Term 2 - theme 1 Flashcards
Beck (1992)
Risk society - It becomes an issue: global threats for global communication. Second the politically manipulative impulse to politics.
Stern Review (2007)
Made possible the ‘political giant’ brought about by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from the vision of ‘green Great Britain’ and ‘green capitalism’.
A contrary position
Newspapers convey different messages about the science behind climate change
Change to risk society
People became better educated + the technological information revolts. An engine of highly educated information society came to the forefront. Meaning and identity are grounded in the self as the primary agent of meaning.
Orography
Changes in Earth orogoraphy takes millions of years to be significant but can be significant indeed.
Land use change
Deforestation for example can change the albedo of the surface leading to a change in climate.
Snow/ice melt
A type of land use change where a change in the surface cover can affect the albedo leading to a change in climate.
Volcanic eruption
Expel gases such as Co2 and sulphur which can reduce solar reflection reaching the ground, cooling the atmosphere.
Proportion of Co2
Traps long-wave radiation emission from the surface and increase the mean temperature of the globe.
Increase in methane
Large portions of methane are being released as a result of anaerobic decomposition of organic matter.
Ice cores
Have been used to reconstruct glacial-interglacial cycles over the past 740ka.
The holocene
Last 11.6ka. Relatively stable. Increasing anthropogenic impact on local to global atmospheric composition.
Why focus on past 200years?
Similarity of boundayr consitions with future climates, climate forcings are reltively well understood.
The medieval climate anomoly
AD 950-1250. Viking colonisation, sea ice retreated.
The ‘Little Ice Age’
16th-19th Century. Glacier advance globally. Abandonment of Greenland.
