It would have to have life develop into a very different set of species
than we now have. Most or intolerant of high temperatures as this tends
to cause proteins to degenerate. And protein specificity and moderate
temperatures allows this. With very high temperatures there might
continue to be unicellular life forms that can tolerate such but not
multicellular and highly specialized life forms. Besides such radical
evolutionary changes would take tens if not hundreds of millions of
years. By then higher life forms might very well have succumbed to more
quickly destructive catastrophes.

Yes, and it won't include human beings. The extremophile bacteria
will have the run of the place.
I mean, you as an individual have white blood cells. Do you care
it they all die? As long as you don't get an infection, you are happy.
You have no concern over the life and well being of individual cells
in your body. They could be suffering the agonies of hell, but as long
as your brain is happy you will not be concerned.

The same for this supposed Gaia (which I don't really believe
exists). An organism doesn't pay attention to its own components. If
Gaia can remain healthy with just a few unintelligent, extremophile
bacteria, she will be happy. Without human beings, she may be even
happier.

I don't think Gaia is a useful hypothesis for anything. In
effect, it merely says that some organisms will survive no matter
what. And that they will probably affect the geology of the earth
somewhere down the line. Most of us are concerned with only with human
beings, or maybe with the inclusion of a few animal relatives. I
definitely would like to see dolphins and chimpanzees survive with us.
But most cultures can't even see other human beings as worth the skin.
I will not trust any deity, least of all Gaia, to protect our
interests.
All and all, I think it would be best if we reduce our carbon
footprint. Let the deities take care of themselves. If we can't
control ourselves, then maybe human beings would be better off extinct.

If one group of my cells died, then chances are that other groups of my
cells would die too, if they depended on them. And then my whole body
would die.

Not necessarily.  Cells die in your body all the time.  Your hair, which grows
all the time, consists mostly of dead cells.  The very outermost part of
your skin also consists of dead cells, which protects the living cells
inside the skin and your body.  As a matter of fact, almost all of your
body is renewed (= the cells are replaced by other cells) every 5 to 7
years or so (the figure varies depending on which part of the body).

The conventional explanation of the run-away greenhouse effect,
which produced the conditions we see on Venus today, is that
the evaporation of water vapor caused the temperature to rise so
high that the atmosphere became unbound.

I have seen a journal article that says the temperature would reach
'several thousand degrees' until the surface could 'radiate in the
visible'.

In article <4861df66$1 at (no spam) news.bnb-lp.com>, Yousuf Khan <bbbl67 at (no spam) yahoo.com> wrote:

If one group of my cells died, then chances are that other groups of my
cells would die too, if they depended on them. And then my whole body
would die.

Not necessarily. Cells die in your body all the time. Your hair, which grows
all the time, consists mostly of dead cells. The very outermost part of
your skin also consists of dead cells, which protects the living cells
inside the skin and your body. As a matter of fact, almost all of your
body is renewed (= the cells are replaced by other cells) every 5 to 7
years or so (the figure varies depending on which part of the body).
As long as this is in equilibrium, your organism remains healthy. But if
your body would start to generate new cells in an uncontrolled way, you'll
get cancer. And if your body would generate too few new cells, you'll get
sick and die too - the latter often happens to old people.

In article <cbedbe10-d94c-4ccc-a1b0-35f17b7f5... at (no spam) w7g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>,
Andrew Usher <k_over_hb... at (no spam) yahoo.com> writes:

The conventional explanation of the run-away greenhouse effect,
which produced the conditions we see on Venus today, is that
the evaporation of water vapor caused the temperature to rise so
high that the atmosphere became unbound.

This is not an explanation I've ever heard of.

1. The explanation I've heard involves 90 bars of carbon dioxide. Is
there any water vapor at all in the Venusian atmosphere?

2. For an atmosphere that is alleged to be "unbound," there seems to
be quite a lot of it.

I have seen a journal article that says the temperature would reach
'several thousand degrees' until the surface could 'radiate in the
visible'.

Reference?

The highest possible temperature is the effective
temperature of the Sun divided by the square root of 2. This is just
conservation of energy for an imaginary atmosphere that is completely
transparent to visible light and completely opaque at longer
wavelengths.

Of course no real atmosphere will be ideal in this fashion.

Robert J. Kolker wrote:
Yousuf Khan wrote:

And according to the Gaia Hypothesis, life on Earth itself will evolve
to absorb and subsume any climate conditions that will lead to runaway
greenhouse effects.

The planet is not a living organism. Organism live on the planet.

Okay, and so what's this got to do with whether or not "life on Earth"
will evolve to rectify the climate?

        Yousuf Khan

Okay, and so what's this got to do with whether or not "life on Earth"
will evolve to rectify the climate?

Yousuf Khan

well, it's always an error to think that evolution is purpose driven.
mutations are random, and wherever there's a niche, presumably one of
those random mutations will be such that it can exploit that niche.
that's one trouble with "intelligent design" theories; intelligence is
limited, compared to randomness.

