Transcript John Harrington`s Global Change Presentation

On the Nature of Global Change
Professor John Harrington, Jr.
([email protected])
Department of Geography, Kansas State University
Planet Under Pressure
Mar 2012 London
International Conference on Adaptation May 2012 Tucson
Climate Change: Impacts & Responses Jul 2012 Seattle
Unprecedented Types, Rates,
Scales, Combinations, and the
Magnitude of Change
Planetary Destabilization
2004
“… the Earth system is now operating
in a ‘no-analogue state’.”
Climate change
is part of something bigger
1973
Symptoms of human induced global change:
- warming
- rapid change in surface appearance (LUCC)
- changes in chemical indicators (nitrogen)
- change in gaseous composition (atmos)
- loss of key biotic components
- new organisms have been introduced
- rapid depletion of stored reserves (water)
- rapid depletion of stored reserves (energy)
- the rate of change is increasing
1999
Global Change
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Global climate change (CO2 & global weirding)
Air pollution (gross insults & micro toxicity)
Shrinking glaciers & loss of Arctic sea ice
Population growth and resource consumption
Land use change – deforestation for agric.
Water resources (reservoirs & irrigation)
Ocean acidification, sea level rise, coral reefs
Loss of biodiversity (major extinction event)
New ideas to hopefully change the conversation
• Ecological Footprints and Overshoot (1.5 Earths)
• Ecosystem services (externalities and “the commons”)
• Sustainability Science
Vulnerability, Resilience
• Planetary Boundaries
The Anthropocene
• Planetary Stewardship The Wildland Garden
• Earth Hour (late March)
The more you read in this subject area, the more you understand
the multiple connections, the complexity, and just how hard it
will be to make the changes needed for a sustainable transition
Oxfam
2012
CO2 levels are now at 394 ppm (up 39.6%)
CO2 levels were at
315ppm at the start of
the Mauna Loa record.
The CO2 level for
pre-industrial times
was 280 ppm.
Annual cycle –
driven
by summer
vegetation greenup
in the Northern
Hemisphere
Lower values at the
end of the growing
season
Understanding the Earth system
(feedbacks and response times)
indicates that there is more to come
• Warmer areas on
Earth will emit slightly
shorter wavelengths
and water vapor is
the main GHG
• Cooler areas on Earth
will emit slightly
longer wavelength
energy and CO2 is
the main GHG
Global pattern of temperature anomalies for 2000-2009
compared with the 1950-1980 base period.
More CO2 and cold places warm up.
Images of change in alpine glacial ice from Africa and North America
Mount Kilimanjaro
Glacier
National Park
The loss of
Arctic Sea ice.
The loss of
Arctic Sea ice.
Human Dimensions of Global Change
Land Use Change
More land was converted to cropland in the 30 years after
1950 than in the 150 years between 1700 and 1850.
Cultivated Systems in 2000 cover
25% of the terrestrial surface
Unprecedented
Change:
Biomes
Land use change
different directions in different regions
Ecosystems in some regions are returning to conditions
similar to their pre-conversion states
Rates of ecosystem conversion
remain high or are increasing for
specific ecosystems and regions
There is a human
footprint on 83%
of the land.
“The Human
Footprint and the
Last of the Wild”
E. Sanderson et al.
2002 BioScience
Last Child
in the Woods
Anthropogenic Biomes of the World
Urban & dense settlements
11 Urban
12 Dense settlements
Villages
21
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24
25
26
Rice villages
Irrigated villages
Cropped & pastoral villages
Pastoral villages
Rainfed villages
Rainfed mosaic *villages
Ellis & Ramankutty
Croplands
31
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35
Residential irrigated cropland
Residential rainfed mosaic
Populated irrigated cropland
Populated rainfed cropland
Remote croplands
Rangelands
41 Residential rangelands
42 Populated rangelands
43 Remote rangelands
Forested
51 Populated forests
52 Remote forests
Wildlands
61 Wild forests
62 Sparse trees
63 Barren
*Mosaic: >25% tree cover mixed with
> 25% pasture and/or cropland
Changes in Water Resources
– 5 to possibly 25% of global freshwater use exceeds longterm accessible supplies (low to medium certainty)
– 15 - 35% of irrigation withdrawals exceed supply rates and
are therefore unsustainable (low to medium certainty)
A period of rapid and unprecedented global change
The Green Revolution:
genetics, fertilizer, tractors, & irrigation
“turning oil into food”
The pace
of growth
is slowing
Made it in Oct 2011
How do we feed the next 2 billion?
Consilience = a fancy way to describe how science is changing
• E.O. Wilson’s 1999 book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge provided a powerful restatement of the importance of linking major areas of
scholarly thought
• C.P Snow’s 1959 lecture: The Two Cultures - major thesis was: that the
breakdown in communication between the sciences and the humanities
was a major barrier to solving the world's problems
Four cultures: new synergies for engaging society, MC Nisbet et al., 2010,
Frontiers in Ecology. Vol 8(6): 329-331.
Consilience: Biocomplexity
• Biocomplexity = the study of complex structures
and behaviors that arise from nonlinear
interactions of biotic agents and abiotic
factors, across multiple scales
• Biocomplexity was introduced as a new initiative
at NSF for funding integrative projects in the
late 1990s by Rita Colwell
• Rita Colwell was NSF Director from 1998 – 2004
The role of women in scientific discourse is critically important
Reciprocal Effects & Feedback Loops
Nonlinearity and Thresholds
Surprises
Legacy Effects and Time Lags
Resilience
Heterogeneity
New framings and new questions
NSF now has SEES
Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability
• Achieving a sustainable human future in the face of both
gradual and abrupt environmental change is one of
the most significant challenges facing humanity
• All eleven NSF Directorates and Offices have joined
together to support Science, Engineering, and
Education for Sustainability (SEES)
• Requests for proposals in: “sustainable chemistry”
“… sole authors did produce the papers of singular distinction
in science and engineering and social science in the 1950s,
but the mantle of extraordinarily cited work has passed to
teams by 2000.”
(p. 1038)
It takes about a year of working together to establish a good team
life supporting resources
declining
we are in what E.O. Wilson (in 2002)
referred to as “the bottleneck”
consumption of
life supporting resources
rising
Can global leaders find a way to address
a long-term and global problem?
Two ‘imperatives’ work against a solution
The imperative of the present
The imperative of the local
Topophilia = love of place; we need geophilia or gaiaphilia
“The relative indifference to the environment springs, I believe, from deep
within human nature. The human brain evidently evolved to commit itself
emotionally only to a small piece of geography, a limited band of kinsmen,
and two or three generations into the future.” E.O. Wilson 2002
Science and engineering enable new
technologies that accompany change
There is a need to move toward
sustainability
“To change something, build a new model
that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Buckminster Fuller
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,
committed citizens can change the world;
indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”
Margaret Mead