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The practice of science
has shaped the modern era.

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But how are discoveries made
and how does science progress?

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Three British scientists,
world leaders in their fields,

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have changed our understanding
of our universe,
our planet and ourselves.

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A physicist whose mysterious
radio signals from space
rewrote astronomy.

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She actually recognised that
there was something happening.

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I suspect that perhaps only 1 in 100
people would have spotted it.

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A chemist
whose radical theory about our
planet divides the scientific world.

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He's one of the greatest
thinkers of the current age
and destined to go down in history.

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And a biologist who discovered
the secret of life in a sea urchin.

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Your fundamental discoveries
have profoundly increased

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our understanding
of how the cell cycle is controlled.

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Their stories tell us about
the nature of scientific enquiry
in the modern world,

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about how scientific
breakthroughs are made

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and about the workings
of the scientific brain.

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I never dreamt, you see,
when I started out doing science,

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that I'd be involved in a highly
controversial theory.
You don't think that at all.

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My initial ambition
always was to work in a lab
and do hands-on science,

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just like an artist wants to be with
his brushes and paints and canvas and
things, and things that come along.

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He doesn't expect to produce
a masterpiece, does he?

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Gaia. G-A-I-A.

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'This is a man who thinks
the world is coming to an end.'

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James Lovelock is responsible
for the Gaia theory. Planet earth
is a self-regulating system.

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'..which seeks to explain why
the earth behaves as it does
was a landmark in modern science.'

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It's going to play absolute mayhem
with our civilisation
in the next 10 or 100 years.

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He may be right and he's had a track
record of being right in the past,

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so he may be right in this case too.
I hope he isn't.

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James Lovelock's scientific
masterpiece, his Gaia hypothesis,

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stunned the world and divided
the scientific community.

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It proposed that the earth is able
to regulate its own atmosphere,

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and that to interfere with that
process would lead to catastrophe.

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It is important, it's extraordinary,
it's incredibly timely.

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It can be compared with the
revelations that we're not
at the centre of the universe.

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I would rank the Gaia theory
as being in the same category

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of scientific advance as Darwin's
theory of natural selection.

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For many,
Gaia theory was a milestone in
our understanding of the planet,

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a way of looking at the world
so different that it challenged

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not only scientific orthodoxy
but also the way in which
science is practised,

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a challenge launched not from a
school of thought or institution

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but from one
extraordinary individual.

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I think James has
two related qualities

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which go some way
towards explaining

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his evolution as one of the
most important scientific thinkers

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of the last century.

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And the two qualities are
individualism

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and directness of mind.

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Lovelock can think
in straight lines, but he can also
think round corners.

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James's capacity to think outside
the box is exactly because he
doesn't recognise the box.

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For some,
James Lovelock is a maverick.

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Certainly he is an outsider.

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Lovelock himself insists
that minds like his can only

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work outside the confines of the
mainstream scientific establishment.

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And so, for 40 highly
successful years, he's been
pursuing science on his own,

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having abandoned the labs
of NASA and British academia
for his garden shed.

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'Snuggled deep in rural Wiltshire
is a thatched 16th-century cottage

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'belonging
to Professor James Lovelock.

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'Today, the lone wolf scientist is
considered a somewhat freakish
rarity

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'and, indeed, for more than 20
years, Professor Lovelock conformed,

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'working in large research
institutes here and in the USA.

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'But a couple of years ago,
he kicked over the traces
and became independent.'

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If you work in a large
institution or a university,

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it's quite difficult to do more
than about 20 minutes work a day,

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what with interruptions and
telephone calls and so on.

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And, for another thing, I think
scientists are a bit like artists,

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and who in their right mind would
think of cooping up a bunch

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of creative artists
in an institute or a university?

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It was the way of life
I wanted to follow, was being an
independent spirit working on my own.

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Perhaps I'm much more greedy than the
others. I want the whole damn show.

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I just want to be a scientist.

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Totally blue sky,

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not done for money.

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Done for curiosity and interest.

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Lovelock believes it's his
unfettered approach that's led

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to a string of remarkable scientific
inventions and discoveries.

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Oh, we're just off
to look in the lab...

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if you can call it a lab.

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It's where I do my...

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keep my toys and do my experiments.

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Don't be frightened of the
notices on the door.

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They're more to pacify
Health and Safety than representing
any serious dangers.

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I've made nearly all
the instruments I use.

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If you build something and
make it yourself, you have

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an automatic understanding of how it
works and what it is that you would
never get by mere reading about it.

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If your hands are not involved
in your scientific work as well
as your brain, it's not as good.

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I remember that when I went
into his house, it was like

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as if he lived slightly at an angle
to the rest of the world.

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He didn't see things in the same way
as anybody else that I'd met.

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It was very disorientating. It made
me feel slightly giddy, actually.

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Yeah.

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It's an accumulation
of 33 years of bits and pieces.

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You wouldn't see much of this sort
of equipment in any modern lab,
anywhere, nowadays.

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Here is an electron capture detector.

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This invention was come
upon serendipitously.

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That's to say, as a sideline.

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I set out to find one thing
and found something better.

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And this is the secret
of all good inventions.

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Some have said the electron capture
detector did more than anything
to start the green movement going.

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I won't go into the full details of
the reaction, but the point of this
thing is it's more sensitive

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than any other
simple chemical analytical detector
that's ever been invented.

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This device
is quite exceptionally sensitive,
more so even than an animal's nose.

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And that's
quite remarkable, for it's not often
that one can do better than nature.

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Lovelock's invention thrust
him into the public arena,
because it showed disturbing

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evidence of man's impact on what
an embryonic green movement was
starting to call "the environment".

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'The pesticide problem
is an application in which this
invention proved its worth.

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'We're now alerted to the dangers
of an uncontrolled use of pesticides

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'and the build-up of
man-made chemicals
in the tissues of animals and man.

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'Traces of DDT have even been
found in the fat of penguins,

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'and it took Professor Lovelock's
electron absorption detector to spot
the minute quantities involved.'

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His electron capture detector,
that's really what made him famous.

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You know, that in itself
would have been an extraordinary
career for one person.

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You know, proud and destined
to go down in history.

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But Jim's done so many
other things as well.

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My earliest encounter quite
definitely with science
was at Christmas.

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I think...I've forgotten which year,
it was '23 or '24.

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My father, as a present, gave me a
box full of tricks, as he called it.

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And all there was in the box were
lots of wires and batteries and bells

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and lights and buzzers and things.

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He said, "There, join that up,
and you'll have some fun with it."
And I was fascinated with it.

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Spent a lot of time finding
out how the things worked.

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And it was the best Christmas present
I think I've ever had.

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And then I got puzzled.
I couldn't understand why it was
you need two wires to send

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electricity along, whereas if it
was gas or water or something,
you just need a single pipe.

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And I started asking around, first
my father and then my grandmother.

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Nobody knew. Not even the postman!

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So I realised I'd have
to do it myself and find out.

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And that's what I think set me on...
a life as a scientist.

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James Lovelock's father
not only set him on the road
to becoming a scientist,

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he also unwittingly paved the way
for his next, and perhaps one of
his most important, discoveries -

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the build-up of CFC gases
in the atmosphere.

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I think I learnt my ecology, if you
like, from my father, because we
used to go for walks at the weekend.

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He would take me through
the countryside and show me
all the tracks of animals.

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'It was a feeling for, and an
understanding of, the countryside,

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'which has remained
with me ever since.'

