Tag: biohydrology

Restoring Forest Cover and Ocean Health as the Frontline in the Climate Fight – an FAQ

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After my essay on September 5th on the need for a pan-ecological understanding of climate change and how to respond to it, I received a range of feedback and questions. “Does it change your anticipation of collapse,” was one question. Ahead of next week’s Metacrisis Meeting on this topic, in this blog I am sharing my provisional answers. An 800-word summary of my essay on the topic can be found below the following FAQ.

The renowned Professor Bill Rees, who popularised the concept of ecological footprint, welcomed the climate dogmas essay as follows:

“Most climate science sees climate as mainly a physical system with scant attention to  systems ecology… Your essay goes a step beyond, to see the climate as a biophysical phenomenon, as a product of the interactions among the physical drivers— atmospheric gases, the solar flux, etc. — and biological processes both marine and terrestrial.  I.e., it forces recognition that the climate system cannot be understood in isolation from the biosphere. To acknowledge and fully understand the role of the oceans (e.g., dimethyl sulfide), forest cover, soils production, evapotranspiration, etc. and their effects on atmospheric gases (hydrological cycle), albedo, heat balance , etc. would be a massive leap forward for climate science.  I suspect, as your article implies, it would go a long way toward revealing why (more or less in the words of top US climate scientist Gavin Schmidt) present climate models cannot explain what’s actually been happening for the past decade or so… I agree completely that what you are calling a ‘pan-ecological paradigm’ would “recognise that the pervasiveness and complexity of living systems” and that related bio-processes “are salient to any natural phenomena” including the climate systems.

As a sociologist and transdisciplinary research analyst, rather than a climatologist or ecologist, I am grateful for such feedback, and hope it encourages you to read the essay and look at the sources and references I link to from it. 

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The Dangers of Climate Dogma – and what we can do about it

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“We are already in a manmade climate emergency and it is probably not primarily due to CO2 in the atmosphere. That’s because the pace of change in our climate is what makes this an emergency, and that is largely due to a decline in the Earth’s reflectivity, primarily from a loss of cloud cover, which is due to a fall in cloud seeding, with strong evidence that is mainly from a degrading of forest cover and ocean health. Downplaying this ecological dimension to global heating due to a dogmatic allegiance to carbon-only explanations and targets, has become as bad a response as that from people who dismiss it all as a climate scam.”

How do you feel when you read these lines? Who would say such a thing? Could it be true? Please read on to explore why we can update our understanding of climate chaos and what to do about it…

Being curious despite our fear  

If you have been noticing the temperatures around the world over the last 2 years, then you will have felt some degree of shock and trepidation. Both on land and in the oceans, the thermometers have been going up faster than we were told to expect – and faster than the top scientists have been able to explain. We’re talking about present day measurements – so the facts of observation – not the latest theories about what might, or might not, occur. Living in a world that’s reached 1.5C degrees above pre-industrial averages, years before past predictions of worst case scenarios, is both scary and a challenge to the claimed expertise of mainstream climatology. Or so it should be. That does not need to be something to be feared and avoided. Instead, science is, by definition and methodology, an ongoing dialogue with nature, which requires an openness to unanticipated or anomalous data, which might lead to the ditching of old ideas, the testing of new hypotheses and even the transition into new paradigms. Unfortunately, that is not how all climate science is being practiced and communicated today. Instead, it has become a field plagued by dogma and tribalism, which results from multiple commercial and institutional interests. 

Continue reading “The Dangers of Climate Dogma – and what we can do about it” →