WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.600 Here we are on a brisk Sunday morning in the city of churches in the appropriately ecclesiastic 2 00:00:06.600 --> 00:00:18.060 for Nathan Hall to hear a prophet for the 21st century. James Ephraim Lovelock was born in 1919, 3 00:00:19.440 --> 00:00:25.060 the son of Tom and Nellie. What I'd like to do, at least for a few minutes, 4 00:00:25.120 --> 00:00:29.740 is to go through your early life a bit, James, to see where you came from. 5 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:37.200 I understand that your father used to take you for long walks and teach you to observe clearly. 6 00:00:38.280 --> 00:00:45.560 That's right. He was a countryman. He was born in 1872, which is a heck of a long time ago, 7 00:00:46.620 --> 00:00:53.900 in Berkshire, the county in southern England. They had a terribly rough life because his father 8 00:00:53.900 --> 00:00:59.860 died when they were young, and there were no welfare systems in those days, and his mother 9 00:00:59.860 --> 00:00:59.980 had to go through a lot of things. He was a very good man. He was a very good man. He was a very 10 00:00:59.980 --> 00:01:00.100 good father. He was a good father. He was a good father. He was a good father. 11 00:01:00.100 --> 00:01:06.240 He had 13 children to bring up. He was the oldest of them, so he had to take on kind of 12 00:01:07.980 --> 00:01:13.720 responsibility, and that meant finding food to keep them all going, and he was a bit too good 13 00:01:13.720 --> 00:01:20.380 at it because he got caught by a local gamekeeper poaching, and spent six months in Reading jail 14 00:01:20.380 --> 00:01:27.780 doing hard labour when he was small. He also had no education at all, so that he couldn't read 15 00:01:27.780 --> 00:01:28.620 or write. 16 00:01:29.100 --> 00:01:29.960 And it was a very good thing for him. 17 00:01:29.960 --> 00:01:35.320 And in spite of that, he ran away to London after getting out of prison 18 00:01:35.320 --> 00:01:40.040 and got a job in the high-tech industry of those days, which was the gasworks. 19 00:01:41.380 --> 00:01:48.880 And it so happened that the chap who owned it, a chemist called Dr. Roger Livesey, 20 00:01:48.980 --> 00:01:51.740 saw that my dad was a bit above average 21 00:01:51.740 --> 00:01:56.860 and sent him immediately to Battersea Polytechnic to learn reading and writing. 22 00:01:56.860 --> 00:02:03.980 And so he was all right, but he had this wonderful countryman's knowledge of ecology. 23 00:02:05.020 --> 00:02:08.980 He knew the tracks of all the animals, the names of all the wildflowers, 24 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:12.920 and it was a complete joy to go for walks with him in the country. 25 00:02:13.120 --> 00:02:16.700 And I think my feeling about the natural world grew up from that. 26 00:02:17.200 --> 00:02:21.200 I understand that you and your wife have similar walks to this day. 27 00:02:21.540 --> 00:02:22.560 We do indeed. 28 00:02:22.940 --> 00:02:26.160 Most days when we're home, we walk five miles, 29 00:02:26.860 --> 00:02:29.820 and climb about 400 or 500 feet doing it, 30 00:02:29.860 --> 00:02:32.540 and do it at about three and a half miles an hour. 31 00:02:33.600 --> 00:02:38.760 James, you and I both remember childhoods where horsepower meant horses. 32 00:02:40.540 --> 00:02:47.740 Indeed. Worse than that, there was an occasion when I ran a milk round from a local farm. 33 00:02:49.340 --> 00:02:52.700 The first time I did it, I asked the farmer, 34 00:02:52.740 --> 00:02:54.060 how will I know where to go? 35 00:02:54.300 --> 00:02:56.580 He said, oh, you don't have to worry, the horse knows. 36 00:02:56.860 --> 00:03:00.320 And sure enough, it did. 37 00:03:00.420 --> 00:03:06.600 It stopped at every house, and I just ladled the amount of milk up to the churn for the customers. 38 00:03:06.860 --> 00:03:10.340 And when the round was finished, the horse just went off back, back. 39 00:03:10.660 --> 00:03:16.840 So, in a sense, one of my first jobs was to be an assistant to a horse. 40 00:03:20.500 --> 00:03:24.660 We're also talking about a time, of course, which was pre-electric. 41 00:03:24.980 --> 00:03:25.560 Mm-hmm. 42 00:03:25.740 --> 00:03:26.600 It was. 43 00:03:26.860 --> 00:03:27.160 Indeed. 44 00:03:27.340 --> 00:03:30.280 Not only pre-electric, there was no radio. 45 00:03:31.620 --> 00:03:33.800 Television hadn't even been thought of. 46 00:03:34.200 --> 00:03:40.120 And most houses were lit either with oil lamps or, if you were fairly rich, with gas. 47 00:03:40.460 --> 00:03:42.180 And that was it. 48 00:03:42.340 --> 00:03:45.880 But you never felt deprived as a result of that. 49 00:03:46.880 --> 00:03:49.020 Everything changes and nothing changes. 