Final Study Guide - HIS 1020

Oil transport accidents - examples, environmental consequences (19-21)

Part of the appeal of oil over coal is the ease of transport. As a liquid, oil (except for the heaviest varieties) can ooze through pipelines. Even more glided over the seas in tankers. After 1950, oil increasingly was drilled in one country and burned in another, a reflection of the emergence of the Persian Gulf giant fields. So tankers plied the high seas in ever greater numbers. Today oil makes up half the tonnage of maritime cargoes, and there are more miles of pipeline than of railroad in the world. Pipelines and tankers proved remarkably susceptible to accident. One reason tankers had so many accidents is that they became too big to stop. In 1945 a big tanker held 20,000 tons of oil, in the 1970s about half a million, and today 1 million tons. Supertankers are 300 meters in length and the least nimble vessels on the seas. They need several kilometers in which to slow to a stop. Fortunately, in the same decades tankers became harder to puncture. In the 1970s most new tankers had double hulls, which sharply reduced the likelihood of spills resulting from collisions with rocks, icebergs, and other ships. But when spills occurred, they could be large, and they always happened near shore where oil could foul rich ecosystems and valuable property. Though small tanker spills happened almost every day, most of the escaped oil came in a few big accidents. The English Channel witnessed two giant tanker spills, in 1967 and 1978. The biggest spill of all occurred off of Cape Town in 1983, leaking more than six times as much oil as did the famous Exxon Valdez in 1989. Tanker spills could happen almost anywhere, but they were most numerous in the Gulf of Mexico, in Europe's Atlantic waters, in the Mediterranean Sea, and in the Persian Gulf. The most recent big tanker spill, in 2002, occurred when a single-hulled vessel broke up in a storm off the northwest coast of Spain. Pipelines carried a smaller, but growing, share of the world's oil after 1945. Their builders intend them to last fifteen to twenty years, but many, perhaps most, pipelines are asked to serve beyond that span. They corrode and crack, especially when subject to extreme ranges of climate. By and large, pipeline design improved over time, but accidents increased because the world's network of pipelines grew so quickly. The most affected landscapes were in Russia. The most serious single pipeline leak occurred near Usinsk, in Komi Republic, Russia, about 1,500 kilometers northeast of Moscow in 1994. Outsiders estimate the leak at 600 thousand to one million barrels. Officials estimate the leak at six hundred thousand to one million barrels. Officials initially denied any leaks, a position they soon had to abandon. Another large one occurred in 2006. Altogether, about 7 to 20 percent of Russian oil production leaked out of faulty pipelines in the 1990s, a reflection of oil's low price, a business culture that put scant value on routine maintenance, especially in an economically disastrous decade, and the challenges of both remoteness and climate. Thousands of leaks and spills, large and small, happened every year in the 1990s. The sub-zero winter cold of regions such as the oilfields of Komi Republic - most of which lies north of the arctic circle - was hard on pipelines and other components of oil infrastructure. Some indigenous Siberians, not surprisingly, tried to organize themselves against oil and gas development. Pipeline leaks imperiled their hunting, fishing, and reindeer herding. On at least one occasion some attempted armed resistance, which succeeded no better than the efforts of Ecuador's Huaorani. In human terms, the worst oil pipeline accident occurred on the Niger Delta in 1998 when a line maintained by Shell and the Nigerian state oil company sprang a leak. As villagers gathered to help themselves to free oil, an explosion and a fireball incinerated more than a thousand people. Two villages burned to cinders. In 2006 two additional oil pipeline fires elsewhere in Nigeria killed about six hundred people. As a means of ferrying energy from point of extraction to point of use, oil tankers and pipelines were both more economical and more hazardous than coal transport

Hydroelectric dams - advantages, disadvantages (33-36)

Hydropower offered great attractions. For the engines, it held the advantage that it could deliver power at any time (except in the event of big droughts that starved reservoirs). The potential power, captive water, stayed put and available at on cost (except where evaporation rates were high, as in the case of Egypt's Aswan Dam reservoir, Lake Nasser). Moreover, reservoirs could serve multiple purposes, as sources of irrigation water, sites for recreation, or fisheries. For environmentalists, who often found big dams objectionable on many grounds, hydropower held the charm of releasing no greenhouse gases in operation. Dam construction was another matter, but even taking all phases into account, hydroelectricity was probably the best form of electricity generation from the climate-change point of view, and certainly far, far better than using fossil fuels. Its drawbacks, however, were legion. Big dams could bring big accidents, as at the Banqiao Dam in China's Henan Province in 1975. During a typhoon the dam broke, unleashing a wave - an island tsunami - that drowned tens of thousands. Subsequent starvation and waterborne epidemics killed another 145,000. Hundreds of other dams failed less catastrophically. More prosaically, dam reservoirs silted up, so that the useful life of a hydroelectric plant might be as little as ten or twenty years in some poorly designed cases, most of which were in China. Reservoirs also sometimes desecrated cherished landscapes, as when Brazil inundated a national park to cooperate with Uruguay on the Itaipu Dam, opened in 1982 on the Paraná River. Its power station is the world's second largest. Archaeological treasures were obliterated by some reservoirs, notably the Aswan Dam in Egypt and Turkey's several dams in the Tigris and Euphrates in eastern Anatolia. "Salvage archaeology" usually could rescue only a fraction of what disappeared beneath the rising waters. The most politically volatile aspect of dam building was the displacement of people. Reservoirs took up a lot of space - bout twice the area of Italy in total. Some of the big ones, in Ghana or in Russia, are the size of Cyprus or Connecticut. Globally, some forty to eighty million people - twenty mullion in India alone - had to get out of the way for reservoirs, in ore cases fleeing for their lives without any advance warning. In many cases ethnic minorities living in holy districts with swift rivers were the ones relocated in the interests of electric power wanted elsewhere in their countries. In India, where dam building (for irrigation as well as electricity) formed a major part of the state's development plans after independence in 1947, peasant resistance to dams became a widespread movement by the 1980s. Resistance rarely deflected the state's ambitions, but in the case of dams along the Narmada River in western India, it led to huge protests, political tumult, and lengthy lawsuits. The Narmada scheme involved thousands of dams, large and small, on which construction began in 1978. Local resistance, occasioned mainly by displacements, grew more and more organized throughout the 1980s, and successfully reached out to international environmental organizations for support. In 1993-1994 the World Bank, a longtime proponent of dams building in India, withdrew its support. Foreign criticism stoked the fires of Indian nationalism. Indian novelists and actors got involved, both for and against additional dams. But India's Supreme Court stood by the government and the engineers, the work continued, and so another hundred thousand or so Indias - "oustees" as they are known in India - moved to accommodate the Narmada's reservoirs. While Europe and North America had exhausted their best sites for hydroelectric development by 1980, the rest of the world continued to build dams apace. half of the big dams built in the world after 1950 are in China. Between 1991 and 2009, China built what is by far the world's largest hydropower installation, the Three Gorges Dam on the Yang. Like the Narmada project, it too attracted environmental controversy, as roughly 1.3 million people had to make way for its reservoir. As the dam trapped most of the enormous silt load behind it, the downstream yang delta began to erode while the reservoir slowly filled. the reduction in organic matter delivered to the East China Sea imperiled China's richest fishery. Moreover, the potential for instant disaster should the dam break - it is built on a seismic fault - is beyond imagination. But the Three gorges dam illustrates the environmental tradeoffs of hydropower: without it China would burn tens of millions more tons of coal annually

Acid rain - sources, consequences (24-26)

In addition to these unhappy effects upon human health, fossil fuels, especially coal, were responsible for widespread acidification. Volcanoes and forest fires released quantities of sulfur to the atmosphere but by the 1970s coal combustion emitted about ten times more. Sulfur dioxide in contact with cloud droplets forms sulfuric acids, which returns to Earth with rain, snow, or fog (commonly called acid rain). Acid rain often contains nitrogen oxide too, from coal or oil combustion. High-sulfur coal of the sort found in the Midwest of the United States, in China, in Bengal, and elsewhere, acidified ecosystems far and wide. Mountain forests and freshwater ecosystems showed the most acute effects, and some sensitive species (brook trout, sugar maple) disappeared altogether in high-acid environments. Broadly speaking, by the end of the twentieth-century the world had three acidification hot spots: northern and Central Europe, eastern North America, and eastern, especially southeastern, China. Acid rain became a policy issue by the end of the 1960s. For local communities the easiest solution was to require tall smokestacks that lofted the offending gases farther afield. In the 1970s acid rain became an international issue, as Canadians objected to the acidification of their lakes by (mainly) American power plant emissions, and Scandinavians discovered damage to their waterways attributable to British and German coal combustion. Poland and its neighbors, which used coal that was especially high in sulfur, splashed one another's landscapes with acid rain that occasionally reached the pH level of vinegar. Railway trains had to observe low speed limits in parts of Poland because the iron of the train tracks had weakened from acid corrosion. With the dramatic rise of coal use in China after 1980, transboundary acidification became a source of contention in East Asia too, as Koreans, Japanese, and Taiwanese felt the consequences of Chinese power plants and factories. Beyond sensitive ecosystems, acid emissions also had modest effects on human health and major ones on buildings made of limestone or marble. Greek authorities found it advisable to put the most precious statutory of the Acropolis indoors to save to save it from corrosion by acid rain. In the Indian city of Agra, pollution from a nearby oil refinery, among other sources, threatened the marble of the Taj Mahal. Acidification, happily enough, turned out to be one of the easiest of environmental problems to address. In Europe ad the United States, after some delay occasioned by the objections of coal utilities and their political allies, cap-and-trade schemes were devised that allowed polluters to choose their means of reducing emissions and to buy and sell permits to pollute. Beginning around 1990 this reduced sulfur emissions by 40 to 70 percent in short order, at a cost that turned out to be a small fraction of that anticipated. It takes a while for ecosystems to rebound from acidification, but in Northern Europe and eastern North America, by 2000 the recovery had begun to show. China, awash in acid rain, tried to address its sulfur emissions, but its heavy reliance on coal hamstrung the effort until 2006, after which date some reductions in sulfur emissions occurred. In northern China the consequences of acid rain were checked by the prevalence of alkaline dust (neutralizing acid), but in the south, soils and ecosystems proved as vulnerable as those of Northern Europe and eastern North America

Falling death rates - causes (powerpoint)

Improved food production - Columbian exchange, agricultural improvements (new crops, rotations, fertilizer, etc) Transportation infrastructure - roads, railways, steamships, refrigeration, bring more food to more people Results of better food production and distribution - improved nutrition/health, famine becomes more rare Public health - hygienic food handling, water supply/running water, sewage systems, personal hygiene, quarantine of infectious diseases, rat control, female literacy (mothers know more about public health - protects children) Medicine, especially from 19th century - inoculation and vaccination - prevent childhood diseases that had been big killer Decreasing frequency of wars, low levels of violence overall

What real-world factors made the night a dangerous time for pre-modern people?

Very difficult to get around in the dark There might be a predatory animal - wolf, bear, tiger, nearby and humans are relatively blind in the night This was a real threat for much of human history - animals will attack and kill you if they're hungry ad they're the right kind Kinds of accidents that happen when poor visibility gets tricky terrain, you can fall and hurt yourself For centuries, people have been injured or killed at night when they fell into a stream or stumbled over a precipice or fell into a recently dug pit or lost control of a spooked horse If you're sleepy of had some alcohol that could complicate things Some people who get injured or die this way may never be found - this contributes to the sense of mystery and the supernatural fear that is associated with the nighttime In a medieval or early modern town there are very close buildings, narrow lanes, and these tend to block out natural light both the sun in the day and the moon at night In addition to the dangers of holes and debris and uneven pavement you have to look out for rushing horse-drawn vehicles, accidents and collisions were very common at night As late as the 1700s, nighttime was when people would usually empty heir chamber pots, tossing urine and excrement out the window where it would shower down those passing by Fear of fire - the history of every major city includes fires, large and small, some historic fires that destroyed entire neighborhoods or sections of a city. Pre-modern buildings were often built out of flammable materials. Fire could break out at any time, but it was a particular threat at night, most people are asleep so fire can spread before someone can raise the alarm. Very dangerous because the only source of light at night was fire - accidentally toppled candles, spilled lamps, dropped lanterns. Tallow candles are made of animal fat, and they attract rats who would nibble on the candle and topple it over

Nuclear power - advantages, disadvantages (27-28)

A fistful of uranium can generate more energy than a truckload of coal. This astonishing power wad first used in bombs, thousands of which were built, and two of which were used, both by the United States and against Japan in August 1945, bringing the Second World War to a close. Peaceful uses of atomic power soon follows. By 1954 the first reactor providing electricity for a grid, a tiny one near Moscow, opened. Much bigger ones started up in the United Kingdom and the United States in 1956-1957. In the middle of the 1950s the prospects for nuclear power seed bright and endless. Scientists foresaw nuclear-powered visits to Mars. One American official predicted that electricity would soon be "too cheap to meter." In both the United States and the Soviet Union, visionaries imagined vast engineering uses for nuclear explosions, such as opening a new Panama Canal or smashing apart menacing hurricanes. Nuclear technology enjoyed tremendous subsidies in many countries - not least a law in the United States that fixed a low maximum for lawsuits against nuclear utilities, allowing them to buy insurance, which otherwise no one would sell them. Between 1965 and 1980, the share of the world's electricity generated in nuclear power plants rose from less than 1 percent to 10 percent. By 2013 that figure approached 13 percent. Countries with scientific and engineering resources but minimal fossil fuels converted most fully to nuclear power. By 2010 France, Lithuania, and Belgium relied on it for more than half their electricity; Japan and South Korea for about a quarter of theirs; and the United States for a fifth. The rosy expectations for a nuclear future withered in the 1970s and 1980s due to well-publicized accidents. Civilian reactor had suffered dozens of accidents large and small in the 1950s and 1960s, the worst of them in the USSR. But they were kept as secret as possible. The 1979 accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania attracted public scrutiny. It turned out to be minor, as nuclear accidents go, but came close to being much worse and was not hidden from view. It served to turn the SU public opinion away from nuclear power. In the rest of the world the public at large took less notice, although the Misha invigorated antinuclear movements and watchdogs groups in every country that had a nuclear industry. Their concerns about nuclear safety led to reforms, more stringent controls, and higher construction and operation costs. In March 1986 the British highbrow magazine "The Economist" opined, "the nuclear power industry remains as safe as a chocolate factory."

Aswan High Dam - description, reasons, consequences (powerpoint)

A project of the British occupiers Constructed in 1898-1902 (54 meters) Raised height in 1912 and 1934 British begin thinking of higher dam upstream Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda? Better for water storage Higher altitude, cooler air, less evaporation Free Officer coup (1952) Pres. Gamal Abdel Nasser Adrian Daninos (Greek-Egyptian engineer) Nasser's plan Dam in Egypt Just 2.5 miles upstream from Low Dam Achievement of Arab nation Reliable water Hydroelectric power Begin planning in 1954 Anglo-Egyptian relations in decline Nasser presents himself as a leader of the entire Arab world Wants to act independently of the West Buys weapons from Czechoslovakia in the Soviet bloc, September 1955 Britain and US agree to finance Aswan dam, December 1955 Summer 1956 - Britain and US revoke offer July 1956 - Nasser seizes Suez Canal Suez War of 1956 Britain, French, Israelis attack Egypt, October 1956 US forces Britain and France to pull out Nasser - propaganda victory Britain and France accelerate decolonization elsewhere Building the dam Soviet engineers do planning in late 1950s Construction begins 1960 Completed in 1971 111 meters high One of the largest man-made lakes Over 2000 square miles 83% is in Egypt - Lake Nasser 17% is in Sudan - Lake Nubia Lake Nasser Can hold 150 km cubed 2-3 years of Nile flow 30x more than 1934 dam Ends the annual flood Holds back 32 km cubed annually 10 km cubed evaporates 22 km cubed for usage Revolutionizes agriculture More systematic use of water - 2-3 crops a year Full flood control - safeguards cotton Summer crops - cotton, maize, rice Doubling of population from 1970-2000 Hydroelectric power - about 1/3 of Egypts power between 1977-2000 Navigation improves Fishing in Lake Nasser Displaced people 100-200,000 Nubians 46 Nubians villages in Egypt 50,000 Nubians in Sudan 18 ancient temples Abu Simbel Built in 1200s BC by Rameses II Impact on agriculture and water usage Almost no silt - now they have to rely on chemical fertilizers Reliable and free water leads to water logging and high water tables lead to salinization Evaporation Health costs Irrigation canals are stagnant and never dry out Water hyacinths Schistosomiasis - carried by a type of snail that loves water hyacinths - doesn't kill but it debilitates Impact on the Nile delta Nile delta shrinking Collapse of fishing off delta Salinization of Eastern Mediterranean Suez Canal - bio-invasion of eastern Mediterranean

Invasive aquatic species - examples, effects (92-93)

As on islands, invasive species in freshwater ecosystems proved increasingly disruptive after 1945. While invasive were nothing new, the accidental or deliberate introduction of such species became a commonplace thereafter. The Nile Perch, introduced from other parts of Africa into Lake Victoria sometime during the 1950s, was a dramatic example of what could occur when exotics encountered endemic species. By the 1970s this large predator reproduced exuberantly in Lake Victoria. It fed on the lake's endemic fish species, including many of its tiny and beautiful species of cichlid, and put the entirety of the lake's ecosystem in jeopardy. Biologists debate that perch's exact role in changing Lake Victoria, but they are in agreement that the fish was a major contributor t biodiversity decline in Africa's largest lake. Invasive species may have had their greatest effects on the world's estuaries, which are transition zones between freshwater and saltwater ecosystems. Estuaries are also natural harbors and provide the global economy with many of its ports. During the 20th century estuaries felt the destructive effects of several combined forces. changes made to upstream river systems altered sedimentation and temperature levels, among other things. Agricultural runoff changed nutrient balances. Urban and industrial centers added pollutants. Wetland conversion reduced animal habitat in estuaries. With estuaries so disturbed, exotic species, often introduced via ships' bilge tanks, easily colonized these habitats. San Francisco Bay provides a good illustration. By the end of the 20th century, the bay had been subject to more than a 100 years worth of urban growth, agriculture runoff, and re-plumbing of its rivers and wetlands. The ports of Oakland and San Francisco, moreover, were among the most important on the American West Coast, which meant that thousands of oceangoing vessels transversed the bay every year, each one a potential carrier of invasive species. As a result, San Francisco Bay is now home to over two hundred exotic species, including some that have become dominant in they new ecological niches

Decreasing terrestrial biodiversity - causes, examples (88-89)

As with so many areas of environmental change during the last decades of the 20t century, population growth, economic development, and technological capabilities combined to drive the decline of biodiversity. On land, the leading cause was habitat destruction. During the 20th century the area devoted to cropland and pastures on Earth more than doubled, with roughly half of that occurring after 1950. This increase occurred at the direct expense of the world's forests and grasslands. This was the greatest that to terrestrial species, because heterogenous landscapes containing great plant and animal diversity were replaced by highly simplified ones managed by human beings for their own purposes. Such landscapes could and did continue to support some indigenous species, but a great many other species could not prosper in these modified landscapes. Replacing native habitat with other land uses systematically reduced the spaces for wildlife. Cropland and pastures, for instance, host only a fraction of the birds counted in the road's remaining intact grasslands and forests. Landscapes already long ago biologically simplified by conversion to farm or pasture grew still more simplified after 1945. Farmland almost everywhere was increasingly subjected to mechanization, intensive mono cropping, and chemical pest control. After land-use changes, the next biggest threat to biodiversity came from exploitation due to hunting, harvesting, and poaching for subsistence or trade. In addition, invasive species were a major problem for biodiversity. Invasives preyed upon or crowded out indigenous species, created "novel" niche habitats for themselves and other exotic intruders, and altered or disrupted ecosystem dynamics in general. Finally, by the end of the century some scientists reported instances of species beginning to suffer form the adverse consequences of climate change

