Evidence For And Against Climate Change Environmental Sciences Essay

Evidence For And Against Climate Change Environmental Sciences Essay Climate Change is a very controversial global issue which has committed supporters and detractors. Critically evaluate the evidence for and against climate change and provide your own assessment of the current and future risks that the planet faces by 2050. It is expected that you will give a broad view of your subject giving weight to policy, regulatory, economic and risk management impacts as well as health and environmental impacts. Use a case study to illustrate a key component of the climate change agenda. The worlds climate is changing and the consequences are serious, wide ranging and long-term. Despite the overwhelming scientific consensus that this is happening, the issue of climate change has its detractors, whose opposition to the phenomenon range from disagreeing about the extent of the problem, the extent of mans influence, to the accuracy of the modeling techniques. During the essay the evidence from both sides will be evaluated and the current and longer term economic, social, and environmental effects assessed. The definitions of climate change vary greatly, but the two most useful are the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) definition where broadly speaking climate change relates to a change in climate which is attributed, directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and that is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which refers to any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity, which is perhaps a more useful definition. Firstly before looking at the evidence for climate change it is useful to understand the global energy flow (radiative budget), which was first suggested by Kiehl and Trenbirth (1997), illustrated in picture 1 below: Picture 1 The incoming solar radiation, often labelled in percentage terms, must match the outgoing short and longwave radiation to achieve radiative equilibrium. Radiative forcing is the measure of the influence that a specific factor has in altering the balance of this incoming and outgoing energy, and is therefore a useful indication of the importance of that factor to change the climate. Positive forcing will generally mean that the surface of the earth is warmed, whilst negative forcing tends to cool the surface. The Kyoto protocol, adopted in December 1997 and entering into force in February 2005, committed all Annex1 countries (39 industrialised countries the EU) to a reduction in four greenhouse gases (Carbon dioxide, Methane, Nitrous oxide and Sulfur hexafluoride) and two groups of gases called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) (often found in refridgerants) and perfluorocarbons (PFCs) (also in refridgerants but having a wide variety of medical and non-medical uses and according to Askam, Khalil et al. (2003) having a lifetime up to 50,000 years). Carbon dioxide is perhaps the most studied and well known of the anthropogenic GHGs. Since some infra-red radiation leaving the planet is absorbed by CO2, the greater the CO2 the greater the absorbtion and reflection of heat and the warmer the climate. Perhaps the most significant indicator of the increase in the level of CO2 in the last 50 years is shown in graph 1 below. This is the measurement of CO2 concentrations as measured in Hawaii, far from industrial areas so no localised bias is present, though these measurements have been replicated around the world (e.g. Pieter P. Tans and Thomas J. Conway 1968-2002) Monthly Atmospheric CO2 Mixing Ratios from the NOAA Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory Carbon Cycle Cooperative Global Air Sampling Network, 1968-2002. NOAA Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory, Boulder, Colorado 80305, U.S.A.) Graph 1 Image created by Robert A. Rohde / www.globalwarmingart.com Similar measurements have been found in ice core samples, which enable us to get a much better picture over time. Graph 2 below shows the CO2 variations over time from the past 420,000 years. Graph 2 Image created by Robert A. Rohde / www.globalwarmingart.com This shows the CO2 levels fluctuating in line with the ice-ages, however, the most important section is the insert the marked increase since the industrial revolution from around 1750/1800. A clear indication of humans influence. More evidence is given in the IPCC 4th Annual Report Working Group summary that the concentration of atmospheric CO2 has increased from 280ppm (pre-industrial level) to 379ppm in 2005. In addition the annual CO2 concentration growth was larger during the last 10 years (1995-2005 : 1.9ppm per year) than it has been since the beginning of continuous direct atmospheric measurements (1960-2005 : 1.4 ppm per year). In a similar fashion the levels of Methane (from a pre-industrial level of 715ppb to 1732ppb in the early 1990s and 1774ppb in 2005) and Nitrous oxide (from pre-industrial levels of roughly 270ppb to 319ppb in 2005) have increased markedly over recent years. Looking at the radiative forcing discussed earlier the There are many different indications of how the climate has altered, and over several different timescales ranging from the most recent 150 years since 1860, since roughly the time of industrial revolution since 1750 and for the past 10-100 thousand years. Each of these will be looked at in turn. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change in its most recent report in 2007 stated: Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level. Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. This is an advance since the TARs conclusion that most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations. Discernible human influences now extend to other aspects of climate, including ocean warming, continental-average temperatures, temperature extremes and wind patterns The time series shows the combined global land and marine surface temperature record from 1850 to 2009. The year 2009 was the sixth warmest on record, exceeded by 1998, 2005, 2003, 2002, and 2004. This time series is being compiled jointly by the Climatic Research Unit and the UK Met. Office Hadley Centre. The record is being continually up-dated and improved (see Brohan et al., 2006). This paper includes a new and more thorough assessment of errors, recognizing that these differ on annual and decadal timescales. Increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activities are most likely the underlying cause of warming in the 20th century. Brohan, P., J.J. Kennedy, I. Harris, S.F.B. Tett and P.D. Jones, 2006: Uncertainty estimates in regional and global observed temperature changes: a new dataset from 1850. J. Geophysical Research 111, D12106, doi:10.1029/2005JD006548 http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/ Detractors In a debate that has become highly polarised the label climate sceptic is readily slapped on anybody who stands on the soapbox and contradicts Al Gore. In reality, the sceptic landscape is more varied, ranging from those scurrilously pursuing scientific truth to others with more obvious economic or political gains to play for. Richard Lindzen, an American atmospheric physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been one of the most vocal in expressing concerns over the validity of computer models used to predict future climate change. He argues that they may be over-predicting future warming due to a failure to properly account for the climate systems water vapour feedback. However he has also been an active contributor to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports. Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies commented that Lindzen agrees with about 90 per cent of what other climate scientists are saying, yet the last 10 per cent is sufficiently different to label him a contrarian. Stephen McIntyre, editor of sceptic blog ClimateAudit and former director of several state-owned Canadian mineral exploration companies, is known in the climate science community for his continual demands for raw data. McIntryre was behind an orchestrated campaign that led to 60 Freedom of Information requests being made to CRU scientists at the University of East Anglia in a single weekend in July. However, while potentially vexatious, McIntyre has made genuine scientific contributions, notably spotting a mistake in NASA data that led to the average US temperatures to be reduced about 0.15C for the period 2000-2006. Philip Stott, an emeritus professor of biogeography at the University of London (although not a published climate scientist), has publicly argued that the climate is too complex and chaotic a system to make long-term predictions on. None of these scientists are climate change deniers, but they question the certainty of the scientific consensus. Several Tory MPs have recently contradicted the Green Conservative line of the Cameron era. Peter Lilley, one of only three MPs to vote against the governments Climate Change Bill in October, has accused climatologists of an unconscious conspiracy in which a dogmatic determination to conform to a consensus driven by the incentive of public funding has made them happier to let the data fit the theory rather than the opposite. David Davis has also spoken out on what he describes as a ferocious determination to impose hair-shirt policies on the public. Taxes on holiday flights and noisy wind turbines are too high a price to pay, he suggests. Both MPs claim to be open to the possibility that man has significantly contributing to climate change, but both remain unconvinced by the evidence. Former Tory Chancellor Nigel Lawson, has also publicly stepped up his opposition to environmental policy, founding the think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, complete with a board of fairly distinguished academics to provide scepticism with a respectable face. However, the think tank was this week accused by scientists of appearing to misrepresent scientific data on its website. At the far end of the spectrum, figures such as Sarah Palin appear to be happy to disregard scientific evidence wholesale in favour of economic gain. Despite substantial differences in outlook, bundled together under the sceptic brand, the views of these individuals appear to be increasingly gaining favour with the public in the lead up to Copenhagen. PLAN For climate change Against climate change Case study Assessment of current risks Assessment of future risks to 2050

