Photo: Solar panel and climbing wall at Prairie Woods Environmental Learning Center’s Earth Day event.
What is limnology?
The question came from an audience member at the weekly lunch meeting of a local service club. I was the guest speaker representing my employer at the time, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
Limnology is the scientific study of freshwater lakes. The word appeared on a slide from the presentation listing more than 20 branches of science, including political and social science. It was an effort to enlighten people about work addressing environmental issues. Why does it often seem so challenging and complicated?
Here’s why: Ecology, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Geology, Geography, Hydrology, Limnology, Geomorphology, Zoology, Mineralogy, Oceanography, Atmospheric science, Meteorology, Natural history, Climate, Economics, and also Theology, Philosophy, Social and Political Science.
Virtually all branches of science intersect somewhere in study of the natural environment. Of course, not all of these sciences engage simultaneously in a particular environmental issue. Water quality may see a confluence of the most. And the last two may be the most challenging.
Efforts to share this perspective often elicits nods of understanding and enlightenment. This happened once with a big city newspaper reporter. She seemed to have her story angle all set, to expose something we were or were not doing about an aspect of livestock and the environment.
We had tried to explain that accurately measuring for toxic elements in the air around large feedlots was complicated, and we had insufficient staff to investigate a particular case. When I proposed the multiple science perspective, that they all intersect in the natural environment, I could almost see the little light bulb of epiphany glowing in her mind.
Anthropocene ascending
Another story that seems to be getting scuttled, or spiked in the current political regime, is climate change. Recent news stories (New York Times, Washington Post) report that the White House is proposing a 27 percent cut in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration budget, severing “climate-related programs.”
We all know – at least most of us – that human activity since the beginning of the Industrial Age has altered the Earth’s climate. When coal-burner smokestacks began belching carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere, when the internal combustion engine revolutionized transportation, when electricity flowed from coal-fueled power plants, it all added up to a new name for our current geological epoch – the Anthropocene.
Officially, Holocene is still the name for the current epoch that arose about 11,700 years ago. A relatively stable climate set the stage for the rapid rise in human population to about 8.1 billion today. I first heard the term ‘Anthropocene’ years ago from technical staff at the MPCA. From the perspective of climate change, it made sense to me that humans must have had something to do with it.
‘Anthropocene’ was coined in the 2000s by Paul Crutzen, a Dutch meteorologist and atmospheric chemist, and Eugene Stoermer, an ecologist and biologist known for his contributions to Earth Systems Science. Both have since died and may now see things from a different perspective.
In 2024 the term was rejected by scientists, leaving Holocene as the current epoch’s official name; nevertheless, it does generate awareness that human activity on earth is impacting climate. If the current federal government is in denial, I am hopeful that the scientific and corporate worlds will continue to conduct research and find solutions. Much of that is occurring in the area of energy.
Earth Day – Tuesday, April 22
During my years at the MPCA I was involved in planning and participating in the annual Earth Day event at Prairie Woods Environment Learning Center, located in central Minnesota. While Earth Day is always on April 22, the local event took place last weekend. The theme for Earth Day 2025 is “Our Power, Our Planet,” and focuses on promoting the adoption of solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, and tidal power.
A generation ago, when Republicans in power were normal, such things as the natural environment and clean energy were important for everyone. The first Earth Day in 1970 was launched by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, with an estimated 20 million Americans participating. That same year President Richard Nixon signed in to existence the U.S. Environment Protection Agency.
Doubters of climate change argue that it’s mostly weather fluctuation. The baseball batter analogy provides a response: Weather is one time at the plate; climate is the batting average. Most older people can attest to changes they have seen: Warmer winters, severe weather, warming water temperatures.
Increasing use of non-fossil fueled energy technology offers hope. Capturing solar energy seems to be the most promising. Driving through the countryside we see increasing numbers of fields covered with solar panels. Yet among them we see vast numbers of livestock, or at least the huge dairy cattle and hog barns.
Passing gas, draining the swamp
In addition to carbon dioxide, methane also ranks as one of the most potent greenhouse gases. Rank also describes much of its source. Scientists say that enteric gases released from ruminants such as cattle accounts for more than a third of global methane emissions. In more rustic terms, cow burps and farts. Methane also rises from decaying vegetation in wetlands and swamps.
We can’t do much about these natural sources. However, the swamp analogy can enlighten us about human activity in the political world related to addressing climate change. ‘Drain the swamp’ became a popular slogan among those decrying the evils of ‘big government’.
From an environmental perspective swamps are good. They teem with countless species of flora and fauna. They filter surface water entering the earth’s supply of groundwater. While often arduous, such positive outcomes also occur in the political swamp. However, the current regime has polluted the government swamp, turning it into a cesspool. We can only hope that the political environment will survive this ordeal.
We all are accountable to God for stewardship of the natural environment. In Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, we learn that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts, both in nature and society. The Golden Rule applies to our relations to others, and to nature.
Leopold says the biotic mechanism is so complex that its workings may never be fully understood. But we must keep trying. If you haven’t read it, I recommend reading The Sand County Almanac, or Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson. And of course, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Revisiting their work is on my library list, maybe on April 22.
