The Anti-Green Ecologist

March 2009

John and Mary Gribbin's He Knew He Was Right is advertised by the publisher Allen Lane as the "definitive, authorised biography" of Lovelock. It's not remotely definitive, but it's not as bad as the Trollopian title portends. The Gribbins recount many episodes large and small in Lovelock's life based on conversations with him and on his autobiography. They also provide much historical background on climate science and on the precursors of Gaia theory.

Their aim is to show Gaia as one of the great breakthroughs in the history of science and Lovelock as Gaia's prophet. This is bad enough, but they then shorten their book's shelf life by tying it all up to the global warming fad.

As an uncritical look at some episodes in Lovelock's scientific career and life, the book cannot compete with Lovelock's own autobiography, Homage to Gaia, because it lacks Lovelock's charm. But it does have one or two moments that reveal his remarkable character. In a chapter titled "What doesn't kill you makes you strong", the Gribbins recount Lovelock's coronary problems that almost killed him because he didn't want to have surgery in the United States in 1972 on the grounds that it would cost too much. After a decade of misdiagnoses and delay, during which he might have had a fatal heart attack at any time, the National Health Service finally operated in 1982. The bypass was "a complete success".

Unfortunately, a catheter had not been sterilised properly due to a labour dispute that was taken out on patients by working to rule. The result has been continual urinary tract infections, at least 40 operations, and "pain and misery that persists to the present day". The Gribbins cheerily report that Lovelock "holds no ill will towards the hospital or the National Health Service. If anything, his experiences over the next 25 years reinforced his belief in a free medical service available to all."

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Lorna Salzman

February 3rd, 2013
4:02 PM

Those under-schooled and under-informed about science, nature and the environment are hasty in embracing scientists like James Lovelock and Freeman Dyson (both physicists, by the way, not biologists, which explains a lot about their rose-colored glasses vision of the earth). The English love eccentrics of course and are quick to smell them out and take advantage of their speculations. I use this word intentionally because the speculations or hypotheses of individual scientists are no more reliable than those of conspiracy theorists. Not coincidentally, Lovelock's fault understanding of evolution shows itself unashamedly with regard to his cockeyed Gaian theory. Many of the earth's systems do self-regulate but the reason is because evolution and natural selection put a premium on behavioral adaptation by individuals in all species. The main difference is that evolution ONLY acts on organisms in the context of EXISTING conditions; it cannot predict the future and what new conditions might arise. Therefore, the notion that the earth regulates itself is meaningless. Nor does natural selection apply to the earth as a whole but only to individuals within populations and species, whose ability to adapt to PRESENT conditions gives them a reproductive edge and allows them to perpetuate themselves; of course their progeny may be forced to adapt to completely different conditions. Lovelock is a good source of what is little more than "pop science". He is a good self-promoter. But he is a poor biologist and ecologist, and has nothing more substantial to offer us than our local gossip columnist.

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