Changes In The Earths Environment Essay -- essays research papers

Changes in the Earths EnvironmentThe 20th century, especially in the second half, has been one of rapidchange in the Earths surround. The impact of populace on the physical form andfunctioning of the Earth have reached levels that argon global in character, andhave done so at an more than and more mounting speed. 20 years ago the environment wasseen as comprise a threat to the future of hu realityity as death rank from naturalhazards had increased dramatically since the turn of the century. The Earththough has forever and a day been plagued by natural disasters. Now, with the worldpopulation growing at a rapid rate more people are living in hazard prone areas.Events which may have gone unnoticed previously, provided become hazards when thereis intervention with universe and their lifestyle. With the discovery of the ozonehole in the 1980s attention was now more focused on the threat human races wereposing to the environment. With scientific evidence to back up pessimisticp redictions of our future, around people, through media coverage, politicalpressures and general concern now see the environment as being truly threatenedby human further and in desperate need of help.Natural hazards have been defined as ...extreme geophysical events greatlyexceeding normal human expectations in impairment of their magnitude or frequency andcausing significant damage to man and his works with possible loss of life.(Heathcote,1979,p.3.). A natural hazard occurs when there is an interactionbetween a system of human resource prudence and extreme or rare naturalphenomena (Chapman,1994). As McCall, Laming and Scott (1991) argue, strictly address there is no hazard unless humans are affected in some way. Yet the linebetween natural and human-made hazards is a very well drawn one and usuallyoverlapping. Doornkamp ( cited in McCall et al, 1992) argues that many hazardsare human induced or at least made worse by the intervention of humans.In the 1970s, natural hazards we re an important subject of topical study,as the nature of their impact on human populations and what they valued wasincreasing in frequency at quite a rapid rate (Burton, Kates, White, 1978).During the 75 years after 1900 the population of the earth increased by astaggering 2.25 billion people. People who needed land on which to resilient and work.As the population rose people were dispersed in more places and in largernumb... ...cote and B.G. Thom (eds) Natural Hazards in Australia. 3-12, AustralianAcademy of Science, Canberra.Kevies, D.J. (1992). near Like it Hot. New York Review of Books. 3931-39.McCall, G.J.H. (1992). Natural and piece make Hazards Their Increasing Importancein the End 20th hundred orb in G.J.H.McCall, D.J.C.Laming and S.C.Scott (eds)Geohazards Natural and Man Made. 1-4, Chapman and Hall, London.McKibben,B. (1990). The End of Nature. Penguin, Middlesex.Meyer, W.R. and Turner, B.L. (1995). The Earth Transformed Trends, Trajectoriesand Patterns in R.J. Johnso n, P.J. Taylor and M.J.Watts (eds) Geographies ofGlobal Change. 302-317, Blackwell, Oxford.Pearce, D. (1995). Blueprint 4 Capturing Environmental Value. Oxford Uni. Press,New York.Perry,A.H. (1981). Environmental Hazards in the British Isles. Allen and Unwin.London.Schnieder, S.H. (1989). Global Warming Are We Entering The Greenhouse Century ?.Sierra Club Books, New York.Stow, D.A.V. (1992). Preface in G.J.H.McCall, D.J.C.Laming and S.C.Scott (eds)Geohazards Natural and Man Made. i-ii, Chapman and Hall, London.Suzuki,D. and Gordon, A. (1990). Its a Matter of Survival. Harvard Uni Press,Harvard.