This blog may help people explore some of the 'hidden' issues involved in certain media treatments of environmental and scientific issues. Using personal digital images, it's also intended to emphasise seasonal (and other) changes in natural history of the Swansea (South Wales) area. The material should help participants in field-based modules and people generally interested in the natural world. The views are wholly those of the author.
Thursday, 30 November 2023
Vicious!
Environments depend on interactions between their living (biotic) and non-living (abiotic) components. Major changes in one component, has repercussions throughout the 'arrangements'. Humans are far from being independent entities, outside their environments. Phoebe Weston clearly illustrates how the natural world is currently caught in a vicious cycle (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/29/10-ways-in-which-climate-crisis-and-nature-are-linked-aoe). Human-generated 'greenhouse gas' emissions, have intensified global heating. That temperature elevation (which largely started with the burning of fossil fuels in England's Industrial Revolution), has increased the incidence of extreme weather events (like storms, droughts and floods). These events and their consequences (such as wildfires) destroy natural habitats and their associated wildlife. Functioning terrestrial (e.g. forests) and marine (e.g. the deep sea) locations, are crucial 'carbon sinks'. These carbon sinks, store emissions, often for extended periods. Impairing those sinks, allows more climate-changing emissions to remain in the atmosphere. This drives further global heating, increasing the frequency and intensities of extreme weather events. This further destroys natural habitats, making their carbon sinks even less effective and so on, ad infinitum.
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