GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE AND SPORTS

Abstract

Climate change is not the new phenomenon. The palaeo-climatic studies reveal that during the Pleistocene and Holocene periods several warm and cold periods occurred, resulted change of sea level and change in climatic processes like rise and fall of global average temperature and rainfall. The last medieval warm period was observed from 950 to 1350 AD, followed by the little Ice Age from 1400 to 1900 AD. Occurrence of these climatic changes and their impacts are considered due to natural processes that are geological and astronomical. In 1970s environmentalists and some climate scientists pointed that earth’s average temperature is rising linked with the anthropogenic causes of global warming and emission of carbon dioxide through fossil fuels. In late 1980s the problem was discussed in politics and media. To examine and monitor the global rise of temperature and its impacts due to the emission of carbon dioxide an organization of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created in 1988 by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The IPCC released several reports based upon anthropogenic causes of climate change and their impacts. According to IPCC, 2007 report on climate change during the last 100 years the earth’s average temperature has increased up to 0.6 degree Celsius and if emission of greenhouse gases particularly carbon dioxide continues to rise, global temperature will rise up to 5.8 degrees Celsius by the end of 2100 AD. Similarly as a result of this threat of global warming, glaciers will disappear even from Antarctica and Arctic sea will open for navigation throughout the year. Many islands and coastal cities will submerge as a result of sea level rise. In 2004 Canadian Broadcasting T.V presented a documentary with the name “ The doomsday called off” in which leading climate scientists, astrophysicist and geophysicist presented evidences that science of global warming presented by IPCC scientists is incomplete and incorrect based upon computer models and stimulations which are deliberately exaggerated. Many climate scientists have shown disassociation with the IPCC views and speculations on the basis of its doubtful manipulated and exaggerated figures of global warming and some consider it a climate scam. Since then debate between UN pro man-made global warming scientists and anti-man-made global warming climate scientists continue.