CHOOSE LIFE, LET’S COOL THE CLIMATE CHAOS Can we stabilize the climate and cool the planet within twenty years? How the climate really works Greenhouse gases heat up the planet, but they are not the major driver of climate change. While carbon gets all the attention, there is another huge factor which is largely overlooked. It is water in its movements and changes of state (ice, liquid water and vapour) as it interacts with plant life and the atmosphere. This interaction has enormous stabilizing and cooling effects. Once we understand the full force of plants and the water cycle, we can actually confront the climate crisis with a whole new set of measures. Plants, healthy soils and healthy ecosystems stabilize weather, the climate and bring cooling. We can leverage these qualities to fight the climate crisis. If the damage to the biosphere is reversed, the planet will regain its capacity to regulate its own temperature. We must reduce emissions but that is not enough! Frontloading vigorous protection and repair of nature around the world together with massive increases in regenerative agricultural practices and agroforestry will make landscapes climate resilient. Combined with reviving ocean biology, it will restore a balanced climate, calm the weather and cool the planet! Tens of gigatons of CO2 per year will be sequestered in the fast increasing living biomass around the world.   How much do we have to do to reverse climate chaos? Through a strategic plan, involving large parts of the global population to act locally with place-based solutions,  plus actions from powerful organizations like states, armies and large companies, we can stop the Earth from warming up within twenty years and see the number of weather extremes drop significantly before that, because the increasing life on the planet regulates its metabolisms better. We bring finance, information, organization and tools to the 600 million smallholder families around the world to restore their lands and transition to regenerative agroforestry food production. This will restore the small water cycles, regenerate degraded soils and substantially increase living biomass. A plan for this has been written. We invite large networks of organizations such as the Rotaries, WVF World Veterans Federation, Red Cross, CARE, The Nature Conservancy, Oxfam, WWF, Peace Corps, climate action groups and so on to support communities everywhere to regenerate the ecosystems in their area and improve their own economy and well-being. We will roll out a program of ocean and coastal marine ecosystems restoration. We know how to do that. We will assemble in a very short time a Digital Gaia to support all these restoration processes. An outline has been written, almost all parts already exist. The planetary restoration project will be financed through several revenue streams from governments, philanthropy, investment programs and carbon credit finance. See below for a bit more info For those who want a bit more background on how the climate really works: Plants cool through evapotranspiration, turning water into vapour that rises up to the higher atmosphere, carrying large amounts of absorbed solar energy, in the form of latent heat, with it, without warming the lower atmosphere. With that, plants cool the Earth’s surface. At the same time, plants also send up a variety of biological aerosols together with the water vapour, which serve as the condensation nuclei for water droplets. So this helps the water vapor to condense on these aerosols, forming clouds. Plants seed clouds and rain!  Of the energy that the water vapour releases at the moment of condensation, at least half leaves the atmosphere into space. As vapour condenses into clouds, they cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight back into space. Under certain conditions clouds can also warm the Earth’s atmosphere but on balance they cool. The condensation into clouds also produces not just rain but also wind. A volume of one thousand cubic metres of vapour becomes one cubic metre of rain, creating a sudden vacuum which draws in air from below and from the side, creating wind. Over large forests, these processes are so strong that they drive a powerful biotic pump, which draws in humid air from the oceans, bringing rains deep inland and enabling the forest to thrive thousands of kilometres away from the coast.   The condensation nuclei cause moderate rains, minimizing the potential for extreme flash  floods.  An intact biotic pump averts droughts by extending the rainy season while bringing moderate rains. This also increases the production of living biomass which in turn draws down carbon. Heatwaves, droughts and flash floods are avoided when the rain is created around these biological aerosols. When the rain falls on healthy soils, with thriving societies of bacteria and fungi, there is little or no erosion. Healthy soils work as sponges absorbing the water to be released slowly with some of it percolating into the aquifers, where it can be retained for a long time.  Meanwhile, the sedimentation  from land-based erosion which can seriously  inhibit marine vegetative growth, is reduced significantly. Phytoplankton, crustacea and many marine organisms capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, thereby manufacturing calcium carbonate for their carapaces and shells which, on the organism’s death, can accumulate on the ocean bed, over time forming huge deposits which,  with tectonics become the limestone mountains we find on land.  Such metabolic activity is a vital process for counteracting ocean acidification. We need to protect ocean ecosystems just as much as we do on land.