Excellent article. I agree with you that a healthy forest can be more resilient than is usually thought. In the area where I live, in the southeast of Spain, the climate is semi-arid. For most phitosociological studies, the potential vegetation of this area must be similar to the current one, made up of xerophytic shrublands. However, medieval historical texts speak of leafy forests (mainly pines and oaks) with a climate similar to that of our time. And when traveling through these landscapes you can find scattered stands that seem to be survivors of a more forest-like past. I believe that the forest has the capacity to grow where a scattered tree would not grow.
Thank you for this comment. It is very true that "the forest has the capacity to grow where a scattered tree would not grow".
What I also want to highlight is that an unexploited forest has the capacity to grow where exploited forest would perish. This is very practical: if we just lessened the pressure on extant natural forests, they would cope with global warming much better. Maybe even not noticing it at all.
Excellent encapsulation of your thinking. And I agree we need new language to conceptualize these things. Terms that come to minds are biotic intelligence, biotic capacity and biotic integrity. The last phrase, biotic integrity, seems increasingly important. Integrity gets beneath the quantitative, referring more to the quality of an ecosystem. Rather than "good" being based on quantities of carbon, species or some other variable, it refers to how well the ecosystem retains its natural function and memory.
There seems an ingrained tendency in science to dismiss the intelligence and capability of natural beings and systems, and now the climate threat is being used to argue for more human intervention in forests, arguing that natural forests are somehow incapable of coping with changes in the climate, despite having survived massive climate fluctuations across hundreds of millions of years, and need "proactive management."
Thanks for championing biotic regulation. My this be the year it gains the recognition it deserves.
Thank you for this post. In thinking about the need for changes in mental models and language, I really wish I could use the word “nature” and know that my audience felt themselves “a part of” rather than “outside of”. Sigh
I think that we need to somehow go around the fact that most people are not (and will never be) tuned to nature and they cannot be blamed for that. That is why I would invest in the rational approach. Nature is necessary for the well-being, it does the right thing that we cannot do ourselves.
Thank you, Rob. The good news is that unlike fossil fuel burning, most activities that currently destroy the remaining forests do not make a crucial contribution to the planetary economy. E.g., if we stop chopping down forests for pellets, we won't ruin the economy. So it is economically feasible just to prohibit certain activities. It is a matter of understanding and determination.
this is a major point of conflict in Australia and I expect in many other parts of the world, the need to continue the indigenous practice of cultural burning for the stability of the ecosystem that has resulted from it over the past 65000 years. I would term this a disturbed landscape with remanent pockets of natural ecosystem but our scientists see this as a natural ecosystem in its own right. There is evidence of sedimentary charcoal deposits around 40 000+ years ago around the same time the biotic pump that bought monsoonal rains deep into the interior started to break down ( seen by fresh water mussels deposits along inland water ways). This land mass is now nearly a year long heat dome with much warmth radiating out from the center effecting all ecosystems both land and sea , with little respite from our fire / flood cycle of slow ecosystem collapse which is only made worse by continued land clearing . When Europeans first laid eyes on Tasmania they described the landscape as savanna like where normally there would be temperate rainforest which shows the degree of change. Having clarity of what would be termed a stable natural ecosystem may provide direction toward solving our situation. Many thanks for your work.
Regarding your note that "There is evidence of sedimentary charcoal deposits around 40 000+ years ago around the same time the biotic pump that bought monsoonal rains deep into the interior started to break down ( seen by fresh water mussels deposits along inland water ways)."
In our first publication on the biotic pump we pondered as follows:
"In Australia, the continent-scale forested river basins ceased to exist about 50–100 thousand years ago, a time period approximately coinciding with the arrival of first humans. There is a host of indirect evidence suggesting that humans are responsible for the ancient deforestation of the Australian continent (see discussion in Bowman, 2002). It is clear how this could have happened. To deforest the continent, it was enough to destroy forests on a narrow band of width l along the continent’s perimeter. This could be easily done by the first human settlements in the course of their household activities or due to the human-induced fires. This done, the biotic water pump of the inner undisturbed forested part of the continent was cut off from the ocean and stalled. Rapid runoff and evaporation eliminated the stores of soil moisture and the inland forests perished by themselves even in the absence of intense anthropogenic activities or fires in the inner parts of the continent. As estimated above, this forest-to-desert transition should have been instantaneous on the geological time scale, so it is not surprising that practically no paleodata were left to tell more details about this ecological catastrophe."
The notion of a fire-related "landscape trap" (a dry state with relatively low productivity) was elaborated by an Australian scientist, prof. Lindenmayer. Basically prescribed burning is what can have been keeping the continent in this trap.
I know from my American colleagues, in particular Michael Kellett from RESTORE: The North Woods (https://www.restore.org/our-team-1 ) that the same conceptual problem (excusing prescribed burning by a reference to indigenous practices) exists in the US. There are ways to go around it, one of which is to show that these practices were not as widespread as we are led to believe. You might find these materials of interest
Thought I would repost this climate impact for those inquiring educators drawn here.
