Explore Quotes by James Lovelock

If you start any large theory, such as quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, evolution, it takes about 40 years for mainstream science to come around. Gaia has been going for only 30 years or so.

I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change. The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful.

We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally can't stand windmills at any price.

Just after World War II, this country led the world in science by every way you could measure it, yet the number of scientists was a tiny proportion of what it is now.

Climatologists are all agreed that we'd be lucky to see the end of this century without the world being a totally different place, and being 8 or 9 degrees hotter on average.

You never know with politicians what they are really saying. And I don't say that in a negative way-they have an appalling job.

All the modelling we do shows that the climate is poised on the jump up to a new hot state. It is accelerating so fast that you could say that we are already in it.

The tropical rain forests are a telling example. Once cut down, they rarely recover. Rainfall drops, deserts spread, the climate warms.

Science always uses metaphor.

We'd never have got a chance to go outside and look at the earth if it hadn't been for space exploration and NASA.

There is little evidence that our individual intelligence has improved through recorded history.

The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium.

One pound of uranium is worth about 3 million pounds worth of coal or oil.

So-called 'sustainable development' is meaningless drivel.

The climate is doing its usual tricks. There's nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now.

I'm a scientist, not a theologian. I don't know if there is a God or not. Religion requires certainty.

Nowadays if you're dependent on a grant - and 99% of them are - you can't make mistakes as you won't get another one if you do.

I suspect any worries about genetic engineering may be unnecessary. Genetic mutations have always happened naturally, anyway.

Esso has been the main one in America spreading the disinformation that there is no global warming problem.

The oil companies regard nuclear power as their rival, who will reduce their profits, so they put out a lot of disinformation about nuclear power.

If it hadn't been for the Cold War, neither Russia nor America would have been sending people into space.