Saturday, October 03, 2009

Global Warming... Time for action...




Global warming is something which you are going to hear a lot in the coming days. I plan to write a series of articles on Global warming, its impact, the Kyoto Protocol, the road ahead and so on. The data has been gathered from different sources and I will make an attempt to simplify things.

October 15th is being observed as Blog Action Day 2009 and the theme is climate change. The basic goal of writing this is to create awareness amongst all and do our bit to save something for the future generation.

How many of you have watched Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth. Please watch it friends. It just makes you sit and take stock of what I am talking about.

Yugratna Srivastav, a 13-year-old girl from Lucknow addressed the United Nations Climate Change Summit in New York last week. Yugratna’s speech was cheered on by world leaders including UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon.

"We received a very nice planet from our ancestors. It was green, now we have damaged it, polluted it, and we're going to give a bad planet to our successors and this is not right".

Friends… Our lives are moving at a breath taking pace and its having a huge impact on the climate. It is time we just take a pause and think on what this Global Warming is and how it is going to impact our lives in the near future.. A decade ago Global warming was a nice topic on which students were asked to right essay and it began and ended there.. But now it is not about essay on Global warming but practicalities of facing a climate which is undergoing a rapid transformation which could effectively put the future of our generation under stake.

Global warming – “The range of activities we end up doing daily in some way is contributing to the usage of carbon rich oil or coal. The electricity we us, the vehicles we use, and the food we cook… Burning these fossil fuels releases heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, particularly carbon dioxide. Because of all this frenetic burning of fuel that's taken place since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased to the point that the planet's overall surface temperature is rising. And this is Global Warming in simple terms… “

Global warming is caused by green house gases, which trap in the sun’s infrared rays in the earth’s atmosphere, which in turn heat up the earth’s atmosphere. These green house effect warming is called as global warming. The effects of green house effect are visible more prominently in the recent years, with number of natural calamities on the rise in the whole world.

Global warming is effecting the crop production, as the crops are getting destroyed by the sudden change in temperatures or sudden onset of rains. Also the flash floods and other natural calamities affect the crop.

As a matter of fact, because of global warming, the earth’s atmosphere is getting more unpredictable with heavy rains in the areas, which have scanty rainfall or drought in the areas, which received good annual rainfall. The months of rainfall has also getting affected. We have witnessed this in our regions.

Environmental graffiti states 5 deadliest effects of Global warming…

5)Spread of disease: As northern countries warm, disease carrying insects migrate north, bringing plague and disease with them. Indeed some scientists believe that in some countries thanks to global warming, malaria has not been fully eradicated.

4)Warmer waters and more hurricanes: As the temperature of oceans rises, so will the probability of more frequent and stronger hurricanes. We are witnessing this very frequently.

3) Increased probability and intensity of droughts and heat waves: Although some areas of Earth will become wetter due to global warming, other areas will suffer serious droughts and heat waves. Africa will receive the worst of it, with more severe droughts also expected in Europe. Water is already a dangerously rare commodity in Africa, and according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global warming will exacerbate the conditions and could lead to conflicts and war.

2)Economic consequences: Most of the effects of anthropogenic global warming won’t be good. And these effects spell one thing for the countries of the world: economic consequences. Hurricanes cause do billions of dollars in damage, diseases cost money to treat and control and conflicts exacerbate all of these.

1)Polar ice caps melting: The ice caps melting is a four-pronged danger.

First, it will raise sea levels. There are 5,773,000 cubic miles of water in ice caps, glaciers, and permanent snow. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, if all glaciers melted today the seas would rise about 230 feet. Luckily, that’s not going to happen all in one go! But sea levels will rise.

Second, melting ice caps will throw the global ecosystem out of balance. The ice caps are fresh water, and when they melt they will desalinate the ocean, or in plain English – make it less salty. The desalinization of the gulf current will “screw up” ocean currents, which regulate temperatures.

Third, temperature rises and changing landscapes in the artic circle will endanger several species of animals. Only the most adaptable will survive.

Fourth, global warming could snowball with the ice caps gone. Ice caps are white, and reflect sunlight, much of which is relected back into space, further cooling Earth. If the ice caps melt, the only reflector is the ocean. Darker colors absorb sunlight, further warming the Earth.

Rest in my next… I will try to convey what Kyoto protocol is all about and expose the double standards of US when it comes to Global Warming.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

kudos for the timely series of article on global warming. it shows you are really concerned about it.

Pratiba Bhat said...

Good work !! Looks like you've done a lot of research on Global Warming.... :D :D I'll get to learn a lot from here :D :D