A chilly northern India gives the cold shoulder
to global warming SOON, IT WILL BE WARM. NEXT YEAR, DELHI WILL
PROBABLY HAVE NO WINTER, AND I WILL HAVE TO WALK TO OFFICE TO REDUCE
MY CARBON FOOTPRINT AND BRING THE FOG BACK
Ever since the
Copenhagen climate summit, I've been very worried about climate
change. I check my car's Pollution Under Control certificate every
day, walk to the grocer's, and generally make little sacrifices to
make the world a better place.
I was starting
to think all my efforts and those of countless unsung others are
beginning to pay off. I've been feeling rather cold for the past
month. In fact, very cold. My legs are often frozen all the way up to
my unmentionables. I have to drink a stiff vodka before I can work up
the courage to enter the bathroom in the morning. In other words, the
part of the globe I live in Delhi has not exactly been hot.
However I am
only a layman, and I believe in experts, so I didn't buy a heater. In
fact, I even postponed buying a new sweater. Surely global warming
can't have turned tail already, I kept telling myself. The Himalayan
glaciers are melting. Soon, it will be warm. Next year, Delhi will
probably have no winter, and I will have to walk to office to reduce
my carbon footprint and bring the fog back. The year after that, we
may even celebrate New Year's by the beach in Gurgaon, since as you
know, sea levels are rising alarmingly.
Now I'm a little
mortified to read that the glaciers may not be melting after all.
What's more, a bunch of scientists I had not heard of before are
saying an ice age could be on its way. This winter has been bitterly
cold across the northern hemisphere, and the hitherto unheard of gurus
of climate change are saying it's only the start of a cooling trend.
A Russian
astronomer named Khabibullo Abdusamatov from St Petersburg has
predicted the next ice age will start between 2035 and 2045 due to a
decline in solar activity. He also says the warming trend in recent
years was simply because the sun was pumping out more heat.
Apparently, the sun has its hot and cold periods. Abdusamatov's not a
fan of carbon trading, I think.
Less Russian
sources like, for example, the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in
Colorado have reported a jump in the Arctic summer sea ice by 26 per
cent over the past two years. It had hit a low in 2007, but has
recovered spectacularly since. And this was before Copenhagen, before
I even started walking to the grocer's.
"Just months
that's how long it took for Europe to be engulfed by an ice age. The
scenario, which comes straight out of Hollywood blockbuster The Day
After Tomorrow, was revealed by the most precise record of the climate
from palaeohistory ever generated," said New Scientist last November.
The most precise
record of the climate showed that 12,800 years ago there was an ice
age funky scientists call the Big Freeze. It froze up most of the
northern hemisphere in less than a year. The scientists from Canada
who carried out the study said the effect would be like "taking
Ireland and moving it up to Svalbard in the Arctic". I guess if we
moved Delhi by a few notches less than that, we'd end up in cool,
scenic Ladakh.
Thing is, now
I'm no longer sure what I should do for the planet. How do I make the
world a better place today? Should I try to warm it because an ice age
is coming, or cool it because global warming is upon us?
I think for
starters I will throw an uttapam at a scientist today.