50 00:03:49.020 --> 00:03:54.680 We live at a time of crashing conflict between religious fundamentalisms. 51 00:03:54.700 --> 00:03:56.240 But you recall a childhood. 52 00:03:57.180 --> 00:03:59.360 Where superstition was incredibly powerful. 53 00:03:59.720 --> 00:04:00.420 Oh, it was. 54 00:04:00.540 --> 00:04:03.020 It was amazing, especially in the countryside. 55 00:04:03.500 --> 00:04:10.560 People really believed in ghosts, and they wouldn't go out to certain places at night and things like that. 56 00:04:11.720 --> 00:04:21.000 And everybody, when they walked around, when, for example, if they spilt some salt at lunch, they would always throw it over their shoulder. 57 00:04:21.140 --> 00:04:21.980 Heaven knows why. 58 00:04:22.240 --> 00:04:23.860 You mustn't cross your knives. 59 00:04:23.960 --> 00:04:26.180 There are an amazing number of superstitions. 60 00:04:26.180 --> 00:04:39.040 And I remember when I first became a scientist, it required a terrific act of will to sort of say, but this is ridiculous. 61 00:04:39.300 --> 00:04:40.640 You've got to stop doing this. 62 00:04:40.760 --> 00:04:42.540 And no more touching wood or anything. 63 00:04:42.940 --> 00:04:47.180 We're talking in a building haunted by the ghost of Kimber Nathan, so. 64 00:04:48.240 --> 00:04:48.920 Well, I. 65 00:04:49.000 --> 00:04:54.860 The, it's odd to me that, well, we're describing an extraordinary lifetime, aren't we, from 66 00:04:54.860 --> 00:04:56.160 a world of, you know, the ghost of Kimber Nathan. 67 00:05:05.120 --> 00:05:26.160 Well, it, 68 00:05:26.160 --> 00:05:34.080 have no hardly a breath of truth in them. People believe things about nuclear waste 69 00:05:34.080 --> 00:05:40.040 and what not which is so untrue, it's almost unbelievable. I will give you an idea of the 70 00:05:40.040 --> 00:05:48.280 extent of exaggeration. We were given a pamphlet outside one of the halls we talked at the 71 00:05:48.280 --> 00:05:54.580 town hall the other night and it showed a map of Australia on the front page and a huge 72 00:05:54.580 --> 00:06:01.360 cooling tower which was about 500 miles in diameter stuck in the middle of it and so 73 00:06:01.360 --> 00:06:06.840 high it stuck right up out into space and some noxious something coming out of the top 74 00:06:06.840 --> 00:06:14.200 of it. Well of course no cooling tower is that big but it's a measure of the exaggeration 75 00:06:14.200 --> 00:06:19.300 and of course cooling towers as any engineer would tell you are things you have at all 76 00:06:19.300 --> 00:06:24.560 power stations to improve the efficiency of the turbines. There's not there's not 77 00:06:24.560 --> 00:06:31.020 nothing to do with the radioactivity of the whatever nuclear plant there is that's producing 78 00:06:31.020 --> 00:06:39.220 the steam. Sir MacFarlane Burnett who was an Australian Nobel laureate used to warn 79 00:06:39.220 --> 00:06:46.360 me and others against nuclear power on the basis his first argument against it and this 80 00:06:46.360 --> 00:06:52.880 is going back to the late 60s or early 70s was terrorist attack. He envisaged quite 81 00:06:54.640 --> 00:07:00.740 often the possibility of airlines being hijacked and flown into nuclear power stations. What 82 00:07:00.740 --> 00:07:06.580 would happen if that happened? There was an attempt as you know in the US in the 70s. 83 00:07:06.800 --> 00:07:13.860 Well this has been calculated quite often the thickness of the concrete shield around 84 00:07:13.860 --> 00:07:19.560 most nuclear power stations except some of the ones in Russia which are not really it's 85 00:07:19.560 --> 00:07:24.540 not quite the same as the Western world. They are so thick that the plane would just be 86 00:07:24.560 --> 00:07:29.980 disintegrated on hitting and everybody in it would be killed but that would be the only 87 00:07:29.980 --> 00:07:36.980 damage done. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island. Well Three Mile Island was a joke. Not a soul 88 00:07:36.980 --> 00:07:43.460 was even slightly hurt. There was some expensive damage to be sure but the containment vessel 89 00:07:43.460 --> 00:07:51.500 this concrete shield held it all back. That's what they're there for. Your independence 90 00:07:51.500 --> 00:07:54.540 of mind of course means that you and I think the 91 00:07:54.560 --> 00:08:01.840 age gives you a great freedom in saying things. You're not at all concerned about making 92 00:08:01.840 --> 00:08:07.360 people cross are you? Oh I am. I don't want to make you cross to start with. 93 00:08:08.580 --> 00:08:15.940 You couldn't James. Incidentally I briefly worked with Sir 94 00:08:15.940 --> 00:08:24.440 Macfarlane Burnett in the 1940s when I was working in virology at a strange hospital. 