Planetary Climate Change Research Articles

A Common World is Possible: Maritain, Pope Francis and the Future of Global Governance

From planetary climate change to the COVID pandemic, the human family is faced with urgent challenges that transcend the borders of the traditional nation state. Here, the Catholic moral tradition, as embodied in different ways by the writings of Jacques Maritain and Pope Francis, offers constructive insights as to how the global political landscape should be organized. In the wake of the Second World War and the advent of the nuclear age, Jacques Maritain proposed a political philosophy for the future creation of a world state. Six decades later, Pope Francis offers a more pastoral argument for a more just, equitable, and fraternal world order. This paper examines the visions of global governance advocated by both Maritain and Pope Francis. Drawing from both figures, this paper identifies five key values that might guide the mobilization of the Catholic community as it works for a more just and common world order: a universal solidaristic vision centered on the human person that affirms the value of pluralism, a multi-layered structure of global governance, and bottom-up change through participation. Together, these values offer ethical guideposts as the international community considers how to reform the present system of global governance, including the United Nations system.

ЭКОЛОГИЯЛЫҚ БІЛІМ БЕРУДІ ДАМЫТУДЫҢ АЛҒЫ ШАРТТАРЫ

An important feature of our time is acute global regional and local environmentalcrisis . The destruction of the ozone layer in the Earth’s atmosphere, the Earth’s planetary climate change, progressive erosion and soil desertification, the decline of humid tropical forests, widespread pollution of the World Ocean and surface waters, the continuous increase in the population in the universe, the constant growth of poverty and hunger, many other global environmental manifestations are a reflection of the crisis of our time. And this is a clear proof that today’s people are in poor contact with nature. In order to avoid this environmental crisis, the prerequisites for the development of environmental education have been developed.

CLIMATIC FACTORS CHARACTERIZING THE MOISTURE SUPPLY OF THE TERRITORY AND THEIR EFFECT ON THE QUALITY INDICATORS OF GRAPES

The study of scientific problem, to which this research is devoted, is due to planetary climate change, manifested in an increase in the average annual air temperature, rapid changes in winter and summer temperatures, and a lack of precipitation.
 For today, there is a serious problem of adapting plants to climate change due to an increase in water deficiency in many regions of the world. Climate change creates significant uncertainty in the potential adaptability of grape plants, as well as in the prospects for viticulture development in general.
 The study and generalization of territorial distribution of climatic factors that characterize a particular region, as well as their effect on the quality characteristics of raw materials and finished products, are attractive from the point of better understanding and forecasting the potential impact on agricultural systems. The obtained data consumption will allow improving the forecast of climate change consequences in the medium term, and in relation to particular terroirs.
 The goal is to study the effect of climatic factors that characterize the moisture supply of the territory on the quality indicators of grapes.
 Materials and methods. The objects of the study were grapes of white and red cultivars, different in agroecological aspect, and growing in micro regions of Crimea. To identify the effect of factors characterizing the moisture supply of the territory on the quality indicators of raw materials for winemaking products, the amount of precipitation from the beginning of growing season to the harvesting, the amount of precipitation for the last month before harvest, and hydrothermal coefficient of Selyaninov were selected. The assessment of grapes was carried out according to the indicators of carbohydrate-acid complex (mass concentration of sugars, titratable acids, pH value, profile of organic acids), as well as the glucoacidimetric indicator revealing the degree of grape ripeness.
 Results and conclusion. Climatic factors characterizing the moisture supply of viticultural and winemaking regions of Crimea were assessed. The studies carried out made it possible to reveal variations in the concentration of carbohydrate-acid complex components depending on the changing ability of environmental factors. A significant precipitation deficiency was observed on the Peninsula. According to the value of hydrothermal coefficient of Selyaninov (did not exceed 1), most of the territory was classified as an arid or very arid zone. A correlation between the hydrothermal coefficient and mass concentration of grape sugars (r=-0.63) was established for red grapevine cultivars. The data obtained indicate that an increase in the amount of precipitation during growing season contributes to a moderation of sugar accumulation in grapes. Similar pattern was not established for white grapevine cultivars. There was a direct correlation of the mass concentration of malic acid on the amount of precipitation in the last month before harvest (r=0.78).

