I agree with Brian that improving the health and productivity of the world's oceans is a likely route to reducing atmospheric CO2 and ocean acidification. I was pleased to see that in Australia, CSIRO is investigating ocean fertilization: Ashes to ashes, dust to life: how iron improves anaemic oceans – CSIROscope.
Fire
One of the problems that is claimed to be caused by Climate Change is the increased severity of wildfires (called bushfires in Australia). There is a little bit of truth in this, because the increase in CO₂ and water in the air increases plant growth. But really the problem is this:
Vegetation without herbivores is an environmental disaster.
Fire is the herbivore of last resort.
The herbivores that you need to stop the understorey of forests building up to dangerous levels are the megafauna, which have sadly disappeared from most of the world outside Africa. I used to think that we needed to completely take over the role of megafauna, perhaps using fire as the Australian Aboriginal people did so successfully. The use of fire seems regrettable in our current situation, and it may not be necessary. We can use middle-sized fauna to eat through the underbrush (and also fertilise the land) if we help it by pushing over or cutting the larger stuff down to a level the animals can reach. Here's a video on using goats to improve the land:
Desertification
Photos of degraded land are often shown as if associated with Climate Change. In fact the problem is almost invariably:
Herbivores without predators are an ecological disaster.
We see that in Australia with feral horses in the High Country, camels in central Australia, water buffalo in the north, and often kangeroos anywhere. Famously wolves were introduced to Yellowstone National Park and the land regenerated because the deer changed their behaviour. In places like Australia where plant growth varies a lot from year to year, preadators are very likely to suffer boom and bust that is out of sync with the herbivores. We see this with the mouse plague at the moment. By the time feral cat populations rise it is too late. At any rate there is no chance that Australia will introduce predators large enough to deal with the larger herbivores.
Humans need to fill the role of the top predator, and indeed we can do it in a way that protects the herbivore population as well as preserving the flora. Unfortunately there is strong opposition to culling. But this is where the pandemic comes to our rescue. People are now used to hearing "On the best scientific advice we are going to do X", where X is something people don't like. Let's extend this to environmental actions. "On the best scientific advice we are going to cull species X to allow the regeneration of its environment".
We need to manage the landscape of Australia much better, as the Aboriginal people did before European arrival. To do it we need to collect a lot more data to understand what's happening. Luckily technology is to hand. We can do a lot from satellites. On the ground we can install unattended intelligent monitoring that uses solar power and communicates its findings by 4G or satellite. Maybe people would like to adopt a monitoring station and check the pictures and sound and other data for things like: animals, birds, insects and weather.
This is important for addressing climate change because a landscape with a healthy level of vegetation will take advantage of the rain that falls and stash the water away. Rain on degraded land is much more likely to evaporate, and though it will fall as rain later that might be over water or other useless place. We know that where plants grow the soil improves and stores carbon.
Update 2022-06-21: This video on "Dingoes save the outback" makes the point beautifully: https://youtu.be/eRp2xp73n0s.
Drought
We all experience that drought years are warmer than rainy years. It is natural for the voters to assume that global warming will be associated with droughts. Droughts certainly raise the public's concern about the changing climate.
This is a misunderstanding. As the oceans warm there is increasing evaporation and, in general, more rain. Historically the ice ages were cold and dry, and the interglacials were, and are, warm and wet. The last time the world was significantly warmer than now, there were rain forests extending nearly to the poles.
However climate change does shuffle the deck. It is guaranteed to make most places wetter, but it can and probably will make some places drier. Some climate models show southern Australia getting drier, and that would be inconvenient because that is where most agricultural production happens.
Summary
Let's build on the experience of the pandemic to get scientific and engineering advice front and centre of the decisions we need to make to fix the problems of the Anthropocene, including the problem of global warming.
It is an easy out to declare that a particular problem is caused by global warming. All problems need to be addressed, and fixing the greenhouse gas levels is unlikely to be the immediate solution for any of them.
In the context of our increasingly wealthy worldwide civilization, global warming is a fixable problem that is not going to cause any huge loss of human life. It is very bad for biodiversity, particularly in the oceans where acidification makes it a double whammy. I think even the Greens know all this. If they really believed the danger was as great as they say, then how could they also continue to argue that nuclear power should not even be given any consideration?
There is now a lot of money getting allocated to address climate change. While most people are keen to fix the problem, there are also a lot who are thinking "How can I get my hands on that money?". Voters need to be aware of this so that they can turn on their radar, even if their radar isn't very good. Unfortunately the linkages between the wealthy and the politicians mean that governments will not protect us as much as we would hope. Parliamentary enquiry will be crucial and needs to be better resourced.
