Future issues of climate change

• 3 reasons why future emissions, atmospheric concentration and climate warming are uncertain?

  • Natural Factors
  • Human Factors
  • Feedback Mechanisms
• Natural factors are the role of carbon sinks like terrestrial sinks and ocean sinks which can both increase carbon in the atmosphere
• Human factors include economic growth, population and energy
• example of positive feedback loop is peatlands and permafrost thawing which releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere
• 4 types of adaptation strategies to climate change are?

  • Water conservation management
  • Resilient agricultural systems
  • Land use planning and flood risk management
  • Solar radiation management
• 5 types of mitigation strategies are carbon taxation, energy efficiency, afforestation, renewable switching and carbon capture storage
• carbon taxation is governments charging businesses for their carbon emissions or for distances travelled for their building materials. some countries older cars are taxed more e.g. UK

  an advantage is greater economic benefits for government

  a disadvantage is its hard to reach agreements e.g. Kyoto agreements in 2015
• afforestation is restoring degraded forests

  an advantage is it deals and addresses all the problems with the degradation of carbon cycle

  a disadvantage is the effects wont be felt now and is long term
• flood risk management is using hard and soft engineering techniques to deal with floods

  an advantage is they have an immediate effect

  a disadvantage is there don't cover all problems with degradation of carbon cycle like ocean acidification
• resilient agricultural systems is using smart irrigation and planting crops that are genetically drought resistant

  an advantage of this is it may be only option for those that cant afford the mitigation techniques

  a disadvantage is if the rate of climate change is too fast it will struggle to address the problems posed