To promote positive change, stating that climate change is your top priority is akin to saying attending church is the most essential activity of the week. Both involve acting on your personal beliefs without sharing much about the reasoning behind them. Without the clarifying details that make the existential crisis more personal and relatable for others, people may stereotype you as ‘other,’ from a different tribe. And you may ask yourself, “Why is no one listening to me? Why am I so alone?”

Today, we accept as fact the findings of learned, peer-reviewed scientific and government publications, much like the words of ancient oracles and biblical scholars.

The gospel of the climate change carbon-narrative would please Augustine in its persuasive telling. Let’s unpack it, starting with the warming effect of carbon dioxide on Earth’s climate. It is true that increasing greenhouse gases has a warming effect on the Earth’s climate.  However, weighing in at 11% of greenhouse gases, carbon is hardly a champion in this arena. That would be water vapor, accounting for approximately 80% of greenhouse gases. As for the importance to the climate of the 1% increase in planetary heat energy retained by greenhouse gases, it pales compared to the thermal mass of the ocean.  Spoiler alert: There is another climate change heavyweight that we’ll meet later on.

The gospel continues: soil carbon accumulates in the Earth very slowly as animals and plants die, and rocks weather. When detritus decays, most of the carbon returns to the air. Springtails and worms would beg to differ with this. They are actively cutting and grinding tough plant fibers to prepare the soil for a chemical transformation into black, rich soil, known as humus, which will hold carbon for thousands of years. Hooved grazers walk on their toenails to expedite the fiber breakdown process, returning nutrients to the roots of plants. Stimulate a plant by chomping or crushing, and it will increase photosynthesis to repair itself. Only plants left fallow lying on the ground rot and return carbon to the atmosphere. Not mowing a lawn increases its carbon footprint, while cutting the grass stimulates plants to grow, draw down more carbon, and exudate more carbohydrates out of roots into soil.

According to the gospel, climate change began when the carbon cycle became unbalanced approximately 150 years ago, with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, which started burning fossil fuels and darkening our skies. Today, we are releasing dioxide 100 times faster and suffer twice the carbon dioxide burden at 420 parts per million carbon.

Most everybody knows that climate change is as old as the Fertile Crescent, located in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates River, where it was transformed by plows opening up the land to gas out carbon dioxide and water, drying the land and burdening the atmosphere. We turned the cradle of agriculture into a desert. Whaling captain William Scoresby knew when, at age 31, he published in 1820: “changes of climate to a certain extent, have occurred, within the limits of historical record; these changes have been… considered as the effects of human industry, in draining marshes and lakes, felling woods, and cultivating the earth.” (page 263).

The government tells us sea level rise is mainly caused by ice melt and heat-driven expansion of ocean water at the global scale and regionally by gravity, land motion and rainfall. Captain Scoresby, having spent two winters (1810 and 1811) frozen in the Greenland Sea, knew better. For two Aprils, as the ice around his ship gave way to blue water, he lowered a ten-gallon wooden cask with valves at either end to collect seawater at great depths and measure water temperature. With water six or seven degrees warmer than the surface, he was surprised to find the Gulf Stream 100 to 200 fathoms below coursing towards the Arctic Ocean. In 2007, the Gulf Stream surfaced in Svalbard and today glaciers on the land are melting do to increased stormwater runoff warmed by our heat islands and hardscapes.

Tales of significant sea level rise caused by ice melt were put to rest by Greenlanders, who reported that there has been no substantial increase in water runoff into the sea due to the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, with the possible exception of 2012. Most of the ice melt puddles on top of the ice and refreezes in the fall. With warmer summer weather, there is more plant photosynthesis and evapotranspiration.

As for the energy retention of greenhouse gases followed by atmospheric heat-driven expansion of ocean water, elementary school science students would readily demonstrate that one cannot warm water with a hair dryer. Instead, it must be placed on a hotplate.

The truth is that climate change is real. Air temperatures are rising, and there is more heat and energy holding moisture in the atmosphere. Moist air picked up from the ocean expands when passing over our heat islands and paved surfaces. Hotter air, thirsty for more moisture, dries the land. This increases the risk of forest fires. With more moisture, more heat energy is retained in the atmosphere, causing storms to be fiercer and dump more water in a short time. A healthy lawn, without quick-release fertilizer that kills soil microbes, may have four inches of deep soil. Because of the sticky carbohydrates produced by plants in the soil, mineral particles are kept far apart to allow four inches of soil to hold seven inches of rain. If the land doesn’t absorb the rainfall into the ground, stormwater runs off, causing damage to others, residents of low-lying areas their homes, and costing municipalities a lot of money.

Stormwaters are rising even though annual rainfall has not increased significantly. We have replaced the ground’s natural carbon sponges with hardscapes that warm the landscape. Stormwater flows over heat islands to transport heat energy to the Atlantic and strengthen the Gulf Stream, with enormous thermal mass that melts sea ice, opens the Arctic Ocean, and changes the climate of the Arctic.

From ancient shifts in the Fertile Crescent to modern-day opportunities to green our urban spaces, every story adds value to the global dialogue. Let’s transform skepticism into connection with the land and inspire real change.

Where is the water flowing underground, under the rocks and stones, and into the blue again, to paraphrase the Talking Heads? Once in a lifetime, opportunities arise to restore vegetation and soils, turning hardscapes and heat islands into green landscapes—even if it’s just with potted plants on cement stoops.

With the right stories and understandings of how we’re all connected, one planet, we can rehydrate the earth and cool the climate. Then, to quote the Velvet Underground, you know it’ll be alright.

Published in The Eden Magazine. September 2025, pages  52-57.