At the fear of going against the environmental grain, I have been wondering recently if perhaps large sections of ice melting away from the poles may not be such a bad thing. No, I haven’t crossed over to the Dark Side; please read on and I’ll explain my thinking.

First of all; if any of you have read Gaia Theory by James Lovelock, my idea may be easier to comprehend. If not, then I will quickly explain what this notion is about as it’s fundamental to my idea. Well actually, I’ll let somebody else explain it, as they’ll be far more succinct than I ever could be:

“The (Gaia) theory asserts that living organisms and their inorganic surroundings have evolved together as a single living system that greatly affects the chemistry and conditions of Earth’s surface. Some scientists believe that this “Gaian system” self-regulates global temperature, atmospheric content, ocean salinity, and other factors in an “automatic” manner. Earth’s living system appears to keep conditions on our planet just right for life to persist.”

Ok. So the Earth is a self-regulating system that does its best to control the conditions on the planet so as to maintain life in this symbiotic relationship.

Some may argue – and many have argued – that as humans we have got out of control, gone beyond the Gaia System and that we are now throwing massive spanners into the works in the form of excessive greenhouse gases, pollution, deforestation, expansion, etc. However, Gaia is strong, adaptable and, like any good guardian, is doing her best to keep the planet from going all-to-pot.

Ok, I hear you ask, but what has this got to do with putting a positive spin on melting ice caps?

Well; let’s look at out bodies as similar self-regulating systems (which of course they are):

If we are too hot, our body has a natural countermeasure to cool itself down in the form of sweat. Agreed? Good.

If that doesn’t work, then a nice cool refreshing gin and tonic should do the trick… and what do you add to the glass to cool down your gin and tonic? That’s right. Ice.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

So then, if the Earth is a self-regulating system and it feels it’s getting too hot, particularly around the oceanic areas, maybe adding a drop or two of ice could prove be a prudent form of action. Returning to the thought posed by the title of this post, one has to ask the question that if the Earth wasn’t dumping large chunks of ice into an ever-warming ocean, what difference would that make to global temperature rise? Do we actually need these influxes of massive chunks of ice to prevent the oceans overheating and triggering runaway climate change?

Now before you get angry and think that I am irresponsibly spreading anti-climate science clatter please just bear in mind that (a) this is only a thought, (b) I am still a firm believer in the dangers of climate change and a firm advocate for action, (c) not nearly enough people read my blog for this to become a mainstream notion.

The optimistic side of me is saying that this is a brilliant form of cooling by the Gaia System and is buying us enough time to sort our act out and stop the harm we are inflicting on the planet and therefore to ourselves and our future generations. The less optimistic and slightly more realistic side of me is saying that this melting ice is simply a symptom of us warming the planet faster than it can cope with and is a harbinger of dangerous times to come. The highly pessimistic side of me is saying, yes, this is proof of the Gaia System trying to cool itself down but that’s of no help to us because if Gaia feels she needs to keep melting ice into the oceans to cool herself then we’re still buggered and we can kiss goodbye to the majority of our built environment and farmland to the water. Make no mistake; Gaia exists for the good of the planet, not the good of Humanity. If the Earth has to cool itself down, a losing a few billion humans in the process will not deter it one iota.

Having said this however, I hope you will take away the thought that although the idea of more and more ice melting into the sea is not appealing; perhaps a greater power is in fact looking after us and giving us that second chance to make amends. Let’s just make sure we use that second chance eh?

Happy New Year to you all!

GR

The book Gaia Theory is well worth a read and had a profound effect on me personally. But in case you want a bit more of an in-depth explanation of Gaia Theory right now, try this link so some text written by James Lovelock, the author of Gaia Theory.

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Photos courtesy of  Jose Tejo,  Jan Martin Will and Tom Dowd