Fracking, Gaia, and Mother Earth, Get With the Program, Obama

James Lovelock who brought us his Gaia theory of Mother Earth is wild about fracking. The 92 year old Lovelock has broken environmentalists hearts with his latest pronouncements. His lengthy interview from the Daily Guardian has produced a wealth of illiberal heresies. Savor this pearl:

Gas is almost a give-away in the US at the moment. They’ve gone for fracking in a big way. This is what makes me very cross with the greens for trying to knock it: the amount of CO2 produced by burning gas in a good turbine gives you 60% efficiency. In a coal-fired power station, it is 30% per unit of fuel. So you get a two-to-one gain there straight away. The next two-to-one gain you get is that methane has only got half its energy in the carbon, the other half is in the hydrogen, so there’s a four-to-one gain in CO2 output from the same amount of electricity by burning methane. Let’s be pragmatic and sensible and get Britain to switch everything to methane.

Or

"I'm neither strongly left nor right, but I detest the Liberal Democrats."

What will Ed Markey think? If he's including Obama he's a racist.

Who will tell Steven Chu?

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. Hydro, biomass, solar, etc, have all got great promise, but they’re not available tomorrow, or even in 10 years.

And now the coup de gras!

It's just the way the humans are that if there's a cause of some sort, a religion starts forming around it. It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion. I don't think people have noticed that, but it's got all the sort of terms that religions use. The greens use guilt. You can't win people round by saying they are guilty for putting CO2 in the air.

I would quibble that he should have said all of this 10 years ago but better late than never.