I will preface this remark by stating I have been at various times in my long career an educator and instructor in Environmental Science. I also was a presenter with Dr. William W Kellogg back when it was pushed forward by the technocrats at the Aspen Institute as The Greenhouse Effect. I was, based on the data available at the time, a signatory to the Scientists Call for a Climate Emergency. I have since then had my name removed when I realized this maybe a concern but hardly an emergency.
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That said, what I post below is to me, living in the high New Mexico desert, an emergency. I don't say that lightly having been a water reservoir study project manager in my state, a natural resources inventory creator for part of our states water plan, and helping to stop fracking proposals in our geologically complex middle Rio Grande acquifer.
----------------
Comment feedback SAV
New World Encyclopedia 12/12/2024
This is in serious need of a critical update. The Chinese government since 2014 has known about the discovery that the dust from the Taklamakhan is a critical component to western USA rainfall events.
The continuation of desert reclamation in this area by China is a threat to the national security of the USA in terms of sustainability of human settlements hydropower, irrigation and biodiversity..It further is in general violation of a number of the Stockholm Declaration Principles.
Going on since 1978. (a time period the U.S. Senate was considering an international treaty to address environmental impact review of major technological' industrial changes) The Taklamakhan shelter belt work continues to 2050. Good from China's technocratic POV but a full on catastrophe in the making for the western USA. by SAV. Geography minor UCONN.
Thank you for this interesting perspective on the Taklamakan dust. The statement that it is a critical component to western USA precipitation was new to me so I had to do some reading before responding. Precipitation is an exceptionally complex multiscale process so my initial guess was that this influence of dust could be overstated.
Having looked up some more recent studies from the same authors (your very interesting publication about dust detectives is from ~2014), it appears that nobody could actually quantify that the desert dust plays a major role in the US rainfall.
In particular, according to Voss et al. 2020 https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0059.1 see their Fig. 11, the dust maximum and the maximum of atmospheric rivers (that bring rain) are almost in an antiphase -- most dust arrives when the atmospheric rivers are few. Furthermore, the researchers point out that "the question ‘‘To what extent do each of the major source regions (e.g.Africa, East Asia, Middle East) contribute to dust in the vicinity of ARs?’’ remains unanswered but could be addressed through additional in situ observations and/or modeling studies."
There are many local factors significantly altering rainfall formation, like industrial pollution and the decimation of the land cover.
Most of what we have seen as critical biological areas we have already set aside...national and state parks, wildlife refuges, national estuaries, national conservation zones, national forests, national grasslands, national seashores, national wild and scenic rivers, national marine sanctuaries, etc.
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I did see your comment regarding the K-feldspar. Prather did identify this critical cloud seeding nuclei and the critical period which it arrives in the west. My hypothesis is that China's attempt at desert reclamation in the Taklamakhan is not good for us by reducing the wind speeds, dust uptake and transport. I have been contacting research institutes now to see if there can be substantiation as to just how much.
Private lands like Plum Creek are not federal..the fact that their state private forest area review process was lax doesn't translate to the federal lands in Montana.
National Forests have major environmental review proceses for timber extraction and so does the Bureau of Land Management. Many National Forest areas have shifted away from the large clearcuts of the 1970's to smaller and less subject to wind throw patch cutting. I was a professional forester during part of my long career and I can tell you that in New Mexico for one example, major timber harvesting is no longer done..
What a delight! As the world degrades, young people see 'normal' as what they were born into. That means it is hard to understand how the world was long, long ago. You make such a wonderful and clear case for the value of old growth forests for those of us who never knew them!!!
Here lies a perfect example of human impacts disturbing the natural hydrological cycles-the 24x7 motion of great rivers once supported the principles of biotic regulation but for a significant number of them here, it is currently impossible:
Our Planet: Person or Living Entity?
Lately it’s fashionable to think of this planet we share as having Environmental Personhood and afforded status equal to a living person and entitled to Environmental Justice.
It’s time to consider our Earth as a living, breathing being possessing systems that keep it running smoothly and in good health. We now have to face the fact that the temperature of the planet is increasing. and as in other living beings this signals that something is happening out of the “normal functioning range”.
Scientists and 75% of the population call this climate change.
We can also say the earth has a fever, and its not going down.
When we humans have a prolonged fever we see a doctor. We test our fluids, our breathing, our blood pressure and our blood for toxic and nutritional levels.
Our cardiovascular system - heart, arteries, veins and capillaries - supply us with nutrients, circulate oxygen from our lungs, and cleanse our kidneys and liver. In short, this system keeps us alive.
Earth, as a living, breathing being, has a similar cardiovascular system,( biotic pump), in play - And this system is not functioning within “normal range”.
In the Earth’s cardiovascular system, we can think of the oceans and atmosphere as its heart and lungs, large rivers its arteries, smaller rivers and streams, wetlands and bogs its veins and capillaries sending nutrients to its extremities.
Terrestrial ecosystem provide sustenance: nutrition, oxygen, and a home to living beings. Land is connected to the waterways providing food and life to aquatic species that travel, breed and participate in the lifecycle of the Earth. and those avenues of support are severely clogged, (similar to cardiovascular disease in humans) by large hydroelectric dams: mega-dams.
