Homage to Gaia (53 page)

I vented my annoyance with three years of frustrated misery with ‘Green’ methods of heating by writing, with Michael Allaby, an article called, ‘Wood burning stoves, the trendy pollutant’, which
New
Scientist
published. This successful collaboration led to projects that were more ambitious. Mike wrote a book based on some ideas I had about the extinction of so many species from giant lizards to ocean organisms 65 million years ago. The finding by the Alvarez family of traces of iridium and other extra-terrestrial elements in the rocks
contemporary with the extinction were what stimulated me. They argued, and I believed them, that a large planetesimal collided with the Earth, and the collision devastated the environment so that few living things survived. Inevitably, many biologists, who preferred to believe that inter-species competition caused the extinctions, scorned the collision theory. The book that we published,
The
Great
Extinc
tion,
acted as a lightning conductor for their scathing criticism, and the reviews were among the worst we had experienced. Now, the collision theory is widely accepted, and the site of the impact thought to be close to the Yucatan Peninsula, but no one among our critics has admitted that they might have been wrong. Not daunted by our rough treatment by reviewers, Mike and I wrote a second joint book,
The
Greening
of
Mars.
It was on the impropriety of terraforming and written as a novel. It has done well in Japan, but poorly elsewhere. From working together, Mike and his wife, Ailsa, became our close friends.

The illness of the 1980s and these experiences reduced me to practice. No longer did I attempt heroic acts of farming like the characters in
The
Good
Life.
We decided instead to let the Coombe Mill land go back to Gaia. We tried to help by planting two-thirds of the land with the sort of trees that would have been there before mankind appeared. The other third we kept as meadow, to indicate the kind of pleasant ecosystem which man in harmony with nature sustains. We did this by cutting half of each meadow once a year in July. Now, sixteen years later, we have increased the land area of Coombe Mill to thirty-five acres by the purchase of a long strip on the other side of the river. It is woodland with grassy glades and is wonderfully moving back to Gaia. Wildlife, both plants and animals, are beginning to appear in a habitat that they find congenial. Sandy and I, with the unstinted help of our friend and accountant, Godfrey Rehaag, have formed a charity called Gaia. Its purpose is to promote meetings and research on Gaian topics, and also to own and care for the house and land at Coombe Mill. Sandy and I have donated all of this property, including the house and outbuildings, to this charity, so that the habitat here will be as much as possible free from human intervention and remain a true refuge for wildlife. Soon after this Margaret Cooper who, with her husband, founded the charity Earth-kind, asked me to serve as their president and I have happily done so ever since. Earthkind has aims close to my own and runs the small ship
Ocean
Defender
that quietly does environmental good.

It would be wrong to give the impression that the inhabitants of Coombe Mill are entirely unsociable and live like hermits. On a typical day, the postman will call between 8 and 9 am, and often chats for a while as he delivers and takes our mail. Clifford Nosworthy and Geoff Francis have delivered our mail for over twenty years now, and are our friends. Later Margaret Sargent comes from the village to look after us, and my disabled son John, who lives in a cottage just near the house. Margaret is a farmer’s daughter, a true country-woman, and is so much a part of Coombe Mill that to us she is a family member.

We have a small circle of local friends, among them John and Truda Lane, who live in a manor house near Beaford, about twenty miles away. John is a fair-haired, tall man with a wonderful sense of fun coupled with an erudition that makes him the perfect companion and guide. Truda’s drawing has the delicacy of a fractal design in bone china, and she is one of the few women I know whose voice matches her trim elegance. They are among our most stimulating and amenable friends. Sandy has a love for music, and we travel to Taunton for musical weekends at the Castle Hotel. Here those most estimable musicians, the Lindsays, entrance us, and here we meet our musical friends Monica and John Pethybridge, who, like us, come to listen. Music links us to Yvonne and Walter Reeves, who live nearby, and to my old friend and scientific colleague, Peter Fellgett, the inventor of ambisonics and fourier transform spectroscopy. All of us meet at what we think is the best restaurant in Britain, Percy’s at Coombshead, just two miles from Coombe Mill, where Tina and Tony Bricknell-Webb care for us in style.

