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That article ended saying: “Action/inaction today will determine what the future will hold for us” and now exactly one year later, in the aftermath of the recent landslide tragedy, we know whether it has been action or inaction that we have executed.
Whenever we talk about climate change, everybody’s mind automatically goes to that well known nasty greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide and our minds seldom go to that worse greenhouse gas water vapour. But actually, water vapour is the worst greenhouse gas in the atmosphere – when it is in the atmosphere it is several times worse than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and when it comes down it could lead to all sorts of water-related disasters – flooding, landslides, cyclones, hurricanes, tornadoes. No other gas in the atmosphere, neither carbon dioxide, methane, oxygen nor nitrogen, can bring about such varied devastation
Background
Now that we know water vapour in the atmosphere can bring about such devastation, we need to identify how we can keep it at natural levels without allowing it to increase. According to the USA EPA website, annual precipitation has increased by about 0.29% per decade globally whi
le the same over the 48 lower states of US has increased by 0.59% per decade which is attributed to excessive use of fossil fuels.
We know that the US uses 95 million barrels of oil per day while it has been estimated that in 2035 China will also consume oil to the same extent, if not more. Does all this mean that there will be more and more precipitation in the future?
A quick glance at the global news a few days ago threw out the following statements: (a) September 2014 has been the warmest September ever in many parts of the world, (b) The US experiences enhanced coastal flooding, (c) Greater rainfall occurs more frequently. Then the question arises what can we do about all this? There are three approaches proposed.
One will be from the Advanced Nay Sayers who will say either (a) carbon dioxide generated will be nothing in respect to the greenhouse effect when compared to the worse greenhouse gas methane thrown out by the cows we keep or that (b) Ours being a small country, whatever we do will have no significant impact when considered in the global context or that (c) we need to implement adaptation strategies which will be readily funded by international agencies. There will be enough and more agencies and donors who will fund these activities, which will ultimately become billion dollar businesses. Climate change adaptation is big business and the routine question posed will be why upset that business?
What these adaptation champions do not see is that no adaptation strategy implemented today will be adequate tomorrow and it will be a continuous stream of newer and more resource intensive adaptation strategies until we all get washed away in a real-life ‘Day after tomorrow’.
Water vapour vs.
Carbon dioxide
What we want to emphasise is that we have been guided by these for more than three or four years now and the only outcome has been experiencing greater water-related disasters more frequently.
It is in this context that we should mitigating action which will reduce the increasing trend of more water vapour in the atmosphere. For us to take effective mitigation action, we should first identify what gives rise to additional water vapour.
Those who talk only about carbon dioxide doing the whole damage will say that CO2 from fossil fuel combustion will enhance the greenhouse effect and increase the temperature – surface as well as atmospheric – and this temperature increase will bring more water vapour into the atmosphere, which comes back as precipitation after spending about two weeks in the atmosphere.
Of course when Prof. V. Ramanathan and A. Amandar plotted (a) the greenhouse effect, (b) atmospheric temperature and (c) water vapour at three levels in the atmosphere throughout the year (this graph is given in the book ‘Frontiers of Climate Change Models’), they found that all these three graphs had the peaks at the same places and followed the same pattern throughout the year without one lagging behind the other as to be expected from the above explanation.
When we calculate the amount of exhaust gases from any energy generating step from fossil fuel (excepting coal) combustion we always find significant amounts of water vapour comparable to water vapour arising from the feedback effect mentioned above.
The most fundamental and oldest theory of problem-solving says that if there is a root cause for any phenomenon, then that phenomenon can be stopped. So if this phenomenon of water-related disasters does have a root cause in that it is due to excessive water vapour entering the atmosphere – whether as a primary effect of combusting hydrogen-containing fossil fuels or as a secondary effect of increased atmospheric temperature from the combustion of carbon in a fossil fuel – then we should be able to stop it by stopping the combustion of fossil fuels containing carbon and /or hydrogen.
This water vapour is not water which was in the water cycle earlier. When plants throw out water vapour into the atmosphere during transpiration that water is what plants have sucked from the ground; but this water vapour from the combustion of fossil fuel is water vapour which is being formed anew.
