Tarun Kundu, Kesoram Rayon, Nayasarai, Hooghly, West Bengal

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   Global warming is a long heard word. Numerous discussions, hundreds of action plans have been framed on the issue in different forums over the last two decades all around the world. But the awareness of the profound threat that the global warming bears, seems very poor among the common people Then what is this global warming and how this is caused? We know the concept of green houses in cold regions where temperature sensitive plants are enclosed in a glass house. Sun rays of shorter wavelength can penetrate through the glass and come upon the plants but reflected rays of longer wavelengths cannot go out of the house. Thus the house or the enclosure becomes warm. Likewise on Earth, there are some gases like water vapor, carbon-dioxide, methane, ozone, nitrous-oxide and chloro-fluoro carbon (CFC) which absorb the reflected infra-red radiations emitted from the earth. So what happens? Solar energy in form of light comes to our earth but a part of it is absorbed by the earth. The earth radiates this heat in the form of heat, hence the term global warming. Global Warming has lead to some drastic environmental chages in the oast century.

a) An Antarctic ice shelf of 1260 square miles area and 650 feet thick, believed to exist over the last 12000 years, disintegrated recently.
b) Intense drought caused loss of 1.5 million acres of forest in Spain, Greece and Italy.
c) Malaria was detected first time at a height of 6900 feet in Indonesia. Hundreds of people in Kenyan highlands died in 1997 due to the same.
d) Mosquitoes carrying Dengue viruses are spreading at height of 7000 ft. in Andes Mountains.
   There are many instances the world has come across recently like especially the extreme climatic debacle like unpredictable catastrophic storms, drought, forest fires, heavy or scare rainfall, extreme hot or extreme cold conditions etc. The most threatening aspect has been human health. Every year some new diseases breakout - viruses, bacteria and parasites change their genetic form to combat with the adverse changing climate and become unpredictable, challenging human lives. The disaster that the human civilization is going to face is the atmospheric temperature.
   It has already risen by 0.45 - 0.60 degree Celsius during the last century and this rate is much higher now. 1998 was the hottest year since 1861. Many may ignore this small amount of increase in temperature but it has to be kept in mind that there is only 1 degree Celsius temperature rise since the inception of human civilization. Sea levels has gone up by about 15 - 20 cm during the last century. This has indeed endangered the costal life across the counties. We don't know how much we have endangered ourselves.
   It is the world's non harmonic economic growth compelling the nations indulging in ruthlessly violating and damaging the environment. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ has increased by 30%, methane concentration by 100% and if this continues, the CO₂ emission may rise from 7 billion tons carbon per year in 1990 to 20 billion tons in the year 2100. There are many global initiatives in controlling the global warming such as IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) which was established in 1988 under UNO and is currently working on the matter. It is the high time for us, the common people, keeping aside the barriers of cast, creed and country to come forward and fight against the causes. We can start simply by close watch on energy saving and saying ‘NO’ to emissions. We do not need wealth rather we need a safer place to live in. Isn't it?

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