There are contradictory predictions about the fate of Dubai by 2100, i.e. uninhabitable or the center of the world. The temperature increase due to global warming can render life in the MENA region almost uninhabitable (http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/27/world/persian-gulf-heat-climate-change/; http://www.kippreport.com/fcs/abu-dhabi-dubai-and-doha-uninhabitable-by-2100/; 

http://m.mic.com/articles/127458/scientists-say-climate-change-could-render-the-middle-east-almost-uninhabitable-by-2100#.wYEmPYmaU).

However, the population dynamics which is predicted to decrease in the Americas and Europe and to increase in the Asia and Africa. This will make Dubai to be the center of the world instead of London which is currently holds this status (http://gulfelitemag.com/dubai-set-become-centre-world-year-2100/; http://m.khaleejtimes.com/nation/general/dubai-to-be-centre-of-the-world-by-2100; http://m.arabianbusiness.com/dubai-set-become-the-centre-of-world-by-2100-gov-t-expert-predicts-581660.html).
  

BI-Science YouTube is a Business Intelligent solution provider, for the on-line media industry, of videos about the newest discoveries in space, medicine, and biotech along with science explainers (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9uD-W5zQHQuAVT2GdcLCvg). 

This video by BI Science is about one of the many irreversible effects of climate change. Sea levels have been rising at a greater rate year after year, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates they could rise by another meter or more by the end of this century. In 2013 National Geographic showed also that sea levels would rise by 216 feet if all the land ice on the planet were to melt. This would dramatically reshape the continents and drown many of the world’s major cities.

Sea level rise is caused by two factors related to global warming: the added water from melting land ice and the expansion of sea water as it warms. The increase in sea level is being measured by two methods, i.e. tide-gauges and satelite altimetry (http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/measuring-sea-level.html). Many leading science and technology institutes and organisations have reported on the increase of sea level which is estimated to be up to or even more than 3.39 mm/yr depending on the used approached, e.g. https://www.skepticalscience.com/sea-level-rise.htm; https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-direct-observations.html; https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch5s5-5-2.html; http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/; https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-5-1-figure-1.html

Here are some inconvenient facts about the global impacts of the rise in sea level on heavily populated coastal regions (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VbiRNT_gWUQ).

How to make our cities sustainable, indeed there is no “one-size fits all” solution as cities around the world face different challenges when it comes to defining what a sustainable city is. Joinig the ongoing transformation to a more sustainable future is becoming not only a global need but rather a neccessity where the urbanization process is not a random process anymore. Yet, the historical, cultural and traditional evolution will play cental role for adoptation along with many other indicators across socio-cultural, economic, climate, energy and environmental domains. ” Juliet Davis, senior lecturer in architecture at Cardiff University says “there will be no one size fits all”. Lucy Warin, project manager at Future Cities Catapult says “There are of course underlying principles that support good, sustainable urbanism – firstly, good city governance, powerful city leaders who know their region and can respond quickly as issues arise. And secondly, citizen engagement. Smart people make smart cities and any sustainability solution should start and finish with the citizens”.

More on how to make our cities sustainable at:
http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/apr/17/how-to-make-our-cities-more-sustainable-expert-view?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Here are, also, some quirky ideas for making our cities more sustainable:

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/apr/16/ten-quirky-ideas-for-making-our-cities-more-sustainable

This said, there are other important issues, what regards the global transformation to a more sustainable future, to take in consideration. Though about 70% of the global population is expected to live in cities by 2050, there very little known about how we can achieve sustainable rural-urban integration. This is specially true in developing counting where for example 70% of the African population is living in rural region with agriculture as a main source of income and employment. Rural Africa suffers from extreme levels of poverty in terms of energy, water and sanitation along with general lack of basic public services and infrastructures for education, health, transportation and communication.

