Environmental Science 1021F/G Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Three Steps, Risk Perception, Environmental Hazard
23 Jan 2013
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Document Summary
Global warming, population growth, habitat destruction and resource depletion have produced a widely acknowledged environmental crisis. These long term environmental pre thioblems are not amenable to quick technical fixes and will require profound social changes for their solutions. Human beings are altering the basic operations of the earth"s atmosphere, geosphere and biosphere. Four prominent biologists have noted with concern that human alteration of earth is substantial and growing. Between one third and on half of the land surface has been transformed by human actions. There is a decline in frog populations around the world. Declining health of frogs, birds and thousands of other organisms may be the clearest indication of environmental threats to human health. Today"s environmental degradation is rapidly creating an unprecedented global crisis. The driving forces are population growth and industrialization. Human activity increased the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide by nearly 30%, doubled the concentration of methane and introduced long lived ozone destroying chlorofluorocarbons into the stratosphere.
