Fever

Fever! In the morning,
And fever all through the night

Everybody's got the fever
That is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago

James McElroy has written an interesting essay, especially the part about Earth's 'fever!'

My main advising professor at the University of Arizona was George Dawson, a fellow Englishman and friend to independent scientist James Lovelock. I remember when Lynn Margulis, one of Lovelock's colleagues, came to speak to us students at U of A.

Lovelock built very sensitive gas chromatographs. I especially liked the idea that if you had to obtain the very best gas chromatographs in the world, the very, very latest and most sensitive technology available anywhere, even if you were NASA or the CIA or MI5, you had to hunt Lovelock down in his little cottage in the remote English countryside, where he built these gizmos. The Gaia hypothesis is very much a valid scientific concept, which is one reason why the New Agers found it so attractive - it has a ring of truth to it, and is immensely appealing at all levels.

Regarding cockroaches (having done many experiments in southern Arizona, where they are as common as - cockroaches) I've discovered they will drown in a mild soap solution. Nevertheless, cockroaches resist being drawn into mild soap solutions, even when tempted with food, which is why these crafty devils will probably outlive us.

Here is James' essay:
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Marc,

I appreciate your review of "An Inconvenient Truth". I have not yet seen it but have heard much about it. Your analysis of the reasons for the reaction to global warming are well thought out and valid. Some who should know better still talk about evolution of the species, but species evolve as the result of individual decisions about where to live, how to acquire food, who to procreate with, and how to respond to intra-species competition and externally applied stressors. Even if we allow for the evolution of a cooperative strategy for survival, the cooperation of each group member rarely extends beyond the 100 or so other individuals that the typical individual can recognize as "my group". The prognosis for any cooperative effort to halt or slow global warming is not good, given the vast variation in economic status and political distrust of individuals all over the world.

There has never been much justification for the widely held view that homo sapiens is the pinacle of evolution and will inevitably continue to develop forever. I have never bought into the theory that evolution of human intelligence is a "good thing". It basically allows members of the species to sidestep evolved instinct and develop cultural evolution in parallel to biological evolution. This allows some individuals to analyse systems and to develop responses outside of past actions. Thus, better methods of hunting, agriculture, physical science, education, etc. lead to ever larger populations in response to overcrowding. In the bad old days overcrowing resulted in fewer survivors, forcing a return to a stable population level. In the last 100,000 or so years (a mere blink of an eye in the history of the Earth) we have developed an unstable forcing function that is driving the species toward an inevitable collapse. The effect on the species has been the development of autocratic political systems, very unequal economic systems, war, pestilence, and exponential deterioration of the environment. In a post-human world of mulicellular organisms, my money is on the cockroach. That is a species that is probably the epitome of biological evolution. It can take anything you can throw at it (with the possible exception of a well aimed shoe) and evolves fast enough to respond to changing environmental conditions.

As an atmospheric scientist, I assume you are familiar with the Gaia Hypothesis formulated by James Lovelock back in the '60s and published in the late '70s. Unfortunately it was glommed onto by many New Age proponents and has been given a bad reputation. I hold no brief that the Earth is some super-organism. In it's original form it was simply the recognition that in a closed system the sum total of the effects of biological evolution can affect the environment and apply a feedback to the direction of evolution. Eliminate the New Age garbage and think of the Earth as an (almost) closed system, and some interesting thought processes come bubbling up to the surface.

In an aside, Lovelock developed the hypothesis in response to a task assigned by NASA to develop methods to detect life on Mars by various probes and/or visits to the Mars surface. Lovelock was intelligent enough to realize that going all the way there, picking up a single (or very small number of) samples, then bringing them back for analyisis was not a good approach. Instead he suggested carefully analysing the Martian atmosphere by telescopic and low orbital probes to look for the by-products of a biological existance. This was not what NASA wanted to hear and he was quickly marginalized and berated as a pseudo-scientist. A scientist working for the Government ignores politics at his peril.

Think for the moment about the human body. Aside from the huge number of body cells that are the result of development from the original genome, there are an equivalent large number of bacteria, viruses, and single cell organisms inhabiting that universe. Some are essential to the function of the body, some are useful, some are benign fellow-travelers, and some are toxic organsims fully capable of making the body incapable of continuing life. Most of the time the bad ones are not numerous enough to outstrip the body's evolved defenses. Occasionally however, something will upset that equilibrium and the bad guys will start to muliply at a high rate and the body must seek to control the population. Please remember that the body does not think, "the Streptococci are getting uppity, I must nuke them back to the stone age". Instead, the presence of abnormal numbers of the errant biological organism is detected by the immune system, and a programmed (by evolution) response is initiated. Most of the time this is sufficient, but bacteria evolve also and sometimes they evade the defenses and a state of sepsis is achieved.

I find it very interesting that one of the regular defenses of the body in fighting off an infection is to raise body temperature, in some severe cases high enough to affect the bodys own cells adversely. Think now about the Earth as a closed system inhabited by numerous biological organisms, from the very same bacteria we have been considering, up(?) to homo sapiens. One of the organisms has begun to proliferate at an unstainable rate and producing effluent at rates that cannot be handled by the offsetting sinks that have evolved over time. One of many results is the concentration of heat trapping gasses in the atmosphere (obvious evidence of life, for any kibbitzing ET in the neighborhood). The organism is rapidly approaching a state of sepsis, and the Earth, acting as a closed system, is modifying the environment in a way to supress the organism. Thought provoking? Please remember that the Earth is not consciously acting to eliminate the threat, but is simply following the natural laws of Physics, as we all must, eventually.

There is another point here, we considered both the Earth and the human body as closed systems. Actually the human body is much less of a closed system than the Earth, thus the possiblilty of carrying infection from one body to another, and epidemics. If interstellar space travel ever actually occurs the possibility of interstellar epidemics becomes a likelihood. The question then becomes what side do we take? The side of the body hosting the infectious organism, or the side of the organism seeking a new host after destroying the old one? The Earth has huge restorative powers and once the infectious organism is gone it will most likely become even more lovely than before, just that no human will be there to destroy it. The cockroaches will no doubt sigh in relief. Actually, complete destruction of humanity is not neccessary, just a severe reduction in numbers, and perhaps a devolution of the human brain, much as whales lost their redundant legs upon returning to the sea.

The argument that the Earth is simply too massive and inert to be affected by a single species is not terribly convincing. The Earth's climate is a highly nonlinear system that can change abruptly over a geological instant. Human timescales are irrelavent. Non-linear control systems frequently have "trip-points" that can flip the system from one stable state to another very different stable state with little effort. Look at how many times and how quickly the Earth's magnetic field has inverted over geological time. The original inhabitants, bacteria and other archaic creatures, survived quite well in a reducing atmosphere, but still evolved into oxygen producing species, poisoning their own ancestors while preparing the way for more "efficient" oxygen cycle creatures. The point is, the Earth will survive, and perhaps prosper, but the inhabitants are more fragile.

Is this a pessimistic prediction of the future? Consider carefully. Think of a Earth with no Musical Theater, but also no Fox News and Reality TV. Nothing but green grass and blue sky, with flowering plants and fruitful trees, all organisms in balance with each other. Isn't that what we want? In the words of the imimitable Walt Kelly, "We have met the Enemy, and they are us!".

Jim McElroy