So You Want to Know About the Environment Page 2

  As oceans become warmer, that means the major air currents get intensified, and we can expect stormier weather. There could be heavier rainfall or snowfall as well. As oceans expand, we can expect more floods.

  At the same time, the warming of the planet can mean droughts in already water-starved areas because in some places it means lesser rainfall. And because the Arctic is getting hotter, Korean and European scientists1 have found that it creates what they call ‘a bulge of warm air in the lower atmosphere’. Now this forces the jet streams—which are fast moving air currents in the upper atmosphere—to dip further south in some place. The jet stream carries cold Arctic air causing extreme cold in some regions!

  Remember, the increase in temperature is calculated on a global average, which means as a whole, the Earth is getting warmer. Specific locations may differ, and weather changes on a day-to-day basis, even if the longer trend of climate says something different.

  Everything is connected—once something changes in one place, it will have repercussions in other parts of the system.

  Meet the people who created smog meringues

  Can you eat smog? Yes, according to Zack Denfeld, one of the founders of The Center for Genomic Gastronomy. In case you’re wondering, smog is a type of pollution, usually a mix of smoke from coal and sulphur dioxide. UGH!

  Fog + Smoke = Smog.

  When you whip egg, what happens? Air gets trapped as the egg foams, right? If you have ever eaten a meringue, then you know it’s basically egg whipped until it becomes stiff white peaks. Sugar is added and then it’s baked. Meringues taste amazing with whipped cream and strawberries.

  The people at the CGG realized that egg foams are up to 90 per cent air. So they trooped off to various places across the world, to beat smog into eggs to harvest air pollution!

  They first conducted the experiment in Bengaluru, where they went to different locations and whipped the eggs along with dollops of polluted air. This was then baked and displayed on a map of the city. The batter can be tested to see how much pollutants it contains. Smog, said Zack, can be tasted and compared this way. You definitely don’t want to eat these, but would be fun to whip up a smog egg meringue. What say?

  Rewind July 2015

  As the month of July slips into the calendar year, it’s time to dust those umbrellas and raincoats. Teachers start to wonder how they will complete their term portion, while students rejoice at the thought of a rainy holiday. Tiger reserves close for the monsoon to allow the forest to replenish without the steady footfall of human beings, streams fill to the brim, and tigers make tiger cubs in peace (without tourists gawking at them). In villages, farmers sow seeds in anticipation of a healthy rainfall, which will nourish the seeds, nudging them to grow into fluffy cotton balls or shiny purple brinjals, or tall stalks of paddy that wave happily in the wind.

  But 2015’s July didn’t bring with it the promise of rain for farmers in Telangana. Already, the year was threatening to be hotter than 2014, the warmest year on record since 18801. A newly formed state, Telangana was witnessing one of its worst heat waves. Farmers waited for the rain, with the cotton and soya seeds sown, but there wasn’t any rain to even plough their fields. By August, the region had a deficit rainfall of minus 21 per cent1 (that’s a lot, by the way).

  What can such a scenario possibly mean?

  a.Less rice, because Telangana farmers grow paddy and the crop needs a lot of water.

  b.More problems for the farmers who are forced to borrow money from crooked moneylenders. These moneylenders charge crazy interest rates for loans—even up to 60 per cent.

  c.Water problems for people.

  Answer: All of the above!

  Weirding, all of this

  A lot of scientists and activists are using the phrase ‘Global Weirding’, which according to their website, explains ‘how the rise in average global temperature leads to all sorts of crazy things—from hotter heat spells to colder cold spells, more drought and intense flooding, as well as slow-onset changes such as ocean acidification and sea level rise. Also includes oddball things such as jellyfish clogging up the pipes of nuclear power plants, forcing them to shut down.’ You can check out http://www.globalweirding.is/here to see what different scenarios of temperature rise can mean for the planet and for us.

