Environment
Understanding Climate : #3 - Tilting At Seasons
The tilt of the earth's axis gives us our seasons.
But not in an obvious way.
Understanding climate science requires a cross-disciplinary approach. This is the second part of the mainly astronomical section. In
part 2, I introduced the idea of, in a manner of speaking, building a model of our earth-moon-sun system. Here I continue with a discussion of seasons and their primary astronomical causes.
Global meat production has tripled in the past three decades and could double its present level by 2050, according to a new report on the livestock industry by an international team of scientists and policy experts led by Standford University.
If not addressed, the impact of this 'livestock revolution' is likely to have significant consequences for human health, the environment and the global economy.
"First of all, FACT agrees that many unsubstantiated claims have been made on jatropha, such as high yields on marginal soils, low water and nutrient requirements, and high resistance to pests and diseases. These claims have already been falsified some years ago2 but it seems difficult to convince all practitioners and policy makers of the facts. Despite the slowly increasing body of knowledge on jatropha cultivation methods, the agronomy of the plant is still largely unknown, and the risks of disappointing yields are substantial.
Understanding Climate : #2 - Earth Air Water Fire
Climate science is a cross-disciplinary study.
I have listed some of the disciplines in
Understanding Climate : #1 - Components Of Climate and have hinted at others in
Mother Earth Cycles To Work.
In this article I shall introduce some astronomical scale inputs to our global climate system. I shall be developing the ideas in what I hope will be easily digested chunks.
This is the first chunk of the astronomy section.
Understanding Climate : #1 - Components Of Climate
The difference between weather and climate
Weather is what you see every day: whatever the sky is doing, that is your local weather. Sun, rain, hail, snow, thunder and lightning - all these are weather. Fluffy white clouds, thunderheads, tornados, hurricanes - all are weather.
Wherever you live in the world you can pretty much guess what sort of weather you will get season by season and what weather you won't get. The range of your local weather throughout the year doesn't change much from year to year. If you live in one region, snow may be common - in another region snow may be unheard of.
"Renewable fuels got a "bit ahead of themselves in the public eye in 2008 when gasoline was over $4 a gallon and the race to biofuels was on," said Chris Kraft, president of Nashville, Tenn.-based CKFutures.com. "High fossil fuels lead to high demand for ethanol, which lead to historically high grain prices, which made ethanol as expensive as gasoline." <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
When I was child my mother used to worship BARGAD i.e. Ficus bengalensis and PEEPAL i.e. Ficus religiosa on a particular day in month of June calling Badmawas i.e. dark moon day falling in summer. BOTH THE TREES HAVE LIVES OF OVER SEVERAL HUNDRED YEARS.
We have to find a tree to worship it The idea was to grow this tree which will protect the people.
It was sin to cut the twigs of Ficus religiosa.
A festival in winter time was to worship AMLA i.e Phyllanthus emblica
Lord Shiva has to be worshiped with leaves of Belpatra Balanites aegyptiaca. and Datura stramonium fruits, and Calotropis procera flowers besides others.
Women in rural India spend hours together traversing vast tracts of hilly terrain to collect the firewood for household leaving their family and children at home. Some times there is "Pakad" i.e. Forest Officials detain them and fine them Rs 2100 as they nerrated. Besides facing the hazards to wild life and human beings praying on lonely women in woods they face the smoke and closed door cooking in dingy houses without the smoke outlet their kids are also exposed to high dosages of smoke.
Amazon rain forests were unaffected by a major drought in 2005, neither dying nor thriving, contrary to a previously published report and claims made the by the IPCC, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters.
"We found no big differences in the greenness level of these forests between drought and non-drought years, which suggests that these forests may be more tolerant of droughts than we previously thought," said Arindam Samanta, the study's lead author from Boston University.
Mother Earth Cycles To Work
Anthropogenic global warming.
AGW
Human-caused warming.
Call it what you will: is it real?
In short: can humans modify Earth's climate?
There are two major views on this question:
1 - human emissions of CO2 cause global warming.
2 - global warming is part of a natural cycle.
I suggest that neither view is sufficiently correct because the underlying suppositions and simplifications are false.
The Earth's dynamic systems are many. They are complex in and of themselves. They do not act in isolation, but interact amongst themselves.
Accordingly, one might ask:
