In the past years it has not been known if Canada should ratify and implement the provisions of the Kyoto Protocol. This idea was brought together during the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro

In the past years it has not been known if Canada should ratify and implement the provisions of the Kyoto Protocol. This idea was brought together during the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, where Canada and 36 other countries entered in a voluntary agreement to reduce the level of greenhouse gases, an invisible gas that traps heat from the sun and creates warmer temperatures. Scientific evidence has shown that air pollution is a local problem with global consequences. Air pollution can be justified by society's lack of knowledge of what is to happen in the future and by lack of scientific ability to reduce non-acceptable emission levels of certain highly dangerous chemicals. However, with modern day science there are warnings and also air pollution, which in terms of greenhouse gases provides us with the scientific means to reduce these emissions. Where is the justification for any country, government or individual to continue to produce unacceptable high emission levels of these dangerous gases? It is the responsibility of all countries and governments to ensure that they reduce or maintain an acceptable level of emissions. In the future they will be able to enjoy an environment that is not threatened by a large-scale production of greenhouse gases. Ratifying Kyoto is important for Canada, in part to protect its reputation as an environmentally responsible nation.

  • Word count: 2558
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Geography
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Emerging Chemical Contaminants: The Case of Perfluorochemicals

Emerging Chemical Contaminants: The Case of Perfluorochemicals Introduction In recent times, an emerging class of global contaminant, the perfluorochemicals (PFCs), has been the subject of immense worldwide investigation. PFCs are a class of organohalogens in which the compound is fully saturated with fluorines. The unique physical and chemical properties of PFCs are of value in industry and commerce. Since the 1950's sulfonated and carboxylated PFCs have been used in a wide variety industrial, commercial and consumer applications. Furthermore, these compounds are metabolically and photochemically inert, resisting both biotic and biotic degradation (Giesy & Kannan 2002). As a consequence, perfluorooctanesulfonate (PFOS) and related perfluorinated carboxylic acids (PFCAs) were recently found to be bioaccumulative, global contaminants of environmental and biological matrices (Giesy & Kannan 2001), including trace level concentrations in the human population (Olsen et al. 2003a; Olsen et al. 2003b). Furthermore, scientific findings suggest that many PFCs exhibit a range of toxicological effects, potentially posing public health concerns. Observed toxicological effects of sulfonated and carboxylated PFC exposure on laboratory animals suggest potential developmental, reproductive, and systemic toxicity (OECD 2002; Seacat et al. 2002; Seacat et al. 2003). Furthermore,

  • Word count: 3916
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Geography
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Evaluate the impact of deforestation in Indonesia.

Evaluate the impact of deforestation in Indonesia. Deforestation is a major global problem with serious consequences to the planet. These consequences have negative effects on the climate, biodiversity, the atmosphere, and threatens the cultural and physical survival of indigenous peoples. Effects of deforestation are too great to continue destroying the forests. Indonesia is the largest archipelago in the world with over 3000 islands including Borneo, Java and Sumatra. The islands lie on or close to the Equator. The climate is equatorial - hot and wet - and the typical vegetation is tropical rainforest giving Indonesia the name of the "Amazon of south-east Asia", there is a total forest area of more than 225 000 000 acres. Indonesia has 10% of the world's tropical rainforest; of this 61% is lowland evergreen broadleaf rainforest. However rapid deforestation is a major problem for this country. The estimated rates of deforestation in Indonesia have risen dramatically from 300 000 hectares per year in the 1970's to 1 million hectares per year in the 1990's. 72% of its original frontier forest has already been lost, and half of what remains is currently threatened. The main causes of deforestation are the subject of much debate in Indonesia. Many think the main causes are the role of the government, its development projects and the commercial logging companies. Others see

  • Word count: 1953
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Geography
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ANALYSE the biophysical interactions that contribute to the unique characteristics of intertidal wetlands and EXPLAIN the impact of humans on the intertidal wetlands

Year 12 GEOGRAPHY Assessment Task Ecosystems At Risk Case Study Task 2: Using the notes, the textbook, class notes and other sources complete the following question: ANALYSE the biophysical interactions that contribute to the unique characteristics of intertidal wetlands and EXPLAIN the impact of humans on the intertidal wetlands. The biophysical interactions that contribute to the unique characteristics of intertidal wetlands will be discussed below as well as geographical termination, and the impact of humans on the intertidal wetlands. The biophysical environment is made up of four components: Atmosphere: The interactions of the atmosphere with other spheres in the intertidal wetlands include, but are not limited to, the hydrosphere's contribution via high humidity levels; the lithosphere's soil profile contributing to the creation of gases, such as nitrogen; and the biospheres contribution of bacteria that are integral to the processes of hydrogen sulfide gas creation in the soils in the mangroves ecosystem. Hydrosphere: The interactions of the hydrosphere with the other components of the biophysical environment in intertidal wetlands include, but are not limited to, the atmosphere contribution of gases that are found in water, especially high dissolved oxygen levels; the lithosphere's soil movements, which contribute to the often high turbidity present in the

  • Word count: 1449
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Geography
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Christian teachings on stewardship and creation.

Religion and the Environment: Coursework Write an assignment on religion and the environment. In the assignment you should: a) Describe, analyse, and explain: (i) The problems associated with the use of scarce/non-renewable resources. (ii) Christian teachings on stewardship and creation. (iii) How these teachings might apply to the use of scarce and non-renewable resources. There are many problems with the fuel sources that we use at the moment. Recently we have acknowledged the amount of destruction upon the environment due to the use of these fuel sources, but still even with this knowledge we carry on using these polluting fuels. Both the non-religious and the religious communities have started to speak up against this. They believe that these non-renewable resources should be cautiously and limitedly used. Non-renewable resources are sources of energy that occur naturally in the world but because we use them all the time as energy (for heating, electricity, fuel for transport etc.) they become depleted and they can not be replenished naturally because they are being used up so quickly. Therefore they become scarce and non-renewable. Examples of these are: oil, coal, natural gas, and fuel wood. Oil is the most common non-renewable fossil fuel. It is used because it holds large amounts of energy and it can be moved easily from place to place. However,

  • Word count: 4016
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Geography
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My Environmental Footprint and ways I could minimise it.

After completed the footprint quiz, it was not surprise to discover that my personal high impact areas were the food section and services section which occupied 55% and 23% of the total respectively. Food has always been a major factor of pollution due to the fact that meat consumption is contributing severe pollution to the environment as people demands for food are increasing rapidly. Based on my research, total amount of meat consumption per capita in Malaysia itself has significantly grown 57.3% from 1990 to 2003. It is said that this high growth of meat consumption rate is the consequences of increase in income and population in the country. However, people do not realize that meat eating is creating approximately half of the world's pollution, in terms of air pollutions and water pollutions. They do not perceive that eating meat is bad for the planet, the place where they stay. Animal agriculture is the major source of water pollution. for instance, pesticides and nitrates in fertilizer that used as crops feed often spill into the ocean and killing millions of fish. Besides, raising livestock requires extensive water consumption before they are ready to serve the human kinds causes the earth going dry. Eventually, it will bring huge impact to poor country such as Africa whereby there are no facilities to treat polluted water. People in Africa are suffering from

  • Word count: 1221
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Geography
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Reforestation is the propagation of trees by natural or artificial means, or it can be defined as the process of restoring tree cover to area where woodland or forest existed but was destroyed.