We will reap what we sow
We have heard many knowledgeable people say that what we do in Sri Lanka would not influence global climate change significantly. We are more concerned about how climate change influences our lives in this small country and we would like to comment on this as follows.
When the emission of carbon dioxide within Sri Lanka is considered, it does not come down (Carbon dioxide does not precipitate.) nor remain within Sri Lanka and it will dissipate in the atmosphere to many other regions.
According to data available on the internet, oceans give out 90 GT/yr of CO2 to the atmosphere and absorb 92Gt/yr from the atmosphere. This implies that land area – vegetation and living beings – should be giving out to the atmosphere more CO2 than they absorb from the atmosphere even to maintain a constant CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. As such CO2 generated even in an island country like Sri Lanka would not remain encapsulated in a vertical silo above the country. So it will get diluted in the atmosphere.
But in the case of water vapour, it is different. We live in an island country surrounded by the ocean. According to the website ‘Water Vapour In The Climate System Special Report’, oceans give rise to 434 terra tons/yr of evaporation, while getting back only 398 terra tons/yr of precipitation, which implies that the land area receives 36 terra tons/yr of water as precipitation more than what land areas yield as evaporation to the atmosphere.
In fact it is this amount of water which is taken back to the ocean along the rivers in a given year. So what happens is that oceans return to the land some of their evaporation and in the case of island nations like ours whatever evaporation we throw out to the atmosphere will come with some additional water which would have evaporated from the ocean.
So the water vapour we generate will not go anywhere else and the more water vapour we generate from the combustion of fossil fuels with hydrogen will definitely come back to us as more rain as what is being experienced in the US.
In 2013 we imported nearly five million metric tons of liquid and gas fossil fuels and if this quantity had 13% of hydrogen on average it would have yielded about six million metric tons of water vapour.
If this water vapour was distributed throughout Sri Lanka during precipitation, we would not have felt it; but when its precipitation coincides – both time-wise and area-wise – with a normal specific rain pattern – which again is time bound and area bound – the outcome would be a level of precipitation which is unbearable for the normal drainage/flow pattern in the particular area and water-related disasters could take place.
Whether the equilibrium of a balance with two scale pans will be disturbed by the addition of an additional weight to one scale pan will not entirely and necessarily depend on the magnitude of the weight, but also on the sensitivity of the balance. It is said that if all the water in the atmosphere were to come down at the same time it would make a 2.5 cm layer on the entire surface of the earth and since the global average annual precipitation is 1000 mm this implies that a molecule of water in the atmosphere or a similar molecule will evaporate and precipitate about 40 times a year.
If the above mentioned 6.5 million tons were also to precipitate and evaporate 40 times a year it would lead to significant rainfall. On the other hand if this amount of water were to come down only once and such an annual downpour accumulated in one particular area – which again is likely – it would reduce the capacity of that area to hold more water and result in water flows in undesirable routes and flow patterns.
It is for this particular reason, I believe, that the International Strategy for Risk Reduction stated that the propensity of water-related disasters has increased by 13% from 1990 to 2007 and 75% of enhanced water-related disasters had been experienced in countries in South Asia where there are monsoons.
This enhanced exposure to water-related disasters is becoming common to other countries also as could be seen from US coastal states experiencing more coastal flooding and the US’ willingness to spend nearly $ 20 billion to build walls at New York, New Orleans and San Francisco just to keep the ocean waters away.
Awakening of bigger countries
It was only a few years ago that there was a certain reluctance on the part of some nations to look at climate change as a real threat. Unwillingness to sign some significant treaties on climate change and the inability to reach a reasonable consensus at that emotionally concluded COP Summit at Copenhagen prompted us to make this statement. Probably their thinking may have been that (i) The world - at least they – could afford to accommodate a temperature which is about 2 C higher and (ii) They could also afford to live with a sea level which is 2 mm higher because they have large land areas.
Since Copenhagen many things have happened and today the line of thought of the same countries may be different.
The US would have seen the prospect of losing some land area even within the country like a lake near North Dakota overflowing in 2010 and Hurricane Sandy sending ocean waters toward land area with significant damage and loss to the economy. The US would have noticed that what climate change implies is not a nice, gradual rise in the sea level to which one could get used to but torrential rains with water gushing inwards disrupting the entire social and economic fabric, also at the most unwelcome places and times.
