One of the surprising facts in the article is this:

>Global fire activity was lowest on record.

The author explain why this is true a few sentences later- the change is being

>driven primarily by the conversion of frequently burning savannas to agricultural areas.

I wonder if this is one of those "humans accidentally geoengineering a few more years of habitability into the planet" things, like the global chilling effect that our pollutants have when they're highly reflective of light. Only, in this case, by preventing fires we're keeping more carbon locked into plants. (This is obviously a gross simplification, but this could be a possibility, right?)