A remarkable friend is Satish Kumar. He was born in northern India, and as a child, he became a noviciate Jain monk. In his twenties he felt the call to protest against nuclear weapons, and chose to walk from India to the western side of Europe, and from there travel by ship to New York to the United Nations. He has vividly described his long walk, which included a large section of the then Soviet Union, in his book
No
Destination.
He and his English wife, June, now live in the village of Hartland, some twenty-five miles away, where they edit and publish the journal,
Resurgence.
Satish was a key figure in the founding of Schumacher College in the grounds of Dartington. This alternative university is one of the first places to teach Gaia science and runs, in collaboration with Plymouth University, a Masters programme for Gaia scientists. The college is also prominent as a place
for discussion about the philosophical and political consequences of Gaia theory.

Our pleasures are things we do together. One of them is walking on that grand mountain block of Dartmoor, or along the superbly rugged coastline of North Devon and Cornwall. Those places are not much more than twenty miles away at the furthest, and even in summertime, amazingly deserted. Few, it seems, wish to walk more than 100 yards from their parked car. The whole of Dartmoor is no larger than greater London, less than 1,000 square miles, and tiny compared with the vast national parks of the United States of America. Yet, once we have climbed the first 1,000 feet and we reach the open inland plateau of the moor, we seem to be in an infinite, never-ending space. We drove one morning the ten miles to Lydford, a village on the edge of the moor, and from there walked across the short turf to the rocky valley of the Lyd. Ahead lay the wall of the moor, rising in two steps of 600 feet each to the central mass, at 1,500 to 2,100 feet high. The first steps led from the valley to a small peak, Doe Tor, from which the panorama of West Devon, with its green and yet almost unspoilt fields and woods, lay before us. Eastwards, across a stretch of heather and bog, lay the next step up to Hare Tor. Past Hare Tor lay a stretch of almost featureless moorland, the central part of the moor, where it is so easy to get lost when the mist comes down. We set off on a course slightly east of north on the compass, and after a mile suddenly came upon the single boulder as large as a house that marks Chat Tor. From here, the going was easier and Great Lynx Tor, with its castle-like rock pillars, lay in view to the northwest. Our destination was no more than a map reference that marked the furthest point of a twelve-mile round walk. We reached it by crossing the bogs that surround the Rattle Brook. On the banks of the brook is the ruin of Bleak House, which is well named. The manager of the peat mine used it as his home fifty years earlier. We wondered if he was a married man. If he was, how had his wife endured the lonely existence of so remote and inaccessible a place? We sat in the sun on a slab above the brook with the house shielding us from the brisk northwest wind and ate our lunch—sandwiches filled with good strong cheddar cheese, slices of beetroot and onions, followed by an apple or a bar of chocolate, and a soft drink. There are few events in life so good for me as the feeling of contentment that a good walk to such a place brings. Sharing it with Sandy fills my cup to over-brimming.

It was now one o’clock and time to continue to the furthest point of our walk. Like some of the other elevations on Dartmoor, it has an animal name, Kitty Tor. It was more of a map reference than a place, but we had planned to reach it. We walked back across the heather to the wind-carved granite of Great Lynx Tor. We find its sculpted rocks, with their sense of ineffable purpose, the most enthralling of all places on Dartmoor. Looking north we see the high slopes of Yes Tor and Great Willhayes, and looking west the Tamar Valley and Bodmin Moor. From here, it was an easy run down to the Lyd valley and to our drive home. Such a day would end with some experiments, a swim, or a laze in the sun, followed by an evening meal and an evening of music on CD. Such are the freedoms that work as an independent brings.

