Whole Earth

It's All Related ... large and small, complicated and simple

GreenPolicy360: A message we have carried forward speaks of an Integral Ecology and interconnected, interacting systems of life. Take foe example the following explanation of how viral vectors can spread through air transmission.

Air-Borne and the Big Miss with Covid

February 28, 2025

Via Ground Truths .... Eric Topol interviews Carl Zimmer

• https://erictopol.substack.com/p/carl-zimmer-air-borne-and-the-big

(System dynamics)

So we are releasing living things into the air with every breath, but we're not the only ones. So I'm looking at you and I see beyond you the ocean and the Pacific Ocean. Every time those waves crash down on the surf, it's spewing up vast numbers of tiny droplets, kind of like the ocean's own lungs, spraying up droplets, some of which have bacteria and viruses and other living things. And those go up in the air. The wind catches them, and they blow around. Some of them go very, very high, many, many miles. Some of them go into the clouds and they do blow all over the place. And so, science is really starting to come into its own of studying the planetary wide pattern of the flow of life, not just for oceans, but from the ground, things come out of the ground all of the time. The soil is rich with microbes, and those are rising up. Of course, there’s plants, we are familiar with plants having pollen, but plants themselves are also slathered in fungi and other organisms. They shed those into the air as well. And so, you just have this tremendous swirl of life that how high it can go, nobody's quite sure. They can certainly go up maybe 12 miles, some expeditions, rocket emissions have claimed to find them 40 miles in the air.

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GreenPolicy: We begin to recognize with science how life swirls and flows, drifts and surges around us, micro-systems to macro-systems that join into a life-enabling, world-wide system, a ThinBlueLayer, whether called 'the sky', or 'air'. We are in our common atmosphere, yes we are interacting with The Commons ... As Planet Citizens, Planet Scientists we are learning as we go forward how to be healthy or not ... Clean air or polluted is our responsibility, breathe in, breathe out ....

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Planet Citizens / Scientists, Preserving & Protecting the Home Planet Earth

GreenPolicy360 Siterunner / Steve Schmidt - SJS:

Remembering an Earth Science Congressman named George

The original Mission Statement of the newly launched U.S. space program spoke of our planet and our responsibilities. GreenPolicy360's founder was fortunate, beginning in the 1960s, to listen to Congressman George E. Brown point to the NASA plan and explain how he saw Congress put into action the reality of a multi-year, coordinated, multi-agency program to achieve mission goals. The Congressman became a friend, then a colleague over the years. Until his death in 1999 Congressman George Brown led historic and essential first-generation US 'Big Science, Earth Science' programs and projects.

Earth science, measuring and monitoring Earth's life-enabling systems, environmental protection and security was given a highest priority. Representative Brown had become deeply involved in our student 'Earth Day' planning and he had direct access to the capabilities to make the Earth Day envisioning a reality. -- Earth Day Memories on the 50th Anniversary

George was a key mover in the launch of the EPA and he drafted the legislation establishing the first climate science programs.

George was among the first voices to be raised warning about the environmental threat of climate disruption and, although few realize, he was at the forefront of the initial efforts to study the climate, pushing the development of initial atmospheric science programs and missions of NASA and public/private research. He combined his engineering skills with his legislative reach.

George E. Brown drafted the "National Climate Program Act" of 1978. He was, as a trained physicist and engineer, looking to the science of Earth's systems, as GreenPolicy360's siterunner was observing during this period in science history and the first years of climate change study.

1978 Climate Act PDF via GreenPolicy360

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:US_Public_Law_95-367.png

In addition to atmospheric science studies, the Landsat program, considered George's 'pet project' by many, set in motion decades-long, first-ever digital scanning of Earth by remote satellites. An array of satellites began to launch, creating and combining the expanding resources of NASA, USGS, NOAA, and what became vast educational and scientific institutions and aeronautics technology.