Friedrich Nietzsche Essay

I chose to write on Freidrich Nietzsche . He was criticized for all of his writing because they were so controversial. He was mostly known for his statement â€Å"the Death of God†. It was said that a lot of his philosophies were misunderstood by most of his readers. He was commonly classified as a German philosopher. He believed in life, creativity, health, and the realities of the world we live in, rather than those situated in a world beyond. His key ideas were the death of god, perspectivism, the Ubermensch, the will to power, and the eternal recurrence. His philosophy was highly innovative and revolutionary but was also indebted to the pre-Socratic Greek thinker Heraclitus. Nietzsche frequently criticized Christianity in offensive and the most blasphemous ways possible. His views on morality were what got the most attention by other scholars. In his Daybreak he called himself an â€Å"immoralist† and often criticized the morality of his day. He wanted to create a new more naturalistic source of value in the fundamental impulses of life itself. He claims that Christianity had more of a master-slave morality than anything else. He associated the master-slave morality to that of the Jewish and Christian traditions. He associates good morals with charity, piety, restraint, meekness and submission and evil one’s being cruel, selfish, wealthy, and aggressive. He saw slave morality was mainly born out of the resentment slaves held toward their masters. It worked to give the slaves their own sense of inferiority over the wealthy or better off masters. His beliefs made it seem as if the slaves had chosen to be enslaved because they were believed to have the good morals. Their refusal to stand up for themselves was relabeled as meekness to further prove this point. Nietzsche argued that slave morality is essentially the morality of effectiveness since moral goodness involves anything that is helpful to whom is weak and poor. Nietzsche saw modern day Europe and its Christianity existing only as a hypocritical state due to the tension created by the master-slave morality. He made it clear that although he didn’t believe that morality was bad, it was just portrayed wrongfully. He believed that each individual should be responsible for their own morality and how they wanted to portray it. One of his favorite mottos was taken from Pindar was â€Å"Become what you are. † In Nietzsche’s view recent development in modern science and the increasing of secularization of European society had effectively â€Å"killed† the Christian God who served as a meaning and value in the west for more than a thousand years. He claimed that the death of god would eventually lead to the loss of any if not all universal perspective on things. The death of god would also cause people to hang on to their own multiple, diverse, fluid perspectives. This thought was eventually named perspectivism. But instead it was believed that the death of god would eventually go from perspectivism to nihilism or the belief that nothing had natural importance and that life itself lacked purpose. Nietzsche then said in The Spoke Zarathustra that an Ubermensch would be brought upon the people. He believed that only after a long twilight period with no God and nihilism Zarathustr’s gift of the superman would be given to mankind. Any problem that shall arise could be solved by the superman. An important element form his philosophical attitude was â€Å"will to power† which was a foundation for understanding motivation in human behavior. He held that the will to power was much more important than the force for adaptation or survival. According to him, it was only in limited situations where the drive for conservation was higher than the will to power, primarily when life was reduced to a state of poverty and limitation. He claimed that the natural condition of life was one of abundance. Later in his works he claimed that the will to power applied to all living things not just mankind. He suggested that adaptation and the struggle to survive came secondary in the evolution of animals and was less important than their desire to expand their power. He eventually took it even further claiming that even inorganic nature also followed the same rules. Nietzsche will to power was often compared to Schopenhauer’s will to live theory. Schopenhauer work was written an entire generation before Nietzsche and was believed to be borrowed. Schopenhauer’s belief was that the entire universe and everything in it was driven by a primordial will to live, resulting in all creatures’ desire to avoid death and procreate. Nietzsche however challenged this belief stating that people and animals really just want power and living in itself is only a subsidiary aim necessary to promote one’s own power. He backed up this belief by using competitive fighting as an example. He stated that people as well as animals were willing to risk their lives to gain power or higher ranking within their groups. Nietzsche was compared to other writers before him along with their views and beliefs on motivation of the human behavior, each time Nietzsche argued that in the end the will to power provided the most useful and general explanation. One of Nietzsche’s articles Eternal Return, was also known as the eternal recurrence, and was used as an answer to nihilism. In it he states that the wish for eternal return of all events would mark the ultimate affirmation of life. To comprehend the eternal recurrence in his thought and not to purely come to peace with it but to embrace it required the love of fate. Some people had stated that the Eternal Return was a crucial part of Nietzsche’s work and was central to his entire philosophy but was not widely discussed felt as though a large part of his philosophy was left untouched and unexplored. The basic explanation was that the universe was limited in extent and contained a finite amount of matter; time was viewed as being infinite. The universe however had no starting or ending state and matter comprised its constant changing state. The number of possible changes was infinite so sooner or later the same state would eventually occur. This concept was one of his most difficult to understand, he used it as an existential thought experiment. His most famous quote on eternal recurrence was called â€Å"the heaviest burden† and the best way to comprehend it was to let it be read by the reader. What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: â€Å"This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but ever pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything immeasurably small or great in your life must return to you-all in the same succession and sequence-even this spider and his moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over and over, and you with it, a grain of dust! † Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently that this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal? -Nietzsche

What Is Literature Review - 3725 Words

4. What is literature review? Discuss in not less than 2000 words Introduction: as a general rule, researchers should first investigate previous research to see whether or not others may have already addressed similar research problems and must acquaint themselves with the relevant literature. Literature review is used to help the researcher link concepts from other sources to his or her research, a good literature review require a balance. A literature review often forms part of a larger research project, such as within a thesis (or major research paper), or it may be an independent written work, such as a synthesis paper. While it should the format of a review of literature may vary from discipline to discipline and from assignment to†¦show more content†¦For example, researcher’s research objective, the problem or issue researcher is discussing or his/her argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries. 8. According to university of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period. 9. Literature review provides arguments, concepts, theories, interpretations and styles of thinking relevant to the research project. The main purpose is to help the researcher develop a good understanding and insight into relevant previous research and the trends that have emerged. (Chartered of Institute Administrators and Management Consultants- Ghana lecture notes) Purpose of Literature Review: 1. Generally, the purpose of a review is to analyze critically a segment of a published body of knowledge through summary, classification, and comparison of prior research studies, reviews of literature, and theoretical article. 2. Literature review helps the investigator to avoid duplication of work that has been done before. 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