Transcript Date: AS Global Challenges Unit 1

Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
Mitigation and Adaptation
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
Aims
To understand how can we limit or adapt to climate change.
What are the national and small scale strategies for limiting or coping with climate
change?
What are the contributions of individuals to help reduce the impacts of climate
change ?
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nALyKU_N5x0
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
Enquiry
What are the strategies for dealing with climate change?
Mitigation
Means reducing the output of greenhouse gases and increasing the size
of carbon sinks.
Examples of mitigation are:
•Setting targets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions
•Switching to renewable energy, such as wind power
•Capturing carbon emissions from power stations and storing them
– what do you think?
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
Adaptation
Adaptation means changing our lifestyles to cope with a new environment
rather than trying to stop climate change .
Examples of adaptation include:
• Managed retreat of coastlines vulnerable to sea level rise
• Developing drought resistant crops
• Enlarging existing conservation areas to allow for shifting habitat zones
Many scientists argue that climate change would still occur even if we stopped
polluting the atmosphere now so even 100% mitigation would require some
adaptation.
-what do you think?
The UN Environment
Programme strategies to climate
change
Date: 26-Mar-16
Most of these strategies need resources, which many LEDCS lack
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
There is much disagreement
about how to deal with climate
change
•For human systems like the economy mitigation
would involve an upfront cost to reduce
atmospheric pollution to ‘safe levels’.
•Adaptation might mean the costs were spread
over a longer time scale and were more gradual.
•For natural systems like ecosystems, mitigation
could limit the damage.
•Adaptation might condemn natural systems
which cannot adapt to climate change. Species
may become extinct and biodiversity be degraded
as threats to ecosystems increased.
Date: 26-Mar-16
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AS Global Challenges Unit 1
The value of natural ecosystems is a strong argument for acting now to reduce
the worst impacts of climate change.
MEDCS may have the resources to act now but parts of the world that are
LEDCS lack the adaptive capacity.
This means that they do not have the human, physical or financial resources to
cope with climate change.
To increase climate adaptive capacity they need:
To reduce poverty to meet the costs of adaptation
Increased access to resources including energy resources and materials
Improved education and skills to develop understanding of the challenges
and the ability to change
Improved health
Improved infrastructure such as roads, energy supply and
communications
So the ability to adapt is linked to development
Most adaptive strategies will be LOCAL in scale as they will be tailored to the
local impacts of climate change.
Mitigation can occur at a range of scales.
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
Scales of mitigation
International agreements are important, but individual governments decide how agreements should
be implemented.
Often it is the local agencies (eg local councils) who decide how to make individuals to make the right
choices.
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
Climate change coping
strategies
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AS Global Challenges Unit 1
Adaptation
Mitigation
Adapting to climate change?
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Vector Eradication – airborne disease
Transit – public transport
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
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AS Global Challenges Unit 1
Where does CO2 come from?
Media attention?
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AS Global Challenges Unit 1
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http://www.energyville.com/energyville/
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
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AS Global Challenges Unit 1
Is mitigation
free?
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AS Global Challenges Unit 1
The costs of cutting carbon
emissions in different ways
P 50-51 Oxford
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
Over to you – consider the statements – where would you place them?
Think about would it affect biodiversity good or bad
Wind Turbines
Urban tree planting
Biofuels
Green rooftops
Improved building insulation
Increased farmland irrigation
Afforestation
Species translocation
Large Dams
Sea wall defence
Low-till cultivation
Flood-control infrastructure
Forest conservation
Ex situ conservation
Forest pest control
New desalinisation plants
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
Over to you – consider the statements – where would you place them?
Think about would it affect biodiversity good or bad
Win-LoseWin
Lose-WinWin
Win –
LoseLose
LoseWinLose
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
Carbon sequestration
This is a geoengineering technique for the long-term storage of carbon dioxide or other
forms of carbon, for the mitigation of global warming.
Carbon dioxide is usually captured from the atmosphere through biological, chemical or
physical processes.
It has been proposed as a way to mitigate the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere released by the burning of fossil fuels. CO2 may be captured as a pure byproduct in processes related to petroleum refining or from flue gases from power
generation.
CO2 sequestration can then be seen as being synonymous with the storage part
of carbon capture and storage which refers to the large-scale, permanent artificial
capture and sequestration of industrially-produced CO2 using subsurface saline aquifers,
reservoirs, ocean water, aging oil fields, or other carbon sinks.
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/6161742/Contraceptioncheapest-way-to-combat-climate-change.html
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
What should be done – think
wedges!
The idea of stabilisation wedges from
Princeton University provides a useful
structure to allow a greater understanding to
develop.
The basic concept is shown here (adapted
from ‘the Guardian’). The graph shows the
predicted increase in carbon dioxide levels to
2030.
An increase to 43.7 billion tonnes equates to
a carbon dioxide concentration of 450-500
ppm – in other words about the level
considered by many to be ‘dangerous’
(unavoidable increase of 2C).
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
Anglian Water
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
Thanks, Darling
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
VED
Car tax, or VED (Vehicle Excise
Duty) is one the minds of the
average 17 year old!
The UK government is using VED as
one of the key planks of its mitigation
strategy.
% of UK car sales by VED tax band
A
2006
B
C
D
E
The aim is to use the tax system to
change our car buying behaviour.
F
2000
G
0%
VED linked to carbon dioxide
emissions was first introduced in
1998 (see table, right)
20%
40%
60%
% all sales
80%
100%
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
They have become the fashionable target for environmentalists, but four-wheel-drive vehicles may be less
damaging to the environment than the cows and sheep essential to the rural economy.
The methane emissions from both ends of cattle and sheep are causing so much concern in government that it
has ordered researchers to find ways to cut down on the emissions from livestock, which account for about a
quarter of the methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful at driving global warming than carbon dioxide
– pumped into the atmosphere in Britain. Each day every one of Britain’s 10 million cows pumps out an estimated
100-200 litres of methane.
This is the equivalent of up to 4,000 grams of carbon dioxide and compares with the 3,419g of carbon dioxide
pumped out by a Land Rover Freelander on an average day’s drive of 33 miles.
With the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation predicting that methane emissions from livestock could
increase by as 60 per cent by 2030, the issue is being treated with some urgency.
Scientists attempting to find new foods for cattle have already exploded the myth that most bovine emissions
come from the rear. They have found the majority come from belching.
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
Mitigation
European Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) p 52 Oxford
Shell p 53 Oxford
London Congestion Charge p 53 Oxford
Bunge, Brazil p 53 Oxford
New York p 54 Oxford
Nuclear in the UK p 57 Oxford
Kyoto Protocol (to come in class)
Adaptation
Tuvalu p 67 Philip Allan
Date: 26-Mar-16
AS Global Challenges Unit 1
Essay
“Mitigation is the only way to manage climate change”. Discuss (15)