This essay tackles one of the crucial challenges facings palaeo-scientists today, i.e. to what extent does human or natural forcings have in environmental change in the Holocene, and how accurately can they be detected and attributed? According to Oldfield and Dearing (2003), climatic and human induced changes are difficult to disentangle from one another, and this essay aims to explore why. At this point, it is important to define and outline the parameters of the essay. A Holocene perspective is adopted in this essay, which will include a discussion on the Anthropocene. This essay also aims to explore different aspects of the environment i.e. terrestrial, atmospheric and aquatic realms, although there bias in literature favouring the terrestrial realm, and the dominant environmental problem being that of climate change. The following points will be discussed: recent environmental change, difficulty in detection and attribution, examples to illustrate the complex nature between climate-man- environment, and the role of research in addressing this problem.
The product of Holocene environmental change presents a difficult task to unravel as it was subject to human influence, natural influence, earth processes, and all of their complex interactions and relationships (Oldfield and Dearing, 2003). In some instances, climate impacts are clear and distinct from human impacts, and in others, it cannot be assumed that either are the only factor at work. It must be noted that disentangling human from climate impacts does not just present a challenge during the Industrial Revolution and onwards; although from that point onwards it has become increasingly more complex. Common consensus among scientists exist that anthropogenic forcing cont...
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...hundred and fifty years, these disturbances have not changed ecosystem dynamics significantly, but have also altered the rates of change (Anderson et al., 2006). In a study conducted by Jones et al. (2013) for the detection of climate signals in a human disturbed catchment - the Petit Lac d’Annecy in France, results from cross correlation and spectral analyses indicated that human activities were dominant in influence the shaping of the catchment during the late Holocene. Less certain however, is the effect of palaeoclimate on the shaping and evolution of the Petit Lac d’Annecy. This can be due to the absence of historical records of climate in the ears of the catchment. Attempts were made to examine the extent to which palaeoclimate had, but this action was limited due to the difficulties in isolating within the proxy record, the climatic from the human imprint.
In this paper Martin is arguing that late quaternary or near time extinctions where caused by human activity or as he calls it “overkill”. Martin recognizes that there have been many forces that have triggered extinctions in the planet on the past but disagrees with the idea that near time extinctions where caused by some commonly believed causes like climate change, disease or nutrient shortage. He argues that the arrival of humans to different continents, islands and the subsequent excessive hunting, the introduction of diseases and other competitors and predators was the cause of extinction of a great number of species “As our species spread to various continents we wiped out their large
Scientists sometimes use erratics to help determine ancient glacier movement.” (NSIDC, 2014). To understand the unique aspects of a gorge created in just a few days, it is necessary to look back to the events that occurred 100,000 years ago. Described by James Lovelock in his book, The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth, Milankovitch Cycles define the regular consistency of the Earth's glacial and interglacial periods.... ...
The thesis of these excerpts from Bill McKibben’s book, Earth: Making Life on a Tough New Planet, is that humanity has permanently changed the earth through global warming. This idea relies on the assumptions that global warming has caused irrevocable changes to the environment and that humans have only recently changed the earth.
One of the remarkable Tim Flannery’s contributions to society is the fact that he raises an awareness of climate change so that people think climate change regards as clime catastrophe. In the book, The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change, Tim Flannery warned carefully and rationally to skeptical people on climate change. These people believe that increase of temperature on the earth is simply natural phenomenon since temperature has not been constant in whole history of the earth. Tim describes that this belief has tended to put the earth severe stage. In accordance with Gaia theory, this planet is an organism to purify by itself, but human being is likely to force it to lead to disaster. Tim explains that humans have been living in glacial epoch that the average temperature is approximately 14 Celsius and even rise of 1 Celsius will bring us anomalous situation (Flannery 2006, p.11). He warns that the temperature change will make difficult environment to survive in the earth. As Tim Flannery has well-informed academic knowledge about zoology and sufficient field experience, especially in Papua New Guinea, he explains wide various
Palaeogeography deals with the reconstruction of physical geographical conditions for the eras of the Earth's history. The term comes from the Greek παλαιός (palaiós) meaning ‘old’ and γεωγραφία (geōgraphía) meaning ‘a description of the earth’ and seems to have been introduced in the Earth sciences vocabulary as ‘Palaeo-Geographie’ by Ami Boué (1794‒1881), a French‒Austrian geologist, in his publication Einiges zur palaeo-geologischen Geographie (Boué, 1875, p. 2). Palaeogeography focuses on the distribution of land and sea, the spread of mountains and volcanoes and the expansion of glaciations, among others. The results are presented in geographic depictions called palaeogeographic maps. A special kind of palaeogeograpahical map is palaeobiogeographical maps depicting the distribution of
The Little Ice Age is the name for the period of cooling spanning from 1400 to 1900 c.e. that took place after the Medieval Warm Period. Scientists believe that solar minimums and reversals in the Northern Atlantic Oscillation, a large atmospheric-circulation system that affects weather in the North Atlantic area including Europe, drove these changes (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2014). It is often assumed that the Little Ice Age had a global impact. However, in 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change put forth in a climate assessment report that though there were glacial increases in other parts of the world, they were not synchronous with the glacia...
