The uncertainties of climate change: More from Human behavior rather than Science.
The uncertainties of weather change have sky-rocketed by leaps and bounds in the whole world for the last two or three decades. It’s shocking yet true that the main culprit is the Human behavior. Because of the change in the climate system, the world is facing challenges on their basic amenities, i.e., safe water and air. When many of the parts of the world are suffering either from water scarcity or floods, i.e., safe-water crisis; at the same time almost all the big cities of the world are adversely affected and stung by the venom air. Despite downpours in a few places, draughts and expanded heat-waves are becoming common. Mounting temperature is hardly startling, although, some parts of the world are also enjoying record cold temperatures and awful winter storms. The world is now actually caught between the Scylla and Charybdis. Though the world leaders are paying attention galore to the advancement of the world economy, yet the bottom line is, no one is taking the onus of converting this green planet into a blackish grey one!
There is a famous maxim in English which states, “Science is a blessing as well as a curse.” There is another famous saying which pinpoints, “Every single thing in our life has a positive as well as a negative impact.” Human exploits his comprehension and science in various research-works and made multifarious technology, industries, etc. which eases our life. But human didn’t realize that these things could harm the mother earth in the yore. We use of excessive fossil fuels in the motor vehicles and daily domestic uses, uses in industries, agriculture including coal, petrol, diesel, natural gases, gasoline, and various petrochemicals like plastics, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, etc.. These fuels release carbon which is the main source of Green House Gases. The toxic gases released by the fossil fuels such as Nitrogen Oxide, Carbon Mono-oxide, various Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), Cloro-Fluoro-Carbon (CFC), Methane gases, soot, aerosols (known as Ozone precursors) in total bonhomie with oxygen, form ozone during the sunny days. This ground-level ozone and PM 2.5 play the most paramount role in the formation of Smog, which affects human health especially in the respiratory system, pulmonary diseases, and skin diseases. These gases and aerosols are rapt in the troposphere and made a newly man-made ‘ground-level ozone layer’.
In recent reports, almost all the climate scientists are agreed that humans are the overwhelming origin of the long term transformation in the climate that we are observing in recent times. The ‘special report on global warming of 1.5°C portrayed that the observed change in global and regional weather over the last five decades or so is almost totally due to human persuasion on the climate system and not due to natural causes. Although there are a few natural external causes, like increase or decrease in volcanic activity and solar radiation. But this can cause very small fluctuation in global temperature up to about 0.2°C in every 11 years or so. The Paris agreement and the reports of IPCC suggest the world to clutch the increment of global average temperature to 1.5°C at any cost to avoid the irreversible effects of climate. But unfortunately the global average temperature has already risen by more than 1°C and it could cross the 1.5°C limit as early as 2040. IPCC report unveils us that 90% of the extra heat due to global warming is trapped in the atmosphere by the newly formed ‘ozone layer’, and that is absorbed by the ocean. As most of the world is covered with ocean, which heats up and makes more clouds. Thus, more energy-intensive storms like Hurricane and Typhoons are forming. Besides that, the warmer atmosphere makes glaciers and mountains melt. Today, Human is observing a dramatic change in the atmosphere. A steep decrease in Arctic ice makes mounting in sea-levels all and sundry, and that is a Sword of Damocles for the low-lying coastal areas. That also disbalances the marine ecosystem and causes of increasing frequencies of many climate extremes. Various weather reports confirm that as of early 2019, nearly 70% of weather events have been occurred due to the influences of global warming.
Prudence is the order of the day to endure in this onerous condition. World leaders need to apply their acumen to confront the catch-22 situation. We need to find out a core strategy to tackle the unpredictable weather across the world. At first, we have to forego the uses of fossil fuels and start to use renewable energies at a large scale. Besides that, we should concentrate on saving energy. We should put the 3R’s of sustainability into practice, i.e., Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. We have to act prominently against forest loss, and most importantly we have to aware people in a broad-way manner. We’ve got a Hobson’s choice, but to stay and bear the anguish and trauma of severe climate change, which is indigenously made by us. Thus, we have to think globally, act locally, and then only we can fight against climate change.