James Lovelock | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Lovelock in 2005 | |
| Born | James Ephraim Lovelock (1919-07-26)26 July 1919 Letchworth, Hertfordshire, England |
| Died | 26 July 2022(2022-07-26) (aged 103) Abbotsbury, Dorset, England |
| Alma mater | |
| Known for | |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 4 |
| Awards | See list |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | The properties and use of aliphatic and hydroxy carboxylic acids in aerial disinfection (1947) |
| Website | Official website |
James Ephraim Lovelock (26 July 1919 – 26 July 2022) was an Englishindependent scientist, environmentalist andfuturist. He is best known for proposing theGaia hypothesis, which postulates that the Earth functions as a self-regulating system.
With a PhD in the chemistry of disinfection, Lovelock began his career performingcryopreservation experiments on rodents, including successfully thawing and reviving frozen specimens. His methods were influential in the theories ofcryonics (the cryopreservation of humans). He invented theelectron capture detector and, using it, became the first to detect the widespread presence ofchlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere. While designingscientific instruments forNASA, he developed the Gaia hypothesis.
In the 2000s, he proposed a method ofclimate engineering to restorecarbon dioxide–consumingalgae. He was an outspoken member ofEnvironmentalists for Nuclear Energy, asserting thatfossil fuel interests have been behindopposition to nuclear energy, citing the effects of carbon dioxide as being harmful to the environment and warning ofglobal warming due to thegreenhouse effect. He wrote severalenvironmental science books based upon the Gaia hypothesis from the late 1970s.
He also worked forMI5, the British security service, for decades.[1]Bryan Appleyard, writing inThe Sunday Times, described him as "basicallyQ in theJames Bond films".[2]
James Lovelock was born inLetchworth Garden City to Tom Arthur Lovelock and his second wife Nellie.[3] Nell, his mother, was born inBermondsey and won a scholarship to a grammar school but was unable to take it up, and started work at thirteen in a pickle factory. She was described by Lovelock as asocialist andsuffragist, who was alsoanti-vaccine, and did not allow Lovelock to receive hissmallpox inoculation as a child.[4] His father, Tom, was born inFawley, Berkshire, had served six months hard labour forpoaching in his teens, and was illiterate until attending technical college, later running a bookshop.[5] Lovelock was brought up aQuaker and imbued with the notion that "God is a still, small voice within rather than some mysterious old gentleman way out in the universe", which he thought was a helpful way of thinking for inventors, but he would eventually end up as being non-religious.[6] The family moved to London, where his dislike of authority made him, by his own account, an unhappy pupil atStrand School inTulse Hill, south London.[7]
Lovelock could not at first afford to go to university, something which he believed helped prevent him from becoming overspecialised and aided the development ofGaia theory.[8]
After leaving school Lovelock worked at a photography firm, attendingBirkbeck College during the evenings, before being accepted to study chemistry at theUniversity of Manchester, where he was a student of theNobel Prize laureate professorAlexander R. Todd.[9] Lovelock worked at a Quaker farm before a recommendation from his professor led to him taking up aMedical Research Council post,[10] working on ways of shielding soldiers from burns. Lovelock refused to use the shaved and anaesthetised rabbits that were used as burn victims, and exposed his skin to heat radiation instead, an experience he describes as "exquisitely painful".[5] His student status enabled temporary deferment ofmilitary service during theSecond World War. Still, he registered as aconscientious objector.[11] He later abandoned his conscientious objection in the light ofNazi atrocities and tried to enlist in the armed forces but was told that his medical research was too valuable for the enlistment to be approved.[12]
In 1948, Lovelock received a PhD degree at theLondon School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.[13] He spent the next two decades working at London'sNational Institute for Medical Research.[11] In the United States, he conducted research atYale,Baylor College of Medicine andHarvard University Medical School.[10]
In the mid-1950s, Lovelock experimented with thecryopreservation of rodents, determining thathamsters could be frozen and revived successfully.[14] Hamsters were frozen with 60% of the water in the brain crystallised into ice with no adverse effects recorded. Other organs were shown to be susceptible to damage.[15]
