We know that we are in the midst of a climate and ecological emergency. A key question is what can we do about this? Which actions will have the greatest positive impact? Scientists have been working to develop modeling tools to help us to predict this and to inform policy decisions. One promising tool is En-ROADS (Energy rapid overview and decision support).
The footprint of human activity is now felt in every region and ecosystem on earth from the bottom of the oceans to the tallest peaks and even high up into the atmosphere. Because of this, many scientists now think we have departed from the Holocene, which refers to the previous 13,000 years or so and entered into a new, much less stable, geological epoch termed the Anthropocene where humans are very much in the driving seat of the earth’s systems.
Free online book by scientist and bestselling author of Brain-fizzing Facts, Dr Emily Grossman, breaks down the science of the climate and ecological crisis to make our situation easy for adults and teenagers to understand.
The claim that runaway climate change has made societal collapse inevitable is not only wrong – it undermines the cause of the climate movement.
The planetary climate clock, in human time. Let’s start by some human and planetary timescales. is 10 long human lifespans, 40 generations, the time separating us from the first millennium and the Middle Ages…
What is Earth System Science?
Earth System Science (ESS) is the application of systems science to the Earth sciences. It attempts to study the whole Earth as a system of many interacting parts and focus on the changes within and between systems.
One Earth, Not One Percent
“Both reducing climate change impacts and poverty are two of the defining issues of the 21st century in trying to achieve sustainable development; they are also intrinsically linked.”
Operation Ice BridgeNASA’s Operation IceBridge images Earth’s polar ice in unprecedented detail to better understand processes that connect the polar regions with the global climate system.
“However horrific the COVID-19 pandemic may seem, it is merely one symptom of gross human ecological dysfunction. The prospect of economic implosion is directly connected. The overarching reality is that the human enterprise is in a state of overshoot.”
