Climate Change ? Very likely

I am sure almost all would have found the advertisement of Vattenfall, mostly aired on BBC to be hilarious, just because it states something so obvious. It shows a conference of intellectuals and scientists, where one person is forcefully delivering the words about how one should control the negative climate change, etc. Then a voice says that empty words like this only add to carbon dioxide, at Vattenfall they do real effort to curb climate change. Vattenfall is an energy company, operating in Nordic countries, Germany and Poland of mainland Europe. I, as well, buy my electricity from them.

Now, let’s move over to the report released by the IPCC yesterday. IPCC is an intergovernmental panel comprising 113 countries and 600 scientists. In its report published yesterday, which is being hailed as something radical and revolutionary, they have said the reason for the climate change is "very likely" human activity! What news? In their report released in 2001, they had mentioned human activity as "likely" cause of climate change, and five years later with lot of conferences, research and money spent, they found human activity is "very likely" the cause of climate change. Five years later they will publish that human activity are the cause of climate change. Do we need 600 scientists to publish something that a high school dropout can conclude in less time and with less money spent?

It is high time that world recognizes that organizing conferences or having scientists jetting around the world to deliver a lecture is not going to help in the cause of climate change. It is time to do some real ground work, something which translates into activities. Along with the report published by IPCC on climate change, Exxon Mobil released its annual result as well. The oil company broke its own record of highest ever corporate profit in a year, posting a profit of $39.5bn. I don’t mind their profit, I am a staunch capitalist, but their result also mentions their expenses. Most of their expenses have been in exploring new oil reserves and nothing has been spent in R&D activity for alternative and cleaner source of energy such as Solar, Wind power, etc. Companies, who are making such huge profits by selling something which is causing climate change, could spend a bit of it in mitigating the bad effects. May be in another 100 years, IPCC would come with a report that yeah, fossil fuel causes climate change. Till then, let’s have more conferences, lectures, seminars and cocktail parties.