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#11
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The run-away greenhouse is impossible
Robert J. Kolker wrote:
Yousuf Khan wrote: And according to the Gaia Hypothesis, life on Earth itself will evolve to absorb and subsume any climate conditions that will lead to runaway greenhouse effects. The planet is not a living organism. Organism live on the planet. Okay, and so what's this got to do with whether or not "life on Earth" will evolve to rectify the climate? Yousuf Khan |
#12
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The run-away greenhouse is impossible
tadchem wrote:
On Jun 22, 9:42 pm, "Robert J. Kolker" wrote: The planet is not a living organism. Organism live on the planet. Not that he said that... I read Yousef's comment as discussing the effect of "life on Earth" collectively. not that the earth itself is alive, nor that he personally endorses the Gaia 'Hypothesis' (really a New-Age neo- religion). Thanks, that's exactly what I meant. I was talking about life on Earth, not the Earth itself as a living thing. Anyways, the Gaia Hypothesis segments into "Weak" and "Strong" versions. The Weak Gaia Theories are completely provable and actually undeniable, as models they fit the planet Earth like nylon. But the Weak Theories are only advocating that which is blatantly obvious: the advent of life on Earth has affected its environment. The Strong Gaia Theories go further and model the Earth like an organism itself. The Strong Gaia Theory may not be provable for a very long time, and it may only be provable through hindsight through history. Regarding the theory as a neo-religion, it was proposed by Dr. James Lovelock, a NASA consultant, with a background in chemistry and medicine. He was studying tests for finding life on Mars at the time. The poetic nature of the theory's name, Gaia, was proposed by Lovelock's friend, novelist William Golding. Although the theory has been taken up by environmentalists, it hasn't taken on religious proportions. It's unfortunate the name turns off so many people, many who haven't even read it, automatically assume things just based on the name alone. Yousuf Khan |
#13
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The run-away greenhouse is impossible
On Jun 24, 11:14*am, Yousuf Khan wrote:
tadchem wrote: On Jun 22, 9:42 pm, "Robert J. Kolker" wrote: The planet is not a living organism. Organism live on the planet. Not that he said that... I read Yousef's comment as discussing the effect of "life on Earth" collectively. not that the earth itself is alive, nor that he personally endorses the Gaia 'Hypothesis' (really a New-Age neo- religion). Thanks, that's exactly what I meant. I was talking about life on Earth, not the Earth itself as a living thing. Anyways, the Gaia Hypothesis segments into "Weak" and "Strong" versions. The Weak Gaia Theories are completely provable and actually undeniable, as models they fit the planet Earth like nylon. But the Weak Theories are only advocating that which is blatantly obvious: the advent of life on Earth has affected its environment. The Strong Gaia Theories go further and model the Earth like an organism itself. The Strong Gaia Theory may not be provable for a very long time, and it may only be provable through hindsight through history. Regarding the theory as a neo-religion, it was proposed by Dr. James Lovelock, a NASA consultant, with a background in chemistry and medicine. He was studying tests for finding life on Mars at the time. The poetic nature of the theory's name, Gaia, was proposed by Lovelock's friend, novelist William Golding. Although the theory has been taken up by environmentalists, it hasn't taken on religious proportions. It's unfortunate the name turns off so many people, many who haven't even read it, automatically assume things just based on the name alone. * * * * Yousuf Khan well, if you look at it objectively, the climate on earth has for most of its existence been hotter, moister, and much more carbon dioxidey; life, in the form of plants, has altered this by sucking up a lot of CO2 during the carboniferous era and burying the carbon, creating an anomalous situation of higher potential energy; humanity and/or human civiliation is just the particular manifestation of the inevitable result of a high potential energy situation, which is that some mechanism eventually emerges to restore the lower energy state. the rock eventually rolls down the hill. unfortunately, for us, once that potential energy is gone, the mechanism which it drove generally dies off. so, once the earth is restored to 1500 ppm of co2 in the air, high humidity, and temps 10 degrees higher than today, we will be redundant and obsolete. but the good news is that there's no real reason to expect that the "runaway greenhouse" will continue to make the earth a lake of melted solder, given that the closest thing to a stable state the climate has shown is that 10 degrees warmer. might be some overshoot, of course, for a few million years or so. |
#14
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The run-away greenhouse is impossible
Yousuf Khan wrote:
