A History of U.S. Defense, Intelligence, and Security Assessments of Climate Change

The Historiography of Environmental History

10.1093/oso/9780199225996.003.0009 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

J. R. McNeill

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Environmental History ◽

Industrial Pollution ◽

Full Scale ◽

Environmental Concerns ◽

The Us ◽

The World ◽

History Of ◽

The 1960S ◽

The Relationship

This chapter discusses the emergence of environmental history, which developed in the context of the environmental concerns that began in the 1960s with worries about local industrial pollution, but which has since evolved into a full-scale global crisis of climate change. Environmental history is ‘the history of the relationship between human societies and the rest of nature’. It includes three chief areas of inquiry: the study of material environmental history, political and policy-related environmental history, and a form of environmental history which concerns what humans have thought, believed, written, and more rarely, painted, sculpted, sung, or danced that deals with the relationship between society and nature. Since 1980, environmental history has come to flourish in many corners of the world, and scholars everywhere have found models, approaches, and perspectives rather different from those developed for the US context.

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What Stymies Action on Climate Change? Religious Institutions, Marginalization, and Efficacy in Kenya

Perspectives on Politics ◽

10.1017/s153759272000479x ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-18

Author(s):

Lauren Honig ◽

Amy Erica Smith ◽

Jaimie Bleck

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Religious Institutions ◽

Religious Groups ◽

State Repression ◽

Address Climate Change ◽

Policy Responses ◽

Vulnerability To Climate Change ◽

History Of ◽

Muslim Communities ◽

Critical Link

Addressing climate change requires coordinated policy responses that incorporate the needs of the most impacted populations. Yet even communities that are greatly concerned about climate change may remain on the sidelines. We examine what stymies some citizens’ mobilization in Kenya, a country with a long history of environmental activism and high vulnerability to climate change. We foreground efficacy—a belief that one’s actions can create change—as a critical link transforming concern into action. However, that link is often missing for marginalized ethnic, socioeconomic, and religious groups. Analyzing interviews, focus groups, and survey data, we find that Muslims express much lower efficacy to address climate change than other religious groups; the gap cannot be explained by differences in science beliefs, issue concern, ethnicity, or demographics. Instead, we attribute it to understandings of marginalization vis-à-vis the Kenyan state—understandings socialized within the local institutions of Muslim communities affected by state repression.

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The Evolution of Communicating the Uncertainty of Climate Change to Policymakers: A Study of IPCC Synthesis Reports

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13052466 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (5) ◽

pp. 2466

Author(s):

Tomas Molina ◽

Ernest Abadal

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Economic Systems ◽

Intergovernmental Panel ◽

Call To Action ◽

The Public ◽

Level Of Confidence ◽

Ipcc Report ◽

Degree Of Certainty ◽

History Of ◽

Tackle Climate Change

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports on climate change have served to alert both the public and policymakers about the scope of the predicted changes and the effects they would have on natural and economic systems. The first IPCC report was published in 1990, since which time a further four have been produced. The aim of this study was to conduct a content analysis of the IPCC Summaries for Policymakers in order to determine the degree of certainty associated with the statements they contain. For each of the reports we analyzed all statements containing expressions indicating the corresponding level of confidence. The aggregated results show a shift over time towards higher certainty levels, implying a “Call to action” (from 32.8% of statements in IPCC2 to 70.2% in IPCC5). With regard to the international agreements drawn up to tackle climate change, the growing level of confidence expressed in the IPCC Summaries for Policymakers reports might have been a relevant factor in the history of decision making.

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The Social Learning Group, Learning to Manage Global Environmental Risks. A Comparative History of Social Responses to Climate Change, Ozone Depletion, and Acid Rain, The Mit Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 2001, pp. 376 vol. I e pp. 226 vol. II. Isbn 0 262 69239 2 (paperback) e 0 262 19445 7 (hardback).

