> I would love to be able to speak to Galileo to understand how he felt.<p>James Lovelock is very old, and Galileo Galilei lived a really long time ago. This made me wonder how far away the two actually are in time. Lovelock was born in 1919, and Galileo died in 1642. Thus if someone was born while Galileo was still alive, and lived to the age that Lovelock is now, they would have died in 1743. Once more, and we are at 1844; then again we get to 1945 --- at the beginning of Lovelock's career in science. Surprising to think that it's really only three long lifetimes that separate Lovelock from Galileo!
As much as I agree with Lovelock's sentiments about the environment, Gaia is more wishful thinking and certainly doesn't have its foundations in science. That is, the world does not tend towards stability. Ecosystems tend towards chaos and don't return a norm.
I'm impressed that for his 101th birthday he's just going to go for a walk and not spend a ton of money partying like he did for his 100th. I can't imagine doing either of these things at 100.
How old is the biosphere? 3.8B years? So it has 38M left?<p>Or 635M years, from the Ediacaran, so 6M left?<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran</a>