The dark world of the future: Gaia Hypothesis in reverse

[BioHazard]

For those of you that do not know what the Gaia Hypothesis is, it can be summed up by saying that the entire Earth acts as a self-regulating Super Organism. The Earth is alive. (google James Lovelock and Gaia Theory)

There have been many changes throughout the Earth’s “life”, temperature changes because of the sun and the orbit of the earth and other many other factors. For the most part Earth has regulated itself and maintained a relativly constant temperature, climate, ecosystem, etc.

Look at what has been happening for the last few decades or so. Aids epidemics. SARS, mad cow disease, bird flu, polution, smog, increase in cancer, nature going haywire, etc etc. Mass extinctions that end up harming us in the long run. Climate changes. A new disease every couple of years. Plagues, droughts, famines, flooding, disasters. “Global Warming”.

What does this all mean?

We are trying to kill our planet. And she is responding the way any organism would. By trying to destroy her attackers. For every harm we cause her she fights back even harder.

We, as a race, are heading toward a dead end at full speed. Unless we learn to live with nature, there’s going to be another mass extinction. Ours.

OK I ran out of steam. Comments? (put flames in the pit please)

biohazard

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

Go have a nice cup of tea, & then lay down awhile with a cold compress on your eyes, & you’ll feel much better.

No, I’m not being sarcastic.

[Grey]

Relax, the planet is not consciously out to get you. The rest of the universe? Yes, of course.

There are simply more of us. That alone allows for more 1 in a million type disasters to impact populations big enough to trigger the orgy of news coverage we’ve come to expect.

I’ll second Bosda’s advice and add that you stop watching the news for at least a week.

[lachesis]

actually, Bosda, i don’t think that BioHazard has said anything inflammatory enough to go calling for cold clothes and a cuppa.

like it or not, Earth is a closed ecosystem. maybe Gaia is watching out for her well-being; maybe natural balance simply relies on random actions and numerical imbalances. but i certainly have no trouble in putting credence in the Gaia Principle. simply restated: “you mess with the system, the system messes with you.”

but then again, you’d probably expect me to subscribe to a Cosmic Sentience or a “living planet”-type theory, given my username.

[js_africanus]

@BioHazard

Look at what has been happening for the last few decades or so. Aids epidemics. SARS, mad cow disease, bird flu, polution, smog, increase in cancer, nature going haywire, etc etc. Mass extinctions that end up harming us in the long run. Climate changes. A new disease every couple of years. Plagues, droughts, famines, flooding, disasters. “Global Warming”.

What does this all mean?

We are trying to kill our planet. And she is responding the way any organism would. By trying to destroy her attackers. For every harm we cause her she fights back even harder.

IMO, the best way to understand this issue is to look at Lovelock’s Daisy World. You have a world populated by a single species: the daisy. Some daisies are light, some are dark. Suppose there is a drop in the output of the sun. This causes the temperature to drop. The light daisies have trouble surviving since they absorb less heat; the dark ones thrive because they absorb more. Daisy world is taken over by dark daisies–with a few light ones surviving, presumably. The dark daisies, by absorbing more heat, raise the temperature of the planet. Kind of like how if we Nebraska black, the temperature there would rise. Daisy World’s temperature rises back to its equilibrium level, though there are fewer light daisies than there was previously. This is the model that led him to the full-blown theory.

Daisy World isn’t an organism, it doesn’t try to do anything. It just is what it is. In a sense, the Gaia hypothesis actually justifies our abuse of the environment since the environment will adjust to keep the really important viariables in line. IIRC, temperatures, oxygen levels, and other key components of life will stay fairly constant as a result of this process of homeostasis. Sans homeostasis, there is no mechansims to keep these key variables in line compatible with human life.

Imagine you live on Daisy World and you have a smoke stack. As you raise temperatures with your greenhouse gasses, Daisy World will compensate by responding to the competitive advantage that the lighter daisies now have. Daisy World’s temperature stays closer to its equilibrium level than it would if the daisies could not respond in Monochrome Daisy World, let’s say.

So, I guess I see your adherence to the Gaia hypothesis as being a cause to moderate your concern, not exacerbate it.

