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Recipe for survival : what you can do to live a healthier and more environmentally friendly life
\"What can YOU do to improve your health and at the same time improve the health of our home planet? Do you want to be a healthier and more sustainable consumer? In this straightforward, easy-to-understand and entertaining book, dietitian and environmentalist Dr. Dana Ellis Hunnes outlines the actions we can all take. Many people feel overwhelmed by the scope of climate change and believe that only large, sweeping changes will make any difference. Yet the choices we make every day can have effects on climate change, the oceans, the land, and other species. This book outilnes the problems we are facing, and then presents ideas or 'recipes' to empower us, to help us all make a difference. Recipe For Survival provides the guidance that you can use right now to improve your health, your family's health, and the health of the environment simultaneously\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Toward an Operational Anthropogenic CO₂ Emissions Monitoring and Verification Support Capacity
Under the Paris Agreement (PA), progress of emission reduction efforts is tracked on the basis of regular updates to national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories, referred to as bottom-up estimates. However, only top-down atmospheric measurements can provide observation-based evidence of emission trends. Today, there is no internationally agreed, operational capacity to monitor anthropogenic GHG emission trends using atmospheric measurements to complement national bottom-up inventories. The European Commission (EC), the European Space Agency, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, and international experts are joining forces to develop such an operational capacity for monitoring anthropogenic CO₂ emissions as a new CO₂ service under the EC’s Copernicus program. Design studies have been used to translate identified needs into defined requirements and functionalities of this anthropogenic CO₂ emissions Monitoring and Verification Support (CO₂MVS) capacity. It adopts a holistic view and includes components such as atmospheric spaceborne and in situ measurements, bottom-up CO₂ emission maps, improved modeling of the carbon cycle, an operational data-assimilation system integrating top-down and bottom-up information, and a policy-relevant decision support tool. The CO₂MVS capacity with operational capabilities by 2026 is expected to visualize regular updates of global CO₂ emissions, likely at 0.05° × 0.05°. This will complement the PA’s enhanced transparency framework, providing actionable information on anthropogenic CO₂ emissions that are the main driver of climate change. This information will be available to all stakeholders, including governments and citizens, allowing them to reflect on trends and effectiveness of reduction measures. The new EC gave the green light to pass the CO₂MVS from exploratory to implementing phase.
Journal Article
Who rules the earth? : how social rules shape our planet and our lives
\"Climate change and its attendant environmental catastrophes--droughts, wildfires, floods, heat waves, and so on--are no longer a looming threat; they're here, now. In this age of well-warranted environmental panic, every trip to the grocery store or purchase from Amazon must become a full-scale research project. Are these tomatoes local? Is this water bottle BPA-free? Did I remember to bring a canvas tote, or will I have to risk contributing to landfills by accepting a plastic bag? The ethos that one person's choices can make a difference is admirable, but ultimately misguided. In Who Rules the Earth?, Paul F. Steinberg, one of America's leading scholars on the politics of environmentalism, draws from the latest social science research to explain why there is room for hope. Green consumer choices and changes in personal lifestyles are important, but they are not nearly enough. Lasting social change requires modifying the very rules that guide human behavior and shape the ways we interact with the Earth. We know these rules by familiar names like city ordinances, product design standards, purchasing agreements, public policies, cultural norms, or national constitutions. Though these rules are largely invisible to us, their impact across the world has been dramatic. By changing the rules, the Canadian province of Ontario cut the levels of pesticides in its waterways in half. The city of Copenhagen has adopted new planning codes that will reduce its carbon footprint to zero by 2025. In the United States, a handful of industry mavericks designed new rules to promote greener buildings, and transformed the world's largest industry into a more sustainable enterprise. Steinberg takes the reader on a series of journeys, from a familiar walk on the beach to a remote village deep in the jungles of Peru, helping the reader to \"see\" the social rules that pattern our physical reality and showing why these are the big levers that will ultimately determine the health of our planet. Unveiling the influence of social rules at all levels of society-from private property to government policy, and from the rules governing our oceans to the dynamics of innovation and change within corporations and communities-Who Rules the Earth? is essential reading for anyone interested in bringing about real environmental change\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Contributions of GRACE to understanding climate change
Time-resolved satellite gravimetry has revolutionized understanding of mass transport in the Earth system. Since 2002, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) has enabled monitoring of the terrestrial water cycle, ice sheet and glacier mass balance, sea level change and ocean bottom pressure variations, as well as understanding responses to changes in the global climate system. Initially a pioneering experiment of geodesy, the time-variable observations have matured into reliable mass transport products, allowing assessment and forecast of a number of important climate trends, and improvements in service applications such as the United States Drought Monitor. With the successful launch of the GRACE Follow-On mission, a multi-decadal record of mass variability in the Earth system is within reach.The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission, launched in 2002, allows monitoring of changes in hydrology and the cryosphere with terrestrial and ocean applications. This Review Article focuses on its contribution to the detection and quantification of climate change signals.
