James Lovelock, Creator of Gaia Hypothesis, Dies on 103rd Birthday (theguardian.com) 52
James Lovelock, the creator of the Gaia hypothesis, has died on his 103rd birthday. The climate scientist died at home on Tuesday surrounded by loved ones, his family said. From a report: Lovelock, who was one of the UK's most respected independent scientists, had been in good health until six months ago, when he had a bad fall. Known as something of a maverick, he had been dispensing predictions from his one-man laboratory since the mid-1960s, and in his old age he continued to work. His Gaia hypothesis posits that life on Earth is a self-regulating community of organisms interacting with each other and their surroundings. He said two years ago that the biosphere was in the last 1% of its life. [...] Lovelock spent his life advocating for climate measures, starting decades before many others started to take notice of the crisis. By the time he died he did not believe there was hope of avoiding some of the worst impacts of the climate crisis.
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder what was in the birthday present that finally killed him.
Re: (Score:2)
FYI, it's about 7 million years since the last common ancestor of chimps and humans ; humans themselves are only 300 to 600 thousand years old, as a species (depends on if you count Neanderthals as humans, which is a three-whiskey problem).
Re: (Score:2)
I presume this means you are willing to help decrease the world's population by one? Let us know how that works out for you.
Re: (Score:2)
If I told you you could decrease the future population and you wouldn't need to kill anyone, would you believe it?
Re: (Score:1)
Didn't China give up on that plan? Not denouncing the plan, but humanity's apparent desire for expediency at the cost of progeny. I'm speaking to the motives of the patrician class and those plebians they convince to act against their own self-interest. This is not in any way a castigation of the Republican Party of United States of America.
Re: (Score:1)
It's the prisoners dilemma. It's bad for the planet to have many people but better for your nation; compared to other nations. China did abandon it the same way democrats have now abandoned abortion in the US to help boost the population. This is not in any way a castigation of the Democrat party of the United States of America.
Re: (Score:2)
Looks what is happening under their watch. No fight back, they let it happen because they want it.
Re: (Score:2)
I did my part by not shitting out any kids.
Re: (Score:2)
What, you want to support 20 grandkids? Or pay child support on 10 kids?
I, my SO, and my exe's have a total of 4 grandkids. You don't need to know how many times I've been married, take it as given that this is significantly less than replacement rate.
Life doesn't care about humans. (Score:1)
Life will *not* end because of climate change. There will be new winners and losers.
Re: (Score:2)
See Venus for how it could end.
Re: Life doesn't care about humans. (Score:2)
Many times the atmospheric pressure of Earth, and instead of a trace gas, CO2 is the most prevalent by far. On top of all that, it's closer to the sun.
If you want to convince nobody, mention Venus as a possibilty for the future of Earth.
Re: Life doesn't care about humans. (Score:4, Insightful)
Modern modelling suggests Venus was very Earth-like until surprisingly recently. It's unlikely Earth would become Venus-like, but not for any of the reasons you mentioned.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Modern modelling suggests Venus was very Earth-like until surprisingly recently.
Modern modelling also suggested that New York would be underwater by now. It previously suggested we'd be in a new ice age.
Re: (Score:1)
yeah but the loser will be our civilization.
Interesting success rate on those (Score:2)
Earth life being on it’s last 1%? He was himself, but probably not earth life as a whole. Don’t take that wrong - I say that with respect. But old people forget that there are also young people.
He’s spot on about mitigating climate change. We completely whiffed that one as a species.
Re:Interesting success rate on those (Score:4, Insightful)
Not sure that's not as encouraging as you think it is. :-)
Re: (Score:3)
Not sure that's not as encouraging as you think it is. :-)
"Have you MET young people?" :)
Re: (Score:3)
1% means we have 45Ma to go; not too shabby as most estimates for our species go.
Re: (Score:2)
You do realize you are a walking petri dish of microbes? Without them, you can have all the consciousness you like, but you'll still be dead.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
More true than most are able to understand. The interesting successes of Project Stargate, as documented by the Stanford Research Institute physicists who ran the program, documented in Amazon Video's "Third Eye Spies" is convincing evidence that consciousness exists beyond our physical minds and is not merely a chemical side-effect of the brain.