Climate Collections and Photosynthetic, Fossil-Fueled Atmospheres

Historical, cultural, and technological collections are routinely put to work to illustrate narratives of progress, history, and identity. They can also convey new stories that articulate how cultural objects might serve as material expressions of climate change embedded in climate processes. This article considers the oldest surviving largely unaltered Boulton and Watt rotative engine, housed in the collection of the Science Museum, London, as an example to examine how objects are at once the material expression of carbon economies and cultures that have generated them and the material archives of the climate histories in which they are enmeshed. It draws on insights from the environmental humanities and the critical posthumanities and augments these with other knowledge practices from the biogeochemical sciences. Specifically, it utilizes stable carbon dating, whose methods provide the opportunity to locate particular cultural objects in relation to the deep time of planetary climate change. In doing so this paper develops the proposition that, articulated as such, these objects are complex climatic ecological compositions, and so understood, they can serve as cultural carbon mitigation strategies that occasion possibilities of new material and climatic attunement that can complement climate mitigation policies and programs. This proposition is trialed in relation to Object No. 1861-46—the Boulton and Watt “Lap” engine.

Tęsknię za tobą, Turze

We live in a time of planetary climate change. One of its elements is the sixth great extinction of species. The article talks about how difficult the relationship between humans and nature is in these times, citing the examples of three species from the Bovidae: the cow, the aurochs, and the bison. Critical issues of nature conservation in the Anthropocene are presented: restoration of extinct species, wildness, and capacity of ecosystems. Combining elements of scholarly discussion with artistic speculation, this article is an extensive story about the need to recognize the subjectivity of non-human beings for understanding current ecological problems. The readers are invited to participate in five speculative journeys with the Last Female Aurochs, and the guide is Golem – an open interpretive figure, a contribution to reflections on advancement, decline, and the struggle to reverse the world order. Key-words: Anthropocene, wildness, species, golem, breeding, conservation, subjectivity, population, reintroduction, speculation, female aurochs, extinction, dependence, savagery

The role of architects in initiating, sustaining and defending urban commons in mass housing estates: R-Urban in Grand Ensembles

This paper addresses aspects concerning the emergence of urban commons in mass housing estates in France. At a critical moment of societal crisis due to resources depletion and planetary Climate Change, urban commons can contribute and offer solutions to the complex process of transition towards more resilient forms of governance at different scales. In the context of mass housing estates built five decades ago, enabling the emergence of commons can be a resilient alternative to the current urban regeneration approaches. This process needs agencies and actors, and architects can play an important role. In order to provide an example in this sense, we take the case of R-Urban, a project initiated by atelier d'architecture autogérée as a commons-based network of civic resilience implemented in Parisian suburbs. The network consists of resilience hubs located in mass housing estates, which are collectively managed by inhabitants. The hubs function as forms of urban commons, constituting an alternative to the publicly funded équipments collectifs of the Grand Ensembles, the major mass housing program of a welfare government that started in the late 1950s and 1960s. As opposed to these équipments, the R-Urban hubs are self-managed, being run and funded mainly with civic contribution. The architects are not anymore top-down experts commissioned by the State, but have successively acted as initiators, designers, and co-managers of the project, sustaining the emergence of those urban commons through diverse local alliances. However, in a political context in which the welfare principles have been replaced by market principles (often sustained by the State), keeping this role for architects is a challenge.