Reforestation Zaid Al-Radaideh Reforestation is the propagation of trees by natural or artificial means, or it can be defined as the process of restoring tree cover to area where woodland or forest existed but was destroyed. Reforestation is seldom a critical issue because the native forests are so flexible that, gives any opportunity, they will quickly re-establish themselves. The importance of trees is to take carbon dioxide from the air, which is one of the factors that are responsible for the green house effect. One of the solutions, which were proposed to cut down the increase of carbon dioxide in the air, is to replant both on land and in the oceans to decrease the overall carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, this could be accomplished by reforestation on land and plankton seeding in the oceans. Since increasing levels of carbon dioxide are believed to lead to increased temperatures, any means of decreasing the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would have an overall mitigating effect on the global warming. Halting deforestation and planting trees on a large scale (reforestation) will help offset carbon dioxide emissions. Deforestation is responsible for about 25% of net annual release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and also lessens the amount of forest available to absorb greenhouse gas emissions. It is said that deforestation will rank

  • Word count: 1107
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Geography
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Economics - Have you ever wondered about the negative side of globalization?

Economics. Have you ever wondered about the negative side of globalization? Nowadays there is hardly any economist who isn't talking about its benefits, especially for low-development countries who get a chance to obtain foreign investments. However, we oftentimes forget about the dark side of globalization. During the recent years globalization has had a very important influence on the environmental issues. As the countries get more connected with one another through the globalization tendencies which are very strong nowadays, the problems of environment protection and pollution rise more sharply than ever during the previous years. The capital which is flowing to the developing countries from highly-developed ones becomes one of the causes of damage which the world environment is getting nowadays. Even though many of such projects are presented as those which are favorable for the environment or at least the ones which don't do any harm to them, the real situation is very dangerous, since the pollution of low-developed countries is facing their nations. In 1991 Lawrence Summers who was at that time US Treasury Secretary in the Clinton Administration and Chief Economist for the World Bank was supporting controversial adjustment policies. The report which he wrote and announced was dealing with the necessity of moving the dirty industries, i.e. those which pollute the

  • Word count: 1562
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Geography
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The consequences for the physical environment of land use change are almost always negative, discuss

The consequences for the physical environment of land use change are almost always negative, discuss. The physical environment is constantly, directly and indirectly being affected by land use change, more often than not this is negative. As technology has advanced the sheer scale of land use change has accelerated to the point where a quarter of Holland lies below sea level and in the last 5 years 37000 square miles of the Amazon rainforest was destroyed, that's roughly an area of Wales and Scotland combined. The urbanisation of London has created an urban heat island effect where temperatures in the centre of the city can vary from the greenbelt by as much as 6 degrees Celsius. This is due to a number of factors, the release of heat from buildings, the emission of pollutants from cars and heavy industry, a lack of surface water (compared to the countryside) and the absence of strong winds to re-shuffle the heat around an area (this is because tall sky scraper buildings absorb the energy from the winds via friction). Since the cities are warmer because of all these factors more people will use air conditioning units to keep cool, which ironically helps heat up the environment even more. The heating of our cities is a direct contributor to global warming which is having numerous impacts to the physical environment. Global warming is often seen as a very negative thing;

  • Word count: 1214
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Geography
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FOREIGN OBJECT DAMAGE (FOD) PREVENTION AND MANAGEMENT IN THE DEPLOYED ENVIRONMENT

FOREIGN OBJECT DAMAGE (FOD) PREVENTION AND MANAGEMENT IN THE DEPLOYED ENVIRONMENT by Nick Moore Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Extended Campus Travis AFB Resident Center July 2004 ABSTRACT Writer: Nick Moore Title: Foreign Object Damage (FOD) Prevention and Management in the Deployed Environment Institution: Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Degree: Master of Aeronautical Science Year: 2004 As a result of the United States involvement in Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) many Air Force aircraft have been forced to operate in austere and rugged airfields. Force multiplying, rapid global mobility, and overall airpower are directly related to the military's ability to operate in the deployed environment. Although this mission is performed everyday and may not seem like a big deal, what is the impact to Air Force assets that continue to perform these operations on a daily basis? How can the Air Force prevent and minimize the hazards of Foreign Object Damage in these environments? This paper will attempt to analyze and answer these questions in further detail. INTRODUCTION Foreign Object Damage has been part of accidents and unscheduled maintenance reports since the earliest days of flight. But the problem of foreign objects really came into focus for the military with the high operations tempo of Air Force aircraft

  • Word count: 2715
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Geography
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