WP: James Lovelock Says This Time We've Pushed the Earth Too Far

[DeepModem Mom]

The End of Eden
James Lovelock Says This Time We've Pushed the Earth Too Far
By Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 2, 2006; C01
ST. GILES-ON-THE-HEATH, England

"Our global furnace is out of control. By 2020, 2025, you will be able to sail a sailboat to the North Pole. The Amazon will become a desert, and the forests of Siberia will burn and release more methane and plagues will return."

Sulfurous musings are not Lovelock's characteristic style; he's no Book of Revelation apocalyptic. In his 88th year, he remains one of the world's most inventive scientists, an Englishman of humor and erudition, with an oenophile's taste for delicious controversy. Four decades ago, his discovery that ozone-destroying chemicals were piling up in the atmosphere started the world's governments down a path toward repair. Not long after that, Lovelock proposed the theory known as Gaia, which holds that Earth acts like a living organism, a self-regulating system balanced to allow life to flourish.

Biologists dismissed this as heresy, running counter to Darwin's theory of evolution. Today one could reasonably argue that Gaia theory has transformed scientific understanding of the Earth.

Now Lovelock has turned his attention to global warming, writing "The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity." Already a big seller in the United Kingdom, the book was released in the United States last month. (He will speak in Washington, at the Carnegie Institution, Friday at 7 p.m.) ...

***

Within the next decade or two, Lovelock forecasts, Gaia will hike her thermostat by at least 10 degrees. Earth, he predicts, will be hotter than at any time since the Eocene Age 55 million years ago, when crocodiles swam in the Arctic Ocean.....Lovelock's radical view of global warming doesn't sit well with David Archer, a scientist at the University of Chicago and a frequent contributor to the Web site RealClimate, which accepts the reality of global warning....What's perhaps as intriguing are the top scientists who decline to dismiss Lovelock's warning....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/01/AR2006090101800_pf.html

[babsbunny]

1. I am sad...........

mostly for our Children and Grandchildren.

[kestrel91316]

9. I guess I'm starting to be really glad I don't/won't have any.............

[gulfcoastliberal]

17. This (enviromental destruction) ismy prime reason for not reproducing...

Even though I've got great genes. ;)

[Gregorian]

2. Here's a link to the mechanism of population growth.

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html

We spent all of our previous history with very low growth. All of previous history. Now we are on the steep part of the exponential curve. Very little action among us makes a huge change. Combine this with the lifestyle of modern society, and the combination is lethal to the planet.

I used to look at the growth curve as unlimited. But the fertility rate has declined since 1990. And then with the outlook due to global warming, I have finally taken on a new perspective. A finite one. Everything is changed now. We no longer will have the ability to grow as we have. The future of the human race is now on an altered course.

There are two sides to this kind of discussion. One is the horror which growth has brought us. And the results of that are just coming to fruition. I have spent many years pondering this part of the phenomenon. And it's multifaceted and far reaching. BUT, there is another side that, to be fair and honest, one must look at. It is a very difficult world to live in without the aid of modern technology. From steam to nuclear, we have managed to create an easier and healthier life. That is debatable, no doubt. But there is a truth to it. Push a button to have instant heat. That is easier than chopping wood and starting a fire. We cure the agony of illness with drugs. We have instant mass communication.

I only say this because it makes me wonder where it ends. What if the population of the human being is finite? How does knowing that help us to love one another? If we are not an impersonal and ever growing massive organism of beings, but rather a finite group that more resembles a family, then does that not make us closer related? The concept of infinite growth might lead one to ignore the rights of any given one of us, and be more careless about starting wars?

I don't know. I just observe. I see horrors. I see beauty. Perhaps in our attempt to save ourselves, we will all come together in peace.

[Pachamama]

3. Shit....

That's all I can think of saying right now....and cry... :cry:

Human's are their own worst enemies....

[glitch]

4. I don't know if this will help, but when despair hits me I look for people

who are working positively to make change. Rocky Mountain Institute is one of my first stops, http://www.rmi.org/ another is Paul Hawken http://www.paulhawken.com/ he's got some of his speeches online there, very uplifting. The situation is bad, but there is hope.
:grouphug:

[Pachamama]

12. It helps...its just incredible how much beauty and wonder there can be on

this planet, and then to see the ugly and what is being done to our earth, done to its plants, creatures and to humanity itself...When are humans going to wake up?