Ecocide, the Anthropocene, and the International Criminal Court

AbstractThe recent proposal by the Independent Expert Panel of the Stop Ecocide initiative to include the crime of ecocide in the International Criminal Court's Rome Statute has raised expectations for preventing and remedying severe environmental harm through international prosecution. As alluring as this image is, we argue that ecocide prosecutions may be the most difficult, perhaps even impossible, in precisely the cases that the ICC would need to be concerned with; namely, the gravest global incidents of environmental harm, including those associated with planetary climate change. We explore a series of questions about the panel's formulation of ecocide that resonate with longer debates around criminalizing environmental harm but take on new dimensions amid the Anthropocene and after twenty years of ICC trials. Ecocide must contend with the hard lessons learned concerning the ICC's limitations in realizing justice in a fraught international political context and also with fundamental challenges to knowledge and legitimacy arising from the uncertainty and dynamic socioenvironmental context of the Anthropocene. The proposed amendment, if adopted, risks ineffective prosecutions or even perverse outcomes for the environment itself. This risk, however, may characterize any effort to prosecute ecocide internationally in the Anthropocene unless the terms of international criminal law are fundamentally rethought.

Storing carbon or growing forests?

Forest managers should promote the long-term growth of forests rather than maximize their short-term accumulation of carbon. Contemporary economic and political interests favor rapidly storing carbon in global forests. Against this background, forest managers are expected to contribute to mitigating planetary climate change by sharply increase forest carbon stocks. Building up the global forest growing stock too rapidly ignores the long-term cycles that govern forest growth dynamics. A further flaw in the strategy stems from the fact that anticipated changes in future climate argue against indiscriminately maximizing the carbon stock over the next two or three decades.4 A range of forest practices from planting site specific species to more comprehensive landscape management offer a path to better long-term forest growth. We claim that past climate policies have taken a narrow view that favors rapidly accumulating forest carbon stocks to the detriment of management options that focus on improving long term forest growth and ecosystem health.

Politicizing Anthropocene Poetry: Reading Provincialization of Anthropocene and Planetary Shift in Climate through a Comparative Analysis of Anthropocene Blues by John Lane and Anthropocene by Sudeep Sen

ABSTRACT Dipesh Chakraborty and Kathleen D Morrison engage in provincializing the Anthropocene to decenter the grasp of the idea that Anthropocene is an outcome of European industrial phase that enhanced socio-economic growth worldwide, thereby revealing the other causes for the culmination of the era of Anthropocene, offering a space to other cultural histories and Anthropogenic pursuits by non-European societies responsible for climate change. Local episodes of altered weather patterns and adversities when compared, they assist in conceiving the shift in the climate of Earth because of inclusivity of experiences across boundaries, giving importance to the planet that constitutes life. This paper is a comparative study of two poetry collections, Anthropocene Blues (2017) by John Lane and Anthropocene (2021) by Sudeep Sen to ascertain how these poets, belonging to two different continents represent the Anthropocene and deal with its provincialization through their poems. Through an analogical framework, this paper deliberates that how provincialization of Anthropocene facilitates a link to gain a panoramic view of the planet towards the realization of a planetary climate change.

Rational Use of Fresh Water as a Guarantee of Agribusiness Development in the Context of the Exacerbated Climate Crisis

Introduction. The global problem of the 21st century is general planetary climate change whose direct consequences are significant warming as well as increasing water shortage and desertification of territories, which together has a merciless impact on agriculture and, subsequently, on the development of agricultural business.Problem Statement. The rational use of fresh water and water supply for agribusiness in arid, dry, and very dry regions of Ukraine, as well as the determination of the priority vectors of its adaptation to climate change, which ensure water and food security of future generations and the environment preservation are the problems tobe discussed in this publication.Purpose. The purpose of this research is determining the rational use of fresh water based on the study of foreign experience, the vectors of adaptation of agribusiness to climate change, and the strategy and tactics of its water supply in medium- and long-term horizons.Materials and Methods. In the course of the research, we have used the following methods: the economic and mathematical modelling, while determining the dependence of water use for irrigation on the average monthly air temperature and the average monthly precipitation; forecasting, for determining the volume of water use for irrigation under the condition of modernization of irrigation technologies; the method of analogies, while studying the foreign experience and the possibility of its implementation in domestic practice; monograph, for presenting the research results; abstract and logical methods, for generalizing and formulating conclusions.Results. The priority vectors of agribusiness adaptation to climate change in the regions of the steppe zone of Ukraine have been determined.Conclusions. The study of foreign experience in the rational use of fresh water has enabled us to determine the priority vectors of adaptation of agribusiness to climate change, and hence the strategy and tactics of its water supply on medium- and long-time horizons.

