Lovelock on Global Warming - Seattle Post Intelligencer (blog)

James Lovelock is a ‘big idea’ type, most successful with his Gaia extrapolation (1976), although it certainly is not universally accepted by all top scientists. He is not a hard scientist. His specialty is medicine, and chemistry, where he has contributed significantly. He understands very little about geophysicalfluiddynamics.
I read his book in the ‘70s and found it entertaining but very vague. That’s the way one wants to be with prognostic hypotheses, to allow room to incorporate the certain-to-occur deviations in observations. His forte is as a “science popularizer” alltho he lacks the scientific credentials to be as successful as Carl Sagan for instance (both worked on exploration of Mars, mainly to find evidence of life.)

Most knowledgable climate scientists cringed at his prognoses for ‘severe & soon’ Global Warming in his 2nd book . He forgot to be vague. He took a far-out gamble on a model possibility, and the past decade hasn’t met his predictions. His recent confession that he was wrong in predicting severe Global Warming soon is naturally taken (in a classic “hasty generalization”) as “proof” that GW scientists are all wrong. At least one was (so far). As he has said; “I would be a little more cautious â€" but then that would have spoilt the book.”

I have argued that scientists in general are “conservative” in their presentations, trying not to deviate too far from the norm (I confess to leaning this direction). Recently, this has become a little dangerous given the bad name associated with “conservative” these days (anti-science e.g.) and I have been criticized for insulting scientists with this term. But it is correct to say that the climate predictions of the hard scientists (highly trained, particularly in the appropriate mathematics) are generally on the “low” side.
For instance, Sea Level Rise has been creeping upward from previous levels in the tidal gauge readings since 1970. In 1990, a consensus of models was published, predicting the SLR for the next 20-years. The ‘most likely’ prediction was the same rate as the 1970-‘90 tidal observations. The possible error-bar amounts were predictive curves that went up a lot faster or a lot less. When the next 20-years of data arrived, now supplemented with satellite data, the SLR matched exactly the maximum prediction curve. The models were too ‘conservative’ and probably lacked feedbacks that would increase the rate. Lovelock was betting on the same thing happening for temperature predictions.

The bottom line hasn’t been affected a whit by Lovelock’s confession. As he says, the globe is warming due to increased CO2 production, which we should stop, and the amount has yet to be determined. It will be somewhere between bothersome and catastrophic.