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What's the connection between
country walks and looking for CFCs?

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You see, the story goes like this.

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I remember from my walks on these
hills with my father how often
one could see the Sussex Downs.

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The air was always,
in those days, quite clear.

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Now, very strangely, many years
later, one of the things that struck
me immediately was how different

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it was, in that every often
during the summertime,
there was a dense haze.

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Where on earth does it come from?
That was the question I asked.

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At first, there didn't seem
to be any answer, and then it
began slowly to dawn on me,

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it probably came from the
nearest highly populated area.

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And I could prove that,
if it was sort of human haze
and not some kind of natural

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phenomenon that had happened
since I was young,

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by analysing the atmosphere
to see if it had some unequivocally
human industrial compound in it.

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And I thought a bit, and the
obvious and only one to choose

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were the fluorocarbons, the CFCs,
because with their spray cans
and leaking refrigerators,

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the only thing on earth that releases
CFCs into the atmosphere is people.

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It's a people marker.

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So all I had to do was to
see if the presence of haze

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correlated with the presence
of an increase in the amount of CFCs.

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I suppose it was very unusual.

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I mean, most scientists have a
laboratory with lots of staff.

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He had my mother, my Auntie Betty,
myself and my brother and sisters.

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You know, we'd all be helping.

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They were only too happy to join
the routine of daily measurements,

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and Christine did an awful lot
of the haze measurements.

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We were just helping as if,

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I suppose, you might help

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on a farm or something.

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Sure enough, it showed a marked
correlation between the haze
and the presence of CFCs.

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At that time, I didn't realise
I was the only person in the world
that was measuring the CFCs.

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Nobody took the slightest notice.

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They weren't in the least
interested, either in the presence
of CFCs in the atmosphere or in haze.

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But the puzzling thing I found
was that there were still

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CFCs in the air even when
the air was sparklingly clear.

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And I thought then, is it building up
in the whole atmosphere of the world
without any kind of losses?

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And I was curious about this.

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The lone scientist
working from home with part-time
assistance from his family

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was on the verge of making perhaps
the most significant scientific
discovery of the 20th century.

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His mind is able to make intuitive
leaps or connections between
things that the rest of us

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would always keep separate
in our heads, and it's
those connections

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that he's been able to see

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that have been
the most remarkable scientific
advances that he's gifted us.

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It suddenly dawned on me,
oh, what a marvellous excuse
to go on a ship voyage

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from right the way down to Antarctica

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to find out were there CFCs in the
whole world atmosphere or not?

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You followed your nose. And
that's what makes your science real.

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That's what makes you want
to go on doing it.

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And it had a wonderful captain.

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We'd often have
good discussions in the ship's dining
room after dinner at night.

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He'd taken the precaution
to bring along some very good wine.

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It was just a very
pleasant atmosphere.

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And all I had to do was to go out
several times a day

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with a hypodermic syringe
and fill it with air

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and then take it back to the lab and
inject it into the gas chromatograph.

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Quite remarkably, I found that
the fluorocarbons were in the
atmosphere of the whole planet.

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So they were just adding up in the
atmosphere without going anywhere.

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I did what scientists usually do -

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I wrote it up in the form of a paper,
which was published in Nature.

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I didn't realise I was
letting loose the CFC ozone business

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and shutting down a billion-dollar
industry in the course of it.

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KLAXON

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You see, the scientists
in California, Mario Molina
and Sherwood Rowland,

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developed the idea that
the CFCs going into the stratosphere

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would be a source of chlorine,
and this would destroy a significant
amount of the ozone layer.

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And, of course, that
hit the fan in a big way.

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Within the past hour, more than
90 countries have agreed on a plan

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to try to
save the earth's ozone layer.

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The meeting has been
taking place in London.

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The agreement commits the countries
to faze out chlorofluorocarbons,
or CFCs, within 10 years.

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It was the connection
between the build-up of CFCs
and the hole in the ozone layer

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that shifted the environmental
movement centre stage and earned a
Nobel prize for Molina and Rowland.

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He deserved and didn't get a
part in a Nobel prize, but then...

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well, the fitting tribute
will be if somehow his ideas

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actually help us find a long-term
sustainable future on the planet.

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That's worth a lot more than the
recognition of the establishment.

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I grew curious
about the nature of things

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and fell in love with science, oh,
at least 80, probably 82 years ago.

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My mother was an avid reader
and she always went to the
Brixton Library,

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because in those days
people didn't buy books, certainly
unless they were very rich.

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And you went to the public
libraries, and they were everywhere.

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The Brixton one was exceedingly good,
and she would go and get her
political books on feminism,

214
00:18:38,120 --> 00:18:42,680
cos that was the kind of thing
that turned her on, or on socialism -

215
00:18:42,680 --> 00:18:45,160
it didn't matter, one or the other -

216
00:18:45,160 --> 00:18:53,120
and I went at first to get science
fiction and came back with HG Wells's
wonderful books.

217
00:18:53,120 --> 00:18:57,080
I think they really
filled in my mind a lot.

218
00:18:57,080 --> 00:19:00,480
I mean, the story of The Time
Machine. I mean, it was so different.

219
00:19:00,480 --> 00:19:04,240
I mean, that was the start
of real science fiction.

220
00:19:04,240 --> 00:19:08,240
But that wasn't enough for me. After
a while, I wanted the hard stuff.

221
00:19:08,240 --> 00:19:15,040
And they kept the hard stuff in
the basement, and that was really
a cornucopia, a cave of wonders.

222
00:19:33,960 --> 00:19:38,040
The kind of stuff you pick up
when the mind is developing,

223
00:19:38,040 --> 00:19:42,120
before puberty, stays there for good.

224
00:19:45,200 --> 00:19:49,720
And you do feel intensely
when you're a kid of that age.

225
00:19:49,720 --> 00:19:52,880
Everything is full of...
life's full of feeling.

226
00:19:55,480 --> 00:20:00,080
I was mining magic down at
the basement of Brixton Library

227
00:20:00,080 --> 00:20:06,440
and I went on doing it all the time,
and it solidified.

228
00:20:06,440 --> 00:20:09,200
I really struck a few
mother-loads down there.

229
00:20:18,680 --> 00:20:24,240
I don't think I understood much
of them, but your mind
is a kind of sponge.

230
00:20:32,080 --> 00:20:35,440
And it stays there
in your machine language memory

231
00:20:35,440 --> 00:20:41,080
for the rest of your life,
so that from then onwards my mind
had a complete understanding

232
00:20:41,080 --> 00:20:45,080
of the position
of all the chemicals
and their properties and things,

233
00:20:45,080 --> 00:20:48,320
although I didn't even know what
the properties were.

234
00:20:50,560 --> 00:20:54,320
But later on, when I came
to be a professional chemist,

235
00:20:54,320 --> 00:20:57,040
then all of that knowledge was there

236
00:20:57,040 --> 00:21:00,320
instantly accessible,
whenever I needed it.

237
00:21:05,640 --> 00:21:10,520
Why did I choose chemistry
as my subject in science?

238
00:21:10,520 --> 00:21:16,800
After all, if you go back to that box
of tricks my father gave me, bits
of wire and stuff, that's physics.

239
00:21:16,800 --> 00:21:20,080
That's not chemistry.
Why didn't I go into physics?

240
00:21:20,080 --> 00:21:25,640
It so happens that I'm dyslexic,
and...not seriously.

