Climate

Point out the various dimensions of the 17th century crisis. Explain why some countries were more seriously affected by this crisis than others. Intro: There was, for several decades in the seventeenth century, a period of major economic and social recession, crisis and secular readjustment, which contrasts strikingly with the periods of economic expansion which preceded and followed it.

Its effects were not confined to any single country, but, with a few marginal exceptions, can be traced throughout he entire range of the economic area dominated by and from, Western Europe, from the Americas to the China Seas; nor were they confined to the economic field. The simultaneous occurrence of revolutions or attempted revolutions in the middle of the seventeenth century, in England, France, the Spanish Empire and the Ukraine has been connected with the crisis. The crisis of the period saw cases of simultaneous state breakdowns around the globe than any previous or subsequent age: something historians have called “The General Crisis. In the sass, Mining China, the most populous state in the world, collapsed; the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the largest state in Europe, disintegrated; much of the Spanish monarchy, the first global empire in history, seceded; and the entire Stuart monarchy rebelled-Scotland, Ireland, England, and its American colonies. In addition, Just in the year 1648, a tide of urban rebellions began in Russia (the largest state in the world), and the Fronded Revolt paralyzed France (the most populous state in Europe); meanwhile, in Istanbul (Rupee’s largest city), irate subjects strangled Sultan Abraham, and in London, King

Charles I went on trial for war crimes (the first head of state to do so). In the sass, Sweden and Denmark came close to revolution; Scotland and Ireland disappeared as autonomous states; the Dutch Republic radically changed its form of government; and the McHugh Empire, then the richest state in the world, experienced two years of civil war following the arrest, deposition, and imprisonment of its ruler. This seems that some countries were more affected than others but it most of the world’s regions with equal force despite the regional variations.

Causes: According to Eric Hobbies the crisis cannot be put down to secular climatic hanged. The suggestion has been specifically investigated and rejected. Nor can it be ascribed to the effects of the Thirty Years’ War, though nobody would wish to underestimate these. It is indeed tempting to make the Thirty Years’ War responsible for the crisis, if only because its beginning coincides with the great collapse in the Baltic trade (the “slump of the sass’s”) which initiates the crisis, and its end with the acute period of European revolutions. However, a) at least one major component of the crisis, the collapse of the Spanish imperial economy in America, clearly begins mom time before the Thirty Years’ War and independently of it, and b) symptoms of the crisis are plainly visible in areas unaffected by the war. It is therefore legitimate to regard the wars as complicating factors in the crisis rather than as a cause; except epidemics, it may well be argued that their capacity to kill people, if not their actual occurrence, depended on the economic and social factors which determined people’s accessibility to infection and capacity to resist it.

Poor men almost invariably die more frequently in epidemics than rich ones. It is thus legitimate to regard the vehement century crisis as one generated by previous economic development. The problem facing us is how it fits into the economic evolution which, at the end of the eighteenth century, produced the industrial, agricultural and demographic revolutions which have ever since dominated the history of the world, or, in the current Jargon phrase, the “take-off into self-sustained growth. The “feudal crisis” of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and the seventeenth century crisis are examples of what happened then: recession, relapse, breakdown, and within this eating, shifts and readjustments which eventually allowed the tendencies of growth to resume. The importance of the seventeenth century crisis is this. The world economy, as it were, taxis along the runway of its aerodrome, to become airborne in the sass’s. Since then, broadly speaking, it has been flying. Its internal difficulties and contra- dictions have been of a different kind.

On the other hand we know that the actual process of the rise of industrial capitalism was a slow and tortuous process. It stretched over at least eight centuries- say from A. D. 1000 to A. D. 1800, and was interrupted by at least two major secular breakdowns, the fourteenth to fifteenth and the seventeenth century crises. That is to say, it included a number of demonstrably false starts. The crisis: The frequency of popular revolts around the world also peaked during the mid- seventeenth century.

In China, the number of major armed uprisings rose from under ten in the sass to more than seventy in the sass and more than eighty in the sass, affecting 160 counties and involving well over 1 million people. In Japan, some forty revolts (hook) and two hundred lesser rural uprisings housebreak) occurred between 1590 and 1642-a total unmatched for two centuries- and the largest up- rising, at Chimaeras on Shush Island in 1637-1638, involved some 25,000 insurgents.

In Russia, a wave of rebellions in 1648-1649 shook the central government to its foundations; of the twenty-five major peasant revolts recorded in seventeenth- century Germany and Switzerland, more than half took place between 1626 and 1650; the total number of food riots in England rose from twelve between 1600 and 1620 to thirty-six between 1621 and 1631, with fourteen more in 1647-1649. 4 In France, finally, popular revolts peaked both absolutely and elatedly in the mid- seventeenth century.

The mid-seventeenth century also saw a third major anomaly: more wars took place around the world than in any other era until the sass. In the six decades between 1618 and 1678, Poland was at peace for only twenty-seven years, the Dutch Republic for only fourteen, France for only eleven, and Spain for only three. Jack S. Levy, a political scientist, found the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe to be “the most warlike in terms of the proportion of years of war under way (95 per cent), the frequency of war (nearly one every three ears), and the average yearly duration, extent, and magnitude of war. The historical record reveals at least one war in progress between the states of Europe in every year between 1611 and 1669. Beyond Europe, over the same period, the Chinese and McHugh empires fought wars continuously, while the Ottoman Empire enjoyed only another political scientist, shows that, on average, wars around the world lasted longer in the seventeenth century than at any time since 1400 (when his survey begins). War had become the norm for resolving both domestic and international problems.

In part, these catastrophic losses occurred because the General Crisis took place at a time when population densities in the Northern Hemisphere had reached unprecedented and sometimes unsustainable levels. In some cities, the concentration of people was even higher: population and building densities within the medieval walls of London, for example, had in the sass reached levels probably not “witnessed in Britain either before or since. ” In some parishes, each acre contained almost 400 people. Causes: Many historians attributed the revolutions, revolts, wars, and mortality that surrounded them to supernatural forces. To the Welsh historian James Howell, writing in 1649, the extent and suddenness of the catastrophe suggested that God Almighty has a quarrel lately with all mankind, and given the reins to the ill spirit to compass the whole earth; for within these twelve years there have the strangest revolutions and ensuing horrors happened, not only in Europe but all the world over.

Others still blamed the devil and his lieutenants on earth: the witches. They also linked the General Crisis with other extraterrestrial phenomena. A Spanish almanac published in 1640 reminded readers that Whenever eclipses, comets and earthquakes and other similar prodigies have occurred, great miseries have usually followed” and predicted that the eclipse of the sun observed on June 1, 1639, would produce “great upsets in war, political upheavals, and damage to ordinary people” between March 1640 and March 1642. 2 As late as 1649, a London newspaper still linked the comet of 1618 with the Thirty Years’ War because “the Blazing Star, in the year the war began, appeared over Europe for thirty days and no more. According to Eric Hobbies the crisis cannot be put down to secular climatic changes. The suggestion has been specifically investigated and rejected. Nor can it be ascribed to the effects of the Thirty Years’ War, though nobody would wish to underestimate these.

It is indeed tempting to make the Thirty Years’ War responsible for the crisis, if only because its beginning coincides with the great collapse in the Baltic trade (the “slump of the sass’s”) which initiates the crisis, and its end with the acute period of European revolutions. 3 However, a) at least one major component of the crisis, the collapse of the Spanish imperial economy in America, clearly begins some time before the Thirty Years’ War ND independently of it, and b) symptoms of the crisis are plainly visible in areas unaffected by the war.

It is therefore legitimate to regard the wars as complicating factors in the crisis rather than as a cause; except perhaps in its political aspect. If the seventeenth century is one of widespread epidemics, it may well be argued that their capacity to kill people, if not their actual occurrence, depended on the economic and social factors which determined people’s accessibility to infection and capacity to resist it. Poor men almost invariably die more frequently in epidemics than rich ones. It is thus legitimate to regard the seventeenth century crisis as one generated by previous economic development.

