John Lovelock
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James Ephraim Lovelock (26 July 1919 – 26 July 2022) was an English independent scientist, environmentalist and futurist. He is best known for proposing the
Gaia hypothesis The Gaia hypothesis (), also known as the Gaia theory, Gaia paradigm, or the Gaia principle, proposes that living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a synergistic and self-regulating, complex system that help ...
, which postulates that the Earth functions as a self-regulating system. With a PhD in medicine, Lovelock began his career performing cryopreservation experiments on rodents, including successfully thawing frozen specimens. His methods were influential in the theories of cryonics (the cryopreservation of humans). He invented the
electron capture detector An electron capture detector (ECD) is a device for detecting atoms and molecules in a gas through the attachment of electrons via electron capture ionization. The device was invented in 1957 by James Lovelock and is used in gas chromatography to d ...
, and using it, became the first to detect the widespread presence of chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere. While designing scientific instruments for NASA, he developed the Gaia hypothesis. In the 2000s, he proposed a method of climate engineering to restore carbon dioxide–consuming
algae Algae (; singular alga ) is an informal term for a large and diverse group of photosynthetic eukaryotic organisms. It is a polyphyletic grouping that includes species from multiple distinct clades. Included organisms range from unicellular mic ...
. He was an outspoken member of
Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy (EFN) — in French: "Association des Écologistes Pour le Nucléaire – AEPN, founded in 1996" — is a pro-nuclear power non-profit organization that aims to provide information to the public on energy and ...
, asserting that
fossil fuel A fossil fuel is a hydrocarbon-containing material formed naturally in the Earth's crust from the remains of dead plants and animals that is extracted and burned as a fuel. The main fossil fuels are coal, oil, and natural gas. Fossil fuels m ...
interests have been behind opposition to nuclear energy, citing the effects of carbon dioxide as being harmful to the environment, and warning of global warming due to the greenhouse effect. He wrote several
environmental science Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physics, biology, and geography (including ecology, chemistry, plant science, zoology, mineralogy, oceanography, limnology, soil science, geology and physical geograp ...
books based upon the Gaia hypothesis from the late 1970s. For decades he also worked for MI5, the British security service. Bryan Appleyard, writing in '' The Sunday Times'', described him as "basically Q in the
James Bond films James Bond is a fictional character created by British novelist Ian Fleming in 1953. A British secret agent working for MI6 under the codename 007, Bond has been portrayed on film in twenty-seven productions by actors Sean Connery, David Nive ...
".


Early life and education

James Lovelock was born in Letchworth Garden City to Tom Arthur Lovelock and his second wife Nellie. Nell, his mother, was born in Bermondsey 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 a socialist and suffragist, who was also anti-vaccine, and did not allow Lovelock to receive his smallpox inoculation as a child. His father, Tom, was born in Fawley, Berkshire, had served six months' hard labour for poaching in his teens, and was illiterate until attending technical college, later running a bookshop. Lovelock was brought up a
Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...
and indoctrinated 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 would eventually end up as being non-religious. The family moved to London, where his dislike of authority made him, by his own account, an unhappy pupil at Strand School in Tulse Hill, south London. Lovelock could not at first afford to go to university, something which he believed helped prevent him becoming overspecialised and aided the development of Gaia theory.


