In much of the earth’s oceans, man-made waste is rising, and nothing is actually disappearing. By 2050, the seas and oceans will have more plastic than fish.
A significant portion of the earth is covered in dumped plastic endangering animal and potentially human health. The accumulation of plastic in our seas and oceans has turned into a major crisis. This increasingly growing plastic waste has overwhelmed our world’s ability to cope with the issue. A garbage truck full of plastic reaches the ocean every minute, ruining beaches, killing species, and infecting our food supply.
Plastic is made from petroleum and is a synthetic polymer with qualities that make it suitable for a broad range of uses, like packaging, construction, domestic and sporting goods, automobiles, electronic devices, and farming. Each year, more than 300 million tons of plastic is manufactured, most of which is then used to create products like shopping bags, disposable cups, bottles, spoons, and straws.
If one were to scoop in the oceans every year, around 8 million tons of plastic would be found. Swirling plastic waste is by far the most common form of ocean pollution right now. Waste plastic in oceans and seas accounts for 80% of all marine litter. Plastic is found on the waters of every country, with higher concentrations of plastic around tourist spots and heavily populated regions.
Plastic waste is found mostly in the waters of developing countries of Asia and Africa. These countries have poor and inadequate litter collection systems and management. Developed nations also face the same difficulty.
Preventing waste materials from reaching rivers, seas, and oceans in the first place is one of the ways to curb plastic pollution
Scientists in the 1960’s first observed the problem of plastic pollution in oceans and seas. Different studies hold different countries responsible for the problem. According to a report from Germany’s Helmholtz Center for Environmental Studies, the bulk of ocean plastic comes from the rivers in Asia and Africa. Research Group at the University of Georgia found out that plastics in oceans and seas would barely drop even if Europe and North America end their plastic production.
Studies have revealed that wildlife suffers directly and fatally as a result of plastic contamination. Every year, hundreds of marine animals, sea turtles, birds, whales, and other sea organisms die as a result of swallowing or being trapped in plastic. Plastics are reported to have harmed nearly 700 animals, including invasive species. It is eaten by almost every seabird species.
Over 100 aquatic organisms, from fish, shrimp to lobsters bound for our plates and bowls, have been reported to contain plastic particles. In certain instances, these insignificant particles move through the digestive tract and are eliminated without causing any damage. Plastics have also been reported to have clogged intestinal tracts or damaged organs, resulting in death. Plastic-filled stomachs inhibit the ability to consume food, contributing to starvation.
It really is hard, if not impossible, to extract plastic litter once it’s in the water. Large items, like plastic plates, cups, spoons, and cans, can be picked up using automated devices, including Trash Wheels. But it is impossible to retrieve after it breaks down into microplastics and drifts deep in water.
Human beings are both a key component of the issue and the solution of this problem, whether they live along the shorelines or far offshore. According to the National Geographic Society, preventing waste materials from reaching rivers, seas, and oceans in the first place is the remedy. Efficient disposal control and recycling, better manufacturing that acknowledges the limited lifespan of disposable products, and a decrease in the manufacture of unwanted plastic materials will all help achieve this target.
Mars. The Red planet. Our Sister planet. It’s the one in our Solar system that enjoys the most prominent place in Ancient Mythology and Astrology across many cultures. Humanity seems to have a centuries-old romance with two celestial bodies; Our Moon and Mars. This fascination engulfs a large number of Scientists & Astronomers as well! It’s the reason that astronomers have closely set their sights on Mars with the advent of modern telescopes. Man did visit the Moon, but since we stopped visiting it, the next stop for space travel was logically set to be Mars.
With advancements in Robotics and Artificial intelligence, the ultimate application of this technology was in Space. Over the years, many orbiter spacecraft and Landers equipped with exploring rovers have been successfully sent to explore Mars. Interestingly, the motivation to explore Mars has always been attached to its past. Was it once habitable? What led to it becoming a barren red planet? Can it be transformed/ terraformed into a habitable planet for humanity? These are the pivotal questions whose answers are being searched today with the latest space technology.
Water on Mars!
The answer to render Mars as livable, the confirmation of the presence of forms of Water on Mars, came as a huge advancement. Early telescopic observers correctly assumed that the white polar caps and clouds were indications of water’s presence. These observations, coupled with the fact that Mars has a 24-hour day, led astronomer William Herschel to declare in 1784 that Mars probably offered its inhabitants a livable environment. It is confirmed through the latest studies that Mars lost its atmosphere and water relatively quickly. Within a short period of time, geologically speaking, all that water disappeared, aided by dust storms. Presently, there is water ice on the poles of Mars (on the surface & underground) and tiny amounts of vapors in the Martian atmosphere.
Let’s have a look at the forms of Water that have been confirmed to be present on Mars:
Water ice below the Martian surface
In 2018, researchers led by USGS planetary geologist Colin Dundas presented detailed observations of eight Martian regions with the help of HiRISE, a powerful camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. They found several locations where erosion had uncovered large, steep cross-sections of underlying ice. It’s not just the volume of water they found (it’s no mystery that Mars harbors a lot of ice in these particular regions); it’s how mineable it promises to be. The deposits begin at depths as shallow as one meter and extend upwards of 100 meters into the planet. The biggest problem to tap this ice is that these locations are present between 55 and 60 degrees north or south of the equator, where temperatures can drop extremely low. Most Mars missions restrict their landing sites to within 30 degrees of the equator (to remain warm!), as would future crewed missions to the planet’s surface. So we have to wait for a mission planned to land near these sites having underground ice. Erosion on Mars has uncovered large, steep cross-sections of clean, subterranean ice. The following false-color image captured by NASA’s HiRISE camera shows one of the eight discovered stripes that appear dark blue against the Martian terrain.
Researchers have found several locations where erosion had uncovered large, steep cross-sections of underlying ice. Image credit: NASA/JPL/ University of Arizona /USGS
Water ice on the Martian surface
NASA has big plans for returning astronauts to the Moon in 2024, a stepping stone on the path to sending humans to Mars. But where should the first people on the Red Planet land?
A new paper published in Geophysical Research Letters will help by providing a map of water ice believed to be as little as an inch (2.5 centimeters) below the surface. Water ice will be a crucial consideration for any potential landing site. With little room to spare aboard a spacecraft, any human missions to Mars will have to harvest what’s already available for drinking water and making rocket fuel.
In 2018, ESA’s Mars Express took a set of images that showed a large ice-filled crater! The image developed after stitching together five photographs taken by the Mars Express spacecraft is a spectacular shot of the Korolev Crater, a dish-shaped basin on the broad plain that surrounds the Martian north pole.
Kirsten Siebach, a planetary geologist at Rice University in Houston, told NBC News: “There used to be liquid water in rivers and lakes on Mars, but it largely either froze as the atmosphere dissipated or was lost to space about 3 billion years ago,” Siebach said. “Ice still exists on Mars near the poles, and the Martian atmosphere has a tiny amount of water vapor.”
Mars has seasons just as Earth does, but the ice never melts because of the location of the crater and its topography.
