Melting of Polar Ice A Major Global Threat

Melting of Polar Ice – A Major Global Threat
 
Global warming is causing changing climate. It has many disastrous effects on the global scale. Among the many harmful effects global warming has on planetary systems is the adverse effect on the mighty polar ice sheets. Both the northern and southern caps of the earth – the Polar Regions – are great storage places of massive amounts of ice.
The Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets provide a critical balance to the global climate. Unfortunately, these ice sheets are now melting at an unprecedented speed due to the manner in which humans use energy. The burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) is the primary cause of global warming due to emission of carbon dioxide – a major greenhouse gas responsible for man-made global warming.
In recent decades the melting of the polar ice sheets due to global warming has seen fast acceleration. In fact, recently scientists have concluded that the polar caps are heating up at least twice as fast as the rest of the planet. Many arctic glaciers have receded several kilometers in the past few decades. Where there was once mountains of ice, today lies barren land. In fact, in a couple of decades, we would see many portions of the Arctic ice-free during summer month. In the coming years, also the Antarctica – which hold much more ice than the Arctic region – would suffer a similar fate. This is a major unwanted change taking place in one of the primary geological mechanisms that keep the earth’s climate in a delicate balance.
The continued loss of ice is not only increasing the sea levels gradually but is also setting in motion a vicious cycle of greater heat absorption from the sun, which further increases the melting of the ice. Let us see how this happens. The white coloured ice reflects most of the energy from the sun. But as ice melts into ocean water, the darker seas begins to absorb a lot of energy from the sun. This causes even more warming and melting of the remaining ice, and the cycle repeats with increasing intensity.
This is a huge cause of worry not only for scientists and climatologists, but also for economists and governments all over the world. There are multiple perilous consequences of continued melting of polar ice. To begin with, the climate disruption will speed up and thus we will see greater occurrences of excessive rains in some places and lower precipitation in some regions. This is already happening more frequently presently, but the effects will increase over time. Excessive heat waves are being reported globally at an increasing frequency. Some of the heat waves are being recorded in very unusual places – like some countries of Europe – which are historically known for their mild and pleasant climate round the year. These are real early warning signs of a major catastrophe that looming on the planet.
The climate shift is already taking a heavy toll on ecology, disrupting numerous ecosystems and causing extinction of species – thus damaging biodiversity irreversibly. With continued ice melting, there would be further increase in sea levels. If all ice stored in the polar caps melts, the earth could see a sea level rise of more than 200 feet. This is painful to even imagine. Now think if this is allowed to happen!
Many mega cities of the world are located on the shorelines. About 55 per cent of global population lives in urban areas, and about 40 per cent of the world’s population lives in and around coastal cities. A catastrophic sea level rise would be the greatest global economic calamity in all of human history. Of course, you could argue that this kind of massive sea level rise would not happen within our lifetime and would take more than a century to occur, but even the present level of sea level rise is flooding some island nations with shallow lands. Sea is encroaching on their land and people from such islands are being forced to become nationless refugees, who are being shifted to other countries. Imagine the scale of political, geographical and economic disruption if we have to completely vacate cities like New York, London, Tokyo, Mumbai and countless others at some point of time in the future?
In an ideal world, such calamities would not be allowed to happen, because human action is causing these problems and we can very well stop our harmful behavior and save the planet. But the actual ground reality is far from ideal. The world continues to rely heavily on fossil fuels, even though the dangers of severe climate change is knocking our doors.
United Nations, through its climate agency, the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has been mobilizing global action towards reversing global warming. IPCC has warned that if we do not reduce our carbon emissions by nearly half by the year 2030 compared to the 2010 levels, then the world could trigger the onset of a catastrophic and most likely an irreversible phase of climate change. In other world, humans will damage this planet irreversibly.
António Guterres, the current Secretary-General of the United Nations, recently once again appealed to the world community to develop clean power generation solution at faster speed, or else we would not be able to stop dangerous climate change, leading to great economic damage in the coming decades.
But all hope is not lost. Nations all over the world have already begun taking positive action to slow down climate change. However, the speed of the corrective action is not satisfactory, as the current measures are too slow and inadequate to make substantial difference within the short time available.
This leads us to the question of what our ideal energy mix should be, since we need economic progress as well as clean energy. The simple answer to this dilemma is that governments of all nations should very rapidly increase the share of clean power generation. And in this regard, India has a clear advantage. We are one of the 30 countries that use nuclear power, which is an ultra-clean source of electricity. Nuclear power plants do not emit greenhouse gases and are thus planet-friendly sources of clean power generation. The role of nuclear power in fighting global warming is well recognized by the scientific community all over the world. However, there are several misconceptions lingering in the public sphere due to inadequate and scientifically inaccurate information on nuclear power. Readers would be surprised to know that indeed nuclear power is among the safest options of power generation, as proven for over 70 years of commercial nuclear power generation globally. It is high time to accept the undeniable merits and benefits of nuclear power, especially in the context of the global climate crisis that the world is facing. With greater generation of clean electricity from nuclear and renewables, the world can move faster towards saving the planet from the clutches of climate change. And this is what we need to do now – urgently!