95 00:08:24.540 --> 00:08:27.520 It was a hospital called Harvard Hospital in southern England. 96 00:08:28.640 --> 00:08:36.180 He was a dear man. Let's go back to your origins because I find them fascinating. When 97 00:08:36.180 --> 00:08:42.580 did you have your epiphany that made you realise you wanted to be a scientist? 98 00:08:44.000 --> 00:08:52.060 Oh when I was about four years old. My beloved father who I've already described had the 99 00:08:52.060 --> 00:08:54.160 wisdom to give me from Christmas. 100 00:08:54.160 --> 00:09:01.140 I remember I had a box on my fourth Christmas full of bits of wire and batteries and bells 101 00:09:01.140 --> 00:09:05.860 and other electrical little bits and ends. He said there you are, play with that, that 102 00:09:05.860 --> 00:09:10.400 will give you some fun. And it did. I thought it was by far the best present I'd had. 103 00:09:11.380 --> 00:09:14.200 I hate to think what would have happened if she'd given you dolls. 104 00:09:15.720 --> 00:09:24.140 Or an atomic kit. But no, I got puzzled because I couldn't see why I was doing this. I was 105 00:09:24.160 --> 00:09:28.620 thinking why you needed two wires to send electricity along whereas you could send water 106 00:09:28.620 --> 00:09:34.260 or gas along just one pipe. And I kept asking people and nobody could give me a satisfactory 107 00:09:34.260 --> 00:09:40.960 answer and it dawned on me I'd have to find out for myself. And that's a fair way of starting 108 00:09:40.960 --> 00:09:42.440 as a scientist I reckon. 109 00:09:42.820 --> 00:09:49.680 But your family couldn't afford to give you a tertiary education. How did you, what happens 110 00:09:49.680 --> 00:09:50.080 next? 111 00:09:50.580 --> 00:09:54.140 Well that was great good fortune, you see. Had I been, I'd have been in the hospital 112 00:09:54.160 --> 00:09:59.620 in the son of a rich family, I'd have gone to university like everybody else would have 113 00:09:59.620 --> 00:10:06.820 done in the circumstances. As it was I got a job with a firm, as a laboratory assistant 114 00:10:06.820 --> 00:10:12.900 with a firm of consultants in London. And that was the most wonderful apprenticeship 115 00:10:12.900 --> 00:10:18.880 for a scientist. They were a strange bunch. They would tackle any problem as long as it 116 00:10:18.880 --> 00:10:24.140 had to do with the photographic industry. All the way from gelatin manufacturing to 117 00:10:24.140 --> 00:10:31.660 the synthesis of colour dyes that went into photographs. And for a youngster just leaving 118 00:10:31.660 --> 00:10:37.200 school to be thrown in at the deep end and given problems, there you are solve it, was 119 00:10:37.200 --> 00:10:44.140 just wonderful. And, but they were also had terrific discipline. I was constantly told 120 00:10:44.140 --> 00:10:50.280 when you do measurements and get results they must be accurate. People, people's jobs depend 121 00:10:50.280 --> 00:10:53.480 on the right answers. Their lives even may depend on them. 122 00:10:53.480 --> 00:10:59.320 So never fudge anything. Now this is the opposite of a student who is told by the 123 00:10:59.320 --> 00:11:04.100 professor or the invigilator, don't worry too much about getting the right answer as 124 00:11:04.100 --> 00:11:09.260 long as you understand the method. And I think that is the wrong way of training scientists. 125 00:11:09.600 --> 00:11:14.700 It got you into trouble in them though, didn't it? When you were at Manchester, your accuracy 126 00:11:14.700 --> 00:11:17.540 of measurement, had you accused of cheating? 127 00:11:18.020 --> 00:11:23.460 Yeah. Well, yes. I got lucky in a sense because worldwide, I was told that I was going to 128 00:11:23.480 --> 00:11:40.400 take it. And it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it 129 00:11:40.400 --> 00:11:41.660 was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it 130 00:11:41.660 --> 00:11:42.380 was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it 131 00:11:42.380 --> 00:11:45.200 was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it 132 00:11:45.200 --> 00:11:45.560 was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it 133 00:11:45.560 --> 00:11:52.340 was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it 134 00:11:52.340 --> 00:11:58.160 society, so he was no slouch. But a month after I'd gone in, I was called to see him 135 00:11:58.160 --> 00:12:03.120 and he