241
00:21:25,640 --> 00:21:27,800
I can't tell the difference
between left and right.

242
00:21:27,800 --> 00:21:30,600
It's one of the peculiarities.

243
00:21:30,600 --> 00:21:36,520
It also meant that in mathematics
I can never tell which side
of an equation I'm on,

244
00:21:36,520 --> 00:21:41,000
and in finding the answer, the
solution, this is quite a handicap.

245
00:21:41,000 --> 00:21:45,600
You get there in the end by
just testing, trying both ways
and seeing which one is right.

246
00:21:45,600 --> 00:21:51,320
But this wastes an awful lot of time,
and when it comes to examinations,
if you're slow, you don't pass.

247
00:21:53,640 --> 00:22:00,880
I was fascinated by physics and
maths, much more than chemistry,
but I realised practically that

248
00:22:00,880 --> 00:22:07,960
because of the slowness in handling
mathematics, I couldn't satisfy
the examiners on physical things.

249
00:22:09,760 --> 00:22:15,320
The best way of thinking of it
was that I'd fallen in love
with science at some age

250
00:22:15,320 --> 00:22:22,240
and I just wanted it around me
as you want a loved one around
nearby and always available.

251
00:22:22,240 --> 00:22:28,440
Though he had studied chemistry,
Lovelock always saw science
as a single entity.

252
00:22:30,920 --> 00:22:35,480
And when war came, the fledging
polymath was unexpectedly exposed

253
00:22:35,480 --> 00:22:38,640
to an even greater array
of scientific disciplines.

254
00:22:40,280 --> 00:22:44,720
Out of the blue came a letter
from the National Institute
for Medical Research

255
00:22:44,720 --> 00:22:50,040
saying, would I be interested
in a job with them?

256
00:22:50,040 --> 00:22:54,080
And the first thing that Sir Henry
Dale said to me, he said, "My boy,"

257
00:22:54,080 --> 00:22:56,920
he said, "don't expect to do
any science when you come here."

258
00:22:56,920 --> 00:22:59,360
He said, "We're at war now.

259
00:23:00,880 --> 00:23:05,640
"And it's going to be nothing but
wartime problems, ad hoc problems,

260
00:23:05,640 --> 00:23:09,880
"that need an answer -
yesterday, preferably."

261
00:23:12,600 --> 00:23:19,240
One of the duties of everyone
working at the National Institute
for Medical Research, that included

262
00:23:19,240 --> 00:23:25,120
everyone, quite literally, was to
fire watch, to patrol on the roof
of the Institute one night a week.

263
00:23:29,440 --> 00:23:36,040
Now, in the course of this, I
met all of the senior scientists
in the Institute,

264
00:23:36,040 --> 00:23:39,160
and it was quite fascinating,

265
00:23:39,160 --> 00:23:45,400
because when an incident occurred,
like a V1 missile coming close by...

266
00:23:46,520 --> 00:23:52,160
On one occasion, it was coming
on a course which looked as
if it was coming towards us.

267
00:23:52,160 --> 00:23:57,320
It came so close by
that we could see the rivets.

268
00:23:57,320 --> 00:24:02,720
We began to get a little
bit excited, to say the least,
and then it cut out.

269
00:24:09,960 --> 00:24:16,160
In their fear, the senior scientist
that I happened to be with
would open his mind

270
00:24:16,160 --> 00:24:20,240
and do a brain dump and see me
as the young person near him,

271
00:24:20,240 --> 00:24:25,960
he'd got to pass on all
the accumulated wisdom of a lifetime,
and you learnt more

272
00:24:25,960 --> 00:24:31,920
in those little incidents
than you ever would, and many of them
would never normally speak to you.

273
00:24:31,920 --> 00:24:38,080
They were sort of senior old buffers
that guarded their
privacy an awful lot.

274
00:24:38,080 --> 00:24:41,120
Boy, did they open up
when the bombs came near!

275
00:24:44,640 --> 00:24:50,280
I learnt from these encounters
an amazingly widespread vision

276
00:24:50,280 --> 00:24:55,400
of all the branches of science
that were included
in that Institute -

277
00:24:55,400 --> 00:25:00,640
physics, chemistry, bacteriology,
virology - you name it, all of them.

278
00:25:00,640 --> 00:25:06,280
And it all helped to
build up in my mind the broad picture

279
00:25:06,280 --> 00:25:09,600
of science as one single subject.

280
00:25:09,600 --> 00:25:14,440
I've worked with him, on and off,
for some years now, and I
think the lasting impression

281
00:25:14,440 --> 00:25:18,640
that I'll carry with me for ever
is his encyclopaedic knowledge

282
00:25:18,640 --> 00:25:22,520
of maths, physics and chemistry...
and biology and medicine.

283
00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:28,200
And his personal experience
that he draws on in everything
he thinks about and does.

284
00:25:28,200 --> 00:25:32,960
Nowadays, science specialises
and specialises.

285
00:25:32,960 --> 00:25:38,000
You can get very good about the
micro-micro-organisms that attack

286
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:43,520
a certain form of bacterium and
their genome and all the rest of it.

287
00:25:43,520 --> 00:25:47,800
But it doesn't take you very far
about understanding the world.

288
00:25:49,560 --> 00:25:55,320
It's this holistic way of thinking
and lack of adherence to a
single scientific discipline

289
00:25:55,320 --> 00:25:59,920
that marks out Lovelock's unique
approach to science, an approach

290
00:25:59,920 --> 00:26:04,000
that he believes was fundamental
in developing Gaia theory.

291
00:26:04,000 --> 00:26:07,840
You see, nearly all
scientists nowadays are slaves.

292
00:26:07,840 --> 00:26:11,120
They're not free men and women.

293
00:26:11,120 --> 00:26:16,240
They have to work in institutes
or universities or government...

294
00:26:16,240 --> 00:26:18,800
places or industry

295
00:26:18,800 --> 00:26:21,960
and they have to work
on a specific problem.

296
00:26:21,960 --> 00:26:25,320
There are very few of them
who are free to think

297
00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:27,560
outside the box, so to speak.

298
00:26:27,560 --> 00:26:32,560
So you come along with the theory
like Gaia, and it's so far beyond

299
00:26:32,560 --> 00:26:37,520
their normal experience, they're
not going to be able to react to it.

300
00:26:37,520 --> 00:26:41,320
'Three, two, one, zero.'

301
00:26:50,520 --> 00:26:53,760
'This is the first shot of earth,
live on television.'

302
00:26:53,760 --> 00:26:57,440
The thing that kicked Gaia off,
mainly, was of course NASA.

303
00:26:57,440 --> 00:27:01,240
There would have been
no opportunity before that

304
00:27:01,240 --> 00:27:05,520
for people to have considered
the earth from outside in reality.

305
00:27:06,800 --> 00:27:14,680
One day, a letter arrived on my
desk that was from Director of Space
Flight Operations for NASA,

306
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:18,360
and in it was an invitation.

307
00:27:18,360 --> 00:27:23,560
Would I like to be an experimenter
to look for life on Mars?

308
00:27:23,560 --> 00:27:28,680
If there is life on Mars, then there
will be a simply fabulous expansion

309
00:27:28,680 --> 00:27:31,360
of the perspective of the biologist,

310
00:27:31,360 --> 00:27:33,560
because all the organisms
on the earth, even though

311
00:27:33,560 --> 00:27:36,360
they seem to be different,
are fundamentally the same.