Italian Political Science Review/Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica ◽

10.1017/s0048840200030495 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 32 (3) ◽

pp. 590-594

Author(s):

Rodolfo Lewanski

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Social Learning ◽

Ozone Depletion ◽

Group Learning ◽

Environmental Risks ◽

Social Responses ◽

Learning Group ◽

Global Environmental ◽

The Social ◽

History Of

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Climate-change modeling: a brief history of the theory and recent twenty-first-century ensemble simulations

Frontiers of Climate Modeling ◽

10.1017/cbo9780511535857.003 ◽

2009 ◽

pp. 26-51

Author(s):

Warren M. Washington ◽

Aiguo Dai ◽

Gerald A. Meehl

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

First Century ◽

Ensemble Simulations ◽

History Of ◽

Twenty First Century

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Cycling Pathways

10.5117/9789463728478 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Henk-Jan Dekker

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

The Netherlands ◽

Political Struggle ◽

The Road ◽

Wide Range ◽

The World ◽

Road Space ◽

History Of ◽

On The Road

In an effort to fight climate change, many cities try to boost their cycling levels. They often look towards the Dutch for guidance. However, historians have only begun to uncover how and why the Netherlands became the premier cycling country of the world. Why were Dutch cyclists so successful in their fight for a place on the road? Cycling Pathways: The Politics and Governance of Dutch Cycling Infrastructure, 1920-2020 explores the long political struggle that culminated in today’s high cycling levels. Delving into the archives, it uncovers the important role of social movements and shows in detail how these interacted with national, provincial, and urban engineers and policymakers to govern the distribution of road space and construction of cycling infrastructure. It discusses a wide range of topics, ranging from activists to engineering committees, from urban commuters to recreational cyclists and from the early 1900s to today in order to uncover the long and all-but-forgotten history of Dutch cycling governance.

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A short history of climate change

EPJ Web of Conferences ◽

10.1051/epjconf/202024600002 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 246 ◽

pp. 00002

Author(s):

Dirk Notz

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Energy Production ◽

Short History ◽

Unique Challenge ◽

Climate Conditions ◽

The Earth ◽

Two Factors ◽

History Of ◽

Natural Climate ◽

First Time

The flux of energy through the climate system determines the living conditions of our planet. In this contribution, I outline the main processes regulating this flux of energy, how these processes have changed throughout Earth history, and how today they are changing by human activities, in particular by activities related to energy production. The changes in the climate state of our planet, which have been ongoing ever since the formation of the Earth some 5 billion years ago, have shaped the world we live in today. Yet, today’s climate change is special in two overarching ways. First, it is the first time that a major climate change is globally affecting a civilisation that is perfectly adapted to thousands of years of stable climate conditions. Second, today’s climate change is occurring at a rate much faster than preceding natural climate changes. In combination, these two factors make today’s climate change a unique challenge to humankind, with direct consequences of future energy production as outlined in the other contributions to this volume.

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Investigation of climate change and history of lead deposition using soil archives

Mineralogical Magazine ◽

10.1180/minmag.2008.072.1.341 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 72 (1) ◽

pp. 341-343 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

T. Pampura ◽

V. Demkin ◽

A. Probst

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Middle Ages ◽

Isotopic Ratios ◽

Humid Climate ◽

Climate Conditions ◽

Anthropogenic Lead ◽

Significant Difference ◽

Profile Distribution ◽

History Of ◽

Burial Mounds

AbstractOur study focused on the investigation of climate change and the fate of lead in soils from the Low Volga region of Russia over 3500 years. We used a comparative analysis of the modern soils and palaeosols preserved under burial mounds, which date back to the Middle Ages and the Early Iron and Bronze Ages. A climate reconstruction showed periodic changes, with the most humid climate conditions occurring during Golden Horde period. However, we could not find any consistent changes in Pb concentration and profile distribution following the climate change. We observed a clear difference in Pb isotopic ratios between the lower and upper horizons both for the modern and buried profiles, reflecting the influence of atmospheric lead depositions. However, there is no statistically significant difference in Pb isotopic ratios between the upper horizons of buried and modern soils (except modern soils collected in the vicinity of a motorway). This means that either anthropogenic input due to long range air transport was insignificant, or that airborne anthropogenic lead and natural airborne lead have similar isotopic composition.

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