Career

After leaving school Lovelock worked at a photography firm, attending
Birkbeck College Birkbeck, University of London (formally Birkbeck College, University of London), is a public university, public research university, located in Bloomsbury, London, England, and a constituent college, member institution of the federal Universit ...
during the evenings, before being accepted to study chemistry at the University of Manchester, where he was a student of the Nobel Prize laureate Professor Alexander Todd. Lovelock worked at a Quaker farm before a recommendation from his professor led to him taking up a Medical Research Council post, 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 own skin to heat radiation instead, an experience he describes as "exquisitely painful". His student status enabled temporary deferment of military service during the Second World War, but he registered as a
conscientious objector A conscientious objector (often shortened to conchie) is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to object ...
. He later abandoned his conscientious objection in the light of Nazi 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. In 1948, Lovelock received a PhD degree in medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He spent the next two decades working at London's National Institute for Medical Research. In the United States, he conducted research at Yale, Baylor College of Medicine, and Harvard University. In the mid-1950s, Lovelock experimented with the cryopreservation of rodents, determining that hamsters could be frozen and revived successfully. 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. The results were influential in the theories of cryonics. Lovelock's experiments were covered in an interview with YouTuber Tom Scott in May 2021, discussing the possibility that Lovelock may have accidentally invented the tabletop microwave oven when he discovered that a person could bake a potato in his magnetron-based emitter while conducting these experiments. A lifelong inventor, Lovelock created and developed many scientific instruments, some of which were designed for NASA in its planetary exploration program. It was while working as a consultant for NASA that Lovelock developed the
Gaia hypothesis The Gaia hypothesis (), also known as the Gaia theory, Gaia paradigm, or the Gaia principle, proposes that living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a synergistic and self-regulating, complex system that help ...
, for which he is most widely known. In early 1961, Lovelock was engaged by NASA to develop sensitive instruments for the analysis of extraterrestrial atmospheres and planetary surfaces. The Viking program, which visited Mars in the late 1970s, was motivated in part to determine whether Mars supported life, and some of the sensors and experiments that were ultimately deployed aimed to resolve this issue. During work on a precursor of this program, Lovelock became interested in the composition of the
Martian atmosphere The atmosphere of Mars is the layer of gases surrounding Mars. It is primarily composed of carbon dioxide (95%), molecular nitrogen (2.8%), and argon (2%). It also contains trace levels of water vapor, oxygen, carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and no ...
, 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 its chemical equilibrium, with very little oxygen, methane, or hydrogen, but with an overwhelming abundance of carbon dioxide. To Lovelock, the stark contrast between the Martian atmosphere and chemically dynamic mixture of the Earth's biosphere was strongly indicative of the absence of life on Mars. However, when they were finally launched to Mars, the
Viking probes The ''Viking'' program consisted of a pair of identical American space probes, ''Viking 1'' and ''Viking 2'', which landed on Mars in 1976. Each spacecraft was composed of two main parts: an orbiter designed to photograph the surface of Mars f ...
still searched (unsuccessfully) for
extant Extant is the opposite of the word extinct. It may refer to: * Extant hereditary titles * Extant literature, surviving literature, such as ''Beowulf'', the oldest extant manuscript written in English * Extant taxon, a taxon which is not extinct, ...
life there. Further experiments to search for life on Mars have been carried out by further space probes, for instance by NASA's Perseverance rover which landed in 2021. Lovelock invented the
electron capture detector An electron capture detector (ECD) is a device for detecting atoms and molecules in a gas through the attachment of electrons via electron capture ionization. The device was invented in 1957 by James Lovelock and is used in gas chromatography to d ...
, which ultimately assisted in discoveries about the persistence of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and their role in
stratospheric The stratosphere () is the second layer of the atmosphere of the Earth, located above the troposphere and below the mesosphere. The stratosphere is an atmospheric layer composed of stratified temperature layers, with the warm layers of air hi ...
ozone depletion Ozone depletion consists of two related events observed since the late 1970s: a steady lowering of about four percent in the total amount of ozone in Earth's atmosphere, and a much larger springtime decrease in stratospheric ozone (the ozone l ...
. After studying the operation of the Earth's
sulphur cycle The sulfur cycle is a biogeochemical cycle in which the sulfur moves between rocks, waterways and living systems. It is important in geology as it affects many minerals and in life because sulfur is an essential element ( CHNOPS), being a con ...
, Lovelock and his colleagues, Robert Jay Charlson, Meinrat Andreae and Stephen G. Warren developed the CLAW hypothesis as a possible example of biological control of the Earth's climate. Lovelock was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974. He served as the president of the
Marine Biological Association The Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom (MBA) is a learned society with a scientific laboratory that undertakes research in marine biology. The organisation was founded in 1884 and has been based in Plymouth since the Citadel H ...
(MBA) from 1986 to 1990, and was an Honorary Visiting Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford (formerly
Green College, Oxford Green Templeton College (GTC) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. The college is located on the previous Green College site on Woodstock Road next to the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter in North Oxford and ...
) from 1994. As an independent scientist, inventor, and author, Lovelock worked out of a barn-turned-laboratory he called his "experimental station" located in a wooded valley on the DevonCornwall border in South West England. In 1988 he made an extended appearance on the Channel 4 television programme '' After Dark'', alongside Heathcote Williams and
Petra Kelly Petra Karin Kelly (29 November 1947 – 1 October 1992) was a German Green politician and ecofeminist activist. She was a founding member of the German Green Party, the first Green party to rise to prominence both nationally in Germany and wor ...
, among others. On 8 May 2012, he appeared on the Radio Four series '' The Life Scientific'', talking to
Jim Al-Khalili Jameel Sadik "Jim" Al-Khalili ( ar, جميل صادق الخليلي; born 20 September 1962) is an Iraqi-British theoretical physicist, author and broadcaster. He is professor of theoretical physics and chair in the public engagement in scien ...
about the Gaia hypothesis. On the programme, he mentioned how his ideas had been received by various people, including Jonathon Porritt. He also mentioned how he had a claim for inventing the microwave oven. He later explained this claim in an interview with ''
The Manchester Magazine Media in Manchester has been an integral part of Manchester's culture and economy for many generations and has been described as the only other British city to rival to London in terms of television broadcasting. Today, Manchester is the second la ...
''. 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 for the purpose of heating up 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' chest to heat them up. He believed that at the time, nobody had gone that far and made an embodiment of an actual microwave oven. However, he did not claim to have been the first person to have the idea of using microwaves for cooking.


