Global Climate Change

• the average weather pattern of a specific area

  Climate
• Earth’s position relative to the Sun is a main driver for long-term climate

  Milankovitch Cycles
• Also responsible to triggering Ice Ages

  Earth’s position relative to the Sun is a main driver for long-term climate
• The Milankovitch cycles include:


  eccentricity, obliquity, precession
• the measure of how our orbit departs away from a perfect circle

  Eccentricity
• This affects the length of seasons in different areas

  Eccentricity
• Earth is nearest to the sun

  Perihelion
• Earth is farthest from the sun

  Aphelion
• Month of aphelion


  July
• Month of Perihelion


  January
• Earth’s journey around the sun is not a perfect circle
• Over time, Jupiter and Saturn causes Earth’s orbit to be elliptical.
• Currently, Earth’s eccentricity is very slowly decreasing and is approaching its least elliptic (most circular), in a cycle that spans about 100,000 years
• The angle earth's axis of rotation is tilted as it travels around the sun


  Obliquity
• Over the last million years, it has varied between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees with respect to Earth’s orbital plane.
• The greater Earth’s axial tilt angle, the more extreme our seasons are.
• Earth’s axis is currently tilted

  23.4 degrees
• This makes seasonal contrasts more extreme in one hemisphere and less extreme in the other.

  Precession
• As Earth rotates, it wobbles slightly upon its rotational axis, like a slightly off-center spinning toy top


  ○ Due to tidal forces.
• Milankovitch Cycles operate separately, but together influence the Earth’s climate over long periods of time
• Combining cycles to model past and future climate conditions

  “Climate Time Machine” model
• Believed to be the most important of the three cycles for climate

  obliquity
• Theoretical foundation of contemporary anthropology.

  Nature-Culture Divide
• “Most world languages do not have a specific word for nature”

  Nature-Culture Divide
• Natural Causes of Climate Change

  Many different causes to climate change

  • Atmospheric (El Niño and La Niña)
  • Change in tilt and orbit around the Sun
  • Impact of large meteorites
  • Plate tectonics
  • Greenhouse gases
• A geological era fully dominated by human activity

   Anthropocene Epoch
• Challenges our relationship with the planet and comes with new responsibilities

   Anthropocene Epoch
• Ability of organisms to adapt to environmental cues through changes in behavior, anatomy, or rate of activity

  Phenotypic Plasticity
• A universal property of living things because all organisms respond to genes and specific environmental cues

  Phenotypic Plasticity
• Organisms now change natural selection pressures in their own selective environments.

  Niche Construction
• An accumulation of information in cultural artifacts or practices of increasing complexity. Variation among species.

  Nature as Culture, Culture as Nature
• Nature being malleable and show of privilege. Nature as something conquerable.

  Anthropocene
• Nature as Culture, Culture as Nature

  • A place vs a space
  • Aesthetics
  • Sacred abode of Gugurang
  • Economic development
• The gap between individuals and access to technology.

  Digital Divide
• Due to socioeconomic status, age, geographic location, and disabilities.

  Digital Divide
• Affects access to information, communication, services, education, commerce, etc.

  Digital Divide
• A substance that causes pollution.

  Pollutant
• Addition of unwanted substances into a natural system.

  Pollution
• Pesticide used in agriculture in the 1970s 


  Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane
•  an environmental science book by Rachel Carson


  Silent Spring