The Site Author

Author: Andrew Gunner

Qualifications:

• Honours Science Degree: Applied Mathematics (BSc. Hons.),
• Social Work Degree (BSW),
• Social Work Master’s Degree by Research (MSW).

Experience:

• Worked briefly at the Bureau of Meteorology; my applied maths study qualified me to become a climate scientist,
• Worked in a geophysics research team in Antarctic waters on a ship, the USNS Eltanin,
• Worked for a petrol company and a petrochemical company for 20 years as an operations researcher, using maths and computers to guide decision-making,
• Demonstrated from a rubber raft during the Franklin River Blockade,
• Studied social work,
• Worked as a counsellor for 17 years, including ten years as an addiction counsellor, working with problem gamblers,
• Completed a master’s degree by research into the way I worked with clients,
• Article published in the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy,
• Developed this website, starting in 2009.

Gunner (2002). “Problem gambling development and recovery: A reflective counsellor’s practical construction based on feedback”. (Unpublished master’s thesis). The University of Melbourne.

Gunner (2006), “Feedback Loops in Clinical Practice: An Integrative Framework”. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy, September 2006, Volume 27, Number 3, Pages 143-152.

Site Purpose

• Urge action on climate change, and
• Present “amplifying feedback” as a tool for understanding climate change and as a general organising principle suitable for use in counselling.

Amplifying feedback in problem development

As a counsellor, I sometimes talked to clients about how their attempts to escape from difficulties often made those difficulties worse. People can get stuck in damaging habits that escalate. Here are webpages describing :

• An introduction to my counselling work
• An example counselling session in which I used these ideas with a client,
• A systems theory–based understanding of human behaviour that emerged from my counselling work.

Amplifying feedback in climate change

Amplifying feedback is also a critical part of climate change, so this site describes some feedback loops that threaten our livable climate, e.g., the permafrost feedback cycle:

Higher global temperatures		More melting of permafrost
More greenhouse gases		More CO2 and methane in the atmosphere

Diagram: This feedback cycle amplifies temperature, greenhouse gas concentrations, and permafrost melting.

The site name: Feedback Reigns

The broad relevance of feedback to climate change, human functioning, and more led to this website’s name: “feedback reigns”.

Contact

To contact me, please see the Contact Page.

If you have constructive comments about this site, please let me know.

Distributing this information

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Loaded 2014; Updated 19 July 2026.