GETTING PRIDE OUT OF THE WAY
While I was our trip to Ohio and back, I bought a science magazine, called TOP 75 QUESTIONS OF SCIENCE, as I think I’ve mentioned more than once here. I thought it would fill my airport and flight time pretty easily without asking me to devote much mental energy to following long complex lines of evidence and reasoning. It admirably filled my need. Below, I’m quoting two questions and answers from the text. What I like about these answers is the way they deflate human egos, reducing us to chemical processes doomed to inevitable extinction. And hasn’t that been the aim of so much good science—to get the human ego out of the equation and put the truth into its place? That’s why I wonder why religious folk, dedicated to humility and truth as they are, are so opposed to ego-reducing and truth-telling science.
WHAT IS LIFE?
Answer: George Whitesides, chemist, Harvard University: Life in a certain sense is a sack of chemical reactions. That's one way to look at it. Another is to say that it's an entity that is compartmentalized, energy dissipating, adaptive, and self-replicating. A third way of looking at it is to say it's a network of catalytic reactions, and amazingly, it replicates itself. But I haven't said anything yet. I've just given names to things I don't understand.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO EARTH'S CLIMATE OVER THE LONGER RUN?
Answer: Ken Caldeira: The sun, which is 30 percent brighter than it was early in Earth's history, will continue to get hotter and hotter. At first, carbon dioxide levels will drop and compensate for the brighter sun. Within a billion years there will be virtually no carbon dioxide left in the atmosphere. From then on, Earth will start heating. The oceans will evaporate more quickly, sending more water into the upper atmosphere, where it will be bombarded by cosmic radiation and split into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen will escape into space, so we will eventually lose our oceans. At that point Earth will be uninhabitable.
Showing posts with label Earth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Earth. Show all posts
Monday, June 16, 2008
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
LOVELOCK LOCKS AND LOADS
In the November 1st, 2007 Rolling Stone Magazine, Jeff Goodell interviews and features the ideas of James Lovecock, the scientist who came up with the idea that our Planet Earth is a living being. Still controversial among some, many other scientists are now accepting of Lovecock’s ideas about the planet. Frankly, I like the idea that, in my interaction with the atmosphere, I’m just like a fish swimming in its environment. It just opens my imagination to so many creative ways to think about life’s existence on the planet.
The interesting thing about Goodell’s writing is that it’s so logical that I’ve excerpted pieces of it, and they make sense even though they are small fragments of a much longer piece. Best, though, is buy a Rolling Stone and read the whole article.
[SNIPPET]
[A]s a scientist, he [James Lovelock] introduced the revolutionary theory known as Gaia—the idea that our entire planet is a kind of superorganism that is, in a sense, "alive."
Our air "is not merely a biological product," Lovelock wrote, "but more probably a biological construction: not living, but like a cat's fur, a bird's feathers or the paper of a wasp's nest, an extension of a living system designed to maintain a chosen environment."
"You could quite seriously look at climate change as a response of the system intended to get rid of an irritating species: us humans," Lovelock tells me in the small office he has created in his cottage. "Or at least cut them back to size."
Lovelock put out a book called Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. "The Gaia hypothesis," he wrote, "is for those who like to walk or simply stand and stare, to wonder about the Earth and the life it bears and to speculate about the consequences of our own presence here." Gaia, he added, offers an alternative to the "depressing picture of our planet as a demented spaceship, forever traveling driverless and purposeless around an inner circle of the sun."
Of course, scientists like Broecker rarely used the word "Gaia." They prefer the phrase "Earth system science," which views the world, according to one treatise, as "a single, self-regulating system comprised of physical, chemical, biological and human components." In other words, Gaia in a lab coat.
"The whole system," he decided, "is in failure mode."
One of the questions that fascinates Lovelock: Life has been evolving on Earth for more than 3 billion years—and to what purpose? "Like it or not, we are the brains and nervous system of Gaia," he says. "We have now assumed responsibility for the welfare of the planet. How will we manage it?"
[PASTE]
In the November 1st, 2007 Rolling Stone Magazine, Jeff Goodell interviews and features the ideas of James Lovecock, the scientist who came up with the idea that our Planet Earth is a living being. Still controversial among some, many other scientists are now accepting of Lovecock’s ideas about the planet. Frankly, I like the idea that, in my interaction with the atmosphere, I’m just like a fish swimming in its environment. It just opens my imagination to so many creative ways to think about life’s existence on the planet.
The interesting thing about Goodell’s writing is that it’s so logical that I’ve excerpted pieces of it, and they make sense even though they are small fragments of a much longer piece. Best, though, is buy a Rolling Stone and read the whole article.
[SNIPPET]
[A]s a scientist, he [James Lovelock] introduced the revolutionary theory known as Gaia—the idea that our entire planet is a kind of superorganism that is, in a sense, "alive."
Our air "is not merely a biological product," Lovelock wrote, "but more probably a biological construction: not living, but like a cat's fur, a bird's feathers or the paper of a wasp's nest, an extension of a living system designed to maintain a chosen environment."
"You could quite seriously look at climate change as a response of the system intended to get rid of an irritating species: us humans," Lovelock tells me in the small office he has created in his cottage. "Or at least cut them back to size."
Lovelock put out a book called Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. "The Gaia hypothesis," he wrote, "is for those who like to walk or simply stand and stare, to wonder about the Earth and the life it bears and to speculate about the consequences of our own presence here." Gaia, he added, offers an alternative to the "depressing picture of our planet as a demented spaceship, forever traveling driverless and purposeless around an inner circle of the sun."
Of course, scientists like Broecker rarely used the word "Gaia." They prefer the phrase "Earth system science," which views the world, according to one treatise, as "a single, self-regulating system comprised of physical, chemical, biological and human components." In other words, Gaia in a lab coat.
"The whole system," he decided, "is in failure mode."
One of the questions that fascinates Lovelock: Life has been evolving on Earth for more than 3 billion years—and to what purpose? "Like it or not, we are the brains and nervous system of Gaia," he says. "We have now assumed responsibility for the welfare of the planet. How will we manage it?"
[PASTE]
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