Sunday, July 22, 2007

Global Warming

Adaptation or Mitigation?


Do you feel the winter warmer than before? Do you feel the summer longer than before? Do you feel the weather is hotter than usually? If the answer is yes then you are also one from million of people that feel the direct effects of global warming. What is global warming? Global warming can be defined as the rise of the earth average temperature globally. Not only in Asia or Europe, but also America, Australia, Africa, and all place in the earth. This rise of temperature is caused by the rise of carbon emission in the atmosphere. Carbon is a particle that has million of years life cycle. So, this can be concluded that the carbon amount in the atmosphere will always be rise and never decrease. Carbon in the atmosphere has a function to warm up the earth that called green house effect. The sunlight radiation that came through the earth as short wave radiation will be received by the earth and transmitted back to the sky as long wave radiation. When the long wave radiation came through the carbon in the atmosphere, this will made the carbon vibrate and produce a heat. And this heat will be transfer back to the earth as a long wave radiation. And this is what green house effect is. All of it is a natural process like how the water becomes a cloud and a cloud becoming rain. But what happen recently, as the population growth and people always try to make their lives much more comfortable through technology, the carbon emission increase more than it should be. And the global warming happens.


Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models predicted that from 1990 to 2100 there will be an increase for global temperature around 1.1-6.4 C. This rise of temperature will lead into global climate change. Global climate change is a serious matter. The more warm the earth, the more the ocean warm. The more the ocean warm the more it can lead into catastrophic hurricane. Since 1970’s the number of hurricane level 4 and 5 has been jumped up. The warmer earth also can raise the sea level. Until 2100 it was predicted that the ocean level can rise into 6 feet. This rise will bring economic and humanity problems, as there are also people and country activities on the shore. Not only people on the shore, people that live from agricultural activities will also feel the effects. The rise of temperature will definitely bring effects to the amount of precipitation. Some region will have more precipitation and some will have less precipitation. This is definitely no good for agriculture. Drought will come more often than before or maybe floods becoming new problems to some. The effect is to the crop yields. The crop yields will be decrease and will become economic and humanity problems. Climate change becoming more serious as it also affects to humans health. The changing will force human body to adapt to the changing. But not all human body can adapt to the change. As the result it will bring sickness to the human. The warmer earth will give a chance to mosquitoes to longer their lives. This mosquito is mosquitoes that bring a disease like dengue fever, malaria, Hantavirus and other viruses. This is a serious problem. Many will infected, many will sick, and many will die. And this is happened recently in Indonesia. Finally, global warming that lead into global climate change is really serious challenge for humanity future.


So, how to overcome the global warming? What can we do? There are only two ways in handling it. Choose to adapt to the change or doing mitigation. Adaptation is an act in receiving the global warming and try to be nice to the change that caused by it. Meanwhile, the mitigation is an act in refusing the global warming and tries to prevent it becoming worse. Adaptation example is like changing the life style. Recently in Romania, as the winter becoming warmer, the Romania Football Federation Chairman, Mircea Sandu said that if the things continue on for the next 2-3 years, the league vacation will only be available for 23 December until 15 January. Usually, the league will have vacation from mid December until 2 months ahead, as cold winter cover Romania. Another example we can see from the farmer. The farmer need to make more advance technology in caring their crop from floods or drought. As for the government, to take care their country from the effect of global warming through climate change, there are two ways in using adaptation as their prudential. “Top Down” or “Down Top”. “Top Down” is an adaptation process derived by government perspective about how should their people adapt to local climate change. As an example, when drought becoming longer than before, government can take a decision to change the plantation that usually their farmer do. Meanwhile, the “Down Top” is a converse from “Top Down”. “Down Top” means government decision is based on how the local people adapt to the change. For example, as the drought comes longer than before, the farmer change their usual plant into a plant that resist to the drought, thought the selling is not good enough. This two ways of adaptation will have better decision when the government has been had a “mainstreaming” for their country development, which make the two kinds of adaptations wont becoming a burden to the country developments.


As for mitigation, the action is much clearer but hardly to do. The purpose of mitigation is definitely how to prevent the carbon emission raise highly. Protocol Kyoto is the result of mitigation action. This protocol rules the world carbon emission for the future. The chosen country in this protocol should reduce their carbon emission for about 5.2% to the average of carbon emission in 1990. To reduce the carbon emission, first of all we should see the data for what actually the most thing that emitted the carbon. And the data show that the carbon emission comes from 21,3% power station, 16,6% industrial process, 14% transportation fuels, 12,5% agricultural byproducts, 11,3% fossil fuels retrieval, processing and distribution, 10,3% residential, commercial and other uses, 10% land use and biomass burning, and 3,4% waste disposal and treatment (http://wikipedia.org). From the data, it can be concluded that the energy source and forestry is the main problems. The power station, industrial process and transportation now days still use fossil fuels as their primary energy source. Fossil fuels emitted carbon as their final work. Therefore it is needed another source energy which is less emitted carbon. This source energy is called alternative energy. Many alternative energy can be made, such as, sun radiation, the wind, the wave, geothermal, and biodiesel. Biodiesel emitted 75% less carbon than fossil fuel. Besides looking for the most suitable alternative energy, caring the forest is also part of act in mitigation. Forest is the most absorber carbon in the world. Without forest, the global warming will come much faster. Therefore an act to make the world keep green is needed.


The final question maybe about “What can individual do?” or “Which one should we use? Adaptation or mitigation?”. Many things can individual do since this is a serious matter for the future. First of all, each individual should understand completely how important this issue is. Then spread as much as possible this issue with its solution. Use alternative energy for any activities as much as you can and grow some plant in your home to help the world keep green. Adaptation or mitigation? It’s up to you.