A spectacular shot of the Korolev Crater, a dish-shaped basin on the broad plain that surrounds the Martian north pole. Image Credit: ESA/DLR
Water vapors in the Martian atmosphere
In 2008, ESA’s scientists discovered the presence of water vapors in the Martian atmosphere. This was based on the data acquired by the “Mars Express” orbiter, which carried three instruments, PFS, SPICAM, and OMEGA. These allowed planetary scientists to study the water cycle of Mars in unprecedented detail.
In 2020, Scientists using an instrument aboard NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, or “MAVEN” spacecraft, discovered that water vapor near the surface of the Red Planet is lifted high into the atmosphere. The new study’s title is “Hydrogen escape from Mars is driven by seasonal and dust storm transport of water.” The lead author is Shane Stone, a former laboratory chemist who is now a Doctoral student at the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Their paper is published in the journal Science. To make their discovery, Stone and his colleagues relied on data from MAVEN’s Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer (NGIMS), which was developed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland. The mass spectrometer inhales air and separates the ions that comprise it by their mass, which is how scientists identify them.
“We were all surprised to find water so high in the atmosphere,” said Stone, “The measurements we used could have only come from MAVEN as it soars through the atmosphere of Mars, high above the planet’s surface.
Stone and his team tracked the abundance of water ions high over Mars for more than two Martian years. In doing so, they determined that the amount of water vapor near the top of the atmosphere at about 93 miles, or 150 kilometers, above the surface, is highest during summer in the southern hemisphere. During this time, the planet is closest to the Sun and thus warmer, and dust storms are more likely to happen.
The warm summer temperatures and strong winds associated with dust storms help water vapor reach the uppermost parts of the atmosphere, where it can easily be broken into its constituent oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen and oxygen then escape to space. Previously, scientists thought that water vapor was trapped close to the Martian surface like it is on Earth.
“Everything that makes it up to the higher part of the atmosphere is destroyed, on Mars or Earth,” Stone said, “because this is the part of the atmosphere that is exposed to the full force of the Sun.”
Formation of water vapors on Mars. Image credit: University of Arizona/Shane Stone/NASA Goddard/Dan Gallagher
This phenomenon was also confirmed recently, along with the fact that some of it is vaporizing, in the form of hydrogen leaking from the atmosphere, according to the new research co-authored in the journal Science Advances by two scientists at Britain’s Open University.
They detected the vapor by analyzing light passing through the Martian atmosphere using an instrument called the Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery.
The device is traveling aboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, a joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Russia’s ROSCOSMOS.
Future of Possibilities!
Scientists are very optimistic about new discoveries as we are witnessing new spacecraft entering the Martian orbit. Namely, UAE’s HOPE Mars mission, the Chinese Tianwen-1 mission, and NASA’s Perseverance rover. Especially, the mission profile of the Perseverance rover is very promising. It has landed and started roving the Jezero Crater, whose fan-shaped delta and rim show it was once a lake that was several hundred feet deep! The latest images are being analyzed by planetary & geological scientists. It is imperative that we are going to discover new exciting facts about the forms of Water on Mars and so much more!
Agriculture is an important sector of Pakistan’s economy. This sector directly supports the country’s population and accounts for 21 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Roughly 95 percent of Pakistan’s water is used for agriculture, with 60 percent of its population directly connected to agriculture and livestock and 80 percent of exports based on these sectors. Recently, the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources issued a serious warning regarding continuous careless water mismanagement and that the country may totally run out of water by 2025.
Dr. Pervez Aamir is a senior environmental economist at the Asianic Agro division environmental. He completed his early education at Lassale High School Faisalabad in 1972. Later he graduated in Plant Breeding and Plant Genetics from the University of Agriculture Faisalabad, followed by Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Michigan State University in 1984. He currently works in advanced environmental economics courses at Harvard University and is the former research associate at Winrock International.
Below are excerpts of his recent conversation with our team member Aniqa Mazhar.
Aniqa: Please enlighten us with an introduction of yourself.
Dr. Pervaiz: I am an economist and the director of the Pakistan Water Partnership and a former member of the Prime Minister’s Task Force for Climate Change.
Aniqa: How do environmental economics benefit society and agriculture?
Dr. Pervaiz: Environmental issues like climate change, pollution, fog, and particularly pesticides directly affect agriculture. If you successfully control pollution in urban areas, its impact can be directly observed on our wheat crop.
Similarly, if we properly control environmental regulations and patents and medicines in livestock and crop agriculture, it will also show direct benefits. Likewise, if we plant trees in the whole country instead of just specific tsunami-affected areas, rainfall patterns can improve significantly as rainfall increases. This is very beneficial for a dry country like Pakistan.
Poor countries of the world first focus on the ‘stomach,’ social services, health, education allocation, etc. Environment comes later.
Aniqa: What do we basically study in environmental economics? Environmental science is part of Biology, so how is it linked to Economics?
Dr. Perviaz: The main thrust of economics is allocating resources like land, labor, capital, etc., for the maximum benefit of society. Different issues in biology and environmental studies like residues, the ionosphere can be dealt with keeping in mind the economic perspective, which is called opportunity cost.
For example, if we start a cement factory-like in Kallar Kahaar, it may be that it proves to be a source of prosperity for its stakeholder, but the life of that area, either trees or wildlife, is affected. Water quality is concerned.
This is where the two fields’ symbiosis occurs; looking at biology through an economic lens and keeping in mind the biological limitations when studying economics. Covid-19 is an excellent example. The virus has led to the complete destruction of the country’s economy, closed all businesses during the lockdown, and still negatively impacted it.
Aniqa: Nature is indeed the GDP of the lows; their income largely depends on it. Why don’t we recognize this in Pakistan and invest in preserving nature?
Dr. Pervaiz: We do recognize this, but our budget for the Ministry of Environment is the lowest. The Environment becomes a priority with the progressive advancement of a country and how rich it is. Most trees planted in the world are in the US or Canada, or Europe. India also has about 30 percent cover by forests.
Dr. Pervaiz (second from left) with renowned Pakistani diplomats. Photo Dr. Amir
Poor countries of the world first focus on the ‘stomach,’ social services, health, education allocation, etc. Environment comes later. In Pakistan, less than one percent of the total budget is allocated to the Ministry of Environment. Now, it has been made to the Ministry of Climate Change. They have combined the fields of Environment and Climate Change. The 17 SDGs include separate goals for trees, birds, oceans, land, economics, and education. About three to four 3 goals linked to the Environment are lumped together. Separate allocation is not available.
The poor farmers have animals who graze land or trees or any biomass. The main thrust of our economy is to increase the GDP, whether it is sustainable or not. Sustainability is not a concern.
Aniqa: Climate change is still a rarely discussed topic in Pakistan. Why is it so?
Dr. Perviaz: I don’t believe that’s true. We have worked a lot on climate change in Pakistan in the last 18 to 20 years or so. I have been very closely associated with it. Pakistan ranks 5th in the German Watch right now. The German Watch is a world risk index, but two or more countries present have no reality.
