A Thawing Earth

2021 ◽  
pp. 132-151
Author(s):  
Jorge Daniel Taillant

This chapter examines the warming of permafrost found in the Earth’s coldest regions. It relates how this warming results in the release of large amounts of methane gas from gas hydrates buried in frozen grounds and discusses the implications for climate change of this release. The chapter outlines the categories of permafrost and the role that thawing and freezing cycles play in the local environment. It also describes how to use online GIS tools to locate permafrost regions on the Earth. Finally, the chapter reviews the common impacts of melting permafrost such as subsidence, sinkholes, destruction of infrastructure, as well as the possible release of human and animal disease agents.

Author(s):  
U.P. Igboanusi ◽  
J.U. Okere

Natural gas hydrates are ice-like materials which exist in permafrost regions and in the continental margins of oceans. They constitute a huge unconventional reservoir of natural gas around the globe including offshore Nigeria. The paper is a review of this important global resource with particular focus on the Nigerian deposits. The reasons for the interest on hydrates are discussed including the potential for the recovery of large quantities of methane, the climate change and ocean floor instability that may result from their dissociation. They may also be exploited for large-scale CO2 sequestration. The geographical distribution of hydrates deposits on earth, the thermodynamics of why they occur in those particular places and source of the methane gas that is eventually enchlathrated into hydrates are discussed. The natural gas in the Nigerian hydrate is essentially biogenic in origin and is almost pure methane (more than 99% methane). The hydrates exist in finely disseminated or massive aggregate forms within clay-rich sediment.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrei Lungu ◽  

Climate change is becoming increasingly unpredictable as the climate dries up, protected areas grown with vegetables are growing every day, but farmers in this area are facing a number of problems, including pests of green cucumber lice (Aphis gossypii), the common thrips. (Thrips tabaci), the common red spider (Tetranychus urticae). Scientists around the world are conducting studies to propose solutions. The use of material that allows the passage of a larger amount of UV rays inhibits the development of aphid colonies. The dual application of Lecanicillium longisporum for the simultaneous suppression of green lice of cucumbers and powdery mildew has been demonstrated. Beauveria bassiana preparations are highly effective against tripe. For a future assured with high quality vegetables, it is necessary to develop as diverse methods as possible to control pests, so that each farmer can choose the method that suits him, both technologically and economically. The methods should be applicable in the most diverse areas of the earth. We must learn to model not only favorable climatic conditions but to create a healthy and viable ecosystem, so the greenhouses will generate profit for the farmer, fresh and tasty products for us.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
David Wood

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the relationship between habit and climate change. It would be hard to overestimate the role of habit in people's lives. At one level, this is all well and good. There are, of course, bad habits, which people try to kick, but people's daily life would collapse without the scaffolding of habit. Still, when one contemplates climate change and the catastrophic future it presages, it is hard not to conclude that “business as usual” simply cannot continue for long. “Business as usual” means the common cloth of people's Western daily lives, their normal practices, in large part consisting of habits—personal, collective, economic, and intellectual. Forms of life, patterns of dwelling, other than the current consumerist model are undoubtedly possible. But whether people can get there from here voluntarily is another matter. If reinhabiting the earth means changing some of people's deep habits, habits reflecting historical sedimentations and congealings, then unearthing the forces in play, seeing how they operate and what is at stake in reconfiguring them, is a historical task to which philosophy can at least contribute. Economists are also central to imagining other economic orders, such as that of degrowth.


2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 25-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dipesh Chakrabarty

Discussion of global climate change is shaped by the intellectual categories developed to address capitalism and globalization. Yet climate change is only one manifestation of humanity’s varied and accelerating impact on the Earth System. The common predicament that may be anticipated in the Anthropocene raises difficult questions of distributive justice – between rich and poor, developed and developing countries, the living and the yet unborn, and even the human and the non-human – and may pose a challenge to the categories on which our traditions of political thought are based. Awareness of the Anthropocene encourages us to think of humans on different scales and in different contexts – as parts of a global capitalist system and as members of a now-dominant species – although the debate is, for now, still structured by the experiences and concepts of the developed world.


2002 ◽  
Vol 02 (02) ◽  
pp. L101-L108 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. S. LIU ◽  
R. KOLENKIEWICZ ◽  
C. WADE

The mismatch between fossil isotopic data and climate models known as the cool-tropic paradox implies that either the data are flawed or we understand very little about the climate models of greenhouse warming. Here we question the validity of the climate models on the scientific background of orbital noise in the Earth system. Our study shows that the insolation pulsation induced by orbital noise is the common cause of climate change and atmosqheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane. In addition, we find that the intensity of the insolation pulses is dependent on the latitude of the Earth. Thus, orbital noise is the key to understanding the troubling paradox in climate models.


Author(s):  
Arianne F. Conty

Though responses to the Anthropocene have largely come from the natural and social sciences, religious responses to the Anthropocene have also been gaining momentum and many scholars have been calling for a religious response to complement scientific responses to climate change. Yet because Genesis 1:28 does indeed tell human beings to ‘subdue the earth’ monotheistic religions have often been understood as complicit in the human exceptionalism that is thought to have created the conditions for the Anthropocene. In distinction to such Biblical traditions, indigenous animistic cultures have typically respected all forms of life as ‘persons’ and such traditions have thus become a source of inspiration for ecological movements. After discussing contemporary Christian efforts to integrate the natural sciences and the environment into their responses to the Anthropocene, this article will turn to animism and seek to evaluate the risks and benefits that could ensue from a postmodern form of animism that could provide a necessary postsecular response to the Anthropocene.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (14) ◽  
pp. 4148
Author(s):  
Estrella Trincado ◽  
Antonio Sánchez-Bayón ◽  
José María Vindel

After the Great Recession of 2008, there was a strong commitment from several international institutions and forums to improve wellbeing economics, with a switch towards satisfaction and sustainability in people–planet–profit relations. The initiative of the European Union is the Green Deal, which is similar to the UN SGD agenda for Horizon 2030. It is the common political economy plan for the Multiannual Financial Framework, 2021–2027. This project intends, at the same time, to stop climate change and to promote the people’s wellness within healthy organizations and smart cities with access to cheap and clean energy. However, there is a risk for the success of this aim: the Jevons paradox. In this paper, we make a thorough revision of the literature on the Jevons Paradox, which implies that energy efficiency leads to higher levels of consumption of energy and to a bigger hazard of climate change and environmental degradation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 97 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-218
Author(s):  
Ousseyni Kalilou

Abstract Environmental stress contributes to food insecurity, poverty, forced migration and violent conflict in the Sahel, with climate change aggravating the situation. The production of gum arabic from the acacia tree increasingly aligns with the community stakeholders’ efforts to promote climate change mitigation, adaptation and resilience. Based on expert interviews and field observations in Niger, and a reading of relevant documents, I found that gum arabic production is valuable for conflict mitigation because it helps tackle the root causes of violent conflicts. The acacia gum tree is a natural soil fixer and multinational companies have coveted the resin from the tree, which is a rising commodity and a promising source of revenue for the local inhabitants. As different communities work together and cooperate with outside actors (government agencies, international partners, NGOs and businesses), the opportunities to build social cohesion around the tree increase. By facilitating ecological improvement, social inclusion and poverty alleviation, the promotion of gum arabic production, despite other issues such as bad natural resource governance, is a critical environmental peacebuilding strategy. Hence, suitable funding of massive afforestation with the acacia tree fits with community-based natural climate solutions to global humanitarian issues by protecting and restoring the local environment.


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