Novel Perspectives of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences Vol. 9

The emphasis on a false climate crisis is becoming a tragedy for modern civilization, which depends on relible, economic, and environmentally viable energy. The windmills, solar panels and backup batteries have none if these qualities. This falsehood is pushed by a powerful lobby which Bjorn Lomborg has called a climate industrial complex, comprising some scientists, most media, industrialists, and legislators. It has somehow managed to convince many that CO₂ in the atmosphere, a gas necessary for life on earth, one which we exhale with every breath, is an environmental poison. Multiple scientific theories and measurements show that there is no climate crisis. Radiation forcing calculations by both skeptics and believers show that the carbon dioxide radiation forcing is about 0.3% of the incident radiation, far less than other effects on climate. Over the period of human civilization, the temperature has oscillated between quite a few warm and cold periods, with many of the warm periods being warmer than today. During geological times, it and the carbon dioxide level have been all over the place with no correlation between them.

This article conducts a statewise analysis of the extent of forest cover in India for the past two decades to focus on the level of implementation of various forest conservation policies. India has diverse kinds of forests which offer an enormous potential for crucial ecosystem services, rural economic growth and sustainable development. However, these ecosystems are threatened by deforestation. Moreover, as India has emphasized on the Joint Forest Management (JFM) as a fallout of forest policies after 1988, this article also studies the importance and the current situation of fund allocation of JFM schemes as a potential participation model expected to facilitate better implementation of policies. Our analysis reveals that Indian states have substantial forest cover, some of which has been lost due to various reasons over the past years in some regions. In order to combat such forest cover loss, there is urgent need to enforce steps to sustainably protect forest ecosystems. Along with the governments, the various stakeholders need to be involved in such conservation efforts. The JFM should be encouraged more so that along with better fund allocation there should be efficient use of such funds.

Despite the findings in Akrotiri that indicate its historical use as a harbor despite its current elevation of 300m, geologists argue that multiple caldera collapses occurred. Santorini has attracted the attention of both geoscientists and archaeologists. However, geoscientists have largely overlooked the presence of numerous high-angle faults with small dip-slip displacement and the formation of domes caused by these faults. The discovery of the buried town of Akrotiri, with its well-preserved buildings and artifacts, by archaeologists, along with the destruction of the flourishing Minoan civilization and Knossos in Crete during the same era, has generated significant interest. Plato's "Dialogues" discussing the catastrophe of Atlantis on the island is also relevant. However, the initial interpretation of the fall of huge areas in Santorini and the association with the legend of Atlantis by archaeologists, such as Galanopoulos in 1957, miscalculated the amount of volcanic ejecta and misinterpreted the features on the caldera walls. As an experienced field geologist, I argue that the topography of Santorini is mainly the result of faulting rather than erosion or volcanism. The slopes of Thira-Thiresia formed fold-like structures, and there was no caldera collapse.

This chapter examines, through a literature review, the social and environmental challenges experienced by communities living around legacy mine sites (shafts and dumps), past and present legislative framework that resulted in these legacy mine sites and how communities find themselves living next to these mine sites in Johannesburg, which results in these problems. The paper further explores the government’s, particularly the DMRE, proposed initiatives to empower those who intend to extract value from these abandoned mines while curbing the scourge of crime in affected communities. The creation of employment opportunities for the youth, in particular, will go far in the eradication of illegal mining. This intervention through effective legislation must be paired with improved implementation and enforcement of the legislation.

Even in locations where gold mining halted more than 100 years ago, legacy mine shafts and garbage dumps in the Witwatersrand continue to provide social and environmental problems for communities. Conflict arises between the communities and authorities due to the sluggish removal of these gold mine shafts and waste dumps (or lack thereof), particularly the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE), which is the relevant authority in the area of environmental management in mining.

In theories of the origin of life, the most reasonable is the concept of the primacy of autotrophic metabolism, in which carbon dioxide (CO₂) is considered as the only source of carbon for the functioning of nascent metabolic pathways. The aim of this paper was to demonstrate that the origin and development of primary autotrophic metabolism on early Earth were influenced by the two different regimes of degassing of the Earth – reducing (predominance CH₄) and oxidative (CO₂). It follows from this that the ancestral carbon used in metabolism may have been derived from CH₄ if the outflow of magma fluid to the surface of the Earth consisted mainly of methane. In such an environment, the primary autotrophic metabolic systems had to be methanotrophic. Due to the absence of molecular oxygen in the Archean conditions, this metabolism would have been anaerobic, i.e., oxidation of methane should have been carried out by inorganic high-potential electron acceptors. In light of the primacy and prevalence of CH₄-dependent metabolism in hydrothermal systems of the ancient Earth, we propose a model of carbon fixation where the methane is fixed/transformed in a sequence of reactions in an autocatalytic methane-fumarate cycle. Nitrogen oxides are thermodynamically most favorable among possible oxidants of methane; however, even the activity of oxygen created by mineral buffers of iron in hydrothermal conditions is sufficient for methanotrophic acetogenesis. The Hadean - Archaean hydrothermal system model is considered in the form of a phase diagram, which demonstrates the area of redox and P, T conditions favorable for the formation and development of primary methanotrophic metabolism.