More than five decades of Atmospheric and Earth Sciences data is now available to study Earth System change and dynamics. This was the original intent back in the 1970s when the NASA missions to measure, monitor and then intelligently manage Earth Systems were conceived, legislated, supported and set in motion... The vision was to gather the data as we saw it was essential to humanity's future and decision-making...

Here's to the visionaries who made the Earth Science missions reality, those who saw facts, science and data as a foundation on which informed decisions can be made wisely and intelligently.

Atmospheric Science

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Atmospheric_Science

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Climate_Policy

New Definitions of National Security

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/New_Definitions_of_National_Security

Look at how thin our atmosphere is

PlanetCitizen.org / Earth System Science / Measuring "Vital Signs"

Measure to Manage:

The Critical Importance of Atmospheric Science

Op-ed: The story behind the satellite mission Trump wants dead

As the U.S. President cuts the central program measuring CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere, it’s difficult to describe all the ways 'this is stupid'

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory's primary job is to see what's happening to the carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere

• https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/op-ed-the-story-behind-the-satellite-that-trump-wants-dead/

CO2 Molecule

Forward to today...

Climate Problems, Climate Solutions

Generation Green

Going Green

GreenLinks

Planet Citizen Action

GreenPolicy360's Campaign to 'Turn National Climate Promises & Pledges into Reality'

Drawing from the database of Earth System Science resulting from decades of space-based missions designed to provide us with actionable 'Earth-system and Climate-related data'

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Environmental_Laws

Climate Plans Enforcement - Resources

Methods to Enforce Climate Plan Pledges

GreenPolicy360: Climate Plans Enforcement Initiative

Pressuring Nations to Step Up, Cooperate, and Act Now

Environmental Laws, Regs, Rules... Lawsuits & Legal Actions

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Decades of Earth Science/Climate Science Data Accessible for Planet Citizen Action

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Planet_Citizen_Action

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Climate_Problems,_Climate_Solutions

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Earth_Science_Research_from_Space

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Earth_Observing_System_-_fleet_of_satellites.png

Measuring & Monitoring to Manage Earth's Living, Dynamic and Changing Systems

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Environmental Security and Sustainablity

NOAA: Earth System Science @Work

Measuring and monitoring everyday

• https://www.esrl.noaa.gov

The NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) pursues a broad and comprehensive understanding of the many physical, chemical and biological processes that comprise the Earth system to better predict their behavior from minutes to millennia on local to global scales.

Earth Science

Earth Science

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Earth_Science

Earth System Science

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_system_science

Earth system science (ESS) is the application of systems science to the Earth sciences. In particular, it considers interactions between the Earth's "spheres" — atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, geosphere, pedosphere, biosphere, and, even, the magnetosphere — as well as the impact of human societies on these components.

The Science Education Resource Center, Carleton College, offers the following description: "Earth system science embraces chemistry, physics, biology, mathematics and applied sciences in transcending disciplinary boundaries to treat the Earth as an integrated system. It seeks a deeper understanding of the physical, chemical, biological and human interactions that determine the past, current and future states of the Earth. Earth system science provides a physical basis for understanding the world in which we live and upon which humankind seeks to achieve sustainability".

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It's all connected --- It's all related

Planet Citizen Vision of Living Earth

"Our separation from each other is an optical illusion... Everything is connected. The greatest tragedy of human existence is the illusion of separateness.” -- Albert Einstein

Systems Connected

It's All Related

"It's All Related, It's All Connected"

Only shifts commensurate with the scale of our existential crises have any prospect of averting them. Hopeless realism, tinkering at the edges of the problem, got us into this mess. It will not get us out.

The Earth’s systems are highly complex, and complex systems do not respond to pressure in linear ways. When these systems interact (because the world’s atmosphere, oceans, land surface and lifeforms do not sit placidly within boxes that make study more convenient), their reactions to change become highly unpredictable. Small perturbations can ramify wildly. Tipping points are likely to remain invisible until we have passed them...

Only one of the many life support systems on which we depend – soils, aquifers, rainfall, ice, the pattern of winds and currents, pollinators, biological abundance and diversity – need fail for everything to slide...