312
00:27:36,360 --> 00:27:38,440
Their chemistry is all identical.

313
00:27:44,440 --> 00:27:48,840
I went along to this meeting of
biologists, about various experiments

314
00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:54,320
to detect life on Mars that
NASA is going to send there
on of the future missions.

315
00:27:54,320 --> 00:27:57,720
The first thing we will
have to do is organise a team,
the best we can get.

316
00:27:57,720 --> 00:28:02,440
Most of the experiments
that the biologists were doing

317
00:28:02,440 --> 00:28:08,360
were based on the assumption
that life on Mars would be
very like life in the Mojave Desert.

318
00:28:10,360 --> 00:28:15,600
If their experiment could detect
life in that desert, then it could
probably detect it on Mars.

319
00:28:18,680 --> 00:28:24,920
One very keen biologist
took me by the arm and said,
"Let me show you my life detection.

320
00:28:24,920 --> 00:28:27,560
"It's absolutely...
an experiment for Mars.

321
00:28:27,560 --> 00:28:30,440
"It's bound to work.
It can't possibly fail."

322
00:28:30,440 --> 00:28:37,480
And what he showed me was a little
stainless steel cage about one
cubic centimetre in size,

323
00:28:37,480 --> 00:28:41,840
and it looked very beautiful, and I
said, "What's that?" And he said,
"It's my Martian flea trap."

324
00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:45,680
And I said, "Why do you think
there's fleas on Mars?"

325
00:28:45,680 --> 00:28:49,720
He said, "Well, everybody knows
Mars is nothing but desert,

326
00:28:49,720 --> 00:28:52,880
"and when you get an extensive
desert, you always have camels,

327
00:28:52,880 --> 00:28:58,880
"and there's no animals
with more fleas than a camel.
This will detect life on Mars."

328
00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:00,480
'Is there life on Mars?'

329
00:29:05,160 --> 00:29:07,600
Ah!

330
00:29:07,600 --> 00:29:09,840
So I started being
stroppy and saying,

331
00:29:09,840 --> 00:29:14,160
"Well, how the hell do you know
that life on Mars is
like life in the Mojave Desert?

332
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:17,240
"It might be totally different.
It's a different planet altogether.

333
00:29:17,240 --> 00:29:20,400
"It might not even have
the same form as life on earth."

334
00:29:20,400 --> 00:29:23,840
And this made them very cross.

335
00:29:23,840 --> 00:29:26,440
And they thought that
I was bullshitting, really.

336
00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:29,360
Is that a technical term? Anyway...

337
00:29:29,360 --> 00:29:32,400
They complained
to the Director about it.

338
00:29:32,400 --> 00:29:37,360
He was a tough guy and so he said,
"Well, what would YOU do?"

339
00:29:37,360 --> 00:29:38,920
And I said, "I've got
to think about that."

340
00:29:38,920 --> 00:29:44,160
He said, "Well, you have until
Friday."  And I knew that my
contract was kind of on the line.

341
00:29:44,160 --> 00:29:47,440
I had got until Friday
to come up with an answer.

342
00:29:47,440 --> 00:29:52,280
And that's the kind of thing
that really stimulates thinking.

343
00:29:54,520 --> 00:29:57,760
I was scared.

344
00:29:57,760 --> 00:30:02,480
Jim is at his best when he's
posed a problem, I think.

345
00:30:02,480 --> 00:30:05,480
Give him a puzzle,
and he's brilliant at solving them.

346
00:30:07,520 --> 00:30:10,360
And what's brilliant about
his thinking is

347
00:30:10,360 --> 00:30:12,200
that he thinks out of the box.

348
00:30:12,200 --> 00:30:15,800
He doesn't imagine what we might
put on the landing craft

349
00:30:15,800 --> 00:30:17,600
and how it might measure the soil.

350
00:30:17,600 --> 00:30:20,920
He says, there must be a much more
general way of recognising life.

351
00:30:23,520 --> 00:30:25,200
Suddenly, it came to me.

352
00:30:25,200 --> 00:30:30,240
Finding life on Mars is the
simplest thing in the world to do.

353
00:30:30,240 --> 00:30:36,560
All you had to do was measure
the composition of the atmosphere
of Mars, chemically.

354
00:30:36,560 --> 00:30:40,440
That was all. Just find out what
gases were in its atmosphere.

355
00:30:40,440 --> 00:30:44,320
He had the realisation that if life
was abundant on a planet,

356
00:30:44,320 --> 00:30:47,720
it would change
the atmosphere of that planet,
and then you could take that a step

357
00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:53,680
further and realise that you could
tell whether there was life on Mars
or not without having to go there.

358
00:30:53,680 --> 00:31:01,400
You can do it with a
regular telescope but using an
ultra-sensitive infrared analyser.

359
00:31:01,400 --> 00:31:06,040
Lovelock felt that if the Martian
atmosphere was inert and unchanging,

360
00:31:06,040 --> 00:31:07,480
there could be no life.

361
00:31:07,480 --> 00:31:12,480
My argument was, if there was life
on the surface, then it would be
obliged

362
00:31:12,480 --> 00:31:16,840
to use the atmosphere as the
source of materials to make itself.

363
00:31:16,840 --> 00:31:22,480
And it would also have to
use the atmosphere as a place
to deposit its waste products.

364
00:31:22,480 --> 00:31:26,760
And doing that would change the
composition of the atmosphere

365
00:31:26,760 --> 00:31:30,360
in a way that would reflect
the existence of life.

366
00:31:30,360 --> 00:31:33,760
For there to be
any chance of life on Mars,

367
00:31:33,760 --> 00:31:37,920
there would need to be a variety
of gases present in its atmosphere.

368
00:31:37,920 --> 00:31:41,560
Lovelock and NASA held their
breaths.

369
00:31:43,200 --> 00:31:46,200
In September 1965,

370
00:31:46,200 --> 00:31:50,560
I met in a room with Carl Sagan,

371
00:31:50,560 --> 00:31:54,600
and in comes another astronomer,

372
00:31:54,600 --> 00:31:58,640
Lou Kaplan,
carrying sheets and sheets of paper.

373
00:31:58,640 --> 00:32:05,760
And we said, "What's this?" And he
said, "It's the complete analysis
of the Martian atmosphere."

374
00:32:05,760 --> 00:32:08,640
What this analysis showed

375
00:32:08,640 --> 00:32:14,480
was that Mars had atmospheres
that were almost nothing
but carbon dioxide,

376
00:32:14,480 --> 00:32:18,040
just bare traces
of other gases present.

377
00:32:18,040 --> 00:32:22,800
And I knew immediately this meant
Mars was probably lifeless.

378
00:32:29,080 --> 00:32:32,400
At that moment,
suddenly a thought came into my mind.

379
00:32:32,400 --> 00:32:36,080
But why is the earth's atmosphere
so amazingly different?

380
00:32:37,680 --> 00:32:41,680
It was this realisation and the
logic that provided it that prompted

381
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:45,360
Lovelock to think about our own
planet in a radically different way.

382
00:32:46,360 --> 00:32:49,600
The earth was a remarkable planet.

383
00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:52,320
How does it stay always habitable,

384
00:32:52,320 --> 00:32:55,120
all the billions of years?

385
00:32:57,720 --> 00:33:00,360
We've got oxygen mixed with methane

386
00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:04,640
that would be explosive
if it were different in composition.

387
00:33:06,600 --> 00:33:12,720
Then it occurred to me that
both gases were made by living
organisms at the earth's surface.