The problem facing us is how it fits into the economic evolution which, at the end of the eighteenth century, produced the industrial, agricultural and demographic revolutions which have ever since self-sustained growth. ” The “feudal crisis” of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and the seventeenth century crisis are examples of what happened then: recession, relapse, breakdown, and within this setting, shifts and readjustments which eventually allowed the tendencies of growth to resume. The importance of the seventeenth century crisis is this.

The world economy, as it were, taxis along the runway of its aerodrome, to become airborne in the sass’s. Since then, broadly speaking, it has been flying. Its internal difficulties and contra- dictions have been of a different kind. On the other hand we know that the actual process of the rise of industrial capitalism was a slow and tortuous process. It stretched over at least eight centuries- say from A. D. 1000 to A. D. 1800, and was interrupted by at least two major secular breakdowns, the fourteenth to fifteenth and the seventeenth century crises.

That is to say, it included a number of demonstrably false starts. Weather as a plausible cause for crisis: There is a need to examine weather/climate as an explanation that helped trigger the crisis. Offering a fresh perspective Geoffrey Parker repeated examples of extreme weather, especially prolonged cold spells that had led some to suspect global cooling. In July 1675, the learned Parisian Madame De Savings complained that, instead of the normal summer heat wave, “We suffer horribly from the cold and have the fires lit” and speculated that “the behavior of the sun and of the seasons has completely changed.

Few historians have considered the impact of the climate as a cause that triggered the general crisis. Even the pioneering 1967 study Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate since the Year 1000, by Emmanuel Lee Roy Ladies, a historian of early modern Europe, concluded that “In the present state of our knowledge it still seems as if the long ‘crisis,’ hypothetical or real, of the seventeenth century had some other explanation” than climate change.

For example, Lee Roy Ladies continued, “it would be quite absurd” to try and “explain’ the Fronded by the adverse meteorological conditions of the sass. Ice cores: the annual deposits on ice caps and glaciers around the world, captured in deep boreholes, provide evidence of changing levels of volcanic emissions, precipitation, air temperature, and atmospheric composition. Glaciology: the alternating advance and retreat of glaciers, together with an analysis of the debris left behind, sheds light on both precipitation and ablation.

Paleontology: changes in pollen and spores deposited in lakes, bogs, and estuaries reflect the natural vegetation at the time of pollen deposit. Ethnologically: the varying size of growth rings laid down by trees during each rowing season reflects local conditions in spring and summer. A thick ring corresponds with a year favorable to growth, while a narrow ring indicates a year of adversity. Combining the two “archives” has enabled climatologists to recreate detailed weather maps for western Europe back to 1659 by month, and back to 1500 by sea- son. 8 In 1999, the Journal Climatic Change devoted an entire issue to European weather during the sixteenth century, which was later published in book form. Since then, articles in the International Journal of Climatology and elsewhere have offered a detailed reconstruction of both the European climate between 1675 ND 171 5 and the entire global climate for certain decades of the early modern period. Unfortunately, no similar survey has yet appeared for the sass, the decade abundant, and they reveal both extreme cold and prolonged drought around the globe.

In America, New England’s colonists experienced the second-coldest winter in a century in 1641-1642. East Asia also experienced abnormal cold. In Japan, when Memento Houseman (a merchant and minor official living Just north of Tokyo) wrote his memoirs, he remembered the unique conditions on New Year’s Day 1641, when “ice lay in the fields one foot deep. A chronicler in Shanghai, writing in April 1642, recorded that “since the New Year [January 31], it has been cold and it has rained frequently.

The spring has almost come to an end, but the cold still persists. ” Europe, too, experienced winters of extreme severity-from Scandinavia (which suffered recorded in 1641-1642) to Macedonia (where that same year “there was so much rain and snow that many workers died through the great cold”). The sass also saw prolonged drought in many areas. The western United States lacked rain in 1640-1644, which, combined with unusually low temperatures.

In 1640, northern China experienced the single-driest year recorded during the last five centuries; while in 1641, central China experienced its second- driest year in two centuries, with a drought so severe in Sandhog Province that the Grand Canal dried up for the only time on record. In Egypt, the Nile fell to some of its lowest recorded levels between 1640 and 1643; much of West Africa suffered droughts of great intensity in 1639-1643; and prolonged drought reduced Lake Chad to the lowest level ever recorded.

In Europe, finally, Catalonia experienced a drought in spring 1640 so intense that the authorities declared a special holiday so that the entire population could make a pilgrimage to a local shrine to pray for water-one of only four such occasions recorded in five centuries. The crisis coincided with a major anomaly in the world’s climatic history; but what caused that anomaly? First, solar activity reached the lowest level in two millennia.

Fewer sunspots-those dark, cooler patches on the solar surface surrounded by “flares” that make the sun shine with greater intensity- appeared between 1645 and 171 5 than in a single year of the twentieth century. Whereas more than 100,000 sunspots now come and go in a sixty-year period, the last six decades of the seventeenth century saw scarcely 100. The aurora Borealis (the “northern lights,” caused when charged particles from the sun interact with the earth’s magnetic field) became rare for two generations after 1640.

Likewise, the brilliant corona nowadays visible during every total solar eclipse also disappeared: descriptions by astronomers between the sass and the sass mention only a pale ring of dull light, reddish and narrow, around the moon. The energy of the sun appears to have diminished, a condition normally associated with reduced surface temperatures and extreme climatic events on earth. 55 Simultaneously, contemporaries regularly reported “dust veils” in the skies above the Northern Hemisphere that made the sun seem paler or redder than usual. 7 Both the dust and the reddened skies stemmed from a spate of major volcanic eruptions, each hurling sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, where it deflected some of the sun’s radiation back into space and thus significantly reduced temperatures in all areas of the earth beneath the dust clouds. In particular, twelve major volcanic eruptions occurred around the Pacific between 1638 and 1644-apparently an all-time record and all of them occurred near the equator. Reduced solar energy received on earth- global temperature; it also changes the climate.

In normal summers, a column of rising heat over Central Asia attracts the monsoon system, which means that easterly winds blowing from equatorial America bring heavy rains to East and Southeast Asia. By contrast, reduced solar energy means that the snow lingers in Central Asia, reflecting the sun’s heat instead of absorbing and radiating it as dark land surfaces o; without the column of rising heat, westerly winds blowing from equatorial Asia to America take the monsoon rains eastward, a phenomenon called El Onion (or, properly, ONES: El Onion/Southern Oscillation).

This shift dramatically affects the world’s climate: whereas in nor- mall years heavy rains nurture the harvests of South and East Asia, in El Onion years they bring floods to Central and South America instead and create drought in Asia and Australia. The “global footprint” left by El Onion also includes three other regions: the Caribbean almost always suffers floods; Ethiopia ND northwest India usually experience droughts; and Europe frequently experiences harsh winters.

On average, these disruptive El Onion episodes occur only once every five years, but in the mid-seventeenth century they happened twice as often: in 1640, 1641, 1647, 1650, 1652, 1655, and 1661. Each time, the regions normally affected all experienced ABA- normal weather. Besides increasing the frequency of El Onion episodes, reduced solar energy affects the global climate in two other significant ways.

In the winter of 1620-1621, the Bosporus froze over so hard that people could cross on foot between Europe and Asia. These extreme climatic events remain unparalleled; each occurred in the Little Ice Age. We must not paint bull’s-eyes around bullet holes and argue that since climatic aberrations seem to be the only factor capable of causing simultaneous upheavals around the globe, therefore those aberrations “must” have caused the upheavals.

In several cases, however, the human and natural climatic archives show exactly how extreme weather anomalies triggered or fatally exacerbated major political upheavals. Thus much of southern Portugal rebelled in 1637 when drought forced the price of bread to unprecedented heights; popular revolts spread through- out Catalonia in spring 1640 as prolonged drought threatened catastrophic harvest failure; and the first urban riots of the Outgas era occurred in 1642 when rice ran short in Osaka, the “kitchen of Japan. 63 Three disastrous harvests preceded the Irish Rebellion in 1641; the catastrophic harvests of 1647 and 1648 helped to precipitate major revolts in Sicily, central Italy, Poland, and Russia; while the harvest of 1650 was the worst of the century in Sweden, creating the backdrop for near-revolution when the Estates of the kingdom met in Stockholm. However no convincing account of the General Crisis can now ignore the impact of the unique climatic conditions that prevailed.

