
James Lovelock: 'The biosphere and I are both in the last 1% of our lives' - akbarnama
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/18/james-lovelock-the-biosphere-and-i-are-both-in-the-last-1-per-cent-of-our-lives
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nkurz
> I would love to be able to speak to Galileo to understand how he felt.

James Lovelock is very old, and Galileo Galilei lived a really long time ago.
This made me wonder how far away the two actually are in time. Lovelock was
born in 1919, and Galileo died in 1642. Thus if someone was born while Galileo
was still alive, and lived to the age that Lovelock is now, they would have
died in 1743. Once more, and we are at 1844; then again we get to 1945 --- at
the beginning of Lovelock's career in science. Surprising to think that it's
really only three long lifetimes that separate Lovelock from Galileo!

~~~
lisper
The entire modern scientific enterprise has only been going on for about 400
years. That's the blink of an eye in the grand and glorious scheme of things.

There are people alive today who personally knew Albert Einstein and Erwin
Schroedinger.

The atomic theory was still controversial 100 years ago. When I was in
elementary school in the 1970s one of the things we were taught is that atoms
are real despite the fact that no one has ever seen one, and no one ever
would.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
I am not sure what "elementary school" is but in the context of atoms I guess
this is more or less 10-12 years old.

I was 10 in 1980 and as far as I can remember we were always taught about
atoms as normal things, with electrons etc. No controversy (that was in
France). I think nobody told us about the capacity to see them or not though.

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intopieces
As much as I agree with Lovelock's sentiments about the environment, Gaia is
more wishful thinking and certainly doesn't have its foundations in science.
That is, the world does not tend towards stability. Ecosystems tend towards
chaos and don't return a norm.

~~~
wizzwizz4
Define "chaos". Ecosystems _do_ tend towards equilibrium, unless something
happens to end up having a _really great_ advantage selected for (e.g. our
interpersonal politics selecting for intelligence) or the environment changes
significantly (e.g. climate change, great big asteroid boi, ice age).

~~~
intopieces
Chaos in the sense of instability, of constant change, of randomness. Earlier
ecologists like Frederic Clements thought that ecosystems tended towards a
stable climax, but this theory has been largely disproven by more rigorous
data analysis that shows ecosystems are more influenced by chance of
physiological and environmental condition than by competition.

If you're interested in reading more, I found Kricher's "The Balance of
Nature" to be a highly engaging read. There's a good retail PDF available from
Princeton University Press [0]

[0][https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691138985/th...](https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691138985/the-
balance-of-nature)

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rbosinger
I'm impressed that for his 101th birthday he's just going to go for a walk and
not spend a ton of money partying like he did for his 100th. I can't imagine
doing either of these things at 100.

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networkimprov
How old is the biosphere? 3.8B years? So it has 38M left?

Or 635M years, from the Ediacaran, so 6M left?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran)

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xwdv
When the biosphere dies, will it be worth even being born?

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pengaru
Through the Gaia lens it's interesting to view the warming climate as Earth's
fever to clear its human infection.

~~~
ealexhudson
In his latest book he suggests that even if humans left, the fever might not
ever break.

~~~
maxander
In many COVID19 patients suffering from severe symptoms, the virus has already
been cleared out of their system- but the extreme immune response itself
(cytokine storm, etc) continues to cause damage, with lethal potential.
Interesting parallel.