Декарбонизация нефтегазового комплекса: приоритеты и организационные модели развития.

Among the current priorities for the development of the Russian oil and gas complex, which determine its competitiveness in the international hydrocarbon market, are its capabilities and the pace of its decarbonization. The development of decarbonization processes at the present requires the solution of a number of scientific, methodological and applied problems. Based on the results of a review of modern domestic and foreign approaches, methodological provisions are substantiated that determine the content and structure of the decarbonization category in the oil and gas complex. Decarbonization in the world economy system is defined as a systemic response to planetary climate change. In the system of the national economy (energy) — as a long-term socio-economic trend (pattern) of reducing the carbon intensity of GDP. In the system of the oil and gas complex — as a systemic process of its transformation in the national energy sector. In the system of industry management — as a process of complex, interconnected use of diverse (including fundamentally new) methods of solutions and technologies from various industries and fields of knowledge. Based on a systematic analysis of the problem field, the strategic goals and priorities for the development of the oil and gas complex have been clarified within the framework of the low-carbon development paradigm in the global energy system. The methods and tools of existing and being in the development and approval legislative documents have been studied. We proposed an approach to the formation of organizational and economic mechanisms that ensure the effective and sustainable development of the oil and gas complex in the context of decarbonization.

Acoustic study of the influence of climate change on the propagation of noise generated by industrial units in real-time: by an industrial zone in Algeria

The industrial revolution in the field of gas and oil treatment that has known the Oran region-Algeria-has participated in the production and propagation of noise pollution and loud noises on the environment and around the places residential, for this, a multitude of noises are now part of our daily life. This contribution concerns the propagation of noise pollution in the industrial environment and the effects caused by atmospheric pollution which has a great influence on the phenomenon of planetary climate change and on meteorological parameters, the latter having a great influence on the propagation of noise. Our study is part of the objective of evaluating the noise levels emitted by gas installations in the industrial zone of ArzewOran, and of seeing the effects of the variation of meteorological parameters on the propagation of noise. To do this, we have adopted a precise in-situ methodology. Subsequently, for the processing of the measurement results, we opted for the COD-TYMPAN software in real-time as a calculation tool to interpret our results

Scripting climate futures: The geographical assumptions of climate planning

Since 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the global governing apparatus of climate planning, has privileged the sovereignty of territorial states. Contemporary political geographical scholarship has since called into question the coherency of the state as a unitary entity and as the sole legitimate arbiter of international politics. This article extends these contributions to planetary climate change adaptation. Through discourse analysis and the multi-scalar institutional and political history of climate planning, this article examines how normative discursive parameters enact prevailing political dynamics that script material futures. Drawing on recent climate planning reports of Palestine and Israel, this article investigates how state discourses operate within an asymmetric geopolitical context where issues of territoriality, sovereignty, and statecraft remain fractured and contested. Climate planning in Israel/Palestine exposes two key institutional constraints of climate governance. First, technical-managerial principles prescribe ahistorical adaptation measures that inadequately address inherently political constraints. Second, the elision of political-economic and historical-cultural contingencies in favor of a universalizing geophysical representation of climate change elides the systemic production of differentiated vulnerability. Consequential of an anachronistic politics of recognition within the UNFCCC, the conditions of climate governance may ultimately embolden the asymmetric status quo. I conclude by highlighting the spatial manifestations (both material and symbolic) of Israeli sovereign violence and the chronic indeterminacy of Palestinian territoriality produced by discursive climate futures.

A Plea for Global Health Action Bottom-Up.

This opinion piece focuses on global health action by hands-on bottom-up practice: initiation of an organizational framework and securing financial efficiency are – however – essential, both clearly a domain of well-trained public health professionals. Examples of action are cited in the four main areas of global threats: planetary climate change, global divides and inequity, global insecurity and violent conflicts, and global instability and financial crises. In conclusion, a stable health systems policy framework would greatly enhance success. However, such organizational framework dries out if not linked to public debates channeling fresh thoughts and controversial proposals: the structural stabilization is essential but has to serve not to dominate bottom-up activities. In other words, a horizontal management is required, a balanced equilibrium between bottom-up initiative and top-down support. Last but not least, rewarding voluntary and charity work by public acknowledgment is essential.

