Gaia Hypothesis

[Agent Smith]

59 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Of course not, (this reminds me of an aviation joke, the pilot reports, to the engineer 'something loose in the cockpit' the engineers report 'something tightened in the cockpit'.) it's just a thought about how something work's, but without the cypher of truth that can break the code, you can't falsify the god of the code.

I non intelligo, so it hasn't been falsified. That means it's not up to the mark ... in some way. Which ways are these, any idea? 

An interesting remark there about "you can't falsify the god of code". Is this a hypothesis you're aware of? Where does it apply? How do you know it's unfalsifiable? God of code, hmmmmm, you mean the God of religion? Sorry, I'm terribly confused at the moment.

[StringJunky]

1 hour ago, Agent Smith said:

Why would NASA use it? I mean it works as a simulation, but many (eminent?) scientists have criticized late Lovelock for what they probably think is jumping to conclusions. Is there evidence that earth is also a Daisy World, albeit more complex? 

Has The Gaia Hypothesis been falsified? 

Daisy world describes albedo, which should be pretty straightforward. It's a model. That first video was from NASA. To my knowledge it has not been falsified. Bear in mind I'm just someone on the internet.

[dimreepr]

32 minutes ago, Agent Smith said:

I non intelligo, so it hasn't been falsified. That means it's not up to the mark ... in some way. Which ways are these, any idea? 

An interesting remark there about "you can't falsify the god of code". Is this a hypothesis you're aware of? Where does it apply? How do you know it's unfalsifiable? God of code, hmmmmm, you mean the God of religion? Sorry, I'm terribly confused at the moment.

I mean the thought of human's, before the inevitable breakdown of comunication between the cultures and their progeny; religions had a good idea about how to live within the means of our planet/God/Gaia; that knowledge was lost, in the rabbit hole of understanding.

If we can relate to the language, via a code breaker, we can at least continue to live here, despite our ignorance... 😉

[Agent Smith]

38 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

Daisy world describes albedo, which should be pretty straightforward. It's a model. That first video was from NASA. To my knowledge it has not been falsified. Bear in mind I'm just someone on the internet.

I see. Gracias.

4 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

I mean the thought of human's, before the inevitable breakdown of comunication between the cultures and their progeny; religions had a good idea about how to live within the means of our planet/God/Gaia; that knowledge was lost, in the rabbit hole of understanding.

If we can relate to the language, via a code breaker, we can at least continue to live here, despite our ignorance... 😉

Any specific references in religion that supports the claim that "religions had a good idea about how to live within the means of our planet/God/Gaia"? Didn't religion hold sway over much of human history? Verum, that science simply compounded the problem by improving efficiency, but in the past half-century science has at least identified the problem, though it seems to be out of its depth when it comes to solutions. You see a link between religion and TGH? Someone did mention it's kinda sorta popular with NewAgeists. 

Yes, we can continue to live here ... that's a plus in my book, but I don't quite get why you emphasize language. Do you wish to discuss TGH from a linguistic POV? I wouldn't know where to start. 

[dimreepr]

11 minutes ago, Agent Smith said:

Yes, we can continue to live here ... that's a plus in my book, but I don't quite get why you emphasize language. Do you wish to discuss TGH from a linguistic POV? I wouldn't know where to start. 

The planet of the apes is a simple metaphor, imagine the discussion we'd have if this was the planet of the worm, Arakis for instance... 

[Agent Smith]

6 hours ago, dimreepr said:

The planet of the apes is a simple metaphor, imagine the discussion we'd have if this was the planet of the worm, Arakis for instance... 

Haven't read/viewed didn't get the op, even a fraction of the classics out there. I would've probably understood your allusions to these wonderful works if I had. 

 

Are you saying TGH is a metaphor? Of what? Arakis ... from Dune? Watched, good movie. 

[studiot]

8 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Daisy world describes albedo, which should be pretty straightforward. It's a model. That first video was from NASA. To my knowledge it has not been falsified. Bear in mind I'm just someone on the internet.

I have already complimented you on introducing DaisyWorld. But please realise its limitations.

Yes Albedo is a very important factor, particularly as the ice sheets grow or recede. which might lead to an acceleration of change.

