March 18, 2011
I-Hsien Porter
The Guardian website recently published a map of carbon emissions by country. There were few surprises. China is the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. hile recession-hit Europe and America have seen a fall in their emissions due to reductions in industrial output, it has not been enough to offset the rapid expansion of emerging economies in China and India. Developing countries in South America and Africa have some of the smallest carbon emissions in the world.
It might have been helpful to see this illustrated in relation to carbon emissions per person, since countries are not all the same size. However, it provides a useful indication of where strategies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions might be best focused.
Market based solutions, where carbon is commodified (e.g. carbon credits), have become the focus for international strategies to reduce emissions. However, in a recent paper in The Geographical Journal, Samuel Randalls warns of the dangers of this approach.
Simplifying carbon emissions into a quantity that must be managed comes with broader ethical and moral issues. Management of the issue by distant national or international markets makes assumptions about the fair allocation of personal carbon allowances.
Randalls argues that wider political participation is needed to consider the ethical implications of imposing a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution across countries with different cultural and social characteristics.
The Guardian (31st January 2011) ‘An atlas of pollution: The world in carbon dioxide emissions.’
Randalls, S. (2011) ‘Broadening debates on climate change ethics: beyond carbon calculation.’ The Geographical Journal [Early View]
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Environment and Society | Tagged: carbon, carbon credits, carbon emissions, Global warming, greenhouse gases, public participation, Samuel Randalls | 
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Posted by I-Hsien Porter
February 18, 2011
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. Human activities, e.g. farming, have resulted in the release of large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. However, in locations across the world, large amounts of methane and carbon are stored in soil or the sea bed. These are released gradually as a natural process.
In a Geography Compass paper, William Bowden raises concerns over this process as Arctic ice and permafrost (frozen ground) begin to thaw in response to climate change. Bowden suggests that stored methane and carbon may be released into the atmosphere, further contributing to the volume of greenhouse gases.
Switching our attention to the Gulf of Mexico, last April’s Deepwater Horizon oil leak also caused the release of a large quantity of methane. Research discovered that methane-absorbing bacteria multiplied rapidly in response. As a result, much of the additional methane was not released into the atmosphere.
The Arctic and Gulf of Mexico may behave very differently from each other. However, research into the Deepwater Horizon oil leak offers an insight into the potential consequences of much greater environmental change.
BBC News (6th January 2011) ‘Gulf of Mexico oil leak may give Arctic climate clues’.
Bowden, William B. (2010) ‘Climate Change in the Arctic – Permafrost, Thermokarst, and Why They Matter to the Non-Arctic World’. Geography Compass 3 (10): 1553-1566
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Leave a Comment » | Biogeography, Climatology, Environment and Society | Tagged: Arctic, Climate change, Deepwater Horizon, Global warming, greenhouse gas, Gulf of Mexico, methane, oil leak, permafrost, William Bowden | Permalink
Posted by I-Hsien Porter
February 4, 2011
I-Hsien Porter
In a commentary in The Observer, Robin McKie outlines some of the statistics that reinforce the argument for man-made climate change.
The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has increased significantly over the past 50 years, causing temperature rises of 0.80C. Many scientists argue that a total increase in temperature of at least 20C is inevitable by 2100, leading to more extreme weather events, water shortages and disruption to food production.
Despite the warnings, surprisingly little has been done to mitigate or adapt to the effects of climate change. In an article in Area, Andrew Sayer expresses pessimism about whether this attitude will change.
Sayer argues that in the Global North, states are too dependant on capital to meet the costs of acting against climate change. Governments are too electorally dependant on the middle classes to reduce their consumption.
Overcoming the incentives not to act on climate change provides a challenge for those in government. However, the need to do so is clear. Geographers can contribute to this debate by improving our understanding of both the physical processes driving climate change, and the human processes driving our response.
‘After a wasted year, climate change must once again be our priority.’ The Observer 26th December 2010.
Andrew Sayer (2010) ‘Geography and global warming: can capitalism be greened?’ Area 41 (3): 350-353
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2 Comments | Environment and Society, Global Issues | Tagged: adaptation, Andrew Sayer, Capitalism, Climate change, Global warming, greenhouse gas, Mitigation, Robin McKie, temperature rise | Permalink
Posted by I-Hsien Porter
September 3, 2010
I-Hsien Porter
Global climate change is likely to cause significant changes, or at least greater uncertainty, in human lifestyles. One vulnerable area of our relationship with the environment is food production.
The BBC recently reported that over the past 25 years, rice yields in Asia have fallen 10 – 20% in response to rising temperatures. This trend is expected to continue. Meanwhile, a summer heatwave (a relatively short-term climatic event) has caused the Russian government to ban the export of wheat, with far-reaching impacts for food prices. In this light, some might be concerned for future food security.
