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Letting Science Touch Base with Decision
Making
By RICHA VARMA
Scientists and researchers come together to discuss issues of
sustainable development at an annual summit in New Delhi.
Get involved." This is the message that F. Sherwood Rowland, a Nobel
laureate in chemistry, urges for governments taking on the menacing
reality of climate change.
"Rather than fanciful suggestions for mitigating global warming-from
carbon sucking technologies to planting sulfuric acid in the atmosphere to
serve as a shield from the sun's ultraviolet rays and cool global
temperatures-the issue will need a unity of purpose from all countries,"
Rowland told delegates at a three-day summit in New Delhi on sustainable
development and climate change. While global warming may already be
visible in the early melting of Alaskan ice or polar caps and is probably
not seen on the sunny beaches of California, it is not going to be limited
to one region or continent alone.
The summit, organized in February by The Energy and Resources Institute,
has become an important landmark for those committed to finding a globally
acceptable and socially inclusive solution to the problem of climate
change. The goal of sustainable development is to allow Third World
communities to improve their lives without destroying their own
environment and future.
One of the natural processes of reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
is photosynthesis, a beneficial activity of plants. However, people living
near forests are tempted to chop them down and need ideas on how to earn
their livelihood from them, instead.
Rowland, who is research professor of chemistry and earth system science
at the University of California, Irvine, won the Nobel Prize in 1995 with
Paul Crutzen and Mario Lolina for work in atmospheric chemistry,
particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of the ozone
layer.
Rowland says the increase in carbon dioxide and a related increase in
global temperature have been well documented over the last 200 years, with
the rise being most pronounced during the last three decades. According to
some scientists, even if the human race were to stop carbon emissions from
the next second, the damage to the planet is now irreversible. "We have
understood the dynamics of climate change. Now we just need some degree of
an effort to find a solution," says Rowland. "The time to act is now."
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Courtesy: SPAN Magazine |
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