Many regions worldwide are facing new and major challenges for generations to come. The world is currently, going through tectonic transformations for meeting the UN-SDG (Paris meeting, 2015) and adapting more sustainable life-styles to meet the future realities of the post fossil-fuel era. With growing population, declining natural resources and increasing waste and pollution and uncertain climate and energy pressures, it becomes imperative to have careful large-scale and long-term planning and manageable policies. To meet the expected doubling of population in Uppsala county a Climate and Energy Strategy is being worked out with consideration to all development areas identified in the regional development plan. In this context, Uppsala county is planning to be an international centre of excellence in the climate-Energy area. 

See how one of the most explosive Swedish regions in terms of population and socio-economic developments is planning to cope with the complex challenges of its distant future.

Click to access strategy-short-version.pdf

The global climate change debate is so far focused on collection of information on climate change indicators by being mainly forced by what is known as man-made global warming. This is a consequence of the increasing levels of green-house gases in the atmosphere in particular carbon dioxide. Enormous amount of research were put to get “validated” data on the average global surface temperature. However, existing knowledge on the associated indicators (http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/) is mainly qualitative with major uncertainties what regards the spatio-temporal accuracies and uncertainties. Validated quantitative data and associated up and down scaling besides being very difficult to get using Environment and Climate Assessment Studies and Models are neither globally available not straightforward to get, e.g. for example using the spatio-temporal archives of lake-catchment systems to retrieve the complex data on indicators (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2854826/pdf/ukmss-29587.pdf). Also, another key issue in quantitative studies is the type of base-line indicators that exist as reference framework for predicting the changes from “normal values”, i.e. how abnormal is abnormal in our observations? We are still left with considerable unknowns of the known unknowns while many new unknowns ars still remain to be known.

Energy and mass are conserved in closed systems. Looking at our universe, the solar system, the earth and using the concept of closed systems we find the following. Since the earth can be looked upon as a “closed system” then we can conclude that what we consume in terms of any fossil natural resources, i.e. being mined and used, is irreversible and can not be brought back as they were before. The same can be also said about natural minerals. Furthermore, all irreversable processes (mining and associated production to other forms, e.g. energy and industrial products) generally give rise to irreversible hazardous products in form of waste and pollution that impacts negatively on the functioning of natural systems. These natural systems, e.g. aquatic systems and land-water resources are generally expected to go out of order and to suffer from “malfunctioning”. In this context the earth’s natural resources can be generally classified into four main categories: 

(1) Mined and used irreversibly with major and remarkable large-scale and long-term damaging effects and negative environmental impacts 

(2) Mined and can be used reversibly but with high economic costs and major side-effects and negative environmental impacts

(3) Mined and can be used reversibly with minor economic costs and limited negative environmental impacts

(4) used and reused reversibly with limited environmental impacts

National Geographic, January 2016, has unique and interesting reportages with professional photographs.

A ski resort in Swedish Lapland is not where one would expect to find 600 refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. One hundred of them are children and they’re now adjusting to life above the Arctic Circle. Nor did the refugees expect to be seeing their first snowfall and figuring out the proper time to pray in a place where the sun hardly shines in winter and always in the sky in summer. But for these asylum-seekers, Riksgränsen offers an interim solution on the path to a permanent home. This ski resort Riksgränsen is in Swedish Lapland not far from the border with Norway. Its guests now, though, are not skiers enjoying the slopes—they’re refugees fleeing conflict.