:hug:

[bananas]

13. "when are humans going to wake up"

I was going to say something about this,
but decided not to bother,
considering this is the E/E forum,
where enlightened discussion is frowned upon.

[glitch]

16. I don't know. People are waking every day, but I don't know when it will

become a genuine paradigm shift. I do think people are deeply hurt by the hurt to their environment so they harden their hearts to keep from feeling the pain. And the abused become the abusers. They'll take longer to wake, but it will be easier for them to wake if there are more of us ready to accept them when they do. So, I concentrate on the path forward for now and hope they'll be ready to listen before it's too late to change.

I also think humans shifted to evolving through ideas rather than waiting for biology and we are participating in an attempt at an paradigm (evolutionary) shift right now. We have to change or we are not going to make it in any way that keeps life joyful, if at all. I don't know if we will make it, but I am backing those of us who are trying to make that shift with all my heart. So I look to the people who are changing for insight and that brings me solace. I try to do what I can personally, and support them in their efforts as well.

I still don't know if we'll make it but at least focusing on the ones actively moving forward allows me to see why I can hope that we might. :hug:

[bananas]

14. Science is poking you with sticks

at least that is what some people in the Science forum believe...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=228x22699#22739

[glitch]

15. I never met anyone I agreed with 100%.

But there is no interesting debate in insults so I ignore them.

Quack quack water off a ducks back. :hi:

[Delphinus]

5. From the article:

Then you dial up Paul Ehrlich, the eminent Stanford University biologist, at his cottage in the mountains of Colorado, where he's been meeting with other scientists. Three decades ago Ehrlich wrote "The Population Bomb," a best-selling jeremiad in which he warned that the Earth's population was expanding much too fast.

Disaster did not arrive precisely as Ehrlich foretold, and he was treated as a doomsayer debunked. Maybe Ehrlich just was too early to the party.

Today Ehrlich sees global warming and population growth, with its attendant pressures on natural resources and demand for oil and gas, as menaces dancing in tango step. "Technically speaking, most scientists I know are scared ," Ehrlich says. "Lovelock and I are doomsayers because I'm afraid we see doom."

The subject of population goes hand-in-hand with Global Climate Change. I think it is very important and we must look at it realistically.

[skids]

6. .

Something about Lovelock and Erlich really brings out the kooks on both sides.

So I am setting up my :popcorn: stand.

[jpak]

7. One of the most stupidly fucked up articles I've read in a while

First we learn that..."Lovelock proposed the theory known as Gaia, which holds that Earth acts like a living organism, a self-regulating system balanced to allow life to flourish."...

...which requires negative biotic climate feedbacks, only to learn now that "(Lovelock) found Gaia trapped in a vicious cycle of positive-feedback loops".

Gee, maybe the Gaia Hypothesis was wrong - and it is. The American Geophysical Union dedicated two Chapman Conferences to this subject and raked Lovelock's hypothesis over the proverbial coals. There is no evidence to support it - period.

Lovelock did indeed invent the electron capture device that allowed chemists to measure halogenated (and other environmental) trace chemicals that other methods could not.

But he did not take "a detector on a ship to Antarctica and proved that man-made chemicals -- CFCs -- were burning a hole in the ozone."

Paul Crutzen, Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland won a Nobel Prize in 1995 for their research linking the photochemistry of CFCs to stratospheric ozone depletion, and J. C. Farman, B. G. Gardiner & J. D. Shanklin of the British Antarctic Survey were the researchers that first measured and reported Antarctic stratospheric ozone depletion - not Lovelock...

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v315/n6016/abs/315207a0.html

and what the fuck is an "arboreal" forest - a forest the swings through the forest canopy??? (I do believe he meant boreal forest though).

and this makes no sense whatsoever "If Mars bore life, bacteria would be obliged to use oxygen to breathe and to deposit their wastes as methane."

Horseshit.

Anaerobic bacteria and archaea thrived in the ancient ocean in the absence of an oxygen atmosphere - and well before the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis. Furthermore, only methanogenic archaea (not bacteria) produce methane - the rest of the anaerobic prokaryotes are not "obliged" to do so...an oxygen atmosphere is not a prerequisite for the origin and evolution of microbial life.

