This article explains why climate change is real and urgent, yet so hard to solve. Colin Austin argues that modern “reductionist” science can miss practical answers when problems are complex, multi-variable, and political. He proposes a systems-and-innovation approach: use soil carbon sequestration as a near-term tool to buy time (about fifty years) while energy storage and other breakthroughs emerge. The focus is not on denial, but on solutions, clear communication, and workable adoption.
Resolving Climate Change 3 — How Science Can Fail Us
Colin Austin — 11 Sep 2012
Keywords: climate change, soil, carbon, science, innovation, greenhouse, sequestration
Prologue — Don’t Get Me Wrong
With a title like “How science can fail us”, don’t think this is a climate denier’s delight. It is exactly the opposite. Climate change is real and happening now. The point is that the reductionist approach of modern science can hinder the search for solutions, and that the speculative approach of the innovator can sometimes provide practical ways forward. I want to talk about solutions, not argue about whether climate change exists, but I am so bottled up about the lousy job science is doing at convincing people that climate change is real that I have to get it off my chest first.
The Age of Spin
What “Joe Public” sees is a mass of confusing, detailed information that is unintelligible and unconvincing. Scientists and propagandists miss that we live in an age of spin, and people have developed an immunity to it. A classic spinner presents a list of facts the listener will accept, then hits with a punch line that has little to do with those facts. Climate change debate is full of this. People talk about past droughts, bigger rains, or grapes in Roman Britain. Some of those points may be true, but they are often unrelated to the question of whether greenhouse gases are warming the earth.
A bunch of facts is not the same as truth. In climate change, both sides push “facts” that become woffle. I call this “foffle”: facts that are really woffle. The way out is to get to the essence — the simple underlying mechanism that can be tested and understood.
Getting to the Essence
Long ago, I learned I had certain mental deficiencies: a bad memory, a wandering mind, and poor attention. A maths teacher helped me by showing that you can write the core formulas for mechanics on the back of a postcard. You don’t need to memorise endless equations if you understand basic principles like Newton’s laws, conservation of mass and energy, and simple heat transfer. That taught me a valuable skill: getting to the essence.
Climate change arguments cannot be won by foffle. You can table pages of rainfall and temperature data and sceptics will find other data to “prove” their preferred story. We need the underlying physics — something simple that can be measured and grasped.
The Essence of Climate Change
Climate change is about radiation and the energy in radiation. Here is a primitive instrument anyone can understand: take a brick or block of metal, paint it black, insert a thermometer, wrap it in insulation except for one face, then point it at the sun. It heats up. Measure the temperature rise and you are measuring incoming energy. Turn it over and, in principle, you can measure radiation emitted by the earth.
Joseph Fourier (1824) recognised a basic imbalance. At equilibrium, energy arriving from the sun should balance energy leaving the earth as radiation. Fourier found they did not balance unless the earth was below freezing, so he deduced an insulating layer in the atmosphere. Put simply, the sun’s radiation is high energy and passes through the atmosphere; the earth’s outgoing radiation is lower energy and is absorbed by gases in the atmosphere. That is the physics of greenhouse gases.
Svante Arrhenius extended this logic by calculating heat absorption by carbon dioxide. Since then we have measured rising CO₂, which implies more heat arriving than leaving. A sceptic may say “that’s just theory”, but there is hard evidence of imbalance. A common everyday observation also helps: clear winter nights are colder than cloudy nights. Water vapour is a powerful greenhouse gas. Most people can relate to that.
What the Public Needs (and Isn’t Getting)
Many politically powerful “deniers” do not necessarily deny warming; they dispute magnitude, speed, and whether sacrifice is justified. That means two critical questions must be answered plainly: (1) how much warming will occur for a given increase in greenhouse gases, and (2) how long will it take. Yet this basic information is rarely presented in a form the public can use.