But it is not the only factor and rarely the controlling factor.

I found the video interesting, but NASA did not offer their mathematics. From their explanation I can deduce that they are using some kind of Volterra (predator-prey) equation, which is known to have chaotic features (sudden jumps and bifurcations in its solutions) in its phase space.

It also depends upon where those ice sheets are (as well as their elevation) since the available insolation energy varies with position on the Earth.

A further important effect is that of energy transport , which again is greatly affected by the disposition of the land masses.

And the distribution of land masses is controlled by plate tectonics.

Quote

The ocean exerts a very strong control over global climate.

...

During Oligocene times ( 38 to million years ago) Australia became separated from Antarctica, while the land link between South America and the Antarctic Peninsula was also broken. these events lead to a ggreat change in the oceanic circulation of the southern hemisphere;  for the first time ocean currents were able to circulate freely around the Antarctic Continent, linking the waters of the Pacific, Indian and South Atlantic oceans in the process.

...

The winters of the World  Brian John (Durham University) p 47

 

So from the very earliest to the most recent times

1. Very different regimes of atmouspheric pressure, temperature and composition have prevailed or persisted for long periods of time.
2. During these periods quite different land and oceanic conditions pertained in respect of disposition of land and ice over the globe.
3. Also quite different regimes of energy transport (ocean currents and atmouspheric winds) pertained.

So it is not suprising that different forms of life appeared and disappeared over time.

Two things follow from this.

 

Our own particular set of circumstances which do indeed constitute a stable state and embody several mechanisms for resisting change (Gaia) have only persisted for a total of a few tens of millions of years so it cannot be said that The Gaia State is ideal, natural, normal for the Earth (or not)

We can say that it is very convenient for our form of Life.

 

Since the earliest forms of life did not use or generate oxygen  through the chemistry Agent Smith has outlined and even those later ones that did we largely wiped out by the planetary environment 250 million years ago we cannot say that evolution had proceeded in a simple linear fashion to ourselves.

 

[dimreepr]

15 hours ago, Agent Smith said:

Haven't read/viewed didn't get the op, even a fraction of the classics out there. I would've probably understood your allusions to these wonderful works if I had. 

 

Are you saying TGH is a metaphor? Of what? Arakis ... from Dune? Watched, good movie. 

Isaac Assimov explored the idea of gaia in the final novel of his foundation series, it was a metaphor for how humans and robot's can interface.

I have no idea who's the original author and what restrictions they placed on the OP/idea; but what makes you think that it's not a metaphor?

What part do you think is litterally true?

[Agent Smith]

21 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Isaac Assimov explored the idea of gaia in the final novel of his foundation series, it was a metaphor for how humans and robot's can interface.

It's a 3-4 volume book I was told. Haven't gotten round to reading it. I have a short memory, unfortunately. There's a grain of truth in that, we can barely stand each other. I had no idea that TGH was part of the book's plot. So Asimov was skeptical of the kind of balance TGH preaches. I take solace in the fact that per some folks TGH hasn't actually been disproved; That New-Ageists are attracted to it indicates there's something Avatar-like mystical about it.  

21 hours ago, dimreepr said:

I have no idea who's the original author and what restrictions they placed on the OP/idea; but what makes you think that it's not a metaphor?

What part do you think is litterally true?

The science part of it I guess. Lovelock was a biologist and so was Margulis and although the idea of balance (e.g. Aristotle's aurea mediocritas) precedes them, it was never given a scientific reading like in TGH. The reciprocal chemical reactions of photosynthesis and respiration I alluded to in my OP was meant to investigate the claim at a basic high school level. In a closed system (where there's no net change in mass i.e. conservation of mass), the only way for sustainable, sensu amplissimo, interactions to occur is (re)cylic in nature. That there exists active chemical processes is, cogito, evidence of some degree that we have on our hands a balancing act going on in the biosphere. If it were not the case all chemical processes would've, methinks, terminated long ago.

NASA, now I get why the North American Space Agency is "so interested" in TGH to have made a video explicating The Daisy World Simulation. Any long-duration space mission depends on TGH being true. Has anyone read about Spaceship Earth?

