A relook at global warming/climate change!

FALSE ALARM
How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet
By Bjorn Lomborg

There is no denying that the world is getting hotter by the day. If we go by our life experiences, we do not remember feeling fearful of staying outdoors in the heat of the afternoon tropical sun. Fans were luxury items, and air conditioning was opulent at its height. 

In the early 1990s, I had the pleasure of meeting some guests from Dubai during a family function. I was surprised when they started complaining about the Malaysian weather, specifically the heat. Living in a desert country, they were complaining about the Malaysian heat. When enquired, they unanimously admitted that because of the architecture and setup of their infrastructure, they were nicely shielded from the blazing desert sun. That carries a significant weightage in how we handle climate change, according to this book which gives a different outlook on how the world should looking this problem. 

True, human activities and fossil fuels are contributing to our degradation of the environment and the loss of the greenhouse effect and all the things we are familiar with. The approach to dealing with it is the author's bone of contention. 

Take the instance of the yellow jacket showdown in Paris. They are the unhappy product of the European carbon tax system. The French ruling party believed it was criminal to use fossil fuel as it polluted the environment at this time and age. The government imposed a high levy on petroleum to discourage people from using private vehicles. It was their wish for the public to use Government-subsidised public transportation. Well, it worked fine for urban dwellers. For the farmers in the outskirts who solely depended on their beaten-up cars and tractors for work and transportation of their produce, it was a hit before the belt. At such challenging times when production costs are already so high, the rise in petrol price is a double whammy. Hence, the uprising. 

Generally, humans tolerate heat better than extreme cold. Around the world, more people die from cold than heat. People have to spend more to keep themselves warm. Coincidentally, fossil fuel is needed for this purpose. If poor people resort to burning wood for cooking and keeping themselves warm, their health will be affected by the emitting soot.

What people need is resources (read finances) to uplift their lives. They must improve their living conditions to keep themselves cool when their living space becomes warmer. They need money to be able to afford air conditioning, fans and other means to make their living area bearable. People at the lower rung of society bear the brunt of the effects of climate change. They can ill-afford houses on higher grounds to avoid the impact of rising sea levels. 

If rising levels of our oceans are going to flood many low-lying areas, it is up to governments to build dykes, like the ones in the Netherlands, to protect the affected people. For that, countries have to prosper. 

If cutting carbon emissions is implemented so strictly, it will prevent newly industrialised countries from catching up with the rest of the developed nations. Wealthy nations handled adversities better than despotic third-world countries. The very nations that need assistance to pull themselves out of poverty will be trapped in the quagmire of poverty.

Chincha Island, Peru.
Pregnant with guano.

Sometimes, the world forgets that the human race is a resilient lot. They would not have become the most dominant species on Earth if not for their resourcefulness. Just see how fast we come up with solutions for any problem. Some time ago, we thought profound starvation would hit the world as the soil gets progressively depleted of its nutrients. The only known nitrogen-based soil fertiliser then was the progressively depleting bat-dropping reservoir on Guano Islands off Peru. In came Haber, who literally plucked nitrogen from thin air to make fertilisers via Haber Reaction. Of course, that led to other disastrous outcomes too. Now, we have malnutrition of the overfed kind.

With time, humanity can come up with ways to combat weather change. They can migrate to temperate countries. Different crops may be grown. In time to come, rice may grow well in Europe, or wheat may grow in what is now tundra land.

The author highlights that the occurrence of natural calamities has not really increased in intensity or number over the years. The publicity highlighted by the mass media makes it appear bigger than life. Fatalities naturally increase as the world population has jumped in leaps and bounds of late anyway.

The world's obsession with preventing temperature rise has diverted money away from what could have been used to develop industries, increase innovation and improve people's standard of living. After all, our civilisation is deeply rooted in energy. Climate change is real but let us be pragmatic about it.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

1816, the year without a summer

Chichester Canal by J. M. W. Turner (1828) [Wiki] 

In 1816, whilst Reverend Hutchings was busy organising things in his selfless deed to set up facilities for English education, free from encumbrances of religion, race, creed and socioeconomic statuses, for natives on a small idyllic island of Penang, Europe and the rest of the 'civilised' world including North America were undergoing turmoils of their own kind.
In April the year before, the volcanic mountain, Mount Tambora in Sumbawa, Indonesia after building up energy over the years, decided enough was enough. It spewed lava, magma, shock waves and dust of such devastation estimated to have had volcanic eruption scale of 7. It is said to be the most massive volcanic eruption in human history and is dubbed 'Pompeii of the East'. The devastation that it left can also be described as callosal. Not only was the immediate human and property loss was immense, but the ash from the outburst also lingered on in the stratosphere long enough to affect climate the following year. As is generally accepted, weather changes affect economic activities and indirectly be a cause of social turmoil.

