Climate Change Flashcards
Hot house conditions
150-200 Mya
2000 ppm
3-4 degrees warmer
Icehouse conditions
4-5 degrees cooler
1.8mya-12kya
approximately 200ppm
Mid cretaceous
100 million years ago. - 6-8 degrees higher
C02 levels 5 times higher
Devensian period
20,000 years ago
Ice 1km deep
Current interglacial period
Holocene
Medieval warm period
900-1300 years ago
1-2 degrees warmer
little ice age
Mean annual temps declined by 0.6 degrees
Tambora and Laki
Crop failures
Increase in ocean temps
0.57 degrees
Shrinking of glaciers
Valley glaciers to shrink 80-96 percent
1961-2005 - thickness of glaciers shrunk by 12 m
Melting of ice sheets adds 1mm to sea level rise per year
Sea level rise
3mm per year
Snow cover
Decreasing by 2 percent per decade
snow reflects 70-80 percent of radiation, vegetation reflects only 20%
Decline in sea ice by 8%
Land use changes
Responsible 1850-1990 for 121 GtC
south east Asia accounts for half of deforestation in tropical forests
Industrialisation
Factories Mathew Boulton
21.3% of global energy consumption in power generation
Population growth
1800-1bn
2000-6bn
Top of the s curve - 9-12 bn
C02 concentrations
280pp pre industrial, now at 400ppm
UK emissions
1800 - 7 thousand thousand tonnes
1900 - 115,000 thousand tonnes
19 times increase
UK reductions
Fell by 9% in 2014
35% natural gas
Kyoto - knocked of 12.5% of 1990 benchmark by 2012
Now aims for 80%
China emissions
1900 - 26 thousand
2010 - 2,500,000 thousand tonnes of co2
Why did chinas economy grow
economic liberalisation - command to fee market after Mao in 70’s
Proportion of coal in chana energy mix
65% more than rest of the world combined uses
Climate Change Deniers
Lord Lawson - BbC aired his sceptic views, absolute uproar
Bjorn Lomborg ‘the sceptical environmentalist’ - denies significance of climate change and finds there are benefits
James Inhofe - “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people - 2 million in payments from big businesses
Percentage of scientists that believe in anthropogenic climate change
97% but 1000 don’t….
Types of sceptics
trend, attribution and impact sceptics
REDD
paying developing countries to look after forests
Kivalina
Kivalina
50 feet of beech lost
no sea ice to protect from winter storms
uninhabitable in 10 years
Tuvalu
10,000 environmental refugees
low lying achiapelago
Bangladesh vulnerability to sea level rise
20m within 1 m above sea level - storm surges up the bay of bengal
How many in poverty
60 million
Flooding issues
80% floodplain, 70% floods annually 1/6 of land to be lost to sea
Mitigation strats
2bn flood embankment project
protection of mangrove swamps,
flooding garden beds, houses on stilts, strains of resistant crops, swimming cows
Australia GDP
49,000 dollars
Percentage of population living near coasts
80%
Australia risks
Desertification and flooding
Costs for australia
Natural disasters cost 4.5 bn now, likely to be 9bn by 2030
Australia weather events
Yasi cyclone, 45 degree heat wave in summer 2009
Mitigation
$59bn in wetland and river management
1 billion sustainable cities fund
carbon pricing mechanism applied to 60% of emmissions
Relocation after Queensland bush fires
