Hiranmay Karlekar
For some time, a number of reports by scientists has been showing how climate change has been affecting the whole world. A report in The New York Times of 29th September stated that, analysing the heat wave that hit Australia in 2013-14, five groups of scientific researchers concluded that it was almost certainly the result of the release of greenhouse gases by human activity. Besides the fact that all the five groups came to the same conclusion, the statement by Michael Hoerling, an American scientist who had often been sceptical of claims of links between weather conditions and global warming, that the evidence in these papers were very strong, has reinforced the credibility of the findings.
Other reports showed that global warming had made the occurrence of extreme heat waves more likely in Europe, China, Japan and the Korean Peninsula as well.Unanimity evaded three reports on the drought afflicting California. One of them found that human activity had increased its intensity; two others claimed to have found no direct evidence of that. There was, however, general agreement that whatever the causes, global warming had worsened things as rains that fell evaporated faster in the hotter climates. According to another report – by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change appointed by the United Nations – uncontrolled increase in the emission of greenhouse gases overwhelmed political efforts to contain the problem. It stated that their world-wide emission grew at the rate of 1.3 per cent from 1970 to 2000 and leapt to 2.2 per cent a year from 2000 to 2010. The pace, it appeared, was increasing and posed the risk of “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts” over the coming debates.
Elaborating, the report stated that global warming, which had already reduced grain production by several percentage points, could grow much worse if greenhouse gases’ emission continued unchecked. The consequences would include a rise in sea levels, devastating heat waves, torrential rains and other climate extremes. Most alarmingly, temperatures were rising to a level which made the melting of the vast ice-sheet covering Greenland, inevitable. The process, spread over centuries, would, according to the report, cause sea levels to rise by 23 feet and, along with the melting of Antarctic ice, could potentially flood the world’s major cities.
A study, known as the National Climate Assessment, prepared by a panel of scientists under the supervision of the US Government, and released by the White House in early May this year, made clear that the whole of the United States was feeling the effects of climate change – water becoming scarcer in the dry parts, torrential rains flooding the wet regions, heat waves becoming more common and severe, wildfires growing worse and heat-loving insects killing forests.
Disaster will follow. As Paul R Ehlrich and Anne H, Ehlrich point out in The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment, “Destabilisation of the climate can undermine biodiversity, exterminating populations and species that cannot adapt or move fast enough to keep up with changing habitats, including species that may play important roles in support of agriculture. Ecosystems may be torn apart as species migrate at different rates and in response to differing changes.” Such credible dark pronouncements notwithstanding, very little has happened. The Kyoto Protocol remains comatose; The Copenhagen meeting of 2009 produced little.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in November 2013 produced an agreement on the broad outlines of a proposed system for pledging emission cuts and declaration of support for a new treaty mechanism to cope with the effects of global warming including the human cost of rising seas, growing floods and more devastating storms. But concrete measures remain elusive. Governments squabble, industry demurs expenditure on green technologies, people are unwilling to jettison the comforts of a polluting lifestyle. The horsemen of apocalypse draw nearer.