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Global warming is predicted to push clouds higher in the sky. One scientist hopes to understand the future of our forests by suspending a vast fog-catching mesh in the Peruvian jungle

What will happen if climate change pushes clouds higher into the sky, as models predict? One ecosystem that will be seriously affected will be cloud forests – tropical jungles persistently bathed in fog.

Until now, little research had been done on the likely impacts of rising clouds, but one scientist is planning to change that using an enormous curtain strung up in the middle of the forest.

Related: 'It's a perverse system': how Colombia's farmers are reforesting their logged land

Related: Seven new species of miniature frogs discovered in cloud forests of Brazil

Areas starved of oxygen in open ocean and by coasts have soared in recent decades, risking dire consequences for marine life and humanity

Ocean dead zones with zero oxygen have quadrupled in size since 1950, scientists have warned, while the number of very low oxygen sites near coasts have multiplied tenfold. Most sea creatures cannot survive in these zones and current trends would lead to mass extinction in the long run, risking dire consequences for the hundreds of millions of people who depend on the sea.

Climate change caused by fossil fuel burning is the cause of the large-scale deoxygenation, as warmer waters hold less oxygen. The coastal dead zones result from fertiliser and sewage running off the land and into the seas.

Related: Oceans under greatest threat in history, warns Sir David Attenborough

Related: Meat industry blamed for largest-ever 'dead zone' in Gulf of Mexico

Communication is everything when it comes to the climate change debate – and there isn’t just one way to speak to people’s emotions

There’s a debate in climate circles about whether you should try to scare the living daylights out of people, or give them hope – think images of starving polar bears on melting ice caps on the one hand, and happy families on their bikes lined with flowers and solar-powered lights on the other.

The debate came to something of a head this year, after David Wallace-Wells lit up the internet with his 7,000-word, worst-case scenario published in New York magazine. It went viral almost instantly, and soon was the best-read story in the magazine’s history. A writer in Slate called it “the Silent Spring of our time”. But it also garnered tremendous criticism and from more than the usual denier set.

Rather than treat emotions as levers to be pulled, they should be seen as part of a dynamic interplay

Related: Checkmate: how do climate science deniers' predictions stack up?

Your correspondent June Lewis (Letters, 29 December), having referred to Country diary, says that the country – by which I think she means the countryside and nature – is “carrying on happily”. While the natural world does indeed carry on functioning regardless of politics (sometimes almost in spite of it), that world of nature struggles more than ever to maintain diversity of species with loss of habitat, environmental pollution, pesticides, climate change and human thoughtlessness. I mention just a few casualties: hedgehogs, butterflies, meadow flowers and some common birds, the numbers of all of which have declined over the last few generations in particular. Not a cause for rejoicing.Margaret PorterGillingham, Dorset

• John Gilbey may not be right about the new nesting box location being more desirable (Country diary, Comins Coch, Ceredigion 30 December). Robins appear to like dry shelter regardless of nesting boxes. On acquiring an unoccupied house with a detached garage with a broken window, I wondered how many times generations of robins might have been nesting in an old empty paint tin on a shelf. All fledglings got away safely.Andrew DeanExeter, Devon