
James Lovelock at 100: the Gaia saga continues - sohkamyung
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01969-y
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sien
His views on nuclear power are interesting. He thinks that nuclear is the only
real solution to climate change.

[http://www.jameslovelock.org/nuclear-power-is-the-only-
green...](http://www.jameslovelock.org/nuclear-power-is-the-only-green-
solution/)

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ptah
that makes me doubt him as he obviously doesn't factor in the enormous
difficulty of nuclear waste. nuclear energy is not green at all. EDIT: Also
that was in 2004 and things have moved on massively since then

~~~
acidburnNSA
Nuclear engineer here. What specifically do you consider the enormous
difficulty of nuclear waste to actually be? Technical issues? Political? Both?

I see it as a well-understood technical problem with well-reasoned technical
solutions. But the politics of "what so we do with the waste?" are basically
self-sustaining now.

~~~
ptah
nuclear waste is tougher to deal with as opposed to green energy where there
is no toxic byproducts

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ThalesX
I dislike being the pessimist but it seems overly optimist to imagine this
singularity coming and undoing all of mankind’s harm... and I can imagine how
someome at his age would embrace this view that surely, soon, automagically
everything will be in order.

How long till we attain singularity? I believe another of his liftime and
we’ll still be far away from true self-replicating GAI. I also believe climate
change will transform our way of living long before that.

What will be it’s primary purpose? I don’t know, it’s definitely not going to
be built to enrich mankind.

I like his view and I hope he is right but I believe the ‘singularity’ will
solve how to further enrich its makes long before it solves the planet’s
ailments.

~~~
zeristor
Singularity is becoming a religion, like the say The Rapture for nerds.

Technology is seldom the bottleneck, that seemingly is down to social
acceptance.

Things used to progress by people dying out, however enhanced lifespan makes
this even more of a problem.

Emigration to new societies helped, but there’s no where left to go with a
clean sheet.

Whilst a fan of space colonies, that looks to be even more complex than when
life moved from the sea to land.

So herding rabid cats seems to be the core skill.

~~~
zeristor
The rabid cats herding was a bit glib in my part, consensus is hard to come
by, but valuable. With so many different points of contention though it’s
almost to get agreement across the board; a statespace explosion.

Several hundred years ago the main question was which crop to grow.

~~~
simonh
Several hundred years ago the main question was who would make the best king
to lead us into the next war, which would probably be next year.

Sorry if I'm being glib, that's incidental to your main points.

~~~
zeristor
They didn’t get to chose the king did they, otherwise it would have been a
democracy.

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coldtea
There were lots of ways to chose a king. Heredity was just one of them --
which is why not all kings (or roman emperors etc) are from the same family.

In lots of cases, popular support (or lack thereof) played a big role (in some
cases, even more directly than in current democracies).

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NeedMoreTea
Often popular support of the elements of the landed gentry with largest armed
hirds or retinues to call upon.

Not quite the modern sense of popular support.

~~~
coldtea
Replace landed gentry with corporatist class, and "largest armed hireds" with
mass media, and you're not very far off.

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olivermarks
Intersting how far his position has changed since the romantic Gaia ideas

[https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/09/james-lovelock-on-
voting...](https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/09/james-lovelock-on-voting-
brexit-wicked-renewables-and-why-he-changed-his-mind-on-climate-change/)