Although we have no desire to live there, London beckons, with its wonderful theatres, concert halls, and museums. In 1988 Sandy and I purchased a small flat in St Mark’s Road in North Kensington. It was a modest but comfortable place in a quiet road on the wrong side of the Westway, a monstrous piece of motorway that, like the angiogenesis of a cancer, keeps London’s malignant traffic alive. We bought it so that we could enjoy London’s unsurpassed supply of music and theatre. It soon turned out to be more expensive than we could afford, and in 1991 we sold it at a loss. We decided to sell when we found the Clearlake Hotel in that never failing source of good accommodation, the Consumer Association’s
Which?
Good
Bed
and
Break
fast
Guide.
Hotels in London are comfortable, but far beyond our price, or cramped, noisy, and not for us. The Clearlake in 1991 offered all that we needed, and at a price we could afford. There was no meal service of any kind, but the hotel provided its guests with either a small suite of rooms or a ‘bedsit’, including an en suite bathroom and a tiny kitchen equipped with a microwave cooker, refrigerator, china, cutlery, and all things needed to cook a light meal. It has theatrical associations, and they have decorated many of their rooms with posters of plays once performed in London. The price in 1991 was £50 to £60 a day. This we could afford and the hotel has been our home in London ever since. Situated in a small road, Prince of Wales Terrace, opposite the west end of Kensington Gardens, it is almost an ideal site for us. We can walk the three miles across the parks to Piccadilly or Whitehall free of the noise and fumes of traffic. The lift does not always work, but that is a small disadvantage in what is a family hotel. We have grown fond of the Herkovits family
who run the Clearlake, especially of Nava who welcomes us so warmly. The Clearlake Hotel was once the home of a Victorian family, a house in a proud and comely terrace in a fashionable part of London. The Prince of Wales Terrace is now wonderfully restored to its Victorian excellence and in its new usage is every bit a source of pride for Londoners as it ever was.

We stole down the two flights of stairs from our room at the Clearlake at 7.45 am in 1996. We opened the street door as quietly as we could and glanced back at the reception desk, wondering if someone had noticed our furtive departure. We walked into Victoria Road and turned south, past the blossom-covered villas of the somewhat rich. What had once been modest housing for the Victorian upper-working class or lower-middle class was now far up market. Soon we were in the Gloucester Road, with its vast array of terraced mansions; were any of them homes of a single family, I wondered? Most likely they were now flats or offices. Soon, as we walked on, that incredible bulk of the Natural History Museum loomed before us: a Victorian masterpiece of variegated marble and brick in a Gothic style—perhaps the unkind might say it had the look of a Lego construction. It was by now 8 am and we walked up the grand entrance steps to the doors of the museum. And once inside, the director, Neil Chalmers, welcomed us. He had invited us to attend a tour behind the scenes of the museum and a breakfast. It was a joyful event to be invited back to the Natural History Museum in these VIP circumstances. In my childhood, seventy years ago, I spent so many happy Sunday afternoons here whilst my mother and father were visiting the Victoria and Albert Museum just opposite. They were there for the works of art, and I was here, or in the Science Museum, learning all the things that were to form my life as a scientist. Dr Chalmers then introduced the other guests and made a short speech as we all stood in the shadow of the
Diplodocus
skeleton that fills the great hall of the museum. After a satisfying breakfast, behind the scenes on the top floor, we met our guide, Sandy Knapp. She showed us some of the tens of millions of plant specimens in what seemed an unending row of polished wooden cabinets. She provided an impressive account of the expeditions to remote and wild places that they had made to collect the dried specimens before our eyes. The quest for Gaia has also rewarded us with enthralling visits to the great gardens of Kew and St Louis where the directors, Sir Ghillian Prance and Peter Raven, generously gave us their time.

11

Building Your Own Bypass

The flight was nearly half an hour late and, as we circled Salt Lake City preparing to land, I was anxious. Traffic had delayed the departure from Chicago and now there were only twenty minutes left to catch my flight to Idaho Falls. I suspected that Salt Lake City Airport was no different from many others in the United States; there would be the long walk with my heavy bag from the landing bay to the departure lounge of my next flight. We landed with fifteen minutes to spare. Somewhat relieved, I began a fast walk, and then a slow run to the concourse. As I ran, I felt an odd pain grow in my lower chest, which I attributed to muscular pains caused by the imbalance of carrying a heavy bag whilst running and dodging people on the way to the departure lounge. Soon I saw the sign, TransMagic, and the door leading to the TransMagic Airlines plane. This miraculous airline flew a one-way flight to Idaho Falls. I could not help wondering if they disassembled the plane in Idaho and sent it back by truck. I checked in and thought no more of the pain; it had gone away. I boarded the small plane and flew across the Magic Mountains to my destination. 

