The Living Climate

Introduction

'Everything is reversible in Nature and hence there are also atomic energies that are not life-destroying, but life-creating.'

Viktor Schauberger

Understanding the world from a holistic perspective has placed me in the position of seeing polarities at work everywhere. Take a polemic around a personality, choices entrenched around two contrary solutions, or any hot topic in the news. In most instances spiritual science takes me to a place where I can see that the dilemma finds a resolution when we start seeing what one side and the other advance. Most often both sides have something to offer but, from a spiritual-scientific perspective something is missing even if we add the best from both contributions. Sometimes the way out is obvious, for example when it concerns something I have studied in depth. At other times such a resolution can remain a question mark for a long time.

Steven E. Koonin, an unimpeachable scientist who knows the science of climate change from deep within the system, places in a few crisp sentences the dilemma out of which I have been trying to get for the past decade at least:

Politicians on the right who deny even the basics that science has settled-that human influences have played a role in warming the globe-are not above exploiting climate science uncertainties, offering them as proof that the climate isn't changing after all.

Politicians on the left find it inconvenient to discuss scientific uncertainties or the magnitude of the challenge in reducing human influences. Instead, they declare the science settled and label anyone who questions that conclusion a 'denier', lumping conscientious scientists advocating for less persuasion and more research in with those openly hostile to science itself.1

In the first instance all of science is often denied, but this is often only possible to do so by cherry-picking . the necessary part of science that helps support the denial. In the second case science goes often unquestioned, which means accepting everything that goes down in the name of it, whether supported by solid evidence, or not. Belief takes the place of deep scrutiny; in fact 'believing in science' has become a trite, common slogan, one that paradoxically denies the role of science in moving the human being away from blind faith. Others speak of 'the science' as if science always presented but one unified face to the public.

The focus of this book shares little ground with either of these perspectives. The present approach seeks to broaden the scientific perspective; to move away from an interpretive lens which rests on a modelling of the Earth's behaviour and climate according to primary physical parametres alone. Instead it looks at the Earth as a living organism influenced by forces and processes that are much more complex than dualistic thinking can apprehend, and which cannot be reduced to simplistic equations. Understanding at least some of them is not easy. But in the end the effort pays off. We can then start to build an understanding of the whole anew and see the challenge in its connection with the human being, her thinking and her behaviour, not just external factors.

The present work is articulated along two complementary fronts. On one hand a decidedly Goetheanistic/phenomenological approach to world ecology, on the other the gathering of the best that modern science can contribute to the understanding of climate, an approach that surprisingly places the Earth in relation to the Sun and beyond. The second approach encompasses a very broad perspective. The two approaches also admirably complement each other. The first will look at Earth ecology from the perspective of land masses and their relationship to the atmosphere and Sun. The second will move from the broad expanses of the oceans to the atmosphere, cloud formations and their correlations with solar and planetary cycles. From there we will return to a fuller Goethean perspective.

The View from the Earth

For years I had intended to embark on an in-depth study of the work of Viktor Schauberger, but kept postponing it. When in the early nineties I chanced upon the work of Olav Alexandersson, who popularized Schauberger, I was immediately hooked. I even experimented with one of his egg-shaped in-ground cisterns involving reduction processes of organic substance on the land where I lived. But, getting to really know Schauberger is another matter altogether. It is like studying Goethean science all over again, but the difference here lies in getting used to a whole new language, which derives from how the researcher tried to put into words the richness of his perceptions. I tried to go directly to his work but hit a wall. I then turned to those who had synthesized an understanding of his work and started to see some light. I could then return to Schauberger himself for months of prolonged immersion.

The net result of all of this was twofold. When you read Schauberger you are completely changed. First of all, you start seeing things more fully, and understanding the dimension of all that has been inflicted upon Nature. It is sobering to say the least. But, in a second step, if you fully embrace what the Austrian genius says, you start to see the light. Yes, it may be even worse than we think, but on the other hand, the twentieth-century pioneer offered us ways to better understand Nature, and solution after solution in one field after another. It lays with us humans to decide which way to go. We are not doomed, far from it.

I graduated in botanic science and ecology first and finished a Masters in environmental sciences immediately after, at a time in which nobody spoke about climate change. I have enlarged my views about Nature from everything that was offered from Goethean science, from anthroposophical natural sciences and biodynamics. And yet it was only recently, after reading Schauberger and grappling with his writings, that I can say I have had a new understanding not of natural sciences in general, but of the science of ecology in particular.

Climate change theories only entered in the public consciousness in the eighties and nineties. As I was studying environmental sciences between 1979 and 1981 in one of the first European Masters in Environmental Sciences programmes, on the second year it was made available, the topic was neither explored, nor even broached. And yet someone was already perceiving some dimension of it as early as 1931 and writing: 'It should be noted that formidable climatic changes will occur if, as a result of incorrect systems of forest management and river regulation, the orderly formation of clouds is disturbed. Where these systems have been implemented, the number of thunderstorms has consistently decreased, while those that do occur are becoming more dangerous.'2 In effect Viktor Schauberger was pointing to human interventions that have now impacted and completely modified the cycle of water at a planetary level, and therefore probably affected the proportions of water and CO2 in the atmosphere. It is no wonder that he already noticed the glaciers starting to retreat in Europe, an effect which he attributed to modern forestry management.3 Anticipating a central theme, he was pointing to the global modification of the hydrological cycle, a theme overlapping with but also slightly different from climate change as we know it at present.

So how could someone already see with clarity a problem that, save for other people in the fringes, was completely ignored? How could someone armed with pure and direct observation at the local level anticipate global problems that are presently explored through the indirect means of immense stores of recorded data?

The answer, as in many similar situations, is a unique perception of natural phenomena allied to a completely holistic thinking. As we will see, Schauberger, in common with what Rudolf Steiner couldn't tire of repeating, questioned and pointed the finger to the modern way of perceiving and thinking about Nature. In reference to the crisis he anticipated by half a century he wrote in 1933: 'If humanity does not soon come to its senses, and realize that it has been misled and misinformed by its intellectual leaders, the prevailing laws of nature (with poetic justice) will reliably act to bring about a fitting end to this ineptly contrived culture. Unfortunately, the most frightful catastrophes or scandalous disclosures will have to happen before people become aware that it is their own mistakes that have led to their undoing.'4 But he also cautioned further in the same document: 'Opposition alone, however, achieves nothing. Our youth will achieve any practical success in their struggle only when the causes are identified and the errors are revealed that previous generations and we have made, so plunging the world into disaster' (emphasis added).

The View from the Solar System

The view from orthodox science is at present a field highly contested and politicized. What would happen if we look at the largest possible picture and let our thinking be illuminated by as vast a horizon of disciplines as possible? Under this lens climate is illuminated by physics, ecology, oceanography, climatology, meteorology, astrophysics and the historical record (paleontology, paleobiology, dendrology, etc.) to name but a few. In fact modern science can take us in two highly contrasting directions: the science of climate models, dominated by physicists, statisticians and modellers, or a new climate science which is the domain of ecologists, oceanographers, meteorologists,...