Impact of fishing and whaling on aquatic biodiversity (94-97)

At the outset of the postwar era, almost everyone believed that oceanic fisheries had a near-infinite capacity to replenish themselves. Pushed by the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, fishery managers around the world adopted a model known as maximum sustainable yield (MSY) that reflected this faith in oceanic abundance. MSY elaborated the view that fish were resilient creatures capable of replacing their numbers easily, at least up to a point (the maximum yield), before they declined. By taking older and larger fish, so the argument went, commercial fishing opened up more space for younger fish to find food, grow to maturity faster, and reproduce quicker. Proponents of MSY this placed the emphasis upon harvesting, essentially mandating that a species show signs of decline before conservation policies were considered. The MSY approach presumed that scientists could estimate fish populations, assign appropriate quotas, and thereby manage fisheries sustainably. This confidence ignored the fact that marine ecosystems were very poorly understood and always in flux, and that fish are impossible to count. Increased fishing effort substantially increased the global catch after 1945, but it also had major consequences for the oceans. Deepwater fishing, made ever more efficient by the new methods, severely reduced the number of top predators such as bluefin tuna. Pelagic net fishing took huge numbers of unwanted and unlucky species,

Air pollution mortality - causes, scale, who is affected (24)

Both coal and oil turned out to be mass killers in the world's cities. In Western Europe around 2000, vehicle exhausts killed people at roughly the same rate as vehicle accidents. Meanwhile, in China air pollution from all sources killed about five hundred thousand Chinese annually and, due to pollutants wafting eastward with the winds, another Leven thousand in Japan and Korea together. In the 1990s, estimates had put the annual death toll attributable to air pollution at about half a million. One study from 2002 put it at eight hundred thousand per year. From 1950 to 2015, air pollution probably killed about thirty fo forty million people, lately most of them Chinese, roughly equal to the death toll from all wars around the world since 1950. Many millions more suffered intensified asthma and other ailments as a result of the pollution they inhaled. Fossil fuel combustion accounted for the lion's share of these deaths and illnesses

What does the evidence suggest about the changing levels of greenhouse gases? (67-68)

By the last decades of the 20th century, it appeared as if the world's climate was indeed shifting as a result of the increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, methane, and other GHGs. Temperature data showed a mean surface atmospheric warming of about 0.8 degrees Celsius over the average of the 20th century. The rate of change was greatest at the end of the century. Roughly 3/4 of the increase occurred after the mid-1970s, the remainder before 1940. Since the 1970s, each successive decade has been warmed than all previous recorded ones; in 2010 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the United States announced that the decade of the 2000s was the warmest on record. Temperature increases were greatest at the highest latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, consistent with climate models that forecast the greatest warming at the poles and the least in the tropics

Solar power - advantages, disadvantages (37-38)

Clouds and night interfered with the steady delivery of solar energy. But the potential of solar power was hard to resist. The Sun donates more energy to the Earth in an hour than humankind uses in a year. And a years worth of the Sun's bounty is more energy than all that contained in all the fossil fuels and uranium in the Earth's crust. More than any other energy source available, solar power promised an infinitude of energy. The technologies of photovoltaic cells emerged in the late nineteenth century but languished for decades. Like wind power, in the 1970s solar appealed to many people due to the high oil prices. For remote places not connected to a power grid, solar panels proved very practical. After several slow years, resulting mainly from the oil price collapse of 1985-1986, investment in solar power surged ahead again after 2000. European countries that provided subsidies played a large role, notably Germany. The bigger single solar energy projects under construction in 2015, however, were in China, where western regions such as Xinjiang and Tibet have plenty of sunshine but are a long way from China's coal

What does the evidence suggest about the scale of snow and ice reduction? (69-71)

During the 20th century, there was was increasing evidence that the world's glaciers were retreating, with the rate of decline much quicker at the end of the century than at the beginning. Glaciers in the European Alps, for instance, melted at the rate of 1 percent per year between 1975 and 2000, and at a rate of 2 to 3 percent after 2000. This was a global trend. Scientific tracking of thirty "reference" glaciers scattered around the globe revealed that melting after 1996 was four times as great as between 1976 and 1985. Concerns about glacial retreat might seem esoteric. Glaciers are far away in both mind and geography. The great majority of the world's ice is locked up path the poles, within the glaciers covering Greenland and Antarctica. Nearly everyone has heard of the risks of sea-level rise from the melting of the polar glaciers, but this particular problem seems to be a concern for the distant future. As for the world's glaciers that are not at the poles, what does it matter if they melt? How important is it to most Americans, for instance, that the glaciers in their soon-to-be-inacurately-named Glacier National Park (in Montana) are almost gone? Not much, perhaps, outside of some aesthetic lament. Yet in many other parts of the world, he spring and summer melt from glaciers is a matter of life and death. A critical illustration of this is provided by the Himalayas and nearby Central Asian mountain ranges, which hold the largest amount of ice outside the polar regions. These ranges are the source of Asia's most important rivers, including the Indus Yangzi, Mekong, Ganges, Yellow, Brahmaputra, and Irrawaddy, which collectively sustain more than 2 billion people. Higher temperatures in the Himalayas, in particular at high elevations, has meant increased glacial melt over the past several decades. The fear is that decreased glacier sizes and snowpack will alter both the amount and the seasonal timing of river water, with dramatic and negative effects for downstream communities that depend on these rivers for irrigation agriculture, for drinking water, and for much else. Indeed, the ecosystems that's support these two billion people are likely to undergo major changes. While the melting of glaciers that people have come to depend on has field some observers with foreboding for the future, millions of people unconcerned with climate change likely have felt its indirect effects. One indirect effect of a warmer atmosphere is the increased capacity of air to hold water vapor. This, paradoxically, has improved the odds of bot droughts and downpours. In dry parts of the world, warmer air can hold more moisture and so less falls as rain. In places already given to heavy rain, warmer air allows still greater rainfalls, because there is more moisture to be squeezed out of the clouds. Thus, areas such as the American Southwest have become more subject to drought, while drenching monsoon rains have brought more drastic floods to the Himalayan foothills. Meanwhile, warmer sea surface temperatures have probably spawned more tropical cyclones

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - description, purpose, activities (powerpoint)

Established in 1988 Goal" help scientists reach a consensus on the important questions about climate change. Questions such as: How much have greenhouse gas levels increased recently? Are these changes normal? How much have regional and global temperatures changed in recent history? Are these changes normal? How much of the temperature/climate changes are due to natural causes (volcanoes, solar cycles, etc) ad how much is due to human activity (anthropogenic)? What will climate change bring in the future? 1990 - First Assessment Review (FAR) 1995 - Second Assessment Review (SAR) 2001 - Third Assessment Review (TAR) 2007 - Fourth Assessment Review (AR4) 2014 - Fifth Assessment Review (AR5) Next review scheduled for release in 2022 Also interim reports in between these, and since 2014 Some of their resorts are in the powerpoint

Why have global patterns of deforestation shifted from northern temperate forest to tropical rainforests? (89-90)

Global deforestation was the most important type of land-use change after 1945, especially in the tropics where the bulk of the world's species lived. The clearing of tropical rainforests spurred scientists to put biodiversity on the International agenda during the 1980s. Yet the exact amount of tropical forest lost in the postwar decades remained unknown. Analysts arrived at different figures for tropical deforestation, as they did with species estimates, because they used diverse methodologies and data sets. While deforestation remains a subject of intense debate and disagreement, the consensus is that it has proceeded rapidly. One estimate, for instance, put the total loss of tropical forest at 555 million hectares, an area a bit more than half the size of China, in the half century after 1950. In contrast, over the same period temperate forests (largely in the Northern Hemisphere) were roughly in balance, losing only a bit more from clearing than they gained in regrowth. This difference represented an abrupt shift in relative fortune. In the 18th and 19th centuries, deforestation had been much faster in the Northern Hemisphere than in the tropics. This imbalance remained even into the early 20th century, as North American forests became the world's largest suppliers of wood and forests products. By then, however, a shift from temperate to tropical forests was under way. The specter of wood shortages had induced reforms in the United States and elsewhere, which meant that large tracts of forest acquired protected status and aggressive afforestation measures began. The European empires also had taken advantage of rapidly decreasing transportation costs to increase logging for export in their colonial possessions in tropical Africa and Southwest Asia, for example, and to relieve pressure on their own forests. By WWII the global deforestation shift from temperate to tropical forests was largely complex. After the war, economic expansion further increased pressure on forests, especially those in tropical regions. Newly independent governments in equatorial regions were happy to supply tiber to North America, Europe, and Japan; converting forests into lumber for export was a quick and simple means of gaining much-needed foreign currency. Rapidly growing human population in the tropics was also an important driver of deforestation, leading to greater migration into tropical forests. Governments often encouraged such migration, preferring that landless workers claim new cropland and pastures rather than enacting political contentious land reforms. Finally, technological changes after the war made it much easier to deforest the tropics. The spread of trucks, roads, and chain saws allowed even the smallest operators to work with greater efficiency. All of these factors worked in combination. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, much scientific concern about the tropics centered on the clearing the amazon rainforest. Although Southeast Asian forests had also been cleared at a prodigious rate, the deforestation of the Amazon became the focus of global attention, due to its enormous size, perceived pristine state, and symbolic importance

What does the evidence suggest about the scale of sea level rise? (powerpoint)

Global warming increase sea level in two ways: Can warming (warm water expands) Increased melting of glaciers and ice sheets (more water in oceans) Historical data Global sea level rose 0.19 meters over the period 1901-2010 Global sea level rise since mid-1800s = faster than during previous 2000 years Prediction Global sea level will continue to rise over next century, exceeding the rate observed during 1971-2010 What could happen? Hurricanes, monsoons, typhoons increase in frequency and destructiveness - loss of life and property Permanent flooding of coastal areas - cities and farmland lost, displacement of millions of people to higher ground, often in different countries; refugee crises like we've never seen Some places - too much rain; other places - too little rain, deserts expand - farmland lost or degraded, food production declines, global famine Tropical disease belts expand into currently temperate zone - malaria and yellow fever could come to Nashville

When and why did people start spending more time outdoors at night?

