(logo) Natural Genesis (logo text)
A Sourcebook for the Worldwide Discovery of a Creative Organic Universe
Table of Contents
Introduction
Genesis Vision
Learning Planet
Organic Universe
Earth Life Emerge
Genesis Future
Glossary
Recent Additions
Search
Submit

VIII. Earth Earns: An Open Participatory Earthropocene to Astropocene CoCreative Future

A. The Old World: Its Archaic, Polar, War Torn, Rapacious Critical Life Support Condition

Knight, Jasper. Rapid Climate Change. Global and Planetary Change. 54/3-4, 2006. An introduction to a special issue on research findings about abrupt shifts in climatic states in the past. For example, Wallace Broecker connects the cold weather of Younger Dryas some 12,000 years ago to a sudden influx in tropical waters of sea ice from Greenland.

Kolbert, Elizabeth. Fields Notes from a Catastrophe. London: Bloomsbury, 2006. A book length version of a series of articles that appeared in The New Yorker. A similar case is made to Flannery and Linden that as we fiddle the world is on the perilous verge of unpredictable and irreversible change. Altogether, these works move beyond any argument about validity and call for, in both developed and emerging lands, an imperative ecologically sane life style. But they also decry that vested politicians, many industrialists, and the consumer juggernaut will have none of this.

Krugman, Paul. Betraying the Planet. New York Times. June 29, 2009. One of the most trenchant columns by the Nobel laureate economist about a precipitous worsening of global climate change, and its political ridicule and denial. While the U. S. House of Representatives did pass the Waxman-Markey climate remediation bill, some 212 members voted against it. But the latest findings from thousands of scientists worldwide warn of an even more rapid loss of polar ice and mean temperature increase. But speakers still cried ‘hoax,’ which was met by applause, that Krugman indicts as a treasonous betrayal.

Kunstler, James. The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005. The artificial bubble of cheap oil is finally bursting which will bring the demise predicted by Malthus some two centuries ago of population outrunning resources. After providing much documentation for this scenario, the veteran journalist offers ways that individuals and societies can sensibly adapt to sustain a decent local and global life style.

Lawton, J., et al, eds. Abrupt Climate Change. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A. 361/3, 2003. An introduction to a special issue to explore the realisation that rather than a gradual warming or cooling, climates can drastically shift their attractor point over just a few years. Typical subjects are paleoclimate data, temperatures of the North Atlantic and sea-ice ratios.

Leiderman, S. Discovering the “New World” of Environmental Refugees. International Conference on Complex Systems. May 23, 2000. The slow apocalypse of habitat destruction due to more volatile weather such as the floods that devasted Mozambique drives an exodus to the shrinking percentage of livable areas, a “remainder earth scenario.” The author, from the Natural Resources Dept. of the University of New Hampshire, warns we are in a race between a corrective mentality and irrevocable loss.

Letcher, Trevor, ed. Climate Change: Observed Impacts on Planet Earth. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2015. A University of KwaZulu-Natal Durban, RSA environmental chemist edits a comprehensive, 600 page collection from Climate Change Through Earth’s History by Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams to Arctic Sea Ice (David Schroeder(, Bird Ecology (Wolfgang Fiedler, Sea Life Ecosystems (Martin Edwards) to Lichens, Acidification, Plant Pathogens, Aerosols, Solar Radiation, Agriculture, and all else.

Climate Change: Observed Impacts on Planet Earth serves as a broad, accessible guide to the science behind this often political and heated debate by providing scientific detail and evidence in language that is clear to both the climatologist and the non-specialist. The book contains 35 chapters on all scientific aspects of climate change, written by the world's authority of each particular subject. It collects the latest information on all of these topics in one volume. In this way, readers can make connections between the various topics covered in the book, leading to new ways of solving problems and looking at related issues. The book also contains major references and details for further research and understanding on all issues related to climate change, giving a clear indication of a looming crisis in global warming and climate change. (Publisher)

Levy, Barry and Victor Sidel, eds. Terrorism and Public Health. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. In an age of economic and conceptual discontinuities leading to vicarious acts of terror, much of which is fueled by the proliferation of weaponry, 19 papers on how the global public health system can respond and cope.

Linden, Eugene. The Winds of Change. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006. A much documented cautionary work within an epochal historical view braced by carefully marshalled evidence.

Liu, Teng, et al. Teleconnections among Tipping Elements in the Earth System.. arXiv:2209.04327. Thirteen senior scientists based in China, Germany, Sweden, Finland, and Israel including Hans Schullnhuber, Jurgen Kurths and Shlomo Havlin proceed to view dynamic world weather as a complex adaptive system which is capable of large, sudden changes due to small perturbations. As the second quote cites, a further inclusion of endemic network qualities (see Global Climate Change) is found to provide vital topological forms. Unrestrained anthropogenic forcing is then seen as a primary factor. As the abstract notes, actual proof is gained from studies of major environmental areas, along with coral reefs, Greenland ice, Boreal forests and more. As depicted on a continental map, a sense of a whole Earth, ecosphere unity becomes evident.

It is now known that local and global climates can reach tipping points and shift abruptly from one state to another. Yet, it remains how to assess and quantify such events and the teleconnections between them. To fill this need, we employ a network approach so to analyze prominent occasions such as the Amazon Rainforest. Tibetan Plateau and West Antarctic ice sheet. We can then identify common propagation paths between them along with early warning signals for critical transitions. Our framework provides new insights into how tipping elements are linked to each other and into the potential predictability of cascading dynamics. (Abstract excerpts, edits)

Networks have proven to be a versatile way to explore the properties of complex systems in many physical, biological, ecological and social sciences. Their application to the complex climate system led to the idea of climate networks (CN) in which geographical locations on a longitude-latitude grid become network nodes, while the degree of similarity, or ‘connectedness’. The climate-network framework has been used model phenomena such extreme rainfall, India monsoons, Atlantic meridional circulation, Atlantic multidecadal scillation and others. The power of CNs lies in its ability to map topological features and patterns related to the physics of the dynamical climate variability. (4)

Long, Douglas. Global Warming. New York: Facts on File, 2004. Called a Library in a Book, the work is intended as a one-stop introduction to the subject: 60 page overview, annotated books, who’s who, legal issues, glossary and so on.

Lovelock, James. The Revenge of Gaia. New York: Basic Books, 2006. The atmospheric chemist and environmentalist founded the now accepted and applied theory that for a billion years earth’s biosphere regulated its compositional, radiative and thermal properties for optimum benefit. But this latest book is a forceful statement that human impacts have so stressed these vital systems as to push them to or beyond the verge of collapse. Lovelock has earlier written of a “geophysiology, by this appropriate metaphor, our special planet as a locus of life and mind is in terminal peril of sickening and dying.

Published in the UK in February, the work has gained some notoriety for its endorsement of nuclear energy, if properly designed, built and managed as Japan and France have done. Renewable approaches such as wind and solar are not adequate nor will be ready in time. Seemingly out of character, the idea has taken root and is leading to a cautious rethinking of energy policy to effectively cut greenhouse gases and climate catastrophe.

Previous   1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10  Next