Edited July 22 by Agent Smith

[dimreepr]

2 hours ago, Agent Smith said:

The science part of it I guess. Lovelock was a biologist and so was Margulis and although the idea of balance (e.g. Aristotle's aurea mediocritas) precedes them, it was never given a scientific reading like in TGH. The reciprocal chemical reactions of photosynthesis and respiration I alluded to in my OP was meant to investigate the claim at a basic high school level.

The science part of it is observation after the fact, for instance when cultivating neurons, it's been observed that they will spontainiously gongregate and communicate, I don't know what the current thinking is about a possible why, but it's probably wrong, when we discover the next level...

High school level is just the first step on the journey.

9 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

The science part of it I guess. Lovelock was a biologist and so was Margulis and although the idea of balance (e.g. Aristotle's aurea mediocritas) precedes them,

I think you have gone off-piste with your interpretation of balance here, you're conflating different definitions. 

3 hours ago, Agent Smith said:

NASA, now I get why the North American Space Agency is "so interested" in TGH to have made a video explicating The Daisy World Simulation. Any long-duration space mission depends on TGH being true. 

No it doesn't, it depends on the current thinking being acurate enough to work.

THG is just like the bible, no longer relevant but it's got some bloody good idea's among the metaphors... 😉

[studiot]

4 hours ago, Agent Smith said:

I have a short memory, unfortunately.

That's where asking the internet comes in useful. Asking respectable sites like Wikipedia, Nasa and the friendly folks at ScienceForums.

4 hours ago, Agent Smith said:

1 

The science part of it I guess. Lovelock was a biologist and so was Margulis and although the idea of balance (e.g. Aristotle's aurea mediocritas) precedes them, it was never given a scientific reading like in TGH. The reciprocal chemical reactions of photosynthesis and respiration I alluded to in my OP was meant to investigate the claim at a basic high school level. In a closed system (where there's no net change in mass i.e. conservation of mass), the only way for sustainable, sensu amplissimo, interactions to occur is (re)cylic in nature. That there exists active chemical processes is, cogito, evidence of some degree that we have on our hands a balancing act going on in the biosphere. If it were not the case all chemical processes would've, methinks, terminated long ago.

2

NASA, now I get why the North American Space Agency is "so interested" in TGH to have made a video explicating The Daisy World Simulation. Any long-duration space mission depends on TGH being true. Has anyone read about Spaceship Earth?

1

I have told you several times that Gaia is an idea that works ie is self consistent.

But it just does not happen to be in effect on Earth.

 

2 

 

NASA's Daisyworld states explicitily that it only addresses one single factor
Your idea of balance requires a multifactorial analysis.
Gaia  acknowledges this and offers a multifactorial balance.

However I have also noted that has also been extended by mystical and (semi) religeous groups so if you are not going to use Lovelock's original you need to make that clear.

Of further interest I pointed out that the original statement is basically a restatement of Lyell's Uniformitarianism.
It is worth noting that, as with Gaia, the original "uniformity" (lyell never used the word uniformitarianism) has been hijacked by later workers for their own ends so I am posting the original 4 postulates.
Gaia is a transcription of postulate 4 which I have starred.

Note the first two postulates are the same as those used by physicists Newton and Einstein in their theories,
that both space and time are homogeneous and istropic.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

I think you have gone off-piste with your interpretation of balance here, you're conflating different definitions. 

I'm glad you pointed this out +1

I brings out what I have been trying to say that several terms used here are subject to contextual differences of definition.

Balance, cycle, feedback being the most obvious.

 

On 7/20/2024 at 6:59 AM, sethoflagos said:

On 7/18/2024 at 10:08 AM, studiot said:

I think it worthwhile agreeing on what we mean by 'feedback'.

I've been watching your comments on feedback with increasing interest, and you raise important points a) because there is an awful lot of misunderstanding mixed in amongst the loose terminology, and b) because it gets really complicated really quickly.

Loosely, feedback occurs whenever a process output is fed back into the input thereby modifying the subsequent output. However, there are some major provisos here, particularly with regard to causal links.

