"Gaia Hypothesis" Originator James Lovelock Reflects on His Career

The scientist and futurist talks about self-regulating Gaia, climate change and peer review, as an exhibition featuring him opens April 9 in London

The new exhibition features some of scientist James Lovelock's inventions, including this homemade gas chromatography device. Credit:Bruno Comby via Wikimedia Commons

A new exhibition at the Science Museum in London features the personal archives of one of the most influential modern scientists; James Lovelock. Unlocking Lovelock: Scientist, Inventor, Maverick tells the story of the British scientist's work in medicine, environmental science and planetary science, and displays documents ranging from childhood stories, doodle-strewn lab notebooks and patents to letters from dignitaries such as former UK prime minister (and chemist) Margaret Thatcher. Also included are several of Lovelocks inventions, such as the electron-capture detector that enabled the measuring of ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere in the 1970s.

Lovelock, born in 1919, is best known for the Gaia hypothesis, which proposes that the Earth functions as a self-regulating system, similar to a living organism. The idea sparked controversy when Lovelock and microbiologist Lynn Margulis proposed it in the 1970s, but environmental and Earth scientists now accept many of its basic principles. In 2006, his bookThe Revenge of Gaiapredicted disastrous effects from climate change within just a few decades, writing that only a handful of the teeming billions now alive will survive.

This week Lovelock spoke toNatureabout his career, his earlier predictions and his new book,A Rough Ride to the Future(reviewed last week inNature).

Is climate change going to be less extreme than you previously thought?

The Revenge of Gaiawas over the top, but we were all so taken in by the perfect correlation between temperature and CO2in the ice-core analyses [from the ice-sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, studied since the 1980s]. You could draw a straight line relating temperature and CO2, and it was such a temptation for everyone to say, Well, with CO2rising we can say in such and such a year it will be this hot. It was a mistake we all made.

We shouldnt have forgotten that the system has a lot of inertia and were not going to shift it very quickly. The thing weve all forgotten is the heat storage of the ocean its a thousand times greater than the atmosphere and the surface. You cant change that very rapidly.

But being an independent scientist, it is much easier to say you made a mistake than if you are a government department or an employee or anything like that.

So what will the next 100 years look like?

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"Gaia Hypothesis" Originator James Lovelock Reflects on His Career