Talk:Gaia hypothesis/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Early text

Why is the title of this "Gaia hypothesis" when it reads "Gaea hypothesis" in the text? I'd move it, but there might be a good reason for having two names, so I'll leave it here for now. --Magnus Manske

let us be clear Budda, there were careful discussions over naming these articles this way. Hypothesis, theory and Theory are not the same things. So please, stop playing with redirection which are completely confusing the different notions. and read the articles maybe to see where the difference is

Page moved back to simple title. Please see our naming conventions on common names and capitalization. --mav 02:30 Apr 26, 2003 (UTC)

The material on Daisyworld is now redundant with the Daisyworld article, this material needs to be merged into the Daisyworld article. Any objections? -- Lexor 03:03 Apr 26, 2003 (UTC)

ok, ant

<snip>

---

We need a bit more clarification. (more arguments also available at Talk:Gaia philosophy.

• Gaia: This is a disambiguation page. The term Gaia may refer to

• Gaia (mythology) - Discussion of the Greek and Roman goddeess.

• Gaia theory - A group of scientific theories about how life on Earth may regulate the planet's biosphere to make it more hospitable to life. This discusses all scientific views on the subject in general, including the views of Drs. James Lovelock, Lynn Margulis, Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, etc.

• Gaia hypothesis- A subset of the above article; this is a discussion of Dr. James Lovelock's ideas on Gaia theory.

• Gaia theory analogues - A discussion of proto-scientific, mystical and religious views that some people believe are related to Gaia theory.

• Gaians - A discussion of the small left-wing radical political and environmentalist group. (Of course, other articles could be made as well, if needed.)

I am asking is that we continue to follow the same disambiguation and NPOV policy that we also have followed. RK 22:50 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Whether or not Lovelock understood the religious parallels to his beliefs should not obscure the fact that those parallels do exist. Pizza Puzzle

No, PP, you misread what I wrote. No one denies that some people see parallels between his scientific theory, and certain religious beliefs. You are rebutting a claim that I am not making. The problem is that Anthere keeps mistakenly claiming that Lovelock's hypothesis is a continuation of these religious ideas; that he did not originate the Gaia hypothesis, etc. Anthere is wrong on all these factual and historical points. Now, you and she point out that today, some people feel that there are paralells between his work and those religious beliefs. Fine; I never claimed otherwise. In fact, I explicitly stated that we should have an article on this: *Gaia theory analogues - A discussion of proto-scientific, mystical and religious views that some people believe are related to Gaia theory. So you and I are in agreement. RK 14:45 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I just wanted you to know that everything I have outlined will be either removed as being personal attack or wrong statement about my position, or rephrased to remove agressivity in them. I will try to keep all relevant information (relevant to the article only - because this is what we are working no ?). It is not unusual that discussions are refactored after issues are solved. So will I do. I think this will be done for the benefit of all

• removing all personal attacks against me (we don't want to show to the outsiders we are sometimes impolite between us, do we ?)
• removing some of your and perhaps mine useless agressivity as it does not help progressing in the discussion - articles are all what matter right ?
• do we need to keep low information level paragraphs for the benefit of the next editors ? I don't think so.
• a couple of paragraphs here and there are discussing matters that have nothing with the topic at hand. If you wish to keep them, I'll move them to the Jew article. User:anthere

Ok, Anthere, I am willing to work with you, but please don't change anyone's quotes without permission. Your intentions are good, but this lead to distortions of someone's position. I wil be happy to change them myself. It is perfectly good form, as you mention, for people to work together, and even rewrite their own comments. BTW, please do not remove discussion here and put them under the topic Jew; this makes me slightly unncomfortable. After all, my examples also mention Daoism, Buddhism, etc. All these examples are on-topic for the example. To focus in one one of these and leave out the rest is uncalled for. I am willing to admit that I may have misunderstood you on some issues, and that I should rewrite some of my above comments. RK

You're welcome. I indicated them so you could work on them yourself if willing. User:Anthere

I am totally willing. I am a bit busy at the moment (plans for tomorrow's 4th of July celebration, etc.) but I will have time very soon, like tomorrow.

If my changing your quotes is a pb to you, you are of course most welcome to revert and refactor (hum, well, rephrase, whatever...) them yourself. I tried to limit myself to remove the unnecessarily stuff. I also removed part of the text which was a doublon with other talk pages to lighten this talk page, but left your initial suggestion as some people commented it. Please do not consider this an attack, but part of a resolving process. Apologies if I was too bold. Anthère

Which Century?

"...most of the earth becoming uninhabitable for humans and other life-forms by the middle of next century, with a massive extension of tropical deserts."

