scholarly journals The Covid-19 Pandemic and Climate Change: A Fractal Crisis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Dennison
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Information Transfer ◽  
Change Processes ◽  
Active Inference ◽  
Markov Blanket ◽  
Fractal Patterns ◽  
Societal Level

This hypothesis paper explores the current Covid-19 pandemic against the background of destructive climate change. Based on recent published theoretical findings on active inference and hierarchical Markov blanket systems, the outermost Planetary-Societal Markov blanket system is considered in terms of fractal patterns of information transfer between climate change processes at the planetary superordinate level, and the Covid-19 pandemic at the inner global societal level. It is hypothesised that this "Gaia" Markov blanket system has become unstable due to conflicted agendas on the part of global societies that undermine constructive self-evidencing active inference processes. In effect, a fractal crisis.

Geohazard and Climate adaption:  impacts and interconnectivity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitar Ouzounov ◽  
Menas Kafatos ◽  
Patrick Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Adaptation ◽  
Seismic Energy ◽  
Small Time ◽  
Change Processes ◽  
Atmospheric Conditions ◽  
New Information ◽  
Global Geodynamics ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Adaptation Processes

<p>The forefront of science now is in bridging fields and making connections across different disciplines, challenging our current understanding of the Earth's changes and overall state. Some of the most challenging science questions now have to do with warnings for significant geohazards and Earth-Space systems' response to climate variability affecting adaptation processes, such as geosphere changes due to climate change and resultant strategies. In recent years, the study of pre-earthquake processes has led for example to developing the lithosphere-atmosphere-ionosphere-coupling concept. This in turn provides new information about the Earth's energy balance (Pulinets and Ouzounov, 2011). From space-born NASA and NOAA Earth observation of atmospheric conditions, we have shown the consistent occurrence of radiative emission anomalies in the atmosphere near or over regions of earthquakes, volcanoes, and geothermal fluxes. Our assessment shows that the latent heat released before major earthquakes is larger than the seismic energy released during the quake (Ouzounov et al., 2018). We find that the associated pre-earthquake phenomena for large events may create an additional thermodynamic contribution in the atmosphere and impact on climate, caused by sources of Earth de-gassing in the lithosphere and followed by ionization processes. Because of these findings, we start exploring major global geodynamics activities and their impact on atmospheric processes and climate through the geosphere coupling channels as a potential forward process of interaction between geohazards and climate adaptation. The reverse mechanism of climate adaptation's impact on geohazards is based on the initial idea that climate adaptation could force additional geohazards activities (McGuire, 2010). The removal of ice sheets may somehow or likely have permitted the release of stresses that had accumulated on previously confined faults, triggering earthquakes in the US, Canada, and Europe. How realistically is it to expect a change in the existing earthquake patterns in Europe, the USA, and Canada during climate change processes? It is plausible, but we do not yet know the answer. Our goal is to explore the coupling between geohazards processes and climate change processes through the lithosphere-atmosphere framework, focusing on dynamic environments, exhibiting a change in physical and thermodynamics processes over relatively small-time scales.</p>

scholarly journals Climate and resource information as tools for dealing with farmer-pastoralist conflicts in the Sahel

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ole Mertz ◽  
Kjeld Rasmussen ◽  
Laura Vang Rasmussen
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Change Processes ◽  
Potential Conflict ◽  
Resource Information ◽  
Key Stakeholders

Abstract. Conflicts between pastoralists and farmers in the Sahel arise from competition over land and water resources or because of livestock damages to crops. Rather than being linked to larger environmental change processes such as climate change, they are often causes by inappropriate zoning of land, governance and unequal power relations between stakeholders in the conflicts. In this paper, we explore whether improved weather and resource information and improvement in its communication could prevent conflicts or reduce their severity. Based on a survey of key stakeholders and studies on pastoral access to and use of information, we conclude that improved information may both reduce and increase the level of conflict, depending on the context. Communication of improved information will need to go beyond just the weather and resource information and also include the multiple options for herd movements as well as providing information on herd crowding and potential conflict areas.

