Quotes from James Lovelock

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

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.

China will soon emit more greenhouse gases than America, but its regime knows if it caps aspirations there will be a revolution.

What I like about sceptics is that in good science you need critics that make you think: 'Crumbs, have I made a mistake here?' If you don't have that continuously, you really are up the creek. The good sceptics have done a good service, but some of the mad ones I think have not done anyone any favours.

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.

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.

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

For each of our actions there are only consequences.

Science always uses metaphor.

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.

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.

I've got personal views on the '60s. You can't have freedom without paying the price for it.

An inefficient virus kills its host. A clever virus stays with it.

The Earth's population will be culled from today's 6.6 billion to as few as 500 million, with most of the survivors living in the far latitudes - Canada, Iceland, Scandinavia, the Arctic Basin.

Our future is like that of the passengers on a small pleasure boat sailing quietly above the Niagara Falls, not knowing that the engines are about to fail.