Peter Ward is a paleontologist whose interests have led him into a variety of scientific fields ranging from astrobiology to the future of evolution on Earth. He writes primarily to publish information not available to the general public, and to introduce ideas that are not a part of general scientific education. I first encountered his works in the book End of Evolution, where suggests that humans are creating a mass extinction based on the rate of species destruction in compassion with mass extinctions in the past. He addresses several factors in the modern world that are mechanisms of extinction, such as pollution, habitat destruction, the development of habitat islands, and global warming, that are modifying the natural world and increasing the rate of species destruction far above that of the rate of species generation.
Admittedly, Ward has written a book about global warming, but I haven't read it and couldn't tell you what it says. The most attention I've seen him give to climate change is in The Life and Death of Planet Earth, which discusses several of the earth's systems (Carbon dioxide cycle, weathering, plate tectonics) as being crucial to the Earth's ability to sustain life. This is where the influence of paganism, if any, comes in. Apparently, in the 1970's and 1980's, a scientist named James Lovelock argued that, based on the impression that “the interplay of air, water, rock and organisms that create oxygen and store carbon resembles the biological system of the body.” This led him to rename the planet "Gaia". Lovelock's most developed comparison of the Earth to a living being is in comparing the planet to a tree, as "the tree is undoubtedly alive, yet 99 percent of it is dead... like the Earth, and more so when we realize that many of the atoms of the rocks far down into the magma were once part of the ancestral life of which we all have come."
Peter Ward is no big believer in this idea and quickly states that most scientists aren't either. He dismisses the idea immediately and scientifically, claiming that the Earth cannot be alive as it does not have metabolism and does not reproduce. Ward even designates a small section of his book, Life As We Do Not Know It, to dismantling the idea that the Earth or any planet is alive. He does, however, describe how Lovelock's theory has affected scientific analysis of the Earth's various systems and cycles, and introduces a scientific study called Earth System Science that partially originated from Lovelock's theory. This science deals primarily with research into the "'life support systems' that sustain atmospheric compositions and pressure, planetary temperature, and even surface land features that are quite different from those of a lifeless planet." So, yes, there are some ideas in the study of the Earth's various systems that can be traced to broad pagan philosophies, but few scientists buy the religion. Ward approaches the idea of the planet being alive metaphorically, comparing what will happen to life in the future as interdependent systems begin to fail with the death of a human- but he does it intelligently and consistently points out the boundary between living and non-living.
I think Ward's position is where most scientists stand on this issue. Thankfully, he almost never mentions religion in his books- it certainly doesn't belong there. In fact, the most moral principle I've read in his works is something like "species have been developed through millions of years of evolution and have consistently avoided extinction, do we have any right to kill them off?" Scientists are probably being unfairly identified with more vocal new age pundits. I've certainly read my share of global warming essays delving into pagan philosophies, but I think the scientific community knows that most any religious influence on their work makes for bad science.