This is in the Gaia's Revenge section. Does this mean this century (21st) or the next century (22d)? Following the rest of the text, it should say 'by the middle of this century', at least as I understand it. KBry (talk) 19:24, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

The book was published in 2006 wasn't it? That'd make "Next century" correct. 118.208.17.68 (talk) 07:54, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Deletion of cleanup tag

I have reduced the references to daisyword to one, and to Kirchner's thesis to two, and generally had an attempt to cleanup the whole article. Hope this overcomes the difficulties with the theory. Bared upon the insertion of the Amsterdam declaration and the re-write of the initial sections, I have deleted the cleanup tag and the factual tag at the end. I have left the middle tag in place. John D. Croft 11:26, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Requested move

aia theory (science) → Gaia hypothesis – I was under the impression the Gaia hypothesis is more generally considered a hypothesis than a theory. I.e. it does not hold enough universial support to be considered a 'scientific truth' and have theory status. That and the opening text refers to it as a hypothesis. References to it as a theory seem to come only from the loose non-scientific linguistic use of the word theory to be equivalent to idea. krebbe 19:00, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

There definitely needs to be some clean-up on the subject of hypothesis vs. Theory in the article, since they are used interchangably throughout in a most annoying fasion. They are not interchangable words. A hypothesis is a scientific idea that is untested. A theory is a scientific idea that has been tested a number of times and has failed to be proven wrong. Based on these definitions, one phrase or another should be pruned from the article.

I think it should be moved up from hypothesis to theory. The increase in carbon dioxide hasn't brought on the doomesday predictions made in the past. Feedback mechanisms, just what the Gaia Hypothesis hypothesized, is what kept the temperature flat where all other models were wrong.98.165.6.225 (talk) 19:06, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

For the two comments above, I think according to your criteria neither String theory should be called a theory? Sampo Smolander 17:02, 02 March 2007 (UTC)

The word theory properly applies to an idea that clearly suggests experiments to disprove itself. The Gaia theory does pass this test. The idea that a hypothesis becomes a theory only through repeated testing is valid but only because a hypothesis that no one has yet thought of a way to test must remain a hypothesis. It's all well enough explained now.

Survey

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

• Oppose. the original Gaia hypothesis has now made accurate scientific predictions and therefore becomes a theory. But perhaps "model" would be neutral? CharlieT 18 August 06
  • Comment: Even "Gaia hypothesis" might not be absolutely correct as some strong aspects are not testable. "Gaia model" seems an accurate way to describe the movement. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 22:59, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
• Support I've taken a class taught by Lynn Margulis, who's mentioned in the article, and she always said Gaia hypothesis. Jay32183 19:24, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
• Support Most common name; this talk page is the first place I've seen it called a theory. Septentrionalis 00:56, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose The Gaia Hypothesis remains a hypothesis until subject to scientific testing. Any hypothesis which survives rigorous testing becomes a theory. The Gaia hypothesis has survived such testing since it was first suggested, and now has been accepted in the Amsterdam statement of "Earth Systems Science". Thus it has earned the name Gaia Theory. One can even go further and suggest that as a number of quite different "Gaia Theories" are currently being tested, a better description would be "Gaia science" John D. Croft 09:24, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
• Lovelock uses theory, Margulis uses hypothesis, and Lovelock lists tests that have been suggested and carried out. That leans toward theory but use hypothesis for Margulis' more specific conception by all means.
• Support Theory 118.208.17.68 (talk) 07:57, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support The Gaia hypothesis does not qualify for the term theory, as it has not been thoroughly tested.71.55.5.174 (talk) 03:38, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Discussion

(moved from the previous 'Gaia what' section)

"Gaia theory (science) The Gaia hypothesis, a theory" ok, so... what? theory hypothesis theory? huh? --TheAlphaWolf 19:15, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I have heard it referred to as "hypothesis" more often than "theory", though both are correct. It is a bit weird that the article goes back and forth, but even weirder that it is called "theory" but opens with "the Gaia Hypothesis"... Maybe it should be moved to Gaia Hypothesis. Any thoughts? romarin [talk ] 15:05, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Each form of it is a single hypothesis or postulate, which can be part of a theory; just as Kepler's theory of planetary motion has three of them. Septentrionalis 01:00, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

This article has been renamed as the result of a move request.

