Special report: The facts about overconsumption

Earth

Dig deeper into humanity's impacts on the Earth with these diagrams and further reading

15 October 2008

The increasing rates of change in human activity since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Significant increases in rates of change occur around the 1950s in each case, and illustrate how the past 50 years have been a period of dramatic and unprecedented change in human history (US Bureau of the Census 2000; Nordhaus 1997; World Bank 2002; World Commission on Dams 2000; Shiklomanov 1990; International Fertilizer Industry Association 2002; UN Centre for Human Settlements 2001; Pulp and Paper International 1993; McDonalds 2002; UNEP 2000; Canning 2001; World Tourism Organization 2001).

Global-scale changes in the Earth system, as a result of the dramatic increase in human activity: (a) atmospheric CO2 concentration (Etheridge et al, 1996); (b) atmospheric N2O concentration (Machida et al, 1995); (c) atmospheric CH4 concentration (Blunier et al, 1993); (d) percentage total column ozone loss over Antarctica, using the average annual total column ozone, 330, as a base
(Image: J D Shanklin, British Antarctic Survey); (e) northern hemisphere average surface temperature anomalies (Mann et al, 1999); (f) natural disasters after 1900 resulting in more than ten people killed or more than 100 people affected (OFDA/CRED, 2002); (g) percentage of global fisheries either fully exploited, overfished or collapsed (FAOSTAT, 2002); (h) annual shrimp production as a proxy for coastal zone alteration (WRI, 2003; FAOSTAT, 2002); (i) model-calculated partitioning of the human-induced nitrogen perturbation fluxes in the global coastal margin for the period since 1850 (Mackenzie et al, 2002); (j) loss of tropical rainforest and woodland, as estimated for tropical Africa, Latin America and South and Southeast Asia (Richards, 1990; WRI, 1990); (k) amount of land converted to pasture and cropland (Klein Goldewijk and Battjes, 1997); and (l) mathematically calculated rate of extinction (based on Wilson, 1992)

The two sets of graphs, right, illustrate how human activity has changed since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and the impacts that our societies have had on the Earth as a whole.

All figures are taken, with the kind permission of the publishers, from:

Steffen W, Sanderson A, Tyson P D, J盲ger J, Matson P, Moore III B, Oldfield F, Richardson K, Schellnhuber H-J, Turner II B L and Wasson R J (2004) . The IGBP Book Series, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, 336 pp

Specific references used are as follows:

Blunier T, Chappellaz J, Schwander J, Barnola J-M, Desperts T, Stauffer B, Raynaud D (1993) 鈥�.鈥� Geophysical Research Letters, vol 20, p 2219-2222

Canning D (1998) World Bank, Washington DC

Etheridge D M, Steele L P, Langenfelds R L, Francey R J, Barnola J-M, Morgan V I (1996) 鈥�.鈥� Journal of Geophysical Research, vol 101, p 4115-4128

. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome.

Klein Goldewijk K, Battjes J J (1997) 鈥�.鈥� National Institute for Public 午夜福利1000集合 and the Environment (RIVM). Bilthoven, Netherlands

Machida T, Nakazawa T, Fujii Y, Aoki S, Watanabe O (1995) 鈥�.鈥� Geophysical Research Letters, vol 22, p 2921-2924

Mackenzie F T, Ver L M, Lerman A (2002) 鈥�.鈥� Chemical Geology, vol 190, p 13-32

Mann M E, Bradley R S, Hughes M K (1999) 鈥溾€� Geophysical Research Letters, vol 26(6), p 759-762

Nordhaus (1997) 鈥溾€� In: Bresnahan T, Gordon R (eds) The economics of new goods. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. ()

OFDA/CRED (2002) : The OFDA ()/CRED () international disaster database. Louvain Catholic University, Belgium

(1993) 鈥淧PI鈥檚 international fact and price book鈥�. In: . Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome

Richards J (1990) 鈥淟and transformation.鈥� In: Turner II B L, Clark W C, Kates R W, Richards J F, Mathews J T, Meyer W B (eds) . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge pp 163-201

(1990) 鈥淕lobal water resources.鈥� , vol 26(3)

UN Center for Human Settlements (2001) . United Nations

UNEP (2000) . Clarke R (ed), United Nations Environment Programme

Wilson E O (1992) . Allen Lane, the Penguin Press

World Commission on Dams (2000) . Earthscan Publications Ltd, London and Sterling, VA

WRI (1990) 鈥淔orest and rangelands.鈥� In: A Guide to the Global Environment. , Washington DC pp 101-120

World Tourism Organization (2001) . Industry Science Resources

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