A lifelong inventor, Lovelock created and developed many scientific instruments, some of which were designed forNASA in its planetary exploration program. While working as a NASA consultant, Lovelock developed theGaia hypothesis, for which he is most widely known.[16]
In early 1961, Lovelock was engaged by NASA to develop sensitive instruments for the analysis of extraterrestrial atmospheres and planetary surfaces.[17] TheViking program, which visitedMars in the late 1970s, was motivated in part to determine whether Mars supported life, and some of the sensors and experiments that were ultimately deployedaimed to resolve this issue. During work on a precursor of this program, Lovelock became interested in the composition of theMartian atmosphere, reasoning that many life forms on Mars would be obliged to make use of it (and, thus, alter it). However, the atmosphere was found to be in a stable condition close to itschemical equilibrium, with very littleoxygen,methane, orhydrogen, but with an overwhelming abundance ofcarbon dioxide. To Lovelock, the stark contrast between the Martian atmosphere and chemically dynamic mixture of the Earth'sbiosphere was strongly indicative of the absence oflife on Mars.[18] However, when they were finally launched to Mars, theViking probes still searched (unsuccessfully) forextant life there. Further experiments to search for life on Mars have been carried out by additional space probes, for instance, by NASA'sPerseverance rover, which landed in 2021.
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Lovelock invented theelectron capture detector, which ultimately assisted in discoveries about the persistence ofchlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and their role instratosphericozone depletion.[19][20][21] After studying the operation of the Earth'ssulphur cycle,[22] Lovelock and his colleagues,Robert Jay Charlson,Meinrat Andreae and Stephen G. Warren developed theCLAW hypothesis as a possible example of biological control of the Earth's climate.[23]
Lovelock was elected aFellow of the Royal Society in 1974.[24] He served as the president of theMarine Biological Association (MBA) from 1986 to 1990 and was an Honorary Visiting Fellow ofGreen Templeton College, Oxford (formerlyGreen College, Oxford) from 1994.[25]
As anindependent scientist, inventor and author, Lovelock worked out of a barn-turned-laboratory he called his "experimental station" located in a wooded valley on theDevon–Cornwall border in South West England.[26]
In 1988 he madean extended appearance on the Channel 4 television programmeAfter Dark, alongsideHeathcote Williams andPetra Kelly, among others.
On 8 May 2012, he appeared on theRadio Four seriesThe Life Scientific, talking toJim Al-Khalili about the Gaia hypothesis. On the programme, he mentioned how his ideas had been received by various people, includingJonathon Porritt. He also said how he had a claim for inventing themicrowave oven. He later explained this claim in an interview withThe Manchester Magazine. Lovelock said that he did create an instrument during his time studying causes of damage to living cells and tissue, which had, according to him, "almost everything you would expect in an ordinary microwave oven". He invented the instrument to heat frozen hamsters in a way that caused less suffering to the animals, as opposed to the traditional way, which involved putting red-hot spoons on the animals' chests to heat them. He believed that, at the time, nobody had gone that far and made an embodiment of an actual microwave oven.[27] However, he did not claim to have been the first person to have the idea of using microwaves for cooking.[9]
After developing his electron capture detector, in the late 1960s, Lovelock was the first to detect the widespread presence ofCFCs in the atmosphere.[19] He found a concentration of 60parts per trillion ofCFC-11 over Ireland and, in a partially self-funded research expedition in 1972, went on to measure the concentration of CFC-11 from the northern hemisphere to the Antarctic aboard theresearch vesselRRS Shackleton.[20][29] He found the gas in each of the 50 air samples that he collected but, not realising that the breakdown of CFCs in the stratosphere would releasechlorine that posed a threat to theozone layer, concluded that the level of CFCs constituted "no conceivable hazard".[29] He later stated that he meant "no conceivable toxic hazard".[30]
