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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Sentient, heh? I’ll never look at a threatening thunderstorm the same way again. It’s out to get me. Augh – there are Tstrms in the forecast for this afternoon. Maybe I’ll join the dog under the sofa.
Living systems reproduce beings of like kind. Complex systems are fascinating, but they do not reproduce themselves. And “reproduction” does not apply to the ability of a dog to support the ticks living on its back.
if the Earth were about to open up and spit out a New Earth (say, from Easter Island, the Navel of the World) then I would be open to this Gaia talk. Till then, it’s all just high tech shamanism with Lovelock posing as head Witch Doctor, casting bones beside the fire and forecasting our future from them.
Phytoplankton blooms are intimately connected with old ice containing iron nutrient. The DMS controls regional climate.
Thus it causes the end of ice ages, stabilises the interglacial and led to the post 1990 Arctic melting, now reversing. much of the Northern hemisphere warming from the latter was confused with AGW.
I must admit that it’s been many years since I read the book, but I could have sworn that the proposition was merely that the earth formed a self-regulating system. Nothing more. There was no claim that the whole thing was alive, much less sentient.
Seriously?
“Dimethylsulfide emissions play a role in climate regulation through transformation to aerosols that are thought to influence the earth’s radiation balance,”
Oh, and here I was thinking all this time that Dimethylsulfide influenced earth’s radiation balance by being the key ingredient in the process that provides ‘seed’ particles for cloud formation. The more dimethylsulfide, the more ‘seed’ particles, the more clouds. I also thought that this relationship was proven by Dr Svensmark and by CERN’s “CLOUD” experiment.
Oh, Somebody had finally discovered Gaia´s life cycle? Is she pregnant? Are we having baby Earths?
/sarc
Reproduction is the fundamental quality of all living beings, If you cannot demostrate that Gaia can produce offsprings, you cannot say it is alive.
The CCN also control the kinetics of cloud droplet coarsening.
Hmmm. Since Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking are all “part” of Gaia, then in a sense I suppose Gaia is sentient.
Oh, wait…Al Gore, James Hansen, Michael Mann…
Never mind. 🙂
Urederra says (May 16, 2012 at 7:25 am): “Reproduction is the fundamental quality of all living beings, If you cannot demostrate that Gaia can produce offsprings, you cannot say it is alive.”
Gaia’s trying. So far she has produced one species that may eventually “Gaia-form” and colonize other planets.
“LeeHarvey says:
May 16, 2012 at 5:41 am
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.”
Beat me to it Lee, I am turning blue with envy.
Transcendental Ranting ?
The ability of life (micro-organisms) to regulate the climate explains why the earth’s temperature has remained within 1.5% of current temperatures for the past 600 million years. Climate science and the IPCC believes we must maintain the earth’s temperatures to within 0.67% or catastrophic climate change will result. Gaia obviously doesn’t believe this, because Gaia is satisfied with 1.5%.
The IPCC models completely ignore the role of life in climate – yet they claim their aim is to protect life. They ignore Gaia and the 1.5% limit on temperature, and try and impose their own artificial 0.67% limit. To ignore the lessons of Gaia speaks of ignorance and contempt for Gaia.
How can you protect what you don’t understand? Gaia sets the temperature variability at 1/5% for a reason, or it would not exists. We simply have not discovered the reason.
Like the wildlife managers in Yellowstone a century ago that removed the wolves, all too often the “experts” end up doing more harm than good through their arrogance and ignorance. Perhaps natural temperature variability serves a role similar to wolves. Perhaps by limiting temperature to 0.67% variability in opposition to Gaia’s 1.5% variability, we will again make the same mistake, this time on a global scale.
Scientists are like priests, they claim to speak for Gaia. These claims are false. No one speaks for Gaia.
If there was no supply of sulphur on land, life that required sulphur would not have evolved on land. Nothing to do with any loopy Gaian ideas, just seeing the direction of cause and effect.
I have no objection to the Gaia “hypothesis” as a metaphor. As a metaphor it can be useful in describing the Earth’s interactions. I do not think “hypothesis” or “theory” is the correct usage of these words. As a religious concept… well… I guess people are free to worship whatever they want. Seems somewhat as idol worship but hey… pray to whomever you want. GK
Perhaps with the internet Gaia has achieved sentience. Now we’ll find out if it can learn anything.
“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.”
I think they overlooked sentient sulfur. And here I thought it was the fairies in the bottom of RichieP’s garden. Note that sulfur, while busy cycling itself, takes care of climate FIRST, then goes on to contribute to that rotten-egg smell emanting from that fetid swamp, er, ecosystem.
Dimethylsulfide and its relative methyl disulfide are the main odiferous chemicals in human feces. They are produced in the anaerobic metabolism of sulfur-bearing amino acids. If the oceans had significant levels of DMS, you would know it. It would smell like ‘Gaia.’
I think Stanislaw Lem wrote a science fiction book about a living planet prior to the ’70’s.
Sentient? Perhaps the copywriters have been reading Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘When The World Screamed’. For those who don’t know the book, Prof Challenger ( of ‘The Lost World’ fame) is convinced that the Earth is sentient. He drills down to the mantle to alert it to Man’s existence, at which point…… well, I don’t want to spoil the story
“a self-regulating, essentially sentient, system.”
Well then obviously humans have been place on Mother EARTH to recycle the carbon locked into coal and oil back into the carbon cycle so Mother earth’s plants do not die from starvation.
self-regulating, essentially sentient, system.
Obviously I am piling on here, but have they really hypothesized that they know what the essence of sentience is? Is it a “self-organizing high-dimensional nonlinear dissipative system with many independent or loosely interrelated negative feedback loops”?
They’re using isotopes to determine where chemicals came from. IMHO, it’s a dangerous thing to do. I can’t find it but there was a post here, not that long ago, which showed that isotopes aren’t that reliable for guessing which sources supplied what proportion of the CO2 in the atmosphere.
Gaia could be sentient by some definitions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentient_beings_(Buddhism)
Urederra says:
May 16, 2012 at 7:25 am
Humans are building the seed packages to carry Earth life elsewhere. Yes, Earth is alive, although not sentient. Life will do whatever it can to survive and expand into new places wherever possible. That’s why I don’t gripe too much about us humans using the stored energy of Earth in such a short time. We are carrying out a role similar to apples on apple trees; apples contain quite a bit of stored energy produced by the tree. Our consumption of resources will all be worthwhile if we establish life elsewhere, and we should start with Mars. It is our duty to make sure the opportunitywe have now to establish life elsewhere is not wasted. We are the same as the first fish and plants leaving the sea and trying to establish a foothold on land. Our new environment is space, and other planets. It may be tens of millions of years before another species has a similar chance, if the chance ever comes again. I strongly object to the idea we should prevent Earth organisms from making the trip to Mars. And taking the long view, we should be looking for ways to visit other stars before the year 3000.
@Hoser says:
May 16, 2012 at 10:07 am
Urederra says:
May 16, 2012 at 7:25 am
And taking the long view, we should be looking for ways to visit other stars before the year 3000.
************************************************************************
Just picking nits here, but I wonder if Tommy Tyrannosaurus might have said the same thing? They had a lot more evolutionary time than humans have so far, and didn’t seem to make it. Or did they? Hmmm? 🙂
By year 3000 ( who’s calender? ) homo whatever may very well be back to a couple thousand mating couples living in various caves. Crystal balls are rarely right. 😉