Andrew Usher wrote: This wasn't supposed to go to soc.men actually. My point (I didn't quite finish) was that there can be no such thing as a true 'run-away greenhouse', that there can be no abrupt tipping point but only a gradual change. It is nonetheless irreversible, though. Also, this has no effect on projections of man-made global warming, as it can't occur unless solar input is considerably higher than today. Andrew Usher And according to the Gaia Hypothesis, life on Earth itself will evolve to absorb and subsume any climate conditions that will lead to runaway greenhouse effects. Yousuf Khan It would have to have life develop into a very different set of species than we now have. Most or intolerant of high temperatures as this tends to cause proteins to degenerate. And protein specificity and moderate temperatures allows this. With very high temperatures there might continue to be unicellular life forms that can tolerate such but not multicellular and highly specialized life forms. Besides such radical evolutionary changes would take tens if not hundreds of millions of years. By then higher life forms might very well have succumbed to more quickly destructive catastrophes. FK |
#15
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The run-away greenhouse is impossible
Fred Kasner wrote:
Yousuf Khan wrote: Andrew Usher wrote: This wasn't supposed to go to soc.men actually. My point (I didn't quite finish) was that there can be no such thing as a true 'run-away greenhouse', that there can be no abrupt tipping point but only a gradual change. It is nonetheless irreversible, though. Also, this has no effect on projections of man-made global warming, as it can't occur unless solar input is considerably higher than today. Andrew Usher And according to the Gaia Hypothesis, life on Earth itself will evolve to absorb and subsume any climate conditions that will lead to runaway greenhouse effects. Yousuf Khan It would have to have life develop into a very different set of species than we now have. Most or intolerant of high temperatures as this tends to cause proteins to degenerate. And protein specificity and moderate temperatures allows this. With very high temperatures there might continue to be unicellular life forms that can tolerate such but not multicellular and highly specialized life forms. Besides such radical evolutionary changes would take tens if not hundreds of millions of years. By then higher life forms might very well have succumbed to more quickly destructive catastrophes. FK Look, we're only talking about an average temp increase of 10 degC. There's more than that between equatorial and mid lattitudes. -- Dirk http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK Remote Viewing classes in London |
#16
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The run-away greenhouse is impossible
On Jun 22, 8:18 pm, Yousuf Khan wrote:
Andrew Usher wrote: And according to the Gaia Hypothesis, life on Earth itself will evolve to absorb and subsume any climate conditions that will lead to runaway greenhouse effects. Yousuf Khan Yes, and it won't include human beings. The extremophile bacteria will have the run of the place. I mean, you as an individual have white blood cells. Do you care it they all die? As long as you don't get an infection, you are happy. You have no concern over the life and well being of individual cells in your body. They could be suffering the agonies of hell, but as long as your brain is happy you will not be concerned. The same for this supposed Gaia (which I don't really believe exists). An organism doesn't pay attention to its own components. If Gaia can remain healthy with just a few unintelligent, extremophile bacteria, she will be happy. Without human beings, she may be even happier. I don't think Gaia is a useful hypothesis for anything. In effect, it merely says that some organisms will survive no matter what. And that they will probably affect the geology of the earth somewhere down the line. Most of us are concerned with only with human beings, or maybe with the inclusion of a few animal relatives. I definitely would like to see dolphins and chimpanzees survive with us. But most cultures can't even see other human beings as worth the skin. I will not trust any deity, least of all Gaia, to protect our interests. All and all, I think it would be best if we reduce our carbon footprint. Let the deities take care of themselves. If we can't control ourselves, then maybe human beings would be better off extinct. |
#17
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The run-away greenhouse is impossible
Fred Kasner wrote:
It would have to have life develop into a very different set of species than we now have. Most or intolerant of high temperatures as this tends to cause proteins to degenerate. And protein specificity and moderate temperatures allows this. With very high temperatures there might continue to be unicellular life forms that can tolerate such but not multicellular and highly specialized life forms. Besides such radical evolutionary changes would take tens if not hundreds of millions of years. By then higher life forms might very well have succumbed to more quickly destructive catastrophes. Hardly! Most of the species needed to rectify the climate probably already exist now. Really, if you look at the history of evolution, it's not a matter of developing new species to take advantage of a new condition. The species already existed at the time of the change in condition, and something that was just getting along before, will all of a sudden shoot to prominence in the new regime. So that's what's going to happen now too. Some species will go extinct, while others will begin to flourish. Yousuf Khan |
#18
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The run-away greenhouse is impossible
Darwin123 wrote:
