Green Construction

GREEN CONSTRUCTIONPRESENTATION

Scientific Assessment of Climate Change

New Findings

Faculty: Dr. A. Abhyankar

Presented By:Anoop K. N.Mahim Ojha

Vinayak MahindrakarSiddhartha Kamat

Contents

• Introduction

• Introduction to IPCC and AR4

• Brief on TERI(The Energy and Resources Institute)

• Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference

• Future Projections

• Need for Mass Movement on Climate Change

• References

An appeal to our Friends…..

“The issue of climate change needs to be given a serious thought, and our Mother Earth would like you all to be responsible citizens and contribute your part in doing

good to the environment”

Introduction to IPCC

• Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change

• Established in 1988

• Its mission is to provide comprehensive scientific assessments of

current scientific, technical and socio-economic information

worldwide about the risk of climate change caused by human

activity.

• It does not carry out its own original research nor does it do the

work of monitoring climate or related phenomena itself.

Introduction to IPCC

• The Main activity of IPCC is to publish special reports on topics relevant to Implementation of UNFCCC

• UNFCC- United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is an international treaty – acknowledging the possibility of harmful climate change.

Introduction to AR4

• By IPCC

• It provides a great deal of new scientific knowledge which

carries learning with the special value in a world where climate

change has now come to occupy centre-stage of contemporary

global issues.

Limitations

• Needs public awareness and public demand for the

governments to take notice of what the public demands

• It can happen only if the manifestation is widespread and strong

• But, the ability and capacity Of IPCC to spread the findings is

limited.

Introduction to TERI

• The first big foot – The conference on “Global warming and climate change: Perspectives from developing countries”, New Delhi, 1989

• The agenda was to concentrate on equity, efficiency and burden sharing needed to be evaluated in defining the role of developing countries

• After conference , TERI established a Centre for Global Environmental Research

• This centre did the following task• Conducted the research• Dissemination of results through message to public, school children,

advising govts. and multilateral organizations on regular basis.

Dangerous Anthropogenic Interferences

• Ever since the industrial age, there has been a clear trend of rising

temperatures.

• A drastic increase in GHG’s due to anthropogenic interference.

• Human factors have overtaken the natural factors in the second half of the

20th century.

• A 17cm increase in sea level in just the past decade.

• 70% increase in GHG’s since 1970 to 2004

• This highlights the ineffective nature of global action even though the UNFCC

was established in 1992 and the KP in 2005

Future Projections

• IPCC has carried out projections of the future changes in temperature as well

as their effects to our earth and us.

• The projected increase in temperature by the end of 21st century will be

within the range of 1.1-6.4 Degree Celsius.

• Even with best efforts by us it will still increase by 2.5 Degree Celsius taking

into account the average of 0.74 Degree Celsius increase in the 20th Century.

• There are some very crucial effects of this future projections and increase in

the climate.

Major Concerns around the Globe

• Mega Deltas extremely susceptible to major coastal flooding.

• 75-250 million people living under water stress in Africa by 2020.

• Decline in agricultural yields by almost 50 % by 2020 in some parts of

Africa.

• Arctic region is warming twice as fast than the rest of the globe.

• Global Ice meltdown could leave more than 700 million as environmental

refugees.

• Adaptation to the impacts of climate change must be taken seriously, also

there is a sense of urgency to take measures so as to bring about

stabilization of the earths climate.

Major Concerns around the Globe

• In order to stabilize the temp. increase between 2-2.4 Deg. C. the extent of

mitigation required would impose a cost of no more than 3% of the GGDP

in 2030.

• The co-benefits from such efforts include higher energy security, lower

levels of air pollution, commensurate health benefits, higher levels of

employment etc.

• The world would incur a negative costs related to such a path of

mitigation.

• Very little time to embark on the preferred trajectory of mitigation.

“Need for a Mass Movement on Climate Change”

Reference

“Dealing with Climate Change-Setting a Global Agenda for Mitigation and Adaptation”-Edited by R. K. Pachauri

Thank You!