Humans relationship with the nighttime began to change in the 18th and 19th centuries very gradually at first and only in a few places. People started going out at night in greater numbers for longer periods and with less fear than before. "Nocturnal revolution" between 1730 and 1830. Over the course of the 1600s and 1700s, more and more peopler dropped their belief in. demons and witches, which eliminated one of the reasons not to go out in the dark at night At the same time, there are a lot of countries in Western Europe with growing wealth and confidence of the middle class - these people often saw urban entertainment in the evening after a long day at work, so there were options for socialization at all levels. Started to develop coffee houses, opera clubs of different kinds Also there were frustration with the nighttime restriction that slow down commerce, transport, retail, and industrial production. By the early 1800s, there are the first 24/7 factories, aided by the industrial revolution Also a decline in violent crime, maybe more likely to lose your wallet but less likely to lose your life if you go out at night Also a new and rising interest in nightlife The development of urban police forces to supplement or even replace the ragtag night watch and the creation of the streetlight

Deepwater Horizon - what happened, consequences (15)

In April 2010 the Deepwater Horizon, an oil platform leased by BP, exploded and sank, killing eleven workers and sprinting a leak some 1,500 meters below the waves on the seafloor off the Louisiana coast. It defied all containment efforts for more than three months. Some five million barrels in all spew into the Gulf, the largest accidental oil spill in world history. The coastal wetlands ecosystems and what in previous years had been tourist-filled beaches of the Gulf Coast sopped up some of the wandering oil. Tar balls and oil washed up on the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Fisheries ceased operations, and dead and damaged birds began to pile up. One of the victims was the Louisiana brown pelican, once brought to the edge of extinction by DDT in the 1950s and 1960s. Conservation work had given the brown pelican second life to the point where in 2009 it migrated off the federal endangered species list. In the first two months of the BP spill, 40 percent of the known population of brown pelicans died oily death. Some forty-eight thousand temporary workers and an armada of vessels not seen since D-Day tried to limit the ecological damage. Oceanographers and marine biologists will be assessing the spill's impact for years, and lawyers will be kept busy for decades ascertaining who will be held responsible and just how tens of billions of dollars will change hands. In the Gulf of Mexico, small spills occurred daily, huge ones every few years, but nothing yet matches the Deepwater Horizon disaster

Oil drilling mishaps - examples, environmental consequences (13-15)

In the early 20th century, oil drilling occurred in many heavily populated places, including East Texas, Southern California, central Romania, the city of Baku, and the then-Austrian province of Galicia. Gushers, spills, and fires menaced hearth and home. But by midcentury the technologies of drilling and storage had improved, so that oil fields were no longer necessarily the oleaginous equivalent of the Augean stables. And production increasingly shifted to places where people were few, such as Saudi Arabia and Siberia, so the consequences of oil pollution became less costly - at least in economic and political terms. Leaks, accidents, and blowouts, became more common, thanks to Arctic cold and deep-sea pressures. Crude oil except in small concentrations is toxic to most forms of life and is extremely hard to clean up. By 2005 the world had some forty thousand oil fields, none of them free from pollution. Routine drilling involved building new infrastructure, moving heavy equipment sometimes weighing thousands of tons, and splashing vast quantities of oil and contaminated water into the surrounding environment. In the decades after 1980, about 30 million tons (or 220 million barrels) of oil dripped and squirted into the environment every year, about two fifths of it in Russia. Offshore drilling pioneered in California waters the 1890s, remained confined to shallow waters for many decades. In the 1920s the practice spread to Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, and to the Caspian Sea - both enduringly polluted as a result - and in the 1930s o the Gulf of Mexico. By the 1990s deepwater platforms dotted the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the coasts of Brazil, Nigeria, Angola, Indonesia, and Russia, among others. Offshore drilling operations were inherently risky. When hit by tropical storms or errant tankers, rigs splashed oil onto the surrounding seas. The worst accidents occurred in the Gulf of Mexico. In 1979 a rig operated by the Mexican state oil company suffered a blowout and spewed oil for more than nine months before it was successfully capped. Some 3.3 million barrels escaped (equivalent to about six hours' worth of US oil use in 1979). It resulted in a surface oil slick roughly the size of Lebanon or Connecticut that ruined some Mexican fisheries and damaged Texan ones

Oil drilling in Amazon forests in Ecuador - what happened, consequences (15-17)

In the remote upper reaches of the Amazon watershed, in northeastern Ecuador, a Texaco-Gulf consortium struck oil in 1967. Over the next half century, the region yielded over two billion barrels of crude oil, most of it sent by pipeline over the Andes, making Ecuador the second largest oil exporter of South America and keeping its government solvent. To operate in the rainforest, the consortium, and Ecuador's national oil company, which took over all operations by 1992, had to build new infrastructure of roads, pipelines, pumping stations, and so forth. Almost unencumbered by regulations, drilling in Ecuador took an especially casual course. Vast quantities of toxic liquids were dumped (or leaked) into the streams and rivers, creating the unhappy irony that in one of most water-rich provinces on Earth, many people have no potable water. Inevitably, accidents happened. In 1989 enough oil spilled into the Rio Napo, which is about 1 kilometer wide, to turn it black for a week Part of the local indigenous population, mobile forage-hunters called Huaorani, tried to fight off the oil invasion. Armed only with spears, the Huaorani failed and were relocated by the government. Other indigenous groups in Ecuador have struggled, although unsuccessfully, to keep oil production at bay. According to some epidemiologists, th populations living near the oil fields have shown elevated rates of diseases, notably cancer Oil revenues proved so tempting the Ecuadorian state that it scheduled two-thirds of its Amazonian territory for oil and gas exploitation. By 2005 it had leased most of that, including blocks within th yasuni National Park. In conventional calculations, it made sense for Ecuador (and for oil companies) to make money from oil drilling in Oriente (as Ecuadorians call it), because the indigenous peoples whose lives it disrupted contributed next to nothing to the state. Likewise th ecosystems of western Amazonia, among the world's most biologically rich and diverse, produced little that the state valued. Identical logic prevailed in Peru, although its government did not permit drilling in national parks. In 2010, Ecuador and the UN Development Program (UNDP) cut a deal whereby a trust fund would pay Ecuador $3.6 billion not to produce oil in one of the Yasuni National Park blocks, where nearly a billion barrels of oil lay, preserving (for the first tune being) broad swaths of rainforest. Nigerian authorities showed instant interest in this novel arrangement

What does the evidence suggest about the scale of anthropogenic CO2 emissions? (67)

Increased anthropogenic carbon emissions translated into increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Carbon dioxide concentrations are now around 400 ppm, compared with the 280 ppm preindustrial baseline. This concentration is the highest CO2 level reached in the last several hundred thousand years and possibly the last twenty million years. In 1958, when the first reliable, direct, and continuous measurement of atmospheric CO2 began, concentration levels stood at 315 ppm. Since then the measured concentration has increased every year. It is unlikely that at any other time in the long history of the atmosphere CO2 concentrations have jumped by 1/4 within fifty years. Recent emission trends have been especially noteworthy. The rate of increase in carbon dioxide emissions during the 200s was more than twice that of the 1990s (3.3 percent versus 1.3 percent global annual growth). The continuing if uneven growth of the global economy provided inly part of the explanation. More troublesome was the carbon intensity of the global economy (CO2 emissions per unit of economic activity). The global economy had been decarbonizing since about 1970, yet after 2000 the process went into reverse. Economic growth became more, rather than less, dependent on carbon-heavy fuels, in particular coal burned in China

What does the evidence suggest about the scale of warming of the atmosphere and oceans? (68-69)

Increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere also had important consequences for the world's oceans. As with the atmosphere, measurements showed that the oceans had warmed during the second half of the 20th century. the upper 300 meters of the oceans warmed a but less than 0.2 degrees Celsius after 1950, while the upper 3,000 meters warmed just shy of 0.4 degrees. This may not sound like much, but gives the density of water and the immense volume of the oceans, these small increases represented an enormous amount of thermal energy Since 1950 the upper 3,000 meters of ocean had absorbed more than 14 ties the amount of energy absorbed by the continents. Increasing oceanic temperature began to have real effects, especially on sea levels and sea ice. Sea levels rose slightly over the 20th century - about 15 centimeters, roughly half of which was from the thermal expansion of water and the other half from melting ice sheets in places such as Greenland. Arctic sea ice also began melting. Spring and summer sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean retreated perhaps 10 to 15 percent over the second half of the 20th century. As with atmospheric temperatures, the rate of change was greatest toward the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. Trends for the sea ice surrounding the Antarctic were less clear. A disconcerting event occurred in 2009, when a part of the enormous Wilkins Ice Shelf collapsed; but while some areas around the continent were losing ice, others appeared to be gaining. The total amount of Antarctic sea ice may even ave increased since 1970. Increasing temperature was not the only consequence for the world's oceans. Part of the atmosphere's CO2 is absorbed by the worlds "sinks," meaning soils, forests, oceans, and rocks. The precise functioning of sinks is still debated, but roughly half of the CO2 emitted through burning fossil fuels winds up in various sinks. Oceans are responsible for about half of this figure. Without this service provided by the oceans, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 would be far higher. Unfortunately, this service is not without consequences. By the turn of the 21st century, there was good evidence that the cumulative, additional CO2 taken up by the oceans had begun to alter their chemistry. Increasing carbon dioxide levels acidify the oceans, which makes it more difficult for some organisms to manufacture their skeletons and shells. A few of these imperiled creatures are critical food for whales and fish. Even more ominously, there is some evidence that oceans and other sinks such as forests may be having an increasingly difficult time absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide. It is possible that some sinks could switch to net producers rather than absorbers of CO2, as might occur if tropical forests dry out due to higher temperatures