Yes, and it won't include human beings. The extremophile bacteria will have the run of the place. I mean, you as an individual have white blood cells. Do you care it they all die? As long as you don't get an infection, you are happy. You have no concern over the life and well being of individual cells in your body. They could be suffering the agonies of hell, but as long as your brain is happy you will not be concerned. Yeah, of course I would care if all of my white blood cells died, so would you, because that would mean that you have some kind of immunological disease such as AIDS, and you're gonna die. I wouldn't care about individual white blood cells, but as long as there were enough of them around to keep me functioning, I'd be happy. Same goes for my heart cells, and lung cells, etc., etc. Our bodies maintain an average temperature of 37°C (98.6°F), not for the sake of our comfort, but for the sake of keeping our individual cells alive. If one group of my cells died, then chances are that other groups of my cells would die too, if they depended on them. And then my whole body would die. A dead body would initially look the same as a living body, but not for long, and eventually it'll just be a skeleton. A skeleton is an immensely less desirable state for a body to be in, than a living one. The same for this supposed Gaia (which I don't really believe exists). An organism doesn't pay attention to its own components. If Gaia can remain healthy with just a few unintelligent, extremophile bacteria, she will be happy. Without human beings, she may be even happier. You're subscribing to the same self-loathing philosophy that most environmentalists have lifetime memberships in. As far as the environmentalists are concerned, all of the ills of the world are caused by humans, and only the humans. All species extinctions are always man's fault; if they could blame us for the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years before man even existed, then they would. And of course, global warming can't be a natural thing, it must always be man's fault. If Gaia is alive, then how do you know that man isn't exactly the evolution that Gaia needs to go through to keep living? Everything was leading upto this point where a type of cell evolved that could leave Gaia and inhabit other planets (much like plant spores) and take Gaia's legacy with it. The "unintelligent extremophile bacteria" can't take Gaia into space. I don't think Gaia is a useful hypothesis for anything. In effect, it merely says that some organisms will survive no matter what. And that they will probably affect the geology of the earth somewhere down the line. Most of us are concerned with only with human beings, or maybe with the inclusion of a few animal relatives. I definitely would like to see dolphins and chimpanzees survive with us. But most cultures can't even see other human beings as worth the skin. I will not trust any deity, least of all Gaia, to protect our interests. All and all, I think it would be best if we reduce our carbon footprint. Let the deities take care of themselves. If we can't control ourselves, then maybe human beings would be better off extinct. Depends on which version of the Gaia Theory you subscribe to. The Weak Gaia Theories simply state that organisms have changed the environment of the planet they inhabit. Pretty undeniable stuff, but not very useful. Strong Gaia Theories, which are the hardest to prove, believe the Earth itself is the ultimate living organism on Earth. All of the biota and the abiota living inside it were just the individual cells of this organism. The Strongest of the Gaia Theories even believe that Earth is just one of many Gaias in the Universe, and that the entire Universe is just a giant hive of evolving organisms. Yousuf Khan |
#19
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The run-away greenhouse is impossible
In article , Yousuf Khan wrote:
If one group of my cells died, then chances are that other groups of my cells would die too, if they depended on them. And then my whole body would die. Not necessarily. Cells die in your body all the time. Your hair, which grows all the time, consists mostly of dead cells. The very outermost part of your skin also consists of dead cells, which protects the living cells inside the skin and your body. As a matter of fact, almost all of your body is renewed (= the cells are replaced by other cells) every 5 to 7 years or so (the figure varies depending on which part of the body). As long as this is in equilibrium, your organism remains healthy. But if your body would start to generate new cells in an uncontrolled way, you'll get cancer. And if your body would generate too few new cells, you'll get sick and die too - the latter often happens to old people. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Paul Schlyter, Grev Turegatan 40, SE-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN e-mail: pausch at stjarnhimlen dot se WWW: http://stjarnhimlen.se/ |
#20
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The run-away greenhouse is impossible
On Jun 25, 3:15*am, (Paul Schlyter) wrote:
Not necessarily. *Cells die in your body all the time. *Your hair, which grows all the time, consists mostly of dead cells. *The very outermost part of your skin also consists of dead cells, which protects the living cells inside the skin and your body. *As a matter of fact, almost all of your body is renewed (= the cells are replaced by other cells) every 5 to 7 years or so (the figure varies depending on which part of the body). and i have little funerals for all of them. it's only right. |
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