As you may recall, James Lovelock recently threw global warming/climate change under the bus. I guess these guys need to get out more. I post this press release solely for the entertainment value, because I can find little else in it. – Anthony
UMD Finding May Hold Key to Gaia Theory of Earth as Living Organism
Discovery ultimately could lead to better climate understanding and prediction
COLLEGE PARK, Md. Is Earth really a sort of giant living organism as the Gaia hypothesis predicts? A new discovery made at the University of Maryland may provide a key to answering this question. This key of sulfur could allow scientists to unlock heretofore hidden interactions between ocean organisms, atmosphere, and land — interactions that might provide evidence supporting this famous theory.
The Gaia hypothesis — first articulated by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in the 1970s — holds that Earth’s physical and biological processes are inextricably connected to form a self-regulating, essentially sentient, system.
One of the early predictions of this hypothesis was that there should be a sulfur compound made by organisms in the oceans that was stable enough against oxidation in water to allow its transfer to the air. Either the sulfur compound itself, or its atmospheric oxidation product, would have to return sulfur from the sea to the land surfaces. The most likely candidate for this role was deemed to be dimethylsulfide.
Newly published work done at the University of Maryland by first author Harry Oduro, together with UMD geochemist James Farquhar and marine biologist Kathryn Van Alstyne of Western Washington University, provides a tool for tracing and measuring the movement of sulfur through ocean organisms, the atmosphere and the land in ways that may help prove or disprove the controversial Gaia theory. Their study appears in this week’s Online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
According to Oduro and his colleagues, this work presents the first direct measurements of the isotopic composition of dimethylsulfide and of its precursor dimethylsulfoniopropionate. These measurements reveal differences in the isotope ratios of these two sulfur compounds that are produced by macroalga and phytoplankton. These measurements (1) are linked to the compounds’ metabolism by these ocean organisms and (2) carry implications for tracking dimethylsulfide emissions from the ocean to the atmosphere.
Sulfur, the tenth most abundant element in the universe, is part of many inorganic and organic compounds. Sulfur cycles sulfur through the land, atmosphere and living things and plays critical roles in both climate and in the health of organisms and ecosystems.
“Dimethylsulfide emissions play a role in climate regulation through transformation to aerosols that are thought to influence the earth’s radiation balance,” says Oduro, who conducted the research while completing a Ph.D. in geology & earth system sciences at Maryland and now is a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “We show that differences in isotopic composition of dimethylsulfide may vary in ways that will help us to refine estimates of its emission into the atmosphere and of its cycling in the oceans.”
As with many other chemical elements, sulfur consists of different isotopes. All isotopes of an element are characterized by having the same number of electrons and protons but different numbers of neutrons. Therefore, isotopes of an element are characterized by identical chemical properties, but different mass and nuclear properties. As a result, it can be possible for scientists to use unique combinations of an element’s radioactive isotopes as isotopic signatures through which compounds with that element can be traced.
“What Harry did in this research was to devise a way to isolate and measure the sulfur isotopic composition of these two sulfur compounds,” says Farquhar, a professor in the University of Maryland’s department of geology. “This was a very difficult measurement to do right, and his measurements revealed an unexpected variability in an isotopic signal that appears to be related to the way the sulfur is metabolized.
“Harry’s work establishes that we should expect to see variability in the sulfur isotope signatures of these compounds in the oceans under different environmental conditions and for different organisms. I think this will ultimately be very important for using isotopes to trace the cycling of these compounds in the surface oceans as well as the flux of dimethylsulfide to the atmosphere. The ability to do this could help us answer important climate questions, and ultimately better predict climate changes. And it may even help us to better trace connections between dimethylsulfide emissions and sulfate aerosols, ultimately testing a coupling in the Gaia hypothesis,” Farquhar says.
Media Contacts:
James Farquhar
Professor
Department of Geology
University of Maryland
(301) 405-5043
Harry Oduro
Postdoctoral Fellow
MIT
(617)-324-3946
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Brimstone! What a hellish hypothesis!
