Germany and the Netherlands will organize a workshop on "Environmental future outlooks and their military implications" at the NBC School of the German Armed Forces in Sonthofen, Germany, from 9 -11 February. The event is organized under the umbrella of the NATO Science for Peace and Security Committee and with the participation of Allied Command Transformation (ACT).

For three days NATO experts as well as participants from Defence Ministries and other institutions will look at future environmental developments and trends and their direct implications for strategic military planning. The discussions will include findings of the "Multiple Futures Project 2030" that has been conducted by ACT in 2009 with the aim to enhance the Alliance's understanding of the complex new security challenges and its capacity to deal with threats across the full spectrum of conflicts.

While the consequences and implications of environmental changes for the tasks of the Armed Forces are currently being studied by individual nations, there has been little exchange of this knowledge among NATO Member and Partner countries until now.

Some of the objectives of the workshop are to establish a repository of available studies on the future environmental situation, compare the contents of the national studies, establish similarities and differences and create a network of experts and organizations.

The outcome of the discussions will serve as a basis for future long-term defence planning. They will also help to evaluate existing long term defence plans, influence concept and strategy development and improve training and threat analysis efforts, both on a national level as well as in the NATO context.

Source: NATO News

Additional, suggested searches:

Bibliography.

Related Products.

More about this topic at Andinia.com.

Debates about this in our forum.

Related games and entertainment.

Heinrich Barth entered into the world of exploration almost like a secondary character but after his first expedition he had become a consummated traveller, explorer and adventurer.

What happened to this scientist of German origin was quite uncommon because people usually don't become experts rapidly; it is very rare that someone could acquire the level of expertise required to attain the status of guru in any trade just in the first try, but that seems to be the case of Herrn Barth. However, this wasn't just because God played dice that day; instead, there are several reasons that explain Barth's performance as an explorer:

He endured a rather prolonged isolation from civilisation; his expedition literally disappeared from the map for about five years. Such a long exposure to the wilderness on a constant basis certainly played a role.

His academic and scientific background and education had prepared him intellectually to confront dangers yet not understood.

After the disappearance of the expedition leader, Barth was left in charge, giving him the opportunity to do things based on his own common sense, at his own pace.

He was undoubtedly naturally talented for the trade of exploration.

The exposure to survival situations and emergencies.

Particularly in the last case, Barth was able by coincidence or fate to learn hard lessons from the mistakes he made during the first stages of the expedition, while he was a newbie of sorts. Being intelligent, he was able to learn from experiences like his rather imprudent solo climb to Mount Idinen, where he got lost and survived by drinking his own blood.

Read more...

Source: Andinia.com

Additional, suggested searches:

Bibliography.

Related Products.

More about this topic at Andinia.com.

Debates about this in our forum.

Related games and entertainment.

Temperature change in the Arctic is happening at a greater rate than other places in the Northern Hemisphere, and this is expected to continue in the future.

As a result, glacier and ice-sheet melting, sea-ice retreat, coastal erosion and sea level rise can be expected to continue. A new comprehensive scientific synthesis of past Arctic climates demonstrates for the first time the pervasive nature of Arctic climate amplification.

The U.S. Geological Survey led this new assessment, which is a synthesis of published science literature and authored by a team of climate scientists from academia and government. The U.S. Climate Change Science Program commissioned the report, which has contributions from 37 scientists from the United States, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom and Denmark.

The new report also makes several conclusions about the Arctic:

Taken together, the size and speed of the summer sea-ice loss over the last few decades is highly unusual compared to events from previous thousands of years, especially considering that changes in Earth's orbit over this time have made sea-ice melting less, not more, likely.

Sustained warming of at least a few degrees (more than approximately 4° to 13°F above average 20th century values) is likely to be sufficient to cause the nearly complete, eventual disappearance of the Greenland ice sheet, which would raise sea level by several meters.

The current rate of human-influenced Arctic warming is comparable to peak natural rates documented by reconstructions of past climates. However, some projections of future human-induced change exceed documented natural variability.

The past tells us that when thresholds in the climate system are crossed, climate change can be very large and very fast. We cannot rule out that human induced climate change will trigger such events in the future.

"By integrating research on the past 65 million years of climate change in the entire circum-Arctic, we have a better understanding on how climate change affects the Arctic and how those effects may impact the whole globe," said USGS Director Mark Myers. "This report provides the first comprehensive analysis of the real data we have on past climate conditions in the Arctic, with measurements from ice cores, sediments and other Earth materials that record temperature and other conditions."

To view the full report, titled Synthesis and Assessment Product 1.2: Past Climate Variability and Change in the Arctic and at High Latitudes, and a summary brochure on this report, visit www.climatescience.gov.

Source: USGS

Additional, suggested searches:

Bibliography.

Related Products.

More about this topic at Andinia.com.

Debates about this in our forum.

Related games and entertainment.