Indeed, the wealth of data in both the human and natural “archives” encouraged Lee Roy Ladies to write the Comparative Human History of Climate that he had abandoned in 1967 for lack of evidence. The first volume, which appeared in 2005, proclaimed that The history of climate, which has made considerable progress since the publication of our History of the climate since the year 1000, has now won full legitimacy The days are gone when modish Astoria disparaged this new discipline with taunts such as “bogus science. The time for such irreverent barbs is past, and this book seeks to provide a human history of climate, dealing with the impact of climatic and meteorological fluctuations on Does this indifference simply reflect the unwillingness of Anglophone American academics to tackle large books written in foreign languages? Or does it also reveal a residual resistance to admitting that climate can exercise a decisive influence on human history?

After all, “denial” is currently the commonest human reaction to environmental catastrophe: we know with absolute certainty that natural disasters have happened in the past, and that they will continue to happen in the future, but we convince ourselves that they will not happen Just yet-or, at least, not to us. The worsening droughts, desiccation, and desertification in equatorial Africa over the past forty years have caused massive migrations, famines, and wars that resemble those of the mid-seventeenth century; yet the rest of the world does virtually nothing.

In the West, even isolated extreme climatic events such as the European heat wave of 003 (which claimed the lives of at least 35,000 people) and Hurricane Strain (which ruined or rendered uninhabitable 300,000 homes in the southeastern United States) found the richest and most powerful governments in human history completely unprepared and incapable of taking appropriate action in time.

Yet even these tragedies remained local: how would those same governments-how would we-cope with a global catastrophe like that of the sass? The climatic impact on the General Crisis not only sheds new light on an old problem but also offers a rare opportunity or historians to engage with scholars in other disciplines who are concerned with the fate of our planet.

Studying causal mechanisms and coping strategies 350 years ago will not, of course, prevent the onset of further climatic catastrophes in the twenty-first century; but if historians can identify the structural, political, economic, and ideological characteristics in each afflicted society around the world that pre- vented (or facilitated) an appropriate response during the General Crisis, and consider how the outcomes could have been different, we may learn some valuable sees- sons for dealing with the climate challenges that undoubtedly await us and our children.

Geoffrey Parker. A brief look at the key historical works on the crisis & conclusions: The middle of the seventeenth century was a period of revolutions in Europe. These revolutions differed from place to place, and if studied separately, seem to rise out of particular, local causes; but if we look at them together they have so many common features that they appear almost as a general revolution. Some examples are the Puritan Revolution in England which fills the twenty years between 1640 and 1660, but whose crisis was between 1648 and 1653.

In those years of its crisis there was also the series of revolts known as the Fronded in France, and in 1650 there was a coup d’etat or palace revolution, which created a new form of government in the United Provinces of the Netherlands. In the Spanish empire there was the revolt of Catalonia, which failed, and the revolt of Portugal, which succeeded. To contemporary observers it seemed that society itself was in crisis, and that this crisis was general in Europe. The thirty years war: The Thirty Years War, in the countries affected by it, military oppression, or military defeat, precipitated the revolts in Catalonia, Portugal, ND Naples.

The dislocation of trade, which may have been caused by the Thirty Years War, led to unemployment and violence in many manufacturing or commercial countries. The destructive passage or billeting of soldiers led to regular peasant mutinies in Germany and France. For historian Tremor -Roper does not believe that the seventeenth-century revolutions can be explained merely by the background of war, which had also been the background of the previous, unreasoningly century. If we are to find an explanation, we must look elsewhere.

We must look past the background, into the Truckee of society. ” According to Marxist view the crisis of production was general in Europe, but it was only in England that the forces of “capitalism,” thanks to their greater development and their representation in Parliament, were able to triumph. Consequently, while other countries made no immediate advance towards modern capitalism, in England the old structure was shattered and a new form of economic organization was established.

Within that organization modern, industrial capitalism could achieve its astonishing results: it was no longer capitalist enterprise “adapted to a generally dual framework”: it was capitalist enterprise, from its newly won island base, “transforming the world. ” This Marxist thesis has been advanced by many able writers, but, in spite of their arguments, I do not believe that it has been proved or even that any solid evidence has been adduced to sustain it.

Maurice Dobb, whose Studies in the Development of Capitalism may be described as the classic textbook of Marxist history, consistently assumes that the English Puritan Revolution was the crucial “break-through” of modern capitalism. It bears, he says, “all the marks of the classic bourgeois revolution”: before it, capitalism is cramped and restated, never progressing beyond a certain stage, a parasite confined to the interstices of “feudal” society; in it, the “decisive period” of capitalism reaches its “apex’; after it, the bonds are broken and the parasite becomes the master.

If the crisis of the seventeenth century, then, though general in western Europe, is not a merely constitutional crisis, nor a crisis of economic production, what kind of a crisis was it? If we take a general view of the period from, say 1000 A. D. To 1800 A. D. , it is reasonable to suppose that the forces making for the disintegration of the feudal economy and the growth of a capitalist economy were powerful enough to secure a break-through sooner or later, somewhere; and it is equally reasonable to sup- pose, with Marx, that industrialization was the logical product of such a break-through.

It has rather been my purpose to show that this replacement of feudalism by capitalism was not, and could not be, a simple linear evolution-that, even in purely economic terms it had to be discontinuous and catastrophic- and to sketch some of the mechanisms of this historic change, and to draw attention to the seventeenth feudal and the victory of the capitalist economy. For Hobbies and his successors, the seventeenth century represented a crucial moment in the larger transition from feudalism to capitalism; new social structures then emerged that allowed England and, to a lesser extent, other countries their eventual economic take-off.

For Gobbet and Lee Roy Ladies, in contrast, the seventeenth-century crisis was a revelatory moment within the history of traditional Europe. Crisis simply meant demographic and economic failure, and demonstrated the enduring limits of traditional society: the low ceiling on its productive capacities, its failure to provide adequately for its embers, its inability to control nature. For social historians, the crisis of the seventeenth century was thus no unitary concept, but rather a range of interpretive possibilities, which individual scholars might mix together in different ways.

New questions and new data complicated early generalizations, in numerous domains. But early modernists’ more basic views have also changed since the sass, and I argue here that this has been the fundamental reason for our current approaches to the seventeenth century. Historians’ increasing attention to the complexities of pre-industrial societies and to heir capacity for significant economic development makes it difficult to accept descriptions of the seventeenth century as an age of “immobile history,” or to see in it a unique turning point on the path to modernity.

Jonathan Israel has described mid-seventeenth-century culture providing the foundations of global modernity; even so resolute a critic of European exceptionalness as Gladstone has turned to seventeenth-century culture as a precondition for industrialization, for he sees seventeenth-century European science making the exploitation of fossil fuels possible.

The achievement of the seventeenth-century crisis,” wrote Hobbies in 1954, “is the creation of a new form of colonialism,” that is, the plantation economies; these territories, he wrote, gave Europe “several precious decades of dizzy economic expansion from which they drew inestimable benefits. ” Spain Catalonia: Spain was facing superficially problems. Philip Avis chief minister, the Count-Duke of Olivares(1 587-1645) (left) had ambitious plans for Spain’s economic recovery, but he made the mistake of renewing with war with the Netherlands in 1621 at a time when the Spanish crown was facing severe financial problems.

The Catalonia was a self-governing province, ruled by a viceroy, that had been part of the Crown of Argon since the Middle Ages. It was difficult to govern and in the reign of Philip II order had broken down almost completely. Catalan commerce depended increasingly on France, Spain’s long-standing enemy. During the winter of 1639-40 Olivares sent troops into Catalonia to protect the principality against French incursions. But the billeting of the soldiers on the civilian population aroused profound resentment.

In May 1640 insurgents began to attack royal officials. On 7 June the viceroy was murdered, and this led to five days of anarchy in Barcelona, forcing the reluctant king to dismiss Olivares. The revolt acquired overtimes of class warfare, becoming a struggle of the poor against the rich. In January 1641 the Catalan Court©s secured a complete transfer of the principality to French sovereignty. The Catalan revolt was ended by the weakness of France during the Fronded and by the extreme hardships suffered by the people during the plague epidemics of 1650-4.

