Page 93 - IBT Sept 2021 (1)

Climate Corner
by Shams-il Arefin Islam
Are We
If you have not been living Listening
under a rock, you would have
billion tons of rain fallen on to the
heard that never before in
recent recorded history has 7
the Greenland Ice Cap. If you
didn’t know, it isn’t supposed
to be raining in either one of
the planetary poles.
According to the Danish
Meteorological Institute, ice
core samples have shown
that above freezing
September 2021
melting. This cannot be
good for the Earth.
To add to our planet’s
distresses, The European
Space Agency has
calculated that yearly
forest fires affect an area
as large as entire India
per year, or half the size
of the United States of
America. This summer
alone, Turkey has seen
the worst wildfires in the
country’s history, and in
Greece, people have been
forced to leave their
homes as 250,000 acres
of forests burned in just
one month. In the
Canadian province of
British Columbia, the
town of Lytton has been
completely destroyed by wildfires and the
village of Monte Lake this past week has been
seriously affected. Fire fighters are routinely
seeing that the fires are behaving in a way that
has never been seen before. And in June,
mussels and clams were being cooked alive
from the heat in beaches in British Columbia.
The bottom line is clear, our planet is ailing
and we must act immediately.
The old saying, that the developed countries
polluted for the last 100 years, made
monumental strides in economic success and
therefore the poor countries should be able to
do the same, is an egregious way to address
the poverty-climate link. A good way forward
to enable developmental opportunities for
poorer nations while reducing climate risks is
through common but differentiated
responsibility. It was first officially declared in
the 1992 United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development, setting the
foundation for a sound planetary action to
address climate change and ensure that poor
nations are not left behind. Yet, almost 30
only six times in the last
temperatures have occurred years later, carbon dioxide emissions are still
2,000 years and three of grow as the planet continues to warm and
exponentially rising, forest fires continue to
them were around the last
unsustainable economic development
decade alone! Furthermore, continues on its dirty path. Since the first
scientists at the Summit
climate conference, the hard truth is that we
Climate Camp base station in the have failed to reduce our emissions. And with
Arctic who have been taking our egregiously overlooked responsibility as
measurements since the stewards of this planet, we are destroying
1980s, have come to the dire other species along the way, and we will very
Doctors? conclusion that an area four likely destroy ourselves as well.
times the size of the United Fortuitously for us, there is hope being
Kingdom has had surface constructed as we speak. The
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www.ibtbd.net
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports are an
assessment report that coalesces thousands of cutting-edge
data and research from hundreds of scientists from across the
globe to bring immediate attention to climate change
challenges. It provides strong scientific analysis and
recommendations that helps to inform policy and potential
national and international law. It isn’t country specific but
planetary specific, and since climate change does not follow
political boundaries it’s applicability rests on the entire planet
and therefore every country.
The IPCC report culminates three areas of focus organized by
three working groups and one final synthesis report. The 6th
assessment report contains “The Physical Science Basis of
Climate Change” published in August 2021, followed by
“Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability” in February 2022,
“Mitigation of climate change” in March 2022, and the final
“Synthesis Report” to be published in October 2022.
Over 200 scientists from 66 countries helped to contribute to
the working group 1 report on the “Physical Science Basis of
Climate Change” published this August. This particular report
sounds the alarm in many critical areas. First, it is
(by humans) caused and hampering our land, oceans and
unequivocally certain that climate change is anthropogenically
atmosphere. Heat is increasing in both intensity and frequency
that we have not seen in recorded history of our civilization.
The report further supports that 1.5 degrees Celsius increase is
very likely to occur within the next two decades, and it is safe
to conclude that a lot needs to be done at the national and
global scale to curb Greenhouse Gas emissions to net zero. If
not then it can be inferred that a cascading number of climate
extremes can make many areas of the planet uninhabitable.
The report also states that rainfall frequency and intensity will
increase as we have already seen over the Greenland Ice Cap
just this past month. As
the planet warms, rains
will increase over the
Arctic Pole, and melting
ice from both poles, can
set up a domino effect
that the human species
will have a hard time
running away from. A
critical point to remember
is that 1.5 degrees rise or
not, what may seem like
a miniscule rise of 0.2
degrees Celsius can mean
the monumental
difference between a
freezing and a thawing
event in either of the
poles. In past IPCC
reports, the scientists’
assessments were rather
conservative in many
areas including sea level rise by 2 meters
without addressing scenarios of the melting of
polar ice caps. However, this time, it is clear
that sea level will rise to 2 meters, even if the will have to do strong research to find the exact cause of this
planet’s temperature stabilizes at 1.5 degrees massive methane emission and figure out solutions with
Celsius and even if we go towards net zero international help to address it.
emissions. This can spell disaster for low lying However, there is another important point to be made.
countries such as Bangladesh, Maldives, Generally speaking, our overt dependence on data has in fact
Tuvalu, to name a few, and thus the reports greatly slowed us down to take action. While our predictions
from working group 2 and 3 will be critical for have vastly improved in many areas since the industrial
long-term planning for all low-lying countries. revolution, planetary changes in a geologic time scale have an
The conclusion is clear, in that we have incredible number of variables. The key should be this: as long
irrefutable evidence our climate is racing as we are generally certain that the planet is ailing due to
towards a new tipping point. emissions from the use of fossil fuels, then we must act
While the warnings are clear, there is a silver immediately, data or not. We cannot afford to wait for yet
lining running through the report. The clearer another perfect set of data due to the immense number of
scientists are, the clearer will be the global variabilities involved. The information we have from working
mitigation efforts. Thus far, we can be certain
that going towards net zero emissions will group I in the IPCC report is good enough for all regions of the
world to work cohesively and take decisive action.
enable us to slow the heating of the planet over
The question looms over us if we will continue on this down
the 1.5 degrees threshold, even if it means we
trodden path of climate injustice, and merely re-act to climate
may not be able to stop global sea level rise. change? Or will we be proactive by instilling national climate
Thus, when policy makers and scientists
policy that addresses our national and international
convene in the next COP meeting to be held in
obligations using evidence from the IPCC Reports? When we
Glasgow, the data will be explicit and the are sick, we go to the doctors to get advice and prescribe us
Carbon emissions aside, methane traps heat sugar, we comply or else we suffer the consequences. And yet,
policy should reflect the needs of the planet.
medicine. If, for example, the doctor tells us to consume less
more than carbon dioxide, over 80 times more
when renowned scientists who have given off their entire lives
potent and thus has a monumental effect on to study the planetary sciences, inform us with utmost
the planet's warming. What is absolutely
urgency that we are causing irreparable harm to our only
shocking is that the European Space Agency home, we act strangely lethargic.
data showed that one of the largest methane
gas emission plumes was over Bangladesh. Written by Shams-il Arefin Islam. Shams studied under the U.S. Climate
This is not good news for Bangladesh as it Diplomat Todd Stern, the former Assistant Director for the Environment, White
negotiates in the next COP meeting since House Office of Science and Technology Policy Professor Paul Anastas, and
mitigation will be a key factor in the IPCC Professor Harold Koh former Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State, at
Yale University in the United States of America. He was also a student of one of
report going forward. Bangladesh undoubtedly the Lead Authors of the IPCC Report Dr. Mizan R. Khan.