COVID, Congress and Climate Models
Hello all. I’m emerging from a bout with COVID, the reason things have gotten kind of quiet here at The Climate According to Life. It will take a little while to get caught up, but in the meantime I want to share a couple items with you.
First, for my American readers, there is a fresh effort to sell off public lands as part of the Trump-named “Big Beautiful Bill,” the budget bill currently being considered by the Senate. Senate Republicans have taken the opportunity to insert provisions requiring the sale of up to 3 million acres of public lands. These includes lands across the west and Alaska, currently administered by the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. A similar effort for far less lands, 500,000, acres was shot down in the house. Now the same needs to happen in the Senate. Here is a link to a Sierra Club action toolkit to help you fight back.
The other item is the publication of a piece by science writer Erica Geiss concerning the many ways global climate models miss the role of plants and natural ecosystems in the climate, while profiling some of the scientists trying to “move biology into greater equity in global climate models.” One of the exciting things about this piece is where it was published, in Nature Water, indicating broader acceptance of these ideas in mainstream science. Here’s a teaser:
Many climatologists now agree that living beings impact climate locally by regulating the exchange of energy and water with the atmosphere. The more provocative question is whether and to what extent those local impacts affect the global climate. And Simpson’s dry lands insight may offer an important clue.
Note: Unfortunately, I earlier published this without authorization from the Author, Erica Gies, and she does not have authorization, as the piece is behind a pay wall. A bad on my part. But here is a read only link, which I am allowed to provide.
Cropping and grazing occupy approximately 50% of Australia's land mass with much of the rest being too dry to be of productive use. Cropping leaves 30 million hectares baren and bare between rotations and dryland grazing offers very little in rehydration during dry spells, all of this effects cloud and heat with flow on effects into the rest. Our worst fires are after drought years after the vapor pressure differential has sucked all the water it can out of our forests usually to be rained out over the ocean. Micro climates create macro climates what more is there to say?
A side note which may be of interest, in relation to the theory of the 12km2 forest which is the minimum area to effect climatic conditions. Because so little energy is needed to lift water small distances and so much of the desert land near the ocean is so flat has anyone done the necessary research around using self draining salt marshes and mangrove forests to help kick start this process? Lifting water a few meters is only 9800j per 1000 liters per meter (less pipe and pump friction) and 12km2 is only a half meter high levee of 14km in length, could we be creating our own areas of rehydration which also offer many other agricultural and ecological solutions? Think of areas in the middle east, the top of the gulf of California, across the top of Africa to name a few.
Another idea I have been toying with in relation to floods , in many of the cleared agricultural areas the only thing that stops the fast flow of water off the hills into the flood plain is friction, as soon as the water is above a frictional point it accelerates at close to force of gravity as it has very high viscosity. this then accumulates in the lowlands at a greater rate than discharge, thus flooding. In nature the best growing region for trees is in the nutrient and water rich areas along these streams and perennial water courses thus they grow tall shading out the competition and help clear a path for water if we have not already cleared it ourselves for grazing. If we were to mass plant this riparian section and partially up the slope and coppice we could create a continuous quick growing supply of high quality timber. With siltation fences or companion planting especially at choke points of interlocking spurs we then could turn a high flow rate and its destructive inertia into a slow release filtration system. This adds to the hydrological cycle in both wet and dry without the need for expensive dams. Miyawaki method crossed with viticulture
Hope you Heal quickly ,all the best.
Hi Rob,
There is a whole community beyond the climate modellers that have been discussing this topic for many decades from Australian scientist Walter Jehne who has been talking non stop about restoring the Soil Carbon Sponge to help cool the planet to Allan Savory's work on Holistic Planned Grazing to reverse desertification. The Savory Global Network of approximately 50 Training Hubs is a big player in expanding Regenerative Ag. with herbivores. Academia treats them very poorly but as you may be aware most research grants in agriculture come from the chemical corporations and genetic seed producers who are behind the modern Industrial agriculture that is poisoning and degrading the land, animals, human health, and the climate. So it is good to hear that some climatologists are examining the important role that biology can play.