In 1652 the province returned to Hapsburg rule and its traditional autonomy was confirmed. Jiao IV of Portugal Portugal: Portugal had been conquered by Philip II in 1581. It remained autonomous until the sass when Philip IV and Olivares tried to make it a Spanish province. In a coup on 1 December 1640 the duke of Brazing was proclaimed JoyҐo IV and a war of independence (the Portuguese Restoration War) was launched.

Portugal formed an alliance first with France then with England and finally gained its independence in 1668. Unlike the Catalan revolt this was a straightforward war of independence and was not accompanied by the social tensions found in Catalonia. Conclusion: Research on the disturbances of the mid-seventeenth century has shown that there was no ‘general crisis’. Instead, there were specific grievances that weak and incompetent governments were unable to satisfy.

Yet the Oromo©e, and, more importantly, the radical movements in England, posed for a while severe threats to the established order. These threats were decisive in producing a political reaction in favor of strong monarchy. From 1660 in much of Europe the state came to exercise an unchallenged monopoly of power. ENDS Reference & Readings: Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: philosophy and the making of modernity, 1650-1750 (oxford, 2001 J. H. Elliott,”The General Crisis in Retrospect: A Debate without End,” in Benedict and

The Climate Crisis Global warming: an increase in the earth’s atmospheric and oceanic temperatures widely predicted to occur due to an increase in the greenhouse effect resulting especially from pollution. Given the definition it may not sound as scary as it actually is. The whole process of global warming is a science in itself. It may also be known as ‘the climate crisis’ because scientists believe that the occurrence of such extreme temperatures will bring our earth to turmoil. Almost) President A1 Gore irected an Academy Award winning documentary on the topic called ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. The film went into great detail on evidence that scientist have found about the effects of global warming. Awareness was the meaning behind Gore’s movie but the first step to helping ourselves is knowledge. The Sun plays the main part in the process of global warming. It shines its rays down on earth giving us heat and reflecting back up into the atmosphere. Kind of like when you shine light in a mirror, it reflects back at you.

It has been discovered that the Sun’s magnetic field has doubled since 1900. This tells us that changes in the Sun have had a hand in the recent general warming of the earth’s climate. If the sun’s rays come down on earth and are trapped from going back into the atmosphere it causes the temperature to rise and therefore causes numerous issues with the climate and our personal health. Pollution is the main cause of global warming. It is defined as: the release of chemicals and particulates into the atmosphere. Some examples are

Carbon monoxide, Sulfur dioxide, Chlorofluorocarbon, and Nitrogen oxide produced by big industries and car emissions. When there is an overabundance of pollution in the air the sun’s rays get trapped on earth because of something called the Ozone layer. The Ozone layer is the part of the Earth’s atmosphere which contains relatively high concentrations of Ozone (03). This causes the ozone to be like a blanket on top of the earth which then causes the temperature to rise. Drastic changes in the weather have been the cause of two storms killing millions of people in the last entury.

Scientists behind Gore believe this is Just the beginning of things to come from global warming. They have discovered that since the earth is so hot the snow caps from the northern and southern poles are melting. This is causing our beaches to be washed away from rise in sea level. In the future it is predicted that the sea level will rise at least an inch per year. It may be inevitable but it isn’t completely unstoppable. When you think of the things like warm days spent on the beach, you should probably cherish them.

Someday they may not be there for you to enjoy as your summer tradition. There are some ways you can help reduce the occurrence of the ‘climate crisis’ that you may not even know about. Changing a light bulb toa fluorescent light bulb will change 150 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. Recycling and driving less also stop pollution therefore helping our ozone layer out. Global Warming may be something we can’t completely stop but we can certainly try to keep it within controllable limits. By ashleymariel 114

Vacations at the Beach Vs. Mountains People are always looking forward to their family vacation time. There are many options where to choose. But, I think that the two most common places people choose for taking a vacation are the beaches, and the mountains. Both places offer a variety of fun activities. Vacation at the mountains and at the beaches is totally different from each other, regarding climate, types of activities, and the location of beaches and mountains. Climate is always important in order to enjoy vacation.

If a person dislikes cold weather, he or she might have a hard time in the mountains. The cold climate in the mountains is the first obstacle people have to overcome to have a great time. As it may be true, the warm climate is one of the most important features that the beach has to offer. Sun and fun are two words that . The temperature in those places is mostly always hot and humid. Climate plays a big role in choosing the next family vacation. The variety and types of activities in the mountains and beaches differ as well.

Even more as the climates are different that also makes the activities they both offer different as well. In contrast with the mountains, some activities a person can enjoy at the beach would be swimming, playing volley ball, snorkeling, surfing, and boating. On the other hand, a vacation at the mountains offers a wide variety of activates, like snowboarding, skiing, mountain climbing, and hiking are some of the activities people can enjoy when going to the mountains. Location also plays a big difference in a vacation, at the beach or in the mountains.

The regions that have mountains are where people can go to have a great vacation. In addition Whistler, Canada is a city located in North America and contains many sites people from all around the world travel there and plan their vacation. Nevertheless, in most coastal cities there is night clubs, and restaurants where people can dance and have fun throughout the night. Mexico offers many amazing coastal cities to visit. Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, and Cancun are the three of the most beautiful and famous beaches in the North America.

It really doesn’t matter what place a person decides to choose. Indeed a person can have just as much fun experiencing ether one. People often make a decision depending on one of the tree options to plan their vacation. Depending on that and what the person likes is what he or she will choose. I enjoy the beach just as much as the mountains. The mountain offers me a place to take a risk and enjoy the slopes. But the contrast in both the mountains and the beach is the climate, activities, and the location.

Scientific researches over the decennaries have shown that clime alteration on our planet can happen as a consequence of both anthropogenetic causes every bit good as natural 1s. The GSA, Geological Society of America, concurs with the appraisals done by the National Research council, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ) and the National Academies of Science that the planetary clime has warmed and that the activities that are human, in peculiar emanations of green house gases, is the chief perpetrator of this heating that has been taking topographic point since the mid 1900 ‘s. in order to understand how and what is bespeaking planetary heating this paper will look at climatic informations for The Wabash River Watershed that day of the months from the 1960 ‘s to the 1990 ‘s.

The information comprises of both the H2O on the surface and that in the ambiance that has been planned on a monthly footing with regard to this part. This includes minimal, maximal every bit good as the mean temperatures for the month. In add-on, informations on precipitation which includes yearss of visible radiation, entire precipitation, heavy, moderate every bit good as the entire figure of yearss of precipitation. Included besides is the H2O balance informations for existent evapotranspiration, shortage, excess and estimated H2O overflow, which is frequently a placeholder for watercourse flow informations. This information will organize a footing for the reading of temperature, precipitation and other factors and their relationship to planetary heating.

Global warming deductions: climatic informations from the Wabash River Watershed

Climate refers to infinite and clip forms of precipitation, air current and temperature. This differs significantly across different countries. Analyzing these alterations and their deductions on planetary heating is a scientific challenge. This is because clime alterations of course over an array of clip graduated tables, that is, from 10 ‘s of old ages ( decadal ) , 100 ‘s of old ages ( millennian ) and even longer periods referred to as glacial rhythms, for illustration, ice ages. Climate besides changes of course over a assortment of relevant particular graduated tables that is from the local and regional infinite to the planetary infinite.

By analyzing this alterations so we can be able to understand their relationship to planetary heating, an issue that is in the head of everyone ‘s attending in every facet of our society today, politically, economically, technologically and socio-culturally. The climatic alteration which can be or non be related to planetary heating frequently determines the location and type of human ecosystems that are managed by worlds such as the handiness of agricultural land and it besides affects how, when and if weathering of stones will take topographic point, the type of dirt that will be signifiers and the rate at which this dirt will be formed. Climatic alteration and consequent planetary heating besides determines the quality and measure of H2O that is available for usage by worlds every bit good as other life on the planet. More dramatically is determines how terrible storms, inundations and drouths are.

