The Biology of Climate
We learned all about how to cool our climate while playing outdoors as children and in elementary school science classes, but we have forgotten how relevant it is.
As many of you know, Fuller Field School in Kansas (USA) is one of my beloved home bases for teaching and learning about living systems. Last April, I gave a talk and demonstration there surrounded by chickens, ducks, geese, guinea hens, sheep, pigs, cows, dogs and cats—as well as lots of visiting insects and birds, and a group of great people too!
This is a very “down home” version of a talk I’ve evolved over the years, to show and get people acting out how other species and their work/processes create and regulate local and regional temperatures, formation of clouds and rain, and movement of weather patterns. (The video was shot on a phone propped on a picnic table, but the audio is good enough that I think you will enjoy it, including the sounds of all the other-than-human participants.)
I show how we can work with plants, animals, and soils to create oases of beautiful microclimates, which when connected, can restore regional rainfall, reduce coastal storms, protect against flooding and drought, reduce wildfire risk, provide abundant water and food, while also putting atmospheric carbon, water, and sunlight back to their rightful work in growing living systems. (If you want to learn more, you can join our discussion course starting in just a few days that will dive deeply into all of this.)
As you may know, this is a story that needs telling. Our current approaches to climate are focused almost entirely on reducing fossil fuel use, which—while absolutely necessary in its own right—is a very partial understanding of how our climate actually works. In this paradigm, nature’s role is simple: as a potential sequesterer of carbon to be traded in markets so that others can continue to emit, or nature as nice places to live for certain valued species. (That also can be traded in markets so that developers can knock down one place and pay to save another.)
In fact, living systems created our climate, and continue to regulate it as best as they can. Our interference has changed the ability of our diverse biological workforce to regulate temperature, climate, and weather systems. We have interfered through draining of wetlands, cutting down forests, damming rivers, plowing up or mismanaging grasslands, separating animals from their natural habitat, killing off whatever we wanted to kill (so that we could eat it, or prevent it from eating our food), planting monocrops, and using new chemicals for our own short-term needs in our bodies, farms, and lawns, without questioning their downstream impacts. Understanding the work of other species and their role in temperature dynamics, cloud and rain formation, and weather patterns is key to restoring the global climate that we can all live within.
Ironically, we learned almost everything we need to know about heat dynamics and climate regulation from playing barefoot outside on hot summer days as children: finding places to lie down and cool off, running past the sprinkler, sticking our feet in mud, wearing sweaty t-shirts, playing with rocks in streams, fanning ourselves, watching heat waves and steam rise off of pavement, standing on white lines and grassy spots and avoiding dark pavement, and jumping into puddles, ponds, and lakes, wherever we could find them. But no one told us how relevant all this was to the problems we would be facing as adults. We learned about photosynthesis, transpiration, and biodiversity in science classes at young ages, but no one told us that ecology is the same field of study as climate—they are two windows for focusing on exactly the same dynamic living system.
After my talk in Kansas, the participants and I walked around the farm and found examples of many of these heat dynamics happening all around us—that we could measure with a simple hand held thermometer, and we did some exploration of what was happening underground.
What are your memories of outdoor play and elementary school science that helped you understand heating and cooling dynamics; the power of water to shapeshift, cool, and heat; the way clouds form, or anything else you’d like us all to remember? Write to me, and our growing community, in the comments.
Check out the upcoming Living Climate and Soil Sponge foundation course and invite me for a playdate to come teach where you are!
I am so grateful for this! I often get lost in the scientific lingo, and I loved your simple demonstration/talk! This visual is easy and approachable to share with others who don't have a lot of time or energy or interest/desire to engage in the climate discussion. Also, we learn things so much faster through play, so it is very interesting to me to link it back to childhood/to consider that maybe the knowledge is already intrinsic! That being said, this makes it increasingly important to give the younger generations space to truly experience and get comfortable with this knowledge.
Also, as a hang glider pilot, I am very interested in clouds... and I have always wondered about microbiology up there... I'm very interested to keep integrating more! You're a powerhouse and you are working on a lot of different parts of the puzzle! Thank you, Didi!