First, the melting of ice caps and glaciers is releasing water into the oceans. Second, human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels, combined with natural activities, it causes the rise of the earth's surface temperature.3 Second, climate change is already having a serious effect on every continent and throughout the world’s ocean. The consequences of sea level rise mainly reflected in three aspects: cultural heritages, indigenous communities and coastal lands. 4 First, sea level rise threats cultural world heritage. Data shows that 136 out of 700 listed cultural heritages throughout the world will be affected in the long term.
This essay clarifies several parts: how human activity influences the climate change, the role of human activity, the impact of natural events. Human activity that is most likely to have a strong impact on the climate change is the burning of the fossil fuels and deforestation. An example of this is the carbon dioxide emissions. A recent report (UNEPWMO, 2004, P10) stated, a great number of carbon dioxide emissions are the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and natural gas which used for transportation, manufacture, industrial uses as well as electricity generation. Owing to the development of industry and the use of fossil fuels, the amount of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere has produced and the average global temperature seems to have risen.
With the depletion of the forest that converts the carbon dioxide into oxygen it has monumental negative effects on the planet as a whole. “Eleven developing countries recently linked to 82 percent of the carbon dioxide buildup due to deforestation will likely come under the greatest pressure for change: Brazil, Indonesia, Colombia, Cote D’Ivoire, Thailand, Laos, Nigeria, Vietnam, Philippines, Myanmar (Formally Burma) and India”. (“cooper”) One of the major locations deforestation is in the south Asian country Thailand. “Located wholly within the tropics, Thailand encompasses diverse ecosystem, including the hilly forested areas of the northern frontier, the fertile rice fields of the central plains, the broad plateau of the northeast, and the rugged coast along the narrow peninsula.”(“Thailand”). Since the formation of the country Thailand
Furthermore, mercury spreads and destroys plants and animals in the area. All of the above help to cause the greenhouse effect, affecting global warming massively. If this continues the oxygen throughout the world will decrease. A staggering 40% of the world’s oxygen supply comes from the rainforest. Statistics state, and I quote; “at this rate the rainforest only has 28 years left “.
The Great Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011 On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake rocked Japan and sent a thirty-three foot tsunami raging down the coast to devastate their towns even further. To make matters even worse, the earthquake also triggered a nuclear emergency that has been compared to the Chernobyl disaster of 1986. (McCurry, 1) This earthquake was the worst earthquake in Japan’s recorded history. (McCurry, 1) It would not be surprising if people will still talk about it for centuries to come. The earthquake began off of the north-eastern coast of Honshu and caused catastrophic damage.
In environmentalist Bill McKibben’s 2008 article, “Civilization Last Chance,” we are warned that we are in a state of emergency time we have little to save our environment from the danger. The current status of our earth is in danger, and people don’t seem to realize the serious consequence for the future. Robert W. Christopherson’s textbook, Geosystems, is an introduction to physical geography with scientific evidence. The current edition of Geosystems introduces the consensus science regarding human-created climate change. The high content of carbon causes global warming and global warming causes climate change.
e) What is the population of Niger? How big is the country? f) What legal changes have led to this new planting of trees? g) What are the chief benefits of the recent reforestation? h) How much of Niger’s land is arable?
My discussion today will be to answer question 1 from Chapter 6 which reads as follows: 1. What are the major ways that people have altered biogeochemical cycles? Biogeochemical cycles are defined by the Encyclopedia of Earth as pathways for the transport and transformation of matter within four categorical areas that make up planet Earth (biosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and the atmosphere) According to Chapin (2011:401), “human activities have altered biogeochemical cycles at global scale in ways that change the functioning of Earth as an ecosystem. Human activities have dramatically altered element cycles since the beginning of the industrial revolution.” M Moses et al., 2010 states that life on planet earth is inextricably connected to climate through a range of interacting cycles and feedback loops. In recent years there has been a growing awareness of the extent to which human activities, such as deforestation and fossil fuel burning, have directly or indirectly changed the biogeochemical and physical processes involved in determining the earth's climate.
The 1993 southwest-off Hokkaido earthquake occurred at 22:17 on 12 July 1993 in the Sea of Japan near the island of Hokkaido. It had a magnitude of 7.7 on the moment magnitude scale (newer version of the Richter scale) and a maximum felt intensity of VIII on the Mercalli intensity scale. It triggered a major tsunami that caused deaths on Hokkaidō and in southeastern Russia, with a total of 239 fatalities recorded. The island of Okushiri was hardest hit, with 165 casualties from the earthquake, the tsunami and a large landslide. The earthquake occurred in the backarc region of the convergent boundary where the Pacific Plate subducted beneath the Eurasian Plate.
The shifting of the earth’s plates in the Indian Ocean on Dec. 26, 2004 caused a rupture more than 600 miles long, displacing the seafloor above the rupture by perhaps 10 yards horizontally and several yards vertically. As a result, trillions of tons of rock were moved along hundreds of miles and caused the planet to shudder with the largest magnitude earthquake in 40 years. Within hours of the earthquake, killer waves radiating from the epicentre slammed into the coastline of 11 Indian Ocean countries, damaging countries from east Africa to Thailand. A tsunami is a series of waves, and the first wave may not be the most dangerous. A tsunami “wave train” may come as surges five minutes to an hour apart.