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.