Aniqa: What is the German Watch?
Dr. Pervaiz: It is a Vulnerability Index for 122 countries of the world. It ranks countries according to their climatic risks. In that ranking, Pakistan’s name comes in the top ten. It has always been so, but this time it is on the 5th number. Countries like Fiji, Philippines are in the top 4, and they are pretty small countries with a population even smaller than Karachi. So, in my view, the most vulnerable to Climate change would have to be Pakistan.
We are part of the Paris Agreement as well and have provided several reportings to them. Our emissions are pretty less globally; we stand at number 135 in emissions in the world. But where the effects of Climate change are concerned, whether they may be a shortage of water, biodiversity, glacier melting, marine life, or droughts, they are all severe. In Pakistan, climate change has multiple threats, unlike in Europe, where there’s just a change in temperature and weather.
Therefore, we take this issue of climate change extremely seriously, but we’ve lumped it with Environment and cannot distinguish the two as separate fields, although I believe the distinction is quite clear.
Aniqa: The Environment includes plants, animals, etc. Climate affects all of these, right?
Dr. Pervaiz: Yes, all of these are affected by climate changes.
According to Dr. Pervaiz, We should introduce this field of climate change from an early level at school to a higher Ph.D. level.Photo Dr. Amir
Aniqa: Sir, why is it then that we are not able to differentiate between these two? What is lacking in our research or the methodology of the people working on this?
Dr. Pervaiz: You see, research is already mere. Now, a couple of universities have come to start work on this. ITCC reports, which are international, are only focused upon here.
We have opened up many departments on Environment in many universities, but departments for Climate Change have been opened only recently at LUMS and one or two other places. These are units rather than full-fledged departments. The hardcore work of Climatology has two phases: adaptation and mitigation.
We should introduce this field of climate change from an early level at school to a higher Ph.D. level. In Islamabad, there is a center at the Ministry of Climate Change, previously known as the Ministry of Environment, called CGSIC, a global climate change center. COMSATs University is also doing some work on Climate change, as well as the University of Faisalabad.
Aniqa: So, all these departments are introductory?
Dr.Pervaiz: Yes, a lot of investment is required. The field of Environment is relatively better established. It is the people of the Environment who exhibit leadership in climate change.
Aniqa: Are these two different fields, or can we say that climate change is a subfield of environmental science?
Dr. Pervaiz: Weather is the day-to-day characterization of the atmospheric conditions, whereas climate describes long-term atmospheric conditions. They are distinct subjects but entirely overlapping, for example, how carbon dioxide emissions affect the Environment.
Aniqa: The Indian Government has canceled hydroelectric projects to conserve rainforests. However, in Pakistan, our electric consumption depends on hydroelectric sources despite massive rain patterns. What do you think?
Dr. Pervaiz: India is working on 5000 dams. We only have 3 to 4 dams. Water security is the most important in the world. Nuclear power and other things do not matter as much. Countries that are water-secure survive while those that are not.
We make dams for water storage at a point to regulate and make it reach a place where a shortage is faced. An extra benefit of a dam is hydropower. You can attach the dam to a turbine to create electricity.
Pakistan is still deficient in electricity. Our struggle is to ban activities that lead to carbon dioxide emissions like burning oil for generators, burning coal, etc. hydropower is the best strategy for Pakistan. To be exact, hydropower, wind energy, solar energy.
India is going towards solar rapidly as well as currently making the most significant number of dams. Our main threat is India, and we need more focus to cope.
Aniqa: How are economic activities related to water resources and the Environment?
Dr. Pervaiz: Pakistan’s economy is basically agriculture-based. Most of our economic activities revolve around our crops. If we talk about sugarcane, it is used in sugar mills. Cotton produced is used in the textile industry. Agriculture is a way of living for us. Our industries would halt without it. We want to provide a facilitative environment for agriculture. For that, safe drinking water is the first most essential thing required. No country can advance without it. Around 40 percent of diseases in Pakistan are due to dirty water, like diarrhea.
Next, if the air in your Environment is not clean due to industries or atomic waste, children’s lungs are affected from birth. Their productive life is less than 50 years. It is crucial to tailor the Environment so that our life expectancy increases to 80 to 90 years like in America.
The quality of life should also improve. If people go to the park, they should feel at peace and harmony with birds and nature. In Europe, for example, societies with suitable physical and biological Environments have higher productivity. Factories with trees and clean water in their vicinity will have more productive labor.
Look at Kalma Chowk in Lahore, people are dying from coughing and sputtering. How productive do you expect them to be with such a condition?
Aniqa: Water is an essential part of economic development. Do you think Pakistan works well in this regard?
Dr. Pervaiz: Many people say that Pakistan had 5000 cm3 of water when made in 1947. Now it has even less than a 1000cm3 left. The main reason is not that the amount of water has lessened. The population growth of Pakistan is relatively high. Availability per capita is quite less due to mismanagement of water resources. We plant crops like sugarcane and cotton, etc., which are very water-intensive.
People living near the rivers face no water shortage, but Southern Punjab faces a severe drought.
The main reason for shortage is not that the amount of water has lessened. The population growth of Pakistan is relatively high. Availability per capita is quite less due to mismanagement of water resources.
Aniqa: So, areas with less water have slower economic development?
Dr. Pervaiz: Yes, exactly. Where does terrorism occur? In extreme and dry desert areas and peripheries of Balochistan, KPK, Sindh, and Punjab.
Aniqa: Which economic, political, and cultural factors significantly impact local agricultural practices in Pakistan?
Dr. Pervaiz: The most significant is land-reforms. The main chunk of the population’s land is in landlords’ hands, who rarely visit those lands. In India or other countries, 65 acres or 1 acre of land is the maximum an owner can have at a time.
Pakistan has been affected by early politics; it was made by the inherited properties of Nawabs and landlords. The English adopted the method of grasping power by land and water allocation, control, and distribution in the political economy. So that’s why Pakistan’s history includes only a few families with the land.
We need productive gain per acre of land, which can be achieved when society prioritizes agriculture as a focal thrust. When wheat, fruits, and vegetables start to go down, all the public starts screaming. When they are available, nobody wants to worry about agriculture. Other sources like McDonald’s, Defense in Lahore and societies, are given priority and allocation.
Aniqa: What is available is always taken for granted?
Dr. Pervaiz: Exactly. You asked at the beginning about poverty. We can reduce it when water is appropriately managed. 20 percent of our GDP that is 50 billion dollars, is from agriculture. We can quickly increase it to 350 billion dollars! If we surmount political barriers and develop our deserts like China, poverty can be erased, and harmony can prevail.
The poor can eat, distribution to other countries can also be possible. This is called the ‘multiplier factor’ in economics. When money is transferred to England by Nawaz Sharif, the economy faces a net loss. Money made in Pakistan should be invested in agriculture and circulated here to increase Pakistan’s productivity and reduce poverty.
