Latest 10 additions
Interview: James Lovelock on Climate Change - FirstScience talked to James Lovelock, a famous British environmentalist, scientist and author, about his views on climate change. By Christine Carter, 2 February 2007. "The climate change we're seeing now is closely similar to a geological event that occurred 55 million years ago, at the beginning of the period geologists refer to as the Eocene. We're not quite certain how, but about two million million tons of carbon dioxide came into the Earth's atmosphere over a period of about 10,000 years. I think the most likely cause was a volcanic sill: lava underground from a volcano coming up beneath a petroleum deposit in what is now the Norwegian Sea. This vaporised practically the whole deposit and put a huge quantity of carbon into our atmosphere ... "
James Lovelock, Gaia′s grand old man - The scientist who first theorized that our planet is a biological organism, not merely a rock, discusses life on Earth and the possibilities for its future. Published on salon.com, 17 August 2000. "Life clearly does more than adapt to the Earth. It changes the Earth to its own purposes. Evolution is a tightly coupled dance, with life and the material environment as partners. From the dance emerges the entity Gaia."
Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change - in his first in-depth interview since the theft of UEA emails, James Lovelock blames inertia and democracy for lack of action. By Leo Hickman, published in The Guardian, Monday 29 March 2010. Note link to full interview transcript. "I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change. The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful ... "
Geophysiology, the science of Gaia - By James E. Lovelock, Coombe Mill, St. Giles on the Heath, Launceston, Cornwall, England. Copyright 1989 by the American Geophysical Union. Published in Reviews of Geophysics 17, 11 May 1989, pages 215-222. "The Gaia hypothesis postulates that the climate and chemical composition of the Earth's surface environ- ment is, and has been, regulated at a state tolerable for the biota ...Gaia has matured and might be better stated as a theory that views the evolution of the biota and of their material environment as a single, tightly coupled process, with the self-regulation of climate and chemistry as an emergent property. It is a theory that makes 'risky' predictions, for example, that oxygen is and has been regulated during the existence of land plants, within ± 5 of its present level; it is therefore falsifiable. Numerical models are used to illustrate the potential for stable self-regulation of tightly coupled systems of organisms and their environments."
Geophysiology: a new look at earth science - By James E. Lovelock. Published in the Bulletin Of The American Meteorological Society Vol. 67, No. 4, April 1986, and in Geophysiology in Amazonia: Vegetation and Climate Interactions (Robert Dickinson, Ed.), the proceedings of a United Nations University international published by J. Wiley and Sons.
Oceanic phytoplankton, atmospheric sulphur, cloud albedo and climate - By Robert J. Charlson, James E. Lovelock, Meinrat O. Andreae & Stephen G. Warren. Published in Nature Vol. 326 No. 6114, 16 April 1987. "The major source of cloud-condensation nuclei (CCN) over the oceans appears to he dimethylsulphide, which is produced by planktonic algae in sea water and oxidizes in the atmosphere to form a sulphate aerosol. Because the reflectance (albedo) of clouds (and thus the Earth's radiation budget) is sensitive to CCN density, biological regulation of the climate is possible through the effects of temperature and sunlight on phytoplankton population and dimethylsulphide production. To counteract the warming due to doubling of atmospheric CO2, an approximate doubling of CCN would he needed."
Atmospheric homeostasis by and for the biosphere: the Gaia hypothesis - By James E. Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, published in Tellus XXVI (1974). "During the time, 3.2 x 109 years, that life has been present on Earth, the physical and chemical conditions of most of the planetary surface have never varied from those most favourable for life ... During this same period, however, the Earth's radiation environment underwent large changes. As the sun moved along the course set by the main sequence of stars its output will have increased at least 30% and possibly 100% ... early after life began it acquired control of the planetary environment and that this homeostasis by and for the biosphere has persisted ever since."
Gaia as seen through the atmosphere - By J. E. Lovelock, published in P. Westbroek and E. W. deJong (eds.), Biomineralization and Biological Metal Accumulation, 1983. "Life can flourish only within a narrowly circumscribed range of physical and chemical states and since life began the Earth has kept within this range. This is remarkable for there have been major perturbations such as a progressive increase in solar luminosity, extensive changes in the surface and atmospheric chemical composition and the impact of many planetesimals. The anomalous and chemically unstable composition of the Earth's atmosphere when compared with those of the other terrestrial planets was the first indication of homeostasis by the biota to maintain conditions favourable for their continued survival."
Thermodynamics and the recognition of alien biospheres - By J. E. Lovelock, FRS, Department of Applied Physical Sciences, University of Reading. Published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 189, 167-181 (1975). "A distant view of the Earth in this context shows that certain of its thermodynamic properties are recognizably different from those of the other terrestrial planets, which presumably are lifeless. The general application of this test for the remote detection of other biospheres will be discussed, as will some implications of this way of viewing biospheres on the nature and organizations of life on Earth."
Biological homeostasis of the global environment: the parable of Daisyworld - By Andrew J. Watson, and James E. Lovelock. Published in Tellus (1983). 35B, 284-289 284. Manuscript received 20 October 1982. "We chose to develop a model of an imaginary planet having a very simple biosphere. It consisted of just two species of daisy of different colours and was first described by Lovelock (1982). The growth rate of the daisies depends on only one environmental variable, temperature, which the daisies in turn modify because they absorb different amounts of radiation. Regardless of the details of the interaction, the effect of the daisies is to stabilize the temperature ... "