My friends at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, had booked me in for three weeks during September 1972 at a pleasant hotel near the Snake River. We were due to spend the time at the National Reactor Facility, a government institution sited in the lunar landscape of the lava fields of north Idaho. The facility itself was a remote place where strange nuclear reactors were tested; a place where an explosion or a meltdown would—they
hoped—be less noticeable and less obtrusive. To my slight regret, my role there was in no way connected with these fascinating monsters: all that we had to do was conduct an experiment in air-mass labelling. So exquisite is the sensitivity of the electron capture detector that it is possible to detect as little as one part in 10
¹⁶
of a tracer substance diluted in air. Our minds cannot deal with large numbers like this; we are not really much better than the apocryphal tribe whose number system was one, two, and many. One in 10
¹⁶
means one part in 10,000 million million, or one with 16 noughts after it. This is too small a dilution for our imaginations to grasp; it is as scarce as three seconds out of the age of the Universe. Yet, by collecting and concentrating a few litres of air, the electron capture detector is sensitive enough to detect the tiny amount of tracer in it.

My friend, Lester Machta, was in charge of the Air Resources Laboratory of the agency, NOAA, in Washington. He wanted to label air masses on the West Coast of America and follow their motion across the whole of the American continent. I believed that my detector was sensitive enough for this ambitious project, and we were in Idaho to prove it. Among the substances it could detect at great sensitivity, were the perfluorocarbons. These are strange volatile odourless liquids. In some ways, they are similar to the hydrocarbons of petrol, but have fluorine, not hydrogen, attached to the carbon. These substances are so inert that they are neither flammable nor poisonous, nor for that matter do they react with other chemicals. As I mentioned earlier, they are so benign that they are less poisonous than water. They were thus ideal materials to release into the air as tracers. These were chemicals that even the most sensitive Green would find difficult to condemn. NOAA was to conduct its experiment in parallel with several from other US government departments. The others were intending to release much less safe materials than our perfluorocarbons: for example, one group was using methyl iodide labelled with the radioactive isotope 131 of iodine. The release of so dangerous a substance was possible only on this remote site in Idaho.

We made our first experiment on a crisp sunlit morning with frost on the ground and the warm sun fast rising over the dry lava desert. I set up my sampling equipment with the distant mountains as a backdrop. Solid though they were, they stood flat against the sky like the stage scenery of atmospheric theatre. Science can be a wonderful occupation when there is the chance to work in such a place.

I shared the fine food served at our motel with my NOAA companions: fresh fish from the Snake River and Idaho's tastiest baked potatoes. At weekends, we explored the Yellowstone National Park, the Teton Mountains, and the country around Jackson Hole. There are few other parts of the American scenery so splendid. We were fortunate that it was late September, well outside the tourist season, and when the trees were already putting on their red and gold to celebrate the fall. I most remember the companionship of the meteorologist, Bob List, with whom I worked, and of a Major in the US Army, whose name I cannot remember, but whose face is still clear before me. One Sunday we went to the waterfall in Yellowstone that roars down into what looks like a miniature Grand Canyon, and which is a favourite spot for visitors. A long flight of wooden stairs, perhaps 100 feet of them, leads to a platform at the very edge of the falls. A damp, deafening, but exciting place, with a breathtaking view and the thunder of the water. It filled me with exhilaration, and I challenged the Major to a race to the top of the stairs. We made it and I just won. We were both breathless, and my legs and thighs in such pain that a few more steps would have broken me, but I felt inordinately pleased. Here was a near sedentary scientist at fifty-two years matching the performance of a fit young Army officer.

