Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Sustainability
-capacity to maintain a certain process/state
-attempt to meet needs of present without compromising the future 
-use of natures resources at a rate at which they can be replenished naturally**
-maintain Earth's finite limits
-very general concept, presents difficulty when defining

"Green"
-environmentalism; philosophy and social movement
-concern for conservation, sustainability, and improvement of human treatment of the environment
-concern for nature itself + state of civilization
-treating nature with greater respect

Climate Change
-long term/significant change in average weather, atmosphere
-changes in average wind patterns, precipitation, temp, etc.
-can occur over millions of years typically, but can be facilitated by others circumstances to change in hundreds of years (extremely short period of time in relative terms)
-can occur from sunlight intensity
-recent issue-civilization's impact on change
-sometimes referred to as global warming in present age
-Non-climate factors contributing to climate change include: amounts of CO2, plate tectonics,  solar variation, orbital variations, and volcanism
-Human influence-fossil fuels, aerosols, land use, livestock,etc.

Concept of Energy
-different methods to power our world

1 comment:

Larry said...

Nice work in identifying the highlights of the terms and concepts for this week.
Keep building on your writing to develop a more detailed understanding. Also, accumulate references that you can cite in your writing.