What economists around the world get wrong about the future.
The idea that economic growth can continue forever on a finite planet is the unifying faith of industrial civilization. That it is nonsensical in the extreme, a deluded fantasy, doesn't appear to bother us. We hear the holy truth in the decrees of elected officials, in the laments of economists about flagging GDP, in the authoritative pages of opinion, in the whirligig of advertising, at the World Bank and on Wall Street, in the prospectuses of globe-spanning corporations and in the halls of the smallest small-town chambers of commerce. Growth is sacrosanct. Growth will bring jobs and income, which allow us entry into the state of grace known as affluence, which permits us to consume more, providing more jobs for more people producing more goods and services so that the all-mighty economy can continue to grow. "Growth is our idol, our golden calf," Herman Daly, an economist known for his anti-growth heresies, told me recently.
"The ESRI storymap on climate refugees does a phenomenal job sampling locations in the world that experience migration effects as a result of climate change. Attached is a guided worksheet that accompanies the ESRI Climate Migrant Storymap."
This site is great to show evidence of climate change. It has various sites with videos and articles. The interactive is organized to answer these main questions:
How do we know it’s happening?How do we fix it?How do we live with it?
There is too much talk about helping the climate and environment. All politicians do is talk about cleaning the environment and having less pollution. Even Al Gore is big talk. I've only heard of little change. I want to see a difference. I want to see people actually doing things to help the environment. Enough talk. What should happen is a world wide clean up. Jobs should be created where people should clean in their own community. Its a simple job. Get a trash bag, get off your lazy butts, get out of the house, get a group together (who would be paid by the state) to pick trash up off the streets, beaches, trails in the woods, baseball fields, parks. This isn't hard to do. Not just one person, but if a group of people can come together and be employed by their state to clean their community, at least four days a week. There should also be a group of people, even fisherman to clean the ocean, go out and get what ever trash you can find. Using nets, and if fish are caught, throw them back in the ocean. Also, Trash Island has to be eliminated. It boggles my mind that who ever passed the law on trash being dumped into the ocean an Okay to do. Are you kidding me?? What is wrong with you? Our Earth is dying because of humanity. Also the oil spill that happened in 2012, I believe, I saw a man on the news that created a way to capture the oil floating on the surface of the ocean with a blanket like material, sure it would take a lot of those "blankets" but at least it would be helping to rid the ocean from oil. What are people thinking?? that the oil will just disappear?? Are you serious? So many people really have to open their minds. Look at what's happening you ignorant selfish fools. I will finish my rant right here.
"How deep is that icy blue water on Greenland's ice sheet? Dr. Allen Pope, of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, is using data from the NASA/USGS Landsat 8 satellite to find out. In this video, Dr. Pope shares what he sees when he looks at a Landsat image of the Greenland ice sheet just south of the Jakobshavn Glacier.
Because the lakes are darker than the ice around them, they absorb more energy from the sun. A little bit of melt concentrates in one place, and then melts more, establishing a feedback mechanism accelerating the growth of the lake. When the lakes get big enough they can force open fractures that then drill all the way down to the bed of the glacier, transporting this water to the base where it can temporarily speed up the flow of the ice."
With Antarctica being the coldest, driest, and most isolated continent on earth, it is surprising that 51 different countries own pieces of land on it. As of now, the lands there can only be used strictly for scientific research, but I presume that treaty will not be in effect forever. Hidden resources yet to be discovered and future technology and is bound to give us some reason to permanently settle in this barren land someday. Discovering oil or minerals would be a good bet, as it was a leading factor in causing Dubai to form in the Arabian Desert, or the city of Perth in Western Australia. A healthy fishing industry could even help support future economies there. While weather has always been an important factor in human colonization, it does not make a place totally inhospitable. If economies can form in places like Barrow, Alaska and Longyearbyen, Norway, I don't see future settlements in Antarctica as an impossibility.
In reality, no one own Antarctica for now. However, it is governed under the Antarctica treaty of 1959. There are a few reasons why no one has been claimed Antarctica, one being that is has extremely cold temperatures that drop to -122 °F. The continent also has a vast amount of thick ice that is 3 miles deep and covers its surface. In addition, it would be very costly to explore these regions and difficult to build infrastructure and transport food due to the cold temperatures and frozen seas. The Antarctica treaty of 1959 is an international agreement which states that no one cannot own the Antarctica. However, some countries have claimed some part of Antarctica. These designated areas are only to be used for scientific research purposes. Also, since an international agreement has been putted in place, Antarctica cannot be used for military purposes. The agreement also stresses freedom of scientific investigation but prohibits nuclear testing and waste disposal in Antarctica. This research has helped scientists discover new truths about global problems, climate change, and geology.
