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Science Global Warming & Climate Change

The Vanishing Face of Gaia

A Final Warning

by (author) James Lovelock

narrator Simon Vance

Publisher
Post Hypnotic Press
Initial publish date
Jan 2017
Category
Global Warming & Climate Change
  • CD-Audio

    ISBN
    9781926910550
    Publish Date
    Jan 2017
    List Price
    $50.00
  • Downloadable audio file

    ISBN
    9781926910543
    Publish Date
    Jan 2017
    List Price
    $20.00
  • Audio disc

    ISBN
    9781926910574
    Publish Date
    Jan 2017
    List Price
    $26.00

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Description

In The Vanishing Face of Gaia, British scientist James Lovelock predicts global warming will lead to a Hot Epoch. Lovelock is best known for formulating the controversial Gaia theory in the 1970s, with Ruth Margulis of the University of Massachusetts, which states that organisms interact with and regulate Earth's surface and atmosphere. We ignore this interaction at our peril.

An “unwilling Cassandra,” he is nevertheless an "an optimistic pessimist" and thinks we will survive the coming Hot Epoch, but predicts climate change will reduce our population from 9 billion to around one billion or less.

"I don't think nine billion is better than one billion," Lovelock writes. He compares humans to the “first photosynthesisers, which, when they first appeared on the planet, caused enormous damage by releasing oxygen -- a nasty, poisonous gas.” Oxygen turned out to be beneficial to the life forms that evolved to utilize it, including us, but a global anaerobic ecosystem gave way in the face of this atmospheric change.

If simple microbial life forms could effect such a change, why is it hard to believe that humans could do so, too?

About the authors

James Lovelock is an English scientist, author, researcher, environmentalist, and futurist. He is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, in which he states that the Earth functions as a kind of superorganism.

James Lovelock's profile page

An AudioFile Golden Voice and Booklist magazine’s inaugural ‘Voice of Choice’, Simon has won two coveted Audie Awards and more than 20 Earphone Awards. His range includes classics such as Dickens and Trollope, modern thrillers, and many nonfiction titles, including an AudioFile Book of the Year.

Simon Vance's profile page

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