Im glad that such an old, old, old, old, ...old idea, shown many times over to hold at the phenomenological level [approach of the researchers boasting in the article], gets into the news once in a while. However, at the same time Im even more disappointed that the scientists/educators are unwilling to incorporate such easy framework into a narrative for the the public and ultimately for policy makers.

This has to do with 1) western philosophy of science, and 2) non-existence of a proper theoretical physics framework to turn this into science, which is due to the point 1). Not only such theoretical frame does not exists, it simply cannot be even conceptualized under the current ideology of man-centric universe of western "man". If you want a proof of this, one can observe how thoroughly we do not understand micro-biological processes sustaining higher life through climate/ocean/air/biosphere regulation, yet, everyone knows (in the west) without a shadow of the doubt that there is only a single variable (CO2) and we know with the same certainty we know that the solution is to return it to the pre-industrial level. That is the level of insanity nearly the entire western world subscribes to, and in its name we will most likely really destroy the biota that actually controls/enables higher life forms to exists in the first place.

This brings me to the crux of the issue as I see it. Due to the real but unperceived politico-cultural biases anything from the East is apriori rejected as having any value. For instance, there are several journals with cumulatively thousands of articles, and dozens of books coming from Russian (in English language) sciences (last century but even more today), South America, and India and (not so much Chinese with few exceptions) where theoretical foundations based on physics (not on the anthropocentric analogies or quasi-spiritual concepts as used in this article). Even the Gaia hypothesis (which does come from western thought) with its attempt to outline a framework falls very far from its target. But instead of picking up the valid fragments, is now ridiculed in science circles, and man-centric geo-ingeneering projects spring to thought while having no frameworks how to understand and evaluate the hierarchical impacts of such action on non-local-disequilibrium ecology.

What Im saying is NOT that there is a ready theoretical approach to be adopted as is (for that we have a long way to go), however, due diligence by western researchers should be done to cite/acknowledge and borrow physical theoretical concepts (and data that already exists) constructed/taken by thinkers of significantly higher ability of logical and physics thinking than themselves [this applies to the post-modern PhD programs turning up mathematically illiterate ecologists/political-activists]. Humanity desperately needs a solid physics-based framework of micro-biological regulation of material and energy fluxes enabling higher lifeforms to exists. Then, ecological actions would focus on living with (biota) rather than living on abiotic planet. In summary, I think western philosophy of science is still not mature enough, or maybe just stagnant with all of its historical baggage to really turn such an obvious phenomenology of mirco-biotic regulation of our planet into solid scientific knowledge, and ultimately into secular-physical concept for future civilization to thrive on.