Mega-dams are creating clots in the world’s circulatory system, not only retaining water for electricity generation, But prohibiting passage of the nutrients which the marine ecosystem needs to live and thrive.
The damming of rivers is one of mankind’s most significant modifications to the worlds cardiovascular system impacting the flow of water and associated materials from land to sea. Included in these nutrients are nutritional elements like nitrogen and phosphorus, required by all life on Earth, and silicon, which is required by diatoms, the plankton that account for the largest percentage of biological productivity in the oceans.
Diatoms in the oceans sequester more Co2 than all the rainforests of the planet
Prior to the mid 20th century many of the larger rivers had been functioning normally. Rivers have always been the main nutritional delivery system for the smallest microscopic living things in the oceans: diatoms (plankton), which feed the largest of marine mammals the Blue Whale.
The estuaries, bays, and Continental Shelf flood each spring and during stormy periods, feeding the earth with rich nutritional sediments from erosion. Through the late 1950s into the 1980s many of the major rivers and waterways that emptied into the Northern Hemisphere oceans had large dams constructed that obstructed the natural flows containing much of the nutritional requirements of marine life.
Dams and flow regulation on rivers weaken the force of these upwelling ocean currents so fewer nutrients are available. The marine food chain is very dependent on diatoms, and their populations are declining rapidly; the world’s ocean fisheries are also in decline. 1.
Many other species, also important for carbon sequestration, are starving because of the nutrients withheld by river impoundments. NASA has indicated diatom populations are diminishing by about one percent per year. This equates to a significant increase in CO2 levels, because CO2 removal by diatoms is not occurring at the same rate before dams.
River obstruction and impoundment cuts off much of the nutrient flow to all marine life, stockpiling it behind dams, decomposing (emitting methane) and accelerating global warming. Clearly out of the historical normal range, the planet’s coronary arteries are now severely compromised.
Like cardiovascular disease in humans, deprivation of this ‘blood supply’ results in the starvation of aquatic life and with it the decline of livable terrestrial habitat.
Unfortunately the earth does not have a primary care physician who would recommend surgery to remove these blockages, freeing up the blood supply allowing the patient to recover.
It is up to us, the tenants, to take the helm and choose not to invest in damming up its cardiovascular system. We need to live with, not on, the earth and allow it to recover from our antiquated energy generation practices, which are doing what may be irreparable harm.
Divest from mega-dams. Remove the blockages that are continuing to damage our climate by preventing nutritional flow, thawing the permafrost and destroying habitats for all living things, land and sea.
Let’s allow the Earth to heal itself by freeing up the natural flow of river waters.
Let the rivers run free again.
1. Maavara, T., Akbarzadeh, Z.,& Van Cappellen, P. (2020). Global dam‐driven changes to riverine N:P:Si ratios delivered to the coastal ocean. Geophysical Research Letters, 47, e2020GL088288.
Your article demonstrates the conundrum in which we spin. Even as you advocate for leaving functioning ecosystems alone, as they are self-regulating, you propose that we take active steps to 'help,' which feels like we're back to us 'saving the planet.'
Mother Earth is on the case, and if any of us manage to survive the inevitable cataclysms 'soon' to come - collapse of industrial civilization, extreme climate catastrophes, etc. - they will 'remember' what we knew for countless millennia, before the scourge of 'civilization' drowned our ancient wisdom in an ocean of crap, including 'modern Science.'
The ecosystems are self-regulating when we do not disturb them. "Help" means to stop disturbing them. I think that it is quite logical, no conundrum here in my view.
But you mention an interesting problem of what the next generations will "remember" after the collapse. If the collapse happens tomorrow, they will probably remember that it was due to high CO2. That will not make their lives better.
It is important to establish the knowledge that biosphere has the capacity of maintaining planetary homeostasis. If we encode this knowledge in scientific language well enough, it has a chance to be remembered, together with the laws of gravity and electromagnetism. And this scientific knowledge can be very useful.
I just read an interesting, and convincing, article that argues the 'root' of our problems stem from our disruption of the water cycle, which has led to, among other things, the emissions problem.
As for the remembering. When industrial civilization collapses because many non-replenishable resources on which it depends will 'soon' be too depleted for it to continue, the few of us who survive the violent chaos that will accompany that collapse won't have any of the technology that 'modern science' has created. We will be left to bring ourselves back in line with the primal instincts that allowed us to be successful before the Dawn of Civilization. Mother Earth doesn't give a rat's ass whether we 'remember' or not, and she and her Laws of Nature are in charge, not us.
YES, “we need to protect natural self-sustaining ecosystems in an area sufficient for them to perform their climate-regulating function on a regional and global scale.”
