Responses to the risk of further global warming Flashcards
What are some of the uncertainties about the future?
The level of greenhouse gas emmisions
The degree of concentration in the atmosphere
The resilience of other carbon sinks
The degree of climate warming
Feedback mechanisms such as the release of carbon from peatlands and thawing permafrost.
The rate of population growth
The nature and rate of economic growth
The harnessing of alternative energy sources
What are the two ways in which humans could react to the very real threat of further global warming?
Adaptation
Mitigation
What is adaptation?
Changing our ways of lving in such a manner that we are able to cope with most, if not all, of the outcomes of global warming.
What is mitigation?
Reducing or preventing greenhouse gas emissions by devising new technologies and adopting low-carbon energies (renewable and recyclables).
What are the five adaptation strategies?
Water conservation and management Resilient agricultural systems Land-use planning Flood-risk management Solar radiation management
What are the benefits of water conservation management?
Few resources used, less groundwater abstraction.
Attitudinal change operates on a long-term basis: use more grey water (recycled water)
What are the costs and risks of water conservation and management?
Efficiency and conservation cannot match increased demands for water.
Changing cultural habits of a large water footprint needs promotion and enforcement by governments, e.g. smart meters.
What are the benefits of resilient agricultural systems?
Higher-tech, drought-tolerant species help resistance to climate change and increase in diseases.
Low-tech measures and better practices generate healthier soils and may help CO2 sequestration and water storage: selective irrigation, mulching, cover crops, crop rotation, reduced ploughing, agroforestry.
More ‘indoor’ intensive farming.
What are the costs and risks of resilient agricultural systems?
More expensive technology, seeds and breeds unavailable to poor subsistence farmers without aid.
High energy costs from indoor and intensive farming.
Genetic modification is still debated but increasingly used to create resistant strains e.g. rice and soya.
Growing food insecurity in many places adds pressure to find ‘quick fixes’
What are the benefits of land-use planning?
Soft management: land-use zoning, building restrictions in vulnerable flood plains and low-lying coasts.
Enforcing strict runoff controls and soakaways.
What are the costs and risks of land-use planning?
Public antipathy.
Abandoning high-risk areas and land-use resettling is often unfeasible, as in megacities such as Dhaka, Bangladesh or Tokyo.
Needs strong governance, enforcement and compensation.
What are the benefits of flood-risk management?
Hard management traditionally used: localised flood defences, river dredging.
Simple changes can reduce flood risk, e.g. permeable tarmac
Reduced deforestation and more afforestation upstream to absorb water and reduce downstream flood risk.
What are the costs and risks of flood-risk management?
Debate over funding sources, especially in times of economic austerity.
Land owners may demand compensation for afforestation or ‘sacrificial land’ kept for flooding.
Constant maintenance is needed in hard management, e.g. dredging; lapses of management can increase risk.
Ingrained culture of ‘techno-centric fixes’: a disbelief that technology cannot overcome natural processes.
What are the benefits of solar radiation management?
Geoengineering involves ideas and plans to deliberately intervene in the climate system to counteract global warming.
This proposal is to use orbiting satelites to reflect some inward radiation back into space, rather like a giant sunshade.
It could cool the Earth within months and be relativly cheap compared with mitigation.
What are the costs and risks of solar radiation management?
Untried and untested.
Would reduce but not eliminate the worst effects of greenhouse gasses; for example, it would not alter acidification.
Involves tinkering with a very complex system, which might have unintended consequences.
Would need to continue geoengineering for decades or centuries as there would be a rapid adjustment in the climate system if solar radiation management stopped suddenly.