The Purpose of the chapter is the development of an effective system of industrial environmental monitoring of sources of environmental pollution and the adoption of timely preventive and corrective measures to prevent excess emissions and discharges of pollutants. An analysis of approaches to the organization and conduct of industrial environmental monitoring was carried out and a process approach was proposed for organizing, accounting and planning and conducting activities for the preparation and monitoring of environmental pollutants, as in any production process. A block diagram of the process of organizing industrial environmental monitoring has been developed. The entire PEM process consists of a series of interrelated procedures or steps, where the output of one procedure is the input of a subsequent procedure. The input of the PEM process is to ensure the requirements of legislative and regulatory documents and international standards] for continuous monitoring of environmental components. The proposed process approach to the organization of PEM provides for the control of the implementation of procedures, which consists in continuous analysis and evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of measurements and definitions. The regulation of the PEM process provides for the elimination of inconsistencies that arise during the process (through corrective actions) and the improvement of the process. The proposed FEM system based on the process approach of organizing and conducting industrial environmental monitoring is implemented in the environmental management system according to ISO 14001-96 at the Aksu Ferroalloy Plant - a branch of TNC Kazchrome JSC, for which the enterprise standard STP 2 / 30-2004 "Monitoring environment. Data registration.

For more than 50 years, Kahrizak waste center has been a neighbor of Tehran metropolis. With the development of the Tehran city and the increase in waste production, it's destructive effects on the environment. Land use units that are always changing under the influence of natural events, human actions, social and economic issues, especially around big cities like Tehran is obvious. In these changes, various lands are converted into built-up lands, whether residential, commercial, industrial, or road network, and in some cases, they are left as barren lands. In this research, by using landsat8 satellite images and remote sensing technique, land use changes of Kahrizak waste center have been investigated in thematic maps which is more available for users, Five vegetation indices NDVI, EVI, SAVI, LAI and VCI and six supervised classification methods maximum likelihood, parallel networks, minimum distance from the mean, neural network, Mahalanobis distance and support vector machines with four circular, linear, polynomial kernels and radial with the same training and test data on the image of 2022 were investigated by using two parameters of overall accuracy and Kappa coefficient. For this research 4classes was selected soil, water, building (urban area) and agricultural lands, the results showed that the maximum likelihood classification method is the best method with overall accuracy of 90.99% and Kappa coefficient of 0.85 and the high similarity of the generated user map classes to the original satellite image. Then, a user map was generated from all the images from 2011 to 2022 using the maximum likelihood classification method. After calculating the area of the classes, the results showed that the area of the building class increased by 71% and the agricultural land class decreased by 80%.

The purpose of this study is to present environment protection in industrial clusters and relevant legal issues. In Article 3, Law on Environmental protection 2020 pointed Environmental protection activities mean activities to prevent and limit adverse impacts on the environment; responding to environmental incidents; overcome pollution, environmental degradation, improve environmental quality; rational use of natural resources, biodiversity and response to climate change.  This paper also presents some cases of environmental pollutions, via which authorities resolutely organize the implementation of measures to handle violations of the law on environmental protection. It would suggest that Relevant ministries and branches need to review and amend a number of relevant laws, such as the Law on Sanctions of Administrative Violations, the Law on Inspection, the Law on Water Resources, the Law on Science and Technology, etc.

The main objectives of this chapter are to come up with wind energy map of Arabian Gulf based on statistical analysis of long term data. Sustainable development is possible by use of sustainable energy and by ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for citizens. Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into a useful form of energy, such as using wind turbines to make electricity, windmills for mechanical power, wind pumps for water pumping or drainage, or sails to propel ships. This paper is on the wind energy resource availability over Arabian Gulf waters, covering 2300 grid points. The data available with Coastal Information System data base at Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, Kuwait, from 1979 to 2015 is used. Electricity consumption in GCC countries increased rapidly during the last three decades not only in absolute terms, but also in terms of its share in total energy demand. From the data sources, the probability density and power density were determined. The wind power density was assessed by fitting the Weibull probability density function to the wind speed data. The investigation is conducted at elevations of 10, 30, and 50 meters. The Weibull shape parameter k varies from 2.5 to 3 at the north and central of the Arabian Gulf. The annual mean wind power density over Arabian Gulf Waters is the highest in the central region of the Gulf. The power density at 10 m, 30 m and 50 m hub height varies be-tween 200 to 300 w/m², 200 to 300 w/m² and more than 300 w/m² respectively. Since the Arabian Gulf's core region falls inside the Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States' Class 2 category, it is appealing to develop large-scale wind power generation there at elevations of 30 or 50 meters. Since air conditioning systems utilize a lot of power in the summer, the wind power density is particularly appealing in the center region of the Arabian Gulf (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar).

This chapter reevaluates the accumulated information focuses on the response of individual taxa to the ecological perturbations that the Deccan volcanism and/or the asteroid impact might have inflicted on life on earth because none of their suggested physical and chemical hazardous factors could have resulted in the puzzling extinction-survival pattern. Radioisotopic constraints on Deccan-related volcanism are much less precise, but they show that early- and late-stage alkalic eruptions preceded and postdated Cretaceous-Paleogene time by at least several million years.

Their combined ejecta must have shaded the sunlight, ceasing photosynthesis for about 2-3 years and lowering the temperature on earth, which must have been crucial for cold-blooded reptiles. The darkening would have obscured seasonality, severely limiting flower blossoming, fruition, and creature reproduction. As a result, the marine and terrestrial food chains as well as prey-predator connections would have collapsed. Other than famine, the majority of the killing was done by the organisms due to a Darwinian battle for survival that resulted in a selective eradication of the temporally susceptible species. Those who managed to flee adapted to their new surroundings and lived. The disappearance of most of the Cretaceous carnivore reptiles enabled the survivors to fearlessly explore the Tertiary world and acclimatize to previously inaccessible habitats, which continuously shaped with the ongoing changes in the ecological and biological settings. The collapse of marine primary production and hence the food chain resulted in intensive predation among marine organisms and the elimination of those that could not withdraw into refuge sites. The Tertiary ecosystems' dynamic development sped up evolutionary processes, resulting in rapid diversification. Although they were the direct descendants of Cretaceous survivors, they were given a new taxonomic identity, and their ancestors were declared extinct, compounding the apparent "mass extinction" that occurred at the end of the Cretaceous.