?Global Warming!? Unlikely as it may seem, these two words are the hottest button the brain dead can push to prove their intellect and supposed concern for Mother Earth? Everyone talks about ?global warming? as our planet gets more feverish, but no one seems to understand its real implications and causes. Only last week, a special fashion line was presented in Europe against global warming ? but when models were asked what they personally did to prevent this catastrophe, we were not surprised to read that they were not aware of what was going on,?I close the tap while brushing my teeth?? (confused with save water campaign!)

Whatever our conception of what global warming is, never mind if you thought it was a slow motion emergency that would take decades to unfold ? believe it or not, the crisis is well alive and kicking! The debate about the impact of global warming and how serious it could be has ended some years back when serious climate imbalances have occurred around the world. Cyclone Larry hitting Australia with 290 kmh winds, accelerating rate of ice cap melting, ocean warming and rise in global temperatures with 19 of the 20 hottest years being after 1980.

What exactly is this phenomenon and how does it affect our planet ? Carbon dioxide has always been a tiny component of the atmosphere and helped keep the Earth warm at comfortable temperatures. However, too much of it, because of human activity mainly, creates a lot of harm. The carbon dioxide and other gases known as greenhouse gases were spread evenly across the air blanket and allowed sunlight to stream in and retain heat (enabling life on Earth). For comparison purposes, the last ice age has a total concentration of 180 ppm (parts per million) of CO2 putting Earth on deep freeze. At the beginning of the modern era, CO2 concentration had risen to 280 ppm. Today, human activity has pushed levels up to 381 ppm.

This causes ice to melt very fast, and drains into the sea ? making water levels rise. (220 cubic km drained into our seas in 2006. One cubic km being 25% more that the entire city of Los Angeles uses in a year). Rising sea levels swallow large parts of land and coastal regions are largely affected ? added to the fact that warm water expands this creates even more deluge. Also note that polar ice is so reflective that 90% of sunlight that shines on it bounces back into space taking all the heat with it. Ocean water does just the contrary; absorbing 90% of energy it receives. This feeds the vicious circle ? the more energy water retains, the warmer it gets, the more it expands, resulting in each mile of ice vanishing faster than the preceding one.

One result of that entire warmer ocean is paradoxically colder continents in a hotter globe. Oceans serve as a natural thermo regulator running between warm and cold regions and distributing heat from the Equator toward the poles. For purposes of illustration, the Gulf Stream carries warmth from the tropics to Europe ? keeping temperatures relatively mild. What upholds the Gulf Stream is this mechanism: warm water, being lighter than cold water, floats on the surface ? and in reaching Europe releases its heat. The current grows denser and sinks as it reaches Europe flowing back to the tropics where it gets warm again. The cycle is extraordinarily efficacious as long as salt concentration is high enough. Ocean water being diluted by melting ice caps, no longer create the same environment and heat is no more distributed as it should have.

Winters get colder and summers get hotter. Since atmospheric heat is not choosy about water it warms, tropical storms could start turning up in some decidedly non tropical areas. Warmer water is a rocket fuel to typhoons and hurricanes. Higher temperatures also bake moisture out of the soil faster - making drier regions drier. Increased heat creates wildfires, which devastate major forests ? implying less CO2 being absorbed from the atmosphere and less oxygen being released. If trees are not being ravaged by fires or human activity, forests are shifting upslope trying to escape from heat and drought of lowlands.

All the above being just a summary of what?s going on around our feverish planet, we are actually really much upset to see that the US refuse to enter the Kyoto protocol to reduce CO2 emissions. For sake of comparison, studies have shown that an average US citizen causes 20 times more greenhouse pollution than a person in India or China. 5% of the world population producing 25% of CO2 emissions. If everyone lived like the average Chinese or Indian, you would not be reading about global warming right now. But, unfortunately, about 2.3 billion people among those Chinese and Indian deeply aspire to an American-style energy intensive life and we are sky rocketed to the real global warming problem we are to face in a very near future.

It?s not too late to prevent the situation from getting worse and our government has a great role in emphasizing more on eco-friendly consump- tion, energy-saving culture and bio-degradable products. Industries must be encouraged into contributing to such measures in form of tax incentives. The only way to prevent our already ill planet from dying is to get people conscious of their consumption patterns and be provided an alternative way of going on with their usual life - just imagine how much of CO2 we could prevent being spit into the air from our vehicles if only we had a decent way of communication to and back from work at an affordable price (forget the Mauritius bus service, for now, which I believe is a very indecent way of having a population travel) ? we would also solve the long lasting problem of traffic jams which people who travel to Port Louis everyday understand. The government should be more reactive to those problems and help in protecting Earth, which is in real need of a Paracetamol pill in form of human help.

<B>By Hannah MAUDARBOCUS</B>