Climate Change

Climate Change; I want to study the social and ecological consequences of addressing climate change through mitigation and adaptation mechanism but firstly we need to understand, what is the climate change? How the human activities and natural consequences causes the climate change? The effect of climate change and measures to control it through adaptation and mitigation.

Climate change is the change in the precipitation, change in temperature, the weather (moisture cloud) and season at different part of the world, which effect more than just a change in the weather of the earth.  Scientist belief that continued increase of CO2 emissions and other gases in the air is the main cause of the climate change. After the industrial revolution, the human activities increasing rapidly to harm the environment in many ways like; deforestation, urban infrastructure, burning of fossils fuel such as coal, natural gas and oil to produce energy and good. All these human consequences lead to create emission in the atmosphere and that emission trap heat term as greenhouse gas. Through this process of increasing in greenhouse effect and global warming in the atmosphere effected ozone layer which in turned lead to the rise in global temperatures, polar ice melting and as a result, sea level is rising. The natural consequences like carbon cycle and water cycle is very important in the climate change. Thereby, in an effort to reduce CO2 emission in the atmosphere, we need to take adaptation and mitigation measure in individual level, group of individuals, national level and international level.

The natural and human factor changes earth climate and the natural forces arise due to solar radiation changes and explosive volcanic eruption causes the effect of atmospheric abundance of greenhouse gases, such as stratospheric ozone. Before the industrial revolution, most of the climate change resulted entirely from natural causes such as changes in earth’s orbit, changes in solar activities, and volcanic eruption. The differences in radiative forcing estimate between the present day human activities and from the industrial era for solar irradiance changes and volcanoes eruption has resulted are very important for current and future climate change.

The increasing effect on environment by human activities, particularly by adding billion of tons of heat-trapping greenhouse gases to the atmosphere caused greenhouse effect. These increase of greenhouse gases, atmospheric gases that existed to kept our planet warm and prevent warmer air from leaving our earth in the atmosphere create general warming, caused global warming. So, in order to control climate change we need to take up adaptation and mitigation measure, and used green technologies to maintain ecological balance as well as developing in sustainable process.

Adaptation means adjustment to the nature by human system to a new changing environment, while mitigation is an act, in such a ways that to cause less serious and it refer to any strategy taken to remove greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. Adaptation and Mitigation are complementary to each other and they play a main role to control the climate change as well as toward environment protection. We should take up the measure of Adaptation, Mitigation and Green Technologies mechanism to maintain ecological balances.

The earth temperature depend on the balance between energy entering in form of sunlight and leaving the planet’s system. When the energy is release back into space, then the earth is cools. However, there are many factors, both the natural and human activities has caused changes in the climate and the earth’s energy balance, including; greenhouse effect, global warming – sources USGRCP. Social consequences of climate change can be address how the human activities effect the climate? What kind of activities they made to effect the world climate? And how the greenhouse effect caused by human activities and how it effect the climate change? What is the effect of climate change and how to control it through adaptation and mitigation process? We all know that the climate recent change cannot be explained by natural causes alone. But rather human activities can be explain most of that warming. The primary causes of the increasing greenhouse effect by human activities are; burning of fossil fuel, coal, natural gas and oil to produce energy, urban infrastructure, industries, farming practices, and deforestation and population growth. Fossil fuel contain carbon and therefore one of the main culprit in carbon emission into the atmosphere. But carbon is not the only greenhouse gas, the other gases are;

• Water vapor
• Methane
• Nitrous oxide
• Hydrofluorocardon
• Perfluorocarbon
• Sulfur hexafluoride.

All this above human activities that have contributed to climate change by adding CO2 and other heat-trap gases to the atmosphere. These greenhouse gas emissions have increased the greenhouse effect and caused earth’s surface temperature to raise. When there is rapid increase in global climate change, then, the world will face many problem like, displacement, drought, shortage of food and many disasters.  Thereby, in order to control the effect of climate change, we must implement a policy to take up different adaptation and mitigation measure.

