Environmental Pollution: A Means of Control?

By: Jyotishraj Thoudam

PhD, Mechanical Engineering

Email: jyotishraj.thoudam@iitgn.ac.in

As a budding scientist, I believe that it is important to question the foundation of everything. However, this is a personal account of my journey through the problem, solution and everything else concerning environmental pollution and climate change. Back in the day, I was an active advocate against pollution, mainly the burning of fossil fuels. We looked for alternative solutions for internal combustion engines and other renewable energy resources. I knew that I alone cannot help solve this. Therefore, I had to make other people change their minds as well. To that end, I used the power of storytelling as means of persuasion to achieve some measure of improvement towards the goal of reversing pollution and achieving a stable climate. A documentary by the name “An Inconvenient Truth (2006)”, was very popular back then. The film is about former United States Vice President Al Gore’s campaign to educate people about global warming.

Every week or so, I convinced my batchmates, starting from my close friends, to watch that movie, along with me. In summary, the film shows the effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, that it is increasing monotonically from the 1950s till 2006. This curve is known as the “Keeling Curve”. Gore delivers all the side effects of global warming due to the increase of this particular greenhouse gas. He stressed that the major effect of global warming is the melting polar ice caps, rendering the increase in sea level, massive hurricanes, drought, unwanted floods, and as a consequence flooding coastal areas, famine, disease, and of course, destruction at large. This caricature of impending doom is the punchline that makes it convincing to persuade people to change their minds and to some extent, their habits. Some of my close friends are convinced, enough to put their acts together. Although we did not start a campaign similar to persuade others, we are altogether pretty much a changed human being.

A few years down the line, we had a change of heart. Through a variety of experiences, we had developed some sort of uneasiness in accepting things at face value. “Most of us are educated enough to believe what we are taught, but not enough to question whether what we are taught is true or not”, this phrase came as a surprising similarity to the idea of critical thinking that fueled our uneasiness. We questioned the generally accepted ideas and trends, for example, in this case, climate change being caused by pollution due to the activity of humans alone was somewhat uneasy, although convincing. Where are the volcanic eruptions, the methane from ocean floors, the usual earth cycle seen from the Smithsonian museum?

However, to probe further, we need to rely on the scientific method because it is the only way we know, to have its own error correction mechanism. The idea, not to accept any argument from authority, instilled in the philosophy of the scientific method is what drove us to that end. So, after a certain point of time we are convinced with the following facts:

It is, however, true that Greenhouse gases do increase the temperature of the Earth, there is no denial about it. However, we do not know how much Earth will warm over the next years unless we know how much GH gases will end up in the atmosphere. This fact of producing GH gases is often attributed solely due to the industrial revolution. On the flip side, there are other pollutants such as SO2 which cool the earth, however, it is short-lived in the atmosphere. But we do not know how great the cooling effects are. At this point in time, in this glorious mess, the media tends to stress quotes like “The science is clear: Earth is warming due to humans”. As a case in point one can always look up the cover of TIME’s magazine. Specifically, on the cover of TIME’s magazine December 1977, January 1977, April 1977 issues, the Earth is apparently cooling, with quotes like that of “The big freeze” and so on. But if we look at October 1987, April 2001, April 2006 and July 2007 issues, the cover purports that the Earth is indeed warming. To any fairly reasonable person or a scientific mind, don’t we see an issue here? Or are we too shy to question the status quo and just follow the crowd like sheep? Isn’t asking questions and seeking truth why we are here in the first place? I leave this to the reader of this essay.

It must be clear by now, that I am playing the devil’s advocate in matters of pollution. But this kind of personal questioning is rather what brings the truth out. Although I haven’t offered any engineering solutions to matters of pollution or reducing agents of GH gases yet, there is utility in realising the present reality at hand. So, it is true that Earth is indeed getting hotter but to attribute it solely to human actions might need some more work and multivariate analysis.

However, it might be outrageous from my end to neglect all human hands in nature’s decline. One stark factor which anyone can cough up is deforestation. Where the decline in oxygen production and trapping of CO2 is usually attributed to trees. Most of the time this is true, and most of us are convinced by this fact. However, as the devil’s advocate, I am inclined to state that phytoplankton is responsible for 70% of the Earth’s oxygen content and trapping of CO2 beneath the seafloor. Yes, this can be challenged by oil spills and whatnot but we cannot deny that this offers another viewpoint where to look for solutions, rather than waiting for the tree to grow.

Therefore, the much-awaited engineering solution would be to enhance this effect of absorbing CO2 to be sent to the ocean floor by the phytoplanktons. Playing the devil, would it be unwise to think that more seawater would increase the population of phytoplankton? I do not know for the moment but it would be an interesting reflection.

Coming back to 2021, with all the fear of sea-level rise, where is Al Gore now? He predicted the breaking of the Arctic Peninsula’s Larson-B ice shelf in this century, which the Greenland ice sheet would also suffer the same fate. As a consequence, most seaside civilizations would vanish underwater, making San Francisco the 3rd highest income tax and sales tax area by governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. However, it is curious to note that Al Gore bought a 9 million ocean view villa in Montecito, San Francisco. Why? I do not know. Is it to witness the rise of terror or as a means of control? This is not the only instance that is anomalous where science is used as a tool for furthering their means of fortune, or can we say a means of control by injecting chaos? If we look at the news, which any normal public would trust, the Telegraph, Guardian (where Snowden published his whistleblowing materials), etc publishing news of “Canada is warming twice the global rate”, “China warming faster than the global average”, “Australia warming faster than the global average”, “Switzerland warming faster than the global average” seems rather inclined to my claim.

Therefore, in summary, before any major decision is made, setting aside every personal glory and public relations, we must sit down together and remove every dogmatic viewpoint and focus on the truth & convincing evidence rather than arguments from authority.

With this, it is important to remember the words of Richard P Feynman, “Reality must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled.”