Also, the idea that ecosystems behave like emergent super-organisms was proposed and rejected by ecologists nearly a century ago - and that view has not changed since then...

Clements, F. E. 1916. Plant succession: an analysis of the development of vegetation. Publication Number 242. Carnegie Institute, Washington, DC.

Gleason, H. A. 1917. The structure and development of the plant association. Bull. Torrey Botanical Club 43:463-481.

Whittaker, R.H. 1965. Dominance and diversity in land plant communities. Science 147:250-260.

Levin, S.A. and R. T. Paine. 1974. Disturbance, patch formation, and community structure. Proc. National Acad. Sci, USA 71:2744-2747.

Pickett, S.T.A. and M. L. Cadenasso 1995. Landscape ecology:spatial heterogeneity in ecological systems. Science 269:331-334.

Here's a funny one

"He (Lovelock) came to see Earth as a self-regulating biosphere. The sun has warmed by 25 percent since life appeared, so Earth produced more algae and forests to absorb carbon dioxide, ensuring roughly constant temperatures."

Again there is no evidence to support this. Were there negative biotic feedbacks that prevented the initiation or collapse of recent or ancient glacial periods??? Nope. And there is no evidence that the production and burial of organic carbon has anything to do with the "faint sun paradox".

This was the funniest though..."The neo-Darwinists are just like the very religious," Lovelock says. "They spend all their time defending silly doctrine."

The Theory of Evolution has been tested and tested and tested, time and again, since Darwin first proposed it. Unlike Gaia - which has been falsified as a hypothesis - The Theory of Evolution (Darwinism) has mountains of evidence to support it.

Lovelock is talking out his ass.

Example: "The radiation exclusion zone around Chernobyl is the lushest and most diverse zone of flora and fauna in Eurasia."

Really???

The most lushest and diverse in all of Eurasia????

Don't think so...

http://www.plant-talk.org/Pages/Pfacts8.html

<snip>

The higher plant flora of Eurasia is diverse but species richness is concentrated in a few, mostly tropical or subtropical regions. Six of Norman Myers' 18 'hot-spots' of plant diversity lie in S or SE Asia: the Eastern Himalaya, N Borneo, Peninsular Malaysia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and the Western Ghats of S India.

<snip>

A global maps of terrestrial primary production (i.e.,"lushiness") clearly show that China, Indochina and India have the highest rates of net primary production - not the Ukraine.

Lieth H. (1975) Modelling the primary productivity of the world. pp 237-263. In: H. Lieth and R.H. Whittaker (eds) Primary Productivity of the Biosphere Springer-Verlag NY

Like all Chernobyl apologists, Lovelock bases his belief system on falsehoods and bullshit.

[HereSince1628]

8. I have thought the Gaia hyposthes crap since I encountered it in

a theoretical ecology seminar in grad school.

That isn't to say that there cannot be so-called locally stable points withing the complex matrix of ecological dynamics. That idea is actually reasonable.

[skids]

10. Yeah, a far more likely scenario...

...if there is a level of communal (sub)consciousness in ecosystems at all, would be for there to be more than one representing different local or vertical segments of the biosphere. They wouldn't necessarily agree or get along with each other.

If you make the jump to the assumption that such an organizational structure is necessarily global, you are then in the realm of conjecture where you face the prospect that it isn't limited to the globe and may entangle things elsewhere in the solar system, or galaxy for that matter.

It's just a round-about way to try to put his own words in the mouths of "the gods."

[hatrack]

11. Further proof of the accelerating decay of science journalism

Paging Ms. Garrett, Ms. Laurie Garrett, please pick up the white courtesy telephone!

Hey jpak - look on the bright side. At least they didn't refer to the brachiating forest!

[Odin2005]

18. Oh great, here come the Lovelock bashing brigade.

Lovelock making a few gaffes has nothing to do with the concept of Gaia being correct or not, according to that logic evolution is wrong because Darwin was wrong on a lot of things. :eyes: Oh, and by "neo-darwinists" he's actually means the strict gene selectionists like Dawkins, he wasn't attacking natural selection