CBSE Class 12 English Unseen Passage Scientists Set Forth Proposals to Tame Climate

In 20 years, global temperatures will rise by 0.2-0.4 degree centigrade, they say

 

1. Scientists from 12 academies round the world have met in Tokyo to issue a statement on the inevitable long-term rise in temperature. 

Their forecast is that in the next 20 years, global temperatures will rise by 0.2-0.4 degree centigrade. The consequences of global warming will be felt worldwide. Polar icecaps will continue to melt and the world’s oceans will erode coastlines still further.

 

2. The academics assessed the scientific aspects of global climate change. This will be a G-8 plus 5 summit involving China, India, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico.Representatives of these five nations participated in drafting the statement on climate change.

 

3. The decision to expand the summit format was logical as China now ranks second  after  the  United  States  in  industrial  emissions,  and  the  other  four countries are also notorious for their high pollution levels.The scientists called on world leaders to minimise the threat of climate change, stressed the need for urgent action to clarify the causes of this process and set forth proposals to “tame” the climate.

 

4. Yury Izrael, director of  the Institute of  Global Climate and  Ecology at  the Russian Academy of Sciences, who co-authored the statement, told RIA Novosti that the document mostly aimed at enhancing climate-stabilisation measures, outlined ways of adapting to the situation and stipulated a transfer to a low- carbon society. 

 

5. He said less carbon carbon-intensive energy sources and the energy-preservation principle had to be introduced. Japan,  which  will  hold  the  G-8  summit,  has  invented  a  production  process making it possible to cut toxic emissions by 70 percent by 2050. However, Mr. Izrael said this would not solve the climate change problem even if all industrial giants followed suit. “To stabilise the climate, we must reduce toxic emissions down to the Earth’s natural absorbing capacity. The planet can now absorbless than 50% of toxic emissions,” he said.

 

6. “This means that we cannot achieve any short-term results in this sphere.”

Mr. Izrael said direct efforts to fight greenhouse emissions held little promise. Scientists have not yet assessed the impact of greenhouse gases on the global climate. At any rate, state-of-the-art industrial technologies are not the only way to fight global warming. This costly programme will take several hundred years and many millions of dollars to implement. The G-8 plus 5 academic meeting also focussed on other factors influencing global climate change.

 

7. “We must have different ‘weapons’ for fighting climate change and stabilising the climate, and have to use the most effective ones,” Mr. Izrael said.For instance, geo-engineering technologies can alter the Earth’s albedo, or reflecting power. According to scientists, young and old trees have different albedo levels. Young trees actively detonate carbon needed for their growth and development, while older trees either absorb little or no carbon at all. Consequently, new forests must be planted regularly to preserve a stable climate. Moreover, we must care for old forests, protecting them from wildfires and implementing well-thought-out tree felling programmes.

 

8. The Tokyo statement said it was necessary to intensify biological processes in the world’s oceans. For instance, plankton, the perennial inhabitant of the seven seas, requires huge amounts of carbon dioxide for further growth and should therefore be planted en masse with special biotechnologies.It  is  also  possible  to  build  orbital  solar-ray  reflectors.  This  project  may eventually prove less expensive than the costs of global warming. The statement called  for  developing  and  promoting  Carbon  Content  Sequestering  (CCS) technologies for accumulating, storing and extracting (sequestering) fossil-fuel carbon.  This  primarily  concerns  coal,  which  will  remain  a  major  source  of energy for the next 50 years. All surplus carbon could be stored under the ground or dumped into the sea.

 

9. Mr. Izrael is an active supporter of the so-called optimal scenario aiming to change the meteorological solar constant by spraying fine dispersed aerosols of sulphuric acid and other substances into the lower atmosphere at 12-16 km  titudes. This will decrease sunshine reaching the Earth’s surface and reduce the temperature in the troposphere by the required number of degrees, serving as an instrument of climate change. 

In 1974, Mikhail Budyko, member of the Soviet Academy of Science and author of the global-warming theory, proposed the aerosol-spraying method for increasing natural atmospheric layers. It is a well-known fact that after volcanic eruptions,  surface  temperature  is  reduced  over  vast  areas  because  natural aerosols block sunshine and bring temperature down. 

Sulphuric acid aerosols could be sprayed from specially-equipped planes. According to Mr. Izrael, this is an optimal and inexpensive scenario in case of fast global warming. It would be possible to change the situation in 12 months or several years at most. Right  now,  a  group  of  climatologists  headed  by  Mr.  Izrael  is  preparing  to conduct an experiment to assess the impact of sulphuric acid aerosols on temperature fluctuations in some Russian areas. 

However, the method has some drawbacks. For example, the stratosphere must be sprayed regularly because sulphuric acid aerosols will eventually drift to the ground. 

But their amount is a thousand times smaller than current greenhouse gas emissions. According to Mr. Izrael, international agreements and joint projects are needed to introduce the aerosol-spraying method.

 

“We have to accomplish this objective because climate remains a major problem and a hard-to-solve social phobia.”       

                                                 —RIA Novosti

 

 

(a) The G-8 summits has been logically expanded. How ? 

 

(b) What are the ways to transfer the society into a low-carbon society ? (Mention two).

 

(c) What is meant by Geo-Engineering Technologies ?

 

(d) Why  has  dispersal  of  aerosols  of  Sulphuric  acid  been  most  favoured  by Scientists ?

 

(e) How does plankton help tame climate ?

 

 

(a) To state clearly and firmly that something must be done or how it must be done.(para 4).

 

(b) Living for two years or more. (para-8)

 

(c) Strong unreasonable fear of something. (para-9)

 

Look up the Dictionary for the meaning of the following words :

(a) optimal

 

(b) eventually

 

(c) accomplish