It will be interesting to see what happens to Antartica as the climate shifts and continues to get warmer. What is under the frozen tundra? Will it be something of a natural resource or mineral? I think this is when the fight will get real about the slice of pie and how much each has.
Brazil’s largest city, Sao Paulo, which provides one third of the countries GPD, is now running low or water due to one of the worst droughts in 8 years. There are more than 21 million people in this city and 13 million of them are facing water outages. If it doesn't rain soon, the city could face a collapse. The city has blamed the drought of lack of water in the vapor clouds that the amazon usually provides to the city. They also blame it on deforestation and global warming. President Dilma Rousseff has questioned the cities misusage of their water supply, claiming that the city mismanaged their water supply.
This shows just how important water is the human race. It also shows how humans have no sense of urgency in conserving water until it's too late. The saying "you never know a good thing until it's gone" applies in this case. The Brazilian government did not take any sufficient measures to conserve water until it realized how depleted the reservoir is. This event demonstrates the environmental impact of water depletion on humans, and how humans have such a huge impact on the geographical landscape on Earth. As seen in the picture above, many greens turned yellow as a result of the lowering water levels. The river beds are soon going to be overgrown by shrubbery as water no longer exists there. These are all results of a combination of natural (lack of rain) and human causes of resource depletion.
"Though uninhabited and full of melting ice caps, the Arctic is surprisingly an appealing piece of real estate. Many countries have already claimed parts of the region. So who technically owns the North Pole? And why do these nations want it so bad?"
The video discusses a big topic in discussion today - Who really owns the North Pole? Although the North Pole is uninhabited, many countries have claimed to take ownership of the vast majority of land (or, ice). Canada has already claimed that the North Pole is part of its nation. Russia has put up Russian flags on the North Pole (such as underwater) but does that really make North Pole a Russian territory? The media plays a role in this by offering different opinions on who should and who deserves the right to own the North Pole. You might read a Canadian article that lists all the outright reasons why the North Pole is or deserves to be a Canadian territory.
In my opinion, I don't understand how the United nations can be seen as an entity that, essentially, controls who would have rights to a place like the North Pole(technically, not owned by anyone). I, naively, understand the basics of the U.N. In short, it is an organization that was formed, post-WW I or II, as a governing board for world-issues.
With that being said, how can they believe that their "law" is the all-powerful one? If I'm a leader of a country who is not a member of the U.N., do I really care what they say? I just find it odd that this narrator speaks about the issue while holding the U.N. as a supreme authority. I know that this video is just a quick fun type of video but it leaves me with wanting to hear the perspective of a non-U.N. member. But a very interesting topic, none the less.
"It has taken between 50-300 million years to form, and yet we have managed to burn roughly half of all global oil reserves in merely 125 years or so."
Resources shape the behavior of people living in a given geographical region. On Earth, the abundance and efficiency of oil has caused our societies to be built and operated with the use of oil. Human's needed fuel and found oil to be a natural resource that could fit their needs. But all good things must come to an end. Even though oil and gas are cheap and efficient ways of fueling our society, there are disastrous consequences like environmental degregation and over dependence on foreign oil that leads countries to be entangled in conflict that cost lives everyday. Now that we have the analytically tools to project when oil will run out it allows people to reevaluate their use of oil and gas and weigh the cost of using a resources that will eventually run out and leave the earth in ecological distress. The global oil reserves have been cut in half in just 125 years, although this use of oil led to many technological and medical advances that propelled society into an age of advancement unprecedented it is time to pull back the reigns and calibrate our expectations on how much oil and gas we should keep using.
Canada has dispatched two icebreakers to map the Arctic seabed beneath the North Pole to support a bid to extend the country's maritime territory deeper into the waterways at the top of the world.
"On May 28, 2008, Adam LeWinter and Director Jeff Orlowski filmed a historic breakup at the Ilulissat Glacier in Western Greenland. The calving event lasted for 75 minutes and the glacier retreated a full mile across a calving face three miles wide. The height of the ice is about 3,000 feet, 300-400 feet above water and the rest below water."
Socks is a online magazine about Media, Art, Architecture, Cities, Design, Technology.
Our society is obviously heavily dependent on oil. Yet we often don't see the environmental impacts of our collective oil consumption on the landscape because the negative impacts have been spatially separated away from oil consumers. This is an excellent compilation of photos by Edward Burtynsky that makes the connection between oil consumption and changes to both the physical and cultural landscapes explicit. For more images by this artist, see: http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/ ;
Welcome to Renaissance Education Foundation (REF)
www.reduf.org http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFLFlMHBxj0 http://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=160491263966987 http://www.causes.com/causes/413232-renaissance-education-foundation-ref/about?m=7f992ebd http://ref-community-lifting-program.blogspot.com/
https://profiles.google.com/u/0/Renaissance.edu.Foundation/about?tab=qh#Renaissance.edu.Foundation/about Renaissance Education Foundation (REF) is determined to help our poor brothers and sisters in their dreams of a better future. The REF program aims for educational excellence for low income families.