said, Lovelock, why the hell have you been cheating? We've let you in under, you 136 00:12:03.120 --> 00:12:08.360 know, easy conditions and there you go and spoil your chances by cheating. I said, what 137 00:12:08.360 --> 00:12:15.620 do you mean cheating? He said, students do not get the right answer to analytical. He 138 00:12:15.620 --> 00:12:21.180 said, you must have looked up the answer in the book in the laboratory. And it took me 139 00:12:21.180 --> 00:12:27.060 at least ten minutes to explain to him that the problem that I'd solved was something 140 00:12:27.060 --> 00:12:31.900 I could almost do in my sleep. And we both kind of felt, well, there's something a bit 141 00:12:31.900 --> 00:12:33.080 odd about teaching. 142 00:12:34.020 --> 00:12:39.640 James, you were exempt from military service, of course, as a student, but you decided to 143 00:12:39.640 --> 00:12:44.760 register as a conchie, as a conscientious objector. Take us through your thought processes 144 00:12:44.760 --> 00:12:45.100 there. 145 00:12:45.320 --> 00:12:50.980 Well, my mother was a Quaker and I'd been brought up in that face, more or less, right 146 00:12:50.980 --> 00:12:51.160 to the point. 147 00:12:51.180 --> 00:12:57.660 I was brought up from a youngster and if you were a Quaker, it was almost a matter of duty 148 00:12:57.660 --> 00:13:04.240 and honor to become a conscientious objector. So I didn't have much option and I became 149 00:13:04.240 --> 00:13:12.860 one. But it wasn't long after the war was going that I realized it was a ridiculous 150 00:13:12.860 --> 00:13:19.040 stand and I couldn't maintain it. I mean, lives were being lost by merchant seamen bringing 151 00:13:19.040 --> 00:13:20.300 in the food I ate. 152 00:13:20.340 --> 00:13:21.160 I was being forced to do things that I didn't want to do. I was being forced to do things 153 00:13:21.160 --> 00:13:25.340 that I didn't want to do. I was being defended by brave young men in fighter aircraft. That 154 00:13:25.340 --> 00:13:31.400 whole thing was absurd. So I resigned. But you have to understand that if you've been 155 00:13:31.400 --> 00:13:37.320 brought up with a certain kind of thing you've got to do, it's the right and honorable thing, 156 00:13:37.420 --> 00:13:39.800 you tend to do it without thinking too hard. 157 00:13:40.160 --> 00:13:47.780 Given your Quaker background and also the comparative poverty of your background, you 158 00:13:47.780 --> 00:13:49.440 were a socialist when young. 159 00:13:49.660 --> 00:13:50.080 Mm-hmm. 160 00:13:50.080 --> 00:13:56.400 But you went through a political transformation during the Thatcher years. You became a political 161 00:13:56.400 --> 00:13:57.600 and social conservative. 162 00:13:59.020 --> 00:14:07.100 To an extent, yes. Although I certainly didn't support, I would not vote conservative and 163 00:14:07.100 --> 00:14:13.320 I disagree with an awful lot. But I had an immense admiration for Margaret Thatcher. 164 00:14:13.460 --> 00:14:19.600 She was a scientist, don't forget, one of the only prime ministers we've ever had that 165 00:14:19.600 --> 00:14:20.060 was a congressman. 166 00:14:20.060 --> 00:14:28.100 She was a competent scientist. And this, of course, endeared her to me. She also was a 167 00:14:28.100 --> 00:14:34.480 great fan of Gaia. She tried to get her cabinet to read my first book. I don't think she succeeded. 168 00:14:36.120 --> 00:14:42.760 And a great supporter, too. So it was a kind of ambivalent thing. I violently disagreed 169 00:14:42.760 --> 00:14:48.140 with her views on the health service, for example. But I never got a chance to discuss 170 00:14:48.140 --> 00:14:48.860 it with her. 171 00:14:48.960 --> 00:14:49.480 Mm-hmm. 172 00:14:49.480 --> 00:14:49.940 Mm-hmm. 173 00:14:49.940 --> 00:14:50.040 Mm-hmm. 174 00:14:50.060 --> 00:14:53.460 And so the conversation invariably was about the environment. 175 00:14:54.060 --> 00:14:59.240 I've got bad news for you. You're in a country where our prime minister is not a scientist 176 00:15:00.240 --> 00:15:07.080 and is not a fan of Gaia and is pretty much a steadfast denier on climate change, but 177 00:15:07.080 --> 00:15:08.040 we won't get political. 178 00:15:10.760 --> 00:15:19.940 In 1957, your gift for being absolutely accurate in measurement blossoms in an 179 00:15:19.940 --> 00:15:20.040 international context. 