Barrister Fabian Awhen
The term global warming refers to the increase in the average temperature of the earth’s near-surface air and oceans in recent times or decades and its projected continuation.
Significantly, global warming could cause other changes including sea level rise and changes in the amount and pattern of precipitation or rainfall.
There may also be increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.
Other consequences include changes in Agricultural yields, glacier retreat reduced summer stream flows, species extinction, and an increase in the ranges of disease vectors.
All these consequences have made human, animal, and plant habitation difficult and as the effects continue to rise the entire ecosystem is at risk of extinction
Thus, the concern expressed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change I.P.C.C., particularly against the background that over the past century, the atmospheric temperature rose from zero point seven four to zero point eighteen degrees centigrade.
Most of the observed increase in atmospheric temperature since the mid-twentieth century has been attributed to greenhouse gas emissions which leads to the warming of the earth’s surface by increasing the greenhouse effect.
Climatologists project that with this unabated growing rate of global warming, there is a possibility of climate disappearance in tropical mountains and the polar regions including regions such as the African highlands, Indonesia, and the Philippines and near the Arctic.
With nowhere to go, species in these regions might become extinct.
It is also their projection that if global warming continues unabated many of the world’s climate zones may disappear by two thousand one hundred, leaving new ones in their place unlike any that exist today.
Furthermore, tropical rainforests may morph into completely new ecosystems like savannahs.
Worrisome as the situation is, Nigeria is not spared of the consequences of global warming and its concomitant negative effect on the ecosystem.
For instance, delayed rainfalls and excessive heat experienced in recent times not only affects agriculture but also our health.
Indeed, in excessively hot weather by medical estimates, there is a high incidence of cerebra-spiral meningitis, malaria, and other diseases in the country.
Again, we notice these days that natural streams and springs including wells dry up in the height of the dry season forcing millions to resort to impure sources for their water needs.
In the face of all these, can global warming be checked?
The answer to this question depends on what humans make of the environment in the years to come.
The Kyoto Protocol for instance stipulates the reduction of gas emissions into the atmosphere, yet many industrialized and industrializing nations have not made conscious efforts in this direction.
Although Nigeria’s industrial capacity is yet to reach the levels of Western European countries, America’s Japan, India, and China, it is worthy for the nation to review its energy policies while pursuing industrialization in order not to join the league of those nations which have been releasing harmful gas emissions into the atmosphere.
For now, it is worthwhile that every Nigerian be concerned about the human contribution to the problem of global warming and fashion out ways of checking the growing environmental problem.
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