This is really interesting to consider, and I hadn’t before. It lends a lot more potential weight and credibility to the idea that rewilding plains (for example), thus increasing the biomass there, would have significant climate benefits. This falls deep into the “We can’t know that” category, but I’m a fairly large proponent of leaving more land alone and letting nature do what it does. At the moment, economic activity like grazing cows seems like it could be a net negative since it’s clearly harming the environment while also preventing natural landscapes from establishing, which could have significant ecological benefits.

The idea that biomass can bring stability and better conditions is certainly supported by my aquarium experience, though it’s a closed system. If you limit the number of species, water parameters will swing all over the place. Add more species (particularly plants and micro flora/fauna), and the water becomes clearer and cleaner. Add some small crustaceans, snails, or other animals which love algae and it’ll get even cleaner, and their populations will self-maintain quite well. Add some tiny fish and they will live on the algae, micro fauna, offspring of the shrimp, etc. These systems work well, but they need a huge amount of plants and tiny creatures, bacteria, and small animals to groom and maintain things. Without them, it’ll crash and swing all over until just about everything is dead.

If we imagine the world as a giant aquarium where we inhibit the micro flora and micro fauna, bacteria, and other balances, it certainly seems possible that restoring this would improve all kinds of factors like water and air quality.