Aniqa: My last question is that economic and ecological systems are interlinked at the local and global levels. What challenges do we face due to massive environmental changes in different parts of Pakistan? For example, the sea intrusion in the Indus Delta, glacier melting, droughts in Balochistan?
Dr. Pervaiz: We either deliberately or unintentionally disturb the ecological system. People say sea intrusion is because of dam-building, but both these are not related. Dam water is used in industry, agriculture, and power generation. Studies show it is a natural phenomenon and is not affected by dams built on top regarding sea intrusion.
Cutting of mangroves and deforestation are at peak in the world. Humankind disturbed the ecological balance itself. Pakistan has 1046 km of coastal areas; we export crawlers and planted them there. That totally destroys the natural flora and fauna over there. Other plants from France and China are also totally ruining the ecological balance there.
Likewise, Pakistan is one of the lowest countries in the world in tree plantation. Not even 4.2 percent of our land is covered with forests. Good countries have 25 to 30 percent cover. Canada has 60 percent cover. Our cover is so less that it leads to soil erosion, and ecological imbalance is inevitable. Severe erosion leads to issues like landslides which also affect the ecology.
People are making a racket about the Indus Dolphin’s extinction, but they don’t care about its habitat. Species depletion is occurring rapidly. Natural parks are rare, while their protection is almost zero.
In olden times, villages had ponds with birds and animals. Now, societies are being made in all these areas and creating biological imbalance.
Aniqa: This imbalance is because industrialization is increasing, right?
Dr. Pervaiz: Yes, cities and industrial zones are increasing at their own pace, but small factories everywhere outside a zone are very problematic—for example, the brick kilns industry.
Ecological balance is at the lowest ladder of economic thinkers. Their vision is blocked; they don’t want to think about the outcome. They just think about the money they’ll get, the money that’ll go in the FBR. Money is all that is being focused on.
Aniqa: Thank you very much, Sir, for your precious time and for sharing your knowledge!
Dr. Pervaiz: My pleasure! I hope you got the answers you were looking for and I wish you the best of luck with your magazine!
It was on February 7, 2021, when a glacier collapse in India’s Himalayan state of Uttarakhand resulted in devastating floods, leaving over 140 feared dead.
A week later, on February 14, the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) released a statement fearing that the Chitral district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province could face flash floods as a result of another glacier collapse.
The reason for PMD’s worry was a prevailing heatwave in the region. An earlier such incident in the Golen Gol valley in the district had ruined crops and several homes too. The fear on part of the PMD was not misplaced as a timely alert system was still lacking.
The devastation was so severe, according to the regional press, that four bridges and a considerably large area of an important road – the only one connecting the valley with other surrounding establishments – was washed away. Many families were left stranded in the mountains, who then waited to be rescued through military helicopters.
As per the PMD, there are at least 10 glaciers in Chitral Valley’s highland alone. They say, those glaciers are hypersensitive and could burst anytime. Meaning, it is a disaster waiting to happen.
These glacial outbursts, or in technical terms Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOF), in India’s Uttarakhand state or in Pakistan’s Chitral district were not isolated incidents and scientists fear that with the warming climate, the pace of such disasters could increase.
What is GLOF, one may wonder? In simpler terms, it is occurring of sudden disaster resulting in the release of millions of cubic metres of water, and with it, the debris, to wherever the direction will take it.
What needs to be understood in this situation is that one cannot possibly stop a glacier collapse, but what can be done is ensuring the placement of an early alert system to minimize any damage to human lives.
According to scientists, Glacial Lake Outburst Floods are not isolated incidents and with the warming of climate this pace may increase
In this regard, the PMD says it is already working with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to put in place small-scale lake outburst warning systems, the building of walls to protect from potential floods, and to educate the people living close to risk areas so that they know what steps to take in case of emergence of an emergency-like situation.
However, Pakistan has a long and diverse range of mountains, such as the Hindu Kush, the Himalayas, and the Karakorum. And outside the polar regions, Pakistan hosts the most glaciers: 7,000, to be exact.
As temperatures continue to rise the world over, glaciers present in these mountainous ranges are melting rapidly. So much so that as per the UNDP and the Ministry of Climate Change’s estimates, as quoted by Dawn in a report published on March 2, a total of 3,044 glacial lakes have formed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan alone. And of these, the estimates say that 33 are hazardous and could face glacial outbursts anytime.
Keeping this in view, the country’s Ministry of Climate Change, with the support of the UNDP, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) on March 1 for use of satellite imagery to help the ministry get a clearer picture of glacial lakes and better equip it in its efforts to mitigate effects of climate change.
But monitoring of glacial lakes, helping in predicting any possible outbursts, is easier said than done. The disaster in India’s Uttarakhand state happened due to a lack of monitoring, and the difficult terrain of the Himalayas only adds to the challenges.
In a report published by BBC on March 5, as a follow-up to the Uttarakhand tragedy, a glaciologist associated with the Indian Institute of Technology in Indore, Muhammad Farooq Azam, said there were more than 50,000 glaciers in the regions of the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush and that only 30 of them were being closely monitored, which included field studies as well. “Only around 15 of those studies have been published. We need to be observing our glaciers more closely, particularly because so many factors are at play,” he said.
There are more than 50,000 glaciers in the regions of the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush and that only 30 of them were being closely monitored
Though Pakistan is responsible for very little greenhouse gas emission, it is still among those countries adversely affected by the effects of climate change. To make this better, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan, who projects himself as an environmentalist, has time and again shown his concern on various global forums regarding deteriorating climatic conditions and their adverse effects on poorer countries.
Recently, he shared a video on his Twitter where World Economic Forum (WEF) was praising the initiatives his government has undertaken and how they are helping Pakistan heading towards a “greener future”.
The WEF video highlights how Pakistan has pledged to source 60% of its energy through renewables by the year 2030; how it has cancelled its coal-fired power projects and replacing them with hydroelectric power; how it has created over 85,000 green jobs ranging from plant care to protection of forests; and, how it is investing in green space, securing $180 million in funding, to create 15 new national parks. Though, there has been criticism from environmentalists that WEF’s video is not based on facts and that the government hasn’t cancelled all coal-fired projects.
This does appear to be a fascinating development towards cleansing the polluted environment and help mitigate the effects of climate change, but what is also true is that in Pakistan, regulations pertaining to the environment is a provincial matter following the 18th Constitutional Amendment, and none of the provinces have an environmental policy to speak of yet.
Pakistan elevated its climate change division into a functional ministry in the year 2015, but critics remained sceptical whether this would translate into effective policymaking and better implementation of climate change-related goals. In the year 2017, the country’s parliament passed a Climate Change Act that created a council under the premiership of the prime minister to fast-track and oversees policies and their implementation. However, it has been four years and the council is yet to organise a meeting.
While the melting of glaciers because of global warming is something scientists have been warning of for a long time, still the pace at which the process is happening is astounding for even experts. The situation does not concern only those living in risk areas, but a great number of people as scientists argue that the melting of glaciers on such a big scale has the potential to destabilise rivers in Asia, resulting in a chain reaction affecting much of the southern part of the continent.