  Huh fact of the day

  It’s against the law to use the words ‘climate change’ in Florida and Wisconsin in the USA in certain departmental papers. In Florida, they are calling it ‘Extreme Weather Events’.

  RACK YOUR BRAINS

  If you were living in Florida or Wisconsin, then how would you tell someone about climate change? Think of different words to describe the phenomena. Here are some word combinations (with the help of a thesaurus of course).

  ◇ Metamorphosis of atmospheric conditions

  ◇ An about-face of meteorological character

  Don’t they sound like Very Important Words?

  What words would you be able to invent?

  ARE WE ALL GOING TO BE TOAST? OR WELL, ROASTED LIKE KHAKHRAS?

  The fact is that Earth will adapt to these changes; just as she has in the past. Humans, and some other earthlings, may not be so lucky. We are already facing many issues related to climate change and we don’t even realize it.

  ▶Unpredictable weather: Unpredictable weather can wreak havoc upon harvest that includes mangoes and cacao beans (the main ingredient in chocolate). In Africa, the weather is becoming too dry to grow cacao. And pests are also attacking the pods! That means farmers will grow lesser cocoa and grow other crops to make ends meet. And all this while, we have been eating too much chocolate, far more than the supply. The world is not going to be a good place without chocolate and good food, that we can agree upon.

  ▶Huge losses: Unpredictable weather leads to a loss of human life and infrastructure. Some of the changes we’ve seen are extreme events like hurricanes, tsunamis, tornados, etc. that are occurring more often and more severely. Storms are bigger, faster, more frequent, and more unpredictable than they were before. For example, people could lose their houses or even their lives in a flood, like the one which hit Chennai in 2015. Or a tornado could crumble down a school building. No school for a while sounds fun, but forever? Nah!

  ▶Habitat loss: It’s not just us, even animals are suffering, thanks to umm… us. Species are getting threatened with extinction at a faster rate than ever. In 2016, Australian scientists declared the Bramble Cay melomys1, a critically endangered mosaic-tailed rat to be extinct! And they think human-induced climate change is the culprit.

  ▶Costing us a pretty paisa: All of this is creating a huge dent in our collective wallets, because governments have to figure out how to repair all these problems. In 2012, a study called, ‘Climate Vulnerability Monitor: A Guide to the Cold Calculus of a Hot Planet’2 found that climate change is ‘contributing to the deaths of nearly 400,000 people a year and costing the world more than $1.2 trillion, wiping 1.6 per cent annually from global GDP’. (That’s Gross Domestic Produce) This is just the beginning. Imagine the costs if things get worse.

  ▶Health issues: We all know that the weather affects our health. According to the World Health Organisation1, ‘climate change will also affect infectious disease occurrence’. Respiratory illnesses from air pollution may seem obvious, but there’s a long list of diseases including malaria, dengue and cholera from water contamination.

  WHO knew

  According to the World Health Organisation, as far back as the late 19th century, humans knew about the link between climatic conditions and epidemic diseases. Roman aristocrats would head off to the hills during the summer to avoid malaria, which sounds suspiciously like what the Britishers did in India.

  ▶Climate refugees: As sea levels rise, islands are going to get engulfed by water, and people will be forced to leave their homes. It’s already happening—a documentary film, Sun Come Up, tells the story of the Carteret Islanders, a community living in the South Pacific Ocean, who a
re forced to look for a new home because of rising sea levels. Earlier in 2016, news filtered in that five tiny islands that were part of the Solomon Islands in the Pacific went under water2! Luckily, no one lived there. But their neighbouring islands are seeing their villages destroyed by water. If you think ‘It’s not my problem’, then imagine for a minute what it would feel like to lose your home because someone else was sending up carbon in the atmosphere! How awful would that be?

  ▶A cranky planet: When it’s hot, you become cranky; and if you’re stuck in the rain with your school books being soaked inside a non-waterproof school bag, it is just not happy news. And now research shows that weather impacts our mood, and that means with unpredictable weather, our moods could also be pretty much unpredictable.

