Global warming no threat to India: Expert

The emission of carbon dioxide, methane, chloflorocarbons (CFCS) and other greenhouse gases from Western countries touched around 2,500 million tonnes per year while the contribution of entire developing nations, including India was around 1,000 million tonnes, he said.

The US had alone accounted for 1,135 million tonnes of carbon emissions in 1983 which was 15 times higher than India while China contributed 413 million tonnes, Negi said.

In fact, things arebrighter for India where precipitation was increasing in the last few decades with higher optimum levels of co2 leading to increased vegetation, Negi argued.

Earlier, making a presentation at the Indo-Italian workshop on environment technologies, organised here recently, Negi had contended that India should not fall prey to the technologies being sought to be dumped by Western nations in “the name of monitoring global warming and greenhouse emissions”.

Disputing the oversimplified global warming theory as it was based on “skewed inferences and short term projections”, Negi said there was no monotonic rise in surface temperatures with northern hemisphere experiencing warming while southern hemisphere had lower temperatures for most part of this century.

The international panel for climatic changes (IPCC), which had originally projected a 0.3 degree rise per decade in global surface temperatures, had recently corrected it to be around 0.1 degrees per decade which meant that it would take 100 years forone degree rise, he said.

“Given the fact that majority of meteorological stations are located in or around urban centres, the results establish urban area warming,” the earth scientist said.

A preliminary analysis of long-term climatic cycles shows that the planet was heading for an `imminent ice age’ with increasing aridity, drought in semi-arid regions and spread of deserts might be acting as precursors to cold periods, he said.

Since the present climatic cycle represents the fag end of the inter-glacial period, which normally ranges from 10,000 years to 20,000 years, the earth was heading for ice age, Negi argued.

The analysis of recent green land ice temperatures shows that the warming trend might shift to a cooler climate around 2010 AD, he said adding that Arctic climate was not experiencing any change in average temperatures for the past 40 years.

Doubting the accuracy of satellite and balloon data which did not reflect temperature behaviour of entire earth layer, Negi said carbon dioxidelevels in the atmosphere could be dramatically brought down due to volcanic activity and absorption by increased photosynthesis by plants and oceans.

For instance, over two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in earth’s atmosphere had mysteriously disappeared so far, probably absorbed by growing photosynthesis of plants and by oceans. Similarly, a major volcanic explosion at Mount Pinatubu in Philippines in 1991 had cooled the continents and restrained greenhouse effect for next three years, Negi said.