However, the experiment did provide the first useful data on the ubiquitous presence of CFCs in the atmosphere. The damage caused to the ozone layer by thephotolysis of CFCs was later discovered bySherwood Rowland andMario Molina. After hearing a lecture on the subject of Lovelock's results,[31] they embarked on research that resulted in the first published paper that suggested a link between stratospheric CFCs and ozone depletion in 1974 (for which Sherwood and Molina later shared the 1995Nobel Prize in Chemistry withPaul Crutzen).[32] Lovelock was sceptical of the CFC–ozone depletion hypothesis for several years, calling the US ban of CFCs asaerosol propellants in the late 1970s arbitrary overkill.[33]
Drawing from the research ofAlfred C. Redfield andG. Evelyn Hutchinson, Lovelock first formulated the Gaia hypothesis in the 1960s resulting from his work for NASA concerned with detecting life on Mars[18] and his work withRoyal Dutch Shell.[34] The hypothesis proposes that living and non-living parts of the Earth form acomplex interacting system that can be thought of as a singleorganism.[35][36] Named after theGreekgoddessGaia at the suggestion of novelistWilliam Golding,[37] the hypothesis postulates that the biosphere has a regulatory effect on the Earth's environment that acts to sustain life.[38]
While the hypothesis was readily accepted by many in the environmentalist community, it has not been widely accepted within thescientific community as a whole. Among its most prominent critics were the evolutionary biologistsRichard Dawkins,Ford Doolittle andStephen Jay Gould, a convergence of opinion among a trio whose views on other scientific matters often diverged. These (and other) critics have questioned hownatural selection operating on individual organisms can lead to the evolution of planetary-scalehomeostasis.[39][page needed]
In response to this, Lovelock, together withAndrew Watson, published the computer modelDaisyworld in 1983, which postulated ahypothetical planet orbiting a star whoseradiant energy isslowlyincreasing or decreasing. In the non-biological case, the temperature of this planet simply tracks the energy received from the star. However, in the biological case, ecological competition between "daisy" species with different albedo values produces ahomeostatic effect on global temperature. When energy received from the star is low, black daisies proliferate since they absorb a greater fraction of the heat, but when energy input is high, white daisies predominate since they reflect excess heat. As the white and black daisies have contrary effects on the planet's overall albedo and temperature, changes in their relative populations stabilise the planet's climate and keep the temperature within an optimal range despite fluctuations inenergy from the star. Lovelock argued that Daisyworld, although a parable, illustrates how conventional natural selection operating on individual organisms can still produce planetary-scale homeostasis.[40]
In Lovelock's 2006 book,The Revenge of Gaia, he argued that the lack of respect humans have had for Gaia, through the damage done torainforests and thereduction in planetary biodiversity, is testing Gaia's capacity to minimise the effects of theaddition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. This eliminates the planet'snegative feedbacks and increases the likelihood of homeostaticpositive feedback potential associated withrunaway global warming. Similarly, thewarming of the oceans is extending the oceanicthermocline layer of tropical oceans into the Arctic and Antarctic waters, preventing the rise of oceanic nutrients into the surface waters and eliminating thealgal blooms ofphytoplankton on whichoceanic food chains depend. As phytoplankton and forests are the main ways in which Gaia draws down greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, taking it out of the atmosphere, the elimination of this environmental buffering will see, according to Lovelock, most of the Earth becoming uninhabitable for humans and other life-forms by the middle of this century, with a massiveextension of tropical deserts. In 2012, Lovelock distanced himself from these conclusions, saying he had "gone too far" in describing theconsequences of climate change over the next century in this book.[41]
In his 2009 book,The Vanishing Face of Gaia, he rejectedscientific models that disagree with the findings thatsea levels are rising andArctic ice is melting faster than the models predict. He suggested that we may already have passed thetipping point of terrestrialclimate resilience into a permanently hot state. Given these conditions, Lovelock expected that human civilisation would be hard-pressed tosurvive. He expected the change to be similar to thePaleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum when the temperature of the Arctic Ocean was 23 °C.[42][43]
Lovelock became concerned about the threat of global warming from thegreenhouse effect. In 2004 he broke with many fellow environmentalists by stating that "onlynuclear power can now halt global warming".[44]