The pointer shows a pronounced addition in temperature by a about a sum of 0.6 grades of the period from early 1960 ‘s to late 1990 ‘s. This calculates to about 0.02 grades addition every twelvemonth.

As such this indicates that the climatic alteration in temperature in the Wabash River watershed is declarative of planetary heating. This is because the addition in temperatures is non systematic with expected alterations that occur of course over clip. Harmonizing to the Milankovitch rhythms, which indicate that the alterations in the orientation and distance of the Earth in relation to the Sun history for the Earth ‘s glacial rhythms, the Earth is really traveling in the way that should be doing major glaciations. As such the exogenous alterations that occur in the solar input as a consequence of this phenomenon are non important plenty to explicate the temperature amplitude of the fluctuations. The alteration presented is really little when compared to a glacial rhythm but the temperature additions are happening in a really high rate. This is a rate of 0.02 grades per annum as compared to o.oo13 grades Celsius per annum that occur during interglacial rhythms. These alterations in temperature are already more than any that have of all time been experience in the yesteryear on Earth and as such this can merely bespeak planetary heating ( Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001 ) .

Precipitation informations

Numerous observations of an empirical nature and theoretical accounts concentrating on the clime in this part, Wabash River Watershed, confirms an sweetening of the hydrological rhythm in the signifier of increased surface and atmospheric H2O. This has been observed by the addition in the lower limit, maximal and mean precipitation informations: heavy, moderate visible radiation precipitation informations, every bit good as watercourse flow informations that are derived from estimated, excess and shortage H2O run off. The low strength and high frequence of the precipitation in this country has resulted in excessively much vaporization something that has been linked with the rise in evapotranspiration which in bend has caused small overflow. The effects of these have been a decrease in the ascertained and recorded river flows in the part of Wabash River Watershed. Other indexs of planetary heating in the part are in the signifier of terrible conditions. The part has experience 29 twister every twelvemonth with the peak months being in the months of April through June which has 63 per centum of the sum twisters.

Research indicates that in order for the Earth to keep H2O balance, so the vaporization from the H2O organic structures around the universe have to be balanced by the precipitation into this same H2O organic structures plus the tally offs in the continentals land organic structures. The ambiance is supposed to incorporate merely 0.001 per centum of the H2O on Earth, an of import facet of the hydrologic rhythm. The addition in temperatures in this part can be attributed to the green house consequence. As such the warmer H2O surface in the part has created a vapor-pressure difference between the H2O surface and the adjacent ambiance which has enhanced the vaporization rate increasing other constituents that are in the hydrologic rhythm such as the addition in precipitation in the part.

The nexus between the sweetenings in the hydrologic rhythm with planetary heating has been drawn from legion empirical theoretical accounts and observations. For case, a planetary heating of around 4 grades Celsius is expected to bring forth precipitation additions of around 10 per centum. This addition in precipitation is in the signifier of heavier rainfall as opposed to rainfall that is more frequent or that autumn over a longer continuance. Rainfall information from this part indicate that the forms of rainfall in the part have been characterized by heavy down pours that are less frequent and normally do brassy inundations. This falls under the description of the consequence of planetary heating ( Lee et, al. , 2001, p.120 ) .

The part ‘s climatic information offers extra grounds as to the alterations in the hydrologic rhythms. First the heating that has been observed in the part are about all caused by an addition in the part ‘s dark clip temperature. The minimal temperatures daily have increased at a rate that is twice that of twenty-four hours clip temperatures since 1960, this is approximately 1 degree Celsius as opposed to the 0.5 grades for the twenty-four hours clip temperatures. This has been explained to be the consequence caused by increased cloud cover and/or humidness during the dark coupled with an addition in vaporization during the say which creates a chilling consequence on the daytime land temperatures in the part ( this can be better explained by utilizing the description Idaho organic structure heat vaporizing after intoxicant is rubbed on person ‘s tegument, go forthing the organic structure ice chest after the procedure ) . As a consequence of this the effects of the planetary heating in the part such as hotter twenty-four hours have non been experienced which does non connote that there are no planetary heating effects in the part ( Lee et, al. , 2001, p.120 ) .

Datas from balloon borne instrumentality ( radiosonde ) every bit good as orbiter informations in the part suggest that the norm ( average ) of H2O vapour concentration in the ambiance has markedly increased. This is indicated by an addition in the sum of precipitation that is generated by storms in the country since the 1961 through to 1990. The Wabash Watershed part has experienced an addition in rainfall sums of about 10 per centum on norm in the four decennaries from 1960 which has increased the rates of precipitation in the part. This addition in the last few decennaries is due mostly because of the disproportional addition in utmost and heavy precipitation rates. This phenomenon is consistent with the anticipations of climatic theoretical accounts. The climatic information in this part indicate that rainfall tends to be more when the norm ( average ) temperature in a month is recorded as being above normal. This is consistent with the anticipations from climatic theoretical accounts that have been designed to picture the rate of planetary warming Another index of planetary warming consequence on the climatic conditions of the Wabash River Watershed is the addition in the strength of the storms that have been experienced in the part over the past few decennaries. This has been associated with the atmospheric forepart that is found in the Northern hemisphere.

An sweetening of the hydrological rhythm in itself has been indicated as an foil of planetary warming through assorted mechanisms. On of the mechanisms is stated as the water-vapor feedback. Water vapour by itself is a major nursery gas and as such contributes to 36-70 per centum of the entire heating of the Earth ‘s surface and lower ambiance by absorbing and breathing of the infrared radiations. In add-on to this, Storms in the part have become really frequent in the last few decennaries, this presents the part with cloud screen that is deep or at least high, the effect of this is that the increased cloud cover Acts of the Apostless to heat up the planet underneath it ensuing in higher temperatures experienced. The ground for this is that deep or high clouds cut down the sum of surpassing long moving ridge radiation to higher extent than the short moving ridge radiation that is incoming into the Earth ‘s atmosphere lending to planetary heating as such. Clouds have a different consequence from H2O vapour on radiations because they are made up of liquid H2O or ice.

Snow autumn and thaw informations

Datas in the part sing snow autumn and the thaw of the snow indicate that t the day of the months of the last hoar in the spring are coming earlier each twelvemonth. This can be contributed to a rise in temperatures which is dissolving the ice faster. This is further strengthened by the fact that the yearss in a twelvemonth cheapness can be considered the turning seasons, warm plenty to turn harvests have besides been on the addition. Projected information from this climatic information indicate that the length of summer will go on to increase at a steady rater if the present conditions ate still maintained. This is a typical feature of the planetary heating phenomenon.

Decision

It is clear that all the climatic alterations that have been experienced in the last few decennaries may hold occurred in the past of course and likely even during times of that can non be considered as planetary heating periods. Climatic alterations represent a complex phenomenon that can hold multiple causal agents. While the forms are consistent with a clime that is progressively warmer, it is presently impossible to province that a individual climatic event such as a storm event is as a consequence of planetary heating. However, informations over a long period of clip does supply a background on which we can province that the climatic alterations and the events that come with it in the part of Wabash River Watershed are in fact as a consequence of planetary heating.

The epoch of cunctation, of half steps, of comforting and perplexing expedients of hold are coming to a stopping point. In its topographic point, we are come ining a period of effects. Winston Churchill

The overpowering bulk of scientists agree that our Earth is undergoing major clime alteration. They besides agree that the degree of C dioxide in the ambiance is lifting significantly. With planetary warming on the addition and species and their home grounds on the lessening, opportunities for ecosystems to accommodate of course are diminishing. Recent old ages show increasing temperatures in assorted parts, and/or increasing appendages in conditions forms.

Research has shown that air pollutants from dodo fuel usage make clouds reflect more of the Sun s rays back into infinite. This leads to an consequence known as planetary diping whereby less heat and energy reaches the Earth. It is believed that planetary dimming caused the drouths in Ethiopia in the 1970s and 80s where 1000000s died, because the northern hemisphere oceans were non warm plenty to let rain formation. Global dimming is besides concealing the true power of planetary heating. By cleaning up planetary dimming-causing pollutants without undertaking nursery gas emanations, rapid heating has been observed, and assorted human wellness and ecological catastrophes have resulted, as witnessed during the European heat moving ridge in 2003, which saw 1000s of people die.

