In an article published by Newsweek titled “Gaia Hypothesis: Humans Have Fundamentally Altered Earth’s Self-Regulation System,” quoted ESSIC / AOSC Professor Raghu Murtugudde. The article analyzes the Gaia Hypothesis, a theory developed in the 1970s that suggests that life on Earth is a result of a self-regulating system that has allowed habitable conditions to exist since life first emerged.
Some modern scientists have challenged the original hypothesis, believing instead that humankind’s self-awareness of their environmental impact has fundamentally changed the Earth’s self-regulating system. This is commonly referred to as Gaia 2.0.
Murtugudde brings a skeptical perspective to the article, stating that the new theorem assumes that humans have evolved out of a “purposeless nature” without distinguishing the limitations of this new nature or where it fits in with the rest of the universe.
Raghu Murtugudde is an ESSIC / AOSC scientist and professor as well as an affiliate professor for the Geology department at University of Maryland, College Park. He works primarily in climate studies, exploring the co-evolution of life and climate and what it means for sustainability. He also writes a blog hosted on the ESSIC website.
To read the article in full, click here: “Gaia Hypothesis: Humans Have Fundamentally Altered Earth’s Self-Regulation System”.
![Figure 3. Monthly TPW anomaly time series shown in red for ERA5 and blue for MiRS SNPP, 2012-2021. The straight lines are the linear regression fits. [a] is for global, [b] for Tropics, and [c] for mid-latitude regions, respectively.](https://essic.umd.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/grassotti-zhou-150x150.png)