Speaking of South Asia, the geopolitical tensions between India and Pakistan are only aggravating the problem. If the situation does reach such a point, then the damage will not be India’s or Pakistan’s alone to handle. The warming of the climate, or melting of glaciers as a result of it, will not care about the nationalities of people before wreaking havoc. There is a need for joint action, and on an emergency basis, to mitigate the effects of climatic changes and better prepare for the welfare of populations that are at the forefront and likely to get affected by it first.
There is a need to join hands and formulate a robust policy and putting in place effective monitoring systems so that peoples of the region could be assisted in a timely manner and the countries can better prepare themselves in preempting any disasters that may occur in the future and take actions accordingly.
There are a couple of diverse reasons involved in water scarcity worldwide. Water could get scarce due to the physical shortage of water (lack of rainfall), the administration fails to preserve water resources, or the entire absence of adequate infrastructure to ensure a regular supply of drinking water to the communities, even in the places where water is abundant.
A report of the water scarcity clock shows that water usage has grown at more than twice the growth in the world’s population over the last century. Climate change has intensified the risk of drought in several parts of the world, especially Asia and Africa. The demographics are pretty horrible; it indicates that around 2 billion people are now experiencing a high-level water shortage.
Water scarcity is not merely a vague problem. Over the last two decades, we can observe its effects in some brutal forms. In Yemen, one of the most water-scarce countries globally, water shortage leading to social and political upheaval. It was also the invisible hand behind other humanitarian crises; like in 2010, the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria broke out of the demand for clean drinking water. Meanwhile, in Pakistan, Sind and Baluchistan were primarily affected by prolonged drought spells in the last decades. During the 2017-2018 drought seasons, a slight rise in the suicide rate was observed in rural parts of Sind. After a massive migration from these areas, the physical environment, poverty, and loneliness forced the remaining inhabitants to commit suicide as they were left with no hope.
Water is a precious life-giving commodity; it becomes scarce because it is never treated as worthy as gold, oil, gas, or other natural resources of industrial importance. The American multinational investment bank Goldman Sachs once said that “water could be the petroleum for the 21st century.” The think tanks suggested that commercializing water resources and sending a price signal could force governments and industries/ agriculture sectors to use water wisely. As a result, many close-end-funds invest a considerable amount to buy water supplies in several countries.
However, making a profit out of water resources could hazardous in the future and results in disputes among nations; a living example is Pakistan and India’s water dispute. The situation needs to deal wisely by the authorities. Water access and usage can be protected through effective policies. Like Carbon-tax implemented in several countries, a water tax for the large multinational and subsidies could apply to save water infrastructure investments for the lows worldwide.
Drought, Mangrove in parched land. French Guiana. Credits: WWF
In 2010, in Cape Town, South Africa, the authorities had introduced the term “Day Zero” to focus the public’s attention on water preservation for the future. It was because the demo-graphs were showing a critical situation, and the city was just three months away from running out of water. It was indeed a luck-charm that Cape Town city’s plan worked out, and this last-minute emergency measure managed to get the city out of the water crisis.
But this “hope” strategy wouldn’t work everywhere and every time. Because the primary cause that the planet is running out of water is low precipitation due to the profound climate changes.
According to the “charting our water futures” report by the global consultancy McKinsey, by 2030, global water requirements would increase from 4500 billion cubic meters to 6900 cubic meters under an average economic growth scenario. The demo-graph shows a wide gap between supplies and demands. The report further states that the drivers for this more water-resource challenge are basically tied to the states’ economic development, food consumption, and trades.
Keeping an eye on the global water crisis, Scientia Pakistan is launching its exclusive edition on world water day; it celebrates worldwide to raise awareness among the 2.2 billion populations living without clean drinking water. The theme for world water day in 2021 is “valuing water,” which sums up environmental, social, ethical, economic, and moral values that people should place to figure out the global water crisis.
We have got some exciting stories on water scarcity in different parts of the world, the melting of Himalayan Glaciers, and modern-day agriculture techniques in the desert of Thar (Rural parts of Sind). We reached out to Dr. Perviaz Amir, a Harvard university Alumnus; director of the Pakistan water partnership, who worked on various notable posts in the Agro-Economics sector to gain insight into the role of water in Pakistan’s economy. We questioned Mr. Zubair Ahmad Siddiqui, a metrology and climatology expert who serves in the PMD’S regional center for Sindh and learned some compelling information about Al Nino, La Nina, and climate changes.
Have a good read; don’t miss sending your feedback to us with the hashtag #water2me.
Noise pollution is a causative agent of stress and deteriorating health. This fact is not only applicable to humans but animals as well.
Recently, a study carried out by ecologists at the University of Victoria in Canada confirms that human activities are disturbing ocean life in several ways, noise pollution being lately included in the list.
Shipping traffic causes too much noise for aquatic life, they are in a place with constant high noise levels. Marine life use sound waves to communicate with each other, for hunting and for mating as well. Excessive sound waves from ships disturb their ability to interpret natural sounds, therefore ruining their quality of life. Masking is the word used to describe the drowning of natural sounds into noises of the same frequency.
Shipping traffic causes too much noise for aquatic life. Excessive sound waves from ships disturb the ability of marine life to interpret natural sounds. Credits: Marine Insight
Exposure to continuous loud frequencies and amplitudes leads to the fish being under stress and at risk of permanently losing its hearing. This has a negative effect on their capability to mate, survive and fight disease due to weak immunity.
According to scientists, other human activities which result in drastic climatic changes are also responsible for muddling up the intricate ocean soundscape. Climate change basically messes up physical processes that shape ocean sounds, like wind, wave, and melting ice.
A positive fact is that noise pollution is easy to deal with- you just need to stop its source. It can be dealt with more easily than other types of pollution, where time and organization are required at a higher level. The effects of noise pollution can be reversed once the noise is ceased.
A few weeks back, when my cable operator shut-down my channel subscriptions, I could only see nothing but the “Radiation of Big Bang” sarcastically and philosophically; I could see nothing but everything at the same time. CMB is one of the very discussed, researched, and debated topics among cosmologists all over the world; why not? It’s one of the proofs of the big bang, and many regard it as “Light of Beginning of the Creation itself.”
Last year, I had the privilege to learn and meet one of the most active and vigilant cosmologists in Pakistan, Faisal Ur Rahman (Currently a Ph.D. Candidate, Researcher & Visiting Member at the University of Karachi), who also happens to be a part of an International Group of Cosmologists; “Investigating the Cosmic Microwave Background Cold-Spot.” I walked by him a few miles and asked him a number of questions regarding his work on the “Cold Spot,” which happens to fall into a long series of explanations about the phenomenon, which I’ll be discussing throughout this textual endeavor.