Consider a kettle. Switch it on: at first you feel nothing; then the temperature rises; eventually it reaches equilibrium. The earth is a giant kettle. Early industrial emissions would show little immediate effect, then the system warms over time. The public needs the “magic graph” showing equilibrium temperature versus greenhouse gas levels, and a simple time-response concept (half-life style) explaining how quickly equilibrium is approached. Without this, policy looks like kindergarten-level explanation for a reasonably informed public.
There is also a publication barrier. Scientists chase journals for prestige and funding; the public finds abstracts via Google but must pay to read the work. Publicly funded research on public issues should be publicly accessible. That gap helps the spin merchants.
Part 2 — Solutions to Climate Change
The Trap: Reductionist Science and Complex Systems
Modern science is reductionist: specialists go down a funnel into narrow niches because no one can learn everything. This has produced staggering benefits. The downside is pockets of knowledge that, until integrated, can miss their potential or even lead to wrong conclusions. The great power of science is developing general laws from patterns, then testing them widely. But integration — climbing back up the funnel — is where errors often creep in.
I learned this when developing Moldflow. Many specialists knew far more than I did in their domains, but no one in their niche produced a working system. The innovation came from integrating pieces into a functioning whole, often by returning to first principles and building the model step by step. Integration is the opposite of reductionism, and it matters profoundly for climate change.
The Grand Plan
The argument is simple. Climate change is real; floods and droughts will cause major harm. The cost of extreme weather has been calculated at around 1.2 trillion dollars. Long term, we must reduce fossil fuel use. Renewable energy is abundant, but the decisive problem is control: renewables are often not available when needed. Until practical energy storage exists, fossil fuel dependence will continue.
New technology often appears by serendipity — unexpectedly and from outside the obvious places. We need time for that. Storing carbon in the soil can buy a window of opportunity. A major program of soil carbon sequestration could provide breathing space of around fifty years while energy storage or other breakthroughs emerge.
Early Soil Regeneration Experiments and the Limits of Single-Variable Testing
Forty years ago, I began soil regeneration experiments on a small farm with degraded clay — more or less bare. I tested many methods: gypsum, sulphur “clay breakers”, seaweed extracts, fish oil, deep ripping, rotary hoeing, green manures (legumes, oats), and more. I followed the classic scientific approach: change one variable at a time and compare to controls. The result was close to a total failure. Treatments produced inconsistent results across patches that looked uniform.
Later I learned why. In dry periods, clay cracks and wind-blown debris partly fills the cracks. When rain comes, clay tries to expand; the filled cracks create pressure that forces virgin clay from deeper layers toward the surface, producing variable patterns. Real soils are multi-variable systems, and the “single variable” approach struggles to reveal what matters.
I concluded soil regeneration requires combinations of processes, but classic science struggles with many interacting variables. Even methods aimed at multi-variable analysis, like Taguchi approaches, did not help me much in soil. I needed a systems approach: get a system that works (even badly) and then refine it, rather than waiting for perfect understanding of each component in isolation.
Why Single-Variable Science Can Create Dangerous Conclusions
A key risk is when a narrowly valid result is generalised into a policy conclusion. For example, suppose policy makers read a high-quality paper such as “Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi Increase Organic Carbon Decomposition under Elevated CO₂” and see experiments showing increased CO₂ increases decomposition and CO₂ release. The experiments may be sound within their strict scope. The danger arises when that becomes “soil carbon won’t work” — a broad claim that can be disastrously wrong.
What matters is not merely the rate of decomposition, but the residual carbon retained in stable forms at the end — the equilibrium level. Faster decomposition does not automatically mean less long-term carbon; it may mean the system runs faster. In complex soils, changing CO₂ also affects plant growth and carbon uptake. Short experiments (for example, over ten weeks) can be misread as indicating long-term outcomes. The correct question is whether agricultural systems can be redesigned as a whole to retain more carbon. The answer is yes — and that question requires a systems approach.
