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
You know, I’ve written some pretty darn slick software that makes complicated, correct decisions on a lot of variables. I know others have written stuff that passes the Turing test. We all know about Deep Blue and Kasparov. Still, nobody claims computers are sentient.
Why exactly am I supposed to take the notion of a ‘sentient earth super-entity’ seriously? I know others have already harped on this, but I find it a particularly offensive example of the fairy tale world these people live in, that we can merely speculate poetically about ‘Gaia’ and be taken seriously, but the evil artificial machines couldn’t possibly ever exhibit intelligence.
Cf. also Nelson S. Bond, “And Lo! The Bird”:
http://tinyurl.com/2bka5qg
/Mr Lynn
Call me whatever you want, but I’m upset that this (the earth being alive) is a seriously debated topic. Sentient and all those other wishy washy words aside, why do some people call the planet Mother earth? If people would take off their blinders of sticking to their little spheres of study, the link between the connection of the micro-verse and Macro-verse is pretty simple, and easy to see. Are your nails alive? Is your hair alive? Is your saliva alive? Do microscopic things exist on, in, and around our bodies?
Now are rocks alive? Are plants alive? Are the oceans alive? With respect to the earths size, would you say that microscopic things live in, on, and around it? The planets are called celestial bodies. They emit radiation, like our own bodies emit radiation, regardless of the type. How about people step back every once and a while, and look at the big picture? Planets are strewn about the universe, some exhibit geologic activity, some of which when recorded sound rhythmic. Where else are rhythmic sound patterns heard? The human heart. We have mapped parts of the brain, neural pathways, and we have also mapped parts of the visible universe, I know you’ve seen the pictures of the galaxy maps and even some of those “dark energy” maps or what have you. Why is it so hard to see what is right in front of your eyes?! “Oh but there’s no scientific proof, we don’t have the numbers to crunch…” and blah blah blah, since I was little and started figuring out what people were saying about scientific topics before they finished I realized something. It’s not about the numbers, its about the fact that so many people are upset they can’t figure out these things and when someone makes it simple, they are stupid and uneducated, ignoramuses, who don’t know anything about anything and need to shut up. For the sake of humanity I hope people will stop being so self absorbed and actually use science and knowledge instead of trying to prove someone else who is smarter than them wrong or stupid. SO many egotistical, megalomaniacle, fartmunches around drag down the potential of us all.
With the amount of sulphur my bum emits, you’d think it was sentient. Then again, maybe it is…
[Moderator’s Suggestion: A change in diet may help. In the mean time, can we return this thread to a higher class of comment? -REP]
As usual, there is no mention of the extensive work done by the Idso group at CO2science. They have a section on dimethylsulfide:
http://www.co2science.org/subject/d/dms.php
which explains why the topic is mostly ignored — DMS is a strong negative feedback factor that stabilizes the world climate. That aspect, and the basic ignorance about biological topics evident in the AGW cabal, means that DMS will contiue to be an obscure idea.
WUWT should invite an essay by the Idso group on this and certain other topics they have reviewed, such as the worldwide extent of the MWP.
Javier, really? You’re just kidding, right?
A reasonable chastisement from REP, but on the other hand, giving the science-fiction notion that the Earth as a whole is some kind of sentient organism the status of ‘hypothesis’ (how would you falsify it?), and suggesting that the ubiquity of sulfur compounds is evidence for it, is so ludicrous as to justify a bit of scatological humor. From where else would Lovelock, et al. have pulled it?
/Mr Lynn
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.
If AGW theorists had included “the Sun will rise in the east tomorrow” to the rest of their theory, (after all, how can there be warming without the Sun?), AGW would have been irrefutable and we’d be reporting our carbon debits to the IRS by now.
I don’t mind pagans inventing their little pagan gods but I DO mind when they start conjuring up what their gods are ‘thinking’ and that ‘thinking’ is that I am to blame for ‘X’ because I failed to OBEY and make a sacrifice to them.
The only way I see anyone answering this question is where did life on Earth come from? did Gaia produce perfect conditions for us to flourish? did a random chance of Earths tilt producing the seasons help life flourish? did the collision that caused the Earths tilt also bring life with it? or did an Alien race wipe out the dinosaurs to make room for the shark fin soup (Human Horn) of the galaxy?
Enquiring minds want to know.