Long ago, “sober geographers” understood ecosystem functioning and how land regulates the climate. George Perkins Marsh, former American Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, wrote in his book Man and Nature (1864):
The most sanguine believer in indefinite human progress hardly expects that man's cunning will accomplish the universal fulfillment of the prophecy, "the desert shall blossom as the rose," in its literal sense; but sober geographers have thought the future conversion of the sand plains of Northern Africa into fruitful gardens, by means of artesian wells, not an improbable expectation. They have gone farther, and argued that, if the soil were covered with fields and forests, vegetation would call down moisture from the Libyan sky, and that the showers which are now wasted on the sea, or so often deluge Southern Europe with destructive inundation, would in part be condensed over the arid wastes of Africa, and thus, without further aid from man, bestow abundance on regions which nature seems to have condemned to perpetual desolation. [Man and Nature, 1864, pg 446]
During Reconstruction following the Civil War, there was much timbering of forests. Marsh explained that if New York continued cutting down forests, there would be insufficient water in the Erie Canal for barge traffic to continue, and New York’s burgeoning economy would collapse. The state bought and protected nearly 10,000 square miles of Adirondack forest, and barge traffic continued moving down the canal. The land barons, however, were furious over their loss of land and revenue.
When Dick Cheney was Vice President, he employed scientists to publish papers in the esteemed journals to call global warming climate change. Everybody had an opinion in such an important question, and what property owners were doing to the land was no longer a concern, unless endangered species habitat was involved.
America has gone from an increasingly environmentally literate nation to environmental stupidity. Once everyone knew that pond ice melts first along the shore, the most likely place to break through the ice was near the edge. The ice in the middle of the lake is the last to melt.
NASA released a video of Arctic Ocean Sea Ice melting last summer. As expected, the video frames the ice melt as beginning in the Arctic Ocean, not against the land but where it meets the Atlantic Ocean. The ice melts in a counterclockwise motion around the edge and becomes cluttered with icebergs at the North Pole. Meanwhile, unlike a pond thawing in the spring, the ice stays thickest along Canada and Greenland’s shores. It melts this way because of warm water from the Atlantic. The Earth turns to the East, and in the Northern Hemisphere, flowing water will always turn right, the Coriolis Effect. https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5382/
Everyone is focused on achieving net zero carbon emissions while blind or stupid to the loss of vegetation and soil. This causes destructive increases in stormwater that strengthen the Gulf Stream, as experienced in Svalbard, where glaciers started to retreat in 2007. We all suffer because property owners do not want to be told how to steward their land with more vegetation and soil.
Thank you very much, Rob, for this very interesting citation from Man and Nature. I know of a related and somewhat complementary quote from Friedrich Engels:
"Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first. The people who, in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor and elsewhere, destroyed the forests to obtain cultivable land, never dreamed that by removing along with the forests the collecting centres and reservoirs of moisture they were laying the basis for the present forlorn state of those countries. When the Italians of the Alps used up the pine forests on the southern slopes, so carefully cherished on the northern slopes, they had no inkling that by doing so they were cutting at the roots of the dairy industry in their region; they had still less inkling that they were thereby depriving their mountain springs of water for the greater part of the year, and making it possible for them to pour still more furious torrents on the plains during the rainy seasons. Those who spread the potato in Europe were not aware that with these farinaceous tubers they were at the same time spreading scrofula. Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature—but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly." [Part Played by Labour in Transition from Ape to Man, ~1876]
What I am struck by in the comments of both Marsh and Engels, is how well land degradation was understood as a function of climate change, at least locally and regionally. It seems, a fundamental aspect of human understanding has vanished. Further, it seems this disappearance coincides with the rise of the carbon narrative.
Rob, I'm interested in why Dick Cheney wanted to shift the terminology from "global warming" to climate change. What do you think was his motivation? I've long wondered whether there was, in the early formulation of the scientific consensus around CO2, an attempt to diminish the role of land degradation, so as to keep it more open to development. As Cheney would say, "We got to get at the resource."
Precisely stated earth has no interest in life or higher intelligence /. It’s a happenstance that began by a unique set of circumstances , not common which we have ignored. I see no reason we have to multiply and flourish , rather it’s a case of cohabitation in a wonderful place as it lasts / given it will end . The idea we control our future is futile in the large context.
Far better to enjoy the simple joys of life . That joy is the ability to know and understand , nothing more .
CO2 has no effect on climate. We have no effect on climate. We could do with over 3 times the current CO2 level to match plants (our) needs but we have no effect on it. It mimics the Global temperature graph after an 800 year lag.
Environmentalism is vital but it has been hijacked 100% by the climate hoax money and influencers.
Granting you the possibility of being where many of us were 5 years ago, i would urge you to look at Professor Happer’s detailed debunking of the utterly ridiculous ‘climate emergency’ hoax.
Even Dr Coleman is becoming clear on the interconnectedness of the control strategies
Excellent article. I agree with you that a healthy forest can be more resilient than is usually thought. In the area where I live, in the southeast of Spain, the climate is semi-arid. For most phitosociological studies, the potential vegetation of this area must be similar to the current one, made up of xerophytic shrublands. However, medieval historical texts speak of leafy forests (mainly pines and oaks) with a climate similar to that of our time. And when traveling through these landscapes you can find scattered stands that seem to be survivors of a more forest-like past. I believe that the forest has the capacity to grow where a scattered tree would not grow.
Thank you for this comment. It is very true that "the forest has the capacity to grow where a scattered tree would not grow".
What I also want to highlight is that an unexploited forest has the capacity to grow where exploited forest would perish. This is very practical: if we just lessened the pressure on extant natural forests, they would cope with global warming much better. Maybe even not noticing it at all.