Island ecosystems - why are they so vulnerable? Examples? (90-91)

Island ecosystems were as severely affected as tropical forests, if in different ways. Islands are home to isolated ecosystems containing many endemic species of plants, mammals, birds, and amphibians. Island species have no place to escape to when humans hunt them, alter their habitat, or introduce invasive species. Island nations therefore routinely appear at the top of the IUN Red List of Threatened Species for having the highest percentage (but not the highest absolute number of threatened species. Madagascar, for instance, contains thousands of endemic species of plants and animals. After 1896, when the French annexed the island, its forests were systematically logged. Deforestation and habitat alteration continued through independence in 1960, much of which owed to the country's high rate of population growth and consequent pressure to clear more land for farming The result was that by century's end, more than 80 percent of the island's native vegetation had been removed, placing its endemic species under relentless pressure. isolation also makes islands highly susceptible to invasive species. Islands have been home to the majority of the world's known bird extinctions, from the great auk to the dodo. On Guam, the brown tree sake, introduced by accident around 1950, found the Micronesian island to its liking and reproduced prolifically. In the following decades, snakes concussed a good portion of the island's endemic bird species and a few of its mammal species to boot. Efforts to eradicate the snake on Guam have failed, and biologists remain concerned that it'll be inadvertently exported to other vulnerable Pacific islands. Small and remote islands, of which the Pacific has its full share, were the most vulnerable to biodiversity loss in general and through invasive species in particular

Impact of migration into the Amazon forests (57-58)

Migrants altered rainforests in Brazil and Indonesia at least as much as they did arid lands in the United States and China. Again, state policies played crucial roles. Many states, including Brazil and Indonesia, often encouraged and subsidized migration. Moreover, states obliged or encouraged migrants to engage in certain activities that just so happened to carry powerful environmental consequences. For centuries, outsiders had seen in Amazonia - nine times the size of Texas and nearly twice the size of India - a sprawling storehouse of riches and resources, awaiting development. A ribber boom (ca. 1880-1913) gave tantalizing evidence of the wealth one might tap. But even businessmen with the savvy and resources of Henry Ford failed in their quests to convert Amazonian nature into money. Ford tried to build an empire of rubber plantations, called Fordlandia, beginning in the mid-1920s, but fell afoul of his own delusions and uncooperative local conditions, especially a rubber-tree fungus. When Ford's grandson sonf off the ruins of Fordlandia in 1945, Amazonia had only about thirty thousand people in it. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the Brazilian government undertook another development scheme for the two-thirds of Amazonia that falls within Brazil. It was, as the saying went, a land without men for men without land. The government - a military regime fro 1964 to 1985 - intended to relieve poverty (and deflate the recurrent. pressures for land reform) in the dry northeast of Brazil. It also wished to populate the country's border regions with loyal Brazilians, and to mobilize the presumed natural wealth of the world's largest moist tropical forest. Thousands of miles of highways soon pierced the forest, and millions of migrants flowed into the region. They cut and burned patches of forest, mainly in order to run cattle on the new cleared land. Parts of Amazonia increasingly became a land without trees for men with cattle. Soils in most of the region are low in nutrients, so ranchers usually found that after a few years they needed to move on, to cut and burn more fresh to keep their cattle in pasture. Soybean farmers, increasingly prominent since the 1990s, found the same conditions. By 2010 about 15 to 20 percent of the forest area of 1970 had been cleared for grass or crops, but the rate of forest clearance had dropped sharply. The issue of Amazonian deforestation had become a perennial one in Brazilian politics and in global environmental politics as well

What factors made the night an attractive or beautiful time for pre-modern people?

Night was seen as a special time that had a positive side, occasionally important public celebrations would be held at night, such as certain religious festivals and rituals, or secular events like the celebration of royal holidays, military victories, etc The darkness of night night provide occasions of individual privacy and anonymity, such as wooing ones sweetheart under a moonlit sky, or visits to taverns and ale houses, or to houses of ill repute The natural beauty of moonlit landscapes, and the natural beauty and the mystery of the night sky itself Astronomy was considered one of the liberal arts in ancient times and it remained a great field of study all the way through Europe's Christian centuries. In the 16th and 17th century, astronomy was the field where the modern scientific evolution took off one landmark in the early 1600s was Galileo's development of the telescope, which allowed them to make new observations of the heavenly realm

Wind power - advantages, disadvantages (37)

Nothing is more renewable than the wind. Windmills for grinding grain originated in Iran or Afghanistan. Fantail windmills for pumping up aquifer water became common more than a century ago, especially on the Great Plains of North America. Wind power as the basis for electricity became practical in 1979 with the work of Danish engineers who built modern wind turbines. Technical improvements followed quickly, so that with the help of government subsidies, by 2010 wind power supplied about a fifth of all electricity in Denmark. In Spain and Portugal, the figure came to around 15 percent. In the United States, less than 2 percent of electricity came from wind power, but the figure was rising fast, as it was in China. After 2008 more new capacity was installed globally each year for wind power than for hydroelectricity. Everywhere, the attraction of wind power was chiefly environmental. Although big wind farms aroused minor controversies here and there because they changed the look of landscapes and in some cases killed birds and bats, by and large wind power had negligible environmental consequences. For green citizens and governments it seemed to promise a way out of the climate change morass. More precisely, it seemed to offer a partial solution, because wind power requires wind, and even in Denmark and Portugal the wind does not always blow when electricity is needed. It is hard to store power for those times when the winds are calm

Air pollution from oil and gasoline - what is emitted, what effects (23-24)

Oil burned cleaner than coal. Combustion of oil and its derivatives, such as gasoline, releases lead, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). VOCs together with sunshine help brew photochemical smog. Oil made its main contribution to urban air pollution through tailpipes rather than chimneys. Vehicle exhausts provided the raw material for photochemical smog, which was first observed in Los Angeles during WWII. Photochemical smog developed where motorization took hold and where the Sun shone brightly. Cities at lower latitudes, especially those with nearby mountains that keep pollution from drifting off with the winds, were especially affected: Los Angeles, Santiago, Athens, Tehran, and the world champion, Mexico City. Mexico City had one hundred thousand cars in 1950, when it was still renowned for its clear vistas of distant volcanoes. By 1990, by which time it was developed in a near-permanent haze, four million cars clogged its streets. Trucks, buses, ad cars accounted for 85 percent of Mexico City's air pollution, which by 1985 was occasionally so acute that birds fell from the sky in mid-flight over the central square (the Zocalo). After careful monitoring began in 1986, it emerged that Mexico City exceed legal limits for one or more major pollutants more than 90 percent of the time. In the 1990s, estimates suggested some six thousand to twelve thousand annual deaths were attributed to air pollution in the city, four to eight times the annual number of murders. Various efforts to curb air pollution since the 1980s have produced mixed results;ts, but the death rate seems to have declined slightly since the early 1990s

What were some of the antecedents to the environmental movement before the 1960s? (185-186)

Over half a century before, the US had gone through a debate about the proper use of public lands, in particular forests. It had created national parks and had busily expanded that system throughout the twentieth century. SO had several European countries, both at home and in their colonies. Debates about industrial pollution also extended well back into European and North American history. In the US, Progressives fretted about coal smoke from the end of the 19th century, leading to smoke control efforts in some of the country's biggest cities. After WWII, West German engineers followed the examples of St. Louis and Pittsburgh, in the hope that West Germany might also reduce smokiness for regions such as the industrial Ruhr

Demographic transition - definition, why important (powerpoint)

Shift from "pre-industrial" population;ation dynamics to "post-industrialization" population dynamic. basically from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates. This is a distinct change in the history of humankind, never before had so many people been on the Earth. This is important because it is completely different from the world before. Issues: Other European nations begin moving into demographic transition by 1800s Europeans as % of world population increase Population pressure contributes to out-migration (esp. to US) in the late 1800s to early 1900s By 1960s - most industrialized nations had completed the demographic transition Process started later in most countries of Asia, Africa, and South America, often not until 20th century

Greenhouse gases - what are they, how do they work (powerpoint)

Short-wavelength sunlight (visible light, ultraviolet light) goes right through greenhouse gases and reduces Earth's surface Earth's surface warms up and re-emits some of this energy as heat Heat os a form of light (longer-wavelength infrared radiation) Greenhouse gases absorb this hear, retaining heat in the atmosphere Without some "greenhouse effect," Earth would be cold and lifeless, but too much would make Earth too hot naturally occurring.. but also artificially emitted by human activity.. carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), ozone (O3), water vapor (H2O), nitrous oxide (N2O) Completely artificial... chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), per fluorocarbons (PFCs), sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) Each gas has a different "level" of atmospheric heating (amount of heating per molecule) Each has a different persistence in the atmosphere (some break down in days or weeks or years; some stay for centuries)

How is the Anthropocene defined by the authors? When do they think it began? (powerpoint)

The Anthropocene is a new period in which human actions overshadow the quiet persistence of microbes and the endless wobbles and eccentricities in the Earth's orbit, affecting the governing systems of the Earth, and therefore define the age. It began in the late 18th century with the surge of both energy use and population growth, continuing today, but the authors place it around the mid 20th century as human action (unintentionally) has become the most important factor governing crucial biochemical cycles, the carbon cycle, the sulfur cycle, and the nitrogen cycle The idea that humans have started a new era in the Earth's history, in which "humankind has emerged as the most powerful influence on global ecology" (1). Features include the "fossil-fuel energy regime" and "runaway population growth" since late 1700s (2). The authors focus on the period since 1945 because "human action (unintentionally) has become the most important factor governing crucial biogeochemical cycles... in the carbon cycle, the sulfur cycle, and the nitrogen cycle (4). Also, human impact on the earth has escalated in many ways