[Grey]

@lachesis

like it or not, Earth is a closed ecosystem. maybe Gaia is watching out for her well-being; maybe natural balance simply relies on random actions and numerical imbalances. but i certainly have no trouble in putting credence in the Gaia Principle. simply restated: “you mess with the system, the system messes with you.”

No it doesn’t. Otherwise the emergence of aerobic organisms would’ve been “squashed” by Gaia in favour of the anaerobic life forms that were predominating. The crux is that life provides a feedback mechanism to the system that can not be discounted. It says nothing about the organism actively evicting a subset of life simply because it’s successful.

Ebola exists independent of humans. Same with the influenza virus. The fact that more humans are now potentially exposed to them makes it appear that “new” viri are emerging, actively hunting us down. The fact is that like all organisms they exploit a ready and available food source.

As for natural disasters, what about the ”little ice age” that wreck havoc on agriculture in Europe before human impacts on climate could’ve been large enough to trigger such a response? What of the earthquake, tidal wave and fires in Lisbon in eth 18th century? Again, with more people in more regions it is more likely that natural disasters will happen to them. This then gets picked up by news services and we get to hear all about it.

[BioHazard]

@Grey

Ebola exists independent of humans. Same with the influenza virus. The fact that more humans are now potentially exposed to them makes it appear that “new” viri are emerging, actively hunting us down. The fact is that like all organisms they exploit a ready and available food source.

According to the July 2003 issue of Discover magazine, page 10, artical entitled “How nature brews a new strain of flu” the researchers Neil Ferguson and Robin Bush have determined that human immune response largely controls the evolution of the flu virus…

[marky33]

@BioHazard

What does this all mean?

It means we are fast altering an ecosystem we spent millions of years involving into.

[Qadgop_the_Mercotan]

@marky33

It means we are fast altering an ecosystem we spent millions of years involving into.

Exactly! It’s bad for us! Not the planet.

I always cringe when I hear the phrase “we’re destroying the ecosystem!” No we’re not! We may be changing it in such a way as to make human life more difficult, or even impossible. But the ecosystem will continue to exist in a different balance, and the planet will continue to do just fine (until the sun explodes, of course). Say we muck things up so badly it takes 100 million years for the ecosystem to advance to the point where it contains all the biologic complexity that it has had in recent centuries. So what? What’s 100 million years to the planet? It’s got time.

We may end up screwing ourselves badly, but Gaia will be just fine.

[Quartz]

Someone has just seen Edge of Darkness.

[Ghanima]

ALL HAIL QADGOP THE MERCOTAN for the most sensible post in this thread.

Bachelor’s in Environmental Science butting in here. Everybody please not to panic. The worst thing we humans could do is kill ourselves off. Moral hysteria about endangered species is, well, moral hysteria. It is a value judgement that “Gaia” herself would have a chuckle over. Really people, to destroy ALL life on earth is outside of human capability.

Quote:
"Aids epidemics. SARS, mad cow disease, bird flu, polution, smog, increase in cancer, nature going haywire, etc etc. Mass extinctions that end up harming us in the long run. Climate changes. A new disease every couple of years. Plagues, droughts, famines, flooding, disasters. "

How about bubonic plague, smallpox, ambient smoke from wood fires, huge infant fatalities, mass extinctions of dinosaurs, ice ages, famine flooding disasters, etc. NONE of these things are new, they all happened before the industrial revolution. And then some. This is natural. REPEAT: This IS natural.

Thank you.

Steps down off of soapbox

[BioHazard]

@Qadgop the Mercotan

Exactly! It’s bad for us! Not the planet.

I always cringe when I hear the phrase “we’re destroying the ecosystem!” No we’re not! We may be changing it in such a way as to make human life more difficult, or even impossible. But the ecosystem will continue to exist in a different balance, and the planet will continue to do just fine (until the sun explodes, of course). Say we muck things up so badly it takes 100 million years for the ecosystem to advance to the point where it contains all the biologic complexity that it has had in recent centuries. So what? What’s 100 million years to the planet? It’s got time.

We may end up screwing ourselves badly, but Gaia will be just fine.

