Global warming game

Global warming games, also sometimes referred to as 'climate games' or 'climate change games,' belong to a genre of games that are usually classified as serious games. As serious games, global warming games try to simulate and explore real life issues to educate the player through an interactive experience. The issues particular to global warming games are usually energy efficiency and the implementation of green technology as ways to reduce CO2 emissions and thus counteract global warming. Global warming games include more traditional board games, computer and video games, as well as other varieties.

The Stabilization Wedge Game, or what is commonly referred to as simply the 'Wedge Game', is a serious game produced by Princeton University's Carbon Mitigation Initiative. The goal of the game creators, Stephen Pacala and Robert H. Socolow, is to demonstrate through this game that global warming is a problem which can be solved by implementing today's technologies to reduce CO2 emissions.[5] The object of the game is to keep the next fifty years of CO2 emissions flat, using seven wedges from a variety of different strategies which fit into the stabilization triangle.

The European Climate Forum and Munich Re have launched a climate game called Winds of Change, which is a board game for 2-4 persons. The game illustrates the climate challenge in a playful way and it can be used in team learning, schools, focus groups, etc. It includes several features, which are hotly debated in climate policy-making. These include among others: investments in R&D, technological learning and innovation, de-carbonizing the economy, ocean uptake of CO2, the 2 degrees limit, and insurance against extreme weather events.

Clathrate gun hypothesis

The clathrate gun hypothesis states that as sea temperatures rise the sudden release of methane from methane clathrate compounds buried in the seabeds will cause a drastic alteration of the ocean environment and the atmosphere of earth, as recent analysis concerning the Permian extinction event indicates may have happened in the past.

In 2002, a BBC2 'Horizon' documentary, 'The Day the Earth Nearly Died,' summarized some recent findings and speculation concerning the Permian extinction event. Paul Wignall examined Permian strata in Greenland, where the rock layers devoid of marine life are tens of meters thick. With such an expanded scale, he could judge the timing of deposition more accurately and ascertained that the entire extinction lasted merely 80,000 years and showed three distinctive phases in the plant and animal fossils they contained. The extinction appeared to kill land and marine life selectively at different times. Two periods of extinctions of terrestrial life were separated by a brief, sharp, almost total extinction of marine life. Such a process seemed too long, however, to be accounted for by a meteorite strike. His best clue was the carbon isotope balance in the rock, which showed an increase in carbon-12 over time. The standard explanation for such a spike – rotting vegetation – seemed insufficient.

Focusing on the Permian-Triassic boundary, Gregory Ryskin explores the possibility that mass extinction can be caused by an extremely fast, explosive release of dissolved methane (and other dissolved gases such as carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide) that accumulated in the oceanic water masses prone to stagnation and anoxia (e.g., in silled basins). As global CO2 levels head towards 450 ppm, the destabilisation of methane clathrates could become an uncontrollable feedback mechanism taking temperatures up alarmingly.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

The Great Global Warming Swindle is a controversial documentary film that argues against the scientific consensus that human activity is the main cause of global warming. The film, made by British television producer Martin Durkin, showcases scientists, economists, politicians, writers, and others who are sceptical of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming. The programme's publicity materials assert that man-made global warming is "a lie" and "the biggest scam of modern times."

The film's basic premise is that the current scientific consensus on the anthropogenic causes of global warming has numerous scientific flaws, and that vested monetary interests in the scientific establishment and the media discourage the public and the scientific community from acknowledging or even debating this. The film asserts that the publicised scientific consensus is the product of a "global warming activist industry" driven by a desire for research funding. Other culprits, according to the film, are Western environmentalists promoting expensive solar and wind power over cheap fossil fuels in Africa, resulting in African countries being held back from industrialising.

The film takes a strongly sceptical view of current scientific thinking on climate change. It argues that the consensus on climate change is the product of "a multibillion-dollar worldwide industry: created by fanatically anti-industrial environmentalists; supported by scientists peddling scare stories to chase funding; and propped up by complicit politicians and the media".

Using a series of interviews and graphics, the film sets out to challenge the scientific consensus by focusing on issues such as perceived inconsistencies in the evidence and the role said to have been played by ideology and politics.

Waste management

Waste management is the collection, transport, processing, recycling or disposal of waste materials. The term usually relates to materials produced by human activity, and is generally undertaken to reduce their effect on health, aesthetics or amenity. Waste management is also carried out to reduce the materials' effect on the environment and to recover resources from them. Waste management can involve solid, liquid or gaseous substances, with different methods and fields of expertise for each.

Disposing of waste in a landfill involves burying waste to dispose of it, and this remains a common practice in most countries. Historically, landfills were often established in disused quarries, mining voids or borrow pits. A properly-designed and well-managed landfill can be a hygienic and relatively inexpensive method of disposing of waste materials. Older, poorly-designed or poorly-managed landfills can create a number of adverse environmental impacts such as wind-blown litter, attraction of vermin, and generation of liquid leachate. Another common byproduct of landfills is gas (mostly composed of methane and carbon dioxide), which is produced as organic waste breaks down anaerobically. This gas can create odor problems, kill surface vegetation, and is a greenhouse gas.

Incineration is a disposal method that involves combustion of waste material. Incineration and other high temperature waste treatment systems are sometimes described as "thermal treatment". Incinerators convert waste materials into heat, gas, steam, and ash.