Re: (Score:3)
More true than most are able to understand. The interesting successes of Project Stargate [....] is convincing evidence that consciousness exists beyond our physical minds and is not merely a chemical side-effect of the brain.
The projects of which you speak were debunked and cancelled about 27 years ago. They were unable to show anything at all (except that you can dupe some people, even smart ones, especially when money is involved).
I have no idea about the fictional movie you watched, But you might want to be a little more skeptical about such "proven" things.
Are you sure it wasn't the History Channel? They prove aliens all the time over there, you know.
Re:Interesting success rate on those (Score:4, Interesting)
The hypothesis is that earth's ecosystem creates a self-regulating feedback loop that helps perpetuate the conditions for life.
An oversimplified version of this is the daisyworld scenario, where there's two species of daisies - black and white. The black ones grow better at colder temperatures, the white ones grow better at warmer temperatures. Due to the color difference, the albedo of the planet's surface changes as the temperature changes - when it's cooler, black daisies predominate, increasing the amount of solar radiation absorbed. When it's warmer, the opposite occurs - white daises become dominant, decreasing the amount of solar radiation absorbed.
A still oversimplified, but more realistic example is the hypothesis that if earth's oxygen levels become too high, wildfires become more common, decreasing the number of photosynthesizing plants and thus decreasing oxygen levels. (Oxygen levels may decrease in other ways as well, for example, more fires means more erosion, thus exposing more rocks, some of which may absorb oxygen.)
Amazing fellow and a terrific public speaker (Score:5, Interesting)
I was lucky enough to see James Lovelock speak at The House of Commons in London about a decade ago. It was one of the most captivating and interesting talks Iâ(TM)ve ever attended. One of the worldâ(TM)s most original thinkers. RIP.
It is our failure as a social species (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
In 100 years when the planet is about the same as it is now will you still claim him a genius for claiming the system is at the last 1% of life?
Of course the planet won't be remotely the same. 100 years is a long time.
There were doomsayers 100 years ago too (as there have been all through human history). They could not have imagined even in their wildest dreams how the world looks today, and it's safe to say life is better now than it would have been 100 years ago for pretty much every person on earth.
People making predictions today are very much equally clueless about what life will be like 100 years from now. Most likely some will still
Re:The real failure // DON'T WORRY (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I like science, but science can't predict 100 years from now either,.
It depends on what the area is, the parameters of the prediction. In terms of climate change, it's done remarkably well over the 34 years since Hansen, and still within the margins of error suggested by Arrhenius 106 years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
He said that in 2004, when wind and solar power were not yet cost-reduced. Nuclear was an already established zero-ghg-emissions energy technology.
His key point was that we had to act immediately, and wind, solar, etc were still experimental. There was no reasonable, scalable grid energy storage at the time either, which is needed to stabilize the grid if massively wind
Re: (Score:1)
If wind, solar, and storage is such a good idea today (as opposed to in 2004) then why is Europe in a panic to build nuclear power plants now that Russia is threatening their natural gas supplies? Why would the United Nations produce a report in 2021 that we need more nuclear power plants if wind and solar power technology has improved so much? https://news.un.org/en/story/2... [un.org]
Was there some technology advance in the last few months that the UN didn't take into account in their report? I doubt it. Lovel
This guy is pretty accurate (Score:4, Interesting)
https://www.theguardian.com/th... [theguardian.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I'm no expert, but I thought the general feeling towards nuclear power on slashdot was positive.
From other comments I've seen, the initial massive cost and long startup time goes a long way towards killing nuclear power, because in many cases we need it yesterday. And of course it's political poison.
Good Fucking Run, Jimmy! (Score:2)
May we all live so long!
But we're going back to a wetter planet and the Sahara will have Great Lakes once again, teeming with life.
This dry, cold, low-life interglacial is pretty much done.
And it's OK, we'll have pulsed laser rifles to handle the triceratops in the woods.
Earth is healing.