TERI Information Digest on Energy and Environment
  • Year: 2020
  • Volume: 19
  • Issue: 1

Nature and global warming

  • Author:
  • S K Pandey
  • Total Page Count: 8
  • Page Number: 1 to 8

Former Executive Director and Plant Manager, ONGC Uran Plant, Mumbai

Online published on 12 June, 2021.

Abstract

Nature has the self-curing capability of any external intervention for the survival of habitat on the planet. The stability of global temperature, salinity of ocean, maintenance of oxygen level in the atmosphere and maintenance of hydrosphere of liquid water and other environmental variables that affect the habitability on Earth are regulated and controlled by nature since the time the planet was born. But this self-regulating capability is not beyond a limit. Human intervention through industrialization and deforestation has caused an imbalance in both ecology and environment that makes survival difficult. Global warming is one of the major threats for the survival of humankind arising due to this imbalance. Though the progress and prosperity of humankind cannot be achieved without industrial development and energy utilization, we have to strike a balance with survival. Today, more than 80% of the world’s energy comes from fossil fuels, which are the main source of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere. This has exponentially risen after the 1970s owing to rapid industrialization. A small temperature rise has an enormous effect on the environment. It is reported that in a 3C world, that is, when the global temperature will rise to 3°C, the swath of Osaka will submerge into the water and at the present sea rise rate, 275 million of human population residing in coastal areas will submerge in water by the year 2100. Though a lot has been done worldwide to mitigate this threat through Paris Convention of Climate Change, encouragement and implementation of gas based (green fuel) economy, shifting from fossil fuels to renewables, and improving technology to enhance burning efficiency so as to reduce CO2 emission, a lot more needs to be done to check the menace. The article focuses on these aspects of global warming, climate change, and challenges for the human survival on this planet arising due to industrialization and deforestation.

Keywords

Global warming, Climate change, GWP, Ecological balance, Human survival, Fossil fuel, Industrialization, Combustion efficiency, Renewables