In his view, nuclear energy is the only realistic alternative tofossil fuels that can both fulfil the large scale energy needs of humankind while also reducinggreenhouse emissions.[45] He was an open member ofEnvironmentalists for Nuclear Energy (EFN).[46]
In 2005, against the backdrop of renewedUK government interest in nuclear power, Lovelock again publicly announced hissupport for nuclear energy, stating, "I am a Green, and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy".[47] Although those interventions in the public debate on nuclear power were in the 21st century, his views on it were longstanding. In his 1988 bookThe Ages of Gaia, he stated:
I have never regardednuclear radiation or nuclear power as anything other than a normal and inevitable part of the environment. Ourprokaryotic forebears evolved on a planet-sized lump offallout from a star-sized nuclear explosion, asupernova that synthesised the elements that go to make our planet and ourselves.[48]
InThe Revenge of Gaia (2006), where he put forward the concept ofsustainable retreat, Lovelock wrote:
A television interviewer once asked me, "But what aboutnuclear waste? Will it not poison the whole biosphere and persist for millions of years?" I knew this to be a nightmare fantasy wholly without substance in the real world ... One of the striking things about places heavily contaminated by radioactive nuclides is the richness of their wildlife. This is true of the land around Chernobyl, the bomb test sites of the Pacific, and areas near the United States' Savannah River nuclear weapons plant of the Second World War. Wild plants and animals do not perceive radiation as dangerous, and any slight reduction it may cause in their lifespans is far less a hazard than is the presence of people and their pets ... I find it sad, but all too human, that there are vast bureaucracies concerned about nuclear waste, huge organisations devoted to decommissioning power stations, but nothing comparable to deal with that truly malign waste, carbon dioxide.[49][excessive quote]
In 2019 Lovelock said he thought difficulties in getting nuclear power going again were due to propaganda, that "the coal and oil business fight like mad to tell bad stories about nuclear", and that "the greens played along with it. There's bound to have been some corruption there – I'm sure that various green movements were paid some sums on the side to help with propaganda".[50]
Writing inThe Independent in 2006, Lovelock argued that, as a result of global warming, "billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in theArctic where the climate remains tolerable" by the end of the 21st century.[51] The same year he suggested that "we have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act, and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can."[51] He further predicted in 2007 that the temperature increase would leave much of the world's land uninhabitable and unsuitable for farming, with northerly migrations and new cities created in the Arctic; furthermore, he added that much of Europe will have turned to desert and Britain will have become Europe's "life-raft" due to its stable temperature caused by being surrounded by the ocean.[52] He was quoted inThe Guardian in 2008 that 80% of humans will perish by 2100, and thisclimate change will last 100,000 years.[53]
In a 2010 interview with theGuardian newspaper, he said that democracy might have to be "put on hold" to prevent climate change. He argued that since war caused countries to halt the democratic process, climate change (which he likened in gravity to war) should as well.[54]Statements from 2012 portrayed Lovelock as continuing his concern over global warming while at the same time criticising extremism and suggesting alternatives to oil, coal and the green solutions he did not support.[41]
In a 2012 interview aired onMSNBC, Lovelock stated that he had been "alarmist", using the words "All right, I made a mistake," about the timing of climate change and noted the documentaryAn Inconvenient Truth and the bookThe Weather Makers as examples of the same kind of alarmism. Lovelock still believed the climate to be warming, although not at the rate of change he once thought; he admitted that he had been "extrapolating too far." He believed that climate change was still happening, but it would be felt further in the future.[41] He denied claims that the "science was settled" regarding climate change and stated that it was impossible for any scientist, including himself, to know the truth with certainty.[55] He criticised environmentalists for treating environmentalism like a religion, and stated that guilting people for contributing to global warming did nothing to encourage them to become environmentalists.[55]