It can be seen through satellite images and research that the ice caps are runing faster, our sea degrees are lifting, and conditions forms are altering. We are sing more H2O deficits and we will see hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones increasing in fierceness and frequence. The comeuppances will spread out and the universe will finally hold trouble turning adequate nutrient.

One of the World Resources Institute, Forest Frontier Regions, found that 80 per centum of the woods that originally covered the Earth have been cleared, fragmented, or otherwise degraded.

And, over the past 150 old ages, deforestation has contributed an estimated 30 per centum of the atmospheric build-up of CO2. It is besides a important drive force behind the loss of cistrons, species, and critical ecosystem services. However, in the international policy sphere, biodiversity loss and clime alteration have frequently moved in entirely unconnected spheres.

Forests are critical parts of many ecosystems. Guaranting a healthy ecosystem that includes woods besides means sustainable saving of other species that dwell in woods. As portion of a life system, forests rely on these assorted species, and the assorted species rely on woods.

A mechanism suggested for undertaking clime alteration and heating has been the thought of utilizing “ Carbon Sinks ” to soak up C dioxide.

It seems there has been a recent involvement in tie ining clime change/global warming with over population and that states such as China and India have to make more to assist incorporate planetary heating.

Yet rich states have a batch to make themselves. There were agreed grounds why developing states were exempt from initial nursery gas emanation marks: it was the emanations from rich states that accumulated in the ambiance for so long to trip climate alteration.

Burning coal, oil and natural gas releases C dioxide gas into the ambiance. On norm, this may warm the Earth and alter the clime in other ways. For illustration, it might alter the badness and continuance of storms or drouths. Other human activities, such as cutting down woods, and turning rice, and raising cows, may hold the same consequence, but are less of import.

If the clime alterations heating, chilling, H2O usage, and sea degree will be affected. In affluent states, the mean cost would likely be little, although some people and parts might hold high costs and others might have big benefits. In some hapless states, the cost could be really high. A big or fast alteration in clime will hold a large consequence on works and animate beings in the natural environment. Very rapid clime alteration is improbable, but could be black, even for affluent states.

We could cut down the rate at which we add carbon dioxide to the ambiance by firing less coal, oil and natural gas. If climate alterations, we could accommodate by altering agribusiness and other human activities. Many works and animate beings in the natural environment might be unable to adapt. If heating is big and dearly-won, some people might desire to do alterations to the ambiance or oceans in order to chill the Earth. This is really controversial.

A mechanism suggested for undertaking clime alteration and heating has been the thought of utilizing ” Carbon Sinks ” to soak up C dioxide. To assistance in this, re-afforestation, or setting of new woods, have been suggested. This is a popular scheme for the logging industry and states with big woods involvements, such as Canada, the United States, assorted Latin American states, and some Asiatic states such as Indonesia. Creating new forest countries would necessitate the creative activity of full ecosystems.

Climate alteration, holding an impact on biodiversity is projected to go a increasingly more important menace in the coming decennaries. Loss of Arctic sea ice threatens biodiversity across an full biome and beyond. The related force per unit area of ocean acidification, ensuing from higher concentrations of C dioxide in the ambiance, is besides already being observed.

Ecosystems are already demoing negative impacts under current degrees of clime alteration which is modest compared to future projected alterations. In add-on to warming temperatures, more frequent extreme conditions events and altering forms of rainfall and drouth can be expected to hold important impacts on biodiversity.

The Arctic, Antarctic and high latitudes have had the highest rates of heating, and this tendency is projected to go on. In the Arctic, it is non merely a decrease in the extent of sea ice, but its thickness and age. Less ice agencies less brooding surface intending more rapid thaw. The ice in the Arctic does dissolve and refreeze each twelvemonth, but it is that form which has changed a batch in recent old ages as shown by this graph:

It is besides of import to observe that loss of sea ice has deductions on biodiversity beyond the Arctic, as the Global Biodiversity Outlook study besides summarizes:

• Bright white ice reflects sunlight.
• When it is replaced by darker H2O, the ocean and the air heat much faster, a feedback that accelerates ice thaw and warming of surface air inland, with attendant loss of tundra.
• Less sea ice leads to alterations in saltwater temperature and salt, taking to alterations in primary productiveness and species composing of plankton and fish, every bit good as large-scale alterations in ocean circulation, impacting biodiversity good beyond the Arctic.
• As clime alteration warms the oceans, the heater H2O ( which is lighter ) tends to remain on top of what is so a bed of colder water. This affects bantam floating marine beings known as phytoplankton. Though little, Phytoplankton are a critical portion of our planetal life support system. They produce half of the O we breathe, draw down surface CO2, and finally back up all of our piscaries, says Boris Worm of Canada s Dalhousie University and one of the universe s taking experts on the planetary oceans ( quoted by Inter Press Service IPS. )
• Around the universe, coral reefs have been deceasing mostly due to climate alteration. Coral reefs provide many ecosystem services to worlds as good, for free.

Is global warming due to human actions?  Can the human race take action to stop global warming?

Global warming result of over use and consuming too much to make things easier, there are many actions that can be adhered to, to stop Global Warming.
One way to stop global warming is to use less, meaning each country; state and family cut down on everyday use and to identify “Global Warming Mechanisms” which causes changes in frequency and intensity of precipitation in the tropics are examined in climate model simulations. Under global warming, tropical precipitation tends to be more frequent and intense for heavy precipitation but becomes less frequent and weaker for light precipitation. Changes in precipitation frequency and intensity are both controlled by thermodynamic and dynamic components. The thermodynamic component is induced by changes in atmospheric water vapor, while the dynamic component is associated with changes in vertical motion.

A set of equations is derived to estimate both thermodynamic and dynamic contributions to changes in frequency and intensity of precipitation, especially for heavy precipitation. In the thermodynamic contribution, increased water vapor reduces the magnitude of the required vertical motion to generate the same strength of precipitation, so precipitation frequency increases. Increased water vapor also intensifies precipitation due to the enhancement of water vapor availability in the atmosphere. In the dynamic contribution, the more stable atmosphere tends to reduce the frequency and intensity of precipitation, except for the heaviest precipitation. The dynamic component strengthens the heaviest precipitation in most climate model simulations, possibly due to a positive convective feedback.

There is also “Freshwater Flux Global Warming” which states the roles of freshwater flux (defined as evaporation minus precipitation) changes in global warming are studied using simulations of a climate model in which the freshwater flux changes are suppressed in the presence of a doubling of CO2 concentration. The model simulations demonstrate that the warm climate leads to an acceleration of the global water cycle, which causes freshening in the high latitudes and salinification in the subtropics and midlatitudes. It is found that the freshwater flux changes tend to amplify rather than suppress global warming. Over the global scale, this amplification is largely associated with high-latitude freshening in a warm climate, which leads to a shoaling of the mixed layer depth, a weakening of the vertical mixing, and thus a trapping of CO2-induced warming in the surface ocean. The latitudinal distribution of SST changes due to the effects of freshwater flux changes in a warm climate is complicated, involving anomalous advection induced by both salinity and wind stress changes. In addition, atmospheric feedbacks associated with global warming also amplify the SST warming.

The conversation on global warming started in 1896, when a physical chemist estimated that the mean global temperature would rise several degrees if the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was doubled. The topic eventually became one of the most passionate in the history of science. The author points out that climate expert were initially strongly skeptical of the theory of global warming; it took a variety of evidence to gradually convince them that warming due to human emissions was likely. The public, however, was guided away from this conclusion by a professional public relations effort, motivated by industrial and ideological concerns. Deniers of the scientific consensus avoided normal scientific discourse and resorted to ad hominem attacks that cast doubt on the entire scientific community-while disrupting the lives of some researchers. The author points out that scientist have failed to mount a concerted public relations campaign to defend their position.