180 00:15:20.040 --> 00:15:20.360 I think there is no question about that. 181 00:15:20.360 --> 00:15:26.520 But there is an invention called the electron capture detector, the ECD. This has been 182 00:15:26.520 --> 00:15:29.340 an incredibly important tool, hasn't it, for all of us? 183 00:15:30.280 --> 00:15:36.400 I guess so. Yes. Some say it was the thing that did more than anything to start the green 184 00:15:36.400 --> 00:15:41.360 movement. I'm not really – it's not for me to make a judgment on that. I think that's 185 00:15:41.360 --> 00:15:47.100 the history. But it certainly – I've seen it associated with it. It certainly did a 186 00:15:47.100 --> 00:15:48.680 lot to first – 187 00:15:49.500 --> 00:15:53.160 gives support to Rachel Carson's great work. 188 00:15:53.420 --> 00:15:55.440 She, of course, if you remember rightly, 189 00:15:55.620 --> 00:15:57.200 wrote a book, Silent Spring, 190 00:15:58.160 --> 00:16:01.980 that stated that the unwise, widespread use 191 00:16:01.980 --> 00:16:04.440 of agricultural chemicals, 192 00:16:04.720 --> 00:16:07.480 particularly DDT and dildrin and whatnot, 193 00:16:07.760 --> 00:16:09.040 were killing off birds. 194 00:16:09.280 --> 00:16:11.980 And the name of her book, Silent Spring, 195 00:16:12.080 --> 00:16:14.020 of course, envisaged a spring 196 00:16:14.020 --> 00:16:15.820 where there was no more birdsong 197 00:16:15.820 --> 00:16:19.220 because they were all dead from pesticide poisoning. 198 00:16:19.560 --> 00:16:21.120 She was right, of course. 199 00:16:21.400 --> 00:16:24.080 Nowadays, the spring is more or less silent 200 00:16:24.080 --> 00:16:26.880 in much of Europe, perhaps in Australia too, 201 00:16:26.960 --> 00:16:29.040 I don't know, but certainly in Europe, 202 00:16:29.160 --> 00:16:31.580 but not just from pesticide poisoning. 203 00:16:31.900 --> 00:16:34.900 I'm afraid farmers regard all forms of wildlife 204 00:16:34.900 --> 00:16:38.920 other than their livestock, pets, and family, 205 00:16:39.280 --> 00:16:40.180 in that order, 206 00:16:42.020 --> 00:16:44.320 as malign and to be destroyed. 207 00:16:44.660 --> 00:16:45.620 And they'll do it. 208 00:16:45.620 --> 00:16:45.800 By all means. 209 00:16:45.800 --> 00:16:50.020 any means if you stop them using pesticides they'll do it by any means 210 00:16:50.020 --> 00:16:56.740 they can. As a lifelong admirer of Carson I'm fascinated to observe there's a huge 211 00:16:56.740 --> 00:17:03.400 renewed attack on her and her work the argument being that whilst DDT was bad 212 00:17:03.400 --> 00:17:09.800 for birds it was rather good in preventing malaria. Oh that's so unfair 213 00:17:09.800 --> 00:17:16.340 Rachel Carson concentrated on birds but as soon as city people read her book 214 00:17:16.340 --> 00:17:22.060 they suddenly forgot the birds and sorted themselves and then some idiot 215 00:17:22.060 --> 00:17:28.240 academics suggested that DDT was a carcinogen. I believe it is a slight 216 00:17:28.240 --> 00:17:32.920 carcinogen to rats or something like that but I know of no case of human 217 00:17:32.920 --> 00:17:37.980 cancer coming from its use but what they did was to ban it heedlessly because 218 00:17:37.980 --> 00:17:39.280 they were frightened of it. 219 00:17:39.360 --> 00:17:39.780 It's a very bad thing. 220 00:17:39.780 --> 00:17:45.500 It's rather similar to the anti-nuclear story. Things get banned out of fear, out of 221 00:17:45.500 --> 00:17:51.760 superstition, not out of good sense. Actually it is the most wonderful 222 00:17:52.520 --> 00:17:58.880 insecticide to use in places like Africa to destroy malarial mosquitoes and it 223 00:17:58.880 --> 00:18:03.460 doesn't need to be used at levels that affect the rest of wildlife and isn't. 224 00:18:03.660 --> 00:18:09.440 It's so bad that the ban on DDT is responsible for something like 2 million 225 00:18:09.440 --> 00:18:09.760 deaths a year. 226 00:18:09.780 --> 00:18:16.040 For malaria to say nothing of 200 millions whose lives are blighted by the 227 00:18:16.040 --> 00:18:21.500 disease. All of that was unnecessary but don't blame Rachel Carson. It was the 228 00:18:21.500 --> 00:18:28.220 city urban people of green persuasion that were responsible for that. Not that 229 00:18:28.900 --> 00:18:29.600 great pioneer. 230 00:18:29.780 --> 00:18:35.440 I think that a lot of the attack comes from the neocons who are in some strange 231 00:18:35.440 --> 00:18:38.900 way connected to the Bush war on science. 232 00:18:39.120 --> 00:18:39.760 But let's go back to the book. 233 00:18:39.760 --> 00:18:46.260 Back to your wonderful gadget, the ECD. Its first practical use was to detect pesticide 234 00:18:46.260 --> 00:18:52.260 residues in foodstuffs. You start using it in other ways yourself. Tell us the story 235 00:18:52.260 --> 00:18:58.920 about how the ECD played such a central role in the ozone layer crisis. 