A Primer on Climate

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How at odds are we with nature? What a question to ask. Quite. And bad things happen when we get out of balance with nature. 

The Dust Bowl. A decade of repeated drought events. Poor soil management. Non-existent crop rotation. The ripping up of sod on a scale unmatched. We simply asked more than the land could give, year after year, and the land lashed out. And recent research has shown that current elevated carbon dioxide levels make an occurrence like the Dust Bowl twice as likely.

Deforestation. The World Bank estimates that roughly 500,000 square miles of forest were lost between 1990 and 2016. For comparison, that's about 90% the size of Alaska. Wow. And harvested trees release stored carbon into the atmosphere, exacerbating the current runaway atmospheric carbon content issue.

Rising sea levels. According to satellite data, sea level in 2014 was 2.6 inches above the 1993 average, the earliest comprehensive satellite data that we have. Yes, 2.6 inches seems small to me, too. So let's examine that in further detail.

Picture an acre. Have it in your mind? One acre is 43,560 square feet. Yes, I have that number memorized from my days in engineering school. Still, it seems abstract, so let's zoom in. 

For those of you who live in suburban America, your house likely sits on one-fifth of an acre, give or take. So five of the plots of land that your house sits on make an acre. Good. Now rainfall, in both hydrology and agriculture, is often measured in acre-feet. One acre-foot refers to one foot of water depth that covers an entire acre. 

Seawater accounts for approximately 139 million square miles of the earth's surface. There are 640 acres in a square mile, so that makes for 88.96 billion acres of seawater on the earth's surface. A rise of 2.6 inches across this surface therefore equates to 19.27 billion acre-feet of water. Perhaps that number sounds a bit larger than 2.6 inches and more accurately conveys the scale of what is happening.

Furthermore, as the planet continues to warm, sea levels will continue to rise due to thermal expansion of the ocean itself. And because of climate change, glaciers and polar ice caps continue to melt at an increasing rate, driving levels even higher. This is bad news for communities in low-lying areas, including the Seychelles Islands, the Chesapeake Bay region of Virginia and Maryland, the Netherlands, and countless others. And we spend billions of dollars desperately fighting to keep the water at bay rather than changing our energy needs and usage.

Water scarcity. Growing populations, increasing urbanization, and greater industrial use of water further stress the availability of this critical resource. While total water content on the planet remains relatively stable over time, usable and accessible water does not. As we draw more water out of aquifers and reservoirs and drink it, flush it, irrigate fields with it and pump it full of nitrogen, and send it on down the river to the ocean, it ultimately becomes brackish seawater. We can't use saline water for much, short of costly desalination. And we are sending water to the ocean at a faster rate than it is replenished over the landscape as freshwater via precipitation.

https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/world_maps/water_scarcity_2025.jpg

And before you respond that it's rained quite a bit recently where you live, or conversely, that your region is in a severe drought, let me stress that the overall effect of climate change is to produce greater extremes. Lengthier droughts, stronger hurricanes, more intense rainfall and storms, a prolonged wildfire season, etc. And all of this can be tied directly back to human activity.

The above examples are just a sampling of the current state of the Earth's climate. It's a complex problem. A wicked problem, in fact. We seek economic growth, greater access to food, shelter, and water for all, improved quality of life; all good things. But we are finding it difficult to reconcile the manner in which we go about it with negative long-term effects on the Earth. Let's be clear, though; the Earth will be fine. It is our own position that we make more precarious as we march ever forward in the pursuit of growth and advancement. We scar the world, time and again, and continue to ask it for more. History has shown us that there comes a time when the Earth lashes out.

Deep Roots Are Not Reached by the Frost

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"Deep roots are not reached by the frost."

We encounter another quote from Tolkien. Yes, Tolkien is a favorite here at Deliberately Aimless. In fact, this quote is drawn from the same poem as the one regarding wanderers. It seemed a natural follow-on, but also worth a deeper dive, as it were.

What do you think of when you hear the word roots? Trees, no doubt. Your hometown and your family, perhaps. A vague sense of where you "came from." The band from Philadelphia. Alright, maybe only a few thought of that last one.

Whatever the case, though, the term roots generally refers to some sense of groundedness, of being on a firm foundation. And the goal is to build upon a foundation that cannot be shaken. The focus is always, therefore, on the structure built upon the foundation, and never on the foundation itself. We like to admire the architecture – the soaring rooftops, the walls of glass, the intricate façades – and appreciate the foundation only insomuch as it prevents these architectural elements from crashing down, whether due to wind or seismic or snow loads. 

You see, the foundation enables the construction of what we term success. The visible building is the success. Our public lives are the successes – or failures. What matters in our world is that which can be seen. We do not give thought to that which the visible is built upon – unless it fails.

We recognize that things can come crashing down around us, but rarely do we consider that something can also be upended. The soil beneath the foundation can fail. The foundation itself can fail through tension, compression, shear stresses. Frost can grab hold of the foundation and heave it upward. Yes, even deep foundations – drilled piers, driven piles, etc. – can be reached by frost. 

It's an imperfect metaphor to describe the spiritual in terms of the physical, but it is nevertheless enlightening. Foundations fail – humans fail – because we fight against nature. We seek to build taller structures  in more remote and arduous environments. We seek greater status and wealth. Collectively, we build cities of millions of people in deserts that cannot support them and then transport water to them unsustainably via aqueducts and pipelines (Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix). We build upon improper foundations and ignore them, until they fail.

Conversely, trees (and other such plants that grow literal roots), do not battle nature. They are nature and are simultaneously one with nature. Roots form a symbiotic system with bacteria in the surrounding soil to aid in the growth of other organisms. Groupings of quaking aspen trees sharing a single root system, known as clones, can grow to cover up to 100 acres of area and live, in one case, for an estimated 80,000 years. The hardy mesquite tree  of the southwest can grow a taproot to depths of almost 200 feet, and its root system can regenerate and keep growing even if the tree above is killed. A firm foundation, indeed.

It is not that trees cannot be uprooted or toppled that makes them remarkable – for they surely can be brought down. It's that they are true to their nature in their growth. One might even say that they are fulfilling their purpose. With few exceptions, a tree builds that which it can support. It seeks that which nourishes it: the sun. It does not grow lofty in order to garner praise. In drought years, its growth contracts and slows as needed. In the cold season, a tree's above ground growth may go dormant, but its root growth can continue on, buffered as it is from the frost via the soil and snowpack. An expansive root system gives a tree its resilience. May we learn to be so resilient.

It stands to reason that this is what Tolkien meant by deep roots not being reached by the frost. In a sense, even the deepest of roots are reached by calamities. There is no way to prevent the frost from occurring, even to depths not previously imagined. But when calamities befall us, when the hard frost comes, we do not utterly fail if we have made our roots resilient. And we make ourselves resilient by being true to our nature, by living with purpose.