Social Learning for Anticipatory Adaptation to Climate Change: Evidence From a Community of Practice

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 416-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renato J. Orsato ◽  
José Guilherme Ferraz de Campos ◽  
Simone R. Barakat
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Learning ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Adaptation To Climate Change ◽  
Private Companies ◽  
Sustainability Management ◽  
Private Goods ◽  
The Social ◽  
Societal Level ◽  
Level Of Analysis

The literature discussing social learning for Anticipatory Adaptation to Climate Change (AACC) has largely been developed at the societal level of analysis. However, how private companies build resilience and reduce damage to their private goods remains underexplored. Since climate change involves high levels of uncertainty and complexity, companies seeking to proactively adapt to climate change are required to search for specific and nontraditional knowledge. In order to contribute to this discussion, we investigated how a community of practice promotes social learning for AACC. We access the social learning emerging from the community of practice by developing a framework that can also be applied to other complex problems faced by companies. We found evidence of the centrality of social learning for the development of strategies and practices addressing grand corporate challenges, such as AACC. The results contribute to both the literature of social learning and the practice of sustainability management.

scholarly journals Global cooling & the rise of modern grasslands: Revealing cause & effect of environmental change on insect diversification dynamics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katie E. Davis ◽  
Adam T. Bakewell ◽  
Jon Hill ◽  
Hojun Song ◽  
Peter Mayhew
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Information Transfer ◽  
Environmental Data ◽  
Global Temperature ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Global Cooling ◽  
Speciation Rates ◽  
Biotic Change ◽  
Life On Earth

AbstractUtilising geo-historical environmental data to disentangle cause and effect in complex natural systems is a major goal in our quest to better understand how climate change has shaped life on Earth. Global temperature is known to drive biotic change over macro-evolutionary time-scales but the mechanisms by which it acts are often unclear. Here, we model speciation rates for Orthoptera within a phylogenetic framework and use this to demonstrate that global cooling is strongly correlated with increased speciation rates. Transfer Entropy analyses reveal the presence of one or more additional processes that are required to explain the information transfer from global temperature to Orthoptera speciation. We identify the rise of C4 grasslands as one such mechanism operating from the Miocene onwards. We therefore demonstrate the value of the geological record in increasing our understanding of climate change on macro-evolutionary and macro-ecological processes.

scholarly journals Who tailors the blanket?

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keisuke Suzuki ◽  
Katsunori Miyahara ◽  
Kengo Miyazono
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Process ◽  
Active Inference ◽  
Cognitive Agents ◽  
Markov Blanket

The gap between the Markov blanket and ontological boundaries arises from the former’s inability to capture the dynamic process through which biological and cognitive agents actively generate their own boundaries with the environment. Active inference in the FEP framework presupposes the existence of a Markov blanket, but it is not a process that actively generates the latter.

STUDIES OF THE IMPACT OF AEROSOL OPTICAL PROPERTIES ON CLIMATE CHANGE PROCESSES

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-159
Author(s):  
Tymon Zielinski ◽  
Przemyslaw Makuch ◽  
Agata Strzalkowska ◽  
Agnieszka Ponczkowska ◽  
Tomasz Petelski ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Optical Properties ◽  
Change Processes ◽  
Aerosol Optical Properties ◽  
The Impact

Real Time Disaster Information Transfer and Emergency Operation Systems Established for Remote Mountainous Communities in Southwestern Taiwan

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kuang-Jung Tsai ◽  
Yie-Ruey Chen ◽  
Tsung Tsai Tsai ◽  
Ming-Hsi Lee ◽  
Jia-Xuan Li
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Land Management ◽  
Information Transfer ◽  
Emergency Operation ◽  
Christian University ◽  
Disaster Information ◽  
Management And Development ◽  
Mountainous Communities ◽  
Southwestern Taiwan