CFCs

After the development of his electron capture detector, in the late 1960s, Lovelock was the first to detect the widespread presence of
CFCs Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) are fully or partly halogenated hydrocarbons that contain carbon (C), hydrogen (H), chlorine (Cl), and fluorine (F), produced as volatile derivatives of methane, ethane, and propan ...
in the atmosphere. He found a concentration of 60 parts per trillion of
CFC-11 Trichlorofluoromethane, also called freon-11, CFC-11, or R-11, is a chlorofluorocarbon (CFC). It is a colorless, faintly ethereal, and sweetish-smelling liquid that boils around room temperature. CFC-11 is a Class 1 ozone-depleting substance ...
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 the research vessel . 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 release chlorine that posed a threat to the
ozone layer The ozone layer or ozone shield is a region of Earth's stratosphere that absorbs most of the Sun's ultraviolet radiation. It contains a high concentration of ozone (O3) in relation to other parts of the atmosphere, although still small in rela ...
, concluded that the level of CFCs constituted "no conceivable hazard". He later stated that he meant "no conceivable toxic hazard". 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 the
photolysis Photodissociation, photolysis, photodecomposition, or photofragmentation is a chemical reaction in which molecules of a chemical compound are broken down by photons. It is defined as the interaction of one or more photons with one target molecule. ...
of CFCs was later discovered by
Sherwood Rowland Frank Sherwood "Sherry" Rowland (June 28, 1927 – March 10, 2012) was an American Nobel laureate and a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine. His research was on atmospheric chemistry and chemical kinetics. His best ...
and Mario Molina. After hearing a lecture on the subject of Lovelock's results, 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 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with
Paul Crutzen Paul Jozef Crutzen (; 3 December 1933 – 28 January 2021) was a Dutch meteorologist and atmospheric chemist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for his work on atmospheric chemistry and specifically for his efforts in studying ...
).