Sustainable River Basin Management

The Impact of Climate Change to River Basin Management


The world now days up roared by an inconvenience truth about human future. The truth which is seen skeptical by some people slowly saw its impact to human activities. Finally, much people better believe on the truth rather than denying it. Finally peoples rather believe that climate can change through global warming, which is finally this climate change becoming number one global issue. What’s wrong with climate change? What so fear about it? Climate that can be define as atmospheric long term condition in ones region has a strong bond with all life activities on earth. This is due to climate cycle system which is influence by the atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, kriosphere, and biosphere. The climate change in ones region will bring many difficulties to humans life, especially in agrarian, economic, environment related, such as natural disaster, humans health, and government development prudence. Climate change can cause ones region precipitation decrease or increase. Hence, the climate change is related to rivers behavior.


All rivers are different, but they all work in a similar way. The way the rivers do is depend on its basin. The basin as the place for river waters to flow has important role in directing where the water will flow, how the water flow and the water condition. Hence, the river basin management is needed. As the climate change happen, river basin management should be take more seriously. Let us assume that the climate change cause ones regions precipitation increase. The increased precipitation will raise the river debit and cause flood in some area which the river cross, and definitely the area which call the river downstream. Not only reasoning the probability of flooding, increase precipitation can shallow the river basin and give bad water quality to the river. This is due to increasing material that rain brings to the river. Higher precipitation the more material can bring along it. Meanwhile, climate change can also decrease ones region precipitation. Decreasing precipitation will mean decreasing of water availability in the river. Fewer water supplies are a big problem. Hence, those few water supplies should be able to be used maximum. However, if the water quality is not good enough, then there is no use again for the river except brought the things flow to the sea. This is how the river basin takes the role. Dirty basin will cause bad river water quality. Hence, how to manage the river basin when it comes to increase or decrease precipitation is the same. The first same idea is how to keep the river water quality good. The different is when it comes to increasing precipitation, the idea is how to make the river water not spill to the land and not cause flooding. But when it comes to decreasing precipitation, the idea is how to make use the river water as maximum water supply to the land.


Climate changes continue on without we realize about it. Especially to the ones who live in tropical region. If we keep not learning about it and just being skeptical it might bring disaster for the future. Climate change might cause a failure in government prudence for city development. Choosing the right time to build public infrastructure, such as the road or river basin repairing is the example. If the government didn’t learn the climate change and only make a decision base on experience, their decision might be cost a lot than what they have been predicted. Off course it is a bad idea to build the public infrastructure when it is raining. Maybe they have planed about it, but they plane it only based on experience. This would be more horrible when that orthodox way is used for river basin management. River basin management needs the right time to run the project. Moreover, if the things continue on with the trend without any proper action, as the impact of climate change, the river can bring disaster. In the winter it may bring flood and in the summer it may not be able to supply the water to people around it. Those things will impact many sector in our life such as economic, agrarian, healthiness and transportation.


There should be an integrated action to solve the problem. For the government who has the authority in managing the river basin, the first thing to do is learning the climate change in their region. What cause it, how to manage it and how to implement it to the river basin management. The second is use the first act as basis for doing the project to keep the water river clean. As an example, the government can take an action to reduce mobile transportation as they emitted the greenhouse gases which is cause the climate change through global warming. Or the government may take an action to change all industry fossil fuel with the one that more suite to the environment like biodiesel. As the fossil fuel such as coal emitted methane, carbon monoxide and sulfur which is act as greenhouse gases and a particle that can bring acid rain. Acid rain can polluted the river and make the river unhealthy. The last is making a good socialization to the society about climate change and the river. Promote about the cause of climate change and its relation to the river. Promote that we need a clean river and a good basin to maximize the function of the river. Finally, the river basin management will not work without society or individuals’ participation. Individual participation in keeping the river and the air clean is big. Individual shouldn’t throw garbage or any harm things to the river. Individual should try to change their fossil fuel with biological fuel. Individual should remind each other about the importance of river and also the climate change that can impact to it. And last, individual should realize that river is part of environment. Good environment will resulted to good society.



Monday, February 12, 2007

Goto Maki

Goto Maki


yooo..... let me introduce you to my lovely angel..... she is soooo perfect.... i can't speak so much this time, but i will give you a little bit of my work about her. This esespecially dedicated to her, this is how i express my love to her..... ok.... watch this..... and if you enjoy it, please kindly leave a comment here. thnx


[opv] Goto Maki - love kan coffe...conannd-kun no tameni...


Sunday, January 28, 2007

INTERMEZO

INTERMEZO


ahhh.. it's been a long time since my last post in this blog..........now i want to start write something again in this blog. First of all, i wanna say happy new year to all of u..... though it is too late, but i want to say it....... new year means new goals, new determination, new power, new effort with fresh brain and heart. I'm really glad that my goals in 2006 are some accompalished, though some also delay to 2007. When it was in 2006, i had a goals to made a national chess tournament in my campus.... it is failed to be held in 2006, but.....i don't give up.... i keep trying and finally it is held in early january 2007. Yeah... i think we can do anything that we want if we able to keep trying and not giving up. Maybe it is not at the time that we want, but surely it will be done. From this point of view, i became more believe that people can plan anything and do anything, but the final result is GOD matters. Sometimes we thought that the time we planned is the most effective and effisien, but...... we realized that it wasn't when it was delay and held in other times. This is like what i experienced. I have set the righteous times for the national chess tournament... but, we had some trouble so that we should delay it.... we are really dissapointed, but we realized that the delay is not a big deal, coz we r given another good times. People should only plan and give efforts to it.... don't expect too much for good result, just enjoy the process, if u had give it all the best u had, surely the result would be good, coz GOD wont sleep, he is watching us.