TY, thats what I was trying to say!

[Uncivil]

The biggest problem with the Gaia hypothesis is that it sounds mystical and people tend to misunderstand it.

There is nothing concious going on, the Earth isn’t aware that we are “poisioning” it. It didn’t come up with AIDS to defend itself, poor little thing. Stripped of the mythical description, all the Gaia hypothesis is saying is that many aspects of life on Earth are self-regulating. This isn’t suprising, if effects like global warming re-enfored themselves without being checked, the Earth’s temperature would just rocket. This is what happened on Venus, the greenhouse effect makes the planet something like 300 degrees hotter than it should be. But in the past, when the Earth’s temperature has risen other factors have cooled it down again.

This doesn’t mean that we can’t change the Earth’s climate. Recent research has shown that the Earth has more than one stable climatic state. We are currently in a warm period, in the past the Earth has alternated between warm, cold and very cold periods (ice ages). It can move from one state to the other rapidy (over a thousand years maybe), but can stay in one state for thousands of years. Its possible, for example, that global warming could push us from a hot climate to a very hot one - which would be a disaster for mankind. Or it could even stop us from moving to a cold climate, which would be beneficial. We can’t really predict the effects in the long term.

[FriarTed]

There’s six billion of us & only one of her. The Bitch doesn’t have a chance.

[jon_pi]

@FriarTed

There’s six billion of us & only one of her. The Bitch doesn’t have a chance.

Maybe so, but Damn… thats a big Bitch.

[Chairman_Pow]

@Qadgop the Mercotan

I always cringe when I hear the phrase “we’re destroying the ecosystem!” No we’re not! We may be changing it in such a way as to make human life more difficult, or even impossible. But the ecosystem will continue to exist in a different balance, and the planet will continue to do just fine (until the sun explodes, of course).

Semantically, you’re right, but I think that the causing changes that are detrimental to supporting human life are implied, so the statement is valid.

So far as I can tell, the argument runs something to the effect of “the way the ecosystem is “right now” (right now being as long as humans have existed as such, ice ages notwithstanding), is perfect (perfect for humanity to develop along the line(s) that it has and altering the way the ecosystem works to make human life more difficult (i.e. global warming which may or may not be a factor and may or may not be caused by such things as global deforestation, CO2 and other pollutants released into the atmosphere due to man-made phenomena, radioactive or other toxic materials improperly stored or disposed of that destroy native flora and fauna) is bad.”

By way of analogy, I think you statement is like saying if I dropped a gallon of ink of my mom’s carpet, her response, “you’ve wrecked the carpet” is incorrect because the carpet still functions as it was intended (once the ink soaks in, of course), it just doesn’t look as nice.

At best, you could argue that the people who make the claim that “we’re destroying the ecosystem” are using overstatement to appeal emotionally to those who might be undecided as to whether they want to mend their ways and work towards restoring the ecosystem to “perfect” (however they percieve that).

Then again, they might just be hippies who don’t know any better and, once they get a job, buy an SUV.

That said, I certainly agree with your point that the ecosystem is simply being altered and human attitudes towards preserving the ecosystem is unlikely to change anytime soon. Not to mention that at best, means of mitigating environmental damage are, at best, too little, too late, and mostly elitist up-with-people group hugs (see current USGBC LEED program for sustainable construction).

[Grousser]

@Qadgop the Mercotan

Exactly! It’s bad for us! Not the planet.

I always cringe when I hear the phrase “we’re destroying the ecosystem!” No we’re not! We may be changing it in such a way as to make human life more difficult, or even impossible. But the ecosystem will continue to exist in a different balance, and the planet will continue to do just fine (until the sun explodes, of course). Say we muck things up so badly it takes 100 million years for the ecosystem to advance to the point where it contains all the biologic complexity that it has had in recent centuries. So what? What’s 100 million years to the planet? It’s got time.

We may end up screwing ourselves badly, but Gaia will be just fine.

Something similar was said by Ian Malcolm, the Jurassic Park character, in the novel by Michael Chrichton. Just for the record, but every time I hear that, I remember what completely agree I’m on it.