WE CAN COOL THE PLANET WITHIN TWENTY YEARS!
Water regulates the temperature of our planet, similar to what it does with our bodies. On Earth it does so in many ways: in the form of clouds, rain, soil moisture, plant growth, rivers, snow cover and so on. Greenhouse gases like CO2 heat up the planet but they are not the largest driver of climate change. The main driver of climate change is the disruption of the water cycle by humans through clearing natural vegetation and forests for agriculture, roads and cities and the destruction of life in the great oceans.
This not only increases surface temperatures but also causes the rise in extreme weather patterns around the world, which currently impact our lives most: increased droughts, heatwaves, heavy rain, floods and stronger storms.
Nature, especially life on land, has evolved over millions of years to balance its environment in the interaction with water. Forests function as the transpiration organs of the planet. Especially the tropical rainforests are powerful coolers of the equatorial regions, great rainmakers! They use solar power to pump up water and evaporate that water through their leaves. The solar heat is used to turn liquid water into vapor which rises up into the atmosphere where at least half of that energy escapes high above us into space, while the water condensates as clouds and falls back on Earth as rain, day after day after day and even creates winds to fuel the biotic pump, pushing precipitation inland and providing an umbrella against sun rays during part of the day.
This is how nature cools the planet and this is how we can cool the planet. You increase the amount of evaporation through leaves and transport huge amounts of energy up and out to the upper atmosphere where at least half escapes into space.
(I wrote about this in an earlier article: https://robdelaet.medium.com/are-fish-really-the-last-ones-to-discover-water-601831fc2d48 )
If we regenerate a billion hectares of land and forests, especially in the tropics, the climate will improve markedly within years. It will both moisturise the land, diminishing extreme weather and cool the climate everywhere locally. Once the countless trillions of leaves of that new vegetation all start to evaporate water, global temperatures will start to go down. We can mimic the forests in forms of agroforestry to secure our food production. We can do this together as humanity everywhere. You and I, we can all be involved. By regenerating land and nature everywhere we can restore a balanced climate. But we have to do it now, this decade, before the damage to our life support systems is irreversible. Will you join the great regeneration and save the future?
