The Emerald Planet

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Beerling
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Computer Models ◽  
Dynamic Evolution ◽  
Fossil Plants ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
Atmospheric Change ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Global warming is contentious and difficult to measure, even among the majority of scientists who agree that it is taking place. Will temperatures rise by 2ºC or 8ºC over the next hundred years? Will sea levels rise by 2 or 30 feet? The only way that we can accurately answer questions like these is by looking into the distant past, for a comparison with the world long before the rise of mankind. We may currently believe that atmospheric shifts, like global warming, result from our impact on the planet, but the earth's atmosphere has been dramatically shifting since its creation. This book reveals the crucial role that plants have played in determining atmospheric change - and hence the conditions on the planet we know today. Along the way a number of fascinating puzzles arise: Why did plants evolve leaves? When and how did forests once grow on Antarctica? How did prehistoric insects manage to grow so large? The answers show the extraordinary amount plants can tell us about the history of the planet -- something that has often been overlooked amongst the preoccuputations with dinosaur bones and animal fossils. David Beerling's surprising conclusions are teased out from various lines of scientific enquiry, with evidence being brought to bear from fossil plants and animals, computer models of the atmosphere, and experimental studies. Intimately bound up with the narrative describing the dynamic evolution of climate and life through Earth's history, we find Victorian fossil hunters, intrepid polar explorers and pioneering chemists, alongside wallowing hippos, belching volcanoes, and restless landmasses.

4. The long-term history of Europe and Asia

2018 ◽  
pp. 42-64
Author(s):  
Chris Gosden
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Tool Use ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Farming Systems ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
Novel Technologies ◽  
Steppe Ecosystem ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Europe

‘The long-term history of Europe and Asia’ explains how the fluctuating climatic systems between cold and warm periods provided the context in which the global expansion of our ancestors occurred. It discusses the mammoth steppe ecosystem, the relationships between plants and animals, and the introduction of tool use, language, and farming systems across Europe and east Asia. The last great global warming—shifting vegetation zones, the territories of animals, and sea levels—was one of the most challenging periods in planetary history since the evolution of Homo sapiens. Yet from this period came a mass of novel technologies, skills, and relationships that provided the basis for life.

scholarly journals VI. The caytoniales, a new group of angiospermous plants from the Jurassic Rocks of Yorkshire

1925 ◽  
Vol 213 (402-410) ◽  
pp. 299-363 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Plants ◽  
Past History ◽  
Fossil Plants ◽  
Amount Of Information ◽  
Vast Amount ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Jurassic Rocks ◽  
Living Organisms

The study of fossil plants during the last quarter of a century has revealed a vast amount of information about the past history of many modern plant types. But while we have learned much about the Pteridophyta and Gymnosperms, singularly little information has been gained about the evolution of the plants now dominant in the vegetation of the world—the Angiosperms. In 1879 Darwin wrote the well-known lines to Hooker :—“ The rapid develop­ment, so far as we can judge, of all the higher plants within recent geological times is an abominable mystery. . . . I should like to see the whole problem solved'. Though 45 years have passed since this was written, we are still hopelessly in the dark about the origin and early evolution of this, one of the largest classes of living organisms. Interesting theories have been put forward as to the possible origin of the angiosperms, but these have been almost entirely unsupported by fossil evidence.

scholarly journals INTRODUCTION: SPECIAL ISSUE ON ‘MACROECONOMICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE’

2021 ◽  
Vol 258 ◽  
pp. 9-11
Author(s):  
Dawn Holland ◽  
Hande Kucuk ◽  
Miguel León-Ledesma
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Extreme Temperatures ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Special Report ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Cost ◽  
Rising Sea Levels

Climate change is one of the most serious risks facing humanity. Temperature rises can lead to catastrophic climate and natural events that threaten livelihoods. From rising sea levels to flooding, bush fires, extreme temperatures and droughts, the economic and human cost is too large to ignore. More than 190 world leaders got together in Glasgow during November 2021 at the UN’s COP26 climate change summit to discuss progress on the Paris Agreement (COP21) and to agree on new measures to limit global warming. In Paris, countries agreed to limit global warming to well below 2° and aim for 1.5° as well as to adapt to the impacts of a changing climate and raise the necessary funding to deliver on these aims. However, actions to date were not nearly enough as highlighted by the IPCC (2018) special report. The world is still on track to reach warming above 3° by 2100. As evident from figure 1, global temperatures have been on a steadily increasing path since the start of the 20th century and this process has substantially accelerated since the beginning of the 1980s. This has been unevenly distributed, with temperatures in the Northern hemisphere being a full 1°C higher than for the 1961–1990 average, whilst temperatures in the Southern hemisphere have increased by almost 0.5°C.