Climate News

Earth and Space, Politics

Earth Science Research from Space

PlanetCitizen

Planet Citizens

Planet Citizens, Planet Scientists

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Big and Small, Micro and Global, Seen and Unseen

Planet Citizen Vision of Living Earth

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Forest Microbiome & Ecosystem Ecology

Soils are alive. Incredibly diverse forest microbial communities have profound impacts on our world that we are just beginning to grasp. My team studies the forest microbiome. How does incredible microbial diversity affect which trees are in a forest, forest carbon sequestration and climate change forecasts? I focus on the ecology of mycorrhizal fungi - fungi that form a symbiosis with the roots of most plants on Earth – however I am broadly interested in links between microbes and ecosystems.

• https://www.colinaverill.com/

Entangled Life

by Merlin Sheldrake

• https://www.amazon.com/Entangled-Life-Worlds-Change-Futures/dp/B082TS4S2L

Excerpts of Reviews:

“Merlin Sheldrake’s marvelous tour of these diverse and extraordinary life forms is eye-opening on why humans should consider fungi among the greatest of earth’s marvels.... Wondrous.” (Time)

A mind-bending journey into the hidden universe of fungi, “one of those rare books that can truly change the way you see the world around you” (Helen Macdonald, author of H Is for Hawk).

Named One of the Best Books of the Year By Time; BBC; Science Focus; The Daily Mail; Geographical; The Times; The Telegraph; New Statesman; London Evening Standard Science

From the Publisher

When we think of fungi, we likely think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains nearly all living systems. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel, and behave.

In Entangled Life, the brilliant young biologist Merlin Sheldrake shows us the world from a fungal point of view, providing an exhilarating change of perspective. Sheldrake’s vivid exploration takes us from yeast to psychedelics, to the fungi that range for miles underground and are the largest organisms on the planet, to those that link plants together in complex networks known as the “Wood Wide Web”, to those that infiltrate and manipulate insect bodies with devastating precision.

Fungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. They are metabolic masters, earth makers, and key players in most of life’s processes. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disaster. By examining fungi on their own terms, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organisms - and our relationships with them - are changing our understanding of how life works.

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Planet Citizen Vision of Living Earth

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Earth_System_Science

Living Earth 'Networking'

More about soil, roots, plants and trees, forests and 'systems'

Image (GIF) via Merlin Sheldrake @MerlinSheldrake

* https://twitter.com/MerlinSheldrake

A laser scan shows a plant root, in blue, enveloped by a mycorrhizal fungus, in red

Mycorrhizal fungi provide plants with nutrients, water and defense from pathogens in exchange for sugars

This image beautifully displays an ancient symbiosis where fungus and root become one

Watch the animation / GIF

• https://twitter.com/i/status/1636745438698283008

• https://twitter.com/samdknowlton/status/1636745438698283008

• https://twitter.com/i/status/1636810936483758093

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Flora, Fauna and ... Funga | #Networks #Biodiversity ... #Microorganisms ...

As GreenPolicy360 has written over the decades, pay attention to the "tiny little ones" in nature, earthy systems rarely seen-by-human-eyes, a micro-world connecting life on earth... Give special attention to the #Soil, it's more than dirt! e.g. mycorrhizal fungi. Pay attention to the roots, the trees, the forests ... living, interconnected webs of life on our Planet Earth.

What are mycorrhizal fungi?

Mycorrhizal fungi are a group of network-forming soil fungi that form symbiotic associations with plants. Nearly all plants form symbiotic associations with mycorrhizal fungi. These associations have shaped life on earth for more than 475 million years.

Nearly all plants of Earth form a symbiosis with mycorrhizal fungi. These fungi have altered the evolutionary history of the planet.

See more at -- https://www.spun.earth/networks/mycorrhizal-fungi

* https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Soil_Underground_Life_-1.jpg

Dirt Just Doesn't Get the Respect It Deserves

"I'm walking here...."

 

Planet Citizen Vision of Living Earth

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