Failures of Climate Change Policy and the Role of Timing
Humanity is still emitting greenhouse gases at an increasing rate. Soil carbon is not a permanent solution, but it can provide a crucial window — roughly fifty years — to develop permanent solutions. Timing matters. History shows ecological disasters sometimes avoided not by planned solutions, but by unexpected technological shifts. That may sound like a poor strategy, but it reflects how innovation often happens.
Consider Britain and oak trees. Centuries ago, forests were cut for warships. Panic would have grown as timber ran out; oak plantations would take a century. There was no quick obvious fix, and ecological disaster loomed. Yet a serendipity event — the rolling of steel sheet and the shift to steel ships — arrived and saved the remaining forests.
Or horse dung in New York. The city was drowning in horse effluent with no visible solution, until mass-produced cars replaced horses. The lesson is that new solutions can arrive unexpectedly. Soil carbon can buy the time required for similar breakthroughs in energy.
Why Energy Storage Is the Hard Part
The core of climate change is burning fossil fuels. The issue is not shortage of alternative energy; it is control. Modern life depends on controllable power: press a pedal and release hundreds of kilowatts; turn it off instantly. Even power systems anticipate surges — like the post–cup final kettle boil — by bringing turbines online minutes ahead. Renewables can generate huge energy, but without storage they cannot reliably match demand.
A practical bulk storage device would solve much of the problem. What will it be? Monster batteries, exotic chemistry, space reflectors, algae fuels, or something nobody has yet imagined? Probably the last. New technologies often emerge “from left field”. Soil carbon can reduce near-term risk while waiting for that breakthrough.
The Tooth Fairy and Human Psychology
People deny unpleasant realities until a viable plan is presented that does not demand an unacceptable lifestyle collapse. Children suspect the tooth fairy is a con, but still ask: “If I stop believing, will I still get presents?” Adults are similar. Offered only the choice between powering modern life and living an “Ashram” cave existence, many will choose denial. Soil carbon may not be perfect, but it holds the wolf from the door.
Science and Innovation: Why Both Are Needed
Soil carbon debates can become heated. Some soil scientists argue storage is limited; others argue it is large. To assess this, it helps to understand how science and innovation work together. Reductionist science is like studying every component of a car in detail; innovation is assembling those components into a functioning system. Many innovations do not come from brand-new science, but from integrating existing knowledge to solve a practical problem — as with the smartphone, which combined known technologies around a clear user need.
Steam engines came before thermodynamics. Early engines were inefficient and developed by practical experimentation. Later, Carnot’s thermodynamics enabled huge improvements. Likewise, we should not wait for perfect soil microbiology science before acting. We can deploy workable systems now, then let science refine them.
Missing the Obvious: Can Soil Store Bulk Carbon?
Soil can hold large carbon volumes, especially when stored deeper, and can buffer greenhouse gases for about fifty years. Plants already extract enormous carbon from the atmosphere — far more than human emissions — and the challenge is that carbon return (via decomposition) is almost as large as carbon capture. The task is not to invent photosynthesis, but to slow the carbon return and convert more plant carbon into stable soil humus.
Some scepticism comes from measuring soil carbon under current farming methods. If residues are left on the surface, they oxidise rapidly. Small systemic changes can have large effects. For example, deep-burrowing worms can drag organic material down where it is converted into humus rather than lost. The systems approach asks: what could be achieved if we change the system, not just measure what happens now.
What Joe Public Thinks, and How to Test Claims
Joe now faces a deluge of information. He has lived through war, nuclear fear, terrorism, pandemics, financial crises, and now climate change. His question is: how does climate change rank among risks? Deniers say warming is mild; others forecast disaster. Joe needs tests that are verifiable. Measurements are usually reliable; failures creep in when data is generalised into laws without system-level testing.
Climate change is about risk, not absolutes. People accept risk every day — flights are not “zero risk”, but low enough to accept. The risk from intensified extreme weather is high enough to matter. But if the only proposed solution is abandoning modern life, many will reject it. Soil carbon offers a middle path: reduce risk now and buy time for deeper energy transitions.