388
00:33:21,720 --> 00:33:24,800
If they were making them,
maybe they were regulating them.

389
00:33:29,880 --> 00:33:31,600
It was eureka moment.

390
00:33:38,400 --> 00:33:44,680
I sort of blurted this all out,
that, oh, the earth must be
a great self-regulating system,

391
00:33:44,680 --> 00:33:48,360
almost alive, that's holding
its atmosphere constant.

392
00:33:48,360 --> 00:33:54,240
And this shook the others,
particularly Carl. He said, "Oh,
you couldn't possibly be right, Jim."

393
00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:59,120
Then he thought for a moment,
and he said, "But there might be
something in what you say,

394
00:33:59,120 --> 00:34:02,920
"because we astronomers have known
that one of the great puzzles is

395
00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:08,560
"that the sun has warmed up 30%
since the earth formed,

396
00:34:08,560 --> 00:34:11,880
"so if it was warm enough
for life to start,

397
00:34:11,880 --> 00:34:14,520
"why aren't we boiling now?"

398
00:34:17,440 --> 00:34:22,200
And then immediately it
occurred to me, well, if the
organisms can regulate the amount

399
00:34:22,200 --> 00:34:26,440
of gas in the atmosphere, then
they can regulate the temperature.
We know it.

400
00:34:26,440 --> 00:34:28,240
We've only put... What is it?

401
00:34:28,240 --> 00:34:33,200
..6% more CO2 in the atmosphere
and we're all in trouble, already.

402
00:34:33,200 --> 00:34:38,680
It doesn't take much to change the
temperature by changing the gases.

403
00:34:40,160 --> 00:34:44,000
It was life that looked after
the atmosphere and the climate.

404
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:46,880
His eureka moment.

405
00:34:46,880 --> 00:34:53,000
He realised that earth had this
incredibly unusual atmosphere
because of the presence of life,

406
00:34:53,000 --> 00:34:55,360
and then he could make
an intuitive leap

407
00:34:55,360 --> 00:34:59,240
to the idea that that might mean
that life was somehow involved

408
00:34:59,240 --> 00:35:03,520
in self-regulating the state of
the atmosphere and the climate.

409
00:35:03,520 --> 00:35:07,760
It's those intuitive leaps that
must require an unusual mind.

410
00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:12,040
It wasn't until you started
asking questions about Mars

411
00:35:12,040 --> 00:35:18,160
and thinking about its atmosphere and
the effect of life on it, that you
suddenly start looking at the bits

412
00:35:18,160 --> 00:35:22,600
of the earth
like the atmosphere and the oceans
in a totally different light.

413
00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:29,000
His single greatest contribution

414
00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:33,360
to science has been to say

415
00:35:33,360 --> 00:35:39,360
you must look at the earth top-down
as a system, looked at from above,

416
00:35:39,360 --> 00:35:45,960
forgetting the disciplines
of geology, biology, meteorology.

417
00:35:45,960 --> 00:35:51,040
You can't take the top-down view if
you're tied into a single discipline.

418
00:35:51,040 --> 00:35:57,000
It's only if you've got it all in
your mind, in one go, that all the
bits and pieces come together.

419
00:35:58,160 --> 00:36:04,800
I was lucky enough to have had strong
hands-on experience in chemistry,

420
00:36:04,800 --> 00:36:11,120
in physics, making instruments,
in biology, working with animals,
with bacteria, with all sorts.

421
00:36:11,120 --> 00:36:15,200
Science was one open board to me.

422
00:36:15,200 --> 00:36:19,680
I didn't...I wasn't tied into a given
discipline, as most of them are.

423
00:36:19,680 --> 00:36:26,960
The first law of thermodynamics -
heat is work and work is heat.

424
00:36:26,960 --> 00:36:32,240
I've always been mischievous and I
think my school days made me that.

425
00:36:32,240 --> 00:36:37,640
The second law of thermodynamics...
I got frequently caned.

426
00:36:37,640 --> 00:36:42,320
Heat cannot of itself
pass from one body to a hotter.

427
00:36:42,320 --> 00:36:49,720
You see, I'm a fairly amenable
sort of non-rebellious person,
but circumstances drove me that way.

428
00:36:49,720 --> 00:36:53,160
# Heat won't pass
from a cooler to a hotter

429
00:36:53,160 --> 00:36:56,000
# You can try it if you like
but you'd far better notter

430
00:36:56,000 --> 00:36:59,240
# You can try it if you like
but you'd far better notter... #

431
00:36:59,240 --> 00:37:05,120
I was very happy to go to a
grammar school. At last I was being
taught science.

432
00:37:05,120 --> 00:37:10,920
Nothing could really dispel the
disappointment I felt when I found

433
00:37:10,920 --> 00:37:14,720
that the real science was almost
unbelievably dull that was taught.

434
00:37:14,720 --> 00:37:17,760
# ..And work is heat
And heat is work

435
00:37:17,760 --> 00:37:20,840
# Heat will pass by conduction... #

436
00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:26,680
And I went through a
dangerous period of almost
becoming turned away from it.

437
00:37:26,680 --> 00:37:29,320
# ..And that's a physical law

438
00:37:29,320 --> 00:37:31,640
# Heat is work
and work's a curse... #

439
00:37:31,640 --> 00:37:36,600
I remember on one occasion we were
given a general knowledge examination

440
00:37:36,600 --> 00:37:44,560
which was set for the top classes of
the school, which included the Sixth
Forms, and I was in the Fifth Form.

441
00:37:44,560 --> 00:37:49,040
And I was lucky enough
to win the first prize

442
00:37:49,040 --> 00:37:54,160
in this examination, which irritated
the establishment beyond belief.

443
00:37:54,160 --> 00:37:57,960
It was not what they had expected
would happen at all.

444
00:37:59,200 --> 00:38:02,440
I was harangued
in front of the school

445
00:38:02,440 --> 00:38:06,080
on the grounds that I was not
intelligent,

446
00:38:06,080 --> 00:38:10,560
I was a freak,
just a storehouse of knowledge

447
00:38:10,560 --> 00:38:17,280
who had accidentally managed
to answer all the questions
on the examination.

448
00:38:17,280 --> 00:38:19,240
I think...

449
00:38:19,240 --> 00:38:23,960
the demeaning...
and ill-treatment of that kind

450
00:38:23,960 --> 00:38:26,800
with many children would be fatal.

451
00:38:26,800 --> 00:38:29,960
It would drive them into depression,

452
00:38:29,960 --> 00:38:32,280
loss of all self-esteem.

453
00:38:32,280 --> 00:38:35,320
I often thought I had low
self-esteem, but it wasn't.

454
00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:38,680
It was really a feeling

455
00:38:38,680 --> 00:38:41,440
that I was at war with
the establishment, always.

456
00:38:41,440 --> 00:38:46,120
And it doesn't hurt to get
warned about them, to deal with them,

457
00:38:46,120 --> 00:38:51,920
at an early age and use it to fight
my battles in life from then on.

458
00:38:56,480 --> 00:39:02,760
Lovelock's radical idea about the
earth certainly went against the
scientific consensus of the day.

459
00:39:02,760 --> 00:39:05,640
It had emerged from
his work at NASA,

460
00:39:05,640 --> 00:39:11,280
but it wasn't until he was back
in the UK that it was given a name.

461
00:39:11,280 --> 00:39:13,520
It wasn't called Gaia then.

