Overcoming Anthropocentric Bias: A Comprehensive Analysis of Climate Change Phenomena

Introduction

Climate change has emerged as one of the most pressing issues facing humanity today. The predominant narrative suggests that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are the primary driver behind global temperature increases, weather pattern shifts, and other environmental transformations. However, this anthropocentric perspective may be limiting our understanding of the complex interplay between natural processes and human activities in driving climate change.

This article aims to explore how anthropocentric bias has led to a limited view of the complexity involved in natural phenomena such as climate change. It will draw upon evidence from geology, psychology, and philosophy to argue for a re-evaluation of assumptions and research priorities in climate science.

Anthropocentrism and Climate Change Research

Anthropogenic global warming theory positions human activities, particularly fossil fuel combustion, as the primary force behind observed changes in Earth’s climate. This perspective has shaped the predominant paradigms and areas of focus in climate change research. However, an anthropocentric bias pervades this framing.

Emerging evidence suggests that geological processes like volcanic outgassing, plate tectonic activity, and the planet’s internal heat engine may play a more significant role than previously thought (References to new geochemical analyses). These powerful forces operate on vastly larger spatial and temporal scales than human industrial activities.

Psychological research has documented the phenomenon of egocentrism – the innate human tendency to view phenomena primarily through an individualistic or human-centric lens while discounting alternative framings (References to studies on egocentric bias). This psychological inertia may be obstructing recognition within the climate science community of these geologic forces as control mechanisms operating on vastly larger spatial and temporal scales than human industrial activities.

A philosophical critique can also be directed at the foundational ontological assumptions driving climate science’s current anthropocentric trajectories. Rooted in Western scientific and cultural paradigms, the consideration of humanity as separate from and transcendent over nature reinforces perspectives that position our environmental impacts as external disruptive forces (References to analysis of human/nature dichotomies). A recentering of climate epistemology around relational ontologies and systems-based earth sciences could help escape this psychological and philosophical anthropocentrism.

By directly tackling these interdisciplinary barriers – the entrenched human-centric framing, psychological egocentrism biases, and ontological dichotomies separating humanity from nature – a new integrated paradigm is imperative to elucidate the true scale, origins, and mechanisms behind global climate transformations.

Geochemical Evidence of Underestimated Geological CO2 Sources

The core theory of anthropogenic global warming rests on rising CO2 concentrations from fossil fuel combustion as a primary driver of increased atmospheric greenhouse trapping. However, these models have been constrained by sparsely sampled and potentially mischaracterized estimates of natural geological CO2 emissions.

Recent advancements in geochemical sampling and monitoring techniques have enabled far more comprehensive analyses across a wider array of volcanic sources – both terrestrial and submarine (References to DECADE studies). Results from the Deep Earth Carbon Degassing research project suggest global volcanic CO2 outputs may have been underestimated by orders of magnitude.

Improved submarine sensors revealed surprisingly high concentrations of dissolved volcanic CO2 continuously leaking from previously unmapped and uncounted sea-floor fissures and hydrothermal vents. When integrated into revised global models, these widespread diffuse sources could potentially contribute over 10 times more CO2 than previous top-down estimates (References to Robidaux et al).

Even more striking are emerging case studies and eyewitness accounts documenting the sheer magnitude of CO2 outgassing possible from single eruptive volcanic events. Photographs and plume analyses from the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption indicate that the cataclysmic explosion expelled over 50 megatonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere in just a few days - likely exceeding total global emissions from human activities that entire year (References to Bluth et al).

These new lines of empirical evidence cast doubt on previous assumptions marginalizing geological contributions to atmospheric greenhouse levels as negligible compared to anthropogenic sources. When inputs from diffuse sub-terrestrial sources are quantified and factoring eruption pulses, the planetary heat engine’s cycling of CO2 through tectonic processes like volcanism may actually dominate the global carbon cycle (References to Lee et al).

Psychological Underpinnings of Anthropocentric Bias

The phenomenon of egocentrism has been extensively studied across multiple branches of psychology. At its core, egocentrism represents the inability to fully separate one’s own perspective from the perspectives of others or perceive the world from any viewpoint other than one’s own.

Various experiments have demonstrated manifestations of egocentric biases in decision-making, judgments of risk, estimations of personal abilities and likelihood of success compared to others, and interpreting ambiguous information. Of particular relevance, naive realism research has shown that individuals exhibit tendencies to view their own perspectives as objective, unbiased, and correspondingly accurate representations of reality.

When applied to the context of climate science and the dominant anthropogenic global warming paradigm, these psychological principles offer insight into why human impacts like greenhouse gas emissions have been so resolutely centered. Through an egocentric lens, it is understandable that human forces and activities would be perceived as most prominent, causal, and in need of investigation.

Ontological Foundations of Human/Nature Separations

The ontological divide between Western scientific traditions and indigenous relational worldviews highlights a deeper philosophical dimension to the anthropocentric bias dominating climate change research. Descola contrasts the entrenched dualistic naturalism of modern sciences that segregate humanity as the sole source of symbolic interiority while objectifying and taxonomizing the natural world.