Testing the Two Planks
The two planks are: (1) soil can absorb enough carbon for a breathing space, and (2) plants already pull far more carbon from the air than humans emit. A simple way to test plant uptake is not to hunt for obscure calculations but to look at real atmospheric data: the Keeling Curve.
The Keeling Curves
Most people focus on the long-term upward trend in atmospheric CO₂. But the seasonal swing is revealing. In northern spring, CO₂ falls through summer as vegetation absorbs carbon; it rises again in autumn as leaves fall and decomposition accelerates. This shows that in northern summer, vegetation is taking carbon out of the air faster than humans are adding it. The swing is strong because northern land area is larger than the south. Trees work. The challenge is retaining more of that captured carbon in soil rather than losing it back to the atmosphere.
Slowing the Carbon Return
Carbon in plants is not raw carbon; it is complex molecules. Soft tissues are unstable and quickly break down by sunlight, microbes, and grazing animals, producing CO₂ or methane. Lignin in wood is more stable but is eventually broken down by fungi, termites, or fire. Some decomposition pathways lead to humus — a stable form that can last for hundreds of years in soil. The objective is to manage decomposition so a higher proportion becomes humus.
A Systems Method for Soil Carbon
The essence of effective soil regeneration is managing soil biology as a system. Continuous plant cover is critical because soil biology relies on plants for energy; without continuous supply, key fungi decline. This can be achieved by intercropping (planting the next crop between rows before harvesting), using permanent plants in alleys or islands, or rotating land through periods of pasture.
Mycorrhizal fungi are central. Plants take carbon from the atmosphere, convert it to sugars, and share it with fungi. Fungi exude complex polymers that help form humus. These fungi are slow growing and delicate; they need consistently humid soil. Spores survive harsh conditions, but active networks need stability. Deep-burrowing worms also help by dragging surface organic matter down into the soil, where it can become humus rather than oxidising on the surface. Worms may also help fungi spread through spores, aeration, or nutrient effects.
Bacteria are robust and reproduce rapidly. They provide food for worms (worms cannot directly digest plant matter well), but bacteria can also tie up nitrogen initially and do less to build long-term structure. The key is balance: to create conditions where fungi can outcompete bacteria for stable soil building. Moisture is decisive because fungi thrive in a narrower, consistently moist range.
Wicking bed technology supports this by maintaining steady moisture: a reservoir wicks water upward so soil stays moist but not saturated. This stable moisture supports fungi and therefore soil carbon formation. Wicking beds can also work with “soil trees” (often deep-rooted legumes) that add nitrogen, mine minerals, and provide habitat for mycorrhizal fungi. Soil chemistry matters too: fungi need suitable pH, calcium, nitrogen, and other conditions to flourish.
Capturing Carbon in the Soil
The critical question is whether we can change agricultural procedures as a whole to capture more carbon in soil. The answer is yes, but it requires a systems approach rather than narrow conclusions from single-variable experiments. Widespread adoption of soil carbon farming may be the one practical opportunity to reduce near-term climate harm while longer-term energy solutions mature.
The Punch Line
Resolving climate change cannot wait for reductionist science to perfect every detail. We need the innovator’s process: understand the problem, define the technology needed, search existing science for components, build a system that works, then refine it over time. The problem is clear: we need a dramatic reduction in fossil fuel use, but the practical reality is that renewables cannot yet be fully controlled because storage remains limited.
Embedding carbon in soil provides breathing space for energy breakthroughs to emerge. We should not wait for complete scientific understanding of soil microbiology. We already have system-level methods that work; science can improve them. Changing agricultural practices can be driven by incentives that are simple and accessible to farmers. Carbon trading may be fashionable, but any scheme must be workable at farm level.
The early steam engines solved an immediate problem — flooding mines — long before thermodynamics refined them. Today we have immediate problems: food production, and managing increased flood-and-drought cycles. Soil carbon systems work now and can offset emissions. Scientific understanding will improve, but we need to act, not wait.
Colin Austin — 2012.
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