In early November I was back again in the United States, this time to visit a firm in West Palm Beach, Florida, who were making ion drift instruments. These are devices similar to the electron capture detector, but lack its sensitivity. We use them because they are more convenient to handle than is the ECD. I was visiting this firm on behalf of UK departments that were interested in picking up small traces of explosive vapours that would reveal bombs in places they should not be. In the evening, after dark, I walked in the warm, humid, tropical air along the beach outside my motel. I might even have walked past Sandy Orchard, as she strolled along the beach from her home, not knowing that in eighteen years she would be my wife. From Florida, I was due at Andover in New Hampshire, some 1300 miles north, where there was to be a conference on the ecology of the chlorofluor-ocarbons. Indeed, I think it was the first conference ever held specifically on this topic, and some time before Rowland and Molina published their famous paper.

I flew from Miami to Boston, where my friend, Jim Lodge, a scientist from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, NCAR, met me. We waited outside Boston's Logan airport for a car
that was to take us to Andover: it was bitterly cold and an astonishing contrast to the near tropical warmth of West Palm Beach. We were shivering, but soon the heat of the car warmed us as we drove north into the New England winter. The conference met in one of those pleasant timber buildings with spacious rooms and polished wooden floors that abound in New England, and we luxuriated in its warmth. If you want to be warm in the North American winter, go to Canada or the northern states. Whatever you do, do not go to California, where the indoor climate can be bitterly cold. Californians believe their climate to be so perfect that they need no heating, and they share this illusion with the inhabitants of the Mediterranean. We enjoyed a vast evening meal that ended with an emperor-sized hunk of cheese-cake. I retired replete, slept well, and the next morning joined Jim Lodge and Ray McCarthy of Dupont and Camille Sandorfy of Montreal University for breakfast, which of course was ample. After breakfast, I collected my lecture notes from my room and started out into the cold air for the short walk to the conference hall, not more than 100 or 200 yards away. Two American scientists, who I did not know, walked and talked with me. About half-way through this brief journey, I experienced an increasing dull pain in my lower chest, just as I had at Salt Lake City Airport and I tried to suppress it, but it grew worse as we approached the hall. I began to fear I was having a coronary occlusion, but when I sat down in the hall, it passed away, and with it my apprehension. I gave my talk about the discovery of the chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere and I said that they were at present harmless, but might become a danger if ever they accumulated to the parts-per-billion level. This was because they absorbed infrared radiation intensely and, at those levels, would be adding significantly to the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide and other gases.

As I walked back to lunch, the pain returned and I began to worry. In the evening, I experimented by walking the quiet road outside the conference hall; every time I walked over fifty yards the pain came on, but went away again if I stood still. I knew now that I was experiencing angina pectoris, but somehow I could not believe that such a thing could happen to me. It was outrageous: after all, I was fit.

Next day I travelled back to Boston and took a taxi from the airport to Lynn Margulis's laboratory at Boston University. I was due to stay with Lynn and her family that night in their house in Newton, a suburb of Boston. We took the tram outside the University to
Newton Station and began the uphill walk from there to Lynn's house, not more than a few hundred yards away. Soon the pain came on again and, as Lynn walked briskly on, it forced me to say, ‘Slow up, I can't walk fast, I've a medical problem.' Lynn slowed down and the pain became bearable. When we reached the house I was walking like an old man, with leaden steps, and I turned to Lynn and said, ‘I think I am having a heart attack, do you have a physician I could see?' Lynn was shocked and said, ‘I am sorry; I thought you meant by a medical problem something trivial like an itch in the crotch.' She was about to telephone her doctor when Nicky, her husband, said, ‘We can do better than that. We can take Jim to the local hospital in Wellesley where they have a programme for dealing with coronary emergencies.' He turned to me: ‘It's only a short distance, let's go.' He was a marvellous comforter; calm, matter of fact, and just what I needed.