  Climate change affects all of us in different ways—from plummeting and rising temperatures to unpredictable weather patterns, complicated health issues and it also threatens food security and livelihoods. Let’s face it, the planet will adapt. We, the human species, may not be so lucky. Ignoring these problems may just show that our empathy levels are slowly eroding away, being washed away by rising sea levels and melting away in this ferocious heat. Uh oh.

  Adapt and/or mitigate?

  Countries across the world are looking to reduce climate change impacts in two ways:

  ▶Mitigation: Reducing or removing the GHG emissions; which mean moving to cleaner energy sources to reduce the emissions. Or removing them by technological methods (see the postcard on geo-engineering to get a teensy-weensy idea).

  ▶Adaptation: Looking at ways to reduce the impacts of climate change through systemic change to limit the damage. For instance, farmers could perhaps grow different kinds of crop in the same field, some of which are drought-resistant or start rainwater harvesting in preparation for delayed monsoon.

  Postcard from Greg Branch

  Geo-engineering: A temporary fix or a solution?

  Greg Branch is the coolest stay-at-home dad who wrote an entire thesis (that’s a tediously long research essay you have to write to get a Master’s degree) on geo-engineering. He lives in Washington D.C. in the USA after living in Central America where he was affiliated with the U.S. Peace Corps.

  Okay, so what if climate change starts creating such havoc that even reducing our carbon emissions wouldn’t change a thing for decades? We don’t want the climate to get to an emergency state of health. In case it does, people are talking about what a climate operating room might be able to do. Scientific doctors have come up with a possible emergency response to climate change. It’s called geo-engineering: a way to engineer the planet so that humans can temporarily fix the problem we have gotten ourselves into.

  There are two categories of geo-engineering.

  Carbon Removal and Storage: Removing carbon from the atmosphere so the heat isn’t trapped as much and then storing it somewhere safe sounds really hard, but scientists have identified the four best ways to do it. This includes putting scrubbers at the end of smokestacks to catch carbon as it’s produced, removing carbon from the air by placing collectors on hillsides, planting more trees to suck up carbon through photosynthesis, or drowning it in the ocean!

  Solar Reflection Management: This means reflecting the sun’s heat away from the Earth so it doesn’t heat up any longer. Scientists plan to do this by creating more clouds by spraying the ocean’s water into the sky using ships, building giant space mirrors that create shadows on the Earth, and injecting sulphur into the stratosphere to cool the planet.

  There you have it. Just like our own health, we need to take care of ourselves to avoid a medical emergency. These are technological interventions which can get quite warped, and some of them sound drastic and dire. Maybe you will be the next to have an idea to cool the planet!

  TO DO OR NOT TO DO,

  THAT’S REALLY UP TO YOU

  ACTION 1

  What’s your climate quotient?

  When it comes to carbon emissions, here’s your chance to play Fastest Fingers First and show off how climate-savvy you are. Some activities in our daily lives are extremely carbon-intensive, which means they release more carbon into the atmosphere, while others are more environment-friendly and help save or ‘sequester’ carbon emissions.

  To play this quiz, give yourself a T if you pick the first answer, a Y for the second one and a W for the third one.

  1.When you travel to school

  a.The chauffeur drops you by car

  b.You carpool, bike or take the school bus

  c.You get there, depending on your mood that day

  2.Your art teacher gives you a craft project

  a.You go out and buy a hobby kit and complete the assignment

  b.Think creatively and use recycled material for the project

  c.Your dog ate up the project note, so you couldn’t complete it

  3.Your room is beautifully lit up with

  a.Yellow and fluorescent bulbs and tube lights

  b.CFL and LED lights and lots of sunlight during the day

  c.You share your room with your annoying sibling so it’s dark all the time

  4.When on a family trip, you prefer to

  a.Buy bottles of water from the railway station or airport

  b.Carry reusable water bottles for each member

  c.Not drink water, because too much time is spent looking for toilets

  5.When you open your lunchbox, it’s usually

  a.A fruit like blueberry

  b.A Kinnaur apple

  c.You hate fruits

  6.The folks are off shopping, they

  a.Go hands free and pay 10 rupees for plastic shopping bags

  b.Carry their own cloth bag

  c.Only shop online

  7.It’s your birthday, and you serve your birthday cake in

  a.Thermocol disposable plates and spoons

  b.Good old steel plates

  c.What cake? Most of it is on your face.