'Feedback' cannot as of current scientific concensus refer to the transfer of anything back to an earlier point in time. It therefore is not a transfer from an output back into the input that created that output. It is a transfer from an output phase into a subsequent input phase. Some examples may help explain:

I'm glad you noticed this one.  also +1

 

So what is the popular decision ?

 

Should we include definitions in this thread or start a new one for that purpose ?

[dimreepr]

39 minutes ago, studiot said:

Should we include definitions in this thread or start a new one for that purpose ?

How many pages were you hoping for?

[Agent Smith]

11 hours ago, studiot said:

That's where asking the internet comes in useful. Asking respectable sites like Wikipedia, Nasa and the friendly folks at ScienceForums.

Si, a rich vein of knowledge/expertise just waiting to be mined ... all for the price of an internet connection. 😃

 

11 hours ago, studiot said:

I have told you several times that Gaia is an idea that works ie is self consistent.

Ok. That's a start.

 

11 hours ago, studiot said:

NASA's Daisyworld states explicitily that it only addresses one single factor
Your idea of balance requires a multifactorial analysis.
Gaia  acknowledges this and offers a multifactorial balance.

Ok. it's complicated.

11 hours ago, studiot said:

However I have also noted that has also been extended by mystical and (semi) religeous groups so if you are not going to use Lovelock's original you need to make that clear.

The mystical link has deistic undertones, would you agree? Respectable scientists like Einstein were deists. I surmise this resemblance is what deists picked up on.

11 hours ago, studiot said:

Lyell

Gracias for the tracing the idea's origins. Will need to look it up.

12 hours ago, dimreepr said:

The science part of it is observation after the fact, for instance when cultivating neurons, it's been observed that they will spontainiously gongregate and communicate, I don't know what the current thinking is about a possible why, but it's probably wrong, when we discover the next level...

High school level is just the first step on the journey.

🤔

12 hours ago, dimreepr said:

No it doesn't, it depends on the current thinking being acurate enough to work.

THG is just like the bible, no longer relevant but it's got some bloody good idea's among the metaphors... 😉

What do you mean by "current thinking being accurate enough to work"? What's this "current thinking"?

The to-die-for life support system for long-haul space missions is one that maintains levels of oxygen at the critical level and autocorrects under various stressors. That's TGH on a small scale.

[StringJunky]

16 hours ago, Agent Smith said:

It's a 3-4 volume book I was told. Haven't gotten round to reading it. I have a short memory, unfortunately. There's a grain of truth in that, we can barely stand each other. I had no idea that TGH was part of the book's plot. So Asimov was skeptical of the kind of balance TGH preaches. I take solace in the fact that per some folks TGH hasn't actually been disproved; That New-Ageists are attracted to it indicates there's something Avatar-like mystical about it.  

The science part of it I guess. Lovelock was a biologist and so was Margulis and although the idea of balance (e.g. Aristotle's aurea mediocritas) precedes them, it was never given a scientific reading like in TGH. The reciprocal chemical reactions of photosynthesis and respiration I alluded to in my OP was meant to investigate the claim at a basic high school level. In a closed system (where there's no net change in mass i.e. conservation of mass), the only way for sustainable, sensu amplissimo, interactions to occur is (re)cylic in nature. That there exists active chemical processes is, cogito, evidence of some degree that we have on our hands a balancing act going on in the biosphere. If it were not the case all chemical processes would've, methinks, terminated long ago.

NASA, now I get why the North American Space Agency is "so interested" in TGH to have made a video explicating The Daisy World Simulation. Any long-duration space mission depends on TGH being true. Has anyone read about Spaceship Earth?

Lovelock is a chemist. Margulis is an evolutionary biologist.

[sethoflagos]

20 hours ago, Agent Smith said:

The reciprocal chemical reactions of photosynthesis and respiration I alluded to in my OP...

For me, the evolution of photosynthesis is quite a serious challenge to GH.

At the time, all organisms were anaerobic. Oxygen, merely a waste product of photosynthesis, was poisonous to (almost?) all lifeforms including the photosynthsisers. It is estimated that the Great Oxidation Event aka the 'Oxygen Holocaust' reduced the planets biomass by >80% though admittedly, the fossil record is so sparse at this time, such figures have large error bars.