I remember travelling through the tree-lined streets of Newton to the hospital where I went straight to the desk of the nurse receptionist. Tongue-tied, I found myself blurting out, ‘Can I see someone about chest pains?' In those days, coronaries were almost epidemic, especially in America, and they were prepared at every hospital for anyone who came in with such a statement. She told me to sit down and soon a young intern came out to see me. I went with him to his office, where he quizzed me and then arranged an ECG and X-rays for me. I returned to the waiting room and sat with Nicky Margulis. The young intern returned and said, ‘We are admitting you at once. Your condition is serious and it requires immediate attention.' At this, the alarm bells began to ring in my mind. I was more worried about the cost to my family than about death or heart disease. I was uninsured and knew, having previously been a staff member of the Baylor College of Medicine, just how expensive uninsured medical treatment can be in America. I had no wish to put such a burden on my family. I said, ‘I am sorry but I have to fly back to Britain tomorrow. Can you give me something to alleviate the pain of the condition?' The young intern shook his head and replied, ‘You have three conditions sufficiently serious to require admission. Your blood pressure is too high, you have angina pectoris, and your ECG is not good.' Nicky Margulis broke in saying, ‘It is his life isn't it? He wants to go home; it's a normal, natural thing to do.' Nicky was a wonderful friend: he supported me forcefully and effectively. In the end, the doctor gave up. He said, ‘Oh, well, there's nothing
I can do, but you must promise me that the moment you get to London you will go to St Mary's Hospital, report your condition, and let them treat you.'

With great relief, I went back to the Margulis's house carrying with me a few trinitrin tablets given to me for the temporary relief of the pain of angina. I spent all the next day lying on their floor propped up with cushions. I was afraid to worsen my condition and I thought that just lying still was probably the safest thing to do. My flight was due to leave Boston Airport some time in the evening, I think about 7 or 8 o'clock. Lynn came home early with much concern and I remember travelling with her in her car to the airport, and a somewhat fraught departure. I remember most clearly the plane, a VC10 of British Airways, accelerating down the runway and taking off. As soon as it was airborne and committed to its flight, a sense of comfort came over me. The anxiety of the past few days evaporated. When the stewardess came round and offered refreshments, I said, unusually, ‘Yes please, give me a double vodka and tomato juice.' I needed something to celebrate my escape. There is something wrong about being ill thousands of miles from home.

I recall little of the flight to Heathrow but I do remember rediscovering the pain of angina as I walked too fast along the long corridors of the airport to the customs and immigration. My baggage was carry-on only, and soon I was in a taxi and on my way to St Mary's Hospital. This old and dignified hospital is just by Paddington station in London. I marched in to the casualty department and tried to tell my story. The response I received was wholly different from that at Wellesley in Boston. The young physician who saw me showed cheerful lack of concern and asked why I had not gone to my GP. I replied, ‘I'm doing what they told me to do at the Boston Hospital and, in any event, my GP is at least a hundred miles away.' ‘Oh,' said he, ‘Well, we will have a look at you. Are you in any pain now?' ‘No,' I said, ‘Only when I walk fifty yards or so.' He took me into a small room with a bed and the usual hospital furniture. He did the kind of things that physicians usually do, such as sounding my chest with his stethoscope. I never know whether this is to impress or soften up the patient, or whether it serves a useful purpose. Anyway, he did it, went away, and said, ‘I'll arrange for you to have an ECG and an X-ray.' Shortly afterwards a young nurse came in and said, ‘Are you the one with angina?' ‘Yes,' I replied. ‘Oh that is a terrible pain,' she said. ‘Oh it's not so bad,' said I. ‘Nowhere near as bad as toothache, just worrying.'
She was clearly disappointed. It was my first realization that some women choose nursing as a profession because suffering itself fascinates them. They are not necessarily worse nurses on this account, but it is a sobering thought. Many years later, I discovered that an ability to appeal to this spectator instinct in some nurses could be essential for survival in a busy hospital. They were thorough at St Mary's and repeated all that Boston had done and took some blood samples as well. At the end, the cheerful intern came in again and said to me, ‘Yes, you have an angina but go home and see your GP some time next week.' I had been expecting immediate admission to the hospital and at least a little drama. I was also worried about having to telephone home with the bad news that I would not be returning but would be in hospital in London. Yet, here they told me to catch a train to Salisbury, in Wiltshire, as if nothing had happened. What an anti-climax.