The idea that biology is affecting climate, a key concept that should be more widely spread for our climate’s sake, is already considered slightly radical.
Another great post, Alpha. I prefer to think of Gaia as a system, and the “regulation” of conditions as states of the system. These states are always in flux, and they just “are”. No organism willfully “controls” or “regulates” climate, the whole system just moves through states with time. The cause and effect are the same. In this sense, I think your biodiversity thesis here is pretty good, since as the complexity of the system increases, it’s more likely that the system will be more stable (complexity science). What some scientists have found is that biodiversity seems spontaneous, which suggests that a more laissez-faire approach to environmental “management” might be to just leave things alone for a while.
I love your systems approach to climate which takes geochemical cycles of various substances I to account!
Why oh why have I not heard of Daisyworld before? Just minutes ago my blood pressure was probably high from reading about billionaires and their economic growth and longtermist views. Your article brought my blood pressure back down immediately. Not only being out in nature feels good for my health, just reading about the wonders of life seems to do similar.
Thanks so much for this Alpha, this is fascinating stuff.
Love it. I think life does promote life. Humans have such a potential for life and diversity restoration on earth. However, i’m not sure how to best understand what that would look like in practice beyond restoration. In a healthy world, what would be the role of the human?
Humans are a keystone species. Supposedly indigenous people in Amazon helped the Amazon get to the biodiverse state it is in today, by the way tended and planted trees. American Indians supposedly helped California reach its rich biome state today by managed burns and tending the wild. See Kat Anderson's book 'Tending the wild' https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520280434/tending-the-wild . Just like squirrels and birds and affect where vegetation repopulates in a helpful way, humans can too.
Biodiversity is our planet's driving force, and we must listen to and value it. By prioritizing biodiversity and using bio-acoustics to monitor and analyze eco-restoration efforts, we can get real-time and cost-effective feedback while ensuring the success of our restoration efforts. I have talked about it in my latest post. I was also thinking of integrating bio-acoustics along with moisture sensing as feedback in our methodology to maybe introduce certain natural nutrients at appropriate stages in our regeneration methodology.
Life is creating the conditions for life all around us. If we could escape our propensity for linear thinking we would see examples of this everywhere. Thank you for another great article. One of your best so far.
Haha... I just looked it up see where it came from..... Charles Eisenstein, Ed Goodall, Paul Hawken, Luis Camargo have all said "Life is creating the conditions for life" !
Who stole it from Lynn Margulis. On camera on John Feldman's bibliography of hers... and again, in the new film "Regenerating Life".
For me, Lynn Margulis is the most under-rated scientists - she should be somewhere with Einstein but hardly anyone knows her ... not even the feminists. Really a shame.
Even though I find Lynn's contribution far more important than Sagan's.
I am in awe of how feminists could let this happen - the most important scientist with respect to our understanding of life, who happens to be a woman, is forgotten because she divorced a chauvinist physicist who wanted a stay-home wife to support his career?!?
On John Feldman's film, a male biologist is on camera claiming that the message of Lynn Margulis needs to be eradicated, in order to protect the careers of established neodarwinist biologists. Seems they are successful.
Excellent blog, once again. I love Daisy World, but the cloud aspect was new for me :-)
You go deep into the history of Gaia theory. I am curious where you learned about the respective roles and contributions of Lovelock and Margulis here. My own sense is that the theoretical models (like Daisyworld) go back mostly to Lovelock, whereas the connection to biology - life - is mainly Margulis's work. But I would love to dig deeper here... because Lynn Margulis was so humble that she always understated her own contributions. Which sources can you recommend?
Did you ever come across Rene Thomes' folding catastrophe theories? They are powerful models for "Tipping point" dynamics... Waiting for next parts :-)
I am not exactly sure how much each contributed. They have co-written papers on the biology part of Gaia https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/001910357490150X If Lynn contributed more I am interested to know. If you would like to look deeper , I saw there is a book about the correspondence between Lynn Margulis and Lovelock https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/writing-gaia-the-scientific-correspondence-of-james-lovelock-and-lynn-margulis/E16C256B801871A25D1F5D858CA7CE3A . Yes there are a lot of complexity theories like catastrophe theory that could be applied to understanding how ecology and climate . The clouds are my idea , because the basics are the same if you substitute albedo effect for cloud effect the simulations should give same result, in my basic two height model . But if you substitute more complex cloud dynamics into model it would be intriguing to see what happens
Another great post, Alpha. I prefer to think of Gaia as a system, and the “regulation” of conditions as states of the system. These states are always in flux, and they just “are”. No organism willfully “controls” or “regulates” climate, the whole system just moves through states with time. The cause and effect are the same. In this sense, I think your biodiversity thesis here is pretty good, since as the complexity of the system increases, it’s more likely that the system will be more stable (complexity science). What some scientists have found is that biodiversity seems spontaneous, which suggests that a more laissez-faire approach to environmental “management” might be to just leave things alone for a while.
I love your systems approach to climate which takes geochemical cycles of various substances I to account!
yes biodiversity can usually help grow itself if humans dont intervene
Why oh why have I not heard of Daisyworld before? Just minutes ago my blood pressure was probably high from reading about billionaires and their economic growth and longtermist views. Your article brought my blood pressure back down immediately. Not only being out in nature feels good for my health, just reading about the wonders of life seems to do similar.
Thanks so much for this Alpha, this is fascinating stuff.
Glad you now got to hear about Daisyworld , its fascinating stuff...
Love it. I think life does promote life. Humans have such a potential for life and diversity restoration on earth. However, i’m not sure how to best understand what that would look like in practice beyond restoration. In a healthy world, what would be the role of the human?
Humans are a keystone species. Supposedly indigenous people in Amazon helped the Amazon get to the biodiverse state it is in today, by the way tended and planted trees. American Indians supposedly helped California reach its rich biome state today by managed burns and tending the wild. See Kat Anderson's book 'Tending the wild' https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520280434/tending-the-wild . Just like squirrels and birds and affect where vegetation repopulates in a helpful way, humans can too.
Thanks for the resource!
Important content.
Biodiversity is our planet's driving force, and we must listen to and value it. By prioritizing biodiversity and using bio-acoustics to monitor and analyze eco-restoration efforts, we can get real-time and cost-effective feedback while ensuring the success of our restoration efforts. I have talked about it in my latest post. I was also thinking of integrating bio-acoustics along with moisture sensing as feedback in our methodology to maybe introduce certain natural nutrients at appropriate stages in our regeneration methodology.
interesting i hadnt heard of bio-acustics before
Life is creating the conditions for life all around us. If we could escape our propensity for linear thinking we would see examples of this everywhere. Thank you for another great article. One of your best so far.
Thanks….. I like your phrasing “life is creating the conditions for life all around us”. Can I quote you ?
Sure, but I think I stole that phrase from Charles Eisenstein!
Haha... I just looked it up see where it came from..... Charles Eisenstein, Ed Goodall, Paul Hawken, Luis Camargo have all said "Life is creating the conditions for life" !
And Dr Millan M Millan said:
Water begets water, soil is the womb and vegetation de midwife.
I think it match in the sense of "life is creating the conditions for life"
Who stole it from Lynn Margulis. On camera on John Feldman's bibliography of hers... and again, in the new film "Regenerating Life".
For me, Lynn Margulis is the most under-rated scientists - she should be somewhere with Einstein but hardly anyone knows her ... not even the feminists. Really a shame.
Perhaps most know her being Carl Sagan ex-wife
yes quite the intellectual power couple
Even though I find Lynn's contribution far more important than Sagan's.
I am in awe of how feminists could let this happen - the most important scientist with respect to our understanding of life, who happens to be a woman, is forgotten because she divorced a chauvinist physicist who wanted a stay-home wife to support his career?!?
On John Feldman's film, a male biologist is on camera claiming that the message of Lynn Margulis needs to be eradicated, in order to protect the careers of established neodarwinist biologists. Seems they are successful.
Excellent blog, once again. I love Daisy World, but the cloud aspect was new for me :-)
You go deep into the history of Gaia theory. I am curious where you learned about the respective roles and contributions of Lovelock and Margulis here. My own sense is that the theoretical models (like Daisyworld) go back mostly to Lovelock, whereas the connection to biology - life - is mainly Margulis's work. But I would love to dig deeper here... because Lynn Margulis was so humble that she always understated her own contributions. Which sources can you recommend?
Did you ever come across Rene Thomes' folding catastrophe theories? They are powerful models for "Tipping point" dynamics... Waiting for next parts :-)
I am not exactly sure how much each contributed. They have co-written papers on the biology part of Gaia https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/001910357490150X If Lynn contributed more I am interested to know. If you would like to look deeper , I saw there is a book about the correspondence between Lynn Margulis and Lovelock https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/writing-gaia-the-scientific-correspondence-of-james-lovelock-and-lynn-margulis/E16C256B801871A25D1F5D858CA7CE3A . Yes there are a lot of complexity theories like catastrophe theory that could be applied to understanding how ecology and climate . The clouds are my idea , because the basics are the same if you substitute albedo effect for cloud effect the simulations should give same result, in my basic two height model . But if you substitute more complex cloud dynamics into model it would be intriguing to see what happens
Continued … complex cloud dynamics it would be interesting to see what happens
Thanks for those citations. I have not seen the scientific correspondences... Great resource!