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DEAR DIARY: The Greenhouse effect: are we responsible?
According to environmental analysts, by the year 2050, planet Earth will already have been subjected to violent storms, disintegration of glaciers and flooding of coastlines leading to the resettlement of millions of people in interior areas which would have been already parched and would have little hope.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change (IPCC) has predicted that global warming will cause extremely polluted cities, resulting in the failure of crops and the extinction of most of the wildlife and livestock on Earth. The natural process by which the radiant heat of the Sun is captured in Earth’s lower atmosphere, the greenhouse gases help maintain the temperature of the planet’s surface. But large concentrations of greenhouse gases can have adverse and harmful side effects on our health and the entire Eco-system.
The greenhouse gases are composed of water vapour, carbondioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other manufactured chemicals some of which are natural while some are emitted as a result of human activities. Over the past decades, concentrations of greenhouse gases have shown an increase in Earth’s atmosphere. Scientists fear that this could cause many calamities and affect human, animal and plant life.
In a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it is stated that: “Our ability to quantify the human influence on global climate is currently limited because the expected signal is still emerging from the noise of natural variability, and because there are uncertainties in key factors. These include the magnitudes and patterns of long-term variability and the time evolving pattern response to changes in concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols, and land surface changes. Nevertheless, the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate”.
According to this statement, though mankind is somewhat responsible for the current global warming scenario, some scientists feel that it is difficult to attribute it only to human activities and that it could most probably be a normal fluctuation or change in Earth’s climatic cycle. The fact remains that, there has been an increase in Earth’s temperature and it could be detrimental to human lives. Regions where the temperatures are mostly high will experience hotter spells and in colder regions, the temperatures will fall lower.
It will in turn result in higher use of resources to keep cooler in summers and warmer in winters. The increased use of air-conditioners in the increased summer heat and heaters in harsher winters will lead to a greater volume of air pollution. Soot, which is the result of incomplete combustion, is also a significant factor. The main culprits in this case are diesel-powered trucks and other vehicles responsible for these particles in the developed and developing countries of the world.
A new NASA study shows that things are not as bad. The rate of greenhouse gases being emitted has slowed down. The peak that was observed in 1980 has gone down and a major factor for that seems to be the international cooperation in reducing the use of chlorofluorocarbon, methane and due to steadying the rate of carbondioxide emissions. Research indicates that global warming during the last few decades was probably caused by carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), methane, tropospheric ozone and black carbon, (soot) particles.
“The decrease is due in large part to cooperative international actions of the Montreal Protocol for the phase-out of ozone-depleting gases. But it is also due in part to slower growth of methane and carbon dioxide, for reasons that aren’t well understood and need more study”, explains James Hanson, (source, Science@NASA, story titled, ‘Easing off the Greenhouse Gas’), author of the report from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Even after this somewhat relieving news, a lot of work still needs to be done by the leading countries of the world who are responsible mainly for the large emissions of harmful gases and also burning of fossil fuels. According to The Global Environment Outlook, an overview reveals that emissions of sulphur and nitrogen oxides are largely responsible for the damaging of 30-50 per cent of the forests in Central and Eastern Europe. West Asia has lost 11 per cent of its remaining natural forest during the 1980s. In USA 728 species are endangered or extinct. In Canada 254 species and 21 species of wildlife are globally extinct. The Asian timber reserves may not last more than 40 years. And in case the Antarctic ice-sheet melts, it will produce a sea-level rise of at least 60 meters and lastly, the Antarctic ozone hole will most probably remain as it is for many decades to come.
Can mankind make a difference? Since we have been major contributors in affecting the Earth’s natural Eco-systems, the answer seems to be, ‘Yes’.
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