Friday, December 11, 2009

Climate Change... it’s in our hand


The Global Language Monitor has announced the Top Word of the Decade is ‘Global Warming’ and ‘Climate Change’ was the top phrase. Of course both are caused by greenhouse gases (Water Vapor, carbon, Methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone.) major caused by Carbon dioxide and Methane. The greenhouse gases emission is increasing the earth’s temperature. The consequences are raise in sea levels, more rainfall, extreme weather conditions, melting glaciers, and uneven seasons.
Affect to Indian agriculture:
Agriculture is extremely vulnerable to climate change. The impacts of climate change on agriculture are expected to be negative, threatening Indian food security. Higher temperatures are eventually reducing yields of crops and encourage the weed and pest. Changes in precipitation patterns may increase of short-run crop failures and long-run production declines. Climate change will have varying effects irrigated yields for all crops like Rice, wheat, and soybeans which will cause food shortages and dramatic price increases. Increase in temperatures need more fertilizers which cause to higher emissions.Climate change is likely to aggravate the heat stress in dairy animals, adversely affecting their productive and reproductive performance. A preliminary estimate indicates that global warming is likely to lead to a loss of 1.6 million tones in milk production in India by 2020.Indian council for agriculture research (ICAR) studies on the effects of climate change found that a temperature increase of one degree Celsius would mean 3 to 7 per cent fall in wheat, soybean, mustard, groundnut and potato crops.
Climate change is reality and it’s in our hand. We need to take the necessary steps and adopt new technologies. Government has to teach the farmers by switching to crop varieties that could withstand heat, because climate change could improve the chickpea, maize, sorghum and millet crops in the West Coast and the potato and mustard crops in northwest India. Investment in agriculture research is needed to develop heat- resistant crop strains. We need to reduce carbon emissions sharply soon and encourage Bio fuels rather than fossil fuels.
For more details on UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen COP 15:United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change