🙂
“The Gaia hypothesis — first articulated by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in the 1970s — holds that Earth’s physical and biological processes are inextricably connected to form a self-regulating, essentially sentient, system.”
I don’t know whether the “essentially sentient” comes from Lovelock or from the press release writer, but I doubt that the thermostats in my rooms are sentient. At least they seem to be incapable of making tools.
If they truly use Lovelock’s original idea, they may begin to find valid theories. I doubt they’re capable of it, though.
The organic Gaea (like all living things) functions by an infinite number of decoupled NEGATIVE feedback loops. The Carbon Cult’s false idea of Nature is tightly coupled (“global average temperature”) and relies on POSITIVE feedbacks.
I’ve found it highly satisfying to watch the real living Gaea killing the false god Gaia. The false god and her apocalyptic cult followers have bankrupted the countries where they rule, leaving those countries with no spare money to pursue religious nonsense. Real homeostasis, real Nature.
“a self-regulating, essentially sentient, system.” If they really believed that then they would leaves things to fix themselves not try and tax it out of existence.
“Earth’s physical and biological processes are inextricably connected to form a self-regulating, essentially sentient, system.”
Animism.
My kitchen oven has a self-regulating system to maintain a nearly constant temperature. So that makes it sentient then?
How can they have discovered something new about the climate? Surely the science is settled.
/sarc
“The Gaia hypothesis — first articulated by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in the 1970s — holds that Earth’s physical and biological processes are inextricably connected to form a self-regulating, essentially sentient, system.”
I didn’t think that ‘sentient’ was part of the hypothesis!
To understand that all these processes are part of a complex self-regulating system is a very useful insight. Evolution is a similar complex system, and that’s often ‘anthropomorphised’, with people saying things like “fish grew legs so that they could walk on the land’. But these are just shorthand ways of expressing a complex process – I don’t think anyone really believes that these complex self-regulating stable processes are actually self-directed, as this set of wording implies…
Then again it might not! 😉 Are we not just a tad lucky to live on the third lump of rock from the Sun, be at just the right radius in our eliptical orbit to receive sufficient warmth, have received enough bombardment from ice bearing comets (possiby bearing interstella bacteria & microbes), received enough volcanic activity & crust formation creating techtonic plates, that all went together to produce a primordial soup to create life on Earth? Then again the hand of God may have had an effect, but yet again that’s one for the theologians to debate! Now, where’s my video of “1,000,000BC” gone?
Harry’s work establishes that we should expect to see variability in the sulfur isotope signatures of these compounds in the oceans under different environmental conditions and for different organisms.
No one has seen this yet in sediments to use as a proxy? Seems like it would have been relatively easy to confirm if this is real.
“The Gaia hypothesis — first articulated by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in the 1970s — holds that Earth’s physical and biological processes are inextricably connected to form a self-regulating, essentially sentient, system.”
I don’t think they know what “sentient” means.
It’s simple and confusing. If the earth is like a (higher) living organism, as Lovelock suggests, it should maintain a constant temperature. So it doesn’t really support the idea of strong positive feedbacks and runaway warming.
Perhaps Farquhar learnt about natural sulphur emmisions from Shrek?
If one is going to buy the Gaia hypothesis for this planet, then it would also have to be applied to the Cosmos generally, since the Earth does not exist in isolation from the rest of the Universe. Might as well just take the next step backwards into various religious beliefs and creation myths and be done with it. [shaking head, rolling eyes]
First dino gas, now Sulphur emissions-is there a link? /Sarc
Since Lovelock frequently makes the news, I’ve decided to read The Ages of Gaia to see what it was about. Lovelock is a biologist and here’s his observations about some of the top Biologists that he worked with at Nasa in the 1960s:
From the beginning to the end, the Martian life-detection experiments had a marked air of unreality. Let me illustrate this with a fable. Dr. X, an eminent biologist, showed me his Martian life detector; a cubical cage of stainless steel, beautifully constructed, with sides about one centimeter long. When I asked him how it worked, he replied, “It’s a flea trap. Fleas are attracted to the bait inside, hop in, and cannot escape.” I then asked how he could be sure that there are fleas on Mars; his response was, “Mars is the greatest desert in the Solar System – a planet full of desert. Wherever there are deserts there are camels, and there is no animal with as many fleas as a camel. On Mars my detector will not fail to find life.”
