Preface to the Preface, Foreword and Chapter 1
I anxiously awaited my library copy of this "groundbreaking work" by Lovelock on the concept of Gaia, the living earth, and the knowledge I would gain by looking at the world through Lovelock's hypothesis. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm was quickly crushed in the Preface, Foreword and Chapter 1. While scientists often promote a hypothesis to encourage expansion of current scientific thought, Lovelock's writing was not even worth the gas my SUV used in driving back and forth to the library. Well, maybe it was worth the gas because it's the coldest winter on record and it's cheaper to warm up in my car (for free since heat is pulled from the hot engine block) than to heat my house. And Lovelock provided me enough ammunition for some thinking and writing of my own.
The Gaia Hypothesis and How Lovelock Uses It
"Gaia" - the idea that the world is a living creature - including traditional non-living pieces such as rocks, gases, etc. - is a valuable concept in understanding the entirety of "how the world works." Indeed, the Gaia hypothesis sums up the world & its history through a unique perspective. However, it is only one perspective. And Lovelock has thrown away the individual pieces in favor of looking at the "whole." A thorough scientist would consider the parts and the whole, both individually and collectively. But Lovelock's lack of compleat science, his degradation of other scientists who do not believe his hypothesis is the one and only answer, and Lovelock's predictions proven false, limited my reading of the book. Truly, I only read until page 11 because (1) it was taking too long to write down my scientific thoughts on Lovelock's science and (2) Lovelock was just plain annoying in his insistence on being the creator and leader of the newest and best religion in town. [Sorry for the sarcasm but it is the kindest way to describe my observations.]
Ignorance of the Parts of the Whole
"We are dangerously ignorant of our own ignorance, and rarely try to see things as a whole." - James Lovelock
We also are dangerously ignorant of our own ignorance, and rarely try to see things as a part of the whole in addition to the whole of a part.
Lovelock the Physician
"What makes it [this book on global warming] different is that I speak as a planetary physician whose patient, the living Earth, complains of fever." - James Lovelock
First, I don't hear the Earth complaining. I hear people complaining. And they're not complaining about a fever.
Second, claims to be a physician usually require attendance at medical school, residency, medical practice and certification in at least one state or country in at least one medical specialty (which admittedly could be "general practice"). While I am not a medical doctor and may often hold physicians up to ridicule, I was accepted at Vanderbilt University for a combined MD-PhD program in biomedical materials, a program I envisioned back in 1979. I decided not to pursue the MD part of the MD-PhD simply because, at the time, 99% of biomedical research was performed in Salt Lake City, the capitol of Mormonism that would interfere with my scientific experiments in lifestyle. And it would be friggin' cold in Utah at a time when the world's scientists were mostly concerned about a global ice-age (if they thought about it at all). Due to my credentials of at least being accepted as a medical student at a premier university, I claim greater knowledge of medicine and physicians than Lovelock and, I am happy to say that my ego is larger than Lovelock could even imagine. In fact, the first thing I wrote after noting this quote of Lovelock's claim to be a physician was "What an ego!"
Lovelock the Physician, Part 2
"We have grown in number to the point where our presence is perceptibly disabling the planet like a disease. As in human diseases there are four possible outcomes: destruction of the invading disease organisms; chronic infection; destruction of the host; or symbiosis - a lasting relationship of mutual benefit to the host and the invader." - James Lovelock
I can now understand why Lovelock thinks of himself as a physician instead of as a scientist. In science there are a myriad of scientific possibilities. Usually more than one of them has a positive outcome. However, in medical school the human body is described in Lovelock's simplistic fashion in order to create functioning doctors after only four years of study. Physicians are not scientists and scientists are not physicians unless they combine the two fields into scientific medical research, with fairly strict protocols too. This is not to demean either party - the physician or the scientist. It is just a fact that the human body is a complex, super-interactive, ever-changing organism that cannot be taught as a whole scientific being in just four years of medical school. If humanity's lack of knowledge of human beings was fully explained in school, our physicians would be zombies, incoherently working to solve the unknown with scientific studies on each patient. Instead, we properly train physicians to (1) believe in only four outcomes and (2) have huge egos - just so they can become functioning physicians.
Lovelock's Prediction: Global Warming Quickly Follows an Economic Downturn
"Smoke and dust pollution of the northern hemisphere reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This 'global dimming' is transient and could disappear in a few days if there were an economic downturn or a reduction of fossil fuel burning." - James Lovelock
Now here is a prediction from Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, stated as a fact in Lovelock's book, which lends itself to true scientific evaluation. Starting in the fall of 2008 and lasting through (at a minimum) early winter 2009, there has been a massive economic downturn. So many businesses and households have closed, gone bankrupt or lost income during this economic downturn that the burning of fossil fuels has drastically decreased. Per Lovelock, global warming would take over "in a few days" as the global dimming from burning fossil fuels has greatly diminished. Yet we are not warmer at all! In fact it has been much colder than normal throughout this recession. Could this imply that our pollution in the northern hemisphere has indeed followed the Gaia model as the earth may have adapted to our changing of its environment, just not in the disastrous way that Lovelock prefers?
(If you prefer a strict mathematical model, look at the commodity price of natural gas go down and down and down as compared to economic recession and the weather, particularly in North America and Europe. Natural gas price is my preferred analytical tool because it is not subject to global manipulation or political interference as compared to oil).
In Summary, Lovelock's View of Humans -> We Are Tribal Carnivores
"We are still tribal carnivores. We are programmed by our inheritance to see other living things as mainly something to eat, and we care more about our national tribe than anything else. We will even give our lives for it and are quite ready to kill other humans in the cruelest of ways for the good of our tribe." - James Lovelock
No comment necessary.
-k, 1/10/10
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