If this outline is accurate, then the development of photosynthesis, while advantageous at least in the short term to the cyanobacteria responsible, can hardly be described as advantageous to the whole planetary ecosystem at that time. If GH is relevant to this epoch, we seem obliged to accept that photosynthesis was evolved for the benefit of the aerobic organisms that followed in the wake of the GOE. This is contrary to all we have learnt about evolution in that it is clearly blind to future consequences.

GH seems to put the cart before the horse. Life does not adjust the environment to the benefit of life. Rather life adapts to live in synergy with the changes in the environment to which it is subjected. 

[StringJunky]

1 hour ago, sethoflagos said:

GH seems to put the cart before the horse. Life does not adjust the environment to the benefit of life. Rather life adapts to live in synergy with the changes in the environment to which it is subjected. 

There are macro events that the biosphere can't change, vulcanism being one, and will inevitably have to adapt to it. It's not all one or the other i.e. dichotomy.

Edited July 23 by StringJunky

[studiot]

1 hour ago, StringJunky said:

There are macro events that the biosphere can't change, vulcanism being one, and will inevitably have to adapt to it. It's not all one or the other i.e. dichotomy.

Time to trot out the parable of the puddle ?

[dimreepr]

9 hours ago, Agent Smith said:

22 hours ago, dimreepr said:

The science part of it is observation after the fact, for instance when cultivating neurons, it's been observed that they will spontainiously gongregate and communicate, I don't know what the current thinking is about a possible why, but it's probably wrong, when we discover the next level...

High school level is just the first step on the journey.

🤔

22 hours ago, dimreepr said:

No it doesn't, it depends on the current thinking being acurate enough to work.

THG is just like the bible, no longer relevant but it's got some bloody good idea's among the metaphors... 😉

What do you mean by "current thinking being accurate enough to work"? What's this "current thinking"?

The to-die-for life support system for long-haul space missions is one that maintains levels of oxygen at the critical level and autocorrects under various stressors. That's TGH on a small scale.

I don't need evidence to support my refutation, but you do need evidence to refute my skepticism... 🤒 

[studiot]

10 hours ago, Agent Smith said:

The to-die-for life support system for long-haul space missions is one that maintains levels of oxygen at the critical level and autocorrects under various stressors. That's TGH on a small scale.

Aren't nuclear subs prototypes for this ?

 

They can stay submerged for long periods.

 

You are also talking control theory here which has restricted definitions of balance, cyclic and feedback, as to for instance Gaia.

 

Edited July 23 by studiot

[dimreepr]

3 minutes ago, studiot said:

Aren't nuclear subs prototypes for this ?

 

They can stay submerged for long periods.

Indeed, and an even simpler metaphore for why it doesn't really work, "we still have to go down the shop's for stuff, now and then"...

Even the sums are simple, a farmer needs 1 acre of fertile grassland per cow; there's only so much science can do to make the cow spherical and vacuum resistant...

[studiot]

33 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Even the sums are simple, a farmer needs 1 acre of fertile grassland per cow; there's only so much science can do to make the cow spherical and vacuum resistant...

Did you see the recent Countryfile program about the Chew Valley project ?

[dimreepr]

21 minutes ago, studiot said:

Did you see the recent Countryfile program about the Chew Valley project ?

No, send me a link.

[studiot]

59 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

No, send me a link.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0021d0b/countryfile-chew-valley

[dimreepr]

8 minutes ago, studiot said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0021d0b/countryfile-chew-valley

Thanks, but let's be honest with the truth, we don't really care about what the cow eats...

 

[Agent Smith]

3 hours ago, studiot said:

Aren't nuclear subs prototypes for this ?

I have no idea, but my money is on NO! You know why the Atlanteans are so mad at us, the oceans are our garbage dump. Nevertheless, noteworthy. 

@sethoflagos, I regard events like the great oxygenation catastrophe as stages towards the final chemical reaction that defines earth at present (photosynthesis-respiration coupling). Those intermediary reactions were building up to what we see now, a stable system that (autocorrects) 😄

3 hours ago, dimreepr said:

I don't need evidence to support my refutation, but you do need evidence to refute my skepticism... 🤒

That's ok, I fully respect your skepticism.