We are taking this opportunity to look back and reflect on the major trends and shed light on what's ahead in 2026. Click to read the full newsletter.
Understanding Biotic Regulation
The challenge of addressing climate change is extremely complex. Even reducing emissions from energy use—as deploying more nuclear will help us to do—doesn't ensure climate stability for future generations. Fortunately, there are things we can do now to better protect our current and future climate and, in appreciation of our investors, advisors and supporters, we are donating to a group whose insights around "biotic regulation" can make a big difference in how humanity fares.
It turns out that forests play a critical and pro-active role in climate change dynamics. Forests, and especially old-growth rainforests, can help to reduce the impacts of our planet's warming. The mounting levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are adding tremendous amounts of heat forcing: that is certain. What is less certain is how severely we'll feel those impacts. With healthy forests, we're much better off.
Emerging from the work of a group of atmospheric physicists, ecophysiologists, and biologists, is an awareness that, weather is not uniform and extreme weather events aren't being distributed equally. Forests, rather than being simply passive stores of carbon, are active participants in controlling weather, particularly the wind and hydrologic cycles. This means, where there are forests, the weather will be more regular, more temperature controlled and more normal.
How do trees and forests do this? They leverage physics, chemistry and their own biology to regulate weather. Through spreading canopies and networks of roots, trees collaborate in keeping the land cool and moist. This cooler air can generate cloud cover, which in turn generates rain and limits the penetration of sunlight, limiting heating impacts and droughts.
Trees can also use their ability to transpire—release moisture from leaves—to help increase the level of humidity in their vicinity, which can increase the air's moisture content and actually hasten rainfall. Clouds in turn reflect the sun's radiation back out into space, reducing heating in their areas despite the higher concentrations of CO2.
Forests, we have learned, have evolved on the planet for millions of years and they have adapted by being able to moderate their own climate. Trees use a number of physical mechanisms—rising warm air, denser cool air and the effects of condensation, to influence winds to suck moist dense cooler air from the seas onto the land and blow warmer air out to sea. Forests are not passive plants: rather, they can act as a massive biologic organism that can actually impact the physics in their environment to trigger rain. Not only is this good for them—giving them the fresh water they need—it is also vital to humanity.
Dr. Anastassia Makarieva, author of the Biotic Regulation substack, frequently discusses this complex blend of physical, chemical and biologic forces that form what she describes as a "biotic pump" that moves water from the ocean to the land. She has argued persuasively that forests play an active role. Further, that thinking that the primary value of forests is in their use as a store of carbon, is failing to recognize their vital function as a force that literally drives a large portion of the hydrological cycles of the planet. Dr. Makarieva’s writing helps readers recognize the problem of focusing climate efforts exclusively on the issue of carbon emissions and not paying attention to the proactive role of forests as a moderator of extreme weather and protecting them . . . from being actively leveled.
As important as nuclear power is to humanity's ability to reduce emissions, preserving forests is equally important as a way to better prevent extreme heating effects from causing damange to vital ecosystems and human systems. Protecting our natural forests and especially rainforests is key to lengthening the runway for maintaining cooler temperatures and ensuring there is continued rain—even as emissions drive higher global temperatures. Therefore, in addition to our usual year-end support of non-profit groups protecting our nuclear power assets (blue), this year we are donating to the Biotic Pump Greening Group (green), which is working to increase our understanding of the role that forests play in protecting their own ecosystems.
Learn more below:
BIOTIC PUMP GREENING GROUP
About
The Biotic Pump Greening Group Institute is a Brazilian-based non-profit scientific, technological, and innovation organization focused on promoting a paradigm shift in combating Climate Change, ecological restoration, and reforestation. Our core mission is to advance the study of the Biotic Pump Theory and develop innovative practices for ecosystem protection, contributing to the defense and preservation of the environment and the promotion of sustainable development. To achieve this, we support scientific research, design restoration projects, organize educational events, and foster scientific and political activism.
For more information, you can reach out to Carlos Nobre Camargo or Dr. Anatassia Makarieva. If you'd like an introduction, we'd be happy to make that.
Instituto BPGG - Biotic Pump Greening Group:
CNPJ: 59.958.061/0001‑09
Avenida Alfredo Ignacio Nogueira Penido, 335, Sala 706
São José dos Campos – SP
CEP: 12.246‑000
Banking information:
BRADESCO Bank Brazil
Swift: BBDEBRSP
Instituto BPGG - CNPJ 59958061/0001-09
Branch: 06012
Account: 000018678
Iban: BR78.6074.6948.0601.2000.0186.783C.1
Other Groups Working to Protect Rainforests
1. Restore established by Michael Kellett, which collaborated with the Biotic Pump team on organizing an "Embracing Nature's Complexity" conference in Munich in 2024.
2. Mongabay founded by Rhett Ayers Butler, one of the leading providers of ecological journalism, reporting on the state of forests, the often nefarious destruction being wrought on rainforests by corporations and the efforts and challenges of those who seek to protect them. Mongabay was the first big environmental news outlet that covered the biotic pump story, initially back in 2012, with more recent follow ups.
3. Amazon Watch, a 30-year old 501(c) organization, works together with and in support of the Amazon's Indigenous Peoples and allies calling for the Amazon to be free of oil, gas, mining, and all extraction and for the U.N. and Amazonian governments to protect the Amazon from deforestation for palm production or other destructive activities.
Groups We Support Working to Protect Nuclear
1. Mothers for Nuclear: Was started on Earth Day in 2016 by two moms who want to protect their children’s future on this planet. They were initially skeptical of nuclear, but through many years of questioning and working at California’s last remaining nuclear plant, they gradually changed their minds. Now they support nuclear as our largest and most hopeful source of clean energy, vital to addressing some of our world’s biggest challenges: climate change, air pollution, and energy poverty. Now, we have an organized way to share our stories and begin a dialogue with others who want to protect nature for future generations.
