Sustainability? - etc.
Ted Talk: Let's protect the oceans like national parks | David Lang
You don't have to be a scientist to help protect the world's oceans, says underwater drone expert and TED Fellow David Lang -- in fact, ordinary citizens have pulled together to save the planet's natural treasures many times in history. Lang asks us to take a lesson from the story of the US National Parks Service, offering a three-point plan for conserving underwater wonders.
The science of sustainability
Can humans drive economic growth, meet rising demand for food, energy and water, and make significant environmental progress? The short answer is 'yes,' but it comes with several big 'ifs.' New research shows that we can put the world on a path to sustainability if we make significant changes within the next 10 years.
Arctic greening thaws permafrost, boosts runoff
A new collaborative study has investigated Arctic shrub-snow interactions to obtain a better understanding of the far north's tundra and vast permafrost system. Incorporating extensive in situ observations, scientists tested their theories with a novel 3D computer model and confirmed that shrubs can lead to significant degradation of the permafrost layer that has remained frozen for tens of thousands of years. These interactions are driving increases in discharges of fresh water into rivers, lakes and oceans.
NOTE: Regarding this last topic: That the growth of shrubbery increases melting of permafrost is an example of a feedback loop or cycle. Melting permafrost encourages the growth of shrubbery (etc)., and VICE VERSA. Then there is the larger feedback loop: emerging shrubbery helps melt permafrost which then releases more methane into the atmosphere - thus warming the planet further, and therefore more shrubbery and melting permafrost, etc., etc.
Such feedback loops can spiral to the point of no-return, or disequilibrium, especially when the wider governor, e.g., stable temperatures, itself fails. The more the main governor fails, the more the loops spiral, and amplify the main governors failure.
Rising temperatures start as an abnormality, and then become linear or arithmetic. But when various, countless other feedback loops get rolling, then the rise in temperatures can become geometric, and then nonlinear. This is the crisis we face today: The rises in temperatures is becoming self-perpetuating, accelerating into chaos, due to this multitude of ultimately unpredictable amplifiers.
This is why we see the rise in temperatures becoming a bending curve, ever-upwards, over the decades and centuries - and, most importantly, into the future. Even if we were to manage to reverse, at a later date, back down to a 1.5 Celsius rise, the complications will be almost as bad as if the rise were 2.0 Celsius. Why?
Because we are nearing a tipping point, where the complexities of amplifiers acquire so much momentum, the planet's climate is delivered into a completely new, more tumultuous, "norm." Some scientists believe that we have already been on a course where this momentum will become too much for us to ever establish a holding pattern.
Instead, what has been done has been done, and has already been spinning feedback loops, like rising methane, which will take us into temperatures, droughts, fires, etc., far beyond anything we, let alone other species, are prepared to weather, without some drastic dimunition of populations.
I subscribe to this view, but also to the view that you do what you can, no matter what, expecting nothing but to keep trying.
You don't have to be a scientist to help protect the world's oceans, says underwater drone expert and TED Fellow David Lang -- in fact, ordinary citizens have pulled together to save the planet's natural treasures many times in history. Lang asks us to take a lesson from the story of the US National Parks Service, offering a three-point plan for conserving underwater wonders.
The science of sustainability
Can humans drive economic growth, meet rising demand for food, energy and water, and make significant environmental progress? The short answer is 'yes,' but it comes with several big 'ifs.' New research shows that we can put the world on a path to sustainability if we make significant changes within the next 10 years.
Arctic greening thaws permafrost, boosts runoff
A new collaborative study has investigated Arctic shrub-snow interactions to obtain a better understanding of the far north's tundra and vast permafrost system. Incorporating extensive in situ observations, scientists tested their theories with a novel 3D computer model and confirmed that shrubs can lead to significant degradation of the permafrost layer that has remained frozen for tens of thousands of years. These interactions are driving increases in discharges of fresh water into rivers, lakes and oceans.
NOTE: Regarding this last topic: That the growth of shrubbery increases melting of permafrost is an example of a feedback loop or cycle. Melting permafrost encourages the growth of shrubbery (etc)., and VICE VERSA. Then there is the larger feedback loop: emerging shrubbery helps melt permafrost which then releases more methane into the atmosphere - thus warming the planet further, and therefore more shrubbery and melting permafrost, etc., etc.
Such feedback loops can spiral to the point of no-return, or disequilibrium, especially when the wider governor, e.g., stable temperatures, itself fails. The more the main governor fails, the more the loops spiral, and amplify the main governors failure.
Rising temperatures start as an abnormality, and then become linear or arithmetic. But when various, countless other feedback loops get rolling, then the rise in temperatures can become geometric, and then nonlinear. This is the crisis we face today: The rises in temperatures is becoming self-perpetuating, accelerating into chaos, due to this multitude of ultimately unpredictable amplifiers.
This is why we see the rise in temperatures becoming a bending curve, ever-upwards, over the decades and centuries - and, most importantly, into the future. Even if we were to manage to reverse, at a later date, back down to a 1.5 Celsius rise, the complications will be almost as bad as if the rise were 2.0 Celsius. Why?
Because we are nearing a tipping point, where the complexities of amplifiers acquire so much momentum, the planet's climate is delivered into a completely new, more tumultuous, "norm." Some scientists believe that we have already been on a course where this momentum will become too much for us to ever establish a holding pattern.
Instead, what has been done has been done, and has already been spinning feedback loops, like rising methane, which will take us into temperatures, droughts, fires, etc., far beyond anything we, let alone other species, are prepared to weather, without some drastic dimunition of populations.
I subscribe to this view, but also to the view that you do what you can, no matter what, expecting nothing but to keep trying.