However, many small-scale farmers in the Global South have been dealing with adverse climatic conditions and resource scarcity for decades. In a recent paper in Geographical Journal, Lindsay Stringer and others look to these groups to inform countries in the Global North, which are now facing similar challenges.
Many of the strategies employed by farmers in developing countries were specific to particular places, so had limited transferability to other contexts. As a result, Stringer et al. looked at the process-related aspects of farmer’s experiences, rather than those rooted in place.
Farmers who were faced with adversity were found to have much greater political awareness (e.g. of trade agreements). Those responsible for food production in the developed world could learn from the way that other actors have influenced food and farming policies.
Redefining the traditional North-to-South flow of knowledge into a two-way exchange generates a much larger pool of ideas to mitigate and cope with pressures on food production.
“Rice yields to “fall” under global warming”, BBC News, 9th August 2010
Stringer et al. (2008) “Learning from the South: common challenges and solutions for small-scale farming” Geographical Journal 174(3): 235-250
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Leave a Comment » | Development, Environment and Society, Global Issues | Tagged: Asia, Climate change, coping strategies, developing countries, experience, export, export ban, farming, food prices, food production, food security, global North, global South, Global warming, knowledge, knowledge transfer, learning, Lindsay Stringer, rice, rice yields, Russia, shared knowledge, wheat, wheat exports | Permalink
Posted by I-Hsien Porter
July 20, 2010
By Paulette Cully
According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) the world is on course for the hottest year ever since records began in 1880. January to June temperatures demonstrated the warmest combined global land and sea temperatures since 1880 and June saw the 304th consecutive month where the global surface temperature has been measured to be above the 20th century average. June was also the fourth consecutive month that the standing high temperature mark was surpassed.
The fact that global warming presents an enormous threat to humanity is widely accepted but according to Andrew Sayer writing in the article “Geography and global warming: can capitalism be greened?” published in the Area journal, the response from academia, including geography, has been slow. Andrew explores the fact that geographers have expertise in specific processes contributing to global warming in specific places but it appears that geographers have not addressed the larger questions; those of can global warming be prevented and if so is capitalism capable of forestalling it?
Andrew’s opinion is that of pessimism, believing that the chances of capitalism being greened are slim. When faced with the challenge of acting against global warming, capitalist states are too dependent on capital to do anything about it and are also too dependent electorally on the middle classes to reduce their consumption. Andrew’s final sentence is to throw this debate open to his fellow geographers. So come on; what do you think?
To read the full global warming article click here
To read the full article Andrew Sayer, 2009, Geography and global warming: can capitalism be greened? Area, Volume 41, Issue 3, Pages: 350-353
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Leave a Comment » | Climatology | Tagged: Capitalism, geography, Global warming, NOAA | Permalink
Posted by Inselberg
July 18, 2010
By Andy Hacket Pain
We hear a lot in the news about climate change, with global scale trends and predictions . This large research effort is underpinned by the historic data for climate change, some of which, for the UK at least, is held by the Met Office.
Much of the primary data is publically accessible, and you can access it from the Met Office website. It is interesting to use the historic weather station data to look back at the climate of your local area over the last few decades; the length of the records vary but some go back over a hundred years.
An easy way to access the data is to copy and then save the data as a .txt file (using Windows notepad for example), then import the data into a spreadsheet from this file. The data is formatted so that you can easily insert column breaks where needed – your data import wizard should guide you through this.
The data can easily be sorted into months allowing you, for example, to look at temperatures for August (as in the graph above). The results for most locations show a clear warming trend over the last few decades, but also the high variability in climate on a year to year basis. For example, in 1997 in Cambridge, the mean maximum temperature in August (i.e. the mean warmest daily temperature across the whole month) was 26.3°C, but the following year was nearly 4°C cooler.
Have a look around the rest of the website too- there is a lot of interesting material.
Access Met Office climate data for local weather stations here
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2 Comments | Climatology, Environment and Society, General, Global Issues, Hydrology and Water Resources | Tagged: Britain, Climate change, Climate records, Climate science, environment, Global warming, Met Office, Weather station | Permalink
Posted by TheBiogeographer
June 8, 2010
By Caitlin Douglas
In exchange for a payment from Norway of US$1 billion, Indonesia has recently pledged to introduce a two year moratorium on deforestation. The action is being undertaken as a climate change initiative. Tropical deforestation releases significant amounts of carbon dioxide but the benefits of maintaining forests extend far beyond carbon sequestration. As John Kupfler and Scott Franklin describe in the their article in Geography Compass, forests provide many services at the local scale, such as soil stability, erosion control, protection and improvement of air quality, timber and non-timber products. Forests also have important cultural and aesthetic roles. Whilst Norway’s initiative to take action against tropical deforestation is admirable, and will have tremendous benefits both locally and globally it fails to address what is driving the deforestation in the first place. Kenneth Young notes in his article in Geography Compass that tropical deforestation is often driven by global incentives and policies; therefore, unless these issues are addressed Norway’s initiative may be futile.