But heavily exploited forests won't cope.
Absolutely, and thank you for explaining this so nicely.
Thank You, Anastassia. Happy New Year.
I will include this in my next blog post.
Excellent encapsulation of your thinking. And I agree we need new language to conceptualize these things. Terms that come to minds are biotic intelligence, biotic capacity and biotic integrity. The last phrase, biotic integrity, seems increasingly important. Integrity gets beneath the quantitative, referring more to the quality of an ecosystem. Rather than "good" being based on quantities of carbon, species or some other variable, it refers to how well the ecosystem retains its natural function and memory.
There seems an ingrained tendency in science to dismiss the intelligence and capability of natural beings and systems, and now the climate threat is being used to argue for more human intervention in forests, arguing that natural forests are somehow incapable of coping with changes in the climate, despite having survived massive climate fluctuations across hundreds of millions of years, and need "proactive management."
Thanks for championing biotic regulation. My this be the year it gains the recognition it deserves.
Thank you for this post. In thinking about the need for changes in mental models and language, I really wish I could use the word “nature” and know that my audience felt themselves “a part of” rather than “outside of”. Sigh
I think that we need to somehow go around the fact that most people are not (and will never be) tuned to nature and they cannot be blamed for that. That is why I would invest in the rational approach. Nature is necessary for the well-being, it does the right thing that we cannot do ourselves.
Thank you, Rob. The good news is that unlike fossil fuel burning, most activities that currently destroy the remaining forests do not make a crucial contribution to the planetary economy. E.g., if we stop chopping down forests for pellets, we won't ruin the economy. So it is economically feasible just to prohibit certain activities. It is a matter of understanding and determination.
this is a major point of conflict in Australia and I expect in many other parts of the world, the need to continue the indigenous practice of cultural burning for the stability of the ecosystem that has resulted from it over the past 65000 years. I would term this a disturbed landscape with remanent pockets of natural ecosystem but our scientists see this as a natural ecosystem in its own right. There is evidence of sedimentary charcoal deposits around 40 000+ years ago around the same time the biotic pump that bought monsoonal rains deep into the interior started to break down ( seen by fresh water mussels deposits along inland water ways). This land mass is now nearly a year long heat dome with much warmth radiating out from the center effecting all ecosystems both land and sea , with little respite from our fire / flood cycle of slow ecosystem collapse which is only made worse by continued land clearing . When Europeans first laid eyes on Tasmania they described the landscape as savanna like where normally there would be temperate rainforest which shows the degree of change. Having clarity of what would be termed a stable natural ecosystem may provide direction toward solving our situation. Many thanks for your work.
Regarding your note that "There is evidence of sedimentary charcoal deposits around 40 000+ years ago around the same time the biotic pump that bought monsoonal rains deep into the interior started to break down ( seen by fresh water mussels deposits along inland water ways)."
In our first publication on the biotic pump we pondered as follows:
"In Australia, the continent-scale forested river basins ceased to exist about 50–100 thousand years ago, a time period approximately coinciding with the arrival of first humans. There is a host of indirect evidence suggesting that humans are responsible for the ancient deforestation of the Australian continent (see discussion in Bowman, 2002). It is clear how this could have happened. To deforest the continent, it was enough to destroy forests on a narrow band of width l along the continent’s perimeter. This could be easily done by the first human settlements in the course of their household activities or due to the human-induced fires. This done, the biotic water pump of the inner undisturbed forested part of the continent was cut off from the ocean and stalled. Rapid runoff and evaporation eliminated the stores of soil moisture and the inland forests perished by themselves even in the absence of intense anthropogenic activities or fires in the inner parts of the continent. As estimated above, this forest-to-desert transition should have been instantaneous on the geological time scale, so it is not surprising that practically no paleodata were left to tell more details about this ecological catastrophe."
The notion of a fire-related "landscape trap" (a dry state with relatively low productivity) was elaborated by an Australian scientist, prof. Lindenmayer. Basically prescribed burning is what can have been keeping the continent in this trap.
I know from my American colleagues, in particular Michael Kellett from RESTORE: The North Woods (https://www.restore.org/our-team-1 ) that the same conceptual problem (excusing prescribed burning by a reference to indigenous practices) exists in the US. There are ways to go around it, one of which is to show that these practices were not as widespread as we are led to believe. You might find these materials of interest
https://www.thewildlifenews.com/2023/07/25/tribal-burning-and-fire-suppression/
https://www.thewildlifenews.com/2022/02/25/native-american-burning-and-parks-and-wilderness-conservation/
Great article, thank-you!
Thought I would repost this climate impact for those inquiring educators drawn here.
I will preface this remark by stating I have been at various times in my long career an educator and instructor in Environmental Science. I also was a presenter with Dr. William W Kellogg back when it was pushed forward by the technocrats at the Aspen Institute as The Greenhouse Effect. I was, based on the data available at the time, a signatory to the Scientists Call for a Climate Emergency. I have since then had my name removed when I realized this maybe a concern but hardly an emergency.
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That said, what I post below is to me, living in the high New Mexico desert, an emergency. I don't say that lightly having been a water reservoir study project manager in my state, a natural resources inventory creator for part of our states water plan, and helping to stop fracking proposals in our geologically complex middle Rio Grande acquifer.
