a valuable and thought-provoking look at global warming which doesn't conform perfectly to either the pro-warming or skeptical side. It is a difficult outlook to accept for anyone who is staunchly defensive of either of these two "sides" of the popular global warming debate, but for anyone with an open mind on the issue, it offers some interesting perspectives that may suggest some hard realities that will need to be faced. Lovelock seems to believe that Gaia theory has been successful in real-world predictions and that a different take on climate modeling suggests something different than the official climate models. If he's right, we probably won't have to wait too much longer for confirmation. In any case, this book is a valuable addition to the somewhat saturated discourse on global warming. | | |  | A Huge Disappointment Dec 2, 2009 |
This book is nothing more than a commercial for nuclear power. It contains facts that can be easily proven untrue: Lovelock's claims that nuclear power does not require government subsidies are incorrect, as you can learn from a five second websearch (my first hit showed that the U.S. government alone has spent 100 BILLION dollars in the past half century subsidizing nuclear power plants.)
Lovelock also is derisive of any other alternative power source save nukes and never even mentions conservation and/or rationing of remaining oil stocks as possible alternatives.
I found this book a total waste of money. Worse yet, Lovelock's cheerleading for nuclear power and unsupported statements about its safety and cheapness made me actually doubt the accuracy and reliability of his previous books.
I do not recommend this book. | | |  | We aren't as smart as we think we are.... Nov 23, 2009 |
The Vanishing Face of Gaia is Lovelock's swan song for Humanity. Lovelock's developed the Gaia hypothesis, the development of which he reviews at length in the book, which views the world as a living being in which all parts, both the geophysical earth and its delicate biosphere shell are interconnected and influence and effect each other much like the different parts or organs of a living animal or plant. This inseparable and complicated interconnectedness of Gaia, (of which Man is but a part) has been poorly understood by Humanity and we are just recently beginning to understand how important this is. Anthropogenic Global Warming is a consequence of our lack of appreciation of how we are a part of Gaia, not separate from her.
Lovelock has been way ahead of the curve on Global Warming for decades. He also sees that from the distant past, from Paleoclimatology, that the Planet can make startlingly fast changes in very short periods of time due to positive feedback mechanisms that get tripped, time periods as short as hundreds of years, maybe only decades. He has tried, pretty much in vain, to warn that the consequences of our pollutions, our poorly thought through disruptions, excavations, and exploitations of Gaia, is inexorably causing Gaia to heat up, much like a virus or infection causes us to develop a temperature as a defense mechanism against that infection. It is hard to think of ourselves, the only clearly conscious, massively intelligent species on the Planet, as a virus, a plague but that is in effect how the planet, Gaia now sees us.
Will we realize our transgressions and save ourselves from ourselves?? Gaia will surely survive, but the coming catastrophic dislocations will stress Humanity, Civilization to the breaking point. Lovelock is already certain that at least in our current evolutionary phase we have failed. Our huge population with its unquenchable appetite for energy and the exploitive destruction of land and natural habits is far beyond the carrying capacity of Gaia. Lovelock is already thinking about how to best deal with the many millions of Climate refugees that will be heading North from the drought destroyed Tropical zones of the planet. He doesn't see a pretty picture for Civilization in the coming millennia. In fact he sees this last century as the last time that Humanity will see a planet rich in lush green and biodiversity and temperate climates for a very long time, think geologic time, perhaps 100,000 years. Once Gaia switches to a higher temperature, Lovelock thinks that she will stay that way for a long time because Gaia is Big and once she makes changes inertia will keep those changes in place for a long time.
The Vanishing Face of Gaia is not a call to arms. It is an explanation of how we failed, and a submission to the inevitable catastrophic changes coming to Gaia, to us, with a beginning view of how do we save what we can, and how do we decide who will survive..
My only dissatisfaction with this book is that Lovelock could have described and labeled the few graphs that he uses better.
| | |  | Thought provoking but lacking Sep 21, 2009 |
This latest Lovelock book is actually my first to read. Many of the reviews made it seem like it was a 'flee for the hills' kind of gloom and doom book, but it was not so bleak as that and was an interesting read although a bit shallow and factually lacking and even intentionally misleading.
For the most part, it is written in a kind of jovial first person style and is informal in presentation. This was fine for me, but a friend I shared it with found it a little too much with a few too many simplistic analogies which seemed to talk down to the reader. That, taken with a lack of depth and an evident lack of objectivity, make it only a three star rating for me.
I very much agree with Lovelock that humans should think of the Earth as more than a bucket of rocks and oil to be mined and drilled - as doing so is rapidly leading to the Earth's destruction and hence our own. Lovelock's point that looking at sea level rise is a good way to see climate change impact with a lot of the short term variations smoothed out is a very good one. Those who like to deny the reality of climate change often cite one year or season or location which falls as an outlier, but the steady pace of sea level rise puts the lie to those opinions.
Lovelock also makes some good points about the difficulty about relying upon models to predict the future. His observation that all too often politics can obscure valid science is all too true. However, he is guilty himself of the same kind of suppression of facts for which he faults others.
