Warming equals greening: Gaia at work?

The BBC revealed statistics yesterday indicating the extraordinary fact that as CO2 levels have risen, the Earth has experienced a corresponding increase in the growth of trees and many other plants.
Biology 101: plants take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and through the process of photosynthesis give off oxygen as a "waste" product. Hence the description of the Brazilian rainforest as "the Earth's lungs", though I found out only the other day that simple algae actually produce more oxygen than the whole of Amazonia.

Don't get too excited, climate change sceptics. The effect will diminish over time, and the benefit will still be outweighed by the negatives in the medium to long term.

But it is encouraging news, and to me at least suggests that the "Gaia" principle is real. Gaia was one of the primordial Greek goddesses: the great Earth Mother. James Lovelock is responsible for re-introducing this ancient concept in 1979, in his Gaia Hypothesis. He suggested, if I may summarise, that the Earth, the biosphere, is a living, breathing entity capable of self regulation and compensating for changes in its environment.

Some say the last Ice Age ended when a crop of dark coloured flowers began to grow on the tundra, absorbing heat instead of the ice fields which simply reflected it back into space. Some might cry coincidence, but to me these latest findings show that Gaia is alive and well. But beware, even Gaia has her limits, and while we continue to pump 40 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year these compensating mechanisms simply won't be enough. Since the Kyoto protocol was agreed by most countries (though unfortunately not the principal offenders, China and the US) this figure has increased by 60%- and that isn't sustainable, despite the best efforts of Mother Gaia.