Ashibaka tock 22:33, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Archives
January 2006 – January 2006 June 2003 — August 2005

General sloppiness in the article

I am still unsatisfied with this article despite my attempts to remove the general sloppiness it contains. There seems to be numerous repetitions of James Kirchners critique of Gaia Theory as if that was the be-all and end-all of anti-Gaian criticism, and as if even Strong and Weak Gaian approaches are true. Lawrence Joseph in his "Gaia:The Birth of an Idea" analyses Kirchner's attack at depth and shows how it was an attack against Lovelock's credibility as a scientist (Kirchner made the same claim against Daisyworld as an example of garbage in garbage out. Jon Turney also has also shown that Kirchner's attack was based on Lovelock's early writings, and that Lovelock's own thinking on Gaia had developed significantly since the early 1970s, which Kirchner never acknowledged.

In the critical section there is also no mention of Stephen Jay Gould's influencial criticism of Gaia as merely metaphorical, nor the rebuttal by David Abrahm that reductionistic science is itself based upon the metaphore of a clockwork machine. Darwinian evolution itself is based upon a "natural selecion" analogous to the artificial selection of plant and animal breeders. Others have shown that as our machines become more cybernetic and microbiology discovers organic feedback systems the old organic-mechanical metaphorical split becomes less meaningful.

Lovelock responded to Gould similarly to Abrahm, and that's now mentioned. Add Abrahm's view too if you want.

The article almost totally neglects the growth of interdisciplinary "Earth Systems Science" which owes its origin and its major development to Gaia Theory. The contributions of Thomas Volk and Stephan Harding are not discussed, nor the critique of homeostatic Gaia posed by Snowball Earth.

Earth System Science has very little to do with the Gaia Hypothesis, and the statement towards the end of the introduction that says the Gaia Hypothesis is more commonly referred to Earth System Science needs to be removed. Earth System Science is much broader and much more inclusive than the Gaia Hypothesis. Furthermore, the link to "earth system science" in this article needs to be corrected (i.e. it should not link to "Earth Science"). Tomwithanh 02:20, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Regarding "Earth System Science", both Stephan Harding in his book "Animate Earth", and James Lovelock in "Gaia's Revenge" consider Earth System Science a form of "intermediate" Gaia (using Kirchner's analogy). Have a look at the Talk given by Sir Crispin Tickell at http://www2.le.ac.uk/ebulletin/features/2000-2009/2006/11/nparticle.2006-11-20.9623961254

John D. Croft 10:24, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Hear, hear! I totally agree that this whole article is just embarassingly sloppy and makes a very bad read. It does not come across as something any thinking person would take seriously. I think the whole thing should be trashed and begun again from scratch.

Freddy011 (talk) 23:50, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

First reference to Gaia?

Lovelock, J. E.; Gaia as seen through the atmosphere, Atmospheric Environment 6 (1972) 579-580.

This is specifically about the oxygen/methane balance. Mention it along side that fact?

reference desk request for clarification

The following question was left at the ref desk:

At the bottom of the article, there is an abbreviated section titled: "Gaia hypothesis in ecology." Here it is stated that "most ecologists agree to assimilate the biosphere to a super ecosystem...." Could this simply be a minor carelessness at the end of a very wonderful article? Let me voice my doubt by asking a question about the use of the phrase "super ecosystem." In what way does the expression "super ecos

I disagree with the move. This should go back to Gaia theory. The Gaia idea has now made scientific predictions which have proved accurate. Also, the correct term is Earth System Sciencew, not "Systems." This whole article is a mess.

Charlie T.

For someone like me who has never hear of any of this, the article is very informative and I see no "mess".

Greg H

The Gaia <-> mule comparison is plain crap, to put it bluntly. The same criticism could _not_ be levelled against a mule or a post-menupausal woman. If you don't get this, then you haven't understood basic evolutionary theory and I am not going to teach it to you. Hint: the mule has an ancestry that wasn't sterile. Gaia, as far as I know, is not the last in some billions of predecessor global ecosystems.

If the panspermia hypothesis is correct, then Gaia certainly is the last we know of in many predecessors.

§§§§John D. Croft

Claes A

POV

The article has some POV language in favour of Lovelock and against his critics. I've removed some but not all as I don't have time now (I've added a POV notice in one section). Ben Finn 21:52, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Sadly there's a lot of plain nonsense stated by otherwise credible scientists, including Gould's bizarre statement. According to Lovelock many have admitted not actually reading his work but instead reacting to the name. Which seems to be correct given the inane statements. What part of oxygen/methane balance or sulfur/iodine transfer between land and sea don't they understand? There's plenty to test.

I'm considering, due to the number of sources by or focusing on Lovelock, changing the introduction to "The Gaia hypothesis is James Lovelock's hypothesis..." Anyone object? If so, please give me a reason. --SpacemanAfrica 00:59, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Margulis is now considered the leading practitioner but has narrowed the study somewhat towards energy issues.

