The Role of the Forest Holobiont in Earth's Climate: A Talk by Anastassia Makarieva

I had several comments on the interview that Anastassia Makarieva gave for a film produced by the New England Forest Group. One was that, lacking images, the presentation was not so easy to understand. So, here is the talk she gave at the International Conference on Basic Science for Sustainability in Belgrade, on Sep 22, 2022. This one is longer and clearer, recommended if you want to understand the mechanisms that make the biotic pump work.

The biotic pump is part of an innovative and important interpretation of the current climate situation. Anastassia is proposing that the warming of the atmosphere may be caused not just by the accumulated CO2, but by a radiative forcing of the same order of magnitude generated by deforestation. Earth's forests are giant holobionts coupled and embedded in the even larger holobiont that's the whole ecosystem. It is not surprising that they strongly affect climate, and not just by the conventional factors, albedo and carbon sequestration. There is much more than that, as you can learn by watching the clip, above.  

I don't have to tell you the consequences of this concept. If it turns out to be true (and I think it might well be), it means that a significant fraction of what we have been doing to mitigate global warming may well have worsened the situation. For instance proposing "biofuels" obtained from wood means damaging the forests, and that damages climate.

But there is much more in this concept: it is a complete revolution in the way we see Earth's climate system. Forests not only cool the atmosphere, but also stabilize the climate. This means not only that we need more forests, but that some ideas such as carbon sequestration and geoengineering could do a lot of damage if not coupled with reforestation.

On the other hand, Anastassia's ideas could also be misunderstood as meaning that Climate Science, as it has been proposed so far, is all wrong. And that's sure to happen if her ideas come into the hands of politically minded people who would use that to propose that there is no such thing as global warming, climate emergency, etcetera.  But if we believe in Science (true science, not TV science), we must not be afraid of the truth.

Onward, fellow holobionts!