The natural environment comprises all naturally occurring surroundings and conditions in which living things grow and interact on Earth. These include complete landscape units that function as natural systems without major human intervention, as well as plants, animals, rocks, and natural phenomena occurring within their boundaries. They also include non-local or universal natural resources that lack clear-cut boundaries, such as air, water and climate.
The concept of the natural environment can be distinguished by components:
As human population numbers increase and as humans continue to evolve, human activity modifies the natural environment at a rapidly increasing rate, producing what is referred to as the built environment. The potential of the natural environment to sustain these anthropogenic changes while continuing to function as an ecosystem is an issue of major worldwide concern. Key environmental areas of interest include climate change, water supply and waste water, air pollution, waste management and hazardous waste, and land use issues such as deforestation, desertification, and urban sprawl.
A Tropical cyclone is a storm system characterized by a large low pressure center and numerous thunderstorms that produce strong winds and flooding rain. Tropical cyclones feed on heat released when moist air rises, resulting in condensation of water vapor contained in the moist air. They are fueled by a different heat mechanism than other cyclonic windstorms such as nor'easters, European windstorms, and polar lows, leading to their classification as "warm core" storm systems. Studies have shown that global warming may have increased the sea surface temperatures, which intensify the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclone.
The term "tropical" refers to both the geographic origin of these systems, which form almost exclusively in tropical regions of the globe, and their formation in Maritime Tropical air masses. The term "cyclone" refers to such storms' cyclonic nature, with counterclockwise rotation in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise rotation in the Southern Hemisphere. Depending on its location and strength, a tropical cyclone is referred to by many other names, such as hurricane, typhoon, tropical storm, cyclonic storm, tropical depression, and simply cyclone.
- October 27, 2011 – Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era, a book by Amory B. Lovins, analyzes the possibility of converting the United States to almost total reliance on renewable energy sources. (NYT)
- September 29, 2011 – Renewable energy in the UK hits record high reaching 9.6% of electricity production. (The Guardian)
- September 29, 2011 – The Belo Monte Dam project in Brazil halted after ruling that it risked damaging fish stocks. (The Guardian)
- May 30, 2011 -- In 2010 the energy-related CO2 emissions were highest in the history 30.6 Gt. According to IEA, the global energy CO2 -emissions should be equal or less than 32 Gt in 2020 to fulfil the agreed 450 Scenario. (IEA)
- April 10, 2011 -- The Japan Atomic Energy Agency raises the severity of the Fukushima I nuclear accidents to level 7, the highest on the International Nuclear Event Scale.
- March 16, 2011 -- Explosions and a fire at Japan's Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant have resulted in dangerous levels of radiation, sparking a stock market collapse and panic-buying in supermarkets. (SBS)
- March 11, 2011 -- Communities around the Pacific ocean, from Hawaii to Easter Island, scramble to safety after the Japanese Sendai earthquake and tsunami. (Guardian)
- March 8, 2011 -- First foundations are laid for the London Array, a planned 1,000 megawatt offshore wind farm under construction in the Thames Estuary in the UK. (Kent Online)
Jonathon Espie Porritt, CBE, (born 6 July 1950) is a British environmentalist and writer. Porritt appears frequently in the media, writing in magazines, newspapers and books, and appearing on radio and television regularly.
In the 1970s, Porritt was the driving force behind the Ecology Party. As chairman of the UK Ecology Party (now the Green Party) from 1978 to 1984, he presided over changes that made the party much more prominent in elections. Under his stewardship, membership grew from a few hundred to around 3,000. In 1984 his first book, Seeing Green, was published. In this year he also gave up teaching to become Director of Friends of the Earth in Britain, a post he held until 1990.
A pile of bison skulls (circa 1870).
The North American bison were hunted almost to extinction in the 19th century and were reduced to very small numbers by the mid-1880s.
The World Wide Fund for Nature is an international non-governmental organization for the conservation, research and restoration of the natural environment, formerly named the World Wildlife Fund, which remains its official name in the United States and Canada. It is the world's largest independent conservation organization with over 5 million supporters worldwide, working in more than 90 countries, supporting 15,000 conservation and environmental projects around the world. It is the world's largest independent conservation organization with over 5 million supporters worldwide, working in more than 90 countries, supporting around 1300 conservation and environmental projects around the world. It is a charity, with approximately 60% of its funding coming from voluntary donations by private individuals. 45% of the fund's income comes from the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands.
The group says its mission is "to halt and reverse the destruction of our environment". Currently, much of its work focuses on the conservation of three biomes that contain most of the world's biodiversity: forests, freshwater ecosystems, and oceans and coasts. Among other issues, it is also concerned with endangered species, pollution and climate change.
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Cars don't cause pollution, trees do.
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