Hi Chris, and thanks for your thought-provoking posts.

As I'm sure you know, the Gaia hypothesis was mostly a pop phenomenon, and not a genuine scientific hypothesis. Although, as a hypothesis, it did explain some observations rather well. But, even if it had been a real scientific description of reality, it would not have been able to accomodate the extreme inputs from modern anthropic activities. Sort of like Newtonian mechanics explains and predicts the path of a comet extremely well, but if we go up there and affix an ion engine to said comet, it's gonna change its orbit.

I know that doesn't perfectly address your comment that Gaia self-regulation seems to have made a 180-degree "flip" in the opposite direction. Maybe the hypothesis was a bad one to begin with.

I find, as do you, that the situation is grim, with little prospect of significantly altering the outcome. I differ with some in that I believe that the remaining oil reserves are going to all be burned up to the last drop, without any chance of changing that, and it makes little difference whether we've accomplished that to the 90% level within the next 50 years, or within the next 150. My beef with profligate oil consumption is that we, the U.S., engage in completely immoral, vicious wars in attempting to satisfy our insatiable thirst.

A massive, and necessarily draconian program of global population control, led by the U.S. and other relatively wealthy, and, hence, mostly Western nations, would stand the best chance of mitigating the coming catastrophes, but there isn't a snowball's chance in hell of that happening, especially if the U.S. has to be a major player . . .

MW
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