The historical record of ecological consequences of climate change shows that the climate system varies naturally over a wide ranges of time scales. Climate change prior to the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s can be explained by natural causes, such as change in solar energy, volcanic eruptions and natural changes in greenhouse gas (GHG) concentration. The recent climate change cannot only claim to human activities because some volcanic eruption released large quantities of CO2 in the distant past. However, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) report that human activities now emit more than 135 times as much CO2 as volcanoes each year. Apart from the volcanic eruption in climate change, climate is influence by natural changes that effect how much solar energy reaches earth and changes include change within the sun and change in earth’s orbit. Change in the shapes of earth’s orbit as well as the tilt and position of earth’s axis can also affect the amount of sunlight reaching earth’s surface. So, the variation in the sun’s energy reaching our earth and changes in the reflectivity of earth’s atmosphere and surface, these factor have causes the climate change. The following are the factor also lead to climate change;

1. solar radiation changes
2. volcanic events that change cloud cover globally
3. warming trend from interglacial periods
4. The position of the earth in the solar system varies.

And other are like; Strom, cyclone, flooding, sea level rising, drought, disasters,

Mr. Larry West, on his views on ‘what is the greenhouse effect’ – “after 150 year of industrialization, climate change is inevitable. The greenhouse effect’ often gets a bad rap because of its association with global warming, but the truth is we couldn’t live without it. Life on earth depend their life on the sunlight. About 30% of the sunlight that beam toward earth is deflected by the outer atmosphere and scattered back into space. The rest reaches the planet’s surface and is reflected upward again as a type of slow moving energy called infrared radiation. He heat caused by infrared radiation is absorbed by “greenhouse gasses” such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, ozone and methane, which slowly escape from the atmosphere. The greenhouse gases regulate our climate by trapping heat and holding it, in a kind of warm-air blanket that surround the planet. This phenomena is what the scientist call the greenhouse effect”. Now we understand that what is greenhouse effect, then the next question is, how the human activities contribute to the greenhouse effect and its effect to global warming? The problem begin when the human activities distort the natural process by creating more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere than necessary to warm the planet earth to an ideal temperature.  This greenhouse gases released into atmosphere caused this long-wave radiation to increase, thus heat is trapped inside of our planet and creates a general warm effect. This phenomena of releasing CO2 into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming is call global warming by scientist. The effect of global warming to the environment are;

1. Rise in global temperature; since the later part of 19^th century, the temperature of the earth have risen 1 degree Celsius. (Source- “is the earth warming because of the human activities or not” by Rachelle Oblack).
2. Melting of ice; the polar ice caps are melting.
3. CO2 level in the atmosphere have risen significantly in the last 150 year.
4. Sea level rising; rising of sea level around all part of the globe.
5. Ecosystem and animals species are disappearing.

If the emission of carbon dioxide continues to grow at current rate, then the level of the gas in the atmosphere will likely double or possibly even triple from pre-industry level during 21^st century.

According to United Nations, the climate changes is already inevitable because of emissions that have occur since the dawn of the industrial Era. As a result global warming will continue to affect life on earth for hundreds of years, even if the greenhouse gases mission are reduced and the increase in the atmosphere level halted. We can remember that many climate has been held from Kyoto to Warsaw. A brief historical overview from the late 18^th century when some prominent climate scientist in the U.S. testified to the congress on human induced global warming to the Kyoto Conference of parties in 1997, the world increasingly became aware of the possibly catastrophic effects of rise in the average global temperature. The UN took the lead and staring with the RIO Conference in 1992, initiated a worldwide multilateral program to address the core issue of climate change. So, the Kyoto protocol 1997 is under the aegis of the UN Framework for Climate Change (UNFCC) and its main objective is to establish a legal binding agreement among the participating countries to reduce GHG emission. And this policy came into effect in 2005, as of the Dec. 2011, 191 countries signed and ratified the protocol; the only signatory not to ratify is the U.S.A.; however, common but differentiated responsibility has been laid down like, developed countries must bear the majority responsibility on the basis of historical cumulated emission, while the developing countries must therefore be allowed to continue to be net emitter. However, both the developed nations and developing nations should take the accurate measure to lessen those long term effect.

