Which is closer to a "Gaia belief system"...?

The fact that nature heals itself can be seen countless times in Earth's history. The planet would have become sterilized ages ago if that were not the case. Call it Gaia, or evolution, or "God", or whatever you want. It happens.

When skeptics harp on about how nature heals itself it is usually a straw man argument attacking what they believe to be a common claim, that AGW will be worse than all other previous disasters and indeed result in the irreparable destruction of nature and the extinction of all life on Earth. I have never seen this claim being made outside of a few fringe extremist groups.

The fact that natures heals itself, while true, doesn't really comfort me. It can take more than a hundred years for an established ecosystem to rebound from a major disturbance, it takes far longer for a comparable level of global biodiversity to be restored following a major extinction event. The fact that the restoration will eventually happen makes me feel sound that nature and the 'living planet' will be around for a long time to come no matter what we do to try to screw it up. But that does nothing to ease my concern over the harm that a major climate shift (or other environmental problem) might potentially bring about to human civilization over the next century.

Lovelock's interpretation of Gaia with respect to AGW (if I remember right, it's been a while) is that nature needs a certain minimum amount of undeveloped land in order to be able to continue to function under major environmental stress like AGW. He argues that 2/3 undeveloped and 1/3 developed (or something like that) is a ratio that gives nature enough flexibility to adapt and survive. I haven't examined the validity of this ratio in any sort of detail to be able to give an opinion on it, but I do agree that a functioning ecosystem is important and efforts should be taken to maintain it. It's not, as many skeptics seem to want to pretend it is, that a city is 'bad' and undeveloped nature is 'good'. Lovelock simply argues that the two should be in balance. Civilization depends on ecosystem services valued much higher than the global GDP (Costanza 1997). It's in civilization's best interest to keep that valuable asset functioning.

And if Jim is going to perpetuate a false quote, he should at least attribute it to the right veep.

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/quayle.asp

Saying “nature always heals itself” if a belief. Perhaps you could hear that from “Gaia type greens”, the “idiot types” that live in a dream, believe in fairies and gnomes and would sign any petition that says ban this or ban that without even knowing what they are doing.

However, If you look at the “big picture” the Universe itself is still evolving, this would include our solar system and the planet on which we live.

Nature does have a way to “balance itself out”, nature is constantly changing and trying to reach equilibrium, it is always subject to reacting and sometimes in a pretty powerful manner.

The notion that ‘things will return to normal’ is vague, because there is such a thing as “returning to normal”, since “normal” is hard to define in reference to our planet, there will always be changes and reactions to changes whether the cause of these changes are of natural or anthropogenic origins. Besides AGW is only the tip of the iceberg, and unfortunately overpopulation is a cause of changes that impact on the planet's ressources. It is not fun to consider but it is part of the reality of the times in which we live.

Your question only addresses a Gaia belief system/religion.

However I maintain that there is a certain "dogma" within climate science community, where anyone that dares to question AGW is considered 'heretic'.

I think the idea to bring things back to pre-industrial times is more along the lines of the Gaia way of thinking. Sure, we'll probably never get there, but that doesn't mean we can't try to preserve what's left and help create more. Planting trees and flowers might not fix everything, but it can help. Also refraining from wasting items created from nature helps a little too.Nature will never go back to how it was unless humans eventually die out and nature replenishes. But, we can still try to help it grow so it's not destroyed altogether. And no, I'm not anti-human. I quite like living.

Ha ha, good one! As I said in my answer to the question that provoked this, AGW is in no way a Gaia-dependent theory. I guess the Gaia idea can be a useful paradigm, but I think that people should not take it too seriously. Perhaps it is the physicist in me, but all system responses are governed by physical laws and are in principle calculable. The Gaia Hypothesis can be a useful construct because the actual physical Earth system consists of many many inter-dependent pieces, and it allows a way to treat interrelationships without knowing the full details. But it should only be seen a model that is useful within its range of applicability.

The statement that

"Nature has a way to balance itself out; nature will always return to normal."

is kind of a vague statement of Le Chatelier's Principle, and applies to systems in stable equilibrium. However we may find that the original system was not in stable equilibrium, but in a metastable or neutral equilibrium (presumably it was not in an unstable equilibrium) and our new "normal" may not be anything like our old "normal."

The statement

"Nature will always heal itself"

is not true and anthropomorphizes nature. Physical processes may work which will eventually hide the evidence of a "scar," but nature is not "healing itself" and those processes may act on all manner of time scales, from seconds to eons.

"We need to protect and restore nature to a pre-human condition."

I think this is pretty much impossible and I can't imagine that anyone would want this except for a few (very very few) misguided extremists. We have our houses and our cities and I wouldn't want to get rid of them. On the other hand, I don't want them to take over the world, either. We must gain control of the Earth's population and do our best to confine mankind's effects to those places where we live in work, and not let them spread like disease to all the "wild" places of the world. I have little doubt that the Earth could hold perhaps 10 or 20 times its current population--I just don't want to live in a world like that.

Balance as in reaching an (equilibrium)?

That would depend on which branch of science you apply it to.

Thermodynamics is represented as a non equilibrium state,while Biology has the point of origin concept. You'll find all the disciplines using more then just one concept.

In your example I'd say ; The first is a based on a Gaia belief system. While the second seems more of a whimsical believe system.

