Wildlife, biodiversity and climate
A habitable climate depends on wildlife and biodiversity, because:
- Climate is a consequence of biodiversity and biodiversity is everything that ecosystems represent to life on Earth;
- A stable climate and therefore, a habitable Earth, depends on stabilising ecosystems; and
- Animals are the only mechanism that can do that.
As wildlife declines, we are breaking down biodiversity structure and losing energy (in the form of carbon) out of food chains and into the atmosphere and ocean. This way, climate and our food security are inextricably linked. We’re not only stripping soils of the material needed to feed us, we’re also introducing chaotic free energy into our atmosphere and causing huge fluctuations in the weather. The latter makes it harder for us to know when, where and how to feed ourselves.
Climate change: fossil fuels v. wildlife
Climate change has always been the symptom of biodiversity loss … that’s to say, the breakdown of the complex connectivity between lifeforms that allows Earth to flex in response to changing conditions.
Only recently have we created artificial climate change by mining carbon buried deep underground by animals millions of years ago. The animals that did that are no longer around and today’s animals, that would be busy moderating modern-day carbon, have populations that are heavily depleted.
We cannot engineer our way out of this crisis. We can only rebuild ecosystems rich in a diversity of animal life.
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Climate models routinely overlook biodiversity and animal impacts. So, when scientists try to explain disparities or conclusions, they often resort to descriptions of physical or chemical processes … whereas its the biological, animal-driven biodiversity processes, that create ecosystem structure.
A recent article published in New Scientist looks at a paper published on Carbon Fertilisation Effects (CFE). That’s to say, as CO2 increases, the additional CO2 creates conditions for more plants to grow, thus reducing some of the effect of global warming. This factor is included in climate models but is mostly based on “the direct acceleration of photosynthesis”, implying that it’s an assumption of chemistry.
The paper found CFE to be more limiting than previously thought, due to limitations in the amount of nutrients in revegetating ecosystems.
The authors say:
This divergence between observations and process-based models possibly originates from the models’ limitations in adequately representing the emerging decline in key foliar nutrient concentrations and the increasing constraints of water limitations on vegetation productivity. Ultimately, these results indicate that terrestrial photosynthesis may not increase as much as models project, possibly reducing the potential of land-based climate mitigation, further accelerating global warming and exacerbating the efforts required for meeting climate targets.
The conclusion makes sense, except the decline in foliar nutrient, is most likely due to collapse of insect and animal populations (or the simple fact that there is a massively-reduced wildlife trophic structure in newly-formed habitat). The authors have tried to explain their findings using chemistry but it’s most likely the impact of animals (or lack thereof) that describes what they are seeing.
The datasets they used were from the mid-1980s but we know that we’ve lost 60% of animals (in terms of number) since 1970 and insect populations are collapsing worldwide too.
The density of plant nutrient is linked to animal impacts.
There is even a link between maximum entropy production and the nutrient value of the food we eat. The humble tomato, grown organically, can be 35% smaller by weight at maturity but pack a mean punch when it comes to nutrients. The stress imposed on tomatoes from growing in an organic (wilder) setting, makes Vitamin C at concentrations over 50% higher and phenolic content almost 140% higher which, in association, protects our bodies against the ravages of free oxygen molecules.
It’s the transfer, amplification and concentration of nutrients by animals, that diversifies vegetation and increases maximum nutrient (and therefore carbon) capture. This is a process of “maximum entropy production”. It underpins the development of all ecosystems and can only be driven by animals.
The paper’s observations stand but its explanation of why, is likely to be way off, because it omits consideration of animal impacts.
The consequence among climate scientists and conservationists, is to underplay the critical importance of animals to climate mitigation. The lack of systems-based understanding of ecology and wildlife is glaringly obvious by its omission from almost all climate modelling.
To make up for the decline in CFE, we need to urgently rebuild wildlife populations.