----------------
Comment feedback SAV
New World Encyclopedia 12/12/2024
This is in serious need of a critical update. The Chinese government since 2014 has known about the discovery that the dust from the Taklamakhan is a critical component to western USA rainfall events.
The continuation of desert reclamation in this area by China is a threat to the national security of the USA in terms of sustainability of human settlements hydropower, irrigation and biodiversity..It further is in general violation of a number of the Stockholm Declaration Principles.
https://www.hcn.org/issues/46-22/the-dust-detectives/
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Addendum
Going on since 1978. (a time period the U.S. Senate was considering an international treaty to address environmental impact review of major technological' industrial changes) The Taklamakhan shelter belt work continues to 2050. Good from China's technocratic POV but a full on catastrophe in the making for the western USA. by SAV. Geography minor UCONN.
https://www.indiatoday.in/environment/story/china-is-turning-its-largest-desert-into-a-forest-heres-how-2641694-2024-11-28
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Thank you for this interesting perspective on the Taklamakan dust. The statement that it is a critical component to western USA precipitation was new to me so I had to do some reading before responding. Precipitation is an exceptionally complex multiscale process so my initial guess was that this influence of dust could be overstated.
Having looked up some more recent studies from the same authors (your very interesting publication about dust detectives is from ~2014), it appears that nobody could actually quantify that the desert dust plays a major role in the US rainfall.
In particular, according to Voss et al. 2020 https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0059.1 see their Fig. 11, the dust maximum and the maximum of atmospheric rivers (that bring rain) are almost in an antiphase -- most dust arrives when the atmospheric rivers are few. Furthermore, the researchers point out that "the question ‘‘To what extent do each of the major source regions (e.g.Africa, East Asia, Middle East) contribute to dust in the vicinity of ARs?’’ remains unanswered but could be addressed through additional in situ observations and/or modeling studies."
There are many local factors significantly altering rainfall formation, like industrial pollution and the decimation of the land cover.
Question, would the rainfall impact of dust be mitigated by the bioarisols of forests?
Most of what we have seen as critical biological areas we have already set aside...national and state parks, wildlife refuges, national estuaries, national conservation zones, national forests, national grasslands, national seashores, national wild and scenic rivers, national marine sanctuaries, etc.
----
I did see your comment regarding the K-feldspar. Prather did identify this critical cloud seeding nuclei and the critical period which it arrives in the west. My hypothesis is that China's attempt at desert reclamation in the Taklamakhan is not good for us by reducing the wind speeds, dust uptake and transport. I have been contacting research institutes now to see if there can be substantiation as to just how much.
https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/9/8545/2009/
I am not sure whether by setting aside you mean protecting, but national forests are heavily logged, and that's a big problem. I highly recommend this piece https://dailymontanan.com/2024/11/29/the-welcome-demise-of-the-conservation-collaboration-fraud/
Private lands like Plum Creek are not federal..the fact that their state private forest area review process was lax doesn't translate to the federal lands in Montana.
National Forests have major environmental review proceses for timber extraction and so does the Bureau of Land Management. Many National Forest areas have shifted away from the large clearcuts of the 1970's to smaller and less subject to wind throw patch cutting. I was a professional forester during part of my long career and I can tell you that in New Mexico for one example, major timber harvesting is no longer done..
What a delight! As the world degrades, young people see 'normal' as what they were born into. That means it is hard to understand how the world was long, long ago. You make such a wonderful and clear case for the value of old growth forests for those of us who never knew them!!!
Here lies a perfect example of human impacts disturbing the natural hydrological cycles-the 24x7 motion of great rivers once supported the principles of biotic regulation but for a significant number of them here, it is currently impossible:
Our Planet: Person or Living Entity?
Lately it’s fashionable to think of this planet we share as having Environmental Personhood and afforded status equal to a living person and entitled to Environmental Justice.
It’s time to consider our Earth as a living, breathing being possessing systems that keep it running smoothly and in good health. We now have to face the fact that the temperature of the planet is increasing. and as in other living beings this signals that something is happening out of the “normal functioning range”.
Scientists and 75% of the population call this climate change.
We can also say the earth has a fever, and its not going down.
When we humans have a prolonged fever we see a doctor. We test our fluids, our breathing, our blood pressure and our blood for toxic and nutritional levels.
Our cardiovascular system - heart, arteries, veins and capillaries - supply us with nutrients, circulate oxygen from our lungs, and cleanse our kidneys and liver. In short, this system keeps us alive.
Earth, as a living, breathing being, has a similar cardiovascular system,( biotic pump), in play - And this system is not functioning within “normal range”.
In the Earth’s cardiovascular system, we can think of the oceans and atmosphere as its heart and lungs, large rivers its arteries, smaller rivers and streams, wetlands and bogs its veins and capillaries sending nutrients to its extremities.
Terrestrial ecosystem provide sustenance: nutrition, oxygen, and a home to living beings. Land is connected to the waterways providing food and life to aquatic species that travel, breed and participate in the lifecycle of the Earth. and those avenues of support are severely clogged, (similar to cardiovascular disease in humans) by large hydroelectric dams: mega-dams.
Mega-dams are creating clots in the world’s circulatory system, not only retaining water for electricity generation, But prohibiting passage of the nutrients which the marine ecosystem needs to live and thrive.
The damming of rivers is one of mankind’s most significant modifications to the worlds cardiovascular system impacting the flow of water and associated materials from land to sea. Included in these nutrients are nutritional elements like nitrogen and phosphorus, required by all life on Earth, and silicon, which is required by diatoms, the plankton that account for the largest percentage of biological productivity in the oceans.
Diatoms in the oceans sequester more Co2 than all the rainforests of the planet
Prior to the mid 20th century many of the larger rivers had been functioning normally. Rivers have always been the main nutritional delivery system for the smallest microscopic living things in the oceans: diatoms (plankton), which feed the largest of marine mammals the Blue Whale.
The estuaries, bays, and Continental Shelf flood each spring and during stormy periods, feeding the earth with rich nutritional sediments from erosion. Through the late 1950s into the 1980s many of the major rivers and waterways that emptied into the Northern Hemisphere oceans had large dams constructed that obstructed the natural flows containing much of the nutritional requirements of marine life.
Dams and flow regulation on rivers weaken the force of these upwelling ocean currents so fewer nutrients are available. The marine food chain is very dependent on diatoms, and their populations are declining rapidly; the world’s ocean fisheries are also in decline. 1.
Many other species, also important for carbon sequestration, are starving because of the nutrients withheld by river impoundments. NASA has indicated diatom populations are diminishing by about one percent per year. This equates to a significant increase in CO2 levels, because CO2 removal by diatoms is not occurring at the same rate before dams.
River obstruction and impoundment cuts off much of the nutrient flow to all marine life, stockpiling it behind dams, decomposing (emitting methane) and accelerating global warming. Clearly out of the historical normal range, the planet’s coronary arteries are now severely compromised.
Like cardiovascular disease in humans, deprivation of this ‘blood supply’ results in the starvation of aquatic life and with it the decline of livable terrestrial habitat.
Unfortunately the earth does not have a primary care physician who would recommend surgery to remove these blockages, freeing up the blood supply allowing the patient to recover.
It is up to us, the tenants, to take the helm and choose not to invest in damming up its cardiovascular system. We need to live with, not on, the earth and allow it to recover from our antiquated energy generation practices, which are doing what may be irreparable harm.
Divest from mega-dams. Remove the blockages that are continuing to damage our climate by preventing nutritional flow, thawing the permafrost and destroying habitats for all living things, land and sea.
Let’s allow the Earth to heal itself by freeing up the natural flow of river waters.
Let the rivers run free again.
1. Maavara, T., Akbarzadeh, Z.,& Van Cappellen, P. (2020). Global dam‐driven changes to riverine N:P:Si ratios delivered to the coastal ocean. Geophysical Research Letters, 47, e2020GL088288.
https://doi.org/ 10.1029/2020GL088288
Your article demonstrates the conundrum in which we spin. Even as you advocate for leaving functioning ecosystems alone, as they are self-regulating, you propose that we take active steps to 'help,' which feels like we're back to us 'saving the planet.'
Mother Earth is on the case, and if any of us manage to survive the inevitable cataclysms 'soon' to come - collapse of industrial civilization, extreme climate catastrophes, etc. - they will 'remember' what we knew for countless millennia, before the scourge of 'civilization' drowned our ancient wisdom in an ocean of crap, including 'modern Science.'
The ecosystems are self-regulating when we do not disturb them. "Help" means to stop disturbing them. I think that it is quite logical, no conundrum here in my view.
But you mention an interesting problem of what the next generations will "remember" after the collapse. If the collapse happens tomorrow, they will probably remember that it was due to high CO2. That will not make their lives better.
It is important to establish the knowledge that biosphere has the capacity of maintaining planetary homeostasis. If we encode this knowledge in scientific language well enough, it has a chance to be remembered, together with the laws of gravity and electromagnetism. And this scientific knowledge can be very useful.
I just read an interesting, and convincing, article that argues the 'root' of our problems stem from our disruption of the water cycle, which has led to, among other things, the emissions problem.
As for the remembering. When industrial civilization collapses because many non-replenishable resources on which it depends will 'soon' be too depleted for it to continue, the few of us who survive the violent chaos that will accompany that collapse won't have any of the technology that 'modern science' has created. We will be left to bring ourselves back in line with the primal instincts that allowed us to be successful before the Dawn of Civilization. Mother Earth doesn't give a rat's ass whether we 'remember' or not, and she and her Laws of Nature are in charge, not us.
Anastassia,
YES, “we need to protect natural self-sustaining ecosystems in an area sufficient for them to perform their climate-regulating function on a regional and global scale.”
