CLIMATE CHANGE: GLOBAL RISK & MANAGEMENT
Introduction
Unprecedented rates of rapid climate & environmental change are now beyond doubt and generate concern amongst the international community, corporations and governments. Global economic and political security depend on the accuracy of scientific predictions of global environmental change, technological capacity to respond and political will to reduce or mitigate their impacts. The 4th Assessment Report of the widely-respected Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 makes abundantly clear our options for reducing our environmental impact and facing the consequences of those already in hand. The 2008 global banking and financial crises may threaten timely action - or boost revolutionary shifts in the way we need to do business.
Virtually all human activities interrupt the operation of Earth's environmental systems and their observed consequences have increased with the size and technical prowess of human populations since later prehistory 10,000 years ago. Their impact on Earth's boundary layer ~ the instable envelope embracing the landsurface, lower atmosphere and oceans on which we and all other biological systems depend for our existence ~ is deliberate in part and inadvertent in others.
So why have global environmental crises arisen now ? What triggered dramatic increases in environmental awareness, placing environmental issues firmly on international agendas ? How can we avoid or mitigate their effects; what will happen if we cannot ? These questions, and expertise to answer them, concern students and practitioners across the socio-economic, political and natural sciences. Future successful Earth management and socio-economic and political stability demand that we understand our environmental impact. Failure by wealthy, hi-tech industrialised nations to respond to environmental impacts of sustained development will raise international tension amongst disadvantaged and marginilised nations.
Academic Aims
The prime aim of the Option is to extend awareness and understanding of key global environmental crises facing the international community to students irrespective of their academic backgrounds. This Option identifies the principal components and dynamics of natural environmental systems and the context of rapid natural climate and environmental changes of the continuing Quaternary “Ice Age”. It then examines ways in which industrial, agricultural and other activities of human societies interrupt their operation, generating environmental disturbance and change. Impacts leave tell-tale signatures so an important early step is to examine and evaluate the nature of surviving evidence for environmental impacts and changes.
Having established these cause-and-effect relationships , we examine several crucial aspects of global environmental crises, with perspectives from British and European Union. This most heavily industrialized and populated zone on Earth ,and its intensive agricultural systems, render it self-sufficient in temperate foods. It also possesses one of the longest continuous records of human occupation since the most recent world-wide glaciation. Much of the origins and consequences of rapid environmental change are found here. The Option may also, from time to time, draw on expertise in Oxford's Centre for the Environment and Environmental Change Institute, and Statutory Authorities in the field of environmental conservation & management in the UK.
Academic Programme
Week 1 : Nature & Context of Earth’s Climate & Environmental Systems
Key Illustrated Lecture : The Landscape legacy of the Late Quaternary Ice Age in Britain
Seminar/Tutorial : Archaeology & Geology ~ environmental detectives. Scientific & documentary evidence of environmental change in the Landscape.
Week 2 : Climate Change : past & present
Key Illustrated Lecture : Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change : Science, Impacts & Mitigations
Seminar/Tutorial : Quaternary cold & temperate stages. Holocene climate ~ the past 10,000 yrs. The Medieval Warm Epoch (c. AD 800-1300) & Little Ice Age (c. AD 1350- 1850).
Week 3 : Global Climate Forecast to AD 2100
Key Illustrated Lecture : IPCC Global climate change forecasts to 2100 AD.
Seminar/Tutorial : “Greenhouse”enhancement. Ocean-Icesheet response. Atmosphere-Ocean circulation.
Week 4 : Landsurface Impacts of Global Climate Change
Seminar : Earth-Atmosphere interactive systems ~ thermal, hydrologic & biospheric regimes & responses.
Tutorial : Sea level change & Coastline Management. Water Resources. Agriculture & the Biosphere. River Management & Slope Instability.
Week 5 : Global Risk : Securing Earth’s Environmental Future
Seminar : Governance of the Environment.
Tutorial : International environmental treaties & protocols. Greenhouse emisions Environmental protection, conservation & management. Sustainable Development.
Preliminary Reading
General texts, intended as useful introductions and background. Students undoubtedly benefit from some reading prior to arrival in Oxford, when more detailed lists accompany Tutorial essay titles are distributed.
- Smithson, P., Addison, K. & Atkinson, K., 2008, Fundamentals of the Physical Environment, (4th Edtn.) Routledge, (ISBN to be allocated)
- IPCC, 2007: Climate Change 2007: 4th Assessment Report. Working Groups I, II & III Intergovernmental Panel on
- Maslin, M., 2004, Global Warming : A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (ISBN 0-19-284097-5)
- Peake, S. & Smith J., 2009, Climate Change: From science to sustainability, (2nd Edtdn.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. (ISBN 978-0-19-956832-1)
- Stern, N. 2009, A Blueprint for a Safet Planet: How to Manage Climate Change, London: The Bodley Head. (ISBN 97818-47920-386)