Bert Bolin

The Carbon Cycle

Carbon plays a diverse, fundamental and dynamic role on our plant. It is the skeleton of life on Earth, the backbone of a major family of crustal minerals, and the root of the dominant source of energy used by human society. The carbon cycle is intimately linked to biogeochemical processes throughout the Earth system, regulates the energy balance of the climate system, and is the reason we have an oxygenated atmosphere today.

Economic growth, carrying capacity, and the environment

Nat iona l and international economic policy has usually ignored the environment. In areas where the environment is beginning to impinge on policy, as in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it remains a tangential concern, and the presumption is often made that economic growth and economic liberalization (including the liberalization of intemational trade) are, in some sense, good for the environment. This notion has meant that economy-wide policy reforms designed to promote growth and liberalization have been encouraged with little regard to their environmental consequences, presumably on the assumption that these consequences would either take care of themselves or could be dealt with separately. In this article we discuss the relation between economic growth and environmental quality, and the link between economic activity and the carrying capacity and resilience of the environment (1).

Economic Growth, Carrying Capacity, and the Environment

Nat iona l and international economic policy has usually ignored the environment. In areas where the environment is beginning to impinge on policy, as in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it remains a tangential concern, and the presumption is often made that economic growth and economic liberalization (including the liberalization of intemational trade) are, in some sense, good for the environment. This notion has meant that economy-wide policy reforms designed to promote growth and liberalization have been encouraged with little regard to their environmental consequences, presumably on the assumption that these consequences would either take care of themselves or could be dealt with separately. In this article we discuss the relation between economic growth and environmental quality, and the link between economic activity and the carrying capacity and resilience of the environment (1).

Resilience in natural and socioeconomic systems

We, as a society, find ourselves confronted with a spectrum of potentially catastrophic and irreversible environmental problems, for which conventional approaches will not suffice in providing solutions. These problems are characterized, above all, by their unpredictability. This means that surprise is to be expected, and that sudden qualitative shifts in dynamics present serious problems for management. In general, it is difficult to detect strong signals of change early enough to motivate effective solutions, or even to develop scientific consensus on a time scale rapid enough to allow effective solution. Furthermore, such signals, even when detected, are likely to be displaced in space or sector from the source, so that the motivation for action is small. Conventional market mechanisms thus will be inadequate to address these challenges.

On the abyssal circulation of the world ocean—IV: Origin and rate of circulation of deep ocean water as determined with the aid of tracers

Abstract Using box models, and the observed distribution of temperature, salinity and radiocarbon estimates are made of the origins and rate of flow of waters that make up the Common Water in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and Antarctic Intermediate Water. Difficulties in extending the computation to Antarctic Bottom Water are described. Emphasis is placed upon questions of computational reliability and the occurrence of ‘ill-conditioned’ equations.

Coping With Uncertainty: A Call for a New Science-Policy Forum

Abstract The scientific and policy worlds have different goals, which can lead to different standards for what constitutes “proof” of a change or phenomena, and different approaches for characterizing and conveying uncertainty and risk. These differences can compromise effective communication among scientists, policymakers, and the public, and constrain the types of socially compelling questions scientists are willing to address. In this paper, we review a set of approaches for dealing with uncertainty, and illustrate some of the errors that arise when science and policy fail to coordinate correctly. We offer a set of recommendations, including restructuring of science curricula and establishment of science-policy forums populated by leaders in both arenas, and specifically constituted to address problems of uncertainty.

Globalization and the Sustainability of Human Health An ecological perspective

205 ozone, biodiversity, terrestrial and marine food-producing ecosystems, and the great cycles of water, nitrogen, and sulfur (Meyer 1996, Vitousek et al. 1997). These systems sustain the conditions on which life depends, and their weakening may therefore have profound long-term implications for human population health (McMichael 1993, Last 1997). Much of the recognition of how these unprecedented large-scale environmental changes may jeopardize human health has emerged, albeit tentatively, during this current decade. For example, the First Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in 1990 (Houghton et al. 1990), paid scant attention to the risks to human health that are a consequence of climate change, although it dealt in detail with the potential impacts of farms, forests, fisheries, water catchments, and other systems. In contrast, IPCC’s Second Assessment Report (IPCC 1996) gave a much more detailed consideration to the potential health impacts of climate change. The report noted that “The sustained health of human populations requires the continued integrity of Earth’s natural systems.” This latter statement invokes an unfamiliar idea. The dominance of urbanism and individualism within modern Western culture has diminished people’s awareness of the dependence of continued good health on the natural world. We tend to focus instead on immediate, local, tangible influences on personal health, thus viewing health primarily as an individual asset to be transacted within the health care system and enhanced by prudent individual behavior (supplemented by regulatory protection). The ethos of modern epidemiological research, with its predominantly reductionist approach to studying disease causation by cataloging proximate risk-factor behaviors and exposures, has reinforced this individual-centered view of health and disease (Loomis and Wing 1990, Pearce 1996). There are, however, important influences on health that operate at the population level—some of which do not translate directly into individual-level factors. An awareness that the health of a population reflects ecological circumstances has long been applied by ecologists to nonhuman, especially wild, species (Anderson 1982, Odum 1992). To understand these larger-scale ecological influences on human health, Globalization and the Sustainability of Human Health

Abrupt Changes: The Achilles' Heels of the Earth System

Abstract Records from the past show that abrupt global change is the norm, not the exception, in the Earth System. Many recent changes-such as the globalization of the worlds economy and the formation of the ozone hole over Antarctica-appear rapid even from the perspective of a single lifetime. What do we now know about the nature of abrupt changes in the Earth System and the probability that human actions could trigger them?

Food Production, Population Growth, and Environmental Security

There are two broad criteria by which one can judge humanitys success in feeding itself: (i) the proportion of people whose access to basic nutritional requirements is secure; and (ii) the extent to which global food production is sustainable. Even though the two are related, they have usually been discussed separately in popular writings. This has had unfortunate consequences. Writings on (ii) have often encouraged readers to adopt an all-or-nothing position (viz. the future will be either rosy or catastrophic), and this has drawn attention away from the economic misery that is endemic in large parts of the world today. On the other hand, writings on (i) have frequently yielded no more than the catechism that the nearly 1 billion people in poor countries who go to bed hungry each night do so because they are extremely poor. In short, if (ii) has focused on aggregate food production and its prospects for the future, (i) in contrast has isolated food-distribution failure as a cause of world hunger. In this article we will adopt the view that (i) and (ii) should not be studied separately, that their link can be understood if attention is paid to the dynamic interactions between ecological and economic systems operating primarily at the geographically localised level.

Studies of the General Circulation of the Atmosphere

Publisher Summary This chapter examines the problem of the general circulation of the atmosphere as the description and explanation of the large-scale behavior of the atmosphere. It also presents recent research in the field of the general circulation of the atmosphere. The chapter provides a description of the mean motion of the atmosphere and its seasonal variations and characteristic fluctuations in that mean stage. It also discusses the basic physical factors that determine the character and scale of atmospheric motion, the momentum balance of the atmosphere, and the energy balance of the atmosphere. A rational discussion of the approach towards a dynamic theory for the general circulation of the atmosphere is also presented. Furthermore, the chapter illustrates irregularities in the mean motion of the atmosphere caused by non-uniformity of the surface of the earth. In context to mean conditions, it is important to note that very significant features of the behavior of the atmosphere can be eliminated by an ordinary averaging process. Therefore, a close connection must exist between the description and interpretation of the observed conditions.