236 00:18:59.480 --> 00:19:08.880 Oh goodness. Well, of course it's a strange device. For the most part it only detects 237 00:19:08.880 --> 00:19:16.920 things which are very poisonous or carcinogenic. Nothing else. And at the same time it's probably 238 00:19:17.560 --> 00:19:24.300 the most sensitive simple chemical indicator you've got. It'll detect much less than a 239 00:19:24.300 --> 00:19:31.680 part per trillion. That's a part per million million. So small that it's infinitesimal. 240 00:19:33.360 --> 00:19:38.860 And because of that you can pick up traces of the ECD. 241 00:19:51.520 --> 00:19:54.700 Well it's it 242 00:20:08.160 --> 00:20:12.020 those skies got dimmer and dimmer and mistier and mistier 243 00:20:12.020 --> 00:20:16.360 until the haze was so thick you couldn't see sometimes 244 00:20:16.360 --> 00:20:18.900 much further than about 200 or 300 yards. 245 00:20:20.960 --> 00:20:26.860 Now, I thought it looked and smelt like the Los Angeles smog, 246 00:20:27.440 --> 00:20:30.740 but when I asked experts in Britain, the meteorologists, 247 00:20:30.880 --> 00:20:33.720 they said, oh, no, it must be something coming out of the ground. 248 00:20:33.920 --> 00:20:36.740 Couldn't possibly be Los Angeles smog here. 249 00:20:36.740 --> 00:20:38.700 We don't have bright enough sunshine, 250 00:20:38.960 --> 00:20:41.940 and there's not enough cars to produce it. 251 00:20:42.160 --> 00:20:46.240 But I felt convinced, nevertheless, that that's what it was. 252 00:20:46.780 --> 00:20:50.040 So I wondered, how can I prove it? 253 00:20:50.240 --> 00:20:54.740 It wouldn't be any use picking up smog compounds like ozone 254 00:20:54.740 --> 00:20:58.420 and sulfur dioxide and things like that in the air, 255 00:20:58.500 --> 00:21:02.800 but it suddenly dawned on me, wherever there's cities and people, 256 00:21:03.040 --> 00:21:05.180 there's CFCs being given off, 257 00:21:05.260 --> 00:21:06.720 but never are they given. 258 00:21:06.740 --> 00:21:07.700 They're not given off by nature. 259 00:21:07.900 --> 00:21:10.260 They're not a natural compound at all. 260 00:21:10.660 --> 00:21:14.740 Sulfur dioxide and ozone are natural, so there's always confusion. 261 00:21:15.300 --> 00:21:20.240 So I started measuring the CFCs and soon found that they could go up 262 00:21:20.240 --> 00:21:24.880 to five times as much in the air when there was the haze as they were 263 00:21:24.880 --> 00:21:27.220 when it was clear air coming from the Atlantic. 264 00:21:28.300 --> 00:21:34.160 And that proved that the smog was indeed coming from industrial regions 265 00:21:34.160 --> 00:21:35.520 and was smog. 266 00:21:35.580 --> 00:21:36.560 And that was followed. 267 00:21:36.740 --> 00:21:38.500 And now there's no doubt about it. 268 00:21:38.580 --> 00:21:41.480 It's part of the haze that, strangely enough, 269 00:21:41.700 --> 00:21:45.000 now keeps the Earth a lot cooler than it would otherwise be 270 00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:48.280 because it reflects sunlight back to space. 271 00:21:49.640 --> 00:21:56.900 The attack on the ozone hole gives one cause for a tiny piece of optimism 272 00:21:56.900 --> 00:21:59.260 in relation to climate change, 273 00:21:59.440 --> 00:22:02.760 because it was a case where there was an international effort 274 00:22:02.760 --> 00:22:04.500 to do something about it. 275 00:22:04.680 --> 00:22:05.700 Indeed it was. 276 00:22:05.760 --> 00:22:05.960 Yes. 277 00:22:06.740 --> 00:22:10.900 And I should add that looking at the CFCs in the air as smog indicators 278 00:22:10.900 --> 00:22:17.440 made me wonder where the constant level in the clean air was coming from. 279 00:22:17.660 --> 00:22:20.280 Was it accumulating in the air of the world? 280 00:22:20.520 --> 00:22:25.000 Because they're so unreactive, there wasn't much anywhere for them to go. 281 00:22:25.320 --> 00:22:30.120 So I thought, what fun it would be to go on a ship to Antarctica and back 282 00:22:30.120 --> 00:22:33.480 and measure them all the way, which is what I did. 283 00:22:33.840 --> 00:22:36.340 And sure enough, they're present in the air. 284 00:22:36.340 --> 00:22:38.780 They're all the way right through around the world. 285 00:22:39.160 --> 00:22:44.660 And that paper that I wrote about it in Nature in 1972 286 00:22:44.660 --> 00:22:48.500 was what kicked off the CFC ozone affair. 287 00:22:48.900 --> 00:22:53.540 I made my biggest blunder in that because I said in the paper 288 00:22:53.540 --> 00:22:58.520 that these things represent no conceivable danger whatsoever. 289 00:22:59.160 --> 00:23:00.540 They're so non-toxic. 