Fukushima Daiichi - what happened, consequences (31-32)

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, one of the world's biggest, had opened in 1971. It survived a 1978 earthquake. It was operated by he Tokyo Electric Power company, known as TEPCO. But in 2011 the waves easily topped retaining walls built to withstand a tsunami less than half the height of this one. The six working reactors shut down, generators and batteries failed, and the plant lost all electric power, and thus the capacity to pump cold water over fuel rods - which generate heat even when a reactor is not functioning, due to the continuing decay of fission products. Fires and explosions followed, Three rectors melted down. TEPCO workers drowned the fuel rods in seawater, hoping to forestall the worst. The quantities of radiation leaked into the environment in the first month after the tsunami were about 10 percent of those form Chernobyl. Dozens of workers at Fukushima Daiichi absorbed heavy doses of radiation. The government, which had initially sharply underestimated the severity of the disaster, eventually created an exclusion zone extending 20 kilometers from the plan. Some 350,000 people departed for safer ground. Just where that was initially seemed hard to specify. the government also officially determined that the water supply in Tokyo, some 200 kilometers south, was unsafe for infants due to radiation. Both TEPCO and the government came in for withering criticism in Japan for their unpreparedness and dishonesty. Small amounts of radiation floated around the Northern Hemisphere, tainting milk in North America and arousing anxieties everywhere. the German government announced a shutdown of some of its elderly reactors, and several countries announced reviews of their nuclear safety procedures. China, although closer to the catastrophe than most, kept up its record pace of nuclear power plant construction. In Japan itself, sentiment surged away from support of nuclear power, and all fifty-four of the country's reactors were gathering dust within fourteen months after the disaster, although two have since returned to duty. Few coal communities wished to host an active nuclear power plant. To make up for the resulting shortfall of electricity, Japan increased its fossil fuel imports by half, substantially raising its energy costs. Whether or not the tsunami at Fukushima's power plant will dampen enthusiasm for nuclear power for long remains to be seen

Human impact on carbon cycle - deforestation, fossil fuels (65-67)

The concern about anthropogenic climate change centers primarily on human interference on the natural cycling of carbon during the industrial era. The world's store of carbon is cycled between the lithosphere, pedosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, and oceans. However, human activities since the Industrial Revolution have altered the distribution of carbon across these spheres. In essence, the climate change problem arises from the fact that humans have removed carbon from the Earth and placed it in the atmosphere at rates much faster than occurs naturally. Humans have also increased the concentration of other carbon-containing greenhouse gases. Methane, also known as natural gas, when burned is transformed into CO2 and water. The main problem with methane, however, stems from direct release into the atmosphere. On a per-molecule basis, methane is far more powerful than carbon dioxide any trapping heat. There are two basic ways humans have added carbon to the atmosphere. First, carbon is released through deforestation, via burnt or decaying wood and from newly exposed, carbon-rich soils. Deforestation is an ancient phenomenon, but the greatest acceleration of deforestation on a global level has occurred since 1945. Conversely, growing forests absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Hence, the amount of carbon added to the atmosphere through deforestation is always a net figure, in effect deforestation minus afforestation. Net deforestation and other land-use changes currently add about 15 percent of total anthropogenic carbon into the atmosphere (as of 2015). Second, and most importantly, carbon is released through the burning of fossil fuels. Humans have shifted carbon stored in the lithosphere (in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas) to the atmosphere and thereby to the oceans. Consider the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere from fossil fuel burning. In 1750, before the Industrial Revolution began, humankind released perhaps 3 million metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere in this manner annually. A century later, in 1850, the figure was around 50 million tons. Another century later, at the end of WWII, it had increased more than twenty-fold, to about 1,200 million tons. Then after 1945 humankind embarked upon a fiesta of fossil fuel combustion. Within 15 years after the war ended, humans were putting around 2,500 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year. In 1970 this figure increased to over 4,000 million tons, in 1990 to over 6,000, and in 2015 to some 9,500 million tons - about 3,200 times more than in the year 1750 and eight times the total in 1945. By the turn of the twenty-first century, fossil fuels had become responsible for around 85 percent of anthropogenic carbon added to the atmosphere

Sunbelt migration - USA case vs. Chinese case (56-57)

The decades after 1945 were an age of migration. Tens of millions moved from one country to another. Even more moved within their countries, although often to very new environments. Millions of Americans moved from the "Rust Belt" to the "Sun Belt", to Florida, Texas, and California in particular. San Antonio, which had a quarter million inhabitants in 1940, by 2010 had nearly 1.5 million and had become the seventh largest city in the United States. Cities such as Phoenix and Las Vegas grew from almost nothing into major metropolises, sprawling into surrounding deserts and siphoning off all available water for many miles around. Residents air-conditioned their homes and workplaces for most months of the year, leading electricity-intensive lives that encouraged additional fossil fuel use and the building of more hydroelectric dams, especially on the already overdrawn Colorado River. A smaller, Chinese sunbelt migration took place into the even drier regions of Xinjiang and Tibet after 1950. Government policy had more to do with it than air conditioning. Millions of Chinese went to Xinjiang in northwest China, an autonomous region consisting of a string of oases thinly populated with ethnic minorities. Many of the migrants were compelled to go, especially during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). In Xinjiang, ethnic Chinese are now probably a majority, despite having a much lower birth rate than the Uighurs and other local populations. These migrations led to cultural and ethnic frictions, but also to new environmental stresses such as water and fuel-wood shortages and desertification. Increased water demand, partly due o the influx of migrants, has reduced Xinjiang's lake area by half since 1950. In Mao's time, few Chinese moved to Tibet, the elevated plateau region bordering on the Himalayas that was incorporated into China in the 1950s. But in the 1980s and 1990s several hundred thousand went, often as laborers on road and railway projects. Since the 1980s the government has encouraged Chinese migration. According to the official census, ethnic Chinese made up 6 percent of Tibet's population in 1953 and slightly more by 2000. But unofficial estimates suggest Han Chinese now outnumber Tibetans in Tibet - if one counts their actual rather than official residence. Unlike in Xinjiang, the migrants flocked mainly to the cities of Tibet, but also to mining enclaves and labor camps around construction projects. The delicate high-altitude ecosystems of Tibet are easily disrupted, and wetlands, grasslands, wildlife, and air quality all suffered from the population expansion and development projects. In recent years the government has tried to check the environmental disturbance caused by railroads, by, for example, building overpasses for migratory wildlife. It as also tried to settle Tibetan nomadic herders into villages in the name of ecological stability, on the grounds that Tibetans and their herds were degrading grasslands

How is the Great Acceleration defined by the authors? When do they think it began? (powerpoint)

The human impact on the Earth and the biosphere, measured and judged in several different ways, has escalated. It began around 1945

What have been the effects of climate change on the global water cycle? (69)

The potential risks of climate change are numerous, few more threatening than the alteration in the world's water supply. Increased atmospheric temperatures likely will alter a great many of the world's ecosystems, change regional precipitation patterns, cause more frequent and extreme weather events, raise sea levels and erode coastlines, harm the world's biological diversity, enhance the speed of infectious diseases, and cause more heat-related human fatalities, among many other effects. By the onset of the 21st century, most scientists believed that increasing atmospheric temperatures had already begun to have such impacts.

What kinds of things did people once know about the night time that many modern people have forgotten?

The vaunting sky was a great source of mystery and wonder, beauty, and sometimes terror. Pre-modern people knew he moon and its cycles, they knew how the stars move in lockstep across the sky, they could identify a wide-range of constellations. They knew how the sky would look different deepening on the season, they knew the five planets visible from Earth - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. All of this figures in he mythology and religious expression of peoples all around the globe The full moon has enough light to make it easy to see At night, the sky is not uniformly dark Even without the moon, a bright planet lie Venus or Jupiter can help humans to see

Air pollution from coal - what is emitted, what effects (22)

To get an idea of the air pollution resulting from coal combustion consider the annual pollution output of an average coal-fired American power plant about 2010, after decades of regulation and technical improvements. The average plant annually released millions of tons of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, and thousands of tons of sulfur dioxide, the main ingredient in acid rain. It put a few dozen kilograms of lead, mercury, and arsenic into the air as well. This was part of the price of turning coal into electricity, and forty years ago the price was much higher because coal combustion was much dirtier. And this does not include ash and soot

Falling birth rates - causes (powerpoint)

Traditional means - abstinence, rhythm method, infanticide, breastfeeding (inhibits ovulation) Modern period - availability of new methods - birth control pill, condoms, etc, sterilization, abortion Makes "family planning" possible - easier to have smaller families Adoption - doesn't affect population Older age at marriage - postpones first child, lowers total # possible for a woman Increasing wages and development of pension systems - allows people to save for retirement, don't have to have lots f surviving children to take care of you in old age Children live longer, are more likely to survive Urbanization - urban housing is more expensive, people living in cities don't need farm hands Material values of consumerism and educational achievement - one can fully provide for fewer kids, too expensive Expanded female education and employment outside home - linked to increasing status of women and redefinition of gender roles, female role is not just motherhood - could include other things, might even exclude motherhood entirely

What supernatural beliefs made the night a scary time for pre-modern people?