  8.Your brother (or whoever’s the masterchef in your house) made rajma and there were leftovers. You

  a.Chucked them in the bin

  b.Made a burrito the next day

  c.Cannot stand beans of any kind, who wants to fart all day

  CALCULATE YOUR SCORE

  Mostly Ts

  Tsk Tsk! Terrible: Get cracking, you have lots of work to do before you can be part of Team Greenfidor.

  Mostly Ys

  YAYY! Go Team Greenfidor: You are a bona fide member of the green team. Now go on, spread the word.

  Mostly Ws

  Whatever: Yeah, whatever. You need to get your priorities straight and then come back and take the quiz again.

  ACTION 2

  Debate the science

  Prep yourself for a debate, but as a climate change denier. Come up with arguments about how climate change is a natural process and humans are not accelerating it. Now, look for holes in your own arguments. Who won?

  ACTION 3

  Map your family’s moods

  You can do this on your tablet or in a notebook (the one with pages, not the laptop). As the weather changes, see if it affects you and your family’s mood. Does your annoying sibling become more annoying when it’s really hot outside? Or does your dad nag you a little bit more when it’s raining unseasonably and he’s behaving unreasonably as well?

  Use emoticons to illustrate their mood. Keep this up for a month, and then share the results with the family.

  ACTION 4

  Calculate your carbon footprint

  A carbon footprint is the total amount of GHG emissions generated by a person, a product, or a group. This book isn’t going to give you lengthy calculations here. Hit the Internet to calculate if you’re treading or trampling upon the Earth’s atmosphere.

  Visit: http://no2co2.in/CarbonCalculator.php

  Swap results with your friends, teachers, and family. Now think of ways you can individually and as a group, bring down your carbon emissions. And if you do stumble upon a solution, then let us in as wel
l.

  By the way:

  •In 2005, the average per capita footprint of an Indian was 1.6 tons of CO2 emissions per year.

  •Globally, the average is 3.9 tons. Developed countries, historically, are responsible for 79 per cent of emissions from 1850 to 2011. And that’s why a lot of developing countries are demanding that the developed countries take on the climate responsibility. That is called, ‘common but differentiated responsibility’.

  That means on an average, Indians are emitting less carbon, but with rapid, unplanned development that could change drastically. Plus, we have a massive population. Even if we are doing better than some countries, we can still improve!

  ACTION 5

  Air test drive

  How do you test air quality, if you don’t have fancy kits1 like scientists do? Here’s a simple experiment that you can do at home.

  You will need a wire hanger (ask your folks before taking one from the cupboard) and some thick, strong rubber bands.

  Bend open the hanger to make it wider. Now stretch two rubber bands on each side of the hanger. Hang the hanger outside the window, in a balcony, wherever you want to test for pollutants. As the days go by, the more brittle—cracked and hard—the rubber bands become, the more pollutants in the air.

  Try the same experiment in a park, near an industrial area and see if the results are different. Psst: NEVER EVER go to strange places alone—always take an adult you trust with you.

  1 www.ipcc.ch/publications and data/ar4/syr/en/mains1.html

  2 https://unfccc.int/files/essential_background/background_publications_htmlpdf/application/pdf/conveng.pdf

  1 http://350.org/about/science/

  1 http://350.org/how/

  1 https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201412

  1 www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-an-global-warning.htm