Hepatitis disease - James Lovelock: 'The lush, comfortable world we are used to is going rapidly'

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James Lovelock: 'The lush, comfortable world we are used to is going rapidly'

Alan

2006-02-25, 8:44 pm

http://news.independent.co.uk/peopl...ticle343237.ece

In his latest book, the green scientist who dared to cross the Darwinists paints
a bleak picture of Earth's future under the ravages of global warming. But, he
insists, all is not lost for humanity. By Steve Connor
Published: 05 February 2006

James Lovelock insists that he's an optimist, but not when it comes to the
future of our planet. We have passed the point of no return, says the scientist
who invented the concept of the Earth as a planetary "super-organism" and who
impishly named it after the ancient Greek goddess Gaia. We have reached a point
where civilisation itself is threatened. Life as we know it will never be the
same, he warns, and we have no one to blame but our own ignorance and greed.

Lovelock does not normally do pessimism. He has in the past dismissed fears over
chemicals in the environment and nuclear power as irrational, and was among
those who believed that the Earth is a far more resilient place than
eco-warriors imagined. But several things have happened in recent years to
change his view. Rather than accommodating human pillage of the environment, the
Earth is showing signs of swinging in the opposite direction. Global warming has
triggered a vicious cycle of further warming, which is accelerating us towards
environmental ruin.

Lovelock's dire warnings of global warming are articulated in his latest book,
The Revenge of Gaia. In it he paints a gloomy picture of a future where the
polar ice caps have melted, rising seas have inundated the major cities of the
world, vast areas of land are reduced to uninhabitable deserts and humanity ekes
out a precarious living around a semi-tropical Arctic basin.

"I'm not really saying there is no hope," he insists. "My message is that the
lush, comfortable world we are used to is going rapidly and will soon be gone
completely. But it doesn't mean the end of everything. It means that
civilisation and living things will have to make the most of it in those parts
of the world that are still habitable."

This depressing Blade Runner scenario from one of the world's leading green
gurus is all the more surprising given his intellectual pedigree. He has been a
fellow of the Royal Society since 1974, won a clutch of major science prizes,
written hundreds of scientific papers and been voted one of the world's top 100
global thinkers. Not bad for a scientist who is the rarest of academics - a
truly independent researcher who gave up his day job 46 years ago when he
resigned from the Medical Research Council to go freelance.

"I was 40 at the time and it was a huge decision," he says. "There was no golden
handshake. I had four kids and one of them was mentally handicapped and my wife
was starting to show symptoms of multiple sclerosis. Of all the times to go
independent, it was probably the worst."

Nearly five decades later, at the age of 86, Lovelock's apparent moment of
madness has been vindicated. He lives with his second wife, Sandy, in an idyllic
old mill on the border of Cornwall and Devon. His study is lined with books and
home-made instruments - his most famous invention was a highly sensitive
electron-capture detector, which enabled scientists to link the gases in aerosol
sprays to the destruction of the ozone hole. (It also made millions of dollars
for the manufacturers, Hewlett-Packard, but the patent royalties did not come
his way.)

His first big consultancy was in the 1960s with Nasa, which was interested in
sending space probes to Mars. "It was working for them on looking for life on
Mars that made me realise what a remarkable planet the Earth is," Lovelock
recalls. His "eureka" moment came in 1965, when he was in a room with the
astronomer Carl Sagan at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. In
walked a colleague clutching an armful of data on the infrared analysis of the
atmospheres of Mars and Venus. It was clear that these two planets were in
effect dead, with unchanging atmospheres containing little more than carbon
dioxide and a few trace gases in a state of static equilibrium. In contrast, the
Earth's atmosphere seemed dynamic and alive.

"I began to think - but look at the Earth. What an extraordinary atmosphere,
which is so far from equilibrium, yet something is keeping it constant,"
Lovelock says. "Then it dawned on me, after Carl Sagan made a remark about how
the sun was cooler in the past, that perhaps life was helping to keep the Earth
constant. So the whole idea of Gaia formed."

He began to think about how life interacts with the non-living, geophysical part
of the Earth to make conditions suitable for living organisms. The idea was like
the homeostasis of animal physiology, the genetically programmed mechanism for
keeping the inner environment of the body constant. The Earth could be likened
to a super-organism with its own regulatory feedback mechanisms that ensure the
constancy of such things as surface temperature, atmospheric composition and
ocean salinity.

Lovelock called this "a cybernetic system with homeostatic tendencies, as
detected by chemical anomalies in the Earth's atmosphere". Understandably he
wanted a snappier name and his then neighbour, the author William Golding,
suggested Gaia, the Earth goddess. Gaia was an instant, if provocative, hit.

Lovelock was not suggesting that Gaia was under some kind of conscious control,
or even mysteriously programmed in some way to keep life in balance - which is
the case with animal physiology. But that did not stop New Age mystics adopting
the idea as scientific proof that "Mother Earth" really was alive and in cosmic
harmony, much to Lovelock's chagrin.

Far more serious for him was the criticism of the neo-Darwinists, who could not
see how natural selection could possibly bring about a planetary-scale control
mechanism that appeared to be designed for life's benefit. The zoologist Richard
Dawkins was particularly scathing, dismissing Gaia as bad poetic science.

"There is no way that evolution by natural selection can lead to altruism on a
global scale," Dawkins wrote in 1982.

Lovelock admits that he was taken aback by the ferocity of the attacks, although
he now seems more sanguine. "Richard's bark is worse than his bite," he says. "I
know him quite well and we've always got on reasonably. We behave scientifically
like a pair of barristers - slagging each other off to win the case for our
clients. I'm very grateful for his criticism."

The problem for the Darwinists is that Gaia invokes the idea of altruism and
"group selection", rather than the selfish-gene concept made famous by Dawkins.

In 1995, Lovelock began a dialogue with the Darwinists and collaborated with
Bill Hamilton, a man whom Dawkins once described as perhaps the greatest
Darwinist since Darwin. But Hamilton was still at a loss to explain how Gaia
could have arisen by natural selection.

Gaia has finally come of age. Now the burning issue is whether the age of humans
can come to live with Gaia.

LIFE AND TIMES

FAMILY: Born in 1919 in Brixton, London. His mother and father came from modest
backgrounds but ran an art gallery in their spare time. Their son, however,
preferred the science section of the local library and going on visits to the
Science Museum in South Kensington. Lovelock had four children by his first
wife. Now lives with his second wife, Sandy, in a converted mill in Cornwall.

EDUCATION: Chemistry degree from Manchester University.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: in 1940s and 1950s, worked for the National Institute for
Medical Research in Mill Hill, London. His permanent post with the Medical
Reseach Council involved working on cryopreservation - freezing and reviving
organisms. Developed microwave heater, which he used to warm up his lunch, but
failed to patent the idea. In 1959, while on sabbatical at Yale University,
Lovelock developed the electron capture detector, which was patented by the US
government with patent royalites worth $20m going to the US government.
Abandoned paid job to go freelance and was invited to join Nasa in 1961. In
1965, while working with Nasa looking for life on Mars, Lovelock formulated the
Earth-systems concept he called Gaia. In 1972 he published a seminal paper on
Gaia co-authored with American microbiologist Lynn Margulis. Two years later he
was elected to the Royal Society. In 1996 Lovelock won the Volvo Environment
Prize and in 1997 the Blue Planet Prize.

http://news.independent.co.uk/peopl...ticle343237.ece

Alan

"Can't you see we're still here,
Can't you see we're still here,
Singing loud; Singing clear,
We shall not go under,
We're still here."

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