Uncommon events in the sky - aurora borealis, comets, meteors, lunar eclipses, and these were out of the ordinary. these rare things were usually taken to be omens or portents from higher powers, sometimes good omens, but usually bad ones. Medieval and early modern medical authorities took is as a given that the moon could have an effect on the human body, they figured if the moon Ould affect the tides, then it could affect people too. They thought that the motion of the moon, through its phases could affect the course of human diseases and that the full moon was the most powerful- able to drive people crazy. Lunatic means somebody who's under the powerful influence of the moon. Lunacy means moon-struck. Women were often considered to be the most susceptible to lunacy - maybe because the average length of the menstrual cycle is 28 days, almost as long as the lunar cycle Many were convinced that the nighttime air was full of noxious fumes and airs, as if the night were caused by the descent of a massive black cloud upon the Earth that contain noxious fumes All of these beliefs might give on the sense that nighttime was a realm governed by dark and evil supernatural forces Night was the realm of demons and devils and Satan himself, who all conspired to do their works of darkness in the dark. these dark agents might catch or seduce someone if they went out at night, might even try to break into someone's house Some cultures warn about spirits and fairies, which could be nothing or they could be spiteful. Might be warned about ghosts, banshees, vampires, werewolves, witches. All of these have in common that they come out at night There was concern about fellow human beings as well Crime is not new, there is the possibility on both urban streets and rural roads of armed robbery. There is also burglary and home invasion. Criminals would use disguises sometimes to look like these nighttime creatures. Criminals preferred darkness with no moonlight. Pre-modern people had many methods to keep their populations secure - an ancient idea was to guard the city with powerful walls, the gates would be open during the day and they would close shortly before nightfall. There were alarm bells, drums, or horns to warn people to come back before the gate closed. Missing the deadline could mean sleeping outside in the wilderness somewhere Within the towns: curfew for everyone, weapons restriction, and the prohibition of disguises except maybe during festivals like Mardi Gras. Most towns had some sort of night watch, usually local people with no training, but they were paid a small wage to stay up all night and watch for trouble

Light sources for pre-modern people

We used to have limited options to light up the dark. Most of our sources of light revolve around burning things and the earliest evidence of fire by the species homo Erectus who's most likely our direct ancestor is as early as 1 million years ago, so controlling fire is something we have basically always been able to do. 200-300 years ago, we had a range of options to light the home such as burning firewood in a hearth or fireplace, for mobile illumination you could carry an oil lamp, or candles. Other options, for poor people especially, were rush lights which are rushes coated in fat, or candle wood, dried branches full of resin. Candles can be carried by hand or on a candlestick. Both candles and oil lamps can be placed in a lantern to protect the flame and to make it easier to transport. These give very dim lights, which served as inspiration for many painters

London air pollution crisis of 1952 - what happened, consequences (22-23)

When a cold air mass settled over the Thames valley in early December, bringing temperatures below freezing, Londoners added more coal to their hearths. Each day their million chimneys spewed out a thousand tons of coal soot and nearly 400 tons of sulfur dioxide. People could not see to cross the street at noon. Natives who knew the city like the back of their hand got lost on daily errands. A few walked into the Thames and drowned. During December 5-9, some forty-seven hundred people died, about three thousand more than normal. Over the next three months mortality remained well above normal for London winters, so that epidemiologists now attribute twelve thousand deaths to pollution during the December episode. In the winter of 1952-1953, coal smoke, soot, and sulfur dioxide killed Londoners at roughly twice the rate the Luftwaffe managed during the blitz of 1940-1941. The public and press raised a hue and cry, prompting one cabinet minister, Harold Macmillan, to write in a memo he wisely kept secret during his lifetime: "For some reason or another 'smog' has captured the imagination of the press and people... Ridiculous as it appears, I suggest we form a committee. We cannot do very much, but we can be seen to be very busy." Macmillan, whose insouciant about air pollution and its effects was characteristic of his time, went on to have a distinguished political career, including a stint as prime minister from 1957 to 1963. Pea-soupers, as Londoners called their densest fogs, persisted in London for a few more years. But between 1956 and the mid-1960s, mainly on Macmillan's watch, air pollution laws and fuel switching (to oil and natural gas) made London's killer fogs a thing of the past

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring - what, when , and why so influential? (185)

1962 - Carson argues that songbirds were caught in a chemical web of contamination that might lead to their elimination - behind it is a stark message for humankind, how chemicals such as DDT were destroying the very basis of life itself. DDT became a symbol of humankind's ecological hubris

Aral Sea disaster - causes, effects (powerpoint)

Aral Sea is a freshwater lake in the central part of Eurasia It is in a desert region, fed by two rivers (Amu-Darya (ancient name=Oxus) andSyr-Darya (ancient name=Jaxartes) Water cycle: Lake fed by two rivers from distant mountains Water evaporates from lake Clouds produce rain in mountains Stable cycle for at least 15,000 years Over centuries, Amu Darya occasionally shifted towards Caspian Sea Early 20th century - 4th largest fresh water lake in the world Central Asia Gradual incorporation into the Russian empire, 1730s-1880s Steppe region (northern Kazakhstan) incorporated, 1730s-1840s Southern region incorporated, 1860s-1880s By 1850s - Russian Empire has encroached on Aral Sea By 1880s - Russian Empire expanded south to fullest extent Russian Revolution, 1917 Russian Empire collapses Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) formed, 1922 Origin of modern borders and country names Independence, 1991 Soviet economic planning 1950s - devise a plan to rapidly expand cotton cultivation Don't want to have to rely on imports of raw cotton from Egypt and India 1960s - rapid expansion of irrigation in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan Grow more cotton and food crops Expand fertilizer and pesticide use They KNOW that this means sacrificing the Aral Sea in favor or cotton Drop in water reaching the sea Pre-1960 - influx averages 55 cubic kilometers/year 1960-61 - sharp drop 1980 - Aral gets only a fifth of previous inflow 1990s - Aral gets between 0 and 10% of previous inflow Leads to falling water level in Aral Sea, shrinking of size 1990 - splits into two seas Northern (Small) Aral Sea Southern (Large) Aral Sea Total volume is 1/3 that of 1960 Mid-1990s 15 meters below pre-1960s level Covers less than half of former seabed Growth of Vozrozhdeniya Island (Renaissance, Rebirth) Home of a biological weapons lab in 1966 Used for open air testing of biological weapons As water falls, island grows 2001 - reconnects to mainland, becomes peninsula 2002 - decontaminated by a joint US-Uzbek team 2005 - Kazakhstan builds Kok-Aral Dam Between the southern and northern seas All the water from the Syr-Darya exclusively flows into Northern Aral Sea Stabilization and recovery of Northern Aral Sea Dooms the Southern Aral Sea to extinction 2014 - first year for eastern lobe of southern sea to dry out completely 2015 - recovers a little Impact on the fishing industry Aral Sea as source of most of USSR's fish Fishing and canning operations (town of Muynak) Caviar industry 40,000 tons of fish annually in 1950s Employed 60,000 people in 1960s Problems: Pesticides from farm run-off As lake dries it gets saltier By 1970s fish were dying 20 of the 24 endemic fish species eventually went extinct by 1990s Fishing industry disappeared by 1990 Coastline recess from fishing ports and the fish die For a while they flew frozen fish in from other places to can at Muynak Population of Muynak falls from 40,000 to 12,000 by 1995 Impact on deltas Delta of Amu-Darya river as center of agriculture and urban life Alluvial forests, wetland, pastures Water table drops by 5-10 meters between 1970 and 1990 Wetlands dry out, forests and pastures die, salt-resistant vegetation appears, by 1990 half of local mammal species present in 1960 have vanished, and 1/4 of the bird species As the sea shrinks, summer heat and winter cold grow more extreme, cotton-growing season gets shorter, less evaporation from sea so the air becomes drier, mountain snowpacks that fed the Syr-Darya and Amu-Darya begin to contract Global warming makes this worse

Chernobyl - what happened, consequences (28-30)

At Chernobyl in Ukraine (then in the USSR), a three-year-old reactor vessel exploded. The ensuing fire released a plume of radioactivity hundreds of times greater than those over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan some forty-one years earlier. For days the Soviet government, led by Mikhail Gorbachev, tried to keep it secret and declined to warn local populations of the risks of venturing outdoors or drinking milk (one of the pathways of radioactivity goes from grass to cattle to milk). radioactivity spread with the winds over Europe and eventually in small amounts over every in the Northern Hemisphere. Some 830,000 soldiers and workers ("Chernobyl liquidators") were dragooned into the cleanup effort; radiation poisoning quickly killed 28, another few dozen soon after, and in the course of time, many thousands more of these unfortunate liquidators died than actuarial tables would predict. Some 130,000 people were permanently resettled due to contamination of their homes, leaving a ghost zone that will host unsafe levels of radioactivity for at least two hundred more years. A few brave and stubborn souls till live there. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone has since become a de facto wildlife reserve teeming with wild boar, moose, deer, wolves, storks, and eagles, among other creatures. They roam in areas with radioactivity levels deemed unsafe for humans - because of the risk of predation and starvation, few wild animals live long enough to develop cancers. But from beetles to boars, all species show unusual rates of tumors, accoutered aging, and genetic mutation. Plant life in "the zone" - as locals call it - also shows high mutation rates. So do the tiny proportion of soil microorganisms so far studied. Because the average human body contains about 3 kilograms of bacteria, viruses, and microfungi, their modification by Chernobyl may prove to have interesting effects upon human beings. The zone became a curious biological contradiction in the wake of the catastrophe of 1986: abundant wildlife and resurgent vegetation, far more prolific than in surrounding precincts because free from quotidian human actions such s mowing, weeding, paving, and hunting - but at the same tie less healthy than wildlife and vegetation elsewhere precisely because of the accident. The human health consequences of Chernobyl remain controversial. Cancer rates spiked in years after the disaster, especially thyroid cancers among children, leading to perhaps four thousand excess arcades up to 2004. The toll could have been much lower without the government attempt to hush up the accident. This much is widely accepted. The full extent of Chernobyl's health consequences is much disputed. Epidemiologists, often extrapolating from the experiences of survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ventured many estimates of the likely mortality from Chernobyl. A conglomerate of Un bodies called the Chernobyl Forum in 2006 estimated nine thousand deaths and two hundred thousand illnesses related to Chernobyl, totals its spokesmen found reassuring. These figures are at the low end of the spectrum of expert opinion. More recently, researchers from the Russian Academy of Science and Belarus Laboratory of Radiation Safety reported a welter of insidious effects. For example, they noted early aging and signs of senility among irradiated people, and spikes in the rates of Down syndrome, low-birthweight babies, and infant mortality all over Europe in the months after Chernobyl. Un Ukraine by 1994 more than 90 percent of the Chernobyl liquidators were sick, as were 80 percent of the evacuees and 76 percent of the children of irradiated parents. So many people suffered weakened immune systems that health workers spoke of "Chernobyl AIDS." The most affected populations were those who received high doses of radiation because they lived near Chernobyl; the Chernobyl liquidators; and babies born in the months following April 1986 - in utero was a very dangerous place to be that spring. Based on the elevated mortality rates in irradiated parts of the former Soviet Union, these researchers calculated that by 2004 Chernobyl had already killed some 212,000 people in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, and, they estimated, caused nearly one million deaths worldwide. These figures are toward the high end of the spectrum. But thanks to inherent difficulties in assessing causes of death and deliberate Soviet falsification of health records among Chernobyl liquidators, no one will ever know the true human cost of Chernobyl

