What
is climate change?
| SINKING
& SUING!
Wednesday, March 06, 2002, SYDNEY: Tuvalu's Prime
Minister Koloa Talake said over the weekend that his nation of 10,000 people was
considering suing the United States and Australia over their failure to ratify the
1997 Kyoto protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The David-versus-Goliath proposal
is barely off the drawing board, and it is not clear who would be sued or where.
Tuvalu, a string of nine coral atolls 16 feet above sea
level at their highest point, says its last palm tree could sink beneath the aquamarine
waters within 50 years. Last year it appealed to South Pacific heavyweights Australia and
New Zealand to give its people special visas in case they became "environmental
refugees" forced to flee. It was rebuffed. — Reuters |
The Green House Effect
is a natural feature of the Earth's environment, keeping our planet's surface at a warm
average temperature of 15 ºC. The natural process of CO2 and the other
greenhouse gases, forming a blanket of gases that do not allow all the radiation to escape
back into space is known as the Greenhouse Effect. The Greenhouse Effect is essential to
maintain the Earth’s temperature at a habitable level.
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The earth receives short wave radiation from the sun,
one-third of which is absorbed by the atmosphere, ocean, ice, land and living organisms.
The energy absorbed from solar radiation is balanced, in the long term, by the outgoing
radiation from the earth and atmosphere.
While short wave radiation from the sun can easily pass
through the atmosphere, the long wave radiation emitted by the warm surface of the earth
is partially absorbed by trace gases in the atmosphere called greenhouse gases (GHGs). The
main natural greenhouse gases are water vapour (H2O), Carbon Dioxide (CO2),
and Methane (CH4). In absence of these gases the temperature of the Earth would
have been 33o C lower than it is today.
In the late 1980s, scientists began to suggest that the
earth's energy flux was no longer in balance. Earth's surface was getting warmer,
affecting the elements of the climate system. The climate itself was changing.
The cause
The problem is that human activity is making the blanket of gases "thicker"
– or enhancing the greenhouse effect. By 1995, research concluded that the main
culprit was CO2 emissions, produced by the burning of fossil fuels (coal, gas,
and oil) in factories and power stations, and cars. When we burn coal, oil, and natural
gas, we spew huge amounts of CO2 into the earth's atmosphere filling it up with
large amounts of greenhouse gases, much much more than what is okay. When we destroy
forests, the carbon stored in the trees escape to the atmosphere. Other basic activities,
such as raising cattle and planting rice, emit methane, nitrous oxide, and other
greenhouse gases.
If emissions continue to grow at current rates, it is
almost certain that atmospheric levels of CO2 will double from pre-industrial
levels during the 21st century.
If no steps are taken to slow greenhouse gas emissions, it is quite possible that
levels will triple by the year 2100.
