No Modiji, climate change is a reality

"Climate has not changed. We have changed."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's views on climate change, in his address on Teachers' Day, has evoked horror among experts across the world. No Modiji, the climate has, indeed, changed. Exactly "how" the climate is changing, and "which" impacts of climate change will be felt "where", is up for debate, but the fact that man has caused the global climate to change is not.

The proof lies in the thousands of scientific papers (including from inter-governmental scientific bodies) drawing on hard data that far outweigh the politically suspect, minority voices denying the existence of climate change.

While the PM's advisers must engage with this robust evidence thoroughly, for starters, they might want to brief their boss using just three simple graphs.

The first graph should capture trends in the global population growth since the industrial revolution (1850) to the present day (1.2 billion to 7 billion); the second should capture the increase of carbon in the atmosphere in the same period (39 per cent increase); and the third should carry data on the increase in average global surface temperature that will show a rise of one degree over the past century and a half (which may not sound like much but is exponentially more than any other period in recent history).

These three graphs that align perfectly should be the first step to clearly understanding the manner in which we have altered the climate of our planet.

"Actually the chill is not more. Due to their age, their [elders] tolerance has become less. That is why they feel colder."

No Modiji, actually the chill may well be more, as might the heat. Predicting precisely how climate change is affecting our world continues to be an inexact science, but one area where scientists largely agree is that the world will experience extreme weather more frequently. While the undeniable trend is towards a global warming (for example, the ten warmest years on record have happened since 1997), extreme cold is another possible by-product of climate change.

For instance, scientists are studying the manner in which the faster pace of melting polar ice shelves - due to global warming - is contributing to harsher European winters. These scientists use computer models to show that the warming of air over the Poles is likely to bring increasingly frigid air to Europe in winter months. Similarly, others are studying the manner in which climate change induced changes into the "jet stream", the fast flowing stream of air that influences global weather, is leading to longer and more extreme winters across vast swathes of the planet. This in turn will affect all aspects of life including health, economy and food security.

"The entire world is facing energy crisis. Coal, gas and petroleum have their limits. So where will one produce electricity from? Sometime or the other, we have to move towards the direction of saving electricity."

No Modiji, apart from fossil fuels, there is a vast array of renewable energy technologies which India must adopt. No one can argue with your advice on the importance of energy conservation, but this needs to be only one part of a country's energy policy. Any modern nation must rely on clean and sustainable energy sources. By some estimates, while the number of countries producing electricity using heat from the Earth's core (geo-thermal energy) has more than doubled since 1975, India is yet to tap this never-ending and clean source of power. While there are indications of India being serious about energy efficiency, major strides are needed to make a perceptible impact.

The Prime Minister's words are mystifying because he touches upon many of these issues in his treatise on climate change published in 2010 (Convenient Action, Palgrave Macmillan). Also, he has failed to see the irony in the fact that a mere three days after these remarks, he announced a package worth Rs 1,000 crores for battling unprecedented floods in Jammu and Kashmir that have claimed a 150 lives (as this piece goes to print).

Research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (a global body of scientists working under the aegis of the UN) demonstrates that climate change will induce spells of intense rainfall that, in turn, leads to catastrophic flooding such as that witnessed in J&K.