2. Stand Up for Nuclear: Works to advance nuclear energy worldwide by activating leaders, driving action, and fostering informed public engagement. Since 2019, Stand Up for Nuclear has grown the international movement, uniting citizens and organizations to champion nuclear energy as a key to securing our clean, abundant energy future. They strive to create a future where nuclear energy is embraced as a reliable and sustainable solution for a low-carbon world.
3. Californians for Green Nuclear Power: Is dedicated to promoting the peaceful use of safe, carbon-free nuclear power, and to keeping Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant open, so it can continue in its important role of generating clean energy for the benefit of California’s economy.
Published by Nucleation Capital in Advanced Nuclear, Air pollution, Brilliant thinkers, Carbon emissions, Climate change, Energy transition, Environmental support for nuclear, Extreme weather, Fission, Future of Energy, Global emissions, Hydrologic cycle, NEWS, Nuclear innovation, Rainforest protection, Regulatory reform, Solving climate, Venture capital support for nuclear, Women in Nuclear, Zero emission energy
Dr. Anastassia Makarieva is a nuclear physcist using her knowledge of physics to study atmospheric processes involving wind and water and regulating climate. The "atomic bombs" that she looks are are category 5 hurricanes and why these become weather systems that are completely out of control. In contrast, forests serve to regulate and control the climate in the air above them and help convert what could be extreme physical forces into more controlled systems that provides regular rain, more akin to the controlled heat released by nuclear energy (the metapher is hers).
Background: Dr. Makarieva graduated from Leningrad Polytechnic Institute, Faculty of Physics and Mechanics, in 1996 and obtained her PhD in atmospheric physics from St. Petersburg State University in 2000. Since 1996, she has been working in the Theoretical Physics Division of Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute investigating the life-environment interactions in the framework of the biotic regulation concept founded by Prof. Victor Gorshkov.
In co-authorship with V.G. Gorshkov, Anastassia formulated the concept of the biotic pump of atmospheric moisture, highlighting key ecological feedbacks on atmospheric moisture transport (2007) and, in cooperation with an international team of colleagues, demonstrated the existence of life’s metabolic optimum (broadly universal rate of energy consumption across life’s kingdoms) (2008). Combining theoretical work with field observations, Anastassia spent over sixty months doing forest research in the Russian wilderness. Her current research interests focus on deepening the physical understanding of ecosystem feedbacks on the water cycle and moisture transport.
She is a recipient of the 2008 L’Oréal-UNESCO prize “For Women in Science” and is currently (since 2021) an Anna Boyksen fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, where her research interests focus on deepening the physical understanding of ecosystem feedbacks on the water cycle and moisture transport.
Dr. Makarieva wrote: "The concept of biotic regulation is inherently interdisciplinary and builds, among other things, on research into the energetics of life. Much of that work preceded the biotic pump, which has since become our main focus. Yet understanding how natural ecosystems keep Earth habitable, and how we can avoid interfering, cannot be achieved within the limits of any single discipline."
As a scientific researcher at the Technical University of Munich, Institute for Advanced Study, Dr. Makarieva looked at drought mitigation through ecosystem restoration. She posted this about her work there:
Plant transpiration influences atmospheric processes locally, regionally and globally. Natural forest ecosystems have evolved a number of mechanisms to stabilize the terrestrial water cycle. While our understanding of them remains incomplete, the direct anthropogenic destruction and climate change are disrupting these stabilizing feedbacks. Conversely, preservation and restoration of natural ecosystems bear the promise of enhancing the water cycle resilience, including protection from extremes like droughts, floods and violent winds, as well as avoidance of tipping points towards aridity. The focus group will explore theoretical problems of how forest-mediated processes affect atmospheric dynamics, including scaling up individual plant processes to synoptically relevant scales. The research will combine TUM’s technical and scientific excellence with the knowledge of climate-regulating functions of least disturbed forest landscapes, most of which in Eurasia are located within Russian borders. The goal is to present quantitative evidence about the importance of natural forests for water-related aspects of regional and global climate stability. This information is required for informed stewardship towards global environmental resilience.
Publications & Interviews
Dr. Makarieva has posited theories that are not yet mainstream but which do help to explain much about why global temperatures are rising well beyond the expectation of climate scientists relative to the amount of CO2 being added to the atmosphere. In order to understand her theories, you will need to read her writing and hear her interviews, some of which we have listed below:
- Google Scholar Citations: Anastassia Makarieva
- Biotic Regulation and Biotic Pump (substack)
- On the scientific essence of Dr. James Hansen's recent appeal
- Forests, Water and Climate: Time for Reconceptualization, which links to a recorded presentation given by Dr. Makarieva on this topic.
- Assessing changes in atmospheric circulation due to ecohydrological restoration: How can global climate models help?
- YouTube: A recorded interview and podcast with Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food: Healthy forests invest their capital to create their own rain
- Science Magazine: Weather Makers: Forests supply the world with rain. A controversial Russian theory claims they also make wind, by Fried Pearce, June 18, 2020
- Mongabay: Forest modeling misses the water for the carbon: Q&A with Antonio Nobre & Anastassia Makarieva, by Judith Schwartz, Feb. 7, 2023
Sources
- LinkedIn, Anastassia Makarieva
- Substack, Biotic Regulation and Biotic Pump
- TUM-IAS, Anastassia M. Makarieva
Published by Nucleation Capital in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear innovation, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID
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