290 00:23:01.120 --> 00:23:06.160 But, of course, I hadn't realized then that when they got into, 291 00:23:06.340 --> 00:23:12.160 the upper atmosphere, that they split under solar ultraviolet light 292 00:23:12.160 --> 00:23:16.280 and gave off chlorine that destroyed the ozone. 293 00:23:18.040 --> 00:23:19.820 You're picked up by NASA. 294 00:23:20.680 --> 00:23:23.920 NASA asks you to start seeing if you can work out a way 295 00:23:23.920 --> 00:23:27.160 of analyzing extraterrestrial atmospheres. 296 00:23:27.460 --> 00:23:30.020 You find a methodology of doing so. 297 00:23:30.160 --> 00:23:33.020 And in a strange way, this leads into Gaia. 298 00:23:34.560 --> 00:23:35.200 Yes. 299 00:23:36.520 --> 00:23:39.020 That was a long time ago, Philip. 300 00:23:39.180 --> 00:23:45.460 I was invited to NASA in 1961 when they were only three years old. 301 00:23:45.740 --> 00:23:46.320 Exactly. 302 00:23:46.540 --> 00:23:49.040 Yes, and it was no great organization. 303 00:23:49.420 --> 00:23:53.200 It was just a lot of caravans stuck on a hillside in California. 304 00:23:54.400 --> 00:23:57.720 And the people working there were not, strangely, 305 00:23:57.920 --> 00:24:02.420 hot-shot scientists so much as model makers and clock makers 306 00:24:02.420 --> 00:24:04.940 and people like that, strange people. 307 00:24:05.140 --> 00:24:06.060 And they were... 308 00:24:06.340 --> 00:24:10.580 They were exquisitely good at designing the wonderful instruments 309 00:24:10.580 --> 00:24:11.980 that went on spacecraft. 310 00:24:12.480 --> 00:24:16.680 And they needed me because I was a producer of sensitive instruments. 311 00:24:17.160 --> 00:24:22.100 And they wanted me to devise things for them that would measure the soil 312 00:24:22.100 --> 00:24:24.640 and atmospheres of Mars and the moon. 313 00:24:25.540 --> 00:24:26.940 And that was my job. 314 00:24:27.180 --> 00:24:30.440 But I'm always a curious, nosy sort of scientist. 315 00:24:30.700 --> 00:24:35.560 And I got talking to the biologists there, and I was utterly astonished. 316 00:24:36.340 --> 00:24:41.380 They wanted to find life on Mars by just looking for the bacteria 317 00:24:41.380 --> 00:24:42.940 that grew in the soil there. 318 00:24:43.540 --> 00:24:46.240 And I said, well, how the hell do you know there are any bacteria there? 319 00:24:46.340 --> 00:24:49.940 It might be a form of life different from anything we've ever seen. 320 00:24:50.360 --> 00:24:55.380 And their attitude after a while got very cross and said, well, you, 321 00:24:56.720 --> 00:24:59.420 clever bugger, you suggest something better. 322 00:25:00.800 --> 00:25:05.760 And that put me on the spot, and the only thing I could think of was to say, well, 323 00:25:05.800 --> 00:25:06.320 if you want to find life on Mars, you have to find life on Mars. 324 00:25:06.320 --> 00:25:09.740 If you want to find life on a planet, look for a reduction of entropy, 325 00:25:10.360 --> 00:25:12.040 which doesn't help at all. 326 00:25:12.160 --> 00:25:13.060 Doesn't help anybody. 327 00:25:13.600 --> 00:25:18.220 And I was called to see the boss of JPL the next day. 328 00:25:18.340 --> 00:25:21.400 And he said, what are you doing upsetting our biologists? 329 00:25:21.940 --> 00:25:26.040 NASA's hired them at great expense, and they're very miserable because you've been 330 00:25:26.040 --> 00:25:29.340 talking some nonsense about measuring entropy on Mars. 331 00:25:29.840 --> 00:25:32.120 So he said, what do you mean by it? 332 00:25:32.180 --> 00:25:34.020 How would you detect life that way? 333 00:25:34.880 --> 00:25:35.600 And I said, well, 334 00:25:36.320 --> 00:25:38.200 I need some time to think about it. 335 00:25:38.280 --> 00:25:40.720 He said, you tell Friday if you don't have enough. 336 00:25:41.060 --> 00:25:43.140 So that was Tuesday. 337 00:25:45.080 --> 00:25:48.020 On Thursday night, it suddenly dawned on me. 338 00:25:48.160 --> 00:25:54.860 Yes, you can find an entropy reduction on a planet by just measuring the composition. 339 00:25:55.040 --> 00:25:57.680 That's the chemical composition of its atmosphere. 340 00:25:58.320 --> 00:25:59.500 Obvious and simple. 341 00:25:59.640 --> 00:26:03.300 Well, it actually isn't so complicated. 342 00:26:03.600 --> 00:26:05.620 If the planet's dead, 343 00:26:06.320 --> 00:26:12.860 the gases in the atmosphere will all be have reacted with one another to the point where they can't react anymore. 344 00:26:13.120 --> 00:26:15.220 They'll be at what's called chemical equilibrium. 