We better hope there are some big-time technological advances in the science of home air conditioning by the year 2040. According to the outlook offered by Dr. James Lovelock in the March 22 issue of The Daily Mail (U.K.), we're in for some dire consequences.

Sarah Sands of The Daily Mail (U.K.) (h/t Marc Morano of The Inhofe EPW Press Blog) reported Lovelock is forecasting the end of humanity due to global warming ... again.

"By 2040, the world population of more than six billion will have been culled by floods, drought and famine," Sands wrote. "The people of Southern Europe, as well as South-East Asia, will be fighting their way into countries such as Canada, Australia and Britain. We will, he says, have to set up encampments in this country, like those established for the hundreds of thousands of refugees displaced by the conflict in East Africa. Lovelock believes the subsequent ethnic tensions could lead to civil war."

But Lovelock isn't urging people to go out and buy hybrid cars or invest in squiggly light bulbs like other global warming alarmist cheerleaders. He said man's efforts to prevent the likelihood of his doomsday scenarios are unlikely.

"Lovelock believes it is too late to repair the damage. Government targets are ‘futile,'" Sands wrote. "Britain contributes such a tiny amount of emissions compared with countries such as China that our self-regulatory measures are pathetic."

"Everyone could burn coal all day and drive around in 4x4s and it would not make a scrap of difference," Lovelock said to The Daily Mail.

In fact, Lovelock thinks a lot of the activism preached by the likes of Al Gore in his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," will just make matters worse. He cited the recent Bali agreement as an example.

"Bali may make things worse," Lovelock said. "One peculiarity is that when you burn coal and fuel you not only put CO2 into the atmosphere, which makes the Earth warmer, but you also put out a lot of dust and haze, which acts as a screen and cools the Earth."