Many nations, communities and individuals are taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow global warming by reducing dependence on fossil fuels. We should increase the use of renewable energy, expanding forests, and making lifestyle choice that help to sustain the environment. The environmental movement like “Chipko Movement” is very good example and is very much important to protect our forest land. Mr. RamachandraGuha, on his book “The Unquiet woods” mention how the women participate in the environmental movement in Gandhain non-violent meant. The famous slogan for this movement is based on “save our forest; our forest give us water, clean air and wood”, which is one of the most famous environmental movement in the world. As an individual, groups of individual, a nation and including all nation; we must try to protect our environment to play our own role because as we all know that environment can’t be protect by one individual, or one nation like U.S or two or three nation but it need mass movement and it is our total responsible to protect our environment and our future generation. So here are some role we can play to protect our environment as under;

1. Forest plantation; so-called carbon sink have the critical role in the climate change negotiations and constitute the central element in the scheme to limit atmosphere greenhouse gas concentration set out by the Kyoto protocol.
2. The 2014 IPCC propose to take up adaptation and mitigation measure in every nation in order to reduce CO2.
3. Saving the energy in our day to day life; switch off the light when it is not in used and use CLF instead of Bulb.
4. Save every single drop of water; our planet earth is drenched is 326 million trillion gallons of water stuff but we have very less amount of fresh water, which we need to distribute all the cities and towns of the world.
5. Reducing uses of private car take public transport, reducing the use of fossil fuels as sources of energy, avoid unnecessary long travel, using and consuming local product and stop unnecessary deforestation.
6. Supporting to environmental protection Non-Government Organization like; Greenpeace and GIZ.
7. Buy energy star appliance and Car pool- many save you money and help the environment.
8. Use more recycle materials such as glass and aluminum, it save more fossil fuel than creating a new bottle or can.

The recent roles of reflectivity; human changes in land used and land cover have changed earth’s reflectivity. The process such as deforestation, reforestation, desertification and urbanization often contribute to changes in the climate in the places they occur. These effect may be significant regionally, but are smaller when averaged over the entire globe. The human population are increasing rapidly and their activities are polluting to water, air, land and noise pollution, and reduction in overall aerosol emission can be therefore lead to move warming. However, targeted reductions in black carbon emission can reduce global warming. So, the climate change was contributed by both human activities and the natural activities.

Adaptability climate change refer to adjustment in the human systems in response to actual climate exploits beneficial opportunities and changing environment; adaptation occur in physical, ecological, and human systems, like; changes in social and environment processes, perception of climate risk, practices and functions to reduce risk and exploration of new opportunities to cope with the changed environment. IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) define adaptation as “adjustment in the natural or human systems to a new or changing environment. Adaptation to climate change refer to adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities”. The adaptation mechanism in the climate change is very important to prepare in state level, local government and group of individuals; through adaptation which is planning for the changes that are expected to occur. Adaptation are taken up on agriculture, ecosystem, forest, international, transportation, coast, energy, human health, society and water resources. We need adaptation because climate change affected to human life and the ecosystem, which lead to rise in temperature, changes in precipitation, and sea level rise will likely affect as under;

1. Climate change can increase or decrease rainfall.
2. Influence agricultural crops yields.
3. Affect human health
4. Cause changes to forest and other ecosystem
5. Affect energy supply
6. Infrastructure collapse
7. Impact too many sectors of our economy.