Rethinking the Society of the Spectacle: Natural Security, the Coming Ecologies of War, and the Critical Inquiry of William V. Spanos

This essay situates the critical work of William V. Spanos in relation to the liminal event of anthropocentric planetary climate change—specifically the manner in which this event is being subordinated to military ends by the US national security state in particular and the global security society in general. In recent years, Spanos has emphasized the importance of Giorgio Agamben’s meditations on the “state of exception,” particularly in relation to the suspension of the political (in Jacques Rancière’s sense of the term) after 9/11. Emphasizing Agamben’s Heideggerian lineage has led Spanos most recently to reconsider the sublime and its symptomatic supplementation by the American political imperative and public ardor for “shock and awe.” This supplanting of the sublime with the spectacle of immense power has begun to extend beyond its initial orchestration (the George W. Bush administration’s adoption of preemptive war and normalization of exceptional forms of security) to the site of the ecological predicament of global warming. This extension involves the annulment of the de-structive potentials of the sublime through the strategic deployment and normalization of anxiety-producing spectacles that unhinge both the beautiful and the sublime from their respective categorical and noncategorical conceptualizations. This contradictory unhinged space is an asphyxiating existence that replaces the possibility of radical transcendence with increasing and supposedly natural cascading forms of security—what this article refers to as “environmentality.” The essay examines how this suspended state has begun to seek a logical justification for its existence within the “natural” world in the new discipline of “natural security”—a field that transforms the exceptional “necessity” of the “War on Terror” into the organic truth of life itself.

Rationality and rupture

Abstract Any thought which is true to the contemporary must, seemingly, recognize the complex ecologies of human and non-human assemblages, algorithms, data structures, planetary climate change and so on. In this setting, it is unsurprising that there has been a recent shift towards consideration of basic questions of ontology and epistemology in order to attempt some traction on this terrain. In much of this, however, we find a constructed caricature of both reason and intuition, in which reason is reduced to the algorithmic by means of a recursively axiomatized formal system for the enumeration of all truths in a structure. Here, I suggest that this is a poor shadow of rationality that is rooted in a static, classical ‘image of thought’, and that many attempts to construct a category in excess of reason end up with an ossification and metastatization of intuition at the loss of any criticality and epistemic mediation. This article provides an attempt to undermine these views from within the caricature itself. In so doing, we consider a form of rationality capable of gaining traction on the shifting sands of the quasi-transcendental structure of experience, through the rehabilitation of abstraction as a process of navigational dialogue and transformation.

Comprehensive analysis of glaciated martian crater Greg

The 66-km diameter martian crater, Greg, east of Hellas, hosts various distinctive features, including dendritic valleys filled with chevron-textured masses (south wall), and lobate tongues a few kilometers long (north wall). We analyze these features by various quantitative techniques to illuminate martian geologic and climatic history. Crater retention model ages indicate that Greg is at least 1–3Gy old, but surface layers of mantles and glacial features are orders of magnitude younger. Properties of the dendritic valleys, combined with climate models, suggest that fluvial activity began under a thicker, warmer atmosphere, soon after the crater’s formation. The oldest exposed fluvial systems have surface crater retention ages of a few hundred My, indicating runoff in recent geologic time. Much of Greg is covered by ice-rich mantle deposits, for which we infer gradual accumulation and depths of order 30–85m; they mask pre-existing landforms. The lobate tongues are interpreted as glaciers with mean slope of 10.2±2.3° and average thickness of 33±19m. Our calculations and data suggest that these glaciers were originally ice-rich and that their surface layers have been depleted by volatile loss. The glaciers probably formed when ice-rich mantle deposits reached critical thickness and flowed downhill. The top 5–10m of the mantle and glaciers show crater survival times of order a few My to ∼15My, which, remarkably, is the time since the last 1–4 episodes of obliquity >45°. Global climate models affirm that Greg lies in one of two non-polar areas with extremes of ice deposition during high-obliquity epochs. This match with observations supports the use of such models in studies of planetary climate change.

