Hans Joachim Schellnhuber has won this year’s Volvo environmental prize for his contributions to earth system science and policy. Resilience science has mentioned his work previously, especially his work on tipping points in the earth system. The prize committee writes: One of the most exciting, relevant and rapidly growing areas of environmental research is Earth […]
I just argued the human role in the Anthropocene with Will Steffen at the 2011 Nobel Laureate Symposium in Stockholm. In a mock court, in front of a jury of Nobelists, I successfully argued that: 1) Humanity has pushed the Earth out of the Holocene epoch, but 4) Humanity can prosper, in the Anthropocene 2) […]
Four interesting new papers – Parks & Poverty, Pleistocene extinctions, Evosystem services, and making better assessments 1) Parks can help local people. Protected areas reduced poverty in surrounding areas in Costa Rica and Thailand by K.S. Andam and other in PNAS (doi:/10.1073/pnas.0914177107) 2) Evidence for a long Anthropocene. Pleistocene extinctions of mega-herbivores may have lead […]
Erle Ellis, whom has mapped the world’s anthromes, writes an provocative editorial in Wired about what environmentalism means in the Anthopocene. In Stop Trying to Save the Planet he proposes a “postnatural” environmentalism: Nature is gone. It was gone before you were born, before your parents were born, before the pilgrims arrived, before the pyramids […]
Another image showing the ecological destruction of the Aral Sea. From EO Newsroom: This natural-color satellite image shows the Aral Sea on August 16, 2008. The colored contour lines show the approximate shorelines of the sea since 2000. The image is from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. The contour lines […]
Fredrik Moberg at Albaeco has set up an English version of the website for Swedish TV’s The Planet a series of four programs about Global Environmental Change. The website provides articles, animations, and videos to illustrate the processes involved in global environmenal change. It is in Flash – which is a bit annoying for linking […]