Sept. 10, 2023: Regenerative farming is part of the solution. Visit the New Music page which has a link to a performance of a chamber music piece I wrote, Regenerate Heal Cool, about this very issue, along with notes about the piece.
Late 2022; The climate chaos Soilution (not a typo) and Native Use of Fire (after the article)
By William R. Taylor, farmer, 707-272-1688, edibleland@earthlink.net, www.floodgatefarm.com, www.touchtheearthmusic.com
Much climate chaos activism is focused on emissions reduction, especially fossil fuels. This, it turns out, is only part of the solution. It is analogous to turning off the water in an overfilled tub. However, in the analogy we also need to empty some of the water from the tub. That is, in part we need to get carbon back into the soil, AND rebalance the hydrological cycle. Because warmer air holds more water vapor, it has been estimated that temperature increase is doubled from what it would be from CO2 alone. This is not necessarily built into the models because the water vapor greenhouse effect is more difficult to model. Reducing CO2 will also reduce water vapor. At least, that is the simplified version of reality. There is another factor in the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, and that is the balance between water vapor remaining in the air and water vapor condensing and precipitating out. To learn that balance, consider how cloud droplets and snow/rain form. Dust, soot, and bacteria serve as nuclei but bacteria are most effective according to Jay Hardy of Hardy Diagnostics, Australian scientist Walter Jehne, and many others, because ice can form on them at warmer temperatures than the non-living nuclei. And these bacteria live on the leaves of living plants and are wafted/blown into the air where they can condense ice (at high altitudes where it is cold enough). Most rain and all snow start as ice at high altitudes. In fact, the most effective bacteria condense ice at temperatures above 0 C (32 F), the bane of farmers as frost damage can happen at temperatures above “freezing”. In nature, this “ice plus” bacteria exists as does a less effective strain of “ice minus” bacteria. There is some recombinant DNA technology that can increase the amount of “ice minus” bacteria which does not as readily form ice, keeping crops from freezing at higher temperatures but also likely reducing rainfall. In addition, if farming practices decrease the amount of bacteria on plants (herbicide and other toxic spraying) or reduce plant cover (as in monocrops or leaving fields bare of living plants for months at a time), this will also reduce condensation of ice on airborne bacteria.
So when it is said that water vapor is an effective greenhouse gas that correlates with the amount of CO2, that is sort of true. The nuances provided by how present nucleating bacteria are and the presence of increased amounts of “hazes” around the world due to decrease in these bacteria, makes water vapor a greenhouse gas not only correlated with CO2. That is, there are two reasons that reducing CO2 emissions without addressing land management (increasing the amount of plants and the amount of nucleating bacteria on those plants) does not solve the climate chaos problem. Increasing carbon levels in the soil by regenerative farming, in particular having the land always covered by growing plants (in seasons that is at all possible) will do those two things to solve the problem, more rapidly than just reducing emissions. All the other aspects of regenerative agriculture also help: no-till or reduced tillage reduces release of soil carbon into CO2, biodiversity and cover crops increase plant coverage, not using biocides preserves nucleating bacteria.
Another factor is simply due to heating of surfaces. You may be familiar with the heat island effect of cities with more asphalt, concrete and buildings, and fewer green plants. The same occurs with solar farms except those over parking lots, deserts, or other already hot surfaces (and why rooftop solar is the best way to go). Plants absorb solar energy and convert it to sugar to feed microbes underground and build their own tissues. Hot surfaces reradiate that energy which is captured in the atmosphere, warming the planet. This is another benefit of reforestation, and regenerative farming which leaves ground covered with plants more of the time than plowing and leaving fields bare soil. If soil is bare, having transplants to immediately plant, and adding mulch to bare areas, can help. All this restores the carbon cycle and water cycle.
Credits: My original awareness of the water vapor greenhouse effect was a Planetary Atmospheres course at Princeton University in the late 1970’s. An interview in the April 2019 Acres USA magazine with Walter Jehne reminded me of this and added the importance of nucleating bacteria. A question to microbiologist Dr. Christine Jones confirmed the validity of the idea that monoculture agriculture increases water vapor haze and reduces rainfall, adding to warming. Jay Hardy’s article goes into some detail on the process on the micro level:
http://www.hardydiagnostics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Ice-Forming-Bacteria.pdf
Native First Peoples’ Use of Fire (and current prescribed burn ideas)
The California Fire Science Consortium holds workshops etc.
http://www.cafiresci.org/events-webinars-source
Fibershed had central and northern CA fire panels: