Do Humans Responsible For Climatic Change? Part II

It has been a long time since I've posted the part I of this article. If you're new to this article be sure that you've read http://vibgy.com/2009/10/do-humans-responsible-for-climatic-change-part-i/. Now we'll continue to explore if humans are really responsible for climatic change.

Continuing on the first hypothesis "Human growth is responsible for sensing climatic change", the facts are abundant enough to prove that humans have grown to create devices to measure and sense the climatic conditions of this planet. So we can very well conclude that the first hypothesis is true. Let's move on to the next one...

Human growth itself has caused climatic change:

This hypothesis is a very sensitive subject everywhere and so I tried to be unbiased as much as possible. If you see any biased perspective, please provide your valuable comments. Those who decline the charge that humans are responsible for the climatic change, put forward the claim that the relatively less amount of time humans spent on earth (which is 4.5 billion years old) couldn't possibly destroy it. The claim is somewhat valid. The activities which we believe to be changing the climatic conditions of this planet are only 200 years old. This is after the industrial revolution after which we started emitting huge amount of carbon  dioxide into the air. Global warming is something which causes all these climatic changes. And in scientists there are 2 groups one which support that human activities are responsible for the current global warming and the other one deny that we have very less contribution towards climatic change.
I was going through piles of data and theories about climatic change and found the below graph depicting the temperature record of the earth from millions of years ago. You can read more on how these records have been measure by going through this article : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record.

Temperature Record of Planet Earth

From the above graph we can observe that the earth has experienced pretty hot weathers millions of years ago. And as per predictions, there are traces that living organisms existed from 3.7 billion years ago. That's quite a long journey actually. Its evident that life sustained in this planet through these major changes in the planet's climate. But what we're really scared of is if it could support humans during this climatic change. Let's investigate further.

Please go through the following images:

Global Temperature History

CO2 Emission History

Population History

Now from the above statistical records I've created an image overlay to see the correlation between them. Please check below:

Image overlay showing correlation

Hope you can see the clear correlation between these 3 graphs. This is a pure probability that human population is a major contributor for the global warming. Another thing you must observe here is that the slope of these 3 curves go out of synchronization before 1975. This can be an evidence that heavy industrial activities contributed to global warming. So this concludes that the second hypothesis "Human growth itself has caused climatic change" is also true. The reason why I compared the temperature rise with the population growth instead of CO2 is that CO2 is not the only thing which is responsible for the global warming. When human population increases so does the population of the species which needs to support human life (crops, poultry, catle etc. etc.). Though the plants eat up CO2, they release a significant amount of methane when they are digested by earth. Methane is more effective green house gas than CO2.

There are so many things which some people agree and disagree. But we can not deny the collective effect of human population on this planet. What if we didn't have all these technologies, medicine and farming techniques? Could we have exploded like this in population? How long can earth support human life? How many years will the resources in earth last (leave fossil fuels how about water)? Do you think the huge amount of sea water would be enough to support the human population increasing in this rate? There are so many questions we're not knowledgeable enough to answer or not mature enough to digest the answers.
Now I want to raise a question will the "Go Green" efforts taken by countries, organizations and societies has anything to do with decreasing the effects of "Global Warming"? I'll answer this in my next post. Thanks for reading. Give your valuable comments to improve the future posts.

New York goes Hybrid - Where are we?

I was going through a couple of articles in digg.com. One is about the introduction of significant amount of hybrid buses to the New York city fleet : http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/automobiles/autospecial2/22BUS.html. Another one is about test run of bus with turbine engine, to be introduced to New York fleet shortly : http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/mta-tests-sleeker-bus-with-turbine-engine/

Hybrid vehicle is the buzz word in the eco friendly community. They have both a fossil fuel engine and an electrical motor to run the vehicle. Authorities claim that in New York the hybrid bus goes 4 miles per gallon (1.7 km per litre), whereas a conventional diesel bus goes 2.75 miles per gallon (1.2 km per litre : significantly lower than Indian buses running 3-4 km per litre, almost 9 miles per gallon, 3 times better, ofcourse they have air conditioning needs). Apart from this what New Yorkers concentrating is the drop in SOOT (diesel particulate emission) of 97% and nitrogen oxides emission by 58%. They care about the lungs of their children. And these hybrid buses cost $1 million. But due to the high demand the cost dropped to half. In Indian rupee value it is almost 2.3 crore. Can you imagine a middle class family people riding a bus like this? Of course they are going to blame the government for the ticket cost rise. I have a point here to mention about our society. Before that I'll tell about the next plan the New Yorkers are having.

The turbine engine is a revolutionary method to propel a vehicle. A turbine engine is used to propel a electrical generator which in turn runs the electrical motors. The authorities say, "It has no starter, no transmission, no water pump and no engine radiator, which should help us significantly reduce our maintenance costs. When you have an inspection every 3,000 miles, you do not have to drain the oil or drain the transmission." They further said that this bus was the only bus in the authority’s fleet that met the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2010 emissions standards without the need for exhaust after-treatment.

So what are we going to do? Are we still going to complain about the 1 rupee raise in the bus tickets? You may ask a question. What will poor people do? My answer would be to visit the MTC website http://www.mtcbus.org/ and check the link "Concession Fares". A school student can travel for just 15 rupees for the whole academic year any distance (home to school). And lot more. So what's the point? you may ask. The point is, Are we working hard enough to improve our children's future? How are we improving our life styles? Improving life style doesn't mean that we prefer luxurious life. Its about eco-friendly. It costs more to be eco-friendly (initially but it will pay back). Let's work hard to go eco-friendly (for our future and our children's future).