Gaia Theory and the scientist behind it

The inventor who understood climate change

James Lovelock, courtesy of times.co.uk

A few weeks ago, James Lovelock died on his birthday. He’d done rather well, making it to 103. Apart from living to an extraordinary age he was also an extraordinary scientist and chemist, famous for inventing Gaia theory with the US biologist, Lynn Margulis.

Gaia is the Greek earth goddess and the theory proposes that all living things interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth creating a synergistic, self-regulating system that helps maintain and perpetuate the conditions for life.

It gradually became accepted into the main stream of science fact, although under the guise of Earth System Science, so as not to upset too many biologists who thought the theory contravened the accepted principles of natural selection.

The life of a scientist

Lovelock made a significant contribution to scientific research. He created the electron capture detector, an extraordinarily sensitive way to detect pollutants which got the attention of a recently formed US space agency called NASA in the 1960s. They were preparing for the Viking Mars mission and Lovelock became the first Brit to work on this project, creating a weight saving prototype that could analyse the composition of the Martian atmosphere.

It was working for NASA in Houston, where he began to consider whether life could be detected on a planet, simply by examining the planet’s atmosphere. He realised that an atmosphere with any sort of chemical disequilibrium could be regarded as a tell-tale signal of life.

He was a free thinker who regularly contested and contradicted current thinking from his homemade laboratory in Wiltshire. He was also a pragmatist, a big fan of nuclear power, who was asked by Shell, as early as the 1960s to advise them about climate change. Perhaps they didn’t like what he told them?

Gaia theory - 10 predictions came true

As Lovelock mused, any theory, even if it’s your own, where numerous predictions come true, must be a pretty good one.

The clouds which form over the great ocean areas of the earth are produced by organisms living on the sea’s surface. The algae which live there, produce gases which rise into the air, oxidise and produce the nuclei around which cloud droplets form, reflecting sunlight back to space. If this process didn’t occur the earth would be as much as 10 degrees hotter.

The removal of carbon dioxide from the air would not take place at anything like the rate that it does, were it not for the organisms present in the soil and on every other surface on land and in our oceans.

The twin processes of sunlight reflection in the atmosphere and the pumping down of carbon dioxide is what keeps the earth temperature regulated. If there were no life on earth, the earth’s temperature would be well over 60 degrees celsius.

Lovelock’s 2007 wake-up call

Watching one of his many interviews on climate change, I was amazed it had been recorded in 2007. His answers are now 15 years old, yet they are still very current today.

Is global warming really happening?

The evidence is all around us, which has not gone unnoticed by the person in the street. It is not just one rare event which would have been regarded as extraordinary, they happen in quick succession. Think about the significant increases in wild fires across the world or unprecedented flooding like recent events in Pakistan. 1,396 people were killed because of melting glaciers and heavier than usual monsoon rains.

Gentler more subtle English examples include olive groves in Devon and vines producing vintage wine on the slopes of Gloucester and Kent.

Not only is global warming real, it’s deadly. He predicts that most of human kind still alive at the end of this century, will die as a result of global warming.

What would the climate be like without humans?

Without humans, the world would be moving towards another glacial period. University taught me, a young geology student, that humans had arrived during an interglacial period which had already lasted about 50,000 years. At some point, the expectation was a return to another ice age, vast ice sheets, hundreds of metres thick, covering over half of the earth’s land mass. This is no longer going to happen. The amount of carbon in the earth’s atmosphere has made the situation irreversible. And we now know that the polar ice caps are shrinking faster than ever thought possible.

Has global warming ever happened before?

The climate change happening today is similar to a geological event which happened about 55 million years ago.

It is estimated that something like 2 million, million tons of carbon dioxide came into the earth’s atmosphere over a period of 10,000 years. The most likely cause was volcanic lava rising underneath an oil deposit in the Norwegian sea. This intense heat, vapourised the whole of the hydrocarbon deposit, putting a huge quantity of carbon into our atmosphere over a relatively short period of time.

The earth did of course, recover from this extraordinary event and balance for life, was again restored.

What can we expect to see in the next 20-30 years (2007, so now)

His opinion reflects that of senior climatologists who produced their first inter-governmental report on climate change in 2001. They predicted that by 2040-50, the European excessive summer of 2003 will become the norm.

The heatwave that year, was the hottest summer recorded in Europe since at least 1540. France was especially hard hit and the heat led to a health crisis in several countries. Combined with a drought, there were significant crop shortfalls in parts of Southern Europe. The final death toll was more than 70,000 people.

The summer just ended, has set new records for Europe and the five hottest years on record have all happened since 2016.

If this continues as expected, it will put a significant strain on European food production, to the point of breaking as the land turns into a vast scrub region or even desert. A situation not just isolated to Europe.

As food supplies become more scarce, mass migrations will begin. As he says, anyone with an imagination can see awful human consequences unfolding.

What will conditions be like at the end of this century?

Temperature rise will now be levelling off, as the Earth’s system, Gaia, as Lovelock prefers, takes control of the situation. Similar to any fever you’ve experienced, our temperature goes up before levelling off, then falling again.

The issue is the levelling off temperature will be around 8 degrees warmer than it is now. A huge change. It takes humans to a point which we’ve never experienced before, a situation which is likely to last at least 100,000 years.

Will a mass extinction occur as a result of global warming?

Yes. It will effect many species including humans, with no more than 20% of the global population surviving.

What’s also interesting, is the event 55 million years ago didn’t create a mass extinction because the timeframe was longer. It happened over 10,000 years, which gave organisms a chance to migrate to the cooler polar regions. This time, it is happening too quickly and not so many can escape.

Will we ever be able to control our climate?

Yes, provided the political will is there to do it.

One example which NASA have been considering is large sun shades in space at the gravity neutral point between the earth and the sun, where the James Webb telescope currently resides. It would be a carbon fibre diaphragm at least 10 miles wide, which would cost less than the current space station, so not impractical. It would be enough to disperse about 2% of sunlight which would have a significant positive effect.

A more practical solution is to mimic the huge volcanic eruptions which have occurred over time. The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, set back global warming for 5 years, just because of the fine aerosol-like particles of sulphuric acid in the stratosphere which reflected sunlight back to space.

It would be quite easy to simulate a volcanic eruption. The main airlines which fly around the world could do the job by burning sulphur rich fuel, unrefined kerosene. This would be equivalent to a Pinatubo every couple of years and help to buy humankind time to reduce carbon emissions to a more manageable level.

It’s a good example of his practical view to solving a problem. Given that most of us will ignore the unfortunate truth of flying, here is a simple way to create a similar result to a volcano, which buys time, while we wean ourselves off fossil fuels.