Fragile Earth - Climate Change

Our 'Fragile Earth' - what does the concept of fragility mean? how fragile is our Earth?

The concept of fragility depends on how easily an ecosystem is disrupted. The stability of an ecosystem is a measure of the capability of the ecosystem to return to an equilibrium state following a disturbance.

Many natural ecosystems have a degree of fragility, for example Tropical Rainforests are highly evolved with a high biodiversity with thousands of species well adapted to life in the rainforest and able to occupy their own niche in the ecosystem, but the whole rainforest system is inherently susceptible to change and deforestation can have a major impact on the ecosystem. It can be argued that humans have compounded and in some instances induced fragility, increasing the vulnerability of the world's ecosystems.

"From over fishing of our oceans and depleting fish stocks to dangerous low leves; from toxins, emissions and pollution entering and choking the atmosphere and making the hole in the ozone layer bigger and causing more harmful sunrays to penetrate through then their should be, thus warming the oceans, melting the ice, and threatening animals environments; from rainforest being bulldozed down to create grazing land for cattle and commerical development, thus destroying natural environmental structure and animals habitats, animal species going extinct, and more.

These problems are caused by humans and humans only; it's scary, it really is, and will over serve to get worse if the human race takes an apathetic attitude towards the planet it ultimately needs to survive; your's and my planet.

We are dependent on the earth's biodiversity for survival and without it we're in big trouble." (William Richardson)

This is the introduction to this interesting video from You Tube called "Call of Life" Facing the Mass Extinction. At only 10 minutes it is well worth a view and gives consideration to a number of key environmental issues and the impacts of humans on our planet.

To follow some of these key issues up I have drawn together some of the most resources and articles.

Climate Change (Part 1)
This issue is forefront in the news at the moment and there are many programmes on TV and articles in the news considering the causes and effects of climate change. The issue is even the focus of TV adverts raising awareness of the issues:

This advert is from American TV:

This TV Advert - Tomorrow's Climate - Today's Challenge is part of a UK government initiative

Indeed climate change is not an issue without contention as was highlighted recently in the Channel 4 documentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle", in which the widely held belief that climate change is largely due to man-made rises in carbon dioxide emissions, was challenged. The arguements underpinning this challenge to the idea that climate change is a man-made phenomenon can be read here on the Channel 4 microsite.

I can not do justice the extensive resources / articles on climate change in a single post and indeed every week sees news stories related to climate change appear in the papers and on the TV so I intend to blog about this in a number of posts between now and the exam to give you some idea of the issues surrounding it through examples.

The weblinks below are to some of the best 'generic' sites on Climate Change which provide a useful introduction to the causes, effects and issues surrounding global warming.

BBC Climate Change Portal - as well as explaining the basics of climate change, looks at stories in the news related to our changing climate as well as views and opinions on the issues - well worth exploring. Linked to this are the Climate Change pages from the BBC Weather Centre - this site considers the evidence for a changing climate, the impacts that climate change is likely to have on us in the UK, the ways in which we need to adapt both now and in the future and the policies and politics of climate change.

The Challenges of Climate Change A site from the Open University exploring many of the issues related to climate change

Tomorrow's Climate - Today's Challenge. The government funded site has a number of key resources aimed to help you understand climate change, including basic climate facts, challenging myths and UK climate change change.

The impacts of Global Warming on the world's ecosystems is well documented and this excellent site gives a "World View of Global Warming" documenting the impacts of climate change around the world.

Finally for now - this new article from the BBC is must see resource on understanding the impacts of Climate Change around the world. An interactive map enables you to explore the projected impacts around the world as well as explore directly the impacts on water, ecosystems, food, coasts, industry and health. The resource links in to BBC news articles with examples of these impacts that are already starting to be seen around the world.

Having looked at Climate Change in detail here, other posts will explore some of the other big issues.