Environmental Conditions Likely to Prevail in the Future
Uploaded by barkhaamonkar on Sep 20, 2005
Journey with me for a moment into the next century and meet two children --- Clara and Peter. Clara has never seen the sun due to the atmosphere, which is permanently shrouded by a dark grayish brown blanket of poisonous gases like hydrocarbons, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide. Peter on the other hand is not allowed to play in the open due to the hole in the ozone layer through which unfiltered ultra-violet radiation of the sun beams down to the earth and causes deadly diseases like skin cancer. These two children have never experienced the thrill of playing outdoor games. “But this is the 22nd century and that’s the way the world is.”
This future world is not an Orwellian fantasy nor is it the world depicted in movies like Terminator; it is a world already in the making. Planet earth is sending distress signals, which carry ominous messages. They tell us about huge holes being ripped in our ozone layer, the vast tropical rain forests being ripped away at breakneck pace and the silent stalker, the acid rain, which is killing plants and fish and threatening human life.
These four phenomenon – all of them the creation of mankind – are a figurative “Four horsemen of Apocalypse” the greenhouse effect created by burning of fossil fuels, acid rain, rifts in the ozone layer and wholesale destruction of rain forests. In view of the above the environmentalists are trying to do their best in stopping the advance of this dreaded future.
The environmental conditions due to the above factors could be as follows in the next century: -
Beneath the veneer of business-as-usual in the world’s greatest sinks (oceans and seas) a time bomb is ticking. The vast waters lap up carbon dioxide as sand soaks up water and thus delays the much feared global warming. Even the seemingly limitless sea has a saturating point for absorption of carbon dioxide and after that the gradual global warming will commence. The temperatures are believed to rise 6 degrees to 9 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the greenhouse gases get into the atmosphere, they are like ‘the man who came to dinner’ they stay. The global warming is irreversible.
Due to the rise in temperature the earth’s present climatic zones and storm tracks would shift northward driving the entire living habitat with them. Thermal swelling within the seas and water from melting land borne glaciers could raise...