345 00:26:15.760 --> 00:26:21.320 But if there's life on the planet, it's got to use the atmosphere as a source of raw materials, 346 00:26:21.440 --> 00:26:22.860 just like life here does. 347 00:26:23.360 --> 00:26:26.960 And it's going to use it as a place to deposit its waste products, 348 00:26:27.260 --> 00:26:28.620 just as we do. 349 00:26:29.020 --> 00:26:32.100 And this will change the atmosphere, make it 350 00:26:32.780 --> 00:26:36.180 recognizably different from... And of course the control planet, 351 00:26:36.320 --> 00:26:36.840 was the Earth. 352 00:26:38.660 --> 00:26:40.260 Does it fit? 353 00:26:40.560 --> 00:26:44.480 Yeah, sure. It absolutely sings out that it's a live planet. 354 00:26:44.860 --> 00:26:47.780 You've got oxygen mixed with methane. 355 00:26:48.120 --> 00:26:53.600 Now that's the kind of mixture, if the composition's wrong, will blow up in a big bang. 356 00:26:53.940 --> 00:26:58.680 Fortunately, it's regulated. It stays at levels which are quite safe. 357 00:26:58.940 --> 00:27:04.960 But it requires that they're reacting together, because they react in the stratosphere 358 00:27:04.960 --> 00:27:06.300 when sunlight is coming in. 359 00:27:06.300 --> 00:27:07.900 When sunlight falls on the Earth. 360 00:27:08.180 --> 00:27:11.960 And that means there must be a source and a sink for them. 361 00:27:12.100 --> 00:27:16.460 There must be something making them, and the sink is the reaction, of course. 362 00:27:16.700 --> 00:27:22.060 And you can easily calculate what that is. And it means huge quantities for the Earth. 363 00:27:22.240 --> 00:27:25.640 There's no way that that could happen on a dead planet. 364 00:27:26.120 --> 00:27:30.020 So NASA accepted that and got quite excited. 365 00:27:30.140 --> 00:27:36.280 And they still have it in mind to use it to find life on planets way out beyond the solar system. 366 00:27:37.060 --> 00:27:41.040 We're not dealing with a Eureka moment for Gaia, are we? 367 00:27:41.080 --> 00:27:41.220 No, no, no. 368 00:27:41.220 --> 00:27:43.840 We're dealing with a thought process. 369 00:27:44.340 --> 00:27:45.980 On life detection, yeah. 370 00:27:46.180 --> 00:27:51.740 The Eureka moment came when an astronomer came into the office I was in 371 00:27:52.300 --> 00:27:58.300 with a great sheet of data on the actual atmosphere of Mars and Venus. 372 00:27:58.560 --> 00:28:04.100 And these were so close to chemical equilibrium that I knew I was on the right tracks, 373 00:28:04.340 --> 00:28:06.280 because by then we were pretty much in the same boat. 374 00:28:06.300 --> 00:28:07.760 I was pretty sure that they were dead planets. 375 00:28:08.740 --> 00:28:17.120 And when you compared it with the Earth, it was then that this idea that life was regulating the atmosphere came to me. 376 00:28:17.180 --> 00:28:19.420 That was very much the Eureka moment. 377 00:28:19.920 --> 00:28:25.100 When I first read you on Gaia, and when we first talked about it quite a few years ago, 378 00:28:25.800 --> 00:28:33.120 I was concerned that its metaphoric majesty had become too... 379 00:28:34.020 --> 00:28:34.580 too... 380 00:28:36.940 --> 00:28:40.640 Well, that the New Age had embraced it rather eagerly, 381 00:28:41.300 --> 00:28:45.140 to the point that I'm sure you must have been embarrassed by your disciples. 382 00:28:45.700 --> 00:28:47.180 I was, yeah. Who wouldn't? 383 00:28:48.420 --> 00:28:53.200 But on the other hand, at first... 384 00:28:53.200 --> 00:28:55.140 Perhaps I should... Let me go into it a bit. 385 00:28:55.360 --> 00:28:59.100 When I first put the idea forward, scientists quite liked it. 386 00:29:00.580 --> 00:29:05.080 I gave a lecture on it to the space scientists in 1968, 387 00:29:05.080 --> 00:29:09.020 and everybody was very happy with the idea, thought it was a good one. 388 00:29:09.460 --> 00:29:13.980 And then later, I gave it to climate scientists in 1971. 389 00:29:14.420 --> 00:29:15.660 They liked it too. 390 00:29:15.960 --> 00:29:19.080 And it wasn't until somewhere in the mid-70s, 391 00:29:19.780 --> 00:29:23.660 the biologists suddenly got the whole notion wrong. 392 00:29:23.940 --> 00:29:26.180 They thought it was an attack on Darwin. 393 00:29:26.500 --> 00:29:31.720 And of course, as you well know, biologists regard Darwin as next to the Holy Ghost. 394 00:29:31.980 --> 00:29:35.060 I mean, if anything, anybody says anything bad about Darwin, 395 00:29:35.060 --> 00:29:37.420 then you're for it. 396 00:29:37.560 --> 00:29:39.140 So I was for it. 397 00:29:39.540 --> 00:29:43.900 But it was all a mistake, because I'm as much for Darwin as they are. 398 00:29:44.220 --> 00:29:46.760 And it's not contrary to Darwin. 399 00:29:46.860 --> 00:29:48.940 It's merely an extension of Darwin. 400 00:29:49.180 --> 00:29:52.680 And I think it's most unfair on Darwin 401 00:29:52.680 --> 00:29:56.400