Long ago, “sober geographers” understood ecosystem functioning and how land regulates the climate. George Perkins Marsh, former American Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, wrote in his book Man and Nature (1864):
The most sanguine believer in indefinite human progress hardly expects that man's cunning will accomplish the universal fulfillment of the prophecy, "the desert shall blossom as the rose," in its literal sense; but sober geographers have thought the future conversion of the sand plains of Northern Africa into fruitful gardens, by means of artesian wells, not an improbable expectation. They have gone farther, and argued that, if the soil were covered with fields and forests, vegetation would call down moisture from the Libyan sky, and that the showers which are now wasted on the sea, or so often deluge Southern Europe with destructive inundation, would in part be condensed over the arid wastes of Africa, and thus, without further aid from man, bestow abundance on regions which nature seems to have condemned to perpetual desolation. [Man and Nature, 1864, pg 446]
During Reconstruction following the Civil War, there was much timbering of forests. Marsh explained that if New York continued cutting down forests, there would be insufficient water in the Erie Canal for barge traffic to continue, and New York’s burgeoning economy would collapse. The state bought and protected nearly 10,000 square miles of Adirondack forest, and barge traffic continued moving down the canal. The land barons, however, were furious over their loss of land and revenue.
When Dick Cheney was Vice President, he employed scientists to publish papers in the esteemed journals to call global warming climate change. Everybody had an opinion in such an important question, and what property owners were doing to the land was no longer a concern, unless endangered species habitat was involved.
America has gone from an increasingly environmentally literate nation to environmental stupidity. Once everyone knew that pond ice melts first along the shore, the most likely place to break through the ice was near the edge. The ice in the middle of the lake is the last to melt.
NASA released a video of Arctic Ocean Sea Ice melting last summer. As expected, the video frames the ice melt as beginning in the Arctic Ocean, not against the land but where it meets the Atlantic Ocean. The ice melts in a counterclockwise motion around the edge and becomes cluttered with icebergs at the North Pole. Meanwhile, unlike a pond thawing in the spring, the ice stays thickest along Canada and Greenland’s shores. It melts this way because of warm water from the Atlantic. The Earth turns to the East, and in the Northern Hemisphere, flowing water will always turn right, the Coriolis Effect. https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5382/
Everyone is focused on achieving net zero carbon emissions while blind or stupid to the loss of vegetation and soil. This causes destructive increases in stormwater that strengthen the Gulf Stream, as experienced in Svalbard, where glaciers started to retreat in 2007. We all suffer because property owners do not want to be told how to steward their land with more vegetation and soil.
Thank you very much, Rob, for this very interesting citation from Man and Nature. I know of a related and somewhat complementary quote from Friedrich Engels:
"Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first. The people who, in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor and elsewhere, destroyed the forests to obtain cultivable land, never dreamed that by removing along with the forests the collecting centres and reservoirs of moisture they were laying the basis for the present forlorn state of those countries. When the Italians of the Alps used up the pine forests on the southern slopes, so carefully cherished on the northern slopes, they had no inkling that by doing so they were cutting at the roots of the dairy industry in their region; they had still less inkling that they were thereby depriving their mountain springs of water for the greater part of the year, and making it possible for them to pour still more furious torrents on the plains during the rainy seasons. Those who spread the potato in Europe were not aware that with these farinaceous tubers they were at the same time spreading scrofula. Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature—but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly." [Part Played by Labour in Transition from Ape to Man, ~1876]
What I am struck by in the comments of both Marsh and Engels, is how well land degradation was understood as a function of climate change, at least locally and regionally. It seems, a fundamental aspect of human understanding has vanished. Further, it seems this disappearance coincides with the rise of the carbon narrative.
Yes Very complimentary. Thank you.
Rob, I'm interested in why Dick Cheney wanted to shift the terminology from "global warming" to climate change. What do you think was his motivation? I've long wondered whether there was, in the early formulation of the scientific consensus around CO2, an attempt to diminish the role of land degradation, so as to keep it more open to development. As Cheney would say, "We got to get at the resource."
Precisely stated earth has no interest in life or higher intelligence /. It’s a happenstance that began by a unique set of circumstances , not common which we have ignored. I see no reason we have to multiply and flourish , rather it’s a case of cohabitation in a wonderful place as it lasts / given it will end . The idea we control our future is futile in the large context.
Far better to enjoy the simple joys of life . That joy is the ability to know and understand , nothing more .
Thank you for this thought-provoking comment. I replied in the post of January 17th.
CO2 has no effect on climate. We have no effect on climate. We could do with over 3 times the current CO2 level to match plants (our) needs but we have no effect on it. It mimics the Global temperature graph after an 800 year lag.
Environmentalism is vital but it has been hijacked 100% by the climate hoax money and influencers.
Wim Test: another KKK mouthpiece trolls nonsense
You buffoon. Or miscreant. Instead of addressing hard facts you veer into stupid Ad Hominem. Of me! 😀
Tell me you have not been keeping up these last 5 years without telling me you have not been keeping up.
I realise you are probably just a troll or an industry plant - but just to play your game - perhaps you would like point out one error in my comment?
Cue: radio silence or more waffle and Ad Hominem.
Granting you the possibility of being where many of us were 5 years ago, i would urge you to look at Professor Happer’s detailed debunking of the utterly ridiculous ‘climate emergency’ hoax.
Even Dr Coleman is becoming clear on the interconnectedness of the control strategies
https://open.substack.com/pub/uriweiss/p/british-retired-dr-vernon-coleman