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Review of Nature is One of the Most Under-appreciated Tools for Reigning in Carbon, by Emma Bryce

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Reviewed by Tami Sheiffer

I’ve always been a big-picture person more than a details-person. in Virginia Master Naturalist basic training, I appreciated learning about the geology, flora, and fauna specific to Virginia and Fairfax County, and I value the focus on native plants and animals in our service projects. But my mind always wants to zoom out to the global scale and to my primary concern, which is human-induced climate change. I wonder, does our volunteer work as master naturalists have a significant effect on mitigating climate change, even when our service projects are not directly related to the issue? Encouragingly, the answer seems to be yes.

In Nature is One of the Most Under-appreciated Tools for Reigning in Carbon (20 October 2017) in the magazine Anthropocene, Emma Bryce summarizes Justin Adams’ (2017)  study, Natural Climate Solutions, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America . The study found that natural climate solutions–reforestation, conserving wetlands, sustainable fertilizer use, and other land management strategies–have a great effect on removing carbon or keeping carbon out of the atmosphere. Even with constraints added to the model, to ensure that land requirements for food production are met, and costs are kept down, a conservative model estimates that natural climate solutions can save 11 billion tons of annual emissions, providing 37% of the mitigation needed to meet the Paris Climate Agreement goal of 2℃ of warming.

The study’s findings are encouraging, and Bryce sums up the key takeaways so that they are easy to remember. The article gives readers information about which land management strategies have the largest impact on carbon mitigation, and assures us that we have enough knowledge about their effectiveness to act on these solutions now.

It turns out that when we plant trees and other native plants, or engage in park restoration, or educate a landowner or farmer to use less fertilizer and disturb the soil less, collectively we are not just improving the local environment but the global one as well.

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Review of Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change (2nd ed.), by Michael E. Mann and Lee R. Kump

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Reviewed by Jim Wilcox

The facts about global warming and climate change are indisputable at this point, but all good naturalists still do their own research. To this end, for the past five years, I’ve completed more than 20 online courses and read about 30 well-researched books (references coming in a related post). If you have time to read only one book now, though, consider Dire Predictions (2015, 224 pp).

Mann and Kump, both professors at Pennsylvania State University, cover the science behind global warming and climate change; Earth’s climate history; how the water cycle and carbon cycle affect climate change; projections for future changes and what impact those changes will have on our environment, ecology, and sociology; possible mitigating actions; adaptive responses; and much more.

As scientists, the authors don’t shy away from data or math, nor are they dogmatic. Instead they speak in terms of probabilities and write for a general reader in easily understandable terms. Photographs and effective graphics document and illustrate complex concepts. A comprehensive glossary serves as a ready reference as do the frequent embedded bookmarks to other sections within the book.

Dire Predictions draws its information primarily from the 5th Assessment Report (AR5) of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (hence the book’s second subtitle: The Visual Guide to the Findings of the IPCC).

Dr. Mann is probably best known for his work showing the rise of Earth’s average temperature graphically, the graph for which became known as the hockey stick.

You can preview the contents and layout of Dire Predictions at no charge and with no effort by clicking on this link to the abridged pdf. The Fairfax County Public Library system has 13 copies of the complete book. Borrow one. Read it. You will walk away better able to have an informed discussion.

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