462
00:39:13,520 --> 00:39:18,000
It wasn't until about two years
later when my friend and neighbour,

463
00:39:18,000 --> 00:39:22,040
William Golding,
the celebrated author,

464
00:39:22,040 --> 00:39:26,160
suggested that if I was going to
have ideas, large ideas like that

465
00:39:26,160 --> 00:39:29,720
about the earth, I'd better have
a proper name, and he said,

466
00:39:29,720 --> 00:39:33,360
"And I suggest Gaia,
the Greek goddess."

467
00:39:35,680 --> 00:39:40,560
'We have a statue which is
supposed to represent Gaia here.'

468
00:39:40,560 --> 00:39:45,800
I don't go out and
pray before it in the morning before
I start work or anything like that.

469
00:39:52,640 --> 00:40:00,440
The first paper that named Gaia
was entitled "Gaia As Seen
Through The Atmosphere."

470
00:40:02,320 --> 00:40:07,360
One of the most
important things about Gaia is
its ability to self-regulate,

471
00:40:07,360 --> 00:40:10,680
to keep the temperature,
for example, constant,

472
00:40:10,680 --> 00:40:15,480
to keep the amount
of the various gases in the air
within certain ranges,

473
00:40:15,480 --> 00:40:19,720
so as always to keep
the planet habitable.

474
00:40:21,600 --> 00:40:28,480
It was life that regulated the planet
and looked after the atmosphere
and the climate.

475
00:40:29,520 --> 00:40:35,520
After I formulated Gaia, the evidence
for it began gradually to emerge.

476
00:40:35,520 --> 00:40:40,880
To give an example, the production
by organisms that live in the ocean

477
00:40:40,880 --> 00:40:43,720
of a strange gas
called dimethyl sulphide.

478
00:40:48,640 --> 00:40:54,880
What happens is, if the
ocean's surface water gets warm,
the algae grow better.

479
00:40:54,880 --> 00:40:57,520
It's like the growth
of all organisms.

480
00:40:57,520 --> 00:40:59,840
It's faster when it's warmer.

481
00:41:05,720 --> 00:41:11,640
And as they grow better, they produce
more of the gas dimethyl sulphide,

482
00:41:11,640 --> 00:41:19,120
which vents into the atmosphere
and ultimately causes a cloud layer
to form over the ocean surface.

483
00:41:25,360 --> 00:41:29,200
The clouds are white and they
reflect sunlight back to space,

484
00:41:29,200 --> 00:41:33,240
and so the more the algae grow,
the cooler the earth gets.

485
00:41:35,160 --> 00:41:37,960
Why should the algae want to do that?

486
00:41:37,960 --> 00:41:39,960
Well, the reason is,

487
00:41:39,960 --> 00:41:45,040
they have a need to keep the ocean
surface waters cool,

488
00:41:45,040 --> 00:41:48,160
because once the
ocean surface water rises

489
00:41:48,160 --> 00:41:52,400
above about 14 degrees Celsius,

490
00:41:52,400 --> 00:41:56,480
it stratifies,
and then the nutrients

491
00:41:56,480 --> 00:42:00,080
that are in the lower water
cannot enter that top layer,

492
00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:03,760
and so the algae living there
die of lack of food, quite simply.

493
00:42:03,760 --> 00:42:07,480
So they have a strong vested
interest in doing anything

494
00:42:07,480 --> 00:42:14,160
that will stop the top layer of water
from rising above 14 Celsius.

495
00:42:14,160 --> 00:42:19,800
So you've got a nice thermostated
mechanism there, and the whole
thing's beautifully stable.

496
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:28,960
So there was one of the great natural
cycles at last explained properly.

497
00:42:28,960 --> 00:42:31,040
And it was a small triumph of Gaia,

498
00:42:31,040 --> 00:42:35,240
which didn't really hit the fan to
any extent. Nobody was interested.

499
00:42:37,880 --> 00:42:42,640
So it left me with no option
but to write a book.

500
00:42:42,640 --> 00:42:46,600
"If Gaia does exist,
then we may find ourselves -

501
00:42:46,600 --> 00:42:51,040
"and all other living things -
to be parts and partners

502
00:42:51,040 --> 00:42:53,960
"of a vast being who, in her
entirety,

503
00:42:53,960 --> 00:43:00,560
"has the power
to maintain our planet as a fit
and comfortable habitat for life."

504
00:43:02,280 --> 00:43:04,320
There was a lot missing,

505
00:43:04,320 --> 00:43:10,960
but it was a skeleton of what...
of the body of theory
that was to develop.

506
00:43:10,960 --> 00:43:14,080
We believe in one God...

507
00:43:14,080 --> 00:43:21,600
CONGREGATION: ..the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is seen and unseen...

508
00:43:21,600 --> 00:43:29,000
I was astonished, quite astonished,
to receive letters and phone
calls from religious people.

509
00:43:29,000 --> 00:43:35,520
One that I remember particularly
was the Bishop of Birmingham,
Hugh Montefiore.

510
00:43:35,520 --> 00:43:39,120
It made me think of what theologians
call the Imminence of God.

511
00:43:39,120 --> 00:43:43,480
That is to say, the Holy Spirit
of God working within creation,

512
00:43:43,480 --> 00:43:47,360
and the way in which
the cybernetic controls are set up

513
00:43:47,360 --> 00:43:53,480
and make life optimal
for human beings to appear
in so many different ways,

514
00:43:53,480 --> 00:43:59,920
which he describes, that immediately
put me in mind of the Holy Spirit
working within creation.

515
00:44:02,960 --> 00:44:05,400
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again.

516
00:44:05,400 --> 00:44:10,760
I found it very easy to engage
with people who are religious

517
00:44:10,760 --> 00:44:17,600
if they want to think of
Gaia as an example of God's creation,
a living thing that God created.

518
00:44:17,600 --> 00:44:22,400
I'm not saying I think that, but it's
a way for them to think about it.

519
00:44:24,720 --> 00:44:27,560
# Sweet child in time... #

520
00:44:29,200 --> 00:44:33,520
I was even more astonished
with the interest that the New Age...

521
00:44:33,520 --> 00:44:37,720
which was a world I'd not even
encountered at all before that.

522
00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:45,120
We don't recognise that we are so
intimately connected with the earth

523
00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:50,360
and that she is so much a part of us
and we are so much a part of her,

524
00:44:50,360 --> 00:44:57,400
that if we don't communicate
with her and recognise
how we can't live without her,

525
00:44:57,400 --> 00:44:59,760
we'll destroy the earth.

526
00:44:59,760 --> 00:45:02,280
We'll destroy her
and we'll destroy ourselves.

527
00:45:06,160 --> 00:45:09,000
They took up Gaia,
not in a way that I liked at all.

528
00:45:19,160 --> 00:45:23,360
I much preferred the religious
approach to the New Age one.

529
00:45:25,680 --> 00:45:30,360
It was no help whatever
in my battle with the scientists.

530
00:45:30,360 --> 00:45:33,360
They say, you know, look,
it's nothing by New Age nonsense.

531
00:45:38,840 --> 00:45:41,600
The initial response to...

532
00:45:41,600 --> 00:45:46,400
the Gaia hypothesis,
as it then was 30 years ago,

533
00:45:46,400 --> 00:45:52,960
was extremely hostile, more than
negative, often dismissive,
scornful.

534
00:45:52,960 --> 00:45:58,960
And persisting in developing
this theory meant a degree

535
00:45:58,960 --> 00:46:04,240
of isolation from the existing
scientific communities

536
00:46:04,240 --> 00:46:08,920
that Jim was ready to accept.

537
00:46:11,200 --> 00:46:16,800
For the scientific establishment,
Gaia was a mystical vision

538
00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:20,760
of organisms acting cooperatively
to benefit Mother Earth.

539
00:46:20,760 --> 00:46:26,840
Fanciful nonsense,
which, it was claimed, flew
in the face of evolutionary theory.

540
00:46:28,640 --> 00:46:32,920
The first serious criticism
from the scientific community

541
00:46:32,920 --> 00:46:38,600
was an article
by the biologist, W Ford Doolittle,

542
00:46:38,600 --> 00:46:41,640
entitled "Is Nature Really Motherly?"

543
00:46:41,640 --> 00:46:46,720
in which he took Gaia to the
cleaners, or rather the theory.

544
00:46:46,720 --> 00:46:53,160
Doolittle said, "Well, you'd have
to imagine a committee of
all the organisms on the planet

545
00:46:53,160 --> 00:46:56,120
"getting together every year
and deciding what the level

546
00:46:56,120 --> 00:46:59,680
"of oxygen would be
in the atmosphere that year,

547
00:46:59,680 --> 00:47:02,760
"you know, and obviously
that's not going to work."

548
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:07,800
And they employed really talented
writers like Richard Dawkins

549
00:47:07,800 --> 00:47:11,400
and I think, at the time,

550
00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:18,400
Dawkins hated Gaia
as much as he hates God,
if you like to make a comparison.

551
00:47:18,400 --> 00:47:21,200
The danger...it's not exactly
distressing or disturbing,

552
00:47:21,200 --> 00:47:23,320
except to an academic biologist
who values the truth,

553
00:47:23,320 --> 00:47:25,040
the danger is

554
00:47:25,040 --> 00:47:31,880
that they will say things like...
the function of oxygen
is to...do so and so.

555
00:47:31,880 --> 00:47:35,040
The function of ammonia is...
The function of methane is...

556
00:47:35,040 --> 00:47:38,240
Because it implies
that individual organisms

557
00:47:38,240 --> 00:47:42,760
that are manufacturing that gas are
doing it for the good of the
biosphere.

558
00:47:42,760 --> 00:47:48,040
The main thing that Richard Dawkins
said was there was no way

559
00:47:48,040 --> 00:47:52,040
for living organisms to regulate
anything beyond their bodies -

560
00:47:52,040 --> 00:47:55,800
what he called their phenotypes -

561
00:47:55,800 --> 00:48:00,920
that regulating the...
the idea of organisms regulating
the planet was quite absurd.

562
00:48:03,280 --> 00:48:05,480
The really key objection

563
00:48:05,480 --> 00:48:11,440
was how could Gaia evolve
to be self-regulating?

564
00:48:11,440 --> 00:48:15,240
You would need that the organisms on
the earth had foresight in some way.

565
00:48:15,240 --> 00:48:18,800
What they saw as altruism
on a global scale...

566
00:48:18,800 --> 00:48:24,800
they could be altruistic
towards themselves or their kin,
but that was the limit.

567
00:48:27,440 --> 00:48:31,400
Looking after the whole planet and
everything on it was just ridiculous,

568
00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:34,800
and this is what stuck in the
throats of most scientists.

569
00:48:34,800 --> 00:48:41,040
They felt that there was no way for
Gaia to evolve by natural selection.

570
00:48:46,760 --> 00:48:50,000
It frightened
all the other scientists off.

571
00:48:50,000 --> 00:48:53,560
Almost everybody else
became then anti-Gaian.

572
00:48:56,880 --> 00:48:58,320
It became impossible

573
00:48:58,320 --> 00:49:00,200
to publish a paper

574
00:49:00,200 --> 00:49:05,040
on the subject of Gaia
in any scientific journal.

575
00:49:08,520 --> 00:49:13,720
It was a quite wicked censorship
of an idea.

576
00:49:15,200 --> 00:49:20,680
This was all the more frustrating,
because, as far as I was concerned,

577
00:49:20,680 --> 00:49:23,840
Gaia isn't against natural selection.

578
00:49:23,840 --> 00:49:29,360
'In fact, natural selection
is a critical part of Gaia.'

579
00:49:31,480 --> 00:49:36,920
I spent a miserable year
trying to find an answer
to Richard Dawkins' criticisms.

580
00:49:38,080 --> 00:49:40,480
In an attempt to silence his
critics,

581
00:49:40,480 --> 00:49:42,960
Lovelock set about building
a computer model

582
00:49:42,960 --> 00:49:45,840
of a planet
he called Daisyworld.

583
00:49:48,840 --> 00:49:53,560
A model he hoped would prove
Gaia's validity once and for all.

584
00:49:55,080 --> 00:50:01,840
It was a model of a simple
planet that's orbiting
a star like the sun,

585
00:50:01,840 --> 00:50:07,640
and this particular star, like our
own sun, warms up as it grows older.

586
00:50:07,640 --> 00:50:14,680
And the only life there is
on Daisyworld are daisies,
one dark and one light.

587
00:50:16,480 --> 00:50:23,440
You won't get any germination until
the surface somewhere has warmed up
to about 4 degrees Celsius.

588
00:50:23,440 --> 00:50:26,080
Then the first daisy seeds
will germinate.

589
00:50:30,920 --> 00:50:33,680
The planet was quite cold,

590
00:50:33,680 --> 00:50:38,240
and what would happen at first was
dark daisies would be favoured.

591
00:50:40,720 --> 00:50:43,920
They'd been selected,
naturally selected.

592
00:50:45,520 --> 00:50:50,480
Being dark, they'd absorb more heat
than the surface, so they'd warm up

593
00:50:50,480 --> 00:50:56,160
first themselves and then their
locality, so they'll start spreading.

594
00:50:56,160 --> 00:51:00,560
Quite rapidly,
dark daisies grow and then spread
and spread and spread,

595
00:51:00,560 --> 00:51:05,080
and the temperature
zooms up and so do they,
in a strong positive feedback,

596
00:51:05,080 --> 00:51:06,920
until you reach a point

597
00:51:06,920 --> 00:51:13,200
where the planetary
temperature is high enough
for white daisies to grow.

598
00:51:17,680 --> 00:51:22,920
And then they start competing
with the black daisies for space.

599
00:51:22,920 --> 00:51:30,680
And as the sun's heat gets warmer,
so gradually the proportion
of white increases.

600
00:51:30,680 --> 00:51:32,680
If it got too warm,
then the white daisies,

601
00:51:32,680 --> 00:51:35,320
which tend to reflect
radiation away,

602
00:51:35,320 --> 00:51:37,960
would cool the planet down,

603
00:51:37,960 --> 00:51:42,840
and the system would fall
into a regulatory pattern.

604
00:51:44,560 --> 00:51:50,000
And the competition kept
the temperature exactly
at the optimum for daisy growth.

605
00:51:50,000 --> 00:51:53,200
And the whole thing's
beautifully stable.

606
00:51:56,120 --> 00:52:03,760
Daisyworld showed that
evolution by natural selection
is absolutely vital for Gaia.

607
00:52:03,760 --> 00:52:07,040
And there's no foresight.
These things all happen by chance.

608
00:52:13,240 --> 00:52:18,800
It answered the criticism
that life can't regulate
the climate of the earth.

