[HN Gopher] James Lovelock has died
___________________________________________________________________
James Lovelock has died
Author : edward
Score : 253 points
Date : 2022-07-27 14:19 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| adg001 wrote:
| We all owe him and Margulis so much. A true giant, whose ideas
| will live even longer than himself. RIP.
| drcongo wrote:
| I knew very little about him sadly, the wikipedia page is
| fascinating.
| dang wrote:
| (We changed the url from
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock - see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32253402)
| pomatic wrote:
| I met had the good fortune to work environs his son, Andrew, when
| I was around 18. He introduced me (unintentionally) to his
| father's work, for which I was very grateful.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/bQFAt
| hunglee2 wrote:
| RIP James Lovelock. A true radical centrist, he was not the New
| Age person people mistakenly believed him and Gaia theory to be
| (e.g. he was a proponent of nuclear energy), but equally he was
| an enemy of many conservative scientists.
| culi wrote:
| "Gaia" is often seen as a really unfortunate name for an
| actually well-thought out scientific theory. However, this was
| exactly Lovelock's point and why he decided to go with a name
| like that. He and Lynn Margulis WANTED to highlight and stand
| against the cultural biases of science as an institution.
|
| Though it should be noted there's growing scientific support
| for the theory regardless
|
| https://aeon.co/essays/the-gaia-hypothesis-reimagined-by-one...
| timst4 wrote:
| Fascinating that his Gaia hypothesis came after his research with
| Royal Dutch Shell. It's amazing how early we knew fossil fuels
| were destabilizing our biosphere.
|
| This man knew we were heading towards an uninhabitable world and
| screamed at the top of his lungs, but corporate growth was more
| important. Persephone, indeed.
|
| He may have walked back his prediction of earth being largely
| uninhabitable by 2050, but I have a feeling he was only slightly
| off. The sad truth is that 50C is coming faster than you realize,
| and this man was crystal clear on the subject in the 1990s.
| iNerdier wrote:
| Persephone? I think you might mean Cassandra, if you're talking
| about the woman who was cursed by Apollo to speak the truth but
| have nobody listen.
| StrictDabbler wrote:
| I'm sure you're right that the commenter meant Cassandra but
| one might also argue that Persephone's curse, that newly
| increased periodic temperature swings will sometimes turn the
| earth barren and useless to us, is relevant to the
| conversation.
| radford-neal wrote:
| skyyler wrote:
| My friend, the person you are replying to was saying that
| daily highs of 50C aren't far off.
|
| Not that average temps will increase by 50C. That would be
| silly.
| radford-neal wrote:
| Hmm... Maybe. Except that temperatures far above 50C have
| been recorded before, including over a century ago. See htt
| ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest_temperature_recorded_o..
| .
| misnome wrote:
| The person you are replying to was saying that daily
| highs of 50C aren't far off.
| jacquesm wrote:
| In a place called 'Furnace Creek Ranch'. Makes you wonder
| about the name.
|
| Really, it was quite clear that the original comment
| wasn't talking about a delta of 50 C and it is quite
| clear that 50 C outside of say Death Valley isn't normal.
| radford-neal wrote:
| Highest recorded temperature in Arkansas was 49C. Maybe
| it will get up to 50C sometime. That wouldn't be
| especially alarming.
| eCa wrote:
| So the Arkansas record was set in 1936. The way I see it,
| it doesn't really matter if Arkansas ever beats that
| record, but rather what happens if it hits 48C five days
| per year.
|
| (I say that as my hometown recently beat it's highest
| ever record by approx 1C.)
| ChrisClark wrote:
| I feel that you've mistaken being deliberately obtuse for
| clever rhetoric.
| skyyler wrote:
| You are willfully missing the point.
|
| Did you not hear about the heatwave in Europe last week?
| 50C is coming to places that have never had temps that
| high.
| derac wrote:
| They surely mean temperatures of 50C not an increase,
| although it's ambiguously stated.
| [deleted]
| culi wrote:
| What's wild to me is how consistently science has chosen to be
| politically palatable rather than come off as "alarmist".