In a 2012 MSNBC article, Lovelock stated that climate alarmism in the 1990s had resulted from scientists' overconfidence, during that decade, that global warming would occur at a high rate and result in a "frying world"; between 2000 and 2012 global temperatures stayed mostly the same, though carbon dioxide levels increased.[41] In a follow-up interview also in 2012, Lovelock stated his support for natural gas; he favouredfracking as a low-polluting alternative to coal.[26][55] He opposed the concept of "sustainable development", where modern economies might be powered bywind turbines, calling it meaningless drivel.[55][56] He kept a poster of a wind turbine to remind himself how much he detested them.[26]
InNovacene (2019), Lovelock proposed that benevolentsuperintelligence may take over and save the ecosystem and stated that the machines would need to keep organic life around to keep the planet's temperature habitable for electronic life.[57] On the other hand, if instead life becomes entirely electronic, "so be it: we played our part and newer, younger actors are already appearing on stage".[58][page needed]
In 2007, Lovelock andChris Rapley proposed the construction ofocean pumps to pump water up from below the thermocline to "fertilizealgae in the surface waters and encourage them to bloom".[59] The basic idea was to accelerate the transfer of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the ocean by increasingprimary production and enhancing theexport of organic carbon (asmarine snow) to the deep ocean. A scheme similar to that proposed by Lovelock and Rapley was later developed independently by a commercial company.[60]
The proposal attracted widespread media attention[61][62][63][64] and criticism.[65][66][67] Commenting on the proposal,Corinne Le Quéré, aUniversity of East Anglia researcher, said "It doesn't make sense. There is absolutely no evidence thatclimate engineering options work or even go in the right direction. I'm astonished that they published this. Before any geoengineering is put to work a massive amount of research is needed – research which will take 20 to 30 years".[61] Other researchers claimed that "this scheme would bring water with high naturalpCO2 levels (associated with the nutrients) back to the surface, potentially causing exhalation of CO2".[67] Lovelock subsequently said that his proposal was intended to stimulate interest and that research would be the next step,[68] and several research studies were published in the wake of the original proposal.[69][70] However, these estimated that the scheme would require a huge number of pipes,[69] and that the main effect of the pipes may be on the land rather than in the ocean.[70]
Sustainable retreat is a concept developed by Lovelock to define the necessary changes to human settlement and dwelling at the global scale to adapt to global warming and prevent its expected negative consequences on humans.[71][page needed]
Lovelock thought that people needed to retreat because development was no longersustainable. He argued that people should be transported to Europe from low-lying areas, which he predicted would fare poorly in the future. He stated that the main point of sustainable retreat was everyone "absolutely doing their utmost to sustain civilization".[72]
The concept of sustainable retreat emphasises a pattern of resource use that aims to meet human needs with lower levels or less environmentally harmful types of resources.[73]
Lovelock waselected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974. His nomination reads:
Lovelock has made distinguished contributions to several diverse fields, including a study of the transmission ofrespiratory infection, and methods of air sterilisation; the role ofCa and otherdivalentions inblood clotting; damage to various living cells by freezing, thawing andthermal shock and its prevention by the presence of neutralsolutes; methods of freezing and thawing small live animals; methods for preparing sperm forartificial insemination, which have been of major economic importance.
He has invented a family ofionisation detectors forgas chromatography. His electron capture detectors are the most sensitive that have been made and are universally used on pollution problems for residual halogen compounds. He has many inventions, including a gas chromatograph, which will be used to investigate planetary atmospheres.His chromatographic work has led to investigation of blood lipids in various animals, includingarteriosclerotic humans. He has made a study of detecting life on other planets by analysis of their atmosphere and extended this to world pollution problems.