From my point of view I think there is a lot of text that is repeated and the content of Gaia Theory is not as concise as it could be. --gbirley 22:32, 18 May 2009 (BST)

Mary Daly The Witch of Boston College

Does this link belong here? Seems a bit sensationalist for an article on an important idea. Added unsigned on 2006-12-13T00:49:32 by 81.178.103.160

PJTraill 01:17, 19 January 2007 (UTC) The linked article also has nothing to do with this article (it contains 'Gaia' in a different sense). I'm removing it. Also the other one to "Gaia: Worshipping the Ground We Walk On" on that site - that article claims "It was from the pulpit of this cathedral in 1979 that James Lovelock first publicly explained the Gaia theory - that the earth as a whole is a living, conscious organism.", but further has no real bearing on it. Lovelock's language has certainly confused people, but he does not impute consciousness to Gaia.

Dead link "Keep a positive attitude"?

The link Keep a positive attitude does nothing useful (for me). Can anyone improve it or should it be scrapped? PJTraill 01:09, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

First sentence

"The Gaia hypothesis is an ecological theory that proposes that the living matter of planet Earth functions like a single organism." This says nothing about the interaction of living and non-living things in the biosphere that - as I understand it - underpins Gaia. Could someone who has read Lovelock improve the opening sentence in such a way as to take this into account? Regards and thanks, Notreallydavid 03:55, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

PJTraill 23:34, 21 February 2007 (UTC) I would suggest that that is ample for a first sentence. Any such details should come later, maybe not even in the introduction. As I recall the book the distinction between living and non-living was not so important as far as their roles are concerned, except perhaps in so far as the hypothesis suggests Gaia maintains conditions propitious for life.

Nature paper

I don't see any evidence of an initial Gaia paper in Nature (and indeed it would have hardly been their sort of thing)  : http://www.nature.com/search/executeSearch?sp-a=sp1001702d&sp-sfvl-field=subject%7Cujournal&sp-q-min-1=Nature&sp-q-max-1=Nature&sp-q-1=Nature&sp-x-1=ujournal&sp-p-1=phrase&sp-q=*&sp-p=all&sp-q-2=lovelock&sp-x-2=uaui&sp-p-2=all&sp-start-day=01&sp-start-month=01&sp-start-year=1960&sp-end-day=31&sp-end-month=12&sp-end-year=2007&sp-s=pubdate_asc&sp-c=100

I'm removing the claim pending citation. Pleclech 19:41, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

seems like nature's db is a bit messed up, as your search had a start date of 1960, but as you can see here the "oldest" article listed is 1901, clearly not correct, but existing nonetheless: http://www.nature.com/search/executeSearch?sp-q=lovelock&sp-c=10&sp-x-9=cat&sp-s=pubdate_asc&submit=go&sp-a=sp1001702d&sp-sfvl-field=subject%7Cujournal&sp-x-1=ujournal&sp-x-1=ujournal Vena

Thanks for that. The "1901" article may be relatively recent (it looks like 2004) from the journal numbering of "Nature Digest". "A Physical Basis for Life Detection Experiments" Nature 207, 568 - 570 (07 Aug 1965) doesn't seem to mention Gaia. "?Earth system? analysis and the second Copernican revolution" by H. J. Schellnhuber does mention the "romantic companion, Gaia theory, as pioneered by Lovelock and Margulis." Nature C19 - C23 (01 Jan 1970) but it's well-known Gaia had been publicied by then. So I still don't see the "initial Gaia paper in Nature" mentioned in the article. If somebody else can find it, I'm happy to be corrected Pleclech 12:43, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

More Gaia in Music

Just if you want to add this info in the music section:

A swedish metal band, called Tiamat, released an EP in 1995 called "Gaia", which titletrack's lyrics can be interpreted as to planet Earth being sick and healing itself, as if it were a living organism.

(Ref 1: http://darklyrics.com/lyrics/tiamat/gaia.html)

Citations?

"The theory was then attacked by many mainstream biologists. Championed by certain environmentalists and climate scientists, it was vociferously rejected by many others, both within scientific circles and outside them." ...

Lovelock himself claimed in the 2006 interview that biologists, not climate or earth scientists, came up with most of the objections. That all the fervent opposition came from biologists. That's good enough.

"For instance many attacked his statement in the first paragraph of his first Gaia book (1979), that "the quest for Gaia is an attempt to find the largest living creature on Earth."

