ok simplicity seems to be hard to come by with the siloed scientists protecting the wholly grail of complexities around climate. What would it do to think of the planet as a being not unlike us humans and born with systems that maintain life and our, its longevity. So here is the one big thing.
If only the old scientific community would come down to Earth and follow the on the ground clues and evidence when it comes to climate .
There are very specific causes for human illness
We run a fever, well the planet is running a fever too, and it is not stopping. And why is it not cooling down even with all the mitigation practices over the last decades? Because we are not treating a significant forcing factor which does have something to do with Co2 sequestration but it is only one portion of the many planetary spheres that continue to be mis-diagnosed by the Science"experts". Maybe it's time to look at our planet with the same lense we look at human health.
Our Planet: Person or Living Entity?
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 in play - a system that 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, and also 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.
Strict flow regimens caused by hydroelectric dams in the subarctic regions: Here many of the Northern Hemisphere's largest rivers used to exist but now 95% of the water stagnates in sea-size impoundments for 6 months of the summer and continues melting the permafrost. long hours in the sun has led to excessive humidity and added greater amounts of methane rich fresh water to these dam reservoirs, insuring a now much much larger volume of and now warmer water to be discharged all winter-long. This is not only warming these regions in the winter but sending this much larger volume and warmer fresh water into the bays and Arctic Ocean region. This is occurring with many of the former rivers from Siberia to labrador
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.
Yeah the analogy to human health is a useful one. James Lovelock, of Gaia theory, used the word geophysiology for the earths systems. And yes the way you put it as damming, as causing the blocking of one of an organisms circulatory systems, is a good analogy, and suggests a lot of reasons why damming, can have large problematical ripple effects on the earth's health.
- Nora bateson on the need for 'transcontextual' rather than 'transdisciplinary' - "transcontextual rather than interdiscianary or trnsdisciplinary, because life doesn't happen in disciplines it happens in contexts" - https://youtu.be/j44AVKgdORs?&t=897
"The hedgehog’s views are lightly held in the sense of being dependent on only a few core or axiomatic beliefs. Only a few key assumptions anchor the big idea. That is the whole point of seeking consistency of any sort: to reduce the number of unjustified beliefs in your thinking to the minimum necessary."
#Fox - weak views, strongly held
"The fox’s beliefs are strongly held because there is no center, little reliance on foundational beliefs and many anchors. Their thinking is hard to pin down to any one set of axioms, and therefore hard to undermine."
Awesome as always. I think a broader understanding of water and information will probably underly a unifying theory. How water holds meaning in phase shifts and movement which all life is entangled to. We probably need more information on things like neutrinos… we’ll get there
In the 1992 Woody Allen movie "Husbands and Wives" there's a scene about this fox/hedgehog theme but I didn't know what it was about til now, lol. I remember being both bemused and confused by the scene when I saw it in the theater at the time but I have actually always remembered it.
Hello Alpha thanks for your comment it means a lot! and by the way I sent you a new reader Roger Wheeler he's in our research group on the dam dams. He already has appreciated your work greatly and is excited to see the subject of water, learning a lot, able to integrate some of your work with our research.
Our small research group intends to run a webinar series on the dams, and my presentation portion will follow earth as a living being with nutrient deprivation..etc.
Is this something that you might mention to your audience? It will not be ready till February. We're all volunteers retired, Been working of A smalll grant from Sierra Club.
Hi yeah your work is good..... You might be interested in this video i made a couple of years ago. i forgot about this video until recently. I thought that human-made dams were leading to a loss of rain https://youtu.be/gYgHNqVPtGs?si=A1VdY6pm0JeAH3Ni
ok simplicity seems to be hard to come by with the siloed scientists protecting the wholly grail of complexities around climate. What would it do to think of the planet as a being not unlike us humans and born with systems that maintain life and our, its longevity. So here is the one big thing.
If only the old scientific community would come down to Earth and follow the on the ground clues and evidence when it comes to climate .
There are very specific causes for human illness
We run a fever, well the planet is running a fever too, and it is not stopping. And why is it not cooling down even with all the mitigation practices over the last decades? Because we are not treating a significant forcing factor which does have something to do with Co2 sequestration but it is only one portion of the many planetary spheres that continue to be mis-diagnosed by the Science"experts". Maybe it's time to look at our planet with the same lense we look at human health.
Our Planet: Person or Living Entity?