1. What are renewables?

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Nick Jelley
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Renewable Energy ◽  
Mass Production ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Clean Energy ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

‘What are renewables?’ defines renewable energy and provides a brief history of its use. It focuses on energy generated by solar, wind, and hydropower. These energy sources are renewable, in the sense that they are naturally replenished within days to decades. Only a few years ago, giving up our reliance on fossil fuels to tackle global warming would have been very difficult, as they are so enmeshed in our society and any alternative was very expensive. Nearly all of the sources of energy up to the 18th century were from renewables, after which time the world increasingly used fossil fuels. They powered the industrial revolution around the globe, and now provide most of our energy. But this dependence is unsustainable, because their use causes global warming, climate change, and pollution. Other than hydropower, which grew steadily during the 20th century and now provides almost a sixth of the world’s electricity demand, renewable energy was a neglected resource for power production for most of this period, being economically uncompetitive. But now, renewables are competitive, particularly through the support of feed-in tariffs and mass production, and governments are starting to pay more attention to clean energy, as the threat of climate change draws closer. Moving away from fossil fuels to renewables to supply both heat and electricity sustainably has become essential.

scholarly journals Storiation: Holding the World

2021 ◽  
pp. 141-178
Author(s):  
Jonathan Pugh ◽  
David Chandler
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Indigenous Studies ◽  
Nuclear Radiation ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
Kamau Brathwaite ◽  
Waste Production ◽  
The World ◽  
Rising Sea Levels ◽  
Key Sites

In Chapter 5, the authors give shape to an approach called Storiation. Central to Storiation is registering the ongoing afterlives, hauntings and effects of such significant forces as colonialism, modernity, global warming, nuclear radiation, rising sea levels, and waste production; where islands and island cultures regularly emerge as important sites for investigation. What distinguishes the Storiation analytic is the holding together of entities and effects, registered through islands and islander lives, intra-actions and effects. For authors like Timothy Morton the (island) future then becomes entangled with the past as the ‘afterlife’ of relational effects continue to reverberate in ‘strange’, ‘weird’ or ‘quantum’ ways. The chapter examines how the analytic of Storiation is today being widely developed in Anthropocene philosophy, critical Black and Indigenous Studies which all increasing turn to engage islands as key sites of relational entanglements and associated island scholars and literatures. Of particular importance is the work of the Barbadian writer Kamau Brathwaite. Brathwaite’s onto-epistemology of ‘tidalectics’ profoundly disrupts mainland, continental and modern frameworks of space-time, and binaries of human/nature. In Tiffany Lethabo King’s Storiations of Black and Indigenous life, she employs such methods as ‘critical fabulation’ and ‘speculative bricolage’ in order to hold together the traces, ghosts and afterlives of colonialism embodied and constitutive of the present. Thus, the chapter charts Storiations of the differentiating powers of colonialism, of the emergence of tidalectic psychologies living on in the wake, of island dances, Vodou loa and shamanistic practices, of species long extinct, of the consumerisms that haunt islands in strange ways.

scholarly journals The history of number words in the world's languages—what have we learnt so far?

2021 ◽  
Vol 376 (1824) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreea S. Calude
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Consistent Pattern ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Number Words ◽  
The Past ◽  
Language History ◽  
Number Systems ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

For over 100 years, researchers from various disciplines have been enthralled and occupied by the study of number words. This article discusses implications for the study of deep history and human evolution that arise from this body of work. Phylogenetic modelling shows that low-limit number words are preserved across thousands of years, a pattern consistently observed in several language families. Cross-linguistic frequencies of use and experimental studies also point to widespread homogeneity in the use of number words. Yet linguistic typology and field documentation reports caution against positing a privileged linguistic category for number words, showing a wealth of variation in how number words are encoded across the world. In contrast with low-limit numbers, the higher numbers are characterized by a rapid and morphologically consistent pattern of expansion, and behave like grammatical phrasal units, following language-internal rules. Taken together, the evidence suggests that numbers are at the cross-roads of language history. For languages that do have productive and consistent number systems, numerals one to five are among the most reliable available linguistic fossils of deep history, defying change yet still bearing the marks of the past, while higher numbers emerge as innovative tools looking to the future, derived using language-internal patterns and created to meet the needs of modern speakers. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Reconstructing prehistoric languages’.

