Mark Lynas

Science author, reformed technophobe


Seeds of Science

Why we got it so wrong on GMOs

Multco Central 664 L9871s 2018

Edinburgh University MA in Politics and Modern History

Lynas' 1996 article for Greenpeace's Corporate Watch helped spur "direct action" against lab-modified crop plants ... which led to attacks on experimental fields in Britain. Lynas organized ecovandalism for years, and attacked Lomborg with a pie in the face. Lynas started reading academic science literature for justifications, and discovered that he enjoyed science, data, and writing better than ecovandalism. That led to the books High Tidein 2004 and Six Degrees in 2007, which earned a Royal Society prize in June 2008. In the academic literature, Lynas found zero support for his anti-GM views, and many reasons why GM methods would help the world. A decade later, this book, as an apology and explanation.

p30 "In the town of Totnes in Devon, a kind of UK version of Portland, Oregon, in its multitudes of alternative lifestyle inhabitants (under the road sign announcing 'Totnes' someone affectionately wrote 'Twinned with Narnia') ...

Much about Greenpeace false GMO propaganda in Africa, perpetuating poverty and starvation.

p213 antinuke book The Whale and the Reactor by Langdon Winner argues that nuclear requires a centralized state

p241 social psychologist Jonathan Haidt The Righteous Mind (BVTN): "If you ask people to believe something that violates their intuitions, they will devote their efforts to finding an escape hatch -- a reason to doubt your argument or conclusion. They will almost always succeed." Haidt thereby refutes the 'deficit model' of human psychology. "... a barrage of facts ..." doesn't work.

p242 Patrick Moore Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout (Multco Central)

p269 David MacKay http://globalcalculator.org


Nuclear 2.0

Why A Green Future Needs Nuclear Power

Mark Lynas, 2013, 333.7924 LYN

Lynas refers to his 2007 "Six Degrees", which advocated rapid adoption of green-tech (solar, wind, efficiency) to mitigate global warming, and dismissed nuclear. His studies since 2005 changed his mind on nuclear, and this book is the result, calling for regulatory restructuring and massive investment in an "Apollo Program" (p9) scale-up of mass produced 100MW-scale nuclear power plants between 2020 and 2030. While we are 9 years closer to his 6 degree nightmare, we are no closer to that rollout.


The God Species

Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans

Multco Central 304.28 L9871g 2011

Biodiversity

< 10 species lost per year

> 100

Climate Change

< 350 ppm

391

Nitrogen (fertilizer)

< 35 MT/yr

121

Land Use

< 15% cropland

11.7

Freshwater

< 4000 km3/y

2500

Toxics

not yet quantified

Aerosols

not yet quantified

Ocean Acidification

> 2.75 aragonite saturation ratio

2.90

Ozone Layer

< 276 Dobson Units

283


MarkLynas (last edited 2022-02-08 19:57:30 by KeithLofstrom)