Gaia hypothesis

Drawing from the research of
Alfred C. Redfield Alfred Clarence Redfield (November 15, 1890 – March 17, 1983) was an American oceanographer known for having discovered the Redfield ratio, which describes the ratio between nutrients in plankton and ocean water. In 1966, he received the Eminen ...
and
G. Evelyn Hutchinson George Evelyn Hutchinson (January 30, 1903 – May 17, 1991) was a British ecologist sometimes described as the "father of modern ecology." He contributed for more than sixty years to the fields of limnology, systems ecology, radiation ecolog ...
, Lovelock first formulated the Gaia hypothesis in the 1960s resulting from his work for NASA concerned with detecting life on Mars and his work with Royal Dutch Shell. The hypothesis proposes that living and non-living parts of the Earth form a complex interacting system that can be thought of as a single organism. Named after the Greek
goddess A goddess is a female deity. In many known cultures, goddesses are often linked with literal or metaphorical pregnancy or imagined feminine roles associated with how women and girls are perceived or expected to behave. This includes themes of s ...
Gaia In Greek mythology, Gaia (; from Ancient Greek , a poetical form of , 'land' or 'earth'),, , . also spelled Gaea , is the personification of the Earth and one of the Greek primordial deities. Gaia is the ancestral mother—sometimes parthenog ...
at the suggestion of novelist
William Golding Sir William Gerald Golding (19 September 1911 – 19 June 1993) was a British novelist, playwright, and poet. Best known for his debut novel ''Lord of the Flies'' (1954), he published another twelve volumes of fiction in his lifetime. In 1980 ...
, the hypothesis postulates that the biosphere has a regulatory effect on the Earth's environment that acts to sustain life. While the hypothesis was readily accepted by many in the environmentalist community, it has not been widely accepted within the scientific community as a whole. Among its most prominent critics were the evolutionary biologists
Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. An ath ...
,
Ford Doolittle W. Ford Doolittle (born February 21, 1942, in Urbana, Illinois) is an evolutionary and molecular biologist. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Norwegian Academy of Science and ...
, and
Stephen Jay Gould Stephen Jay Gould (; September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was one of the most influential and widely read authors of popular science of his generation. Gould sp ...
, a convergence of opinion among a trio whose views on other scientific matters often diverged. These (and other) critics have questioned how natural selection operating on individual organisms can lead to the evolution of planetary-scale homeostasis. In response to this, Lovelock, together with Andrew Watson, published the computer model
Daisyworld Daisyworld, a computer simulation, is a hypothetical world orbiting a star whose radiant energy is slowly increasing or decreasing. It is meant to mimic important elements of the Earth-Sun system, and was introduced by James Lovelock and And ...
in 1983, that postulated a hypothetical planet orbiting a star whose radiant energy is slowly increasing 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 a homeostatic 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 to keep temperature within an optimal range despite fluctuations in energy 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. In Lovelock's 2006 book, ''
The Revenge of Gaia ''The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth is Fighting Back – and How We Can Still Save Humanity'' (2006) is a book by James Lovelock. Some editions of the book have a different, less optimistic subtitle: ''Earth's Climate Crisis and the Fate of Hu ...
'', he argued that the lack of respect humans have had for Gaia, through the damage done to
rainforest Rainforests are characterized by a closed and continuous tree canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforest can be classified as tropical rainforest or temperate rainfores ...
s and the reduction in planetary biodiversity, is testing Gaia's capacity to minimise the effects of the addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. This eliminates the planet's
negative feedback Negative feedback (or balancing feedback) occurs when some function (Mathematics), function of the output of a system, process, or mechanism is feedback, fed back in a manner that tends to reduce the fluctuations in the output, whether caused by ...
s and increases the likelihood of homeostatic positive feedback potential associated with runaway global warming. Similarly the warming of the oceans is extending the oceanic thermocline layer of tropical oceans into the Arctic and Antarctic waters, preventing the rise of oceanic nutrients into the surface waters and eliminating the algal blooms of
phytoplankton Phytoplankton () are the autotrophic (self-feeding) components of the plankton community and a key part of ocean and freshwater ecosystems. The name comes from the Greek words (), meaning 'plant', and (), meaning 'wanderer' or 'drifter'. Ph ...
on which oceanic 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 massive extension of tropical deserts. In 2012, Lovelock distanced himself from these conclusions, saying he had "gone too far" in describing the consequences of climate change over the next century in this book. In his 2009 book, '' The Vanishing Face of Gaia'', he rejected scientific models that disagree with the findings that sea levels are rising and Arctic ice is melting faster than the models predict. He suggested that we may already have passed the tipping point of terrestrial climate resilience into a permanently hot state. Given these conditions, Lovelock expected that human civilisation would be hard-pressed to
survive Survival, or the act of surviving, is the propensity of something to continue existing, particularly when this is done despite conditions that might kill or destroy it. The concept can be applied to humans and other living things (or, hypotheti ...
. He expected the change to be similar to the
Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum The Paleocene–Eocene thermal maximum (PETM), alternatively (ETM1), and formerly known as the "Initial Eocene" or "", was a time period with a more than 5–8 °C global average temperature rise across the event. This climate event o ...
when atmospheric concentration of was 450 ppm, and the temperature of the Arctic Ocean was 23 °C.