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 in play - a system that 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, and also 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.
Strict flow regimens caused by hydroelectric dams in the subarctic regions: Here many of the Northern Hemisphere's largest rivers used to exist but now 95% of the water stagnates in sea-size impoundments for 6 months of the summer and continues melting the permafrost. long hours in the sun has led to excessive humidity and added greater amounts of methane rich fresh water to these dam reservoirs, insuring a now much much larger volume of and now warmer water to be discharged all winter-long. This is not only warming these regions in the winter but sending this much larger volume and warmer fresh water into the bays and Arctic Ocean region. This is occurring with many of the former rivers from Siberia to labrador
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.
Yeah the analogy to human health is a useful one. James Lovelock, of Gaia theory, used the word geophysiology for the earths systems. And yes the way you put it as damming, as causing the blocking of one of an organisms circulatory systems, is a good analogy, and suggests a lot of reasons why damming, can have large problematical ripple effects on the earth's health.
Still reading your essay, but there's a few things that arose from briefly skimming :
- 'The case for scientific transculturalism' ( https://nautil.us/the-case-for-scientific-transculturalism-589255/ -> https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2209196121 ) ( Brian J. Enquist , Christopher Kempes, Goeffrey West)- about integrating the three central different cultures of science "exactitude culture" along with what the researchers call “variance culture” (which focuses on taking stock of how particular things are different or similar) and “coarse-grained culture” (which tries to simplify matters with general principles governing how systems operate) - see also thread https://bsky.app/profile/bjenquist.bsky.social/post/3ks3bw75jpo2k . It's a bit different than 'reductionism' vs. 'holism' where both of those sit within one of the cultures if I recall correctly. (https://blog.andymatuschak.org/post/18851823748/top-to-bottom-bottom-to-top might be related)
- Nora bateson on the need for 'transcontextual' rather than 'transdisciplinary' - "transcontextual rather than interdiscianary or trnsdisciplinary, because life doesn't happen in disciplines it happens in contexts" - https://youtu.be/j44AVKgdORs?&t=897
- 'The cactus and the weasel' https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/02/20/the-cactus-and-the-weasel/ (Venkatesh Rao) - I probably don't agree with Venkat at times, but gets into the fox hedgehog thing around how strongly held things are:
#Hedgehog - strong views, weakly held"
"The hedgehog’s views are lightly held in the sense of being dependent on only a few core or axiomatic beliefs. Only a few key assumptions anchor the big idea. That is the whole point of seeking consistency of any sort: to reduce the number of unjustified beliefs in your thinking to the minimum necessary."
#Fox - weak views, strongly held
"The fox’s beliefs are strongly held because there is no center, little reliance on foundational beliefs and many anchors. Their thinking is hard to pin down to any one set of axioms, and therefore hard to undermine."
the cactus and weasel addition to the fox and hedgehog is quite interesting.
Awesome as always. I think a broader understanding of water and information will probably underly a unifying theory. How water holds meaning in phase shifts and movement which all life is entangled to. We probably need more information on things like neutrinos… we’ll get there
Makarieva thinks information and photons plays a part
Thats good to hear. I’ll look more for it. She’s an incredibly brilliant force
Alpha, good essay. Berlin's concept of the Hedgehog and the Fox is a useful metaphor for approaching climate differently.
In the 1992 Woody Allen movie "Husbands and Wives" there's a scene about this fox/hedgehog theme but I didn't know what it was about til now, lol. I remember being both bemused and confused by the scene when I saw it in the theater at the time but I have actually always remembered it.
https://youtu.be/LhYyGy6t9ko?si=-DNcA6nCwZbcAYdu
Hello Alpha thanks for your comment it means a lot! and by the way I sent you a new reader Roger Wheeler he's in our research group on the dam dams. He already has appreciated your work greatly and is excited to see the subject of water, learning a lot, able to integrate some of your work with our research.
Our small research group intends to run a webinar series on the dams, and my presentation portion will follow earth as a living being with nutrient deprivation..etc.
Is this something that you might mention to your audience? It will not be ready till February. We're all volunteers retired, Been working of A smalll grant from Sierra Club.
Hi yeah your work is good..... You might be interested in this video i made a couple of years ago. i forgot about this video until recently. I thought that human-made dams were leading to a loss of rain https://youtu.be/gYgHNqVPtGs?si=A1VdY6pm0JeAH3Ni