His work generally shows remarkable originality, simplicity and ingenuity.[24][excessive quote]
Lovelock was awarded a number of prestigious prizes, including the Tswett Medal for Chromatography (1975),[74] theAmerican Chemical Society Award in Chromatography (1980), theWorld Meteorological Organization Norbert Gerbier–MUMM Award (1988), theDr A. H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences (1990) and theRoyal Geographical Society Discovery Lifetime award (2001). In 2006 he received theWollaston Medal, theGeological Society of London's highest award, whose previous recipients includeCharles Darwin.[75] Lovelock was appointed aCommander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to the study of the Science and Atmosphere in the1990 New Year Honours and aMember of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) for services to Global Environmental Science in the2003 New Year Honours.[76][77]
In March 2012, theNational Portrait Gallery[78] unveiled a new portrait of Lovelock by British artist Michael Gaskell, which was completed in 2011. The collection also has two photographic portraits byNick Sinclair (1993) and Paul Tozer (1994).[78] The archive of theRoyal Society of Arts has a 2009 image taken byAnne-Katrin Purkiss.[79] Lovelock agreed to sit for sculptorJon Edgar in Devon during 2007, as part of theEnvironment Triptych (2008)[80][page needed] along with heads ofMary Midgley andRichard Mabey. A bronze head is in the collection of the sitter, and theterracotta is in the artist's archive.[81]
| Country | Date | Appointment | Post-nominal letters |
|---|---|---|---|
 United Kingdom | 1990 | Commander of the Order of the British Empire[82] | CBE |
| 2003 | Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour[83] | CH |
| Location | Date | School | Degree |
|---|---|---|---|
 England | 1941 | Victoria University of Manchester | Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Chemistry[74] |
| 1948 | London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine | Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Medicine[74] | |
| 1959 | University of London | Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) in Biophysics[74] |
| Location | Date | School | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
 United States | 1954 | Harvard University Medical School | Rockefeller Travelling Fellowship in Medicine[10] |
| 1958–1959 | Yale School of Medicine | Visiting Scientist[74] | |
| England | 1994 | Green Templeton College, Oxford | Senior Visiting Research Fellow[84] |
| Location | Date | School | Degree |
|---|---|---|---|
| England | 1982 | University of East Anglia | Doctor of Science (D.Sc.)[74] |
| 1988 | Plymouth Polytechnic | ||
| University of Exeter | |||
 Sweden | 1991 | Stockholm University | |
 Scotland | 1993 | University of Edinburgh | |
| England | 1996 | University of Kent | |
| University of East London | |||
 United States | 1997 | University of Colorado Boulder | Doctor of Humane Letters (DHL)[85] |
 |
| Location | Date | Organisation | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 1974 | Royal Society | Fellow (FRS)[86] |
| 1986–1990 | Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom | President[87] | |
| 2014 | Honorary Fellow (Hon FMBA)[87] |
Lovelock married Helen Hyslop in 1942. They had four children and remained married until her death in 1989 frommultiple sclerosis.[11][5][88] He first met his second wife, Sandy, at the age of 69.[89] Lovelock stated of their relationship: "... you would find the life of me and my wife Sandy to be an unusually happy one in simple beautiful but unpretentious surroundings."[90]
Lovelockturned 100 in 2019.[91] He died at his home inAbbotsbury, Dorset,[3] on his 103rd birthday in 2022,[92] of complications related to a fall.[93]
... for ... work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone.
... enhancing the ocean's uptake of CO2 by 1 Gt C / y would require approximately 0.8 billion pumps (of 1 m diameter) to be deployed.
However, the model predicts that about 80% of the carbon sequestered is stored on land, as a result of reduced respiration at lower air temperatures brought about by upwelling of cold waters.
Interviews and public lectures
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