“Species” Radiations of Symbiotic Dinoflagellates in the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific Since the Miocene-Pliocene Transition

Endosymbiotic dinoflagellates, or "zooxanthellae," are required for the survival of a diverse community of invertebrates that construct and dominate shallow, tropical coral reef ecosystems. Molecular systematics applied to this once understudied symbiont partner, Symbiodinium spp., divide the group into divergent lineages or subgeneric "clades." Within each clade, numerous closely related "types," or species, exhibit distinctive host taxon, geographic, and/or environmental distributions. This diversity is greatest in clade C, which dominates the Indo-Pacific host fauna and shares dominance in the Atlantic-Caribbean with clade B. Two "living" ancestors in this group, C1 and C3, are common to both the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic-Caribbean. With these exceptions, each ocean possesses a diverse clade C assemblage that appears to have independently evolved (adaptively radiated) through host specialization and allopatric differentiation. This phylogeographic evidence suggests that a worldwide selective sweep of C1/C3, or their progenitor, must have occurred before both oceans separated. The probable timing of this event corresponds with the major climactic changes and low CO(2) levels of the late Miocene and/or early Pliocene. Subsequent bursts of diversification have proceeded in each ocean since this transition. An ecoevolutionary expansion to numerous and taxonomically diverse hosts by a select host-generalist symbiont followed by the onset of rapid diversification suggests a radical process through which coral-algal symbioses respond and persist through the vicissitudes of planetary climate change.

The Cambridge atlas of astronomy

This new edition is an unrivalled source of information and images covering the whole of modern astronomy. Its 130 articles written by experts form an absorbing panorama of information arranged by topic. Almost every page of the Atlas is richly illustrated with colour photographs, maps, and detailed diagrams. This reference book commences with a survey of the Sun and the solar system, followed by the stars and the Galaxy, and concludes with the extragalactic universe and cosmology. For this edition there are entirely new sections on the planets Venus, Neptune and Pluto, solar system debris, black holes and collapsed stars, active galaxies, galaxy clusters and cosmology. Many photographs have been replaced by improved images from modern telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope. An elaborate 24-page glossary and index has been added to increase the ease with which this sumptuous and lavish encyclopedia can be used for quick reference. There are substantial changes throughout the section on the Solar System. The material on Venus is re-written, to take account of the spectacular Magellan mission. The Mars chapter now includes the Phobos results. In the outer solar system new results on the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn are included, as well as new photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope. There is also a new chapter on planetary climate change. The section on stars and the Galaxy now includes chapters on astrometry and protoplanetary systems, as well as many modifications to the existing texts on evolved stars.

The Cambridge atlas of astronomy

This new edition is an unrivalled source of information and images covering the whole of modern astronomy. Its 130 articles written by experts form an absorbing panorama of information arranged by topic. Almost every page of the Atlas is richly illustrated with colour photographs, maps, and detailed diagrams. This reference book commences with a survey of the Sun and the solar system, followed by the stars and the Galaxy, and concludes with the extragalactic universe and cosmology. For this edition there are entirely new sections on the planets Venus, Neptune and Pluto, solar system debris, black holes and collapsed stars, active galaxies, galaxy clusters and cosmology. Many photographs have been replaced by improved images from modern telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope. An elaborate 24-page glossary and index has been added to increase the ease with which this sumptuous and lavish encyclopedia can be used for quick reference. There are substantial changes throughout the section on the Solar System. The material on Venus is re-written, to take account of the spectacular Magellan mission. The Mars chapter now includes the Phobos results. In the outer solar system new results on the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn are included, as well as new photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope. There is also a new chapter on planetary climate change. The section on stars and the Galaxy now includes chapters on astrometry and protoplanetary systems, as well as many modifications to the existing texts on evolved stars.