Yes but that's a criticism of his book not his theory, and an argument about what is a "creature" or "living". It should be treated separately from the specific balances Gaia describes as a theory.

True or not, don't bold statements like that require some kind of citation(s)? Paulzon 00:55, 13 July 2007 (UTC)Paulzon

Yes, usually, but a lot of these things were snide attacks that didn't get to print but all parties acknowledge happened.

Weasel words

I have ammended the offending section and deleted the weasel words template as a result. John D. Croft 04:10, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Model, not a hypothesis

Considering that life is entirely subjective, Gaia is not a hypothesis. It simply a way of thinking about the world —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.65.7.0 (talk) 17:28, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree. It's a model or paradigm, not a hypothesis and surely not a theory. Of course, that's the problem: People think it's a theory, and that inevitably leads to teleology.  Randall Bart   Talk  18:36, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

So, should the article be renamed? --Slartibartfast (1992) 23:34, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

No, what drivel: "life is entirely subjective". That's wrong. Biology has a definition. Chemistry has a definition. Scientific theories about life and its objective basis do exist. That's what the hypothesis/theory is about. There are other implications but that's only implications, not the theory.

Can you please point me to where I can read those definitions of life?

There are no objective definitions of live (coming form a biochemist). Hence, life is entirely subjective. I entirely agree with the original poster. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.67.21.28 (talk) 16:15, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Wetwarexpert (talk) 16:33, 3 November 2010 (UTC)Life can lack a consensus definition and yet not be subjective. Might we agree that such definitions are therefore partial and heuristic - useful for guiding research, but neither objective or subjective? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wetwarexpert (talk • contribs) 16:28, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Lovelock has disavowed teleological interpretations and embraced those from non-linear dynamics, of which there are plenty. If you don't understand how feedback loops work, mathematically, then you really have no business trying to discuss what constitutes a valid theory of life forms or planets that support them. Sorry if that's elitist but this particular theory does require that kind of math to see as a theory rather than a model.

deleted some "cultural references"

This article is on Lovelock's "Gaia Hypothesis". However, the "cultural references" section was crammed with all sorts of "references" that weren't specifically related to Gaia Hypothesis, but instead were referring to things like:

• Goddesses named Gaia;
• goddesses who embody the existence of a planet;
• planets who are sentient.

I have deleted those references, as they have nothing whatsoever to do with the topic of this article. Any "cultural references" that do have something to do with James Lovelock or his specific hypothesis, though, I left. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 21:06, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Good move. They could remain as bad examples of teleology, but who needs that?

CBC Radio interview

This article is not using the rigorous citation form. The most recent two edits both included quotes from Lovelock and facts and claims from the 2006 CBC Radio "Ideas" program interview (an episode of the How to think about science series). Someone who knows how a radio interview should be cited can fix up those quotes. They are NOT "citation needed" in the sense of lacking a source, they're citation needed in the sense of not knowing how to make a proper citation of a radio interview.

Lovelock clarified a lot of things in the interview and I highly recommend it to anyone who is intending to make major changes to this article. It should be pretty much mandatory I think.

Do you have a link to this interview? I wouldn't mind checking it out. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 19:09, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Inline Reference #17

There's something wrong with it; please fix it because I don't know how. Thanks.Asrghasrhiojadrhr (talk) 08:23, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Does [sic] or a (word) need to be inserted in this quote?

Actual quote: "It would be hubris to think humans as they now are God's chosen race."

Does this mean: It would be hubris to think humans as they now (exist) are God's chosen race."

Or: It would be hubris to think humans as they now are (, are) God's chosen race."

Also, why did he say "race" instead of "species"? Doug Youvan (talk) 22:47, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

James Lovelock and Nuclear power

Has anyone heard how Lovelock has jumped on the nuclear power bandwagon? It's crazy to think about someone supporting the gaia hypothesis and nuclear power, don't you think nuclear power would be like a cancerous growth on the gaia 'organism'?GeeDomsta333 (talk) 04:39, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

It's clear leftist environmentalists cannot even comprehend the Gaia Hypothesis, but they turn it into a pagan god. How embarrassing.98.165.6.225 (talk) 19:02, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

James Lovelock has always been ambivalent about Gaia and nuclear power - for example his discussion on the Okla reactor in Gabon in "Ages of Gaia". Recently in the "Revenge of Gaia" he shows that we are fast arriving at the point of positive feedbacks in the Gaia System that will greatly threaten the chance of civilisation surviving at all. He sees nuclear power as the only real way of deferring the collapse. In this he is to be commended for trying to prevent the collapse of civilisation and the suffering it would entail, but he is suggesting a cure that is worse than the disease, and would probably only hasten the collapse anyway. John D. Croft (talk) 07:15, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