It is puzzling how an event occurring at one end of the world has such a profound effect on the opposite end of the world. Globalisation is not a new construct.

The lingering ash provided a picturesque view of nature. The view of the sunset with its exaggerated orangy hue had never been better. The snow, on the other hand, was tinged yellow. The presence of high sulphur content in the rain and a wet, cold summer devastated food cultivation for a couple of years to come. It was the nidus of famines to come.

Hong Kong sunset circa 1992
after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo [Wiki]

In the present area surrounding Myanmar, rice cultivation failed. Farmers eventually discovered opium to grow well during those colder climates. By the time regular weather patterns returned three years later, they had abandoned their ancestral vocation but pursued with the new more lucrative crop. This must have started the notorious drug route.

In New England of Northen America, failure of crop forced farmers to migrate west. This must have eventually opened the Western frontier, the mad Gold Rush, spurred genocide of the Natives, starting of fringe Christian societies like the Mormons and just perhaps the idea of the abolishment of slavery must have taken root.

Over the literary side of things, it is said that the cold summers of London forced a group of writers to stay on the icy lakes of Switzerland to write scary stories with dark, nihilistic themes. This later evolved to Frankenstein and Dracula storylines. A new revolution in writing had started. Human imagination had never been the same since.

It is intriguing how a single event can give such seismic shift in the direction of the path of mankind. With the rapidly and unpredictably changing weather patterns of late, I wonder what awaits the human race? Is it going to be all doom and gloom and are we just going to take a detour and head in another direction? Just like how we have done so many times.

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson

The other side of the coin?

The Great Global Warming Swindle (2007)
Channel 4; UK.

I thought that it is a given thing, that Man's existence is the reason for nature's degradation, that our carbon footprint is leaving irreparable damage to the ecosystem, that our reaping and raping of its resources for our selfish needs is going leave our descendants cursing at our lackadaisical attitudes, that our mere existence is going to increase the atmospheric carbon dioxide content and raise the global temperature. That was the prophecy that had been pushed down our throats all this while. Well, now a group of scientists say that this is not the whole truth.

That is the problem in the post-truth world where nothing is so clear cut anymore. For any argument, there is always another equally convincing counter-argument. The listeners are left baffled, confused and come to understand that the truth is a multilayered animal that is neither black nor white!

This polemic documentary film is emphatic that the threat of global warming is actually a well-synchronised hoax perpetrated by developed countries with their own self-serving agendas. For a start, world leaders wanted to keep the coal workers unions in check and avert petroleum usage when its price skyrocketed in the 70s. They brought up the idea that increased CO2 levels in our atmosphere may lead to a catastrophic rise in world temperatures. From then on, it became a mantra the world over, to exert domination of the West on the newly developing economies who just wanted to catch up with their past colonial masters.

The opponents of this global warming theory insist that Earth has been going through cyclical periods of warming and cooling over the centuries. It is now going through a 'heating up' period. It is not related to industrialisation as the world actually went through a cooling period between 1940 and 1975 even when the CO2 levels increased. The scientists reviewed old data over the centuries to posit that there is a lag of ten years between the rise of temperature and increased levels of CO2. Carbon dioxide levels increase due to global warming when the oceans release more of them rather than being the cause of warming!

Space probes that had been sent as far as Pluto had shown universal warming of all planets. This is probably due to increasing the sun's nuclear fission activity, as evidenced by visualising more sunspots on its surface. This explains the increase in Earth surface temperature. The correct measurement of global warming is measured in the troposphere via satellites or weather balloons. It shows a low rate of increase.

The film emphasises that CO2 emission by human activity is minuscule compared to the natural decomposition process (like falling of leaves, animal excrements) and volcanic activity.

The vocal scientists in the documentary assert that the whole global warming fiasco is an organised plan by anti-capitalistic, neo-Marxist, anti-US, environmentalists and imperialists to use authentic-sounding authority like Interplanetary Climate Change (IPCC) to put forward their climate research to hoodwink the public, hiding their financial, ideological and political interests.

This film is proof that there are always two sides of the coin. The democratic way is to assess both sides of the arguments judiciously and to draw your own conclusion. 

A future not so bright!