He argued how history has been affected by short-term climate change. The ice age period was a time of extremely changeable climate. He also argued how climate did not cause history, but how climate impacted the lives of humans, animals, plants, and the world itself. Climate played a major role of history because it affected the agriculture. When the agriculture is affected the people of the land must adapt to the climate changes and adjust their way of life in order to survive with these drastic changes.
Extinctions happen everywhere on the world that has increasingly fluctuating weather. Before the Industrial Revolution, the days prior to humans pumping the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, the earth was moderately temperate. Today, the average temperature is 64° F, almost 10° F above normal. Because of the climate change, the polar caps are melting, making the Artic inhospitable to a serious of taxonomic groups, which are now in danger of extinction. Since all the glaciers are thawing, the newly liquefied water is flooding into the oceans. The sea-level rise devastates coastally ecology, erodes beaches, and floods agriculture land. This affects the habitats of plants, birds, and sea life, meaning they no longer have a safe place to have their young. With no new offspring, the species cease to exist. The continents most affected by the Holocene extinction are North and South America because that is where a majority of the megafauna lived thousand of years ago; of these was the Woolly mammoth. In the 1800’s, the ecosystem (over hunted and deforested) was not resilient enough to protect themselves from the industrial e...
Throughout history climates have drastically changed. There have been shifts from warm climates to the Ice Ages (Cunningham & Cunningham, 2009, p.204). Evidence suggests there have been at least a dozen abrupt climate changes throughout the history of the earth. There are a few suspected reasons for these past climate changes. One reason may be that asteroids hitting the earth and volcanic eruptions caused some of them. A further assumption is that 22-year solar magnetic cycles and 11-year sunspot cycles played a part in the changes. A further possibility is that a regular shifting in the angle of the moon orbiting earth causing changing tides and atmospheric circulation affects the global climate (Cunningham & Cunningham, 2009, p.205). Scientific studies suggest that all these played a role in past global warming and cooling periods. Today, however, there is a lot of conflict on whether humans are causing a global warming that could be disastrous to humans and all species of plants and animals on this earth. This paper will first explain the greenhouse effect, then take a look at both sides argument, and, finally, analyze the effect of global warming on world-wide sustainability
In theory some parts of the world might benefit, from a human point of view, due to global warming. However, at current rates of warming, local ecosystems will collapse and any objective measure of global benefits versus suffering would show much more suffering than benefits gained.
There is no longer any question that our world climate has changed (King, 2004). Over the last 100 years, "temperatures have risen by about 0.6 degrees Celsius and global sea level has risen by about 20cm" (K...
Despite the evidence to the contrary, many interest groups with considerable political clout have successfully perpetuated the argument that documented changes in the environment are a product of natural cyclical changes in climate, and are not associated with human activities. However, even the acceptance of this particular brand of reality is no grounds for the disregard of environmental consciousness. Even if one accepts the premise that recent climate change is not a result of human activity, the rationale behind environmental conservation remains valid.... ... middle of paper ...
In Dipesh Chakrabarty’s essay, “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” he begins with “…the proposition that anthropogenic explanations of climate change spell the collapse of the age-old humanist distinction between natural history and human history.” With this initial statement, Chakrabarty declares that the advent of manmade climate change in the anthropocene, humans can no longer be considered separately from nature as they had been previously segregated by Enlightenment and western thinking. In other words, “humanism,” or human-centered thinking is neither relevant nor reasonable in the face of global climate change. According to Chakrabarty, since human and natural history are both intrinsically tied together, the fate of mankind is now
middle of paper ... ... The Web. 13 Mar. 2014. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'. Dinosaurs: Climate Change and Biodiversity."
One of the most key examples of understanding human culture through archaeology is the topic of climate and the environment. As seen through history, there is an intricate relationship between the environment and life on earth. Through extensive research, archaeologists have the ability to take note of minor cultural changes that can be attributed to the environment during a particular time period. These changes include, shifts in methods of food collection, changes in the artwor...