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...hippie days of the 1960s drew to a close, the British scientist James Lovelock began to formulate a fittingly hippie (yet still innovative) theory about the earth. He believed that the living and non-living parts of the earth form a single, self-regulating system. When some change occurs within the “system,” some other part of the system reacts to restore the original conditions. He called the theory the Gaia hypothesis, after Gaia, the Greek goddess of earth...
There is certainly some scientific truth to the hypothesis: The Earth does have some self-regulating properties. But is that the case for atmosphere-warming carbon dioxide? If the earth is self-regulating, the theory goes, then an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide should mean an increase in plant growth. Plants, after all, scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, so more plants should mean less carbon dioxide—thus countering the initial increase...
...main reason has to do with the Arctic and Antarctic. As polar climates warm enough for trees to move in, the color of that part of the earth will change, as viewed from above. Green trees, which absorb more light, will replace whiter snow and ice, which reflect more rays back to space. Like a dark-colored car hood on a hot day, a dark-colored earth will warm. The group’s computer modeling experiments show that the localized warming due to the change in the earth’s surface reflectivity (called its “albedo?...
...situation is a little different in the tropical regions. Tropical soils are much darker than polar snows, so replacing open land with trees makes little difference as to how much light the land reflects. In fact, planting trees in the tropics actually cools the earth. Warm-weather trees help to draw water out of the ground and into the atmosphere, creating clouds that reflect light and keep the atmosphere cool...
There’s a larger lesson here, however, than where not to plant trees: Optimism alone will not slow climate change. The Gaia hypothesis, taken to an extreme, implies that humans can sit back and watch the Earth warm, and eventually the earth will respond and restore itself. The view is characteristic of many individuals’ (and nations’) attitudes today. True, the earth will respond, but when it’s finished responding, it won’t look anything like the earth we have now. By now, you’ve probably heard the litany...