Is the science community hopelessly corrupt? That is the conclusion many would draw from a letter that senior physicist Harold Lewis (2010) sent last October to the American Physical Society. He accused the Society of promoting a “Pseudoscientific fraud” namely “the global warming scam”, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists. The underlying issue was whether humanity was causing the temperature of our planet to rise a question that indeed put at stake trillions of dollars, although one might wonder how much of this money went to scientists. The climate question had led not only Lewis but other senior scientists to hurl accusations of bias that increasingly overshadowed the actual scientific findings. It was an unprecedented attack on the trust that is the very core of the relationship between science and society. How did we get into such a situation? Every novel scientific idea must scale a wall of skepticism. First it must overcome the resistance of scientists who found the older ideas plausible. Changing the consensus of the experts is only a beginning, however; the public has yet to be convinced. That may never be completed if the new idea contradicts widely cherished assumptions about the natural world. There is yet another barrier if the idea seems to attack established interests such as a religion or an industry. Then doubt is reinforced by denial: concerted efforts to represent the scientific consensus as false. Nothing shows this process so clearly as the history of the idea that human emissions of greenhouse gases must inevitably produce a global warming. Can the human race take action to stop global warming?

1. Use Environment Friendly Electrical Appliances
You can replace electrical appliances like your refrigerator, which emits greenhouse gases with environment friendly appliances. In fact, replacing a regular incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb, popularly referred to as CFL, can help in saving 60 percent energy and avoid the release of 300 lbs. of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere each year.

References

Chou, C., Chen, C., Tan, P., & Chen, K. (2012). Mechanisms for Global Warming Impacts on Precipitation Frequency and Intensity. Journal of Climate, 25(9), 3291-3306. doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00239.1 Zhang, L., & Wu, L. (2012). Can Oceanic Freshwater Flux Amplify Global Warming? Journal of Climate, 25(9), 3417-3430. doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00172.1 Weart, S. (2011). Global warming: How skepticism became denial. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 67(1), 41-50. Doi: 10.1177/0096340210392966

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Agriculture is an art, science and industry of managing the growth of plants and animals for human use. In broad sense, agriculture includes cultivation of the soil, growing and harvesting the crops, breeding and raising livestock, daring and forestry. Modern agriculture is engineering and technology based. Therefore, mechanization has eased much of the back breaking toil to the farmer. Agriculture is the backbone of economy of most of the countries of the world.

About 48 percent of world’s labour force is engaged with agriculture. For some countries, agriculture is the major source of foreign exchange for example Sri Lanka depends upon tea, Denmark specializes in dairy products and Australia in wool. Nations depends on agriculture not only for food but for national income and raw materials for industry as well, trade in agriculture is a constant international concern. Agricultural scientists are of opinion that, about 40% of 37 million acre land of the world may be considered cultivable.

Today, only 5. 5 million sq miles (10% to 11%) of the land surface is actually cultivated. It is fact that nature sets the outer limits of man’s potential resources, because physical limitation, like temperature, rainfall, soil character and physiography, fix up the outer limit of cultivable land. Factors Governing Agriculture: Today, agriculture has become an industry. Therefore, like all other industries, its development depends upon multiple factors.

Basically, physical environment imposes limits on the distribution of agricultural activity but cultural environment at the same time has its own importance for this activity because, agricultural patterns in the world are the result of interaction among the influences exerted by the physical, economic and social factors. The factors of agriculture can be divided into following classification. I. Physical Factors II. Human Factors / Non Physical Factors A. Economic Factors B. Political Factors C. Social / Cultural Factors Physical Factors of Agriculture:

Man’s agricultural activities depend on the physical environment in which he lives although he often has tried to minimize the restrictions imposed by the natural conditions. Nature in its diverse manifestations provides man in different areas with a variety of possibilities for development. To examine the agricultural activity of man in the world, it is necessary to know about the natural and physical factors of the world, which are as follows: 1. Terrain 2. Climate 3. Soils 4. Water Resources 5. Forest Cover 1. Terrain:

Many agricultural geographers have analysed the influences of terrain on agriculture and it indeed plays a significant role in land-use variation. The three most significant aspects of terrain are: (i). Attitude (ii). Slope (iii). Drainage texture (i). Attitude: The primary consequence of altitude is decrease in air pressure with the increase in elevation. At the height of 3500 m and above the decreased atmospheric pressure causes nausea and agricultural activities cannot be carried out despite conditions being favourable to numerous domesticated plants.

Usually the rarefied air of the high mountains increased transpiration rates of plants, which unfortunately restricts growth. In tropics, altitude is of special significance for utilization of the land for agriculture. Modification in temperature and not infrequently in humidity conditions associated with increasing elevation make these areas habitable for farming communities. The important secondary consequences of increasing elevation, both agronomically and economically significant are decreased temperature, increased precipitation, increased wind velocity, poor soil and rugged relief.

All these factors a negative role on agricultural activity and they minimize the agriculture and agricultural products. Even increase in precipitation on elevations are has significant role for agriculture because at those place moisture results in snowfall which makes agriculture very difficult. (ii). Slope: Slope of land is also one of the important physiographic aspects influencing the agricultural land use of an area. It is universal fact that with increase in steepness of slope the use of even very simple farm machinery becomes difficult. Steep slopes are generally avoided by farmers.

Livestock farming may be equally effected by slope. It is difficult for animals to more on and graze in the pasture situated on very steep slopes. Accessibility is the most potent factor in agricultural land-use in mountainous regions at any slope or elevation, and inaccessibility at places can put all the development efforts in reverse gear. Easy access is essential specially for perishable agricultural commodities like vegetable and fruits grown in mountainous area, although technological developments have reduced its significance. Milk and meat cannot be kept for a long time and need quick transportation.

Soil erosion is a major problem of almost every slope. Soil erosion affects the agricultural activity of that area moreover the arrangements of irrigation cannot be easily made on the hilly areas with slopes. Sunshine is another issue related with slpe. Agriculture is practiced only at sun facing slopes. The slopes which do not receive direct rays of sun are unable to grow crops. (iii). Drainage Texture: Drainage texture is expressed as the total length of streams per unit area, while its reciprocal is the distance between two adjacent channels.

These are two important parameters by which one can estimate soil erosion. The critical value of drainage density per square km which may cause faster soil erosion. The heartland of water erosion areas satisfy almost all the requisites of soil erosion. Soil erosion from cultivated fields, grazing lands, forest areas and the catchment areas of big rivers affects a nation’s agricultural economy as a whole. Accelerated erosion produces abnormal quantities of sand, silt, and shingle that are carried from the field and stream system and deposited on the lower land, lessening its productivity.

Excessive water erosion areas coincide approximately with the areas of confluence of many tributaries or areas of joints and cracks. 2. Climate: Climate controls agriculture more than any other factor. The pole-ward limit of agriculture is set by the isotherm for the warmest month. Particular climate suits particular crops. Temperature and rainfall are two main controlling factors of agriculture and some others are snow, wind, mist and fog etc. we can make a list of them as. (i). Temperature (ii). Winds (iii). Snow (iv). Humidity (v). Fog (vi). Sunlight (vii). Rainfall (i).

Temperature: For plant growth certain upper and lower limits of temperature control the plantation in certain areas temperature of lower limit and temperature of upper limit, certainly control the agricultural activity in the world. While some plants grow in the high temperatures and like rubber, rice, banana, tea, date, oil palm etc. Some plants requires moderate or low temperatures like wheat, barley, almonds and oranges etc. Natural vegetation distribution regions clearly depict temperature control likewise, the agricultural regions and products follows the temperature control.

(ii). Winds: Winds and atmospheric pressure exert direct and indirect influence on the agriculture. The zones of trade winds especially eastern corners of continents are not suitable for agriculture due to aridity. High winds generally act as deterrent to the growth of crops in various ways. * Unusual high velocities of winds may damage the standing crops. * Snow drifts and chilled winds may damage the crops. * Hot and dry winds may not allow to grow crops in their areas. (iii). Snow: Snow has its own bearing on livestock and cropping.

Snow drift results in loss; and melting of large masses of snow creates floods and water logging. In general, there are two major places where snow falls, i. e. higher elevations and higher latitude. When snow fall occurs heavily, it blocks the roads, tracks, foot paths. This retards the accessibility to field and markets. In general, it slackens all the agricultural activities of the area. Agricultural activities are resumed with the advent of summer season. Unfortunately huge losses often occur along the streams by sudden flooding caused by a large mass of melting snow.

