B’lore losing its charming weather

B’lore losing its charming weather


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By IBNlive.com
Tuesday June 5, 08:16 PM
New Delhi: There is nothing heart warming about the cold facts of global warming. Bangalore will soon become Delhi. No, we aren't talking about a shift in Capital. We are talking about the once pleasant climate of the IT city, which is fast becoming like that of Delhi's.

Project Agastya Co-Founder and Chairman P K Shanbhag says, "If you see in the last 10 years Bangalore temperatures have gone up by 1.5 per cent. If it continues then may be in another 4/5 decades it will be like Bihar or Kanpur temperature."

No, that's not being alarmist or even clairvoyant. It's a reality that most Bangaloreans will have to face, and soon at that. Building insensibly has contributed to the heat island effect in what was once the garden city of India.

Professor Ravindranath who is part of the committee on Inter Governmental Panel for climate change is a worried man today. The IPCC was set up to study the impact of human-induced climate change on India and identify measures to mitigate the impact.

Centre for Sustainable Technologies Professor N H Ravindranath says, “The critical thing we need to look at is mitigation. Mitigation in the sense how to reduce the emission of green house gases from human activities so that we can stabilise the concentration of green house gasses in the atmosphere. Within India, there will be a warming of anywhere between 2.5-3.5 degrees in the next 50-70 years.”

So what's the way forward then?

"What all these buildings, whether a shopping mall, a multi storey complex for software or any industry, they really have to adopt energy efficient building technology. That is something that is missing. The municipality/government should really insist on many of the new technologies available for conserving energy in buildings," Ravindranath says.

It's no longer a doomsday prophecy. It's clear and present danger. The effect of climate change is very visible and will only get worse with time. What is needed at the moment is for governments to adopt the recommendations of scientific committees like the IPCC in mitigating climate change.