Nuclear power

Lovelock became concerned about the threat of global warming from the greenhouse effect. In 2004 he broke with many fellow environmentalists by stating that "only nuclear power can now halt global warming". In his view, nuclear energy is the only realistic alternative to
fossil fuel A fossil fuel is a hydrocarbon-containing material formed naturally in the Earth's crust from the remains of dead plants and animals that is extracted and burned as a fuel. The main fossil fuels are coal, oil, and natural gas. Fossil fuels m ...
s that has the capacity to both fulfil the large scale energy needs of humankind while also reducing
greenhouse emissions Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities strengthen the greenhouse effect, contributing to climate change. Most is carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas. The largest emitters include coal in China and la ...
. He was an open member of
Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy (EFN) — in French: "Association des Écologistes Pour le Nucléaire – AEPN, founded in 1996" — is a pro-nuclear power non-profit organization that aims to provide information to the public on energy and ...
. In 2005, against the backdrop of renewed UK government interest in nuclear power, Lovelock again publicly announced his support for nuclear energy, stating, "I am a Green, and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy". Although those interventions in the public debate on nuclear power were in the 21st century, his views on it were longstanding. In his 1988 book ''The Ages of Gaia'' he stated: In ''The Revenge of Gaia'' (2006), where he put forward the concept of
sustainable retreat James Ephraim Lovelock (26 July 1919 – 26 July 2022) was an English independent scientist, environmentalist and futurist. He is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the Earth functions as a self-regulating syst ...
, Lovelock wrote: 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".


Climate

Writing in the British newspaper '' The 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 the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable" by the end of the 21st century. 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." 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 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. He was quoted in '' The Guardian'' in 2008 that 80% of humans will perish by 2100, and this climate change will last 100,000 years. In a 2010 interview with ''The Guardian'' newspaper, he said that democracy might have to be "put on hold" to prevent climate change. He continued: 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. In a 2012 interview, aired on MSNBC, 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 documentary '' An Inconvenient Truth'' and the book ''
The Weather Makers ''The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change'' is a 2005 book by Australian scientist Tim Flannery. It discusses climate change, its scientific basis and effects, and potential solutions. The book received critical accl ...
'' as examples of the same kind of alarmism. Lovelock still believed the climate to be warming although not at the rate of change that he once thought, he admitted that he had been "extrapolating too far." He believed that climate change is still happening, but it will be felt farther in the future. Of the claims "the science is settled" on global warming he stated: He criticised environmentalists for treating global warming like a religion. In this 2012 MSNBC article Lovelock is quoted as saying: In a follow up interview also in 2012 Lovelock stated his support for natural gas; he favoured fracking as a low-polluting alternative to coal. He opposed the concept of "
sustainable development Sustainable development is an organizing principle for meeting human development goals while also sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the natural resources and ecosystem services on which the economy and society depend. The des ...
", where modern economies might be powered by wind turbines, calling it meaningless drivel. He kept a poster of a wind turbine to remind himself how much he detested them. In ''
Novacene ''Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence'' is a 2019 non-fiction book by scientist and environmentalist James Lovelock. It has been published by Penguin Books/Allen Lane in the UK, and republished by the MIT Press. The book was co-authore ...
'' (2019) Lovelock proposed that benevolent superintelligence may take over and save the ecosystem, and stated that the machines will need to keep organic life around to keep the planet's temperature habitable for electronic life. 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".