Fred Kasner wrote:
Yousuf Khan wrote:
Andrew Usher wrote:
This wasn't supposed to go to soc.men actually.

My point (I didn't quite finish) was that there can be no such
thing as a true 'run-away greenhouse', that there can be no
abrupt tipping point but only a gradual change. It is
nonetheless irreversible, though.

Also, this has no effect on projections of man-made global
warming, as it can't occur unless solar input is considerably
higher than today.

Andrew Usher

And according to the Gaia Hypothesis, life on Earth itself will
evolve to absorb and subsume any climate conditions that will lead to
runaway greenhouse effects.

Yousuf Khan

It would have to have life develop into a very different set of
species than we now have. Most or intolerant of high temperatures as
this tends to cause proteins to degenerate. And protein specificity
and moderate temperatures allows this. With very high temperatures
there might continue to be unicellular life forms that can tolerate
such but not multicellular and highly specialized life forms. Besides
such radical evolutionary changes would take tens if not hundreds of
millions of years. By then higher life forms might very well have
succumbed to more quickly destructive catastrophes.
FK

Look, we're only talking about an average temp increase of 10 degC.
There's more than that between equatorial and mid lattitudes.

Dirk Bruere at NeoPax wrote:
Fred Kasner wrote:
Yousuf Khan wrote:
Andrew Usher wrote:
This wasn't supposed to go to soc.men actually.

My point (I didn't quite finish) was that there can be no such
thing as a true 'run-away greenhouse', that there can be no
abrupt tipping point but only a gradual change. It is
nonetheless irreversible, though.

Also, this has no effect on projections of man-made global
warming, as it can't occur unless solar input is considerably
higher than today.

Andrew Usher

And according to the Gaia Hypothesis, life on Earth itself will
evolve to absorb and subsume any climate conditions that will lead
to runaway greenhouse effects.

Yousuf Khan

It would have to have life develop into a very different set of
species than we now have. Most or intolerant of high temperatures as
this tends to cause proteins to degenerate. And protein specificity
and moderate temperatures allows this. With very high temperatures
there might continue to be unicellular life forms that can tolerate
such but not multicellular and highly specialized life forms. Besides
such radical evolutionary changes would take tens if not hundreds of
millions of years. By then higher life forms might very well have
succumbed to more quickly destructive catastrophes.
FK

Look, we're only talking about an average temp increase of 10 degC.
There's more than that between equatorial and mid lattitudes.


What about the non-poikiothermic life forms. They would find their
chemical reaction rates approximately doubled with such an increase in
temperature.
FK

"Yousuf Khan" <bbbl67 at (no spam) yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:486536ec$1 at (no spam) news.bnb-lp.com...
| Hasn't got anything to do with organisms evolving to rectify the
| climate. One of the misconceptions of evolution is that something has to
| evolve after a change in the climate or whatever. But in actual fact
| what's really happening is that these organisms have already existed
| prior to the change, and the change makes them far more successful than
| they were before. So if the environment changes, the organisms that will
| re-regulate the environment will already exist, and now will simply be
| more successful.
|
| Yousuf Khan

Actually you've given an optimistic bias to the situation. All species
survive until killed, success has nothing to do with it.
It is not survival of the fittest but destruction of the weakest that
drives evolution. That's also called "luck".

"Yousuf Khan" <bbbl67 at (no spam) yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:48695b6f at (no spam) news.bnb-lp.com...
| Androcles wrote:
| > "Yousuf Khan" <bbbl67 at (no spam) yahoo.com> wrote in message
| > news:486536ec$1 at (no spam) news.bnb-lp.com...
| > | Hasn't got anything to do with organisms evolving to rectify the
| > | climate. One of the misconceptions of evolution is that something
has
to
| > | evolve after a change in the climate or whatever. But in actual
fact
| > | what's really happening is that these organisms have already existed
| > | prior to the change, and the change makes them far more successful
than
| > | they were before. So if the environment changes, the organisms that
will
| > | re-regulate the environment will already exist, and now will simply
be
| > | more successful.
| > |
| > | Yousuf Khan
|
| > Actually you've given an optimistic bias to the situation. All species
| > survive until killed, success has nothing to do with it.
| > It is not survival of the fittest but destruction of the weakest that
| > drives evolution. That's also called "luck".
|
| Whatever, works out to the same effect.
|
| Yousuf Khan

This is not so. "Survival of the fittest" evolution means that
individuals within the species compete with each other - for
example the antelope chased by a lion escapes and passes on
it genes at the expense of the slower antelope that is caught.
That didn't help the dodo, they were all wiped out by man.
The effects are very different, on the optimistic side the
species improves itself gradually, on the pessimistic side
the species becomes extinct. An extinct species cannot
have one individual more fit than another when neither exist.