Anastassia Makarieva on Nate Hagens' podcast

[Hart Hagan]

Friends,

I was happy to see this this morning!

Their Vital Role in Climate Dynamics, Rain, and The Biotic Pump with Anastassia Makarieva | TGS 193

Congratulations, Anastassia!

Hart

[Rob Lewis]

Exciting! Can't wait to see it.

Rob L

On Wed, Sep 10, 2025 at 5:10 PM Kathryn Alexander MA <soilsmar...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hart,

Thank you!!! The word is getting out!!!

Warmly,

Kathryn

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[Russ Speer]

Fantastic!

I'm forwarding this to my friends who are principals at the Sierra Nevada Research Institute and to many of my other colleagues.

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[Christopher Haines]

This is a great interview, with lots of critical material from Anastassia as usual. I have enormous respect for what she has done. However, while she talks about heat rising off of the planet’s surface, she appears to believe that saving natural forests is the only really critical need. Comments near the end indicate that if we can do that we can continue our civilization. As important as forests are in all the ways she describes, we have other problems.

Climate discussion tends to revolve around the IPCC’s average 1.5⁰C (2.7⁰F) greenhouse gas induced temperature increase. But with over half the world’s population now living in cities, they experience typical heat island induced increases of 2.7⁰C to 5.0⁰ C, (5.0⁰ to 9.0⁰F), but with assumptions that under-estimate the actual rise. A doctoral dissertation cites an example of 14.5⁰ C, (26.0⁰F).

When heat islands were discovered in 1818, the conditions that created them were limited to urban environments, and we referred to them as “urban heat islands”. Increased temperatures result from five interacting causes. While one cooling-reduction process, and the heat-trapping mechanism that creates the highest temperatures are limited to dense development, the primary causes*, reduced evaporation (de-vegetation), increased heat storage, (the conversion of sunlight into heat), and anthropogenic heat, (thermal pollution), have followed population growth and development around the globe.

As an example, whether a city street, a suburban road, or a winding country lane, every mile of a two-lane road covers just short of three acres of land with paving, more than two football fields. In addition to trapping heat, the rain-deprived soil is not growing vegetation, nor creating cooling, not building fertility, and not recharging water tables. So, trapping heat is part of a much larger problem.

Unless someone has repealed the laws of physics, these conditions are raising temperatures everywhere they exist. We have created a Heat Planet. Greenhouse gases serve as the pot-lid.

Reversing nature’s destruction addresses warming:

·         At the Root Cause – By increasing cooling and reducing heat generation.

·         More completely – Turning down the stove is more effective than a thinner pot lid.

·         Rapidly – In months, years, or maybe decades, not centuries. And

·         Locally – Where individuals and communities have agency over their own circumstances.

And local communities have more latitude to address local temperatures than they realize. A photo of a neighbor’s lawn, taken with an air temperature of 91⁰F shows temperatures of 68⁰F and 128⁰F; the difference between a frost, and a summer day, separated by 30 feet

As long as almost no one understands this, business-as-usual moves ahead with well-intentioned, but misguided plans that will raise temperatures. Here are links for a peer-reviewed article and a simpler piece.

Greenhouse Gases: True, but Not the Whole Truth « Journal of Sustainability Education (susted.com)

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2024-07-19/what-is-causing-record-shattering-heat/.

Christopher Haines                              

* Garland, L (2011) Heat Islands: Understanding and Mitigating Heat in Urban Areas. Washington D.C.: Earthscan Publishing.

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[Christopher Haines]

This is a great interview, with lots of critical material from Anastassia as usual. I have enormous respect for what she has done. However, while she talks about heat rising off of the planet’s surface, she appears to believe that saving natural forests is the only really critical need. Comments near the end indicate that if we can do that we can continue our civilization. As important as forests are in all the ways she describes, we have other problems.

Climate discussion tends to revolve around the IPCC’s average 1.5⁰C (2.7⁰F) greenhouse gas induced temperature increase. But with over half the world’s population now living in cities, they experience typical heat island induced increases of 2.7⁰C to 5.0⁰ C, (5.0⁰ to 9.0⁰F), but with assumptions that under-estimate the actual rise. A doctoral dissertation cites an example of 14.5⁰ C, (26.0⁰F).

When heat islands were discovered in 1818, the conditions that created them were limited to urban environments, and we referred to them as “urban heat islands”. Increased temperatures result from five interacting causes. While one cooling-reduction process, and the heat-trapping mechanism that creates the highest temperatures are limited to dense development, the primary causes*, reduced evaporation (de-vegetation), increased heat storage, (the conversion of sunlight into heat), and anthropogenic heat, (thermal pollution), have followed population growth and development around the globe.