On the other hand, snow cover is advantageous to agriculture because it insulates the ground from extremely low air temperature and retards deep penetration of frost action. This make soil available for cultivation rather more quickly when the snow begins to thaw. (iv). Humidity: Humidity is one of the prominent elements of weather from the farmer’s point of view and plays a significant role in changing agro climatic conditions from place to place. Of the many possible beneficial influences of high atmospheric humidity on plant growth, following are most significant.

* Many a plant can absorb moisture directly from an under saturated air of high humidity. * Humidity affects the photosynthesis in plants. * Most plants grow well in conditions of high atmospheric humidity because very often saturated air stops transpiration. (v). Fog: Fog, that is very thick mist, is really much like low hanging clouds and appears as a dense mass of small water drops in the lower layers of atmosphere. The negative aspect of fog manifests itself when it persists for several consecutive days, blocking the sun’s light. Consequently plant growth is retarded and plants are likely to be attacked by pests and diseases.

On the other hand fog and mist are the sources of moisture supply in many areas like crops of tomatoes, peppers, beans and other vegetables can be grown in southern California where fogs are frequent without irrigation and even rainfall does not come in the growing season. (vi). Sunlight: Sunlight is a factor of great physiological importance to plants because it helps in the formation of chlorophyll. The source of sunlight is the sun and its attribute depends upon the sunshine. The total amount of light that falls on the earth varies from place to place.

The intensity, quantity and duration of the sunlight depend upon the latitude, altitude, season and the conditions of the atmosphere at a given place. On all the places on equator, the sun shines for 12 hours a day round the year. However away from the equator towards the poles the days become progressively longer during summer reverse is the case during winter when days are comparatively shorter. This seems to account for the fact that summer crops mature faster than the winter ones since the former can get the needed light and sunshine in the minimum possible period. (vii). Rain Fall:

Rain fall is another climate element and major factor is mainly responsible for plant growth and distribution and certain areas for specific plants or agriculture practices etc. Rubber is the tree of the equatorial region, and requires high rain fall uniformly distributed throughout the year. It may be said that rain fall is the most important climatic factor as it determines the potential of any region in terms of crops to be produced, farming system to be adopted, the nature and sequence of farming operations to be followed, and the targets to be achieved in agricultural productivity.

The cultivator are more optimistic about a bumper crop, in those seasons when moisture receipts are considerably above normal. In a region where rain fall is confined to a particular season and ground water resources are wanting, a drought will not be an unusual phenomenon. Sometimes the distribution of rain fall is so irregular, not only in amount but also in time and space, that it creates water deficiency everywhere. These variations may produce dry spells. Therefore, the emergence of way ward behavior of rainfall from year to year gives rise to different cropping patterns and imbalances in levels of agricultural productivity.

3. Soils: Soils constitute the physical base for any agricultural enterprise. Farming is a business and good soil is the part of the farmer’s stock in trade. Together with their fertility and special qualities, soils influence the particular types of food, fibre, horticultural crops and olecultural crops. * Physical characteristics and properties of soil determines the types of the crops and their distribution. * Crop growth is determined to a considerable extent by the amount of nutrients in the soil. The three basic nutrients nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, contribute to soil fertility.

* Differences in soil fertility have the greatest impact on agricultural land use throughout the world. Unenlightened farming may lead to the rapid soil exhaustion. Soil resources are very important, and these must be carefully husbanded, so that these are conserved and not exploited. Improvement in water supply to crops, use of chemical fertilizers, and high-yielding exotic seeds, accelerate the rate of cropping intensity but at the same time they may have very harmful effects on the soil. 4. Water Resources:

Availability of water to the crops is very much important because without water crops cannot be survived and we cannot think about agriculture at all. On the other hand, sufficient and assured water supply to the farming systems would yield superior, stable, diversified and commercially profitable farming, and a vastly superior living standard to peasant proprietors. Many parts of the world use irrigation for the activity of agriculture. The major sources which are used for irrigation are: (i). Ground water (ii). Surface water (iii). Desalinated water (i). Ground water:

Ground water is often called under ground water which occurs below the surface of the earth. On the whole ground water is very unevenly distributed beneath the surface of the land. Moreover, the behavior of such unique storage of underground water is not consistent. It varies from year to year and season to season. Ground water is a major source of irrigation. It can be used from simple Persian wells to modern tube wells. In ovrid areas it is used through Karez system. Judious tapping of ground water resources is the need of the hour for avoiding excessive over draft and depletion of ground water.

Water table is also important for agricultural point of view. If water table is too low then (in the absence of surface water source), the area cannot grow crops. The very high water table causes the two dangerous disease of land; water logging and salinity means again the area cannot grow crops. (ii). Surface water: Surface water supply is controlled by several factors such as large quantity of water in the form of rivers, streams, lakes, glaciers, gentle surface gradient and soft land. These make possible the construction of a network of canals.

For such schemes, ideal conditions are prevailed in the plains of Niles, Ganges and Indus etc. so that these all plains are intensively irrigated. The main problems in surface water utilizations are: * Prevention from evaporation in dry lands is a major problem. * Intensive irrigation may invite water logging and salinity. (iii). Desalinated water: The ocean and inland seas are also the source of water. Containing about 93 percent of earth’s water but not usable because of salt and contaminations. It would be great value to areas along the coasts which are in need of supplementing the short supplies of agricultural water.

Some attempts have been made to utilize desalinated water for agriculture but this process is no doubt very costly. It has been estimated that at present in the western part of United States desalinated water costs between between fifteen and twenty five times more than irrigation water obtained from rivers or wells. Now in this modern era the constantly expanding need for fresh water for various purposes, especially agricultural and industrial, requires technically and economically feasible processes for desalination. 5. Forest Cover:

In the beginning, agricultural development benefited from forests by the use of natural species to breed more resistant varieties of cultivated crops. In addition to this forest also satisfied man’s material and socio-economic needs. Forest are also important for environmental balance and for charging the ground water. They are also important for providing water for irrigation in terraced we lands in mountains. Forests are badly effected by the agricultural activities of man in many areas of the world but their preservations are very important.

A recommended and balanced extent and density of forest cover has to be maintained, so as so keep an ecological balance between man, agricultural land use and natural vegetation cover for achieving an optimum efficiency in agricultural land use at minimum level of hazards and costs in an area. Human / Non Physical Factors: No doubt that Agriculture depends on physical environment but the socio cultural forces can not be neglected at all. Agricultural activities depend upon interrelated physical and non-physical factors.

Non physical factors can be classified as follows: A. Economic Factors B. Political Factors C. Social / Cultural Factors A. Economic Factors: Agriculture provides employment for 48% labour force of the world’s population. Therefore, its economic importance and development needs proper investment for certain facilities to improve its yields for economic welfare of the farmers and food requirements of the growing world population. The factors of agriculture that need money are known as economic factors of agriculture.

(i). Capital (ii). Agricultural Machinery (iii). Transportation (iv). Market (v). Cold storage (vi). Irrigation (vii). Pesticides / Herbicides (viii). Fertilizers (ix). High yielding verities (i). Capital: The capital or investment is the basic requirement for the agricultural activity. To practice the agriculture on modern grounds, a large investment is required. (ii). Agricultural Machinery: To keep pace with changing nature of agricultural process, modern agricultural machinery is required.

Now a days combined harvester, threshers, sprinkled irrigation are necessary to gain a handsome productions. (iii). Transportation: The role of faster means of transportation cannot be forgotton in agriculture fruits, vegetables and dairy products are perishable items and they can only bring to the market in the presence of faster means of transportation. The advancements of transportation methods reduces the expenditure and wastage of the agricultural products. (iv). Market: Market place is a very important factor in agriculture.

The markets for perishable agricultural products must be located near to the farms to deliver products to consumers as rapidly as possible. (v). Cold storage: Now a days storage / cold storage are too much necessary for agriculture point of view because whole yield of crops cannot be consumed at once. Grain crops required a proper storage in this way, they can be consumed throughout the year for example wheat, vegetables like peas, tomatoes, potatoes required cold storage for preservation. (vi).