HOMOEOPATHIC NOSODES IN INFECTIOUS DISEASES AND COVID-19: A SCOPING REVIEW

2021 ◽  
pp. 122-124
Author(s):  
Madhuvarshini Sundararajan ◽  
Srinivas Govindarajulu
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Infectious Agent ◽  
Review Of Literature ◽  
Indian Journal ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

Background: Concern about infectious diseases laid more burden on the global health which merely affects the global economy too. Highly transmissible infectious diseases which are the commonest cause of death in the world. Vaccines are the one showing considerable evidence in protecting the people from the infectious diseases. Even though evolutions happened in the eld of vaccines, there is certain infectious agent which are resistant to vaccines. Despite, people are in search of other alternative effective therapy for the infectious disease rather than vaccine. Nosodes came into existence as an alternative one, but there is no quality evidence for the effectiveness of vaccine. Objectives: A review of literature on examining the efcacy of nosodes in infectious diseases. Methods: A search (PubMed and google scholar, Indian Journal of Research in Homeopathy) was conducted regarding the history of nosodes, their preparation, and their effects on various epidemics and particular diseases were included. Other studies regarding the experimental studies of nosodes on animals also included. Conclusion: A total of 21 articles were included. While this review of literature regarding the efcacy of nosodes in infectious diseases shows a positive tagging on the curing ability of nosodes. However, further more studies elucidate to enhance the mechanism of action of nosodes and it is efcacy in infectious diseases.

Dennis Showalter and the history of armour during Second World War

2022 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-67
Author(s):  
Kaushik Roy
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Present Author ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Good Works ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Second World

Whenever one thinks of the World War II, the image of dark menacing panzers cutting deep swathes into enemy forces comes up to the mind. No amount of interpretation and overinterpretation can belittle the extraordinary role-played by the panzers in World War II. Similarly, despite the presence of numerous good works by various historians and introduction of exotic methodologies, Professor Dennis Showalter’s place in the world of academic writings on World War II can never be marginalized. The present article humbly attempts to highlight one aspect of Professor Showalter’s research: history of tanks during the World War II. This essay has two sections. The first section evaluates Showalter’s three works dealing with armour during the World War II. In the next section, the present author, inspired by Showalter’s works on armoured war, attempts to recount the evolution of armoured branch in the Indian Army until the end of World War II. Indian tank units, as this article argues, played a crucial role in the capture of Meiktila and the subsequent ‘Race to Rangoon’.

Earthquakes and the Environmental Transformation of a Floodplain Landscape: The Brahmaputra Valley and the Earthquakes of 1897 and 1950

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-77
Author(s):  
Arupjyoti Saikia
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Seismic Activity ◽  
Deep Impact ◽  
North East India ◽  
North East ◽  
Brahmaputra Valley ◽  
Physical Setting ◽  
The World ◽  
Environmental Transformation ◽  
History Of

Two major earthquakes in 1897 and 1950 had a deep impact upon the environment and humans in north-east India. The massive seismic disturbance of 1897 played a crucial role in shaping the physical history of this region. Seismologists have observed that this earthquake holds a 'prominent place among the great earthquakes of the world'. Another earthquake in 1950 disturbed the region's physical setting. This article will examine how these earthquakes transformed the landscape of Assam, and, in so doing, affected the lives and livelihoods of human communities. It will detail the various geological and hydrological consequences of earthquakes, which included the creation of floods, landslides, fissures, sand vents and artificial river dams. It will demonstrate how these changes affected Assamese agriculturalists and fishing communities. In so doing, it will shift the historiography of earthquakes away from a largely urban focus to examine the rural experiences of seismic activity.

scholarly journals Building Teachers' Resilience: Practical Applications for Teacher Education of China

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi Wang
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Universal Model ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Practical Applications ◽  
Teacher Resilience ◽  
The World ◽  
Emotional Aspects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Practical Implications

Teacher resilience has a crucial role to play in teaching and teacher education all around the world. However, few practical attempts have been made to systematically improve and (re)build this characteristic in teachers. Against this backdrop, this article draws on a universal model to offer practical implications of building resilience in the teacher education of China which is largely oriented toward pedagogical and economic concerns rather than the socio-emotional aspects of teaching. More particularly, it explains the history of China's teacher education, the conceptualizations and significance of teacher resilience, and a systematic model to integrate resilience into teacher education. Finally, some practical implications and future directions are provided for avid scholars.

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