POLI 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Hydrosphere, Geoid, Negative Feedback
Document Summary
Need scientific approach e. g. ice sheets melting in greenland and antarctica, we measure rate of losing ice mass it exceeds anything we have seen over the last 15 million years. But social media can skew this. (cid:1688)greenland is melting because of the mantle not climate change. (cid:1689) -not relevant. Geothermal heat- 4 billion yrs, ice sheets melting-200 yrs (same time as industrial revolution). Biosphere: life layer, contains organic material, entities that make up ecosystems including ourselves. Lithosphere: not going to touch on this much. System: ordered and interrelated set, linked by flows of energy and matter, behaviors of processes can be linked in a way, sunlight on plants, eaten by deer, later decomposed by decomposers. Open vs closed system: leaf is a open system, inputs coming from extra planetary space as well as gases c02 and water, combined and stored and leaf itself and decompose. Earth is close system to matter but not energy.
