News in Science reports:
A series of giant pipes in the oceans to mix surface and deeper water could be an emergency fix for the earth's damaged climate system, says the scientist behind the Gaia hypothesis.
Professor James Lovelock, whose hypothesis says earth is a kind of superorganism composed of living and non-living elements, has fuelled controversy for three decades.
He thinks the stakes are so high that radical solutions must be tried to fix our climate, even if they ultimately fail.
In a letter to the journal Nature, he proposes vertical pipes 100 to 200 metres long and 10 metres wide be placed in the sea, so that wave motion pumps up water and fertilises algae on the surface.
This algal bloom would push down carbon dioxide levels and also produce dimethyl sulfide, helping to seed sunlight-reflecting clouds.
I always thought the point of the Gaia hypothesis was that the Earth is a self-regulating organism and humans should stop mucking with it. After all, it isn't the Earth that's being harmed by getting hotter or colder or whatever, it's people who would presumably suffer Gaia's revenge if their contributions to the atmosphere were considered undesirable by the superentity. Apparently Lovelock feels he has a special dispensation. Either that or he just can't keep his fingers out of the pie.
He's probably hoping someone will pay him for his idea or give him a grant to explore it further.
Posted by: prairie biker | September 28, 2007 at 09:06 AM
I hope someone tells him his idea is really gaia.
Posted by: gail | September 28, 2007 at 01:18 PM
I want to know where the name Gaia came from. Any ideas? Or is it just made up?
Posted by: prairie biker | September 28, 2007 at 03:01 PM
Arrogance.
Posted by: iamnot | September 28, 2007 at 05:06 PM
Gaia is the Greek goddess of the Earth.
Posted by: Sean H | September 28, 2007 at 06:44 PM
That was me. I posted something for Sean earlier.
Posted by: gail | September 28, 2007 at 06:45 PM
and here I always just thought it was some made up hippy thing
Posted by: prairie biker | September 28, 2007 at 08:02 PM
That Lovelock's a bit of an odd cat. There was an article somewhere last year saying that even with all the nuclear fallout around Chernobyl the wildlife is doing better than it has in centuries because the people are all gone. Lovelock suggested we should start dumping nuclear waste in the Amazon basin to stop rain forest depletion.
Posted by: SeanH | September 29, 2007 at 09:00 AM