His-ideas are narrated in my words: Our standard model of the big-bang tells us that our Universe was a hotter, extremely-dense plasma type, made up of elementary particles such as nuclei, electrons, and protons only for the first few hundred thousand years. And just after 380,000 years old, our space-time in the Universe had expanded and cooled to below 3000K, allowing the birth of atoms and the first atoms of the first element “Hydrogen” formation. As the free electrons and protons decreased to a very small fraction, the photons were finally able to move around the Universe and till the existence of today’s CMB. And that’s why to regard it as an evidentiary account of the Birth of the Universe. Further, as we know, the Universe is expanding today; thanks to the discovery by Astronomer Hubble, the current CMB wavelength is stretched and has a temperature of just about 2.7K.
Faisal Ur Rahman giving a seminar on “Big Bang: The Birth of Universe” on the invitation of the Royal Aeronautical Society Pakistan.
When analyzed at around 10-5K, it’s all isotropic, and the entire CMB has a fine blackbody spectrum (fully uniform temperature). But, as we change it to the microkelvin scale, we start seeing the variations in the graph of Temperature in terms of different temperatures, some cold, some hot, and some hotter. It is important to note that matter wasn’t evenly distributed after the big bang due to the tiny quantum fluctuations in densities. Instead, we can always see some areas have more matter or galaxies, and some don’t, eventually giving rise to the cosmic web we see in the models of the Universe. The CMB photons traveling from the surface of the last scattering moving through a denser region have to overcome a deeper gravitational pull which results in an apparent redshift, and the photons passing through a less dense region will appear blue-shifted.
The increase or decrease in the wavelength of the CMB photons is caused by the changes in μK scale or parameters. More vividly, there’s a relation between the large-scale universe and temperature anisotropies, different temperatures at larger scales, referring to different properties. There’s a Sachs-Wolfe effect, which is a gravitational effect on the large-scale anisotropy of the CMB, which has two kinds. First is the “Ordinary Sach-Wolfe effect,” the non-integrated type, which is related to the early Universe only and tells us about the redshift of light from the last scattering surface. Then the other is the “Integrated Sach-Wolfe (ISW) effect,” which depends on the changes in gravity as the matter-density in the Universe evolves over time, eventually a change in CMB photons.
The evolution of the Universe, with main events occurring at different intervals of time. Credits: Phys.libretexts.org
The primitive fluctuations in the CMB have the strong support of evidence for cosmic inflation, and cosmologists believe that the Universe had the uttermost rapid expansion when it was merely seconds old. Researchers estimate the relative abundance or amount of Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the Universe by the CMB fluctuations, along with Gravitational Lensing as predicted by Einstein’s theory of General Relativity and the Sunyaev-Zel’dovic Effect: In which the CMB photons are distorted due to the high level of energetic electrons in the clusters of galaxies they come through.
Penzias and Wilson stand at the 15 meter Holmdel Horn Antenna that brought their most notable discovery. Credits: ESA
Since the discovery of CMB in 1964 by Physicist Arno Penzias and Radio-Astronomer Robert Wilson (For which they won the Nobel Prize of 1978), the Cosmic Microwave Background has given scientists oceans of information and curiosity. Although, it has raised some of the most substantial and complex questions and anomalies, as the strange incongruity of the CMB, as seen from both opposite hemispheres of the sky.
The map of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature as data collected by the ESA’s Planck satellite, and confirmed fluctuations, the circled) cold spot, which extends over the large area of the sky and has a too lower temperature. Credits: ESA/Planck/Physics World
In the CMB, there lies a substantial question, a huge cold spot, which is around a billion light-years across. This cold spot was first seen by WMAP in 2004 and more strongly discovered by ESA’s Planck Satellite. We call it “CMB Cold Spot,” it’s around 70µK cold on average than the entire CMB temperature of the Universe and located in the southern celestial hemisphere.
In other ways, it may be a possibility that the cold-spot was born the first of the big bang density fluctuations or irregularities that bought the entire CMB temperature anisotropies into existence because those anisotropies have a Gaussian distribution, which only permits small variations (at the scale of around 16µK) but not such large. A few found places the temperature of the spot is around 150μK colder than the average CMB, more than of which is permitted from a Gaussian distribution. The radius of the cosmic cold spot extends about an angle of 5°, but apparently, on the other hand, the largest fluctuation found in the primordial CMB temperatures occurs at 1°, making it peculiar and uncanny.
If we go through the literature review, the researchers have postulated many different hypotheses of this mysterious cold spot in our Universe, and a lot of debate is going on to reveal its mystery and reason of occurrence. Few explanations suggest that the spot is nothing but forefront contamination of the matter (as a kind of dust or synchrotron radiation) within our galaxy or some kind of celestial object. But, profoundly, the observations of NRAO Very Large Array Sky Survey (NVSS), 2 Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS), Sloan Digital Survey, with proper detailed optical images of Hubble, show us that ‘no object’ found at those coordinates.
Void and null
One suggested simple but questionable explanation for it is that there might be a “super huge void” between us and the cold spot, but our universe structure on a larger scale, the galaxies have already been found in voids, their density can be much lesser in some cases (1/10th) than other densely populated areas in the Universe. On another side, the Universe also has superclusters – regions where there are more galaxies or quantities of matter in easy terms than normal cases.
Veiled void? One promising explanation for the phenomenon is that there exists a vast cosmic “supervoid” between us and the cold spot, thanks to the large-scale structure of the Universe. While galaxies still exist within voids, their density of matter is much less (one-tenth of the average) than in other regions of the Universe. On the flip side, the Universe also contains superclusters – huge regions with many more galaxies than normal.
Faisal Ur Rahman (Physics World, 2019) says that according to analysis, “Both supervoids and superclusters have a very impactful effect on the photons of the CMB as the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect varies due to the physical properties of it, it can also be termed as late-time ISW effect. As the CMB photons pass through the superclusters (passing through huge gravitational effects), they gain potential energy as they pass through the superclusters and have a thermal energy increase. Everything is fine; the increase in energy within the photon should be dispersed once the photon comes out of the gravitational valley of the supercluster. But, there’s another factor, Dark Energy, that comes into action, which is responsible for the overall expansion of our Universe.
During the time when a photon travels across a supercluster, dark energy expands the valley, stretching it in a way that the photon leaving does not have the extra energy to climb back out of the valley. That’s why the CMB photons have some heat. In the same manner, the super-voids work as gravitational hills, and the entering photon of the CMB loses more energy while getting into a void and getting out with regain in energy as they are leaving the void (as now the void is big due to the dark energy). This phenomenon colds the photons. The ISW has a possibility in this phenomenon for the CMB cold spot, and there must be a supervoid existing in the place of the cold-spot then.
Lambda-CDM Model of the Universe.
Hide and seek
Discussing another study in 2007 at the University of Minnesota by Rudnick and colleagues claimed the presence of supervoid in that place, but a prominent dip in extragalactic brightness and numbers of radio sources that were present there, as seen through the NVSS radio catalog. But another study done by University of Cambridge researchers under Kendrick Smith and collaborators of the University of Michigan in 2010 found that there’s no data evidence for the presence of dips in NVSS maps, which dismissed the presence of a supervoid. Further later in 2014, Seshadri Nadathur of the University of Helsinki concluded that the ISW influence on the CMB light from the believed supervoid is not a possible explanation of the cold-spot. They said that for the possibility of the necessary photon temperature decrease via ISW, the supervoid must be extremely massive and without matter that our standard model of the cosmology will be violated and changed, known as ΛCDM.