But is Lovelock’s thinking much beyond that? Here are some of his other remarks:
Those bacteria have been with Gaia for nearly four thousand million years, and they still live all over the Earth in muds, sediments, and intestines – wherever they can keep away from the deadly poison – oxygen.
I say that only by pollution do we survive. We animals pollute the air with carbon dioxide, and the vegetation pollutes it with oxygen. The pollution of one is the meat of the other. Gaia is more subtle, and, at least until humans appeared, polluted this region of the Solar System with no more than the gentle warmth of infrared radiation.
I have lots to say but will keep my remarks to myself. I will only say that I’m glad biologists weren’t the ones to build the spaceship. Can’t wait for the EPA to declare oxygen a pollutant.
“…ultimately testing a coupling in the Gaia hypothesis,” Farquhar says.”
New Testament, 2nd Peter, 3:4; “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.”
Since carbon cycles through animals, plants, soil, geologic formations, the oceans and the atmosphere, then should not man-made CO2 emissions be considered equivalent to speeding the coming of Gaia’s big butt or whatever?
New Testament, 2nd Peter, 3:12; “Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?”
Coincidence of science and religion commingling? Nah, of course not! HA!
And …
1) Just because sulfur was part of the Gaia Hypothesis construct does not come close to confirming any presence as an organism. A sulfur cycle in the biosphere is expected, even in absence of a metabolism.
2) Organisms as well as natural physical processes famously can select isotopes, being able to discriminate between them. This means that as an organism uses a sulfur compound, the organism will have an isotopes signature composition and the source will also take on a different composition. There will always be two changes occurring. When an entity does its selecting, the picture becomes much more complicated. It is going to be difficult to sort this out, but whatever they find, it is unlikely to have any aspect of organismal processes—there are too many physical processes involved.
Sentient system …. and there are fairies at the bottom of my garden too.
Yes, indeed, and it “may even” order you a mushroom pizza next weekend.
OK, wild speculation has its place, I suppose, and press releases are hardly known for their rigor in any field, but still…
Wow… so living things alter their environment, and other living things respond to changes in their environment, ad infinitum.
It’s totally like having a pony tail with an ethernet port on the end of it that I can plug into my horse or giant bird.
“— holds that Earth’s physical and biological processes are inextricably connected to form a self-regulating, essentially sentient, system.”
Okay, self-regulating, I can buy that. Sentient, Hmmm …. could a thermostat be described as sentient? I suppose so. The delusional and grandiose are the end game of a failed grand hypothesis.
DirkH said, “I don’t know whether the “essentially sentient” comes from Lovelock or from the press release writer, but I doubt that the thermostats in my rooms are sentient. At least they seem to be incapable of making tools.”
Actually, temperature sensors appear quite capable of making tools. They appear to have made Hansen, Gavin, the smut book author, etc, etc, etc.
Ever since I heard of the theory at about 13 years of age (a long time ago now), I was smitten with it. After all, how much does a single cell of our body know about our 9 to 5 job, taxes and religion? Why could all living things not be a part of some much larger ‘organism’ that has knowledge of things so far beyond our ken as to be as impossible for us to understand as it is for a skin cell to understand fiscal policy.
Discussing sulphur in this context in order to try to understand what this higher organism may be is like two skin cells discussing osmosis in order to understand that fiscal policy. Utterly useless.
I rest my case, with no verdict, but still plenty of intellectual fodder for the wee hours when the whisky and the hookah run low….
Well, no complaint about that, but it would have been nice if he included a references to muons and low level maritime clouds. Does this mean we have to consider Svensmark to be a leading proponent of the Gaia Hypothesis?