Donald Noble's Website

Everyone should read this book. It should be part of the national curriculum, as it is much more important than Shakespeare.

Yes, James Lovelock does have an outlying view of the Earth system we live in, but only by reading these theories that are not mainstream, do we truly appreciate the potential perils we face if we do not change the way we live. And fast.

When you start reading his theory of a “living planet” called Gaia, and referred to in the feminine form, it does not appear to be a scientific text. Dig deeper and that changes. There is plenty of science, including an explanation of how the plants and then animals that have inhabited the Earth for the past 3.5 billion years (or thereabouts). If it were not for these plants, there would be no oxygen, and thus no higher lifeforms, including Homo Sapiens. Lovelock developed a mathematical model of “Daisyworld” with black daisies (that absorb heat and warm the planet) and white daisies (that reflect heat to cool the planet) which produced a stable environment for them to coexist, even when the temperature of the sun was varied. Simple, perhaps, but it illustrates the principals of the Gaia hypothesis clearly.

The other big issue I took from this book is how quickly we are diminishing not only the Earth’s natural resources, but also diminishing the ability of the planet to stabilise the climate at a level in which we can survive. If we take away the rain forest, then the ability of the planet system to remove CO₂ from the air is reduced. This idea is starting to become more widespread, but it is developed in much more detail in this book.

If you know me, you are welcome to borrow this book, if not, I suggest you try and source a copy, as it is well worth reading if you have more than a passing interest in science or the planet we live on. You could also look at The Gaia hypothesis page on Wikipedia which (as usual) has lots of interesting material.

This entry was posted on Friday 22nd June 2007 in Reviews, Science and tagged book-review, books, climate change, environmental, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.