ACDM provides us with an overall understanding of the Universe in a way that dark matter (26.8% of the Universe is mass/energy) and dark energy for 68.3%. The war between the gravity of the dark matter and dark energy’s expansion of the cosmos. Nedathur’s work finds that by anyway, we ought to explain the cold-spot that would be completely anomalous for our knowledge of today.
More puzzling, another claim rose in 2014, when a team of astronomers under the leadership of István Szapudi of the University of Hawaii found a rare supervoid, with a size of 1.8 billion light-years. And they quoted it as “the largest individual structure ever identified by humanity.” They combined the infrared data from NASA’s Wide-field Survey Explorer (WISE) 2MASS Catalogue and Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) optical observations for it. They surveyed galaxies near the cold-spot boundaries and found a supervoid. According to the team of Hawaii, the void was 3 Billion light-years away from us, which was not found in previous surveys because searches in the past focused on the early Universe, farther away from us in space and time. Besides this discovery, researchers realized that the large supervoid isn’t enough for the CMB Cold Spot’s temperature down, as the cooling Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect would be a maximum of 20μK.
To test the hypothesis of Szapudi, spectroscopic data was used by a team led by Ruari Mackenzie of the University of Durham from the 2dF-VST ATLAS Cold Spot Redshift (2CSz) survey at the Anglo-Australian Telescope in New South Wales, so they could study the redshift in-line of sight to the cold spot. They measured twice from different lines of sight and found three voids out to a distance of three billion light-years and with a possibility of a fourth void as well. Although all the voids were smaller than the void Szapudi predicted in his research, they all had an overall 31μK ISW cooling impact, but simply not most-likely enough to support the cold spot.
Surprisingly, all the research led to this theory that the voids are not the conclusion here; it’s due to something else, the massive size must have something to with primordial fluctuations. This is so because the standard ΛCDM model will be conflicting if we go through Szapudi’s idea of supervoid. While on the other hand, coded simulations suggest that there’s only a 1 in 50 chance of random, nonGaussian quantum fluctuation in the CMB for the birth of the cosmic cold spot.
Unusual Structures
Thinking with a different approach, there lies another explanation for the cold spot of the CMB. Maybe the motion of matter or galaxies within that region is unusual, with a super gravitational effect. This could be something similar to the concept of “Greater Attractor,” a kind of abnormality at the mid-point of Laniakea supercluster (the object between our Milky Way) which occurs due to extremity of the presence of mass, and the related “Dipole Repelling,” which works as a gravitational repulsion on the large scale flow of galaxies in our local group, and that might be supposed to exist due to large supervoid. These both have their effect on the CMB dipole, but none such abnormal or unusual structures have been identified within the cold-spot or its surrounding place. Another study from independent sources by Qi Quo and fellows at the Chinese Academy of Science pushed forward the probability of 19 dwarf galaxies that have dark-matter insufficiency, which is very strange because mostly these small galaxies are filled with dark matter normally.
Among these galaxies, 14 are isolated, and they are not the satellite-orbiting type around a large galaxy like ours, which leads to the view that the dark matter deficiency was not the result of any connection with larger or other dwarf galaxies. As per studies, these low-dark-matter dwarf galaxies may change the results of other ISW parameters, all of which are impacted by dark matter. Some cosmologists believe that may be a cold-spot answer lies with the theory of inflation itself? Or maybe after it. Maybe after the whole big-bag, within the infant universe, this patch of the Universe went on for a longer period of infancy, due to which the cold-spot came into being naturally in that part of the Universe. That’s a theory put forward by Yi Wang at the Honk Kong University of Science and Technology and Yin-Zhe Ma of the University of KwaZulu-Natal of South Africa. They proposed a “feature scattering” system of inflation that predicts cold spots (not hot ones). But, still, these substantial questions must be consistent with the validity of other phenomena, including the impact of such anomalies on permutations of density and the overall stars and galaxy evolutions within our Universe.
Since I’ve discussed so many circulating solutions to uncover this mystery, it’s important to consider each explanation with the larger context of the cosmology, such as Ia supernovae, baryonic acoustic oscillations, and the entire CMB itself for supporting evidence. Some gravitational physicists suggest that a more precise Hubble constant value can be arrived at in the future through mergers of neutron stars or black holes. These observations, with some changes in value for the cosmological parameters, must support the ΛCDM, and so any solution must be consistent and agreeable with the model.
But, still exploring alternatives outside our standard model play an important role in studying the anomalies such as itself, the cold-spot. For example, Elenora Di Valentino at the University of Manchester carefully studied the Planck satellite data of 2018, and their findings challenged our understanding of the usual ΛCDM assumption of the Universe being flat. Their results pointed out a “closed universe,” which is contradictory to our present assumptions and challenges the inflation theory. While their research was only 3σ, not conclusive, it needs a parallel study for more investigation as a cross-check.
The above map shows CMB fluctuations. Credits: ESA
The map shows the amplitude fluctuations polarization. While the temperature map clearly signifies the cold spot, the anomaly. It doesn’t show any statistical signification in anomalies of the polarization map, but doesn’t rule out the potential relevance of seen in the temperature map, but makes it more mysterious as a puzzle to be followed. Credits: ESA
Getting to an exotic route?
As we don’t have any standardized explanation or theory for the cold-spot of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, some thinkers, for instance, philosophical actors, opt for a more weird possibility that the cold spot might be due to a “collision” between our Universe and a parallel universe. This goes with the popular multiverse theory we hear today by physicists all around the world. It says that the Universe collides and interacts over-time. The other Universe must have collided with ours, also thanks to the quantum entanglement between universes before they were separated at first by the cosmic inflation, and the interactions left this footprint on the CMB as a cold-spot. But, still, the “ECREE: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence as said by Dr. Carl Sagan” and must be following the laws of other cosmological observations. If there’s a possibility to the theory of collision between universes, then there would have been an identifiable polarization signal in the coldspot. This has been suggested by Tom Shanks of the Centre of Extragalactic Astronomy at Durham University in 2017.
The recent data results of the Planck team in 2019 involved further analysis of the polarization found in the CMB (that’s entirely different from its temperature scale) to further dive into the anomalies and mysteries such as the cold spot. Planck’s multi-frequency data are designed to eliminate noises already existing from other microwave sources, including the dust and gas coming in between surveys from our own Milky Way. Even due to this scrupulous and worthy analysis, they failed to find any specific breakthrough traces of anomalies in the polarization maps (shown in maps). Till now, the Planck team has not denied or confirmed any of the nature of such anomalies as cold spots. This leaves an open-minded possibility of testation and explanations that would better our understanding and the implications of laws of physics for parameters at a cosmological scale.
