We Adopted a tree today @ Project Pehal

Location: Project Pehal, Shalimar Bagh, New Delhi, INDIA

At Pehal, we learnt how to plant trees, how trees are beneficial for us.

All the children were full of questions and adopted one tree each. They promised to water them in the morning and evening.

A tree plantation drive where Children themselves will plan trees will happen next week  

Quote of the Day

“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, that is way great spiritual giants are produced.”

~ Swami Vivekananda (Indian Spiritual leader of the Hindu religion (Vedanta). Disciple of the famous 19th century mystic-saint Sri Ramakrishna of Calcutta. Founder of the Ramakrishna Order of Monks. 1863-1902)

Even the Sun can’t save us from global warming !

A new study has determined that even if the sun commenced avery long period of low activity, it cannot put the brakes on the relentless rise of global temperatures caused by greenhouse gases.

Since the 13th century, the sun has gone through four “Grand Minima”, one of which is thought to have contributed to the anomalously low temperatures in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.

This extended cold period, known as the “Little Ice Age”, coincided with a very long period of calm on the solar surface.

Tracking sunspot numbers, astronomers noticed that from 1645 to 1715, the sun’s disk was “blank”, that is, it had few, if any, sunspots.

This period became known as the “Maunder Minimum”.

If the sun lacks spots, that means there is a reduction in magnetic energy, signifying a lower energy output, or a slight reduction in brightness, or “irradiance”.

Typically, every 11 years, the sun goes through peaks and troughs in energy output (known as solar maximum and minimum, respectively) and this abnormally long minima is largely attributed with contributing toward the Little Ice Age.

Solar minimum went on for a little longer than expected during Solar Cycle 24. Unfortunately, it didn’t help our warming climate much.

Scientists have pondered that if the sun endures another Grand Minimum, could the solar cycle slow down – or even reverse – the amplified global heating caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

“The notion that we are heading for a new Little Ice Age if the sun actually entered a Grand Minimum is wrong,” said study lead author Dr Georg Feulner of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

If greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase unchecked, global average temperatures are predicted to rise by between 3.7 degrees Celsius and 4.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century.

If the sun enters another Grand Minimum, the reduction in solar energy will slow heating by a paltry 0.3 degrees Celsius by the end of this century.

But, global warming will overwhelm any “cooling” effect caused by reduced solar output.

According to Julie Arblaster, a climate researcher at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, a reduction of 0.25 percent in solar irradiance is “on the extreme end of what we would expect for the next century.”

“This shows that any changes in the Sun, even large changes, will only have a small impact in offsetting that warming,”

 

New Delhi’s Yamuna River — a catastrophe in the making

A Drive to clean the polluted River Yamuna is in progress.

Methane gas is bubbling up from the black-coloured stew, and the water smells horrible.

The holy river Yamuna, once teeming with life, is practically dead, yet a homeless man is rinsing his mouth with the noxious liquid.

Under a nearby bridge, scavengers on a self-made raft are fishing out votive offerings that drivers throw from their cars to Yamuna, which is worshipped by Hindus as a goddess.

But it is people and politics that are choking Yamuna to death, and ecologists are warning of a looming environmental catastrophe as World Water Day approaches on March 22.

The river, New Delhi’s lifeline, is reputed to be India’s most polluted as well as one of the most toxic waterways worldwide.

The Yamuna provides an example of Indian government policies that are focused on economic growth, often at the cost of the environment.

In the meantime, the river is dying a slow yet unpublicized death, partly because it has mostly vanished from public sight behind concrete after the river was moved. A highway now runs along the old riverbed.

Access to the river is possible at only a few points and glimpses of it can be gained only from road or subway bridges.

Vimlendu K Jha, executive director of the environmental organization Swechha, estimates that 60 per cent of New Delhi’s 14 million people have never seen the river.

“How can you save the Yamuna if nobody ever sees it?” he asks.

The river is indeed rather beautiful — before it reaches New Delhi and is polluted with raw sewage and toxic waste.

Outside the capital, its waters are clear, birds are sailing above its surface and fishermen cast their nets.

But at this point of its course, most of the river’s waters are held back by an irrigation dam in the neighbouring state of Haryana in violation of federal agreements, which is one of the causes for the problems downstream.

The sluice gates let pass only a trickle, which is then “replenished” with human and industrial sewage as soon as the river reaches New Delhi.

Eighteen major sewage canals in the capital are emptying into the holy river, depleting it of its oxygen.

Authorities in New Delhi have assessed the water as so toxic that they have even prohibited cleaning animals with it. It may only be used to cool industrial machinery.

But the many homeless people living along its banks have no access to a regular tap water supply. They are forced to use the Yamuna’s waters to wash themselves and their clothes. Some even use it for cooking and drinking, according to Jha, because they had no alternative.

“For them, it is better to have unhealthy water than no water at all,” he says.

The Yamuna stretches for 1,370 kilometres, but only 22 kilometres of these flow through New Delhi. It is in this short stretch during which 80 per cent of its pollution is inflicted, Swechha says.

Another 9 per cent of the pollution is attributed to the city of Agra, home to the world-famous Taj Mahal, behind which the Yamuna passes.

The river eventually spills its toxic floods into India’s holiest river, the Ganges.

Although millions of dollars have been spent in recent years to revive the river, Jha said: “We don’t know where the money has gone.

The action plans were useless. Nothing happened. The river is your witness.” Instead, he claims, the pollution is increasing because most sewage treatment plants in New Delhi are not functioning properly.

The river still constitutes the capital’s most important source of drinking water, which is simply pumped from the river before it enters New Delhi. But its toxins also contaminate groundwater, another important drinking water source for the ever-growing metropolis.

“We are just waiting for a disaster to happen,” Jha warns.

“Everyone seems to be thinking the city is run by malls and the metro. It’s not.” That disaster might happen “when people start dying in a plague-like situation” in the capital because of their toxic drinking water, he says.