Global-Warming: Fact or Farce??

The WHO, this year had a theme on world Health Day, ‘protecting health from the impact of climate change'. The idea was to increase the awareness of health hazards of climate change.

These include the extreme weather conditions that we face now, like the extreme summers and winter in India, the drought, famine in one part of the world and floods, hurricane (Katherina) and dam bursts in other. These extremes evoke a lot of passion among people. With 24X7 news channels just a remote control away, which tend to sensationalize everything, the common man is left impressed by the numerous so-called-experts version that man is the culprit of all these changes, the global warming is the result of human species exploiting the mother nature of its resources.

Up to a few years back I was a strong supporter of the lets-go-green movement, but my eyes opened up when I read a novel by Michael Crichton "State of Fear", though it does seem odd to make a work of fiction as the base of the argument that global warming is a farce, but the fact that Mr. Crichton has written this book with so many scientific footnotes and references like any scientific article that it is hard to deny it. When I Googled the reference given at the back, my case became stronger, that global warming is a big farce. The fact is that it is politically correct to support the theory that global warming is a real danger and caused by the increased energy consumption by the rising economies of India and China.

If I were to extend my argument to other so called ecological disasters, then the closest one has been the Sardar Sarovar Project and the role of NBA in it. It is a developmental project which was to cater to the water needs of millions of parched throats and farms in North Gujarat and Kutch, the fact that the media and the NGO's went against it was totally a jingoistic war cry and not based on facts. The fact that the displaced population should get there rightful rehabilitation should have been the focus of the NGO's rather than questioning the project itself.

Similar is the situation with global warming, there are too few facts that we know, oh yes the summers are getting hotter, but are WE responsible for it or has it been the trend through millions of years. Climate on earth still remains a big scientific mystery. We cannot predict volcanoes, flood, rains, earth quakes, tsunamis hurricanes, but we seem to have mastered the stock market.

During origin of life, Carbon dioxide was the crucial ingredient, and the lack of oxygen actually helped it. Since then CO2 has reduced to 0.03% of the atmospheric air. These changes took billions of years and are reason for our existence. Is man responsible for these changes also?

Similar case is with acid rain. We don't hear much about acid rain these days, but back in the 1970s it was regarded as one of the most significant environmental problems in North America. Sulfur dioxide from power plants and other industrial sources was thought to be mixing with rain and posing a mortal threat to our northeastern forests and lakes. A consensus formed that Something Must Be Done Now. Good policy depends on good information, however, so in 1980 President of US, Mr. Carter set in motion the largest scientific study in U.S. history to determine the scope of the acid rain problem and to suggest solutions. The government took eight years and spent $500 million on the acid rain study only to conclude in 1988 that the acid rain threat had been wildly over exaggerated. Not only was acid rain a minor problem, but where acid rain genuinely threatened lakes or forests, the problem could be treated cheaply for less than $100 million a year by simply treating acidified lakes and forests with alkaline compounds.

Karl Marx famously wrote that history repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce, and with the global warming controversy history is repeating itself in ways that are both tragic and farcical. We are again told that the overwhelming scientific consensus is that catastrophic global warming is imminent unless we Do Something Now, though this is far from accurate. There are hundreds of reputable climate scientists who harbor doubts about the theory, or the prospective severity, of global warming. They are routinely vilified by the press, Vice President Gore, and environmentalists for their honest doubts.

But even if the catastrophic global warming hypothesis is true, does the answer require wholesale changes in the modern economy, costing potentially trillions of dollars? Are we about to adopt a trillion-dollar solution to a billion dollar problem? Since the problem is that greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere, are there ways we might reflect some heat back into space? It turns out that this is a simple problem and not terribly expensive problem. As we find out every time a volcano erupts somewhere around the world, the climate is very sensitive to high altitude aerosols. Several physicists have calculated that we could remedy whatever global warming may be upon us for a few hundred million dollars a year by such simple techniques as additives to jet fuel that would provide reflective aerosols at high altitude from jet exhaust.

GUESS WHAT? THE ANTARTICA IS GETTING COLDER NOT WARMER

WORLD'S LARGEST FRIDGE:

Australian scientists navigate around Antarctic ice sheets. New sample data and satellite information show that the ice mass is getting colder, not warmer as had been previously thought. New data may affect political debate over global warming.

The Earth's polar regions long have been considered canaries in the coal mine on climate change - the first places to look, many scientists said, to learn whether the planet's temperature is, in fact, rising. Indeed, climate models generally predict that the heating of the atmosphere - precipitated by global warming - will cause the vast layer of ice that covers Antarctica to melt, raising sea levels and changing regional climate patterns by altering ocean currents. Two studies of temperatures and ice-cap movements in Antarctica suggest that the Southern Hemisphere's "canary" isn't going down without a fight - key sections of the ice cap appear to be growing thicker, not thinner, as previously believed. And the continent's average temperature appears to have cooled slightly during the past 35 years, not warmed.

Global warming like all climate changes are difficult to understand and prove. Some scientist have data that prove it others disprove it, it is like the clinical trials that we come across in conferences and journals, we don't know which ones to rely on.

The information bombardment of our times is not helping us either; the saturated and intoxicated mind tends to judge things in haste. It's like repeating the lies a hundred times, till everyone believes it. But the onus is on us to believe what we. It is said that "seeing is believing", but does it hold true in our times..... Think about it!!!