Statements from 2012 portray Lovelock as continuing his concern over global warming while at the same time criticizing extremism and suggesting alternatives to oil, coal and the green solutions he does not support.
In an April 2012 interview, aired on MSNBC, Lovelock stated that he had been "alarmist", using the words
“All right, I made a mistake,”
about the timing of climate change and noted the documentary
An Inconvenient Truth and the book The Weather Makers as examples of the same kind of alarmism. Lovelock still believes the climate to be warming although the rate of change is not as he once thought, he admitted that he had been “extrapolating too far." He believes that climate change is still happening, but it will be felt farther in the future. Of the claims “the science is settled” on global warming he states:
"One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don’t know it."He criticizes environmentalists for treating global warming like a religion.
“It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion,” Lovelock observed
“I don’t think people have noticed that, but it’s got all the sort of terms that religions use … The greens use guilt. That just shows how religious greens are. You can’t win people round by saying they are guilty for putting (carbon dioxide) in the air.”In the MSNBC article Lovelock is quoted as proclaiming:
"The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened;" he continues "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," he said
The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time ... it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising - carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that", he added.In a follow up interview Lovelock stated his support for natural gas; he now favors fracking as a low-polluting alternative to coal.
He opposes the concept of "sustainable development", where modern economies might be powered by wind turbines, calling it meaningless drivel. He keeps a poster of a wind turbine to remind himself how much he detests them.