Before the Flood (2016)

This must surely be the follow-up to Al Gore's 2006 'The Inconvenient Truth'. It is an indirect manner of telling that nothing much has changed in the past ten years except that what was known as global warming is now referred to as climate change. The latter seems to be a more appropriate term as the weather change caused by the excessive emission of greenhouse gases also give rise to colder winters as well.

Before the Industrial Revolution, the world used to be in a steady state. Greenhouse gases (water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, fluorinated carbons and ozone) from the perspiration of plants and animals helped to maintain the temperature of Earth which would otherwise be too cold (-18 degree C) for human inhabitance. The corals in the sea and lush green forest act as a reservoir to absorb the extra greenhouse gases primarily carbon dioxide, CO_2. 

Man's insatiable desire to assault of Nature with their economic activities, like burning forests, cutting trees, over-dependence on fossil fuel and even the overproduction of methane by the cattle industry just tipped the balance. Scientists say that a rise in the world temperature of 2-degrees above the pre-industrial era could be disastrous and irreversible.

Leonardo DiCaprio produced and hosted this National Geographic sponsored documentary on this issue. He flies around the globe to investigate the extent of this problem and see for himself what various countries are doing to curtail this potentially devastating problem.

During the shooting of his last film, The Revenant, in Canada, his director had a Herculean time trying to find a snowy mountainous forest for his set. All the snow had melted due to climate change. The Boreal forests had all disappeared.

The biggest polluter in the production of greenhouse gases is China. They, according to the documentary, are taking a concerted effort to offset their bad record. So does India, the third biggest polluter. Many countries are exploiting green energies like wind and solar energies to its full potential. Unfortunately, the second largest culprit, the USA is still in denial mode. Many big companies think that climate change is just a hoax. The real reason for their refusal is their business interests in fossil fuel.  Many American companies, including Koch Industries and many lobbyists for the US Government, are climate change deniers.

Many of Man's activity cause irreparable damage to the environment. Fracking for oil and gas leave a denuded piece of wasteland. Deforestation for palm oil cultivation and open burning in Sumatra release too much carbon dioxide into our air. The beef industry is notorious for emitting way too much of greenhouse gases in the form of methane. Compared to other types of food production, including rice cultivation and husbandry, cattle leave way too much carbon footprint.

History shows that weather change had been a cause for change of government and a reason for a revolution. Hence, the documentary tries to empower people to choose leaders who would listen to them other than the other way around.

Change is on its way. Many European countries are tapping into solar and wind energies. Sweden has become the first fossil fuel free nation. President Barack Obama has endorsed the Paris Accord on climate change. Many countries have imposed a carbon tax to syphon the revenue to develop other energy sources. The producer of the film too claimed to have voluntarily paid his dues in carbon tax for their long distance flying during the making of the documentary.

The film ends with Dicaprio giving an address to United Nations General Assembly in his capacity as a special envoy for climate change.

The scriptures in its various forms have all told us in so many ways of the dark look of the future. Many Eastern philosophies and even monolithic religions have advised us to be respectable of the environment. The picture below appeared quite frequently in the documentary. It is a 15th-century triptych by Hieronymus Bosch called The Garden of Earthly Delights. It probably shows the beginning of our world, followed by our present time and the gloomy future of darkness on the third panel. The trouble with us is that we cherry-pick what we want and use it for own self-interest and self-indulgence.

Awake the fighting spirit in us!

 Alive! (1993)

I remember watching the trailer of this dubbed (Mexican) film named 'Survive!'. My sister and I were fascinated by the cinematography and the desperation of the passengers to survive in the freezing temperatures of the Andes. We never watched it till now. After the MH370 mystery, I thought of giving it a go.

This survival film shows the fighting spirit of humans to live in the treacherous, freezing, barren mountainous terrain of the Andes over two months. A group of young boys and relatives were travelling from Uruguay to Chile. As they descended, misjudgement caused the plane to lose a wing, part of her fuselage and the other wing and finally crash in the middle of nowhere, making it impossible for anyone to search and rescue. With no telecommunications and a limited food supply, staying alive in the cold was a Herculean task. If that was not enough, an avalanche hit the unfortunate victims, killing more passengers who were not killed earlier.

The dilemma that the survivors had to endure to stay alive in a freezing mountain with no vegetation is the conundrum of resorting to cannibalism, feeding on the flesh of the dead. The question of God and retribution was constantly argued. Most of them relented to severe hunger pangs. One succumbed to starvation.

I quite enjoyed the movie, as the events were real, and the screenplay kept to the origin story. All five crew members perished, and 29 of the 45 passengers met their maker.