Ocean fertilisation

In 2007, Lovelock and
Chris Rapley Christopher Graham Rapley (born 8 April 1947) is a British scientist and scientific administrator. He is Professor of Climate Science at University College London, a member of the Academia Europaea, Chair of the European Science Foundation's E ...
proposed the construction of ocean pumps to pump water up from below the thermocline to "fertilize
algae Algae (; singular alga ) is an informal term for a large and diverse group of photosynthetic eukaryotic organisms. It is a polyphyletic grouping that includes species from multiple distinct clades. Included organisms range from unicellular mic ...
in the surface waters and encourage them to bloom". The basic idea was to accelerate the transfer of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the ocean by increasing primary production and enhancing the export of organic carbon (as marine snow) to the deep ocean. A scheme similar to that proposed by Lovelock and Rapley was later developed independently by a commercial company. The proposal attracted widespread media attention and criticism. Commenting on the proposal,
Corinne Le Quéré Marie Corinne Lyne Le Quéré (born July 1966) is a French-Canadian scientist. She is Royal Society Research Professor of Climate Change Science at the University of East Anglia and former Director of Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. ...
, a University of East Anglia researcher, said "It doesn't make sense. There is absolutely no evidence that climate 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". Other researchers claimed that "this scheme would bring water with high natural ''p'' levels (associated with the nutrients) back to the surface, potentially causing exhalation of ". Lovelock subsequently said that his proposal was intended to stimulate interest and research would be the next step.


Sustainable retreat

Sustainable retreat is a concept which was developed by Lovelock in order to define the necessary changes to human settlement and dwelling at the global scale with the purpose of adapting to global warming and preventing its expected negative consequences on humans. Lovelock thought the time is past for sustainable development, and that we had come to a time when development is no longer
sustainable Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and have varied in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national, and individual levels (e.g. sustainable livin ...
. Therefore, we needed to retreat. Lovelock stated the following in order to explain the concept: The concept of sustainable retreat emphasised a pattern of resource use that aims to meet human needs with lower levels and/or less environmentally harmful types of resources.


Prizes and other honours

Lovelock was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974. His nomination reads: Lovelock was awarded a number of prestigious prizes including the Tswett Medal for Chromatography (1975), the American Chemical Society Award in Chromatography (1980), the World Meteorological Organization Norbert Gerbier–MUMM Award (1988), the
Dr A.H. Heineken Prize The Heineken Prizes for Arts and Sciences consist of 11 awards biannually bestowed by Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. The prizes are named in honor of Henry Pierre Heineken, son of founder Gerard Adriaan Heineken, Alfred Heineken, ...
for Environmental Sciences (1990) and the
Royal Geographical Society The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), often shortened to RGS, is a learned society and professional body for geography based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical scien ...
Discovery Lifetime award (2001). In 2006 he received the Wollaston Medal, the Geological Society of London's highest award, whose previous recipients include Charles Darwin. Lovelock was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to the study of the Science and Atmosphere in the
1990 New Year Honours The New Year Honours 1990 were appointments by most of the Commonwealth realms of Queen Elizabeth II to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of those countries, and honorary ones to citizens of other countries ...
and a Member of the
Order of the Companions of Honour The Order of the Companions of Honour is an order of the Commonwealth realms. It was founded on 4 June 1917 by King George V as a reward for outstanding achievements. Founded on the same date as the Order of the British Empire, it is sometimes ...
(CH) for services to Global Environmental Science in the
2003 New Year Honours The 2003 New Year's Honours List is one of the annual New Year Honours, a part of the British monarch's honours system, where 1 January is marked by naming new members of orders of chivalry and recipients of other official honours. A number of ot ...
.


Honours


Commonwealth honours


Scholastic

; University degrees ; Chancellor, visitor, governor, rector and fellowships ;Honorary degrees


Memberships and fellowships


Personal life

Lovelock married Helen Hyslop in 1942. They had four children and remained married until her death in 1989 from
multiple sclerosis Multiple (cerebral) sclerosis (MS), also known as encephalomyelitis disseminata or disseminated sclerosis, is the most common demyelinating disease, in which the insulating covers of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord are damaged. This d ...
. He first met his second wife, Sandy, at the age of 69. Lovelock stated of their relationship: " turned 100 in July 2019, Lovelock died at his home in Abbotsbury">centenarian">turned 100 in July 2019, Lovelock died at his home in
on 26 July 2022Birthday effect">his 103rd birthday of complications related to a fall.


