The Asian Brown Cloud
Scientists have discovered that two-thirds of the 46,000 glaciers present in the Himalayas are on an inexorable shrinking trajectory, resulting in severe downstream flooding. And when (and if) they are eventually exhausted completely, the result will be no more gradual, seasonal and anticipated flood of renewable water resources, but rather an irreversible drought.It was originally assumed that the causative was greenhouse gases, much as they are pinpointed throughout the rest of the world in being responsible for Climate Change and resulting severe weather conditions, beyond what are considered to be the norm. The seasonally melting glaciers in the Himalaya have historically been responsible for renewing Asia's great rivers like the Indus, the Yangtze and the Ganges.
Now, however, a research team with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography identifies the Asian Brown Cloud as being responsible. The atmosphere has been polluted with gases and suspended particles called aerosols, caused by huge plumes of smokestack exhaust from factories, power plants and fires that locate across the Indian subcontinent into southeast Asia and over the Indian Ocean.
Some of the dust clouds and particulate matter, including harmful chemicals can, when the winds are powerful enough, be blown clear across to North America, polluting the edges of that Continent and in effect contaminating the soil where they touch down there.
This great brown cloud of suspended particles and exhaust amplifies the effects of solar heating by 50% on the landscape under its broad-based existence. The heat the cloud brings to bear on the glaciers causing them to melt at an accelerated pace will impact on the lives of billions of people dependent on those major river systems for their very existence.
Veera-bhadran Ramanthan, leader of the Asian scientists and policymakers on the glacier issue has warned: "If we continue to use outdated technology to achieve industrialization, this is only going to get worse. But there is some good news", for unlike greenhouse gases which stay suspended in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, aerosols drop to the ground in the space of several weeks; an obviously-reversible trend.
The Indian subcontinent and Asia are awash in sunshine. Germany has, relatively speaking, little sun, yet that country has engaged in a massive campaign to install solar heating panels all across the country, rather than continue to burn goal and use nuclear power and fossil fuels. Individual homes, farm fields not in tillage, city building roofs, are all encouraged to install solar heating panels, and the country is determined to wean its energy use away from other sources.
It's a move that appears to be succeeding. Why then wouldn't India, China, Bangladesh, economically emerging countries, with India and China in particular beginning to boom, invest in solar heating for their future energy prospective? They enjoy the crutch awarded them as still-developing nations to not be subject to the same strictures self-imposed by developed countries through their agreements on sustaining and correcting our environment.
Truth is, the issue is serious enough world-wide, and most certainly in the Asian countries affected that they recognize the imperative to themselves take firm and immediate steps to mediate the situation of severe environmental degradation they have brought upon themselves in their eagerness to respond to their self-perceived need to reach economic parity with the developed world.
Labels: Environment
posted by Pieface @ Friday, August 03, 2007
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