He hasn't "jumped on the nuclear bandwagon". At least, not recently. He discusses nuclear power in his 1989 book Ages of Gaia, and expresses more or less the same views then as he does now. If there is a change, it's that he now appears to view the scale of our changes to the Earth more seriously and that they require a fast transition away from carbon dioxide producing technologies. His view is that, as far as the biosphere (= Gaia, in his terms) is concerned, nuclear power is simply not a serious threat. The quote in the article at present relates to this, but he goes on in the book to compare the risk of cancer from nuclear accidents to the risk of cancer from exposure to oxygen (i.e. breathing). His argument is that a perceived risk from, say, nuclear energy, should be compared to everyday risk. As a jobbing scientist, I can't disagree with this. Individually, we might be concerned about an increased cancer risk from nuclear power, but the risks are small, and the biosphere (which, we shouldn't forget, we're hammering to pieces at the moment) really couldn't care less. Your mileage may vary, of course. Cheers, --Plumbago (talk) 09:25, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

P.S. By the "quote in the article" I meant the quote in the James Lovelock article. Oops.

A 'lesser of two evils case'? key is, where to store nuclear power after it's been used! Or can we clean it up? nuclear power plants take many years to start running, there has to be a safe, sustainable way...unless one believes in this 'clean coal' talk...Anyways, I think Chernobyl scarred nuclear power forever, whether we acknowledge that it was a faulty system or not...Domsta333 (talk) 10:41, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Anyway, we're getting off topic here. Rightly or wrongly, Lovelock is a supporter of nuclear power, but has been a long-standing one rather than a recent convert. Just in passing ... on the subject of nuclear waste, Lovelock has suggested [*] that he'd be happy to use some to heat his home since, once it's (heavily) encased in glass, its radioactivity is decreased and it acts as a source of heat. Cheers, --Plumbago (talk) 07:57, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

[*] I can't remember where, it might have been a newspaper interview.

thoery section

In that section I find this:

"However that said, we must never forget that life itself evolved on, and hence from, Earth."

That is an unsubstantiated conjecture. If we accept the premise of evolution (many do not), we still cannot say that the "hence" is true. Nobody really knows where life is from. It's never been proved that life originated "from" Earth.

We need some sources in this article - there is a lot of conjecture and narrating going on. 216.153.214.89 (talk) 06:01, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Good catch 216.153.214.89! I've removed the offending sentence. Although it's part of a whole section that could do with sourcing and possibly trimming (to this end, I've tagged up the section for sources). There are a number points in there that appear to be either original research or a synthesis of material. In passing, we should avoid debating the premise of evolution either here or in the article itself - it's not relevant in this forum and, anyway, is accepted by the scientific community. Cheers, --Plumbago (talk) 07:49, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't think you need to debate the premise of evolution from a starting point of life on Earth. The process of natural selection can and does take place on human time scales. The classic moth story for example. The offending sentence above seems to be correct in the present tense. Mrshaba (talk) 18:45, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Bio-precipitation

About six months back there were several stories about the involvement of Pseudomonas syringae in precipitation. Does this bacteria deserve an honorable mention on the page along with coccolithophores? Mrshaba (talk) 18:45, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Copy-editing and comments

I went through the page and made some minor edits here and there. Good read overall but here are some comments: The external links and reference formatting needs some work. I can help with this if the primary authors like. There also seems to be some overlinking i.e. Lovelock, carbon dioxide, biota, and daisyworld only need to be linked once. Homeostasis is linked twice in one sentence. I would remove the Gaia in fiction section altogether as this is trivial to the subject and this sort of material leads to a snowball effect as interested parties add more and more bits. The Southpark episode was hilarious but it is not notable and its mention cheapens the educational content of the page. Mrshaba (talk) 18:45, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

lool

lol —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.77.152.70 (talk) 15:42, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

The Great Oxidation Event?

I didn't see any references to the Great Oxidation and the formation of the ozone layer, which seems like it would be a pretty good support of the Gaia hypothesis.

As textbooks love to recite, most energy cycled through the little organisms of the biosphere comes from the sun, initially captured by photosynthesists. This is true in the present moment, but is also true over the history of biochemical life. The first really successful photosynthesists pumped out so much oxygen that they changed the atmosphere drastically - most notably in the formation of the ozone layer. This step enabled the development of more complex organisms, most of which could not survive without it. This includes most organisms on the planet today, as well as in evolutionary history.

