ABSTRACT
James E. Lovelock has continued to write about Gaia since the publication of his Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth in 1979. In his The Vanishing Face of Gaia he describes how from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s it was impossible to publish any paper on the subject in any mainstream journal. Since then, however, Lovelock's controversial hypothesis has influenced academics, scientists, politicians, and the general public for many years. Lovelock took critics' comments on board, and transformed his hypothesis into the more sophisticated, scientifically testable Gaia theory. In 1988, Lovelock published his second book, The Ages of Gaia—a more technical version of the first book. The Ages of Gaia laid out the main ideas more scientifically, explaining, for example, the critical role of ocean algae in climate regulation. In 1987, Lovelock and three collaborators, led by the American climate scientist Robert Charlson, published a paper on what they called the CLAW hypothesis.