Journal Article
Nitrogen and phosphorus constrain the CO2 fertilization of global plant biomass
Elevated CO2 (eCO2) experiments provide critical information to quantify the effects of rising CO2 on vegetation1–6. Many eCO2 experiments suggest that nutrient limitations modulate the local magnitude of the eCO2 effect on plant biomass1,3,5, but the global extent of these limitations has not been empirically quantified, complicating projections of the capacity of plants to take up CO27,8. Here, we present a data-driven global quantification of the eCO2 effect on biomass based on 138 eCO2 experiments. The strength of CO2 fertilization is primarily driven by nitrogen (N) in ~65% of global vegetation and by phosphorus (P) in ~25% of global vegetation, with N- or P-limitation modulated by mycorrhizal association. Our approach suggests that CO2 levels expected by 2100 can potentially enhance plant biomass by 12 ± 3% above current values, equivalent to 59 ± 13 PgC. The future effect of eCO2 we derive from experiments is geographically consistent with past changes in greenness9, but is considerably lower than the past effect derived from models10. If borne out, our results suggest that the stimulatory effect of CO2 on carbon storage could slow considerably this century. Our research provides an empirical estimate of the biomass sensitivity to eCO2 that may help to constrain climate projections.Elevated CO2 increases plant biomass, providing a negative feedback on global warming. Nutrient availability was found to drive the magnitude of this effect for the majority of vegetation globally, and analyses indicated that CO2 will continue to fertilize plant growth in the next century.
Journal Article
Taking the metabolic pulse of the world’s coral reefs
Worldwide, coral reef ecosystems are experiencing increasing pressure from a variety of anthropogenic perturbations including ocean warming and acidification, increased sedimentation, eutrophication, and overfishing, which could shift reefs to a condition of net calcium carbonate (CaCO3) dissolution and erosion. Herein, we determine the net calcification potential and the relative balance of net organic carbon metabolism (net community production; NCP) and net inorganic carbon metabolism (net community calcification; NCC) within 23 coral reef locations across the globe. In light of these results, we consider the suitability of using these two metrics developed from total alkalinity (TA) and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) measurements collected on different spatiotemporal scales to monitor coral reef biogeochemistry under anthropogenic change. All reefs in this study were net calcifying for the majority of observations as inferred from alkalinity depletion relative to offshore, although occasional observations of net dissolution occurred at most locations. However, reefs with lower net calcification potential (i.e., lower TA depletion) could shift towards net dissolution sooner than reefs with a higher potential. The percent influence of organic carbon fluxes on total changes in dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) (i.e., NCP compared to the sum of NCP and NCC) ranged from 32% to 88% and reflected inherent biogeochemical differences between reefs. Reefs with the largest relative percentage of NCP experienced the largest variability in seawater pH for a given change in DIC, which is directly related to the reefs ability to elevate or suppress local pH relative to the open ocean. This work highlights the value of measuring coral reef carbonate chemistry when evaluating their susceptibility to ongoing global environmental change and offers a baseline from which to guide future conservation efforts aimed at preserving these valuable ecosystems.
Journal Article
Glaciers : the politics of ice
\"Glaciers is a volume about the role glaciers play in our daily lives (often without us knowing), the risks posed to glaciers from natural and anthropogenic activity (including climate change and industrial pollution), and policies and practices that should be employed to protect this fundamental hydrological reserve\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Scenarios towards limiting global mean temperature increase below 1.5 °C
The 2015 Paris Agreement calls for countries to pursue efforts to limit global-mean temperature rise to 1.5 °C. The transition pathways that can meet such a target have not, however, been extensively explored. Here we describe scenarios that limit end-of-century radiative forcing to 1.9 W m−2, and consequently restrict median warming in the year 2100 to below 1.5 °C. We use six integrated assessment models and a simple climate model, under different socio-economic, technological and resource assumptions from five Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs). Some, but not all, SSPs are amenable to pathways to 1.5 °C. Successful 1.9 W m−2 scenarios are characterized by a rapid shift away from traditional fossil-fuel use towards large-scale low-carbon energy supplies, reduced energy use, and carbon-dioxide removal. However, 1.9 W m−2 scenarios could not be achieved in several models under SSPs with strong inequalities, high baseline fossil-fuel use, or scattered short-term climate policy. Further research can help policy-makers to understand the real-world implications of these scenarios.
Journal Article