In October, when there were 10,000 refugees entering Sweden each week, government officials called the resort to ask if he would be interested in opening it for asylum seekers. Once the government made a decision, things moved quickly as Sweden is organized country with well-established routines in this context. The government gives the resort 350 Swedish Krona (less than $41) per person per day—much less than a ski guest would pay. “We basically did it to do something good,” Kuldkepp says, the resort manager. See What Life Is Like for Refugees Above the Arctic Circle: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/160111-refugees-sweden-photos/utm_source=NatGeocom&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=pom_20160117&utm_campaign=Content&utm_rd=1084349381

It is all about sustaining life where education is imperative to understand where we were, where we are just now and where are we going to. Visit, share and contribute in http://sustain-earth.com

The International Renewable Energy Agency published an interesting report on the global Renewable Energy benefits “The Economics of Renewables”. This is the added-value of the decarbonization of energy for mitigating the global warming.  

https://www.dropbox.com/s/12cy7ynt4sgwzwk/IRENA_Measuring-the-Economics_2016.pdf?dl=0

  


The human eye can only see objects in daytime and not when it is dark by night. This is unlike, e.g. snakes, where they can see objects in dark space as well. The visibility of human eyes is made possible through the natural daylight coming from the sun which among its components some type of electro-magnetic radiation called “the visible light”. The visible light can also come from artificial light sources (http://www.continental-lighting.com/lighting-basics/artificial-light-sources.php) e.g. light bulb (heated wires), LED-lamps, flourescent, ….). Snakes for their visibility, for example, use other type of radiation called “the infra-red” which is also emitted from hot bodies including the human body. The global distribution of snakes bites leading to envenoming can be viewed at (http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1678-91992013000100205&script=sci_arttext&tlng=pt).

Researchers have now created possibilities for extending the visibility of human eyes to include in addition to visible light the infra-red radiation. Read the story below:

http://www.slipperybrick.com/2014/04/night-vision-contacts/
  

The world around us is moving steadily  and rapidly towards different distinations to meet the growing challenges for post oil and fossil-fuel era or even more seriously stated towards what we can call the post natural resources era. One exception is the solar energy which will outdate all other natural resources on earth including water and the life itself. 

This does come with a surprise as all existing knowledge and research predictions indicate that all natural resources on planet earth are, or sooner or later will be, going through peak-consumption followed by gradual decline and even annihilation. In the case of water and life it is about peak-quality and peak-life as we are also facing peak-waste and peak-pollution in this very century. However, it is only our collective human intelligence, integrated worldwide innovation and coherent hardwork combined with systematic planning and above all sustainable policies and management strategies that can save our planet from total collapse and annihilation. 

Successful transformation to sustainable future for planet Earth can not and will not be achieved without effective global dialog, shared knowledge and expertise combined with worldwide solutions and work for implementation of innovative and sustainable policies and management strategies. We can not imagine that this can be achieved by “business as usual” where only a small and localized portion of the world population has access to knowledge and expertise while the large majority of the global population lack the resources and capabilities to contribute constructively in saving planet Earth. 

It is not about finding false and destructive solutions for erasing poverty (only filling the hungry stomachs) since we will be overloading planet Earth with more blind consumption, generating and accumulating enormous waste and pollution everywhere. It is about empowering the majority of the world population with resources and capabilities to actively share the heavy responsibility for preservation and protection of our collective natural resources on earth. This is only possible if we have collective vision and mission for more sustainable future for our planet Earth. 

It is interesting to see how some first-class universities (http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm) are taking major steps for the globalization of knowledge and increasing the mobility of expertise around the world.

The post industrial revolution era was  geared to lifestyle based on production and consumption engineering technology. While our global lifestyle is moving on new tracks to revert what went wrong in the post industrial era new concepts are being emerging. Future  technology will involve the expansion of the so-called “Reversed Engineering” where 12 GREEN Engineering Principles would be absolutely imperative for getting our planet on large-scale and long-term sustainability roads. 

Read more about this: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es032373g

Transformations to sustainable societies involve seeing the big picture to achieve optimization in all sectors and on all levels, i.e. for the benefit of everyone. An example is provided here, INDUSTRIAL AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT. 

http://learningcourses.com.sg/dt_courses/diploma-industrial-operations-management-rp/
Join “Sustain-Earth.Com” to inform and get informed on the existing urgent and imperative global needs for transforming our life-styles and tuning them towards a sustainable future for planet Earth.