James Lovelock Totally Explained

Dr. James Ephraim Lovelock, CH, CBE, FRS (born 26 July 1919) is an independent scientist, author, researcher, environmentalist, and futurologist who lives in Cornwall, in the south west of Great Britain. He is known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, in which he postulates that the Earth functions as a kind of superorganism.

Biography

Lovelock was born in Letchworth Garden City. He studied chemistry at the University of Manchester before taking up a Medical Research Council post at the Institute for Medical Research in London.
In 1948, Lovelock received a Ph.D. in medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Within the United States he's conducted research at Yale, Baylor College of Medicine, and Harvard University.

Career

A lifelong inventor, Lovelock has created and developed many scientific instruments, some of which have been adopted by NASA in its programme of planetary exploration. It was while working for NASA that Lovelock developed the Gaia Hypothesis, for which he's most widely known.
   In early 1961, Lovelock was engaged by NASA to develop sensitive instruments for the analysis of extraterrestrial atmospheres and planetary surfaces. The Viking program that visited Mars in the late-1970s was motivated in part to determining whether Mars supported life, and many of the sensors and experiments that were ultimately deployed aimed to resolve this issue.
   During work towards this program, Lovelock became interested in the composition of the Martian atmosphere, reasoning that many life forms on Mars would be obliged to make use of it (and, thus, alter it). However, the atmosphere was found to be in a stable condition close to its chemical equilibrium, with very little oxygen, methane, or hydrogen, but with an overwhelming abundance of carbon dioxide.
   To Lovelock, the stark contrast between the Martian atmosphere and chemically-dynamic mixture of that of our Earth's biosphere was strongly indicative of the absence of life on the planet. However, when they were finally launched to Mars, the Viking probes still searched for life there. To date no evidence for either extant or extinct life has been found (although interest has recently revived with the discovery of unexpected methane in the atmosphere).
   Lovelock invented the Electron Capture Detector, which ultimately assisted in discoveries about the persistence of CFCs and their role in stratospheric ozone depletion.
   Lovelock was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974.
   After studying the operation of the Earth's sulphur cycle, Lovelock and his colleagues developed the CLAW hypothesis as an possible example of biological control of the Earth's climate.
   In 1990, Lovelock was awarded the first Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for the Environment by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
   An independent scientist, inventor, and author, Lovelock works out of a barn-turned-laboratory in Cornwall.
   In 2003, he was appointed a Companion of Honour (CH) by Queen Elizabeth II.
   Lovelock is currently president of the Marine Biological Association (MBA).

Gaia

While the Gaia Hypothesis was readily accepted by many in the environmentalist community, it hasn't been fully accepted within the scientific community. Among its more famous critics are Richard Dawkins and Ford Doolittle.
Critics point out that since natural selection operates on individuals, it isn't obvious how planetary-scale homeostasis can evolve. Lovelock responded to these criticisms with models such as Daisyworld, which illustrates how individual-level effects can translate to planetary homeostasis. However, as Earth Systems Science is still in its infancy, it isn't yet clear how well Daisyworld applies to the full complexity of the Earth's biosphere and climate.

Nuclear power

Lovelock has become concerned about the threat of global warming from the greenhouse effect. In 2004 he caused a media sensation when he broke with many fellow environmentalists by pronouncing that "only nuclear power can now halt global warming". In his view, nuclear energy is the only realistic alternative to fossil fuels that has the capacity to both fulfill the large scale energy needs of mankind while also reducing greenhouse emissions. He is an open member of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy.
In 2005, against the backdrop of renewed UK government interest in nuclear power, Lovelock again publicly announced his support for nuclear energy, stating, "I am a Green, and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy".
Although Lovelock's interventions in the public debate on nuclear power are recent, his views on it are longstanding. In his 1988 book The Ages of Gaia he states:

"I have never regarded nuclear radiation or nuclear power as anything other than a normal and inevitable part of the environment. Our prokaryotic forebears evolved on a planet-sized lump of fallout from a star-sized nuclear explosion, a supernova that synthesised the elements that go to make our planet and ourselves."

On 30 May 2006, Lovelock told the Australian Lateline television program: "Modern nuclear power stations are useless for making bombs". This is because the Plutonium-239 from a nuclear reactor power plant is contaminated with a significant amount of Pu-240, so it isn't weapons-grade. It is easier to enrich Uranium than than to separate the Pu-240 from the Pu-239.
In response, Dr. Jim Green, a nuclear campaigner, said: "Lovelock's claim that nuclear power plants can't be used for weapons production is false, irresponsible and dangerous. A typical nuclear power reactor produces about 300 kilograms of plutonium each year, enough for 30 nuclear weapons". Technically however this isn't a refutation of Lovelock's claim, as Lovelock didn't deny that reactors produce plutonium, merely that it's in a form difficult to utilize for weapons production.

Climate and mass human mortality

Writing in the British newspaper The Independent in January 2006, Lovelock argues that, as a result of global warming, "billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable" by the end of the 21st century.
He claims that by the end of the century, the average temperature in temperate regions will increase by as much as 8°C and by up to 5°C in the tropics, leaving much of the world's land uninhabitable and unsuitable for farming, with polar cities needed. He suggests that "we have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act, and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they've to sustain civilisation for as long as they can".

Ocean Pipes proposal

In September 2007, Lovelock and Chris Rapley proposed the construction of ocean pipes "100 to 200 metres long, 10 metres in diameter and with a one-way flap valve at the lower end for pumping by wave movement" to pump water up from below the thermocline to "fertilize algae in the surface waters and encourage them to bloom". The intention of this scheme is to accelerate the transfer of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the ocean by increasing primary production and enhancing the export of organic carbon (as marine snow) to the deep ocean. The idea is theoretical, and the authors note that it "may fail, perhaps on engineering or economic grounds", and that "the impact on ocean acidification will need to be taken into account".
The proposal attracted widespread media attention, although also criticism. Commenting on the proposal, Corinne Le Quéré, a University of East Anglia researcher, said "It doesn’t make sense. There is absolutely no evidence that geoengineering options work or even go in the right direction. I’m astonished that they published this. Before any geoengineering is put to work a massive amount of research is needed – research which will take 20 to 30 years".

Books

(Lovelock's autobiography)

External results

Click here for more details on James Lovelock

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://james_lovelock.totallyexplained.com">James Lovelock Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.