If the early ozone layer protected the organisms who made it, it of course would protect all other organisms on the planet. This must be generally true biochemically speaking, because of the underlying biochemical monotony of life on this planet. Barring special protective molecular structures, all organisms based on the same RNA/DNA/carb/lipid system have the same fundamental molecular vulnerability to solar radiation. So, by fundamental molecular definition, the great oxidation and the formation of the ozone layer by life enables the planet to support more life. Here is where the fixation on organisms and their bodies and transmogrifications through evolutionary history has led us astray - all organisms, while usually seeming to compete, may actually be involved in a much larger, planet-scale cooperation, as a result of that ultimately thermodynamically favorable propagation of self reproducing systems. Focus on the molecular-scale monotony of biochemical life (and not the deceiving diversity of organisms) across the scale of the planet and you immediately see the truism: this single underlying, in-dwelling molecular system takes energy and begets more of itself, with a myriad accessory molecules and structures. If this is believed on the scale of a cell, why not a planet? This molecular system "terraformed" the planet eons before there would be anyone to understand the process.

Finally, I posit that the weak Gaia hypothesis is plenty strong enough. Take as a parallel the strength of gravity. Its the weakest force, but is very long ranged, and ultimately orders the structures of everything bigger than single molecules. The weakest force, which is attractive only, turns clouds into stars, stars to black holes, which nucleate the structures of entire galaxies, whose filaments and sheets stretch on and on, across the universe. The Gaia theory may necessarily be "weak" in the sense that this allows it to be long ranged, and capable of enabling planetary energy budgets to balance themselves in the face of stellar evolution.

So, uh, yeah. Ozone layer, anyone? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.100.254.38 (talk) 06:32, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I think this should be incorporated into the article. Go ahead and do it, unsigned post person!~~

Gaia Thesis

From the article on Oberon Zell-Ravenheart An early advocate of deep ecology, in 1970 Zell-Ravenheart articulated the Gaia Thesis, independently of Dr. James Lovelock, who is usually credited with the theory's development.[1]. The Gaia Thesis article has a see also to this article but this article doesn't correspond. I'll add it and hope it's not controversial. Ravenhearts ideas were supposed to be independently developed and are more devoted as a basis for worship of Gaia. Alatari (talk) 08:50, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I have seen Oberon Zell claim credit for the Gaea hypothesis, as he spells it. Zell is, however, a neo pagan, not a practicing scientist, and his publication was not in a scientific journal. John D. Croft (talk) 17:37, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Copywriting/editing/other comments

Agree with above copyedit comments.

Citations can easily be added but some of the "controversy" brought up by Dawkins et al. was more of a media frenzy and the citations for Dawkins et al. are not academic ones.

I'll find them and add them, and add citations for the specific passage in Lovelock as well.

Vacuous?

I just ran across this theory, or hypothesis, in this article, which was news to me. My apologies if I've misunderstood something here, but isn't this theory going to be vacuously satisfied on any planet that is in some form of equilibrium whether it has life or not? Equilibrium is a relative concept, and refers to any situation that remains relatively constant over long periods in the face of fluctuations in forces acting on its parameters. The Gaia hypothesis seems to be about systems in equilibrium, however maintained.

Life on Earth is without doubt a complex system. To the extent that life is in equilibrium, the mechanisms by which this is achieved would presumably constitute relatively sophisticated instances of the Gaia hypothesis in action.

As a case in point, humans are now pumping some 15 GtC (gigatonnes of carbon) into the atmosphere each year. The resulting increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere naturally drives reactions in the ocean and in vegetation in the direction that absorbs CO2, as an instance of Le Chatelier's principle in chemistry and osmosis in partial pressures between membranes, more generally homeostasis as referred to in the article. We can therefore expect the oceans and vegetation to absorb an additional amount of CO2, say 7 GtC, by these well-understood principles, as it seems to be doing judging by the actual accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere which is roughly half of what we're pumping into it, the other half being obligingly taken up by the Earth.

Had we not understood this mechanism however, we might be inclined to imagine Nature actively taking it into her hands to deal with this surplus, as might some benevolent god overseeing the planet's operation, but falling behind (so humans aren't part of the equilibrium). The name "Gaia hypothesis" sounds as though it was chosen to promote that point of view.

If there is anything controversial about homeostasis in either organic or inorganic chemistry, or in physics, etc., it is news to me.

So what could be controversial about the Gaia hypothesis? Well, only if one ascribed some teleological significance to homeostasis.

Lovelock denies there is any teleology in the Gaia hypothesis. But in that case what else could the Gaia hypothesis be than yet another name for homeostasis, about which there is no controversy?

