Williams: The broad science of climate change | Gaia | Scoop.it
In the 1970’s James Lovelock, a NASA planetary scientist, proposed and has since documented the theory of Gaia. The theory states that once Earth had produced dominant populations of prokaryotic organisms (Bacteria and Archaebacteria), those organisms through their metabolisms began to regulate atmospheric composition, ocean chemistry, mineral cycling and biological diversity. These processes are the nature of Gaia. This was initiated over 3.8 billion years ago.