Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Gaia


What do you think of Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis? Read about it HERE if you need to. Do you think the Earth is a living system capable of managing its own survival? Do we have a duty to protect, respect, or restore the earth?

10 comments:

  1. Well, though it is debatable whether or not the Earth is an entity in itself, and the concept of Gaia is automatically related to bogus psuedo science (mostly because the term Gaia is now attributed to tree huggin soy eating spiritualists, [not that there's anything wrong with that, soy's pretty good,]) it can't be denied that the earth is a very complicated interconnected system. There is no real proof suggesting otherwise, especially when we can observe the systems at work together. The only problem is it is not self sustainable at it's present state, or in very short terms. with the current rate of industrial growth, and environment has been changing, and there are signs of the atmosphere trying to balance itself out (for example, the extreme weather conditions we've been obsering in recent years). In an extreme long term it is possible that this will all balance out, you know, like a few million years down the road when humans aren't around anymore, and signs of our presence and damage have been swallowed up and disolved back into the earth, then I would dare to say that the earth is self sustainable. the huge environmental changes that the earth has undergone in billions of years it's been in existance will attest to that, but withen any of our lifetimes, we won't see it. I think, that we can't ruin the earth permanently, because no matter what, life will find a way, but it definetly will not be the same, in terms of the kind of life forms that will prevail and the change in the evolutionary process. The changes people have made threw a monkey wrench into the system, but it will clear up. Just not in our life time. As for the Gaia theory, it's interesting, and quite possibly on the right track.

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  2. I suppose that the Earth being a living organism isn't such a far-out idea. Indeed, it's interesting to toy with the notion that natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes could be a sort of defense mechansim, which the Earth uses to cleanse it's "system" of harmful objects (cities, and other man-made structures, for example). Still, I don't know that I'd put much stock into the idea. If nothing else, it's a romantic idea.

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  3. I think The Earth is like a fine grandfather clock. It keeps itself going using it's own efforts and sometimes needs a little fixing once in a while. But even if one piece of the clock is broken because a vermin has decided to invade and infest the clock and it may not work so well. So when the clock breaks because a part of it was taken away from the system the clock can't really do anything about it and the clock continues to die from the vermin that infest it... And when the clock has been depleted of all its lifeforce, the vermin move to another, leaving the clock useless; a wasteland of nothing.

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  4. I would not go that far, I mean it is obvious that we are completely screwing up the planet, but in the long run, we're screwing ourselves over, because if we ruin everything, we won't be able to sustain ourselves, especially at our numbers, so the what seems more likely to me is that we'll die out, and given enough time everything will sort itself out. It'd be cocky to think that the earth is helpless and it's up to us to salvage it from this inevitable destruction. For our own sake, and the sake of most organisms living on earth at this present time, then it is incredibly important, but even if we don't, it'll straiten itself out. I don't really think it's the earth as a sentient organism per say that's going to do that, but rather, the versitility of life.

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  5. though i dont neccisarily think of the earth as a living entity (though i like the idia of it)i do agree that evry action has a consaquence. we cut down forests and build large cities for example and as a consaquence we have messed up the natural balance of nature and have heavily polluted the earth. I beleive there is a dilicate balnce in nature that we humans have to do our part to maintain, becouse we have ruined this balance with our high usage of the earths resources, and all the pullution we cause that has led to global warming.

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  6. Mmm yes, but even though other events such as the mass extinction of the dinosaurs or the ice age, those were all caused (as far as we can tell) by natural causes. Humans on the other hand have the ability to change nature itself. Thinks such as genetic engineering and the creation of new elements like Einsteineum and Plutonium. So if humans alter the world so much that there is no longer any of the necessary elements that are responsible for life on the earth (such as oxygen getting turned into some other "more useful" element) then the world will not have anything to return to its former life force.

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  7. Hmm where to begin. The Gaia theory is a very debatable topic. on one hand you have the spiritualists who believe that the world is capable of defending itself and natural disasters are not freak occurences but acts of cleansing. I do not believe this i believe that "Natural Disasters" are just that freak events that are natural occurences not Mother nature punishing us not an act of god freak occurences. I believe mankind can not be saved and we will leave the world the same way we entered it kicking and screaming. The rate that we are polluting our planet makes it nearly impossible for us to have a positive outlook on the future. The few resources we have will not be able to sustain our Constant need for both bigger better things but these things (SUV's,trucks etc,etc) burn stupid amount of fossil fuels which in turn destroys our atmosphere. No matter how hard Gaia trys to clean up Man kinds mess we will continues to screw up our planet inevitabley leading to the destruction of life as we know it.

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  8. What I don't understand is why people try to make a debate and as good as it is refuse to sign their name to it. So are you just scared to actually own an oppinion or what? Possibly just lazy. But really how much energy does it take to poke the keyboard a few extra times>...

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  9. I disagree, Kyle. I think the beauty of blogs is that anyone can jump in... from the person who speaks up in class anyways all the way to the strong silent type who doesn't speak up in class but has something to say. Maybe even a contribution from someone outside our course. Anonymity (even feigned) often provides courage to speak.

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  10. Re: kyle

    Yeah, I'm just a lazy jerk. =P
    I was the first person (although not the second) who didn't sign their name, but that's 'cause I'm a slacker. It took me a while to finally get that signing up thing down pat (had to try different titles that weren't taken--I finally just put random letters). So, for someone like me who has the attention span of a goldfish, simply clicking "anonymous" was a lot simpler than creating a blog of my own that I will never use.

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