The only sustainable objection I can imagine for the Gaia hypothesis is that homeostasis doesn't need yet another name.

Am I missing some third possibility here? --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 07:31, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

There's one mental experiment called Daisyworld that explained it pretty well for me. You've got a planet with a bunch of daisies on it, orbiting a sun that we can power up and down. If we crank the sun up, mostly white daisies will grow; if we crank it down, mostly black daisies will grow; and the planet's temperature will remain about the same. Daisyworld's moon's temperature would increase and decrease along with the sun, unlike Daisyworld. Daisyworld maintains an equilibrium that it really shouldn't at all, or at least a kind of equilibrium that places without life cannot maintain. I guess it's possible to describe the Gaia hypothesis as "earth's equilibrium remains consistant with itself and contrary to the rest of the solar system because earth has life on it that ultimately cooperates in an interdependant system." The name "Gaia" is one of the main causes of the controversy (though it is getting more and more acceptance), but I think the interdependance is another part (although my impression of that may be from reading Dazzle Gradually instead of Lovelock). A lot of people are uncomfortable with the idea that we're are to the biosphere what the E. Coli in our intestines is to us, and that used to include a lot of scientsts. I've not read Lovelock's original work, but Dorian Sagan and Lynn Margulis (who have helped it acquire some acceptance) would argue we are very much a part of that equilibrium (and if we don't want to be, the planet doesn't need us like we need the planet). Ian.thomson (talk) 15:39, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Great. So unless I've misinterpreted you it sounds like we're very much on the same page.

The history of homeostasis is that in each discipline in which it's first encountered, the discipline embraces it as its own and names it accordingly. In chemistry it was (and still is) called Le Chatelier's principle. For ion transport across membranes it is called osmosis. In climatology it is called negative feedback. In engineering one gets to design homeostasis in; thus in steam engines it is the governor, in automobiles cruise control, in HVAC systems thermostats, and so on.

It seems to me that the Gaia "hypothesis" is neither a hypothesis nor a theory but rather a principle, namely that of homeostasis as encountered in ecology (the biosphere), just as Le Chatelier's principle is homeostasis as encountered in chemistry.

However any negative connotation of "hypothesis" would appear by now to have been neutralized by usage. If one defines the Gaia hypothesis to be the homeostasis principle as encountered in ecology this should remove any lingering doubts as to its meaning while serving as a reminder of an important difference between ecology and chemistry, that the mechanisms of the former can often be more mysterious than those of the latter, to the point of appearing supernatural. --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 18:48, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Had we not understood this mechanism however, we might be inclined to imagine Nature actively taking it into her hands to deal with this surplus, as might some benevolent god overseeing the planet's operation, but falling behind (so humans aren't part of the equilibrium). The name "Gaia hypothesis" sounds as though it was chosen to promote that point of view.

It is well-documented why the name "Gaia hypothesis" was chosen. It was none of the above. It was just that "self-similar complex homeostatic self-repairing system" or the likes were not acceptable names for Lovelock (I agree).

The homeostasis principle as encountered in ecology may be a valid name for the small part of the theory you are using; there are, however, other important principles as encountered by other sciences.

EG: Lovelock re-defined Life in various aspects, because there are problems with the "fixed border"-requirement. Are your mitrochondrials part of your organism, or symbionts so much specialised on human cells that they can't live on their own? What about bacteria that "outsource" organs to host organisms (as the smallest discovered ones do)? Provided the right envirnoment, cell cultures can live indefinitely. Coli bacteria are so specialised on the human intestines they can't live on their own. So where are the boundaries between "life forms" and "organs"? My favourite aspect of Gaia (simplified ++) is that it defines "Life" as autopoietic systems (-> autopoiesis), so microscopically a mammal can be seen as a symbiontic system of ~50,000 milliard organisms (cells), each of them symbiontic systems of mitochonds and the rest, and macroscopically, a system like a megalopolis can be addressed as one individual organism. "Gaia" as in "Earth" does that: It sees the whole planet as macroscopic life-form.

However, I would NOT propose to rename the theory to "re-definition of Life with respect to autopoiesis and self-similarity" or "Detection method for extraterrestric Life by comparing debit and credit of athmospheric entropy". Because those are important facets of the Gaia Theory, but not synonyms for the entire theory.--129.13.72.197 (talk) 18:23, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Error

The history section of this article states that both of Lovelock's early books were published in the same year. Surely this is in error. Secondly why does the history section finish in 1979. That is 30 years ago, surely the theory has a more recent history too? John D. Croft (talk) 20:15, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

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