Daisy World and the Gaia Hypothesis

[Charles Pegge]

Daisyworld: James Lovelock and Gaia

(open university)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yvQVD7sgn0&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I47vhzErOCE&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gIQShSrk1I&NR=1

[Charles Pegge]

The Vanishing Face of Gaia

James LoveLock

Lecture 2009 Canada

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg7Jt_Yzl1o&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViyIxrKJ4tE&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XowvcrOl0DY&annotation_id=annotation_181959&feature=iv
http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_709769&feature=iv&v=vzprwVtPp9Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NephEUelu3A&NR=1

Book Review

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/camilla_cavendish/article5725106.ece

[danbaron]

I read the article (I still can't watch videos).

I want him to be wrong, so, I will make a psychological analysis that supports my hope. ==>

He is 90 years old. He is mixing his own gloomy prognosis, with humanity's.

(Anyway, to be honest, I'm afraid that he is correct. (Should we all just commit suicide now, or, should we wait?))

[Charles Pegge]

This could be the answer:

http://www.inhabitat.com/wp-content/uploads/lilypad4.jpg
http://inhabitat.com/lilypad-floating-cities-in-the-age-of-global-warming/

And if we build our floating cities using carbon fibre and graphene then we lock up carbon and begin to reverse the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans.

Charles

[danbaron]

It might be a good idea.

It could be that humanity can do a lot to improve things, if, it doesn't run out of energy.

Making a floating city would require a lot of energy, correct?

It seems to me, that we can't run out of solar energy, or geothermal energy. The problem becomes that, it requires a big initial energy investment, to be able to use them. For instance, for solar energy, we need lots of solar panels; for geothermal energy we need to at least dig a lot of deep holes into Earth. The initial energy investment, would be much greater than the maintenance cost. I guess we need to make the initial investment, before we run out of oil. Otherwise, many will die. After the initial investment, hopefully, the system would pay for itself. Ultimately, we must be able to acquire at least as much solar and geothermal energy, as we use to maintain both civilization and the energy infrastructure.

If houses and even cities were built underground, then, just about all of the heating and cooling costs, would disappear. But, the first thing you have to do, is dig the holes to build them. It's sort of like the cavemen - they were smart enough to live in caves. The difference is that they found the caves, they didn't dig them.

Some people think that governments are now secretly seeding the upper atmosphere with tiny (nano?) aluminum particles, to make the atmosphere more reflective. Of course, the particles would not stay in the upper atmosphere. They would eventually fall to Earth, and, people would breathe them - probably not good. Maybe it would be possible to make the ocean's surface more reflective, to cover the surface with some kind of thin low density ultra-reflective liquid. But, who knows what additional problems that would cause (the water would become too cold, and the fish would die?). It seems that like the human body, Earth's ecosystem is so complex, that whatever you do to alter it, has unintended, and usually, unpleasant consequences. In other words, it could be that whatever we try to do to alleviate global warming, will have a net negative effect - I hope not.

(However, I'm not sure whether the picture above, is of a conception for a future floating city, or, is the 2012 Olympic Stadium, floating on the Thames.)

:p