As an example, whether a city street, a suburban road, or a winding country lane, every mile of a two-lane road covers just short of three acres of land with paving, more than two football fields. In addition to trapping heat, the rain-deprived soil is not growing vegetation, nor creating cooling, not building fertility, and not recharging water tables. So, trapping heat is part of a much larger problem.

Unless someone has repealed the laws of physics, these conditions are raising temperatures everywhere they exist. We have created a Heat Planet. Greenhouse gases serve as the pot-lid.

Reversing nature’s destruction addresses warming:

·         At the Root Cause – By increasing cooling and reducing heat generation.

·         More completely – Turning down the stove is more effective than a thinner pot lid.

·         Rapidly – In months, years, or maybe decades, not centuries. And

·         Locally – Where individuals and communities have agency over their own circumstances.

And local communities have more latitude to address local temperatures than they realize. A photo of a neighbor’s lawn, taken with an air temperature of 91⁰F shows temperatures of 68⁰F and 128⁰F; the difference between a frost, and a summer day, separated by 30 feet

As long as almost no one understands this, business-as-usual moves ahead with well-intentioned, but misguided plans that will raise temperatures. Here are links for a peer-reviewed article and a simpler piece.

Greenhouse Gases: True, but Not the Whole Truth « Journal of Sustainability Education (susted.com)

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2024-07-19/what-is-causing-record-shattering-heat/.

Christopher Haines                              

* Garland, L (2011) Heat Islands: Understanding and Mitigating Heat in Urban Areas. Washington D.C.: Earthscan Publishing.

On Wed, Sep 10, 2025 at 9:41 AM Hart Hagan <nhh...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Michael Pilarski]

Thank you Christopher for bringing up a very important point.  Heat island effect not being limited to cities.  As you point out every road (that is not overshadowed by tree canopy) is heat island effect.

What I have been pointing out lately is that annual cultivated agriculture is one of the biggest heat island effects on the planet.  Especially in the periods when it is bare.  For instance, where I live in eastern Washington we have somewhere around 3 million acres of summer fallow grain crops, mostly wheat.  This ground goes bare (or almost bare) every other year.  This is an incredible heat island area for the planet.  In some counties fully 1/3 of the landscape can be bare of growing vegetation for the fallow year.

Another major area of heat island effect is bare (or almost bare) areas of desert and degraded lands. Much of this used to be more vegetated but several thousand years of human intervention with grazing, deforestation, abusive agriculture, etc has made it more barren.  These areas can mostly be restored to more vegetation cover, but with cost and time. Some of it can be improved through Holistic Grazing management more quickly.

On the other hand, the cultivated farmground is where we can reduce planetary heat island effect the quickest.  Especially by switching to agroforestry and perennial crops.  I contend this will not only cool the planet, it will also increase food production (and other crops).  I consider this a high priority item for our regeneration movement.  Converting industrial and small-holder annual cultivated crops to agroforestry and perennial crops. I have written on this for decades.

PS.  I would not be so hard on Anastasia on account of the Nate Hagen interview.  She said if she had one magic wand wish, it would be to preserve intact primary forests.  I very much doubt she meant that was all we had to do. 

Michael "Skeeter" Pilarski

Global Earth Repair Foundation

Friends of the Trees Botanicals

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Permaculture - Agroforestry - Wildcrafting - Medicinal Herbs -

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[Rob Lewis]

Thanks Christopher and Michael for expanding the conversation. I too think a lot about agricultural heat islands. To limit the effect to cities, as a purely urban phenomenon, as it is currently treated, is another example of reduced thinking. But I think the point Anastassia was making has to do with biotic intelligence and capability. Prime lands need saving not only for what they do, but for what they know and remember. And I would argue for what they are. Restoring damaged land is really important, but will they function as we hope? Will they know when and how to transpire to recycle moisture and not hyperventilate it away?

We need to do both, preserve and restore. Save what's left and restore the rest. My own evolution is leading me more and more to the save-what's-left side of the equation. I feel the need is most acute here, especially at the moment when a new wave of extraction is being unleashed. 

Of course, they are two sides of the same coin, and we need as many coins as we can get.

Rob

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[Christopher Haines]

Thanks Michael and Rob for your comments. It is clearly true that the rural issues in agricultural and forestry: bare ground, erosion, aridity, and other mismanagement are the easiest and cheapest to resolve and where we should start. But suburban and urban areas are also repairable: first the land issues, but also the thermal pollution. The technology is far more complicated and costly, but solutions do exist. What may be missing is the will and the resources. 

Christopher