Mr. Kaushik Ganguly and Mr. Gyana Ranjan Panda book on “adaptation to climate change in India” the study mainly focus on Indian adaptation policy and the union Budgets of India for fiscal years 2006-07 to 2009-10, in order to ascertain the fiscal priorities ascribed to different sector of adaptation. The expenditure on adaptation estimated by the study across all the sectors for adaptation stands at 1.7% of GDP for 2006-07 which increased to 2.68% of GDP as per 2009-10 budget estimates. The study find that adaptation are very crucial, the adaptation intervention such as; food security, heath, livelihood based, forest and fisheries, flood prone areas, rural and urban housing for the poor and infrastructure for education have received inadequate attention from policymakers in India. These critical sectors need to be integrated into the country’s adaptation policy network and the policy and budgets for adaptation need to be embedded as an intrinsic part of the policies and budgets for poverty reduction programs. The discourse on public policies and investment in the sphere of adaptation to climate change help to many individuals, communities and nation as a whole. And this help to save environment in small regional scales but contribute to control climate change in the larger outcome.

Mitigation; mitigation refer to any strategy or action taken to remove the Greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere or to reduce their amount. IPCC define Mitigation as “Technological change and substitution that reduce resource inputs and emission per unit of output with respect to climate change. Mitigation means implementing policies to reduce GHG emission and enhance sinks”.  Some of the other Mitigation mechanism are as under;

1. Flood mitigation; it involves the managing and control of flood water movement, such as redirecting flood run-off through the use of floodwalls and flood gates. (flood risk management)
2. Earthquake mitigation; mitigation of seismic motion is an important factor for earthquake engineering and construct in earthquake prone zone. (Construction to induced landslide, liquefaction of the foundation soil and weave of tsunami).
3. Tsunami mitigation and prevention; tsunami is natural disasters is beyond human control. There are, however, a number of technique that can minimize the harmful effect of tsunami to the physical environment, to an individual and the communities.
4. Disaster mitigation; community based approach to disaster mitigation is an important for community. Locally involved people know what the need are able to define the problem, when any disaster occur in the region of the community.

In the conclusion, the environment damage is mainly cause by human activities and natural consequences. However, we cannot control the climate change, it is inevitable but we can take a measure of adaptation and mitigation to lessen the rise in the global temperature rise and environmental damage.

The human activities like burning of fossil fuels; coal, natural gases, oil, deforestation, forest fire, urban infrastructure, causing the rise of global temperature and increase in the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere.  The continued increased in the greenhouse gases emission at the atmosphere cause of climate change. The heat caused by infrared radiation is absorbed by greenhouse gases like water vapor, CO2, ozone and methane, which slows its escape from the atmosphere. These process of rising the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere lead to greenhouse effect and the increasing in the temperature caused global warming.

The natural consequences of climate change occur mainly before the industrial revolution, when compared to the present natural consequences contributing to climate change. Climate change prior to the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s can be explained by natural causes, such as;

1. Solar radiation.
2. Volcanic eruption.
3. The orbit of the earth in the solar system.
4. Polar ice melting.
5. Drought, flood, cyclone and tsunami.

The social and ecological consequences effect the global climate by increasing concentration of CO2 emission in the atmosphere. The greenhouse gas emission have increased the greenhouse effect and which caused earth’s surface temperature to rise. Through this process, which lead to as follow;

1. Rising in the global warming.
2. Melting of the polar ice.
3. Rising of the sea level.
4. Ecological imbalance.

Adaptation and mitigation play a major role to control climate change. Adaptation, means the human system is adjustment to the new changing environment. The state government has taken up many step for adaptation process like; on agriculture, ecosystem, forest, international, transportation, coast, energy, human health and society and water resources. While, mitigation means strategy or action reducing the greenhouse gases at the atmosphere. The other mitigation are as under;

1. Flood mitigation
2. Tsunami mitigation
3. Earthquake mitigation
4. Disaster mitigation.

Therefore, the environment is damage by human activities and natural consequence, which lead to climate change. However, through adaptation, mitigation and technological measure we can maintain ecological balance.