the hydrological cycle on land and the adjacent ocean, provided they are allowed to occupy a significant area. Conversely, destruction of forests leads to disruption of the hydrological cycle, which expectedly causes significant fluctuations of the magnitude of the global greenhouse effect, up to complete loss of climate stability and transition of Earths climate to a state incompatible with life. Most modern climate researchers have grown up on computer models of climate and are used to believing in the model output. As illustrated by the discussion of our work, it is rarely appreciated that by artificially setting the needed numerical parameters it is possible to simulate a very broad range of climate scenarios, including those that will agree with observations of the past. The existence of simulations that mimic the past and present reality does not mean that the physics included in the models is correct or that the model can generate a trustworthy prediction. What is more, modern climate modeling has been traditionally implemented by people with a technological background and little knowledge of ecosystem functioning. Such knowledge is generally poor, too. Thus, the ecological systems are "fed" into the models as a set of geophysical parameters, e.g., albedo, evaporation rate, surface roughness, amount of stored carbon etc. While the numeric values of these parameters are borrowed from reality, they do not represent the ecosystem functioning in very much the same manner as a colored high-resolution digital photo of a dead corpse does not represent a live human being. Without studying the principles of highly-organized functioning of ecological communities, including their genetically encoded ability to respond to environmental perturbations in a non-random compensatory way, the perspectives drawn from global circulation models with respect to the climatic effects of land cover change (e.g., statements like cutting all boreal forests will ease global warming) will continue to lack any resemblance to reality. Quantitative analysis of ecological and biological variables is a very complicated task due to the complexity of living objects. Consider a flying canon and a flying bird that are both under gravity. A quantitative description of the former is straightforward, while to predict where and how the bird will fly from initial conditions is not feasible. This complexity of living systems and the number of surprises it implies for global environmental research has only recently begun to be gradually appreciated across a number of disciplines, from organismal energetics to soil biochemistry and climatology. The biotic pump concept (and more generally the theory of the biotic regulation of the environment of which the former is a part) for the first time quantifies the stabilizing environmental function of natural ecosystems with respect to the hydrological cycle and pinpoints the physical mechanism that is responsible for this function. We must elevate the status of ecosystem conservation from a side issue in global environmental talks and treaties (that are exclusively focused on carbon) to an urgent high priority issue. We must also implement targeted research programs to study the stabilizing impact of natural ecosystems, to stimulate public discussion, and to raise peoples awareness of the