Giant Magellan Telescope to be finished in 2029 as per gmto.org. Credits: GMTO
Further in the future, we need more data from more sensitive telescopes such as the MeerKAT array and other ventures like Giant Magellan Telescope and Square Kilometre Array. We also need to understand more about the existing forces such as Dark Energy and how it plays a role in the overall evolution of our Universe every passing second to understand the workings of the Integrated Sache-Wolfe effect. We do not reach any steady conclusion about the CMB cold spot with our present knowledge and limitations. So, we direly need better observational data or maybe revisitation in our current universal understandings. On the bright side, we can always use more advanced ground or space-based telescopes to get deeper to find a substantial explanation for the question of this enigmatic scientific occurrence of CMB cold spot.
References:
1. “The Enduring Enigma of the Cosmic Cold Spot.” Physics World, 11 Feb. 2020, https://physicsworld.com/a/the-enduring-enigma-of-the-cosmic-cold-spot/.
2. Dark Matter & Dark Energy | University of Oxford Department of Physics. https://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/research/dark-matter-dark-energy. Accessed 27 Jan. 2021.
3. “Astronomers Discover Largest Known Structure in the Universe Is … a Big Hole.” The Guardian, 20 Apr. 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/apr/20/astronomers-discover-largest-known-structure-in-the-universe-is-a-big-hole.
4. Goss, Heather. “What Created the Universe’s Cold Spot?” Air & Space Magazine, https://www.airspacemag.com/space/what-created-universes-cold-spot-180955343/. Accessed 27 Jan. 2021.
5. Hu W, Dodelson S. Cosmic microwave background anisotropies. Annu Rev Astron Astrophys. (2002) 40:171–216. doi: 10.1146/annurev.astro.40.060401.093926
6. Kolb EW, Turner MS. The early Universe. Front Phys. (1990) 69:1–547.
Childhood obesity is not something that has plagued only a particular part of the world rather; it is branching to every nook and corner of the world. Unfortunately, we humans do not take anything seriously until it smacks us right into our faces and rattles our bones. The pandemic is just like a fine wine; the longer it is left alone, the more it ferments and the costlier it becomes; yet terrible in taste.
You might not be alarmed by the situation yet but the facts will startle you. The rise in the obesity rate is not one or twofold rather a tenfold increase in the last 40 years since 1975. To conduct the study, a team from the Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RISC), led by researchers from Imperial College London and the World Health Organisation (WHO), analyzed 2,416 different existing studies that measured the height and weight of a total of 31·5 million 5- to 19-year-olds from 200 countries.
They found that from 1975 to 2016, the number of girls with obesity went from 5 million to 50 million, and the number of boys with obesity went from 6 million to 74 million. That doesn’t even include the 213 million children and adolescents that fell in the overweight range in 2016.
Few extra pounds have enough potential to make childhood miserable and a lifelong course that will eventually lead to low quality of life. Obese children might look bulky and healthy, but they are often malnourished lacking essential vitamins in their bodies, diagnosed with serious medical conditions.
Obesity is a life-threatening disease — diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, musculoskeletal disorders, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease all stem from obesity and completely deteriorating a child’s health. They face physical health problems and major setbacks mentally, including poor self-esteem due to depression, anxiety, and complexes related to their body image.
It is not merely the result of parent’s ignorance or the laziness and bad choices of our kids when it comes to food. The whole shift of system from processed food, beverages to the way our communities, workplaces operate to the activities we indulge ourselves into. The new transit system has just digitalized everything minimizing the mobility and physical activity restricting the new generation to their cellphones and computers.
The rise in obesity is like a ski slope; to stop this snowball effect, we have to closely monitor the symptoms, causes, and risk factors of the problem so that we can address it in a more professional way; involving all the stakeholders and relevant departments to bring changes on a systematic level.
How do you know if your child is obese?
You might not be able to know by the physical appearance of your child whether the child is obese or not. Child weight depends on the body frame and the fat percentage in the body, which vary at various growth stages.
Obesity is defined by Body Mass Index (BMI), which is a standard scale used worldwide to calculate overweight or obesity. BMI is calculated by taking weight concerning height; at or above the 95th percentile for obese children and teens of the same age and sex.
If you are worried about your child’s weight, it is better to consult a doctor rather than doing self-medications. The doctor will find BMI with other tests and consider your family’s weight-for-height history to see where your child land on the growth chart and will decide accordingly whether your child is obese or not.
What are the causes of obesity in children?
Not one factor alone but a combination of factors make a child overweight or obese.
Diet: One of the leading factors of obesity in kids is regular intake of junk food consisting of more salt, more sugar, artificial sweeteners, and other hazardous ingredients. And brownie points to the desserts, candies, chocolates, and all the sodas and sugary drinks, posing life-threatening risks other than obesity.
Lack of physical Exercise: Kids having a more sedentary lifestyle, spending more time on their tablets playing video games, or watching cartoons are more prone to gain weight than the kids who actively participate in physical activities, including bicycling and other outdoor sports.
Genetic Factor: Your family history and genes also play a significant role in your kids’ weight. Suppose your child comes from a family of overweight people. He/she has significant chances of becoming obese.
Psychological factors: Kids who don’t know how to express their emotions or when their parents do not address their emotions or problems or loved ones overreact to the situations. Few children tend to overeat when they feel under stress, anxiety, or fighting their boredom.
Socioeconomic factors: Children being raised in neighborhoods lacking access to supermarkets often eatconvenience foods, such as frozen meals, crackers, and cookies that result in obesity. Also, the lower-income communities lacking safe exercise spaces where physical activities are not encouraged, kids are likely to gain weight.
Medications: Certain prescription drugs including prednisone, lithium, amitriptyline, paroxetine (Paxil), gabapentin (Neurontin, Gralise, Horizant), and propranolol (Inderal, Hemangeol) can cause obesity.
Children being raised in neighborhoods lacking access to supermarkets often eat convenience foods, such as frozen meals, crackers, and cookies that result in obesity.
Risk factors for childhood Overweight
Type 2 diabetes: Obese child faces four times the risk of developing type 2 diabetes that affects how the child uses glucose.
High Blood Pressure and High Cholesterol: Around70% of obese children have at least one CVD risk factor; they have higher systolic and diastolic blood pressure (BP). Plaque buildup in their arteries, causing them to narrow and harden, resulting in a stroke or heart attack later in life.
Joint Pain: Obese children are often victimized to pain and sometimes injuries in the hips, knees, and back because of extra stress on hips and knees.
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD): This disorder causes the deposition of fatty acids in the liver leading to scarring and liver damage.
Breathing problems: Asthma is prevalent in obese children. Also, sleep apnea, the disorder in which a child’s breathing repeatedly stops and starts during sleep.
Emotional Complications: Overweight kids may experience bullying from their peers resulting in a loss of self-esteem and an increased risk of depression and anxiety
How can you prevent your child from being obese?
A child nutrition researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Sara Benjamin-Neelon, says
“The most important opportunity to prevent childhood obesity is within the first thousand days after birth, during that time, mothers should breastfeed as much as possible and especially avoid unhealthy food during an infant’s transition to solid foods, a formative