<p><strong>Real Time Disaster Information Transfer and Emergency Operation Systems Established for Remote Mountainous Communities in Southwestern Taiwan</strong></p><p><strong> </strong></p><p>Kuang-Jung TSAI <sup>1</sup>, Tsai-Tsung Tsai <sup>2</sup>,Yie-Ruey CHEN<sup> 3</sup>, Ming-Hsi Lee<sup>4</sup>,Jia-Xuan Li<sup> 5</sup></p><p>1Department of Land Management and Development, Chang Jung Christian University, Tainan , Taiwan</p><p>2 Department of DPRC, National Chengkuang University ,Tainan,Taiwan</p><p>3 Department of Land Management and Development, Chang Jung Christian University, Tainan , Taiwan</p><p>4 Department of Soil and Water Conservation, National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, Pingtung ,Taiwan Corresponding</p><p>5 Department of Land Management and Development, Chang Jung Christian University, Tainan , Taiwan</p><p> </p><p><strong>ABSTRACT</strong></p><p>According to the report (1990) proposed by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicated that Extreme Climate Change has a detrimental effect on the environmental ecology, cultural system, human society and national economic development all over the world since 1950. Taiwan is located at Pacific-rim area and belongs to the sub-tropic to tropic weather characteristics. Recently, extreme heavy rainfall resulted from climate change to induce serious sediment related disasters, such as large-scale landslide and debris flow, are critical in Taiwan. There are almost 24% of total remoted mountainous communities were located within Chiayi, Tainan, Kaohsiung and  Pingtung counties/cities with the amount of 50 remote communities where is almost 24% of high potential risk area occupied by remote mountainous communities in Taiwan. Most of these communities were frequently attacked by typhoons likes Morakot (2009), which brought the accumulated rainfall more than 2450 mm within continuous 72 hours. This extreme rainfall has triggered off a crisis of compound disasters to destroy the environment systems, agricultural productions, human lifes, properties and public facilities. Within there mountainous communities more than 608 landslides with total area of 968.2ha were induced by these disasters which were based on the field investigations. In order to decrease the risk of sediment related disasters attack these remoted mountainous areas, the adaption strategy of environmental conservation, new technology of filed investigations, hazard mitigation system, environmental vulnerability analysis and disaster risk assessment should be executed as soon as possible. According to the historical record (2007-2018) from soil & water conservation Bureau indicated that most of the remote mountainous communities located at southwestern Taiwan attacked by these compound disasters are significant. Meanwhile, study on the mechanism and behavior of compounded disasters induced by extremely heavy rainfall become an important issue which was seriously concerned by Taiwan government. An establishment of real time disaster information transfer and emergency operation systems would be positively concerned and recognized as an important issue by this research. Hopefully, all results can be expected to promote and enhance the disaster prevention capability for the remoted mountainous communities in southern Taiwan.</p><p>Keywords：climate change, extreme rainfall, sediment related disasters, adaption strategy</p>

scholarly journals Social dreaming and ecocentric ethics: sources of non-rational insight in the face of climate change catastrophe

Organization ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 705-721 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Gosling ◽  
Peter Case
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Critical Point ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Indigenous Culture ◽  
Planetary Boundaries ◽  
Dream Vision ◽  
Analytical Perspective ◽  
The Face ◽  
Societal Level

The article considers the role of dreams as social, rather than individual, phenomena and suggests that as such they may serve as resources for ‘future imaginings’ with respect to potentially devastating consequences of climate change (and other transgressions of planetary boundaries). Adopting a socio-analytical perspective, it contemplates the possibility of a societal level ‘cosmology episode’ caused by catastrophic climate change; a critical point of rupture in the meaning-making process which leaves local rationalities in ruin. Drawing on a ‘representative anecdote’, the article finds allegorical parallels between the cultural collapse of a traditional indigenous culture and the impending threat of ecocrisis currently facing humanity. The possibilities of seeing and imagining offered by collective forms of dreaming are explored alongside development of a non-anthropocentric ethics. Our focus is on ways of sensing, thinking and talking about climate change that are less dependent on a rational conscious subject. The article thus enquires into what cultural means or resources might be available to (post)modern Western societies that, like the shamanic dream-vision of certain traditional cultures, might enable them to draw on non-anthropocentric sensibilities and organize responses to an impending cultural crisis. We conclude by offering Gordon Lawrence’s social dreaming matrix as one possible medium through which to imagine and see beyond climate change catastrophe.

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