(together with closed circuit television, radio-
frequency ID chips, biometric ID cards and
high-resolutionremote sensingimagery tech-
nologies) is sometimes given as an example
of geosurveillance, emotively described by
Dobson and Fisher (2003) as threatening
geoslavery – the erosion of privacy, permitting
governments or other organizations the ability
to locate where ‘their’ people are at any time of
day and to monitor (or control) their time–
space geographies (cf.surveillance). rh
Suggested reading
Brimicombe (2006); Monmonier (2004).
global warming Global warming is the in-
crease in global temperature resulting from
human activities that ‘enhance’ (exacerbate)
the so-called natural ‘greenhouse effect’. The
term ‘climate change’ (seeclimate) is used
increasingly, because although the global im-
pact is warming, impacts vary throughout the
world. Human-induced climate change is
seen by many environmentalists as the most
serious environmental problem, because it ex-
acerbates other environmental issues.
Greenhouse gases are mostly natural com-
pounds (water vapour, carbon dioxide, me-
thane and nitrous oxide) that allow the
Earth’s atmosphere to trap heat released as
longwave energyfrom the Earth’s surface.
This process, called the greenhouse effect,
means that the earth is 33 8 C warmer than
expected given its distance from the sun.
At an average temperature of 15 8 C, the Earth
supports many lifeforms.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change(IPCC)hasprovidedscientificanalyses
of various greenhouse scenarios to inform the
United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (1992) and the Climate
Change Convention in Kyoto in 1997
(O’Neill, Mackellar and Lutz, 2001). The
Kyoto Protocol came into effect in February
2005, after ratification by 55 countries that
were responsible for 55 per cent of emissions in
- The largest emitter of greenhouse gases,
the USA, and the largest emitter per capita,
Australia, rejected ratification. Concerns
about the Kyoto Protocol range from weak tar-
gets and an emphasis on creating trading sys-
tems (seeenvironmental economics), to its
exclusion of rapidly developing economies
such as China and India. There are also issues
of ‘baseline inflation’. The choice of 1990 as a
base year meant that pollution from redundant
heavy industry in the former East Germany was
included in the base figure. Under the Kyoto
Protocol,theAnnexOne(developed)countries
agreedtoanaveragereduction of5.2percentof
greenhouse gas emissions from a base year of
1990 by 2008–12. Australia secured an 8 per
cent increase in emissions, including foregone
land clearing (Hamilton, 2001).
There have been natural cooling and heat-
ing periods throughout the Earth’s history, but
the IPCC found that ‘most of the warming
observed over the past 50 years is attributable
to human activities’ (IPCC, 2001, p. 10).
These include increased levels of carbon diox-
ide (coal burning, transport and clearing of
forests), methane (burning natural gas, seep-
age from landfill sites, rice paddies and cattle)
and nitrous oxide, mainly through agricultural
activities (see Munasinghe and Swart, 2005).
The impacts include rising sea levels and
changes in the location, intensity and fre-
quency of cyclones, droughts and floods.
The changes are yet to be fully understood,
because of the lag time between emission and
cumulative impacts. While initial predictions
of global warming have been lowered, there is
uncertainty about the significance of clouds,
the operations of ocean currents and the
threshold levels of ecosystems. What is certain
is that emissions of carbon dioxide and some
other greenhouse gases are increasing, that
they have a long lifetime, and that the average
temperature of the Earth is about 0.7 8 C
warmer than 100 years ago. While these pro-
cesses are still occurring, lowering the initial
predictions merely means that the impacts will
be delayed by a few years. pmglobalization A big buzzword in political
speech and a ubiquitous analytical category
in academic debate, globalization operates
today rather likemodernizationdid in the
mid-twentieth century as the key term of a
master discourse about the general state
of the world. The most common political ver-
sion of the discourse depicts globalization as
an unstoppable process of globalintegration,
a supposedly inevitable process that while
being driven by free marketcapitalismalso
necessitates all the free market reforms ofneo-
liberalism.Here,forexample,isThomas
Friedman (1999, pp. 7–8), a columnist of the
New York Timeswho has made a name for
himself by interpreting practically any event
anywhere in the world through this same
simple discourse. Globalization, he says,
involves the inexorable integration of
markets, nation-states, and technologies to
a degree never witnessed before – in a wayGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_G Final Proof page 308 2.4.2009 6:30pmGLOBAL WARMING