The best example of this is his opinions on non fossil fuel energy sources. Whatever you personally may think about nuclear energy as a source of power before you start to read the book, by the end of it, you'll start to question Lovelock's reliability as an evaluator of nuclear as an option - and contrary to his goal he will likely make you a doubter by the end of it. As you read through the book you will find that Lovelock has such a pro-nuclear stance that he in fact makes it appear something must be actually wrong with nuclear energy for him have to work so hard to try to promote it. He devotes pages and pages to efforts to promote nuclear energy without any downside considered whatsoever. When it comes to other forms of non fossil based energy sources, while anecdotes and selected citations make it appear that most of the book is current and that Lovelock is writing with the backing of scientists around the globe (he repeatedly drops the names of those with whom he talks and those whom he advises), he selectively avoids stating the facts available at the time of his writing when it comes to solar photovoltaic efficiency. He makes similar misrepresentations about wind energy. He seems to be trying so hard to promote nuclear that he feels the need ignore facts clearly known to him in order to try to present all other alternatives as not viable. His argument grows so lopsided and biased that it becomes absurd.
What particularly irked me was his claim that the best solar photovoltaic efficiency ever achieved in any setting has been 30% and that he implied this efficiency record would be virtually insurmountable. Based on when he wrote the book, it seems impossible that he actually believed that. I can only conclude he intentionally made a false statement - which calls into question pretty much everything else he writes. Given that he presents the book as current and that he presents himself as an expert in the field who is in touch with state of the art science and policy, one can only conclude that he is intentionally lying to try to make solar look non viable contrary to fact. This is appalling and calls the rest of the book into question. The fact is that EVEN YEARS BEFORE THIS BOOK in 2006 well before he put pen to paper an efficiency of 40.7 percent was attained by Boeing's Spectrolab, Inc. Since then many other labs have achieved over 40% efficiency including the University of Delaware (solar cell efficiency of 42.8 percent), Freiburg's Fraunhofer Institute (39.7%), and more recent work by Spectrolab now independently validated by the U.S. Department of Energy (41.1 %). How can Lovelock who claims to be so connected and in the loop not be aware of any of this research - including research public long before his own writings!
In summary, this is a book hot off the presses by an author who proclaims himself on numerous occasions as on the bleeding edge and acting as an advisor and colleague to the top scientists and world policy makers. He presents himself as someone outside the system who can write without political influence yet be still 'in the loop' of current research and politics. However, where the facts might compromise his personal agenda, all objectively goes out the window. It's pretty shameful.
It is worth reading as 'food for thought' but don't mistake it for more than that. | | | | Not as informative as I hoped, but well worth reading Sep 14, 2009 |
I read this because Lovelock is one of the grandees of environmental science. And also because he's come out swinging against the traditional green establishment, by supporting nuclear power and geo-engineering among other things.
I found Vanishing interesting and sometimes downright alarming. Basically, he posits that we might very well be on the edge of, or past, a point of no return. The planet might move to another equilibrium point where it is hotter and will be difficult to cool off. Of concerns are things like methane release, CO2 proper, acidification of the ocean. Given that, Mr. Lovelock suggests that governments should start thinking in terms of saving "their" people. Notice the possessive. He believes the UK to be better placed, being on the ocean, than most inland areas, and puts its max population limit around 100 million. He does not really explain how the extra 40 or so million residents would be chosen from the large numbers of refugee candidates. There is an underlying sense of lifeboats on the Titanic and perhaps a bit of Brit nationalism as well.
But the book also falls somewhat short at times. He is pro-nuclear. Fine, that is an opinion I share as well. However his dismissal of nuclear fears is glib, artless and barely articulated. He calls radiation natural, which it is. But higher levels of radiation do cause damage to humans, so being concerned about them is not irrational. I expected a better defense of what he considers a very very necessary change in our way of thinking.
Likewise, he dismisses many of the upcoming green technologies as being driven by business-as-usual lobbies looking to cash in government and consumer spending. True, perhaps, but there are degrees within that. First generation bio-fuels, and especially their large farm subsidies, are a classic example of lobbies over reason. Can we say the same about all other climate-driven changes to our technologies and consumption? How does he propose we discern between bogus, greed-driven, proposals and useful ones? Again, he doesn't argue this point much, except for a very interesting snipe at the economic and logistical difficulties of getting anywhere with large scale wind power. I mostly like wind power, and assumed it made sense, in terms of scalability and expenditures. He says it doesn't and I will pay more attention to its critics.
He scathingly dismisses the science-by-consensus approach of the IPCC. Yet, while the actual physics of climate change is not governed by human opinion, I expect that its interpretation and, more importantly, what to do about it, would be subject of debate and negotiation. Nevertheless, if his dismissal seems a bit abrupt, it is useful to remember that just because our countries' representatives agree to say that a 2 degree C change limits risk to acceptable levels, that may not necessarily be true in practice. It might. Or not. I happen to think that public opinion has come a long way in a short time, though it might not be enough in the end.
On Gaia theory itself, I was surprised that he scorns the green mysticism surrounding it. He sees his work is scientific in nature. But, this being my first real exposure to the author, I had a hard time figuring out if he considers the planet in a solely utilitarian light or whether he attributes some special qualities to keeping it "alive" and protected. Some parts of the book made me think he does, some don't.
This book is definitely well worth reading, but left me somewhat frustrated in that it seems he bit off too much to cover. Large passages are biographical or contemplative in nature, leaving relatively little space to what I wanted to read about - hard information on how he sees the future unfolding and what he thinks we should do. | | | Write your own review about The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning
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