Read BBC’s news article
Read Kupfer and Franklin’s article and Kenneth Young’s article in Geography Compass
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Leave a Comment » | Cultural Geography, Development, Economic Geography, Environment and Society, Global Issues, Political Geography, Social Geography, Urban Geography | Tagged: carbon cycle, Climate change, ecosystem services, Global warming, Indonesia, tropical deforestation | Permalink
Posted by cdoug
May 23, 2010
Andy Hacket Pain
Over the last few years, there has been much recent media interest in the impacts of climatic warming in the Arctic region, with the Guardian recently reporting new research that demonstrates a strong feedback between sea ice loss and increasing regional temperatures, potentially leading to even more rapid loss of Arctic sea ice.
Studies such these provide important evidence on the global impacts of anthropogenic climate warming, and are often used in high profile campaigns by conservation groups to emphasise the importance of rapid national and international action to reduce carbon emissions.
However, I think we can sometimes be guilty of neglecting the local impacts of climate change. James Ford and others, writing in The Geographical Journal provide a case study examining how climate change in the Arctic impacts on indigenous Inuit populations in Canada. They show that in addition to the rate and nature of environmental change, factors such local traditions and community structure interact to produce a complex picture of vulnerability in these communities.
Despite this being a very locally-based study, work such as this highlights that simply producing good monitoring and prediction capacities is not enough when we are dealing with the impacts of climate change – we must go beyond the pure science and appreciate the complex relationships between society and nature if we are to gain a better understanding of the true human consequences of greenhouse gas emissions.
Read the article in The Guardian
Read the article by Ford et al (2007)
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Posted by TheBiogeographer
January 21, 2010
View from the NASA Terra Satellite on 7 Jan 2010
By Clare Boston
Our recent spell of cold weather has once again invoked questions about whether global warming really is happening. Alongside a recent admission from the IPCC that an erroneous estimated date regarding the melting of Himalayan glaciers was published in their 2007 report and last month’s ‘ClimateGate’, climate-sceptics are armed with ‘evidence’. Yet, whilst this December was the coldest in the last 14 years in the UK, the Arctic Oscillation actually caused higher than average December temperatures in the Arctic. However, as Richard Betts from the Met Office discusses in the BBC Online Green Room, there is a difference between weather and climate. It is not these isolated weather events that scientists are worried about, but mean annual global temperatures, which have shown a significant trend upwards over the last few decades, with five of the warmest years on record since 1998.
Andrew Sayer, in a recent commentary in Area, asserts that geography has yet to fully address the big questions of climate change, such as “can it be prevented?” and “is capitalism capable of forestalling it?” He provides an insightful discussion on whether global warming can be slowed under capitalism and the chances for a greener future. In light of the failure of politicians to deliver a binding agreement on emissions reductions during December’s summit in Copenhagen, his pessimistic conclusion is even more poignant.
Read Richard Betts’ discussion in the BBC Online Green Room
Read more about the Arctic Oscillation on the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) website
Read Andrew Sayer (2009). Geography and global warming: can capitalism be greened? Area
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Leave a Comment » | Climatology, General, Global Issues, Political Geography | Tagged: Arctic Oscillation, Copenhagen Climate Summit, Global warming, UK snow | Permalink
Posted by cboston
December 14, 2009
By Matthew Rech
Simon Dalby, writing in Geography Compass, provides a compelling argument that prompts us to reconsider our place in the world, and to challenge implicit geographies associated with globalisation, geopolitics and the environment. As Dalby suggests, “some of the most taken for granted and obvious parts of environmental political thought are assumptions about context and environmental circumstances” (104), and it must be our role as geographers to continue to critique geopolitical categories and scientific understandings that shape political discourse.
Specifically, and in relation to the ongoing Copenhagen summit, Dalby takes issue with certain spatialisations used to organise our understandings of the world, which might often be out of line with the new contexts of our lives. These new contexts (meaning post September 11th politics, the transformation of humanity into an urban species, and new thinking in earth systems science) demand a rethink of the categories we use to make sense of our place in the world.
So, as we are beholden to the twists and turns of the climate summit this month, we should be mindful that “the taken for granted nature of geographical categories – states, regions, blocs, continents, resources and environments” (104) – shape political will and discourse. And also, that whilst “geopolitical reasoning is mostly about the view from the metropoles of the global polity” (104) we must remain cognisant of strategic silences, and the unheard voices of those that climate change may threaten most.
See the BBC Copenhagen newspage
Read Dalby, S (2007) Anthropocene Geopolitics: Globalisation, Empire, Environment and Critique. Geography Compass. 1. 1, 103-18
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Leave a Comment » | Cultural Geography, Environment and Society, Political Geography, Social Geography, Urban Geography | Tagged: Climate change, Copenhagen Climate Summit, environment, Global warming, globalization | Permalink
Posted by matthewrech