That is how nature controls mankind. It may be this change in the thinking patterns of influential countries which prompted the UN Climate Summit 2014 to adopt the three key objectives of (i) Ensuring 30% of new vehicle sales in 2030 to be battery electric vehicles, (ii) Ensuring increased use of renewable energy and (iii) Reducing deforestation by 50% by 2020 and by 100% by 2030. We have of course been prompting and promoting these three objectives for the last six years.
Highway Solarisation, the solution
We have been promoting the Battery Electric Vehicle as the most preferred alternative vehicle to replace the current Internal Combustion Engine powered automobiles since 2008. Even at that time we were planning to use renewable energy for the purpose and we were not planning to carry out any deforestation to install the photovoltaic solar panels to obtain renewable energy.
Instead we wanted to (i) Reduce climate change even further by reducing/eliminating absorption of solar radiation by the bituminous surface of the highways and (ii) Also reduce transmission losses by generating electricity where it will be consumed – i.e. on the highway itself.
This is what gave rise to Highway Solarisation, which is defined as “a dedicated infrastructure for powering battery electric vehicles using solar energy collected by PV solar panels installed along and above the highways as a solution for climate change.”
In fact, we were so confident about the practicality of the whole concept, we even wrote to Preethi Bhandari, Technical and Financial Coordinator at UNFCCC, in January 2011, requesting information as to how we could obtain a $6 billion grant from the Green Climate Fund which UNFCCC was planning to establish in the aftermath of the Copenhagen Summit. She replied that the fund had not yet been established and they would inform the Ministry of Environment when it was available. This fund is currently being formed and will be ready by the end of 2015 as mentioned in the media recently.
Synergy with economic aspirations
Another key aspect of this approach is that it is quite in line with the objective of being self reliant as mentioned in the recent Budget 2015. When we wrote to the Financial Times about two months ago on realising a positive balance of trade, we mentioned that the area we need to concentrate the most on is becoming self reliant in respect to energy and reducing the import of oil.
As the article was prompted by a statement made by Dr. P.B. Jayasundera, he may have read it and it may have entered his mind when the President read out the three principles of Self Reliance, Knowledge Based Economy and Innovations in the budget speech.
We are quite sure highway solarisation will also definitely reduce trade deficit and balance of payment issues as well.
It was also mentioned in the papers that Suresh Shah, Chairman of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, expressed how challenging it would be for the Government to realise a 4.5% budget deficit in the near term at a recent seminar organised by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce.
Considering the significant number of vehicles being used by the public sector, including those used by different ministers and their supporting staff, resorting to highway solarisation and battery electric vehicles will definitely reduce the cost of their transportation by at least 50% and will make its own contribution towards reducing the budget deficit.
What all this implies is highway solarisation provides us with a significant, suitable, positive mitigatory response to water-related disasters.
It will help the Government to move towards self reliance in energy in both power generation as well as the transportation sectors.
It is quite in line with the UN Climate Summit’s three objectives in respect to the usage of battery electric vehicles powered by renewable energy while reducing deforestation to 50% in 2020 and 0% in 2030.
It will help in those three problematic objectives of all Ministers of Finance, reducing the Trade Deficit, Budget Deficit and Balance of Payments Deficit.
It will reduce global warming, the generation of greenhouse gases and leave a better environment for future generations.
Do we really expect anything more from a mitigation action for climate change and water-related disasters? I will not mention action and inaction as inaction is not an alternative today.
It should be noted without question that it is neither CO2 nor global warming which will punish mankind – from simple, unsophisticated village folk in Haldumulla in Sri Lanka to increasingly more sophisticated people in Nigeria, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Philippines, Australia, England, Germany, Japan to the most sophisticated in New York, USA – for this incessant exploration for and burning of hydrocarbons to obtain an extra terawatt hour of energy when the sun bestows upon them thousands of terawatt hours every day; but that simple substance called water, which looks after us and refreshes us so well from the time we are conceived until we exhale our last breath. When angered, water will not spare any nation, however powerful it may be.
