Just started reading James Lovelock’s The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning. Gaia refers to the Earth as a living organism, in that it has systems that react to changing conditions.

Lovelock, at 90 years old, is a renowned and independent climate scientist who believes the planet will take care of itself; our future on it is a different matter given the irreparable damage already inflicted.

He makes an analogy between climate and economics: neither follows a straight line pattern. Rather there are stops and starts. Simplistically: a few wet summers do not mean global warming has been arrested.