Skip to main content

Home/ Climate Change/ Group items tagged community

Rss Feed Group items tagged

davido T

The Thirteenth Tipping Point | Mother Jones - 0 views

  • The 12 tipping points are: 1. Amazon Rainforest 2. North Atlantic Current 3. Greenland Ice Sheet 4. Ozone Hole 5. Antarctic Circumpolar Current 6. Sahara Desert 7. Tibetan Plateau 8. Asian Monsoon 9. Methane Clathrates 10. Salinity Valves 11. El Nino 12. West Antarctic Ice Sheet
  • A 2005 study by Anthony Leiserowitz, published in Risk Analysis, found that while most Americans are moderately concerned about global warming, the majority—68 percent—believe the greatest threats are to people far away or to nonhuman nature. Only 13 percent perceive any real risk to themselves, their families, or their communities. As Leiserowitz points out, this perception is critical, since Americans constitute only 5 percent of the global population yet produce nearly 25 percent of the global carbon dioxide emissions.
  • 12 ASTEROIDS AND EVOLVING INTO WISDOM IN 2004, JOHN SCHELLNHUBER, distinguished science adviser at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the United Kingdom, identified 12 global-warming tipping points, any one of which, if triggered, will likely initiate sudden, catastrophic changes across the planet. Odds are you've never heard of most of these tipping points, even though your entire genetic legacy—your children, your grandchildren, and beyond—may survive or not depending on their status.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • EISEROWITZ'S STUDY OF risk perception found that Americans fall into "interpretive communities"—cliques, if you will, sharing similar demographics, risk perceptions, and worldviews.
    • davido T
       
      that's a great term "interpretive communities"
    • davido T
       
      stopped reading here
  • On one end of this spectrum are the naysayers: those who perceive climate change as a very low or nonexistent danger. Leiserowitz found naysayers to be "predominantly white, male, Republican, politically conservative, holding pro-individualism, pro-hierarchism, and anti-egalitarian worldviews, anti-environmental attitudes, distrustful of most institutions, highly religious, and to rely on radio as their main source of news."
  • This group presented five rationales for rejecting danger: belief that global warming is natural; belief that it's media/environmentalist hype; distrust of science; flat denial; and conspiracy theories, including the belief that researchers create data to ensure job security
  • We might wonder how these naysayers, who represent only 7 percent of Americans yet control much of our government, got to be the way they are. A study of urban American adults by Nancy Wells and Kristi Lekies of Cornell University sheds some light on environmental attitudes. Wells and Lekies found that children who play unsupervised in the wild before the age of 11 develop strong environmental ethics. Children exposed only to structured hierarchical play in the wild—through, for example, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, or by hunting or fishing alongside supervising adults—do not. To interact humbly with nature we need to be free and undomesticated in it. Otherwise, we succumb to hubris in maturity. The fact that few children enjoy free rein outdoors anymore bodes poorly for our future decision-makers.
    • davido T
       
      hmm... was it so clear-cut a conclusion?
  • THE ALARMISTS AND THE ACROBAT ON THE OTHER END of Leiserowitz's spectrum of perception regarding global warming is an interpretive community he calls the alarmists, generally comprised of individuals holding pro-egalitarian, anti-individualist, and antihierarchical worldviews, who are supportive of government policies to mitigate climate change, even so far as raising taxes. Members of this group are likely to have taken personal action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
  • Collectively, alarmists compose 11 percent of Americans, with the remaining interpretive communities falling considerably closer to the alarmists than the naysayers in the spectrum—suggesting the gap might be cinched by sustained public education on the neighborhood dangers likely to arise in a changed global climate.
  • Hurricane Katrina provided a wake-up call for how bad it can get in the neighborhood, and may prove a tipping point itself.
  • Yet long before its rampage, American kids were coloring pictures of the first icon of global environmentalism, the Amazon. Its billion-plus acres of rivers and rainforest—its trees collecting and containing excessive greenhouse gases from the atmosphere—were our primer for the revolutionary notion that the earth's neighborhoods are interdependent. Today Amazonia is the most famous of Schellnhuber's tipping points. For a generation, kids have grown up learning that the Amazon is at risk from massive deforestation. But even if clearcutting were to halt, climate models forecast that a warming globe will convert the wet Amazonia forest into savanna within this century, and the loss of trees will render the region a net CO2 producer, further accelerating global warming.
yc c

Games - 0 views

  •  
    Bigfoot is an interactive program in the EcoLogic exhibition and playable on this site. It estimates the size of your ecological footprint from your answers to 15 questions. Bigfoot is the first ecological footprint calculator to use Australian data and terminology. Ecotown is an interactive program in the EcoLogic exhibition and playable on this site. It demonstrates the use of sustainability indicators at a community level. A sustainable indicator provides information on how far a community is from its goal of sustainable development. Discussion is needed over what the community really values.
yc c

Carbonrally - climate change community focused on fun, social, and competitive challenges - 0 views

  •  
    Reduce global warming by taking quick & easy challenges. Compete with others in your area and around the world and show off your progress.
yc c

Real World Visuals - 0 views

  •  
    Real World Visuals specialise in data visualisation for contemporary environmental and humanitarian topics and challenges, turning unseen numbers and volumes into relatable imagery. We have helped clients communicate a range of subjects such as air pollution, ozone, carbon capture, waste disposal, water and resource use to their audiences. Our team are able to accurately transform your data into images, animations and interactives that convey meaningful volume, scale and perspective. We are always keen to work with new methods and topics so feel free to contact us about your project.
yc c

Pollution Tracker - How polluted is your ocean? - 0 views

  •  
    A collaborative effort between Ocean Wise and coastal partners Sampling for Phase 1 was conducted by Ocean Wise scientists and partners, including First Nations, community groups, port authorities, and government agencies.
yc c

Greenpeace Schweiz: Adh - 0 views

  •  
    Pages des donnations Greanpeace
Philippe Scheimann

WAVE: The place to share your views on Climate Change issues - Feedmyapp - 0 views

  • WAVE is a new free social media tool that harnesses the power of collaborative action to help give individuals and communities a voice on the climate change issues that matter to them.
yc c

The facts | Population Matters | Every Choice Counts | Sustainable World Population - 0 views

  •  
    Our vision is of a future in which our population co-exists in harmony with nature and prospers on a healthy planet, to the benefit of all.​ Our mission is to drive positive, large-scale action through fostering choices that help achieve a sustainable human population and regenerate our environment. There are now more than 7,700,000,000 people on planet Earth. It took until the early 1800s for the world population to reach one billion. Now we add a billion every 12-15 years. There are many misconceptions about population - what the numbers say, what the impact is, and what population campaigners want to do about it. We are a company limited by guarantee (3019081) and a registered charity (1114109).
1 - 9 of 9
Showing 20 items per page