1.5.1 Why is it important to be organised? 87% of items that are filed into a filing cabinet are never looked at again. STANFORD UNIVERSITY
The world is producing nearly two exabytes of new and unique information every year – an exabyte is a new term that had to be coined for a billion gigabytes. All the words ever spoken by human beings comes to five exabytes. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA (BERKELEY)
More new information has been produc
1.4.1 PROMPT There is so much information available on the internet on every topic imaginable. But how do you know if it is any good? And if you find a lot more information than you really need, how do you decide what to keep and who to discard? In this section we are going to introduce a simple checklist to help you to judge the quality of the information you find. Before we do this, spend a few minutes thinking about what is meant by information quality. 1.3.2 Search engines and subject gateways Although both search engines and subject gateways will help you find the resources that you need, the types of information that you find will differ. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo! search the internet for keywords or phrases, and then show you the results. These results are not mediated by the search engines, and therefore you need to use your own judgement on the reliability of the results. You may, for example, find websites written by experts, alongside websites written by 4.3.2 Complementary currencies Complementary currencies also demand a rethink of our economy, but have a more imaginative and radical edge. Because of the difficulties with conventional monetary systems, various alternatives are being tried. These are usually restricted to a particular group of people, and so are called ‘local’ or ‘complementary’ currencies. They are generally based in a local community and enable people to exchange goods and services without resorting to ‘traditional’ currency. Some are 4.3.1 Ecological tax reforms Communities such as Findhorn already behave as if natural resources need careful management: they work hard to reduce fossil fuel use. A central assumption of this way of thinking is that people need to root economies more locally (Figure 15). To see the same impulse spread through the mainstream economy would require that th 2.2 Vibrant civil societies and a networked globe One thing is common to all three attempts to find a route to a sustainable economy and society: in different ways they all assume that people will get actively involved in making human societies more sustainable. But this transformation will not take place through the corporate world's promises, by local protectionism, a return to ‘strong states’ or the publication of numerous indicators. Any of the three positions outlined above requires interactions and feedbacks created by a vibrant 2.1 Political responses to climate change and the environment Not for the first time in this book, you are faced with a term that is important but difficult to define precisely. Although the fact that plenty of people from different standpoints are using the term ‘globalisation’ is some measure of its importance, it can be confusing to find that there are different ways of framing what it means for humans and the environment today and in the future. In this section, the range of political responses to climate change and environment–economy interac Introduction Human societies have to take urgent action to end their dependence on fossil fuels. They also have to prepare to adapt to the uncertainties inherent in global environmental changes, particularly climatic ones. We have to alter the whole path of our development and decision making in order to make our societies both environmentally adaptable and sustainable. This unit takes on the task of trying to chart some of the ways in which this might come about. The context for these changes by g Acknowledgements The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence, see terms and conditions). This content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following: Figur 5 The contemporary Arctic climate There is a remarkable seasonality in the Arctic climate. For example, the flow in some of the great rivers of Russia and North America that empty into the Arctic Ocean almost stops in winter (Figure 21). During May, ice in the rivers starts to break and in June there is a rapid flood of fresh water followed by a 4 The end of the last ice age: the Holocene I have already noted that the great ice sheets took about 100,000 years to form and only about 10,000 years to decay. So what happened at the end of the last ice age? Figure 15 shows the EPICA ice core CO2 concentration and air temperature for the most recent 20 000 years, which is within the last ice 3.2 The past temperature of the planet Measuring the concentration of lead in the ice is called a direct measurement: the ice sample is melted and the water produced contains a very small but readily measured quantity of lead dust. A very accurate set of scales would be needed to measure it, but it is a directly measured quantity. There are also many indirect measurements that can be made using proxy data. The concept for using proxies is both simple and brilliant: one measured property allows inference about other states o 1 A climate change icon The polar bear has become an international climate change icon. But how much is known about this bear, its habitat and life? This unit will talk about the role of language, but by way of introduction how about the name of this bear? To me it is the polar bear; to a German it is an Eisbär (ice bear) and to a French person it is an ours blanc (white bear). In these three examples the bear is referred to as polar, white, or an ice bear – eminently sensible. The Latin name for th Introduction The scientific theory of plate tectonics suggests that at least some of these Arctic lands were once tropical. Since then the continents have moved and ice has changed the landscape. This unit will concentrate on evidence from the last 800,000 years using information collected from ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica, and will use this evidence to discuss current and possible future climate. The cores show that there have been nine periods in the recent past when large areas of the Earth 6.1 ‘I’, ‘we’ or ‘they’? We must abandon the conceit that individual, isolated, private actions are the answer. They can and do help. But they will not take us far enough without collective action. (Al Gore, 2007) There are some things that we can do as individuals: making this an energy-efficient house and making smart transport choices. Then there a 5.3 Moving towards a sustainable carbon footprint So far, you've been considering reductions in average individual or household carbon footprints by 20% to 30% or more. But it is becoming increasingly clear that this will not be enough. As I mentioned in Section 4, developed countries, like Britain, Germany and America, will have to reduce their CO2e emissions by 60% to 80% or more by 2050 to prevent climate change running out of control, while at the same time allowing the growing populations of Africa, India and China to r 2.2.4 Identifying the carbon heavyweights I've focused on two studies of the carbon footprint of UK individuals and households, but there are many others (e.g. WWF, 2006; Goodall, 2007 and Marshall, 2007a). 2.2 The carbon footprint of UK individuals and households The simplest way of calculating the average (mean) carbon footprint of an individual living in the UK can be obtained by dividing total UK annual CO2 emissions by the number of people in the country. Using the official government information in Figure 3(a), this produces a mean footprint 1.2 Individual and household carbon footprints I'll be referring mainly to the carbon footprint arising directly and indirectly from the activities of individuals and households. The carbon footprint of individuals and households is important because they are ultimately the main consumers of the energy, food and other goods and services that produce those emissions. Look at Author(s): 1.1.1 Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases Carbon dioxide (CO2) is used as the basis for the carbon footprint because it is by far the main contributor to the enhanced greenhouse effect from human activity (mainly burning fossil fuels, clearing forests and making cement). So, often only CO2 is counted in the carbon footprint. However, for a more complete measure of the carbon footprint the other human-generated greenhouse gases are converted into a CO2 equivalent (in kilograms or tonnes CO2e
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