REF helps young people who, after completing basic schooling, have no possibility to continue their education. REF helps students to continue with the traditional education as well as computer training.
REF also, helps these students stand on their own by adding computer training to their qualifications.
The in demand fields are currently petrochemical, aeronautics, agriculture/dairy, banking, clothing, and educational-based industries. Our computer based technology training provides expertise in all of these fields. Therefore, computer education has become a prerequisite for becoming a successful and member of society.
REF was established in 1996 as a Not-for-Profit Organization, and is sponsored by a team of dedicated young educators and professionals. REF is located in Youhanabad Lahore Pakistan. Youhanabad is a rural area of Lahore Pakistan, in an area that is largely Christian.
A costly plan to build floating islands shows how climate change is pushing the search for innovative solutions, but some critics ask who will ultimately benefit.
Global warming has raised global sea level about 8" since 1880, and the rate of rise is accelerating. Rising seas dramatically increase the odds of damaging floods from storm surges.
Most of the 1,000 or so Marshall Islands, spread out over 29 narrow coral atolls in the South Pacific, are less than six feet above sea level — and few are more than a mile wide. For the Marshallese, the destructive power of the rising seas is already an inescapable part of daily life. Changing global trade winds have raised sea levels in the South Pacific about a foot over the past 30 years, faster than elsewhere. Scientists are studying whether those changing trade winds have anything to do with climate change.
This post shows how climate change is currently impacting small island nations such as the Marshall Islands. Pacific Sea waters are rising and driving families out of their homes. It is changing the entire physical geography of the land. It is also changing the political climate between different nations as the battle over climate control continues and countries react in different ways to ideas and suggestions, or even laws stating nations like the United States would have to pay money to help those other countries being flooded.
Catastrophic property destruction from sea level rising is (at this point in time) inevitable. A number of Islands that serve as homes for hundreds of thousands of people will be devastated and most likely destroyed. These spots will become uninhabitable and dangerous. The Marshall Islands is just one area that will suffer this fate. Trying to save the islands is a moot point. What is now needed is a discussion about ethics and fiscal responsibility. Industrialized and developed nations led the way in destroying parts of the planet and should be held accountable. To become wealthy, these affluent nations collectively sacrificed the world's fragile environment. With this understanding, people of the Marshall Islands should be given a new home and compensation for their losses. Fortunately, the United States has a deal with the Marshall Islands to allow people to immigrate to the U.S. While this is a good start, these people will require job training, education, homes, transportation, and funds to rebuild their lives. Instead of spending massive amounts of tax dollars on military and defense budgets, Congress needs to reassess its values and priorities. By committing to ethical and noble leadership, the U.S. will have more international prestige and leverage to build defense coalitions and negotiate through diplomatic means. An immense single-nation military-industrial complex will be less relevant. By reducing military spending, this country can address problems like the sinking Marshall Islands and our nation's energy needs. How would it look if the U.S. became a true champion of justice and a despotic nation like China attacked the U.S.? The world would be outraged. The U.N. would condemn the aggressor. Alliances could step forward, allowing America to step back as the world police officer which no one ever asked us to be.
Islands are already at a disadvantage of losing land for a few reasons. First the fact that the older the island gets the more corroding that takes place under the sea. Another reason is they are in the middle of no where so relocation is not easy, costly and not many countries these days are willing to take people in. The Marshall islands like I am sure many other islands are facing in recent years is global warming causing sea levels to rise. So know they have another reason to worry about losing lands. The global warming that takes place on earth never effects the contributors, it almost always effects the little guys who cannot doing anything to fight back. They just get to watch there homes be destroyed because of big time nations. More attention needs to be brought to the subject of global warming and everything and one who is negatively effected by it. What if we were in there shoes, we surely would change our ways then.
"Even as Europe wrestles over how to absorb the migrant tide, experts warn that the flood is likely to get worse as climate change becomes a driving factor." http://wp.me/P2dv5Z-1YS
The surge of migrants to Europe has another major contribution other than the Syrian War. Climate change cause food and water shortage to the region of middle-east. The intense droughts and flood are killing their agriculture ultimately lead them to find a food source somewhere else. It's like adding stress to more stress and now you have a massive problem that is showing no sign of stopping.
We learned last year that many of the effects of climate change are irreversible. Sea levels have been rising at a greater rate year after year, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates they could rise by another meter or more by the end of this century.
There may be a counterintuitive explanation for the deep freeze that hit New England this winter: The rapidly warming Arctic is causing big disruptions in the jet stream, which carries weather across North America. Is this the worst winter you've experienced?