Urederra says: May 16, 2012 at 7:25 am
Let’s examine your statement first with a practical example: the lowly farm animal known as a mule. Is this animal alive? It eats, sleeps, moves, is used for labor by man, will defend itself when threatened, and is descended (born) from other living creatures. So from those attributes, I would judge it to be alive.
However, the mule is a sterile animal and cannot reproduce itself. It is the offspring of a donkey and a horse. So by your limited definition of life, the mule is not alive.
So what is the truth? I from first-hand experience involving actual farm animals, I would have to judge the mule as alive, even though it fails one of your conditions. Their are many other types of sterile animal hybrids including ligers, tigons, and zebroids (zebra-horse hybrid).
Finally, let’s take this discussion just one step further, consider the birth of a human child with a specific birth defect – the inability to reproduce. The sexual organs are present, just incapable of generating sperm or ova. Is this being alive? (I’ll leave this example as an exercise to be completed by the student.)
BTW, in the interest of full disclosure, I do not subscribe to Lovejoy’s Gaia Theory.
Urederra says:
May 16, 2012 at 7:25 am
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.
Oh, c’mon Urederra, it is downright common for the Earth to be described exactly that way when contemplating such prospects as the colonization of Mars.
Lovelock is absolutely the right person to turn to to look for global negative feedbacks. His idea is that the anorganic world lives in equilibrium with the biosphere. He set up an extremely simplified model for it, called Daisy World:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisyworld
I like his thinking, even when he predicted armageddon. Even if he’s wrong he is interesting, a bit like Fred Hoyle was.
Who really knows?
Who will here proclaim it?
Whence was it produced?
Whence is this creation?
The gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe.
Who then knows whence it has arisen?
Whence this creation has arisen
– perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not –
the One who looks down on it,
in the highest heaven, only He knows
or perhaps He does not know.
http://vinaire.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/the-creation-hymn-of-rig-veda/
——————————————————————————–
The Rig Veda is our oldest continuous tradition with the concept of Earth as Mother and entropy rules here too, Lovelock’s version perhaps the final step in this disintegration to his gods as powerless victims of man.. For any interested a look here at the entropy through the Puranas of the original concepts of the Rig Veda: http://vedrig.blogspot.com/2007/09/knowledge-in-rig-veda.html
“G.Gods in Rig Veda and Puranas
1. A word about the connection between the Vedic gods and purāņic gods is appropriate here. In Rig Veda a god is neither less nor more than the other is. In the Veda, all the Gods are pure and harmonious with no rivalry, jealousy and such other flaws. All of them are equal, bereft of impurities, endowed with auspicious qualities and all represent Truth. Each Vedic god has a distinct power and personality, but he or she also carries the presence of the Supreme, “That one.” All the Vedic gods harmoniously work together in providing the divine inspiration to the individual .The Rig Vedic gods are kind and compassionate. They fulfill the desires and aspirations of the devotees.
2. At a much later period, the purāņās tried to convey the esoteric truths of the Veda in a popular form. However, in that attempt the qualities of the Vedic gods were partially humanized and endowed with human virtues/flaws. Thus in the purāņās, the various Gods work together sometimes, but also quarrel with one another. They are bitten by jealousy, envy, greed, arrogance, etc.”
As for “sentient”, having sense perception, I’m very much taken with the theory in biology that species diversification is being driven by the desires of plants, which may well be the reason we’re fighting back to stop this demonisation of carbon dioxide…
Aggh. Sorry, that should be: “that animal species diversification is being driven by the desires of plants”
Javier says:
May 16, 2012 at 12:44 pm
Uh, you don’t think plants are alive? The thing to consider is the effect of life on the planet, changing its chemistry, and the effect of the planet on life. Nobody believes rocks are alive, but the rocks are part of the cycles that maintain life. The Earth magnetic field protects us from radiation. The carbon cycle includes subduction of marine sediments where water and organic matter are returned to the surface via volcanism. Clearly, the Earth itself is a key element in supporting life. It is reasonable to view the entire biosphere and the Earth as a living entity. Is the CaPO4 in your bones alive? No, but it’s easier to think of that material as part of your living self. Same goes for hair, nails, and outer skin layers. So where do we draw the line? Why bother to draw a line? In fact, more explicitly regarding the Sun as an essential part of our living system would help people think about the energy flow that powers life on Earth.