Develop technologies for inevitable climate change:Scientist

New Delhi, Oct 6 (UNI) Noted enviroment scientist and distinguished Professor at George Mason University, Washington, Dr J Shukla today called for a dialogue between the scientists and economists to chalk out strategies to cope with the inevitable climate change due to global warming.

He said the problem is there, though a strong lobby in the US was spending huge sums in convincing people that global warming was a hoax.

The freezing of lakes has been delayed by six days, frost days have reduced, carbon content of oceans was increasing and there was a two mm rise in the sea level per year, said Prof Shukla adding that these were irrefuitable developments, pointing towards global warming.

He was delivering a lecture on 'Global Warming: The known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable' organised the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.

Prof Shukla, who is also president of the Institute of Global Environment and Society, said that global warming was directly related to the way the world was using energy.

"Even if we stopped all activities today, enough of green house gasses have reached in the atmosphere to cause half a degree rise in the global temperature during this century," he said.

Therefore, he said it was necessary to start devloping technologies that can help us cope with the circumstances resulting out of the inevitable climate change.

In this connection, he called for development of a special model for predicting regional climate changes.

''Presently we take something from all the existing 15 models for making predictions. But the fact is that some are good but some are bad. We will have to give up this model democracy to arrive a more efficient model for prediting climate changes,'' said Prof Shukla.

Earlier, introducing the subject of the lecture, Union Minister for Science and Technology Kapil Sibal said the present model of development has a huge cost.

''The development agenda should take into account the impact of thge use of coal energy on the environment,'' he said.

The minister advocated a mix of various sources of energy and adoption of a model of low cost energy production for a cluster of villages.

UNI NAZ VD BST1919