Coal mining waste and mishaps - examples, environmental consequences (11-13)

Deep mining brought changes to land, air, and water, Carving galleries out from beneath the surface honeycombed the Earth in coal districts such as South Wales, the Ruhr, eastern Kentucky, the Donetsk Basin, and Shaanxi Province. Occasionally underground mines collapsed, as in the Saarland (Germany) in 2008, producing a small earthquake. In China, as of 2005, subsidence due to coal mines affected an area the size of Switzerland. Mine tailings and slag heaps disfigured the landscape around coal mines. In China (by 2005) coal mine slag covered an area the size of New Jersey or Israel. Everywhere tailings and slag leached sulfuric acid into local waters. In some Pennsylvania and Ohio waterways, acidic liquids from mine drainage had killed off aquatic life by the 1960s, although in some spots life has since returned. Deep mining also often put extra methane in the atmosphere, adding perhaps 3 to 6 percent on top of the natural releases of this potent greenhouse gas. Deep mining has always put people in dangerous environments. In China, for example, where roughly one hundred thousand small mines opened up during the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961), mining accidents killed about six thousand men annually at that time, and at least that many yearly in the 1990s. In the United Kingdom in 1961, about forty-two hundred men died in mine accidents. In the United States, the most dangerous year for coal miners was 1907, when more than three thousand died; since 1990, annual deaths have ranged from 18 to 66. Early in the twenty-first century, accidents killed a few thousand miners each year in China, several times the figure for Russia or India. Black lung disease, a consequence of years spent underground inhaling coal dust, killed far more wherever coal was mined. Surface mining, often called strip mining in the United States, was far safer for miners. It began with simple tools centuries ago, but steam technology made it more practical in the early twentieth century. After 1945, new excavation equipment and cheap oil ushered in a golden age of strip mining. Today it accounts for about 40 percent of coal mining worldwide, and outside of China is usually much more common than deep mining. In surface mining, which is practical to depths of nearly 50 meters, big machines claw away earth and rock above coal seams, destroying vegetation and soils. In the United States it aroused fervent opposition in many communities, which provoked federal regulation after 1977. Since that time, mining companies have been legally obliged to find landscape restoration. One particularly unpopular variant of strip mining was "mountaintop removal," practiced especially in those parts of Kentucky and West Virginia that had low-sulfur coal. High energy prices in the 1970s made these procedures lucrative as never before. Tighter air pollution laws in the 1990s, which made using high-sulfur coal more difficult, added to the economic logic of mountaintop removal. Blasting the tops off the Appalachians had many environmental consequences, none so important as the filling in of streams and valleys with waste rock ("overburden"), which buried forests and streams and led to accelerated erosion and occasional landslides

Outdoor public illumination - reasons, positive beliefs, unintended consequences

In 1667, Paris became the first city with an official system of public lighting, they deployed about 3000 lanterns that were suspended above major streets throughout the city. Within 20 years, all the major cities in Europe have streetlights of candles, then they did street lamps that burned coal, gas, or natural gas which was 10-12 times brighter. It would take quite some time for provincial cities or smaller towns to get this newer light sources, the priority was major cities and capitals. These lights need an entire infrastructure of gas supply and distribution, so the spread of public lighting in a country roughly parallels the rise of its industrial capability and its overall wealth Invention of the lightbulb in 1879, once there are electric lights and an expanding electric grid to power them the temptation becomes strong to put lights everywhere because they are a sign of progress. Over the course of the 19th century, home lighting became safer, so families could light their homes in the evening with less fear than ever before, part of the reason you wouldn't light up every room in your house if you're afraid of all those candles burning the house down Now we have light almost everywhere, everywhere people are there are lights Powerful electric lights became a symbol of wealth, science, and progress. nighttime illumination also means that you can enjoy an enchanted island or skyride late into the evening Unintended consequences: Greenhouse gases, much or even most of the light that is omitted at night goes places where it wasn't intended or isn't needed and this is light pollution. How didl light pollution occur? We put lights where they aren't needed because we assume that more light is better, we might install outdoor lights that are brighter than necessary for our purposes, using unsheathed light fixtures Waste of energy - some estimates say between 30 and 50 percent of the energy that we use on lighting is wasted, contributing to the energy bills of businesses and cities and private citizen Energy consumption contributes to global warming and climate change Health impacts - messes with our circadian rhythms. Long-term exposure to light at night could be associated to increased risk of thinks like obesity, depression, sleep disorders, and diabetes (ongoing research) Disruption to nocturnal species, like baby sea turtles, moths and other insects, birds It might disrupt the cycles of trees

Oil drilling in Niger River delta - what happened, consequences (17-18)

The Niger Delta region of southeast Nigeria, a patchy rainforest area, and one of the world's biggest wetlands, is a maze of creeks, marshes, and lagoons with once-rich fisheries. As in Oriente, the population of the Niger Delta is divided among several ethnic groups, notably the ljaw, Igbo, and Ogoni. Unlike Oriente, it is densely populated,home to several million people. Shell and BP began oil operations here in the 1950s, happy to find a low-sulfur crude that is easy to refine into gasoline. Other companies followed, creating some 160 oil fields and 7,000 kilometers of pipelines. For decades, tankers filled up on crude where centuries before wooden ships had loaded slaves. The Nigerian government, in what could well be an understatement, recorded about seven thousand oil spills between 1976 and 2005 in the Delta, involving some three million barrels of crude. Some of the spills resulted from routine accidents, normal in the industry but especially frequent in the Delta due to poor maintenance and challenging conditions, both geographic and political. Others were acts of sabotage undertaken by locals, some of whom were seeking revenge for something, others of whom sought extortion or compensation payments from oil companies. The Niger Delta was, and remains, one of the poorest parts of Nigeria despite the several billions of dollars' worth of oil pumped out. For most residents, oil production made life harder. Dredging canals for oil exploration eliminated much of the mangrove swamp in which fish spawned, which together with oil pollution undercut a long-standing source of sustenance in the Delta. Air pollution and acid rain, largely from gas flares at oil wells, damaged crops. In the early 1990s the United Nations declared the Niger Delta the world's most ecologically endangered delta. Locals felt (and feel) that their natural wealth has been either destroyed or stolen by foreign companies and the Nigerian state, whose leadership has shown remarkable persistence in skimming off oil wealth. Resulting frustrations fed both liberation movements of local minorities and criminal syndicates. Lately Nigeria and its multinational partners have emphasized driling offshore, where there is no local population to consider

China's one-child policy - description, reasons, results (47-48)

The People's Republic of China, born in revolution and civil war in 1949, traveled a meandering road to birth control. For millennia Chinese emperor had favored high fertility, and later Chinese nationalists such as Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek were equally pro-natalist. At the time of the revolution, Mao Zedong agreed, feeling, as most Marxists did, that birth control would be unnecessary in communist society because communes would unleash productive forces hitherto constrained by capitalism, yielding a cornucopia of food. Soon after, he also judged that WWII was imminent and reasoned that China would need all the people it could get. In 1958 the Communist Party's second in command, Liu Shaoqi, looked forward to the day when China might have six billion people, but allowed that in this rosy future everyone would have to share beds. Others among Mao's lieutenants saw matters differently, thinking that father growth of China's huge population imperiled the economy, and after the horrendous famine of the Great Leap Forward of 1959-1961 their views acquired greater weight. But the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), a violent political m movement that plunged China into administrative and economic chaos, prevented any effective policy. In 1970 China began to encourage birth control by distributing fee contraceptives. In the course of the 1970s, engineers trained in cybernetics (rocket guidance systems in particular), influenced by dour ecological forecasts of the Club of Rome, worked out the scientific rationale for drastic reductions in fertility. Through personal connections with party leaders, their views gradually prevailed, first in a seres fo carrots and sticks devised to encourage small families, and in 1979 in the "one-child policy." This gave party cadres great power to determine who would be allowed to have children in any given year, and imposed stiff penalties (loss of job, loss of apartment, loss of educational opportunities) on couples who did not follow instructions. Urban couples by and large fell into line; villagers sometimes did not and eventually were permitted greater leeway. The policy made exceptions for ethnic minorities, who likely would have resisted it strenuously. In China, extended families and heads of lineages had long exercised influence over when couples might have a child. This tradition made the concept of state-regulated fertility easier for Chinese to accept than it was for Indians. With these measures, among the most forceful efforts at social engineering anywhere in modern history, China reduced its annual population growth from about 2.6 percent in the late 1960s to 0.4 percent in 2015. The success of its population policy assisted China's economic miracle