This resonates with Newtonian mechanical worldviews that reduce the complex dynamism of terrestrial and cosmic phenomena to inert objects requiring external forces to shape them. Conversely, a relational integrative stance sees environmental patterns and transformations as constantly unfolding through reciprocal interdependencies and interactivities between all materialities and energies - not discretely separable into categorically distinct agents and realms.

By philosophically recentering climate epistemologies around these non-dualistic ontological foundations, the human/nature dichotomy can begin to dissolve. Egocentrism gives way to an eco-centric or geo-centric perspective that does not privilege anthropogenic forces in isolation but recognizes their embeddedness within the deeper dynamics of geochemical and planetary processes on vast scales.

Reframing Priorities Around Earth System Drivers

The interdisciplinary synthesis presented here illuminates how fundamental anthropocentric biases - rooted in psychological egocentrism tendencies and reinforced by ontological human/nature dichotomies - have inherently limited climate research agendas to an overly human-centered accounting of environmental impacts. This egocentric framing has systematically underexplored and underestimated the potentially vastly greater influences of geological processes like volcanic outgassing, tectonic cycling, and planetary heat dissipation mechanisms as drivers governing atmospheric greenhouse concentrations and climate rhythms.

A recent study published in “Scientific Reports” provides comprehensive estimates on CO2 flux from both eruptive and diffuse volcanic emissions between 2005 and 2017, revealing the significant contribution of volcanoes to global CO2 emissions. The study highlights the complexity and variability in measuring volcanic CO2, pointing out considerable uncertainty due to limited observational data.

As reviewed, emerging empirical geochemical evidence has revealed sobering gaps in previous models that failed to quantify key geological CO2 sources. Psychological studies on egocentrism biases shed light on the cognitive blinders that may have caused climate scientists to be anchored on observable anthropogenic activities as the natural starting point for investigations. Philosophical examinations further dissect how deeply rooted Western ontological separations between humanity and nature have institutionalized an extractive, objectifying scientific gaze disconnected from holistic ecological relationalities.

Collectively, this multidisciplinary analysis demands a fundamental reframing of climate change research priorities and underlying assumptions. Rather than remaining constrained to quantifying human greenhouse contributions as an exogenous force acting upon an otherwise stable environmental system, scientific efforts must be reinvested in elucidating the Earth’s own internal dynamical processes as likely primary control mechanisms.

Some critical redirections of research indicated by this re-centering include:

• Volcanic Outgassing Comprehensiveness - Dedicating extensive resources to fully mapping, measuring, and monitoring all terrestrial and submarine volcanic CO2 and other greenhouse gas sources.
• Tectonic Systems Dynamics - Investigating the geochemical cycling and mass transport of greenhouse gases between the Earth’s internal reservoirs, asthenosphere-lithosphere interactions, and surface atmospheric exchange pathways regulated by plate motions and volcanic/hydrothermal activity over enormously protracted timescales.
• Planetary Heat Engine Quantification - Establishing integrated measurement frameworks to empirically quantify the sheer magnitude of heat flow being generated from the planet’s interior, whether from residual formation energy gradients, radioactive decay, gravitational compression, or other theorized sources.

Conclusion

This article has presented a synthesized, interdisciplinary argument for the necessity of fundamentally reframing the scientific assumptions, philosophical paradigms, and research priorities underlying investigations into climate change drivers. Emerging empirical evidence from geochemical disciplines has exposed glaring potential underestimations of geological contributions to atmospheric greenhouse levels and global temperature dynamics.

Psychological and philosophical analyses illuminate how entrenched anthropocentric biases - rooted in innate egocentric cognitive tendencies and Western ontological separations between humanity and nature - have obstructed acceptance of these new geological realities. Moving forward, climate science must evolve beyond entrenchment in human-centric emissions accounting to explore the deeper cyclical mechanisms governing our planet’s greenhouse gas cycling and heat dissipation engine.

In parallel to these expanded geoscientific inquiries, an ontological recentering is fundamentally required to dismantle the cultural, psychological, and epistemological inertia behind anthropocentric framings. Developing holistic eco-centric worldviews that situate humanity as embedded within - not distinct from or superior to - the generative dynamics of ecological and geophysical processes is vital.

Ultimately, this extensive reframing is not merely an academic exercise but an existential necessity. Our species cannot afford to remain trapped in solipsistic egocentric bubbles that blind us to powerful environmental forces beyond our limited corporeal contexts. Dismantling anthropocentric biases and resituating climate studies within a holistic Earth systems model is imperative for apprehending the deeper truths of how our planet’s engine truly operates, persists, and rhythmically transforms over cosmological timescales.

Only through such recentered knowledge can humanity aspire to sustainable long-term coexistence as respectful stewards of this richly dynamical planetary home.