Both are relative to time.

I had to look it up, I did see someone recently refer to this Gaia belief system as a religion.

With my limited knowledge of it, I would say Nature will always heal itself.

However, if we don't change our ways the way it will heal is by reducing the number of humans on it. I'm not saying the earth has an awareness and can create disasters to wipe out humans. I'm saying that by destroying ecosystems we are actively creating a planet that will not support human life at the numbers we now exist. We have already seen massive man made disasters, The Dust Bowl is a good example, it was fore warned, completely preventable and completely created at the hands of man, it killed of thousands of people and made huge areas of land uninhabitable.

I don't believe it is realistic or even possible to go back to a pre-human or even pre-industrial revolution society. However with our technology we can dramatically reduce our impact on the planet and reduce the amount of pollution we produce and habitat destruction.

I believe the GW deniers are brainwashed by the greedy corporations that need us to keep our head in the sand and continue to be consumers above all. With some blind faith that the world will continue to provide us with endless resource no matter how much damage we subject it to.

As a environmentalist I'm ok with being accused of having a Gaia belief system. Being raised a Christian I've been taught to have faith that no one but God can destroy the earth. However there are other passages in the Bible that say we should be good stewards of what God created and we will be punished if we destroy it.

I see this comparison to other religions used only to provide a little perspective. Usually it is meant as an insult, but sometimes it is a valid comparison. Warmers revere/worship Earth and denigrate mankind. Basic to their belief is the expendability of humans. They have a high priesthood and a dogma of carbon dioxide. The high priests sacrifice one another (resign from position as chief editor) for the good of the religion. They protect each other when attacked, and use circular logic to substantiate their claims.

Skeptics' mention that nature will balance out doesn't constitute a system of belief.

Neither is a valid choice: we can not return to the way things were before people, we have already had an over bearing effect on nature. Removal of trees, plowing grass lands, drying up swamps, building dams and buildings all effect the balance of nature. That is why plants and animals have vanished from the earth before man ever came on the seen. NO! Nature is for ever changing itself, this is why deserts grow Deno is gone, the woolly Monmouth gone, the cave bear, saber tooth tiger, and maxi-um shark are gone to name a few. Nature changed and they could not do so.

The world as we know it is changing with and with out us causing it. Nature dry-ed up the mid west states so all that is left is the great salt lake, nature caused the lands of south New Jersey to rise from the bay floor as did Delaware and Maryland. Nature changes things on its own and to believe we have an over all effect on it is foolish human pride. We ain't that all important to mother nature.

- Nature will always heal itself,

I do not believe this to be true regardless of the presence of humans or not. And it's probably less true as humans affect the environment more.

- We need to protect and restore nature to a pre-human condition.

I'm not sure what this means. The last ice age (when humans were around) probably changed nature quite a bit. Nature has changed since the birth of the Earth. It has evolved and adapted to things like continental drift.

I will agree that we need to seriously consider our environment as we build, expand and just live. When I go canoeing in the wonderful Canadian shield, we practice "zero-trace" camping. It just makes sense to leave things the way we found them for nature's sake and for the sake of others who will follow (and hopefully adhere to the same values).

Now when you talk about a Gaia belief system, you are headed into a different territory. This is where the phrase "protecting the environment" can mean vastly different things to different people. An example of one extreme is the recent passing of laws in Bolivia which give Mother Earth "rights". http://celdf.org/downloads/FINAL%20UNIVERSAL%20DEC...

In my mind, that is an example of an over the top religious Gaia belief system that I believe will cause undo harm. I feel for the people of Bolivia but we shall see. I cannot see how anything without the capacity for responsibility can be given any rights.

This is also an interesting read: http://green-agenda.com/gaia.html

Edit: As for Gaia belief and climate change, I have always assumed that when anyone who has a deep concern for mother nature hears of something that may harm her, they will simply follow any suggestion that might correct that (harm). It just so happens that coal has many negative connotations like strip mining and oil also has many as well like spills from tankers or on offshore oil rigs. Claiming that burning these fossil fuels creates more problems would be accepted basically without question since it fits right in to the belief system.

Edit2: I see you asked not to go to "getting rid of humans". I do however need to point out that Gaia as a concept of mother earth being a living being was conceived by James Lovelock. And one of his main contentions was that if humans (continue to) treat Gaia the way we are, "humans will be reduced to a few breeding pairs".

And this sort of thinking might just be connected to the birth of the global warming issue:

“The common enemy of humanity is man.

In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up

with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming,

water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these

dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through

changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome.

The real enemy then, is humanity itself."

- Club of Rome

By the way, Al Gore subscribes to that as well and Prince Charles and James Hansen and John Holdren and Paul Erlich and Maurice Strong so on.....

I would say that those who think humans are necessarily a force for bad are biased. Those people that think that everything bad that happens is due to humans have a non-scientific mindset.

Just because industry and humans emit CO2, there is very little evidence that those emissions have caused any significant warming or harm. Those that see a harm or significant warming are probably acting out of a belief system rather than a rational scientific thought process.

There have been plenty of alarmists that suggest the earth is alive and it will take revenge on humans. I agree that is nonsense. No one with any scientific knowledge would suggest that.

As Al Gore said....

“I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people.”

Oh wait that was the wrong quote