609
00:52:18,800 --> 00:52:21,240
Well, they were right. It can't.

610
00:52:21,240 --> 00:52:26,240
But when life is part of
a complete system of an atmosphere

611
00:52:26,240 --> 00:52:30,200
and a surface and so on,
then it can regulate.

612
00:52:30,200 --> 00:52:34,800
It's not the life that's regulating,
it's the whole system is
regulating itself.

613
00:52:40,040 --> 00:52:43,560
It applies to the organisms
and their environment,

614
00:52:43,560 --> 00:52:49,600
and for us on earth, this means
all life takes part in Gaia
together with the atmosphere,

615
00:52:49,600 --> 00:52:51,320
oceans and surface rocks.

616
00:52:54,800 --> 00:53:02,680
What we find is that the system
is locked in a sort of dance in
which everything changes together.

617
00:53:02,680 --> 00:53:06,920
It's as if everything seems to be
correlated with everything else.

618
00:53:06,920 --> 00:53:11,600
Just one example, you've
got the circulation of the ocean,

619
00:53:11,600 --> 00:53:17,080
you've got the amount of ice
on the surface as well,
all of these things are working,

620
00:53:17,080 --> 00:53:19,760
changing in concert.

621
00:53:19,760 --> 00:53:22,320
It's almost like a symphony.

622
00:53:25,840 --> 00:53:29,120
Daisyworld was enough
to allow scientists to start

623
00:53:29,120 --> 00:53:35,000
taking Lovelock's theory seriously,
and, as more and more interdependent
systems are discovered,

624
00:53:35,000 --> 00:53:38,920
the core ideas behind Gaia are
finally moving into the mainstream.

625
00:53:42,080 --> 00:53:48,760
We don't have a model that explains
everything, but these things are
all linked together and have been

626
00:53:48,760 --> 00:53:54,280
the chief stabilising mechanisms
that have kept the planet habitable
over literally billions of years.

627
00:53:56,560 --> 00:53:59,640
Lovelock's ideas are at the heart
of understanding

628
00:53:59,640 --> 00:54:03,560
how humanity is now changing
those stabilising mechanisms

629
00:54:03,560 --> 00:54:07,880
and they brought him to a
controversially bleak view
of our future.

630
00:54:07,880 --> 00:54:10,160
'From a Gaian point of view,

631
00:54:10,160 --> 00:54:14,640
'when we first started
interfering with the atmosphere,
nothing much happened.'

632
00:54:14,640 --> 00:54:19,840
It was encompassing it by its
ordinary regulating mechanism.

633
00:54:19,840 --> 00:54:23,400
But when it gets too much,
Gaia can't cope with it.

634
00:54:25,200 --> 00:54:29,720
'And this is why I'm afraid, I think.

635
00:54:29,720 --> 00:54:36,720
'It's going to play absolute
mayhem with our civilisation
in the next 10 or 100 years.'

636
00:54:36,720 --> 00:54:42,320
And when you see the whole picture,
it is really fearsomely bad.

637
00:54:43,480 --> 00:54:49,240
I mean, things like the very rapid
melting of the floating ice
near the North Pole.

638
00:54:49,240 --> 00:54:54,840
As the floating ice melts,
so less sunlight is reflected back

639
00:54:54,840 --> 00:54:59,880
to space by the dazzlingly white ice,
and more and more sunlight's
absorbed by the ocean.

640
00:54:59,880 --> 00:55:04,600
Just the melting of the floating ice
in the Arctic Ocean

641
00:55:04,600 --> 00:55:11,040
will add as much heat to the earth
as all of the CO2
we put in the atmosphere to date.

642
00:55:12,720 --> 00:55:19,000
And this is why
I'm afraid, I think, there's very
little we can do about it.

643
00:55:19,000 --> 00:55:22,320
All of our efforts to reduce
emissions are as nothing.

644
00:55:24,040 --> 00:55:26,320
'There's no morality about it.

645
00:55:26,320 --> 00:55:31,440
'If the earth improves as a result of
our presence, then we will flourish.

646
00:55:31,440 --> 00:55:33,600
'If it doesn't,

647
00:55:33,600 --> 00:55:35,920
'then we will die off.'

648
00:55:41,120 --> 00:55:44,160
I fear that
not many of us will survive...

649
00:55:44,160 --> 00:55:50,040
perhaps at best about a billion,
possibly a lot less than that.

650
00:55:50,040 --> 00:55:56,360
Now, how they will die,
it'll be by starvation, by war,
by disease, who knows?

651
00:55:56,360 --> 00:56:00,200
The four horsemen really ride
when conditions like that happen.

652
00:56:03,760 --> 00:56:11,640
I still think there's a lot
to play for, but we will see
the face of the world change.

653
00:56:11,640 --> 00:56:18,520
We're still in the midst of a kind
of scientific revolution about how
we...not only how we see or study

654
00:56:18,520 --> 00:56:24,360
the earth, but how we see
our relationship as humans
with the earth's system, or Gaia.

655
00:56:26,560 --> 00:56:28,640
The key lesson

656
00:56:28,640 --> 00:56:35,200
of Lovelock's life as a scientist
is that he doesn't think in terms

657
00:56:35,200 --> 00:56:39,880
of any pre-existing consensus,
but he's been able to radically
shift

658
00:56:39,880 --> 00:56:45,520
the prevailing scientific paradigm
to the point at which,

659
00:56:45,520 --> 00:56:48,880
from having been almost reviled,

660
00:56:48,880 --> 00:56:53,080
it's become part of the way
scientists generally now think.

661
00:56:56,120 --> 00:56:59,000
James Lovelock, it gives me
enormous pleasure to reward this
towering career

662
00:57:06,160 --> 00:57:09,280
For James Lovelock, now aged 90,
acceptance of his ideas
is also recognition

663
00:57:09,280 --> 00:57:14,200
of the importance of independent and
unconventional thinking in science.

664
00:57:14,200 --> 00:57:20,840
But whether future generations will
be able to continue this tradition
is, perhaps, uncertain.

665
00:57:20,840 --> 00:57:23,240
It isn't an easy subject, is it?

666
00:57:24,800 --> 00:57:30,480
And people say to me,
"Well, YOU can say that kind of
thing easily, because at your age,

667
00:57:30,480 --> 00:57:35,280
"it's not going to affect you
anyway, you'll be dead before
it all happens."

668
00:57:35,280 --> 00:57:39,520
And that's true, although I'm not
so sure that if I live to 100,

669
00:57:39,520 --> 00:57:42,800
I think a lot of things
may happen before then.

670
00:57:42,800 --> 00:57:46,000
But I do have great-grandchildren,

671
00:57:46,000 --> 00:57:51,920
and it's progeny...
is the name of the game here.

672
00:58:06,960 --> 00:58:08,880
RANDY NEWMAN: # Man means nothing

673
00:58:10,040 --> 00:58:12,240
# He means less to me

674
00:58:14,280 --> 00:58:17,320
# Than the lowliest cactus flower

675
00:58:17,320 --> 00:58:20,360
# Or the humblest yucca tree

676
00:58:22,960 --> 00:58:25,040
# He chases round this desert

677
00:58:25,040 --> 00:58:28,480
# Cos he thinks that's where I'll be

678
00:58:30,240 --> 00:58:33,160
# That's why I love mankind. #

679
00:58:33,160 --> 00:58:35,000
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680
00:58:35,000 --> 00:58:37,000
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