So bizarre how the rate of the arctic warming causes us to get smacked with the cold weather. Its one of those things that are like how does the jet stream actually work. Including the fact that California is getting hit with a major drought.
"Trying to understand what’s actually going on in the world’s climate seems like it might be truly impossible. For one thing, there are so many different factors at work. Everything from how light travels through the atmosphere to how the winds move the ocean around to how rain hits the ground has an effect on what actually happens on Earth both now and in the future. That also means there’s absolutely no use in looking at each piece individually … to understand what’s really going on, the climate jigsaw puzzle needs to be complete.
"Perhaps the biggest misunderstanding is that the Arctic and Antarctic are similar. One’s in the north and the other is in the south; but other than that, they’re the same, right? No, this couldn’t be more wrong. These polar opposites are literally polar opposites. For starters, the Arctic is a small, shallow ocean surrounded by land: Eurasia, Greenland, Canada and the United States. It’s only about 5 ½ million square miles, which is five times smaller than the Atlantic and 11 times smaller than the Pacific. Antarctica, on the other hand, is a continent surrounded by the entire Southern Ocean.
This may seem like no big deal, but it makes all the difference in the world. It takes a lot of energy to change water temperature compared to what it takes to change land temperature, which means Arctic seawater isn’t as cold as the continental ice sheet covering Antarctica. So, the Arctic sea ice (frozen sea water) is about 10 feet thick, whereas the Antarctic ice sheet (compacted freshwater ice) is over a mile thick."
A new analysis of sea levels and flood risk around the world offers more evidence that the brunt of climate change will not be borne equally.
More than a quarter of Vietnam’s residents live in areas likely to be subject to regular floods by the end of the century. Globally, eight of the 10 large countries most at risk are in Asia. These figures are the result of a new analysis of sea levels and flood risk around the world, conducted by Climate Central and based on more detailed sea-level data than has previously been available. The analysis offers more evidence that the countries emitting the most carbon aren’t necessarily the ones that will bear the brunt of climate change.
In this article the author discusses the risk of flooding in many different locations of the world. He claims about 2.6 percent of the world's populations. That's a big percentage considering all the people of the planet.
Flooding is a major risk when it comes to the world we live in especially for Southeast Asia, some areas will be below sea level which shows how the the climate changes are affecting the flood risks caused by global carbon emission. A study from this article shows that eight our of ten of the largest countries will be at the risk of being flooded and below sea level. The major question is how can this carbon emissions be lower? If the carbon is lower then the sea level will rise and less countries will be at risk, this is mainly focusing on Southeast Asia. Yes, we can not change the climate changes but by keeping the land clean and taking care of the environment the flood risk and sea level change could get out of risk level.
If the weather continues at the rate it is at then about 2.6 percent of the global population which is approximately 177 million people will be living in a place at risk of regular flooding. Flooding can cause a lot of damage to homes, crops and people physically because flooding is not just a little amount of water.
The largest country at risk with people in danger from the map is China, I liked the way this map worked because you can see from the boxes how many people are going to be affected by the flooding. Instead of just having numbers, giving a better visual for people with the boxes and their sizes.
It's like watching the land on Earth change right in front of our eyes. According to this map, if global carbon emissions stay as they currently are and sea levels can be affected about as much as expected, 2.6 million people of the global population will live in a high risk flood zone; this wipes out 177 million people!
Scientists have issued a new warning to the world’s coastal megacities that the threat from subsiding land is a more immediate problem than rising sea levels caused by global warming.
A new paper from the Deltares Research Institute in the Netherlands published in April identified regions of the globe where the ground level is falling 10 times faster than water levels are rising - with human activity often to blame.
In Jakarta, Indonesia’s largest city, the population has grown from around half a million in the 1930s to just under 10 million today, with heavily populated areas dropping by as much as six and a half feet as groundwater is pumped up from the Earth to drink.
The same practice led to Tokyo’s ground level falling by two meters before new restrictions were introduced, and in Venice, this sort of extraction has only compounded the effects of natural subsidence caused by long-term geological processes.
Casey Lysdale's curator insight, November 28, 2016 12:43 PM
Could subsistence in megacities becoming a bigger threat than sea level rise? The population rise caused an increase in groundwater extraction practices which made the ground sink over six feet in Indonesia's largest city. The solution is to stop pumping groundwater and seek alternative forms of obtaining drinking water. Effects of land subsistence combined with rising sea levels can leave many coastal cities into project Atlantis.
"It can be difficult to conceive of the long process that's led the world to having its nine hottest years on record all after 2000. That's why it's nice that NASA has generated this nifty animation, which shows temperature abnormalities for every month of the past 13 decades. Watch reddish warm zones spread over the globe as time rolls past, like a virulent fever covering the body of a sick host."
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