Portraits

In March 2012, the National Portrait Gallery, London">National Portrait Gallery National Portrait Gallery may refer to: *National Portrait Gallery (Australia), in Canberra *National Portrait Gallery (Sweden), in Mariefred *National Portrait Gallery (United States), in Washington, D.C. *National Portrait Gallery, London, with s ...
unveiled a new portrait of Lovelock by British artist Michael Gaskell, which was completed in 2011. The collection also has two photographic portraits by Nick Sinclair (1993) and Paul Tozer (1994). The archive of the Royal Society of Arts has a 2009 image taken by Anne-Katrin Purkiss. Lovelock agreed to sit for sculptor Jon Edgar in Devon during 2007, as part of the ''
Environment Triptych ''Environment Triptych'' The ''Environment Triptych'', by sculptor Jon Edgar, is a group of three portrait heads of environmental thinkers of the day. First assembled in 2008, it is composed of the terracotta heads of James Lovelock, proposer of t ...
'' (2008) along with heads of Mary Midgley and
Richard Mabey Richard Thomas Mabey (born 20 February 1941) is a writer and broadcaster, chiefly on the relations between nature and culture. Education Mabey was educated at three independent schools, all in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. The first was at Roth ...
. A bronze head is in the collection of the sitter and the terracotta is in the archive of the artist.


Publications

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *


See also

*
Gaianism Gaianism is an earth-centered philosophical, holistic, and spiritual belief that shares expressions with earth religions and paganism while not identifying exclusively with any specific one. The term describes a philosophy and ethical worldview w ...


References


Further reading

* * * *


External links


James Lovelock tells his life story
at Web of Stories
Listen to an oral history interview with James Lovelock
recorded for An Oral History of British Science at the British Library * * * * by the Polish band Łąki Łan about the Gaia hypothesis and Lovelock Interviews
Lovelock at the ''Guardian''

Lovelock at the BBC

Dr. Lovelock Lectures on ''The Vanishing Face of Gaia''
presented by '' Corporate Knights'', 26 May 2009
Audio: James Lovelock in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion show
''The Forum'', 1 March 2009
''The Vanishing Face of Gaia''
(Lovelock in conversation with
Tim Radford Tim Radford (born 1940) is a British–New Zealand freelance journalist, born in New Zealand in 1940 and educated at Sacred Heart College, Auckland. At 16, he joined ''The New Zealand Herald'' as a reporter. He moved to the United Kingdom in 1 ...
), RSA ''Vision'' webcast, 23 February 2009
Audio interview
from '' Ideas'' (
How to think about science
'), CBC.ca, 2 January 2008
''Climate Change on the Living Earth''
(public lecture by Lovelock), Royal Society, 29 October 2007
The Prophet of Climate Change
Jeff Goodell Jeff Goodell is an American author and contributing editor to ''Rolling Stone'' magazine. Goodell's writings are known for a focus on energy and environmental issues. He is Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. ...
, '' Rolling Stone'', 17 October 2007
Radio interview with James Lovelock
KQED KQED may refer to: * KQED (TV), a PBS member station in San Francisco * KQED-FM KQED-FM (88.5 MHz) is a NPR-member radio station in San Francisco, California. Its parent organization is KQED Inc., which also owns its television partners, both ...
San Francisco, 13 September 2006
Reflections on meeting James Lovelock and a recent interview with him
Creel Commission, 26 August 2005 * (Lovelock interviewed on using microwaves in cryobiology research to
resuscitate Resuscitation is the process of correcting physiological disorders (such as lack of breathing or heartbeat) in an acutely ill patient. It is an important part of intensive care medicine, anesthesiology, trauma surgery and emergency medicine. W ...
frozen hamsters in the 1950s), Tom Scott, 17 May 2021 {{DEFAULTSORT:Lovelock, James 1919 births 2022 deaths 20th-century British non-fiction writers 21st-century British non-fiction writers Deaths from falls Deaths in England Alumni of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Alumni of the University of Manchester British agnostics British ecologists British environmentalists British science fiction writers British science writers British scientific instrument makers Commanders of the Order of the British Empire English agnostics English biologists English centenarians English conscientious objectors English ecologists English environmentalists English expatriates in the United States English male non-fiction writers English science fiction writers Environmental philosophers Environmental writers Fellows of the Royal Society Futurologists Green thinkers Harvard University people Independent scientists Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour Men centenarians Mythographers Non-fiction environmental writers People associated with nuclear power People from Letchworth Sustainability advocates Winners of the Heineken Prize Wollaston Medal winners