In Unweaving the Rainbow, Richard Dawkins tells a story about the ultimate example of 'bad poetic science', based on James Lovejock popular idea of 'Gaia', the Earth as an organism:
The most extreme example I know of this kind of bad poetic science comes from a famous and senior 'ecologist' (the quotation marks denote an activist for green politics, rather than a genuine scholar of the academic subject of ecology). It was reported to me by Professor John Maynard Smith, who was attending a conference sponsored by the Open University in Britain. The conversation turned to mass extinction of the dinosaurs and whether this catastrophe was caused cometary collision. The bearded ecologist was in do doubt. 'Of course not,' he said decisively, 'Gaia would not have permitted it!'
Dawkins argues that the 'Gaia hypothesis', if it can be called even that, caused many embarrassing moments for its creator James Lovejock. Nevertheless, he points out that either it is true at some quite metaphoric and trivial level, with lots of exceptions and caveats, or it is just plain wrong. Organisms have no foresight or planning, they are opportunistically exploiting environmental niches, including those created by other organisms. In this sense, and this sense only, organisms can be said to form some higher level of organisation along with the environment itself, and if you want to name that after a Greek goddess of the Earth, and don't mind that it will make new agers go crazy and run with it, be my guest.
But James Lovejock has gone much further than that with his descriptions of Gaia. Indeed, he has just come full circle and walked over an intellectual cliff, proclaiming that Gaia is no longer the loving earth goddess who nurtures and protects us all. No, Gaia is an angry goddess, and is going to kill us all, and this divine PMS will last for a 100,000 years. James Lovejock is her prophet, and he has written his holy screed in the Independent, the in-house publication for Britain's eco-nuts, in a style that would make the prophet Jeremiah proud.
The climate centres around the world, which are the equivalent of the pathology lab of a hospital, have reported the Earth's physical condition, and the climate specialists see it as seriously ill, and soon to pass into a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years. I have to tell you, as members of the Earth's family and an intimate part of it, that you and especially civilisation are in grave danger.
Our planet has kept itself healthy and fit for life, just like an animal does, for most of the more than three billion years of its existence. It was ill luck that we started polluting at a time when the sun is too hot for comfort. We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics. [...]
We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.
Yes, we will all die, die, die - except a few scared survivors on an ark (sorry, wrong testament) hiding in the Arctic.
Luckily, I will not have to travel that far, then.
James Lovejock is amusingly introduced by the Indy's Environment Editor Michael McCarthy with these words:
Thirty years ago, the scientist James Lovelock worked out that the Earth possessed a planetary-scale control system which kept the environment fit for life. He called it Gaia, and the theory has become widely accepted.
Among bearded 'ecologists' in sandals, undoubtedly. Among scientists and the clinically sane, not very!
Lovejock has gone into a long tradition of doomsayers, ranging from countless religious prophets to preachers with a quasi-scientific style of argumentation. One thing they all have in common: they have all been wrong.
6:34:06 PM 
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