|
| Like in the original 1.5C report. We didn't have good data on
| permafrost melting and how much methane that would release.
| Permafrost melting has been hypothesized as possibly one of the
| biggest contributors to a runaway effect. But they just
| straight up decided to ignore the entire effect
|
| That's just one of the many decisions made that makes the 1.5C
| report wildly more optimistic than reality.
|
| It's no wonder scientists like Lovelock who were very familiar
| with this research were some of the most likely to point out
| that science is a political institution with its own biases and
| incentives
| svnt wrote:
| If the choice was to be invited to participate in the
| conversation or not, wouldn't you tone down your public
| statements in order to have a hope of influencing policy?
|
| I'm not saying it's the right strategy now, but premature
| hyperbole just slows down adoption, if it does anything at
| all.
| groby_b wrote:
| The answer is "no".
|
| If the system refuses to face truth, you will need to
| circumvent the system. The opposite of that gives us
| institutions that are continually disseminating lies, in
| the process undermining trust in institutions.
|
| Truth doesn't get "invited to conversations". It is always
| part of it, and the choice is just spoken or unspoken.
| anthony_d wrote:
| > If the system refuses to face truth, you will need to
| circumvent the system.
|
| That is a terrifying sentence. It can be used to justify
| anything while denying accountability. There's always the
| possibility (probability) that you are wrong about what
| is "the truth."
| culi wrote:
| I completely agree with you but I don't really think it's
| relevant to this situation. The situation is not a
| decision between 2 different possible truths. It's a
| decision to sweep something under the rug. Something that
| we know will have an effect, we just don't know the
| magnitude of it. When faced with ambiguity we should take
| a best guess (even if it's a "conservative" guess) not
| ignore everything because its more politically convenient
|
| The "best guess" was clearly not taken here
| carapace wrote:
| Right, that's why empiricism and the scientific method
| are so important. This is in the context of scientists
| being "invited to participate in the conversation or
| not", eh?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > If the choice was to be invited to participate in the
| conversation or not, wouldn't you tone down your public
| statements in order to have a hope of influencing policy?
|
| An interesting bind is called "The Critics' Dilemma", best
| understood through a (Chinese) story.
|
| One day some farmers see an invading army coming over the
| hill. They rush into the city to tell the emperor.
| "Emperor, a huge army is approaching, we're surely doomed!"
| Not wanting to have the whole city panic the emperor has
| the men executed to silence them. Invaders enter the city
| and slaughter all the imperial soldiers.
|
| Many years later two farmers are watching the horizon when
| they see an army gathering. "Quickly, let's warn the
| citizens" says one. "No. Remember the story of what
| happened to our grandfathers." says the other. So they
| return to the city and tell the emperor, "We saw a few
| bandits gathered by the woods". The emperors soldiers go to
| confront them and are all killed, The city is raided again.
|
| The dilemma is "Tell them too much and they will deny you
| out of fear. Tell them too little and they will be
| unprepared."
|
| This applies, along with the Cassandra effect, right to the
| heart of all intelligent critique. People are happy to die
| from ignorance so long as you don't upset them with
| cognitive dissonance. Later, when they are in imminent
| peril, they'll blame you for not speaking up sooner.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| The story doesn't really make sense, wouldn't the more
| distant outposts easily confirm if a huge army is
| amassing nearby?
| Mtinie wrote:
| Not if the distant outposts have already succumbed to the
| advancing army...and all of those who came in from the
| field to warn the Emperor have previously been silenced.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| What so you mean 50C is coming?
|
| 50 degrees C of warming?
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| No, obviously it means high temperatures of 50C will become
| reality even in urban areas, not just in deserts.
| DFHippie wrote:
| I think they mean the temperature spiking to 50C, instead of
| ~40C, in the summer.
| burkaman wrote:
| > It's amazing how early we knew fossil fuels were
| destabilizing our biosphere.
|
| For those who don't know, the US government had a pretty
| complete understanding of the issue in the 60s.
|
| https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3227654-PSAC-1965-Re...
|
| https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/virtuallibr...
| beastman82 wrote:
| > Dr. Lovelock caused a sensation in 2004 when he pronounced
| nuclear energy the only realistic alternative to fossil fuels
| that has the capacity to fulfill the large-scale energy needs of
| humanity while reducing greenhouse emissions.
| getpost wrote:
| By coincidence, I listened to this 2012 biographical interview
| only a few days ago. This is a good summary of his life's work.
| He was unbelievably lucid at age 94, and more recently.
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01h666h
| WebbWeaver wrote:
| We're losing people who have no true replacement and James
| Lovelock is one of those people. According to the wikipedia
| article he was pro nuclear and fracking as an environmentalist. I
| think largely natural gas and fracking is a relative success
| where regulation are followed and cost cutting does not occur.
| Some of the capability learned and gained in that area can be
| applied for a lot of useful things in the future.
|
| >Retreat, in his view, means it's time to start talking about
| changing where we live and how we get our food; about making
| plans for the migration of millions of people from low-lying
| regions like Bangladesh into Europe; about admitting that New
| Orleans is a goner and moving the people to cities better
| positioned for the future.
|
| We definitely need to consider moving towards sustainability much
| more quickly. CO2 burden related to climate and daily life should
| be looked at. Something needs to happen to save the bayou around
| New Orleans.
| I_complete_me wrote:
| I wish to pay my respects to this great intellect and person as I
| don't know where else to do it. Rest in peace.
| birriel wrote:
| TIL: The birthday effect. RIP
| _sigma wrote:
| A news release
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/27/james-lo...
| [deleted]
| pfdietz wrote:
| https://medium.com/science-and-philosophy/the-gaia-hypothese...
| AJ007 wrote:
| Novacene was a little more optimistic than this obituary ended.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| Yes definitely he made waves and did interviews when it came
| out in 2019 and was very interested in how Artificial
| Intelligence could end up solving so many of the worlds
| problems -- forget the Anthropocene already here comes the
| Novacene and it's going to be amazing!
| hsnewman wrote:
| Life reproduces, how can the earth?
| [deleted]
| wwarner wrote:
| I suppose that if we sent an ark to an Earthlike planet in
| another star system that would count as reproduction. Not that
| it's going to happen...
| nmeagent wrote:
| "Flying Mother Nature's silver seed to a new home in the
| sun..."
| Darmody wrote:
| I'm not a fan of his Gaia theory but many years May his books
| made me change my mind about nuclear energy.
|
| May he rest in peace.
| zahma wrote:
| Why aren't you a fan of the Gaia Theory? It isn't really much
| of a theory. The Earth adapts to our foolishness and outsized
| impact. It will survive in some condition or another even if
| life as we know it is extinct.
| retrac wrote:
| > The Earth adapts
|
| This right here is where I get tripped up. Let's imagine we
| find out that Mars has no life, and we start mining it in the
| future. Would it also be fair to say that "Mars adapts" to
| that? If so, what does "adapt" really mean here? Does a rock
| adapt to being broken up?
|
| So I figure you mean life on the Earth (as we know it, or
| not). Adapt in the sense of evolution. Living systems adapt
| by replicating, varying, and having some of the variations
| being selected against, among other mechanisms. If the Earth
| is a single meta-organism or something like that, it has
| never been selected against, has never replicated, and has a
| population of one. How much of ordinary biology translates to
| an organism that strange?
|
| I guess it often seems like a metaphor being conflated with a
| theory, to me.
| munch117 wrote:
| In the Gaia book, Lovelock talks at length about all these
| challenges that life on earth has met. All these chances
| the earth had to become lifeless and barren, or at least
| barren of intelligent life.
|
| When I read it, I came to a conclusion that's very
| different from Lovelock's. I saw in it the answer to the
| Fermi paradox: The world keeps throwing challenges at life,
| and sooner or later life fails to address them, and dies
| out. We're only here to talk about it because we are among
| the lucky few who got this far (the anthropic principle).
|
| It's a pretty depressing conclusion, because we are no more
| likely to meet the next challenge successfully, just
| because we lucked out in the past. And there will be a next
| one, that's essentially the message of the Gaia book, the
| challenges just keep coming.
|
| I can understand that people prefer instead to delude
| themselves with magical thinking about a benevolent earth-
| organism.
| gilleain wrote:
| From an interview I read a couple of years ago, this part
| stuck out (paraphrased, from memory).
|
| The interviewer asked something like "Are you optimistic
| about human survival?" and Lovelock's reply was, roughly
| - "Oh yes, I am optimistic. I mean, there might be a
| bottleneck of the population down to a few thousands, but
| long term we will survive".
|
| Talk about the large-scale view.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Surely "humans" are very unlikely to survive long term
| precisely because of evolution. Intelligent life probably
| will. But it might need to reboot from closer to the soup
| again.
| DennisP wrote:
| Lovelock ultimately agreed with you. From The Guardian:
|
| > Lovelock "has warned that the biosphere is dying due to
| human action. He said two years ago that the biosphere is
| in the last 1% of its life."
|
| https://archive.ph/I3dog
| robocat wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32250694#32254924
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| If you've never seen Dana Meadows videos on complex
| ecological system theory [1] you are missing a huge insight
| into modernity.
|
| When you have massive interlocking systems of convection,
| atmospheric thermodynamics, tectonics, ocean currents and
| winds, all in concert through feedback loops, regulators,
| non-linear compression and expansion functions,
| multipliers, hysteresis and tipping points, you don't need
| to ascribe sentience, evolution or even biology to see the
| sum as "living".
|
| Push here. it reacts there.
|
| In the simplest analysis, overpopulation of "too
| successful" species leads to pandemics that wipe them out.
| Hardly a stretched metaphor.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuIoego-xVc
| tcgv wrote:
| I find the debate over nuclear energy an interesting topic.
| From the information and evidence provided by the
| Environmentalists for Nuclear [1], from which Loelock was a
| member, I find it hard to understand why there's still so much
| opposition to nuclear energy. I'm not sure if I'm missing
| something (I'm open minded for valid arguments/evidence on
| either side) or if it's just that lobby and disinformation
| campaigns to preserve the status quo in favor of fossil fuel
| companies are really effective in turning the masses against
| nuclear energy (which would be very sad with respect to our
| potential to evolve as a civilization).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmentalists_for_Nuclear
| dane-pgp wrote:
| I think one basic argument against nuclear is that it can't
| produce energy as cheaply as renewables (and nuclear energy
| is getting more expensive while renewables are getting
| cheaper).
|
| If we had decided to invest heavily in nuclear 20 years ago,
| we might not be in the mess we're in now, but it's probably
| too late for nuclear to help now. Look at Flamanville unit 3,
| for example. They started building it in 2007, and it still
| isn't producing power (in fact just this year they announced
| more delays to its start date).
|
| Even if we abandoned all concerns about where they were
| built, and started building a load of them today, they
| probably wouldn't all be ready until after 2040 because there
| probably isn't enough spare capacity in skilled nuclear
| engineers to parallelise their production. By that time,
| batteries and power-to-gas could be cheaply supplying
| reliable energy to a grid that's over-provisioned with
| renewables, without having to worry about storing radioactive
| waste for thousands of years or proliferation risks.
| StillBored wrote:
| Except we have been saying the same thing for 20-30 years.
| And when you actually look at the costs of wind/solar
| (although maybe solar thermal might be useful, but for
| various reasons its been abandoned) they aren't as cheap as
| the cost to install them because they have external costs
| which never get accounted for. Starting with the fact that
| the cheapest way to build them is to build a KW of
| wind/solar and match it with a KW of natural gas.
|
| When you start looking at overbuilding them to supply some
| kind of energy storage, or to meet even their nameplate
| capacity 100% of the time on average they suddenly become a
| lot more expensive. I posted elsewhere (and was downvoted)
| for posting one of the many studies of how much it actually
| costs to build a KW of energy using particular technologies
| in various countries, and it turns out that those numbers,
| can be summarized as: Nuke plants are expensive because we
| want them to be, they aren't as expensive in countries
| (South Korea, China, etc) where random people don't (or
| cant) sue to stop construction even when the reactors are
| the exact same technology being proposed in the US/Europe
| (because they parent company doing the design and
| construction is frequently US/European)
|
| Followed by, wind farm's aren't cheap, and the prices only
| go up when you start talking about offshore and on the tops
| of mountain ranges.
|
| So, its no surprise that people who just want cheap energy
| will continue to pick carbon sources.
|
| Some people look at this differently, There are fundamental
| laws around energy density which tend to inform the
| economics (aka dig a ton a uranium and process it, or dig
| 10T to extract Neodymium, Lithium, etc and then built
| something that has 1/1000000th the energy density).
|
| So, one can claim wind/solar are cheaper and getting
| cheaper, but its like comparing apples to oranges, there is
| a reason places like TX, which have a world leading level
| of wind installed, also have some of the dirtiest power
| around.
|
| Sorta the computer equivalent of building ones datacenter
| around the raw price/perf of a given CPU/SoC, while
| ignoring every other variable. Then wondering why the HW
| ends up costing more per unit perf (cause maybe the
| motherboards cost more) and why the energy bill is eating
| your lunch (cause the cores are running at some extreme
| clock rate, and burning power).
|
| Finally, to summarize, you simply cannot hand wave the
| largest problem with wind/solar away, which is the fact
| that they are not on demand dispatchable. To get reliable
| power of of them easily adds a good 10x cost multiplier or
| more if your not willing to use a carbon source as a
| backup. So, basically standing around yelling wind and
| solar, is the same as asking for more carbon. And using
| wind+solar+NG is cleaner than just NG along, but it
| actually costs just as much as Nukes built in countries
| without regulatory bodies setup to stop the construction of
| Nuke plants. Despite the fact that even plants built 50
| years ago are the safest form of energy production in
| existence (safer than wind for sure) when measured by
| deaths per MWh.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| > Except we have been saying the same thing for 20-30
| years
|
| We have. Which is why we started building out solar and
| wind 30 years ago. And now we're at 90% renewable and
| haven't used coal for 6 years.
|
| But that's us, not you. How's the nuclear approach going?
| Built anything yet?
| StillBored wrote:
| Who has 90% renewable that isn't majority Hydro?
| antod wrote:
| _> Who has 90% renewable..._
|
| I know! I know! Pick me!
|
| _>...that isn 't majority Hydro?_
|
| oh... never mind
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Maybe Scotland?
|
| "A total of 97.4% of gross energy consumption came from
| renewables, a rise of 8% on the year before."
|
| "Of the Scottish Government's renewable electricity
| target for 2015-2020, onshore wind accounted for 60.3% of
| the total, offshore wind 10.7%, and renewable hydro
| 18.1%, with other sources making up 8.3%."
|
| https://www.thenational.scot/news/19499830.scotland-top-
| thre...
| pfdietz wrote:
| > And when you actually look at the costs of wind/solar
| (although maybe solar thermal might be useful, but for
| various reasons its been abandoned) they aren't as cheap
| as the cost to install them because they have external
| costs which never get accounted for.
|
| They do get accounted for. One can explicitly account for
| them by running simulations, using actual weather data,
| to see how much of those external things would be needed.
|
| If you do that, you discover nuclear isn't going to be
| cheaper in most places now. That natural gas is currently
| being used to fill in around renewables does not
| challenge this point.
| StillBored wrote:
| Please provide data. I live in TX, I see how much it
| costs, and I see what happens when the wind is blowing at
| 8% of nameplate.
|
| TX for all the shit ERCOT gets, is very open (a google
| search will give you a bunch of data dashboards), very
| unregulated and capitalist driven power grid.
|
| The weather is incredibly hard to predict and no one
| wants to take worse case projections against wind,
| because they don't look pretty. Instead in the case of
| ERCOT when the weather isn't cooperative, we get calls to
| conserve, and when that fails rolling blackouts. And we
| also get financial destabilization which leads the
| reliable operators to skip out on maintenance and things
| like weatherization.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Safe nuclear is expensive and humans are cheap.
| robocat wrote:
| > maybe solar thermal might be useful
|
| https://www.e-education.psu.edu/eme811/node/682 "Minus
| field losses, the typical average overall efficiency of
| solar trough thermal plants is around 15-20%". Your first
| sentence has an implicit contradiction! PV has efficiency
| of say 20%. I get that you are thinking about thermal
| storage, but the only sensible argument is overall
| economic costs, which you seem to be explicitly arguing
| against.
|
| > I posted elsewhere (and was downvoted) for posting one
| of the many studies
|
| If you have links explaining your position, I think
| always add them.
|
| I strongly suspect you are mistaken in your reasoning
| about why you are getting downvoted. I'm not sure how to
| help you correctly guess why people downvote (sometimes
| their reasons are opaque), but I can tell you my own in
| this case:
|
| I think your core point is interesting. However overall
| your comment across to me as waffling and mixing in
| opinionated misinformation and fact. Perhaps make one
| major point, with a modicum of supporting information.
| Avoid random tangents. Your comment here in particular
| appears to me to be mish-mashing implicit economic
| arguments with other issues.
| StillBored wrote:
| Less efficient yes in absolute production, but solves the
| majority of the storage problem. Which is a huge problem,
| one that most people are ignoring, and many of the
| storage solutions lower PV efficiency as much or more.
|
| Here are a couple links from my comment history, the
| first is a comparison of KW costs, and the second is an
| overview of what the Chinese are doing.
|
| https://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11132930/nuclear-power-
| costs-u... https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-
| library/country-pr...
|
| I've repeatedly posted hard facts on this board and few
| people bother to do much research at all, overwhelmingly
| posting puff pieces and data which is obviously wrong
| (aka nameplate install/$, average capacity factors
| (because average doesn't tell you the worse case, which
| is required for a reliable grid)) and a bunch of other
| things that get hand waved away by "renewable"
| supporters, like the fact that in most places with a lot
| of "renewables" its actually 50+ year old hydro and not
| wind/solar providing the energy. Or that places with a
| lot of wind/solar are basically green washing their
| natural gas usage (like Germans are suddenly
| discovering).
|
| edit: And to be clear, did you down vote the parent
| comment too, which states as fact something that is
| provably wrong (that nukes are more expensive than
| wind/solar, note the vox article which points out they
| were cheaper than natural gas plants at one point.), but
| commonly accepted, or did you let your own personal bias
| decide the misinformation he was repeating sounded
| correct?
| pfsalter wrote:
| I think it's mostly down to Chernobyl and the cold war.
| Speaking to people in their 60's (anecdotally) they seem to
| overestimate the risks of nuclear power and underestimate
| climate change. This is probably because there's such strong
| visual evidence for problems with the former.
|
| I'd also say that fossil fuels are very simple to understand;
| burn thing, generate power. Nuclear is much more 'magic'. And
| I don't doubt that the fossil fuel lobby is drastically
| larger than the nuclear power one, just so much more money in
| it
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| My mother was _huge_ fan of his, and of his Gaia hypothesis.
|
| She even traveled to the UK, last century, as a sort of
| "pilgrimage," and met with him.
| techdragon wrote:
| Despite everything else he accomplished in his quite storied
| professional career as one of the last independent scientists...
| Including his work on the Viking mars landers!
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock
|
| To me he will always be the man who invented his own microwave to
| thaw frozen hamsters. The whole story is worth a watch since Tom
| Scott does an admirable job of explaining how he went digging up
| a weird fact expecting to debunk it only to wind up recording an
| amazing interview with James Lovelock
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tdiKTSdE9Y but if you're
| impatient the interview with lovelock about cryopreserved
| hamsters and his "microwave" starts here
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tdiKTSdE9Y#t=5m42s
| tombh wrote:
| That is such a genuinely wonderful video <3
| gnatman wrote:
| Charmed and amazed by how lucid and lively he is recounting
| this story at 101 years old!
| bambax wrote:
| This Tom Scott's video from last year about microwave ovens
| features a nice interview with Lovelock:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tdiKTSdE9Y
| asplake wrote:
| Wow, read Gaia (1979) in my teens, soon after it came out,
| triggered I think by a Horizon programme (BBC science series,
| still going-ish). Definitely made an impression.
| digitalsankhara wrote:
| Likewise. Lovelock shaped my approach to science as he was an
| independent worker in his field and that resonated with me when
| I read for my own science degree. I find Gaia compelling and
| beautiful. Sad day. BBC documentary;
|
| https://youtu.be/QqwZJDEZ9Ng
| gwern wrote:
| > His family confirmed the death in a statement on Twitter,
| saying that until six months ago he "was still able to walk along
| the coast near his home in Dorset and take part in interviews,
| but his health deteriorated after a bad fall earlier this year."
|
| Another death from elder falling, like Freeman Dyson.
| jl6 wrote:
| I have never understood what the central point of the Gaia
| hypothesis is. Wikipedia summarizes as:
|
| "... living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings
| on Earth to form a synergistic and self-regulating, complex
| system that helps to maintain and perpetuate the conditions for
| life on the planet."
|
| How should we understand something like the Great Oxygenation
| Event in the light of this theory? The planet became somewhat
| uninhabitable for many organisms of that era, but it also
| unlocked a whole new generation of oxygen-using organisms. Is
| that supposed to be an example of perpetuating conditions for
| life on the planet?
|
| Life, and its environment, affect each other in a complex two-way
| flow of influence. Yes, OK, that seems evident, but what about
| this is self-regulating? Surely the history of the planet is
| replete with mass extinctions and changing conditions that really
| don't seem to be part of any greater system than natural
| selection and the buildup/drawdown of biogenic minerals.
|
| Where is the homeostasis? Everything is changing, all the time.
|
| What does the theory allow us to predict?
| sampo wrote:
| > I have never understood what the central point of the Gaia
| hypothesis is.
|
| Daisyworld is a very simple thought example, but also a
| computer simulation, of emergent planetary homeostasis:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisyworld
|
| Organisms modify their immediate microenvironment to their
| benefit. Lovelock points out that these modification mechanisms
| can regulate the planet-scale macroenvironment, as well.
| perrygeo wrote:
| See also the "Medea Hypothesis" which proposes that organisms
| are generally suicidal at a population scale, destroying
| themselves and their own environment if left unconstrained.
|
| Life's historical record alternates between extinction events
| and long periods of species-building. So in some ways we can
| see the Gaia and Medea tendencies as an cyclic pattern but not
| quite "homeostasis".
|
| The important part is that "life begets life" but occasionally
| takes it away too. We tend to assume that complex life forms
| like mammals are inevitable but it's quite amazing we exist at
| all really, considering the thousands of other species and
| complex ecological support systems we require to survive. Break
| down that web of life and the earth would be dominated by
| bacteria and slime mold.
| carapace wrote:
| > How should we understand something like the Great Oxygenation
| Event in the light of this theory?
|
| The ancient war between anaerobic and aerobic factions is not
| over. Humans are a sophisticated biological weapon designed by
| the anaerobes to trigger the "clathrate gun" and return Earth
| to a non-oxygen-rich regime.
|
| It's a very clever plan. We work faster than the aerobes can
| react, in geological/evolutionary time were are an explosion.
|
| > what about this is self-regulating?
|
| The answer to that question is in Lovelock's book. If you don't
| want to read the whole thing you can start with Daisyworld:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisyworld
|
| > Where is the homeostasis?
|
| Oxygen levels. The first clue that led to the Gaia Hypothesis
| was, IIRC, that the atmosphere of the Earth is not in chemical
| equilibrium.
|
| > What does the theory allow us to predict?
|
| Well, for one thing, if we find a planet that has a lot of
| oxygen in its atmosphere that it might have life on it.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Let me condense it for you: "we're all in this together".
| jkmcf wrote:
| "Remember I'm pullin' for ya"
|
| And, keep your stick on the ice.
| jl6 wrote:
| I actually don't have much of an issue with the New Age
| version of the theory. We are indeed all in this together.
| But this is the version of the theory which Gaia proponents
| have typically insisted they are not pushing.
| [deleted]
| zahma wrote:
| The New York Times has a nice obituary on his life.[1] There are
| two things that I would like to celebrate from his lifetime of
| innovation.
|
| The Gaia Theory is a beautiful framework to understand humanity's
| outsized impact on the Earth and all of its lifeforms from fungi
| to insects to the trees and the critters who spend a lifetime in
| their canopies. The Earth will survive the spasmodic calamity of
| our species, even if we don't. It doesn't matter if you are the
| most cynical technologist or an optimist trying to change what
| you can -- that theory puts us in our place; we are so minuscule
| against the backdrop of planet, the solar system, the universe.
| Lovelock noticed that disproportionality a lot sooner than most.
|
| The other important discovery he made was electron capture
| detector, which is a device capable of detecting man-made toxic
| chemicals in the wild. When I read Silent Spring and the
| testament to the frightening effects of DDT, it changed my life.
| Without that invention, Silent Spring might not have been
| written. Absolutely transformative for me.
|
| 1-https://archive.ph/bQFAt
| DennisP wrote:
| > The Earth will survive the spasmodic calamity of our species,
| even if we don't.
|
| Lovelock himself was less sanguine. According to the Guardian's
| obituary, Lovelock "has warned that the biosphere is dying due
| to human action. He said two years ago that the biosphere is in
| the last 1% of its life."
|
| https://archive.ph/I3dog
| sampo wrote:
| > "has warned that the biosphere is dying due to human
| action. He said two years ago that the biosphere is in the
| last 1% of its life."
|
| Having read many of his books, these are two different
| things. Biosphere is about 4 billion years old, so the last
| 1% is still 40 million years. This is inevitable, as the Sun
| grows warmer, eventually planet Earth gets too warm for life
| as well. But this death-in-40-million-years timescale is
| unrelated to human action.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| The "biosphere" will be fine. It's been through much worse.
|
| It's the humans that are screwed.
| dang wrote:
| Actually, let's switch to that from
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock.
|
| Wikipedia pages usually aren't as good for HN submission as
| more specific in-depth articles, and you're right, this is a
| nice one.
| balentio wrote:
| This guy is one of those iconoclastic fellows who people
| partially agree with on one point, and completely disagree with
| on another. It's pretty hard to reconcile nuclear energy with the
| idea that the planet self-regulates since nuclear energy screws
| most of those self-regulatory mechanisms up and seems to require
| vast sums of time to undo.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Wildlife wise the area around Chernobyl isn't doing that bad
| after one of the worst nuclear disaster we could imagine. For
| longer lived lifeforms like humans it's much more problematic,
| but shorter lived creatures experience less decay events and
| are less effected. The hottest nuclides decay in the range of
| decades. The long lived stuff decays much more slowly, hence is
| less dangerous.
| balentio wrote:
| <The long lived stuff decays much more slowly, hence is less
| dangerous.>
|
| Unless you are human.
| wiredearp wrote:
| What natural mechanism do you belive nuclear energy to
| influence?
| balentio wrote:
| Radioactivity--particularly waste/water.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| That's fine you think that -- links?
| balentio wrote:
| https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2020/05/22/fukushi
| mas...
| samstave wrote:
| An impressive mind.
|
| I love the stories of children of adversity that rise to
| greatness.
|
| His father was illiterate. his mother, while educated, worked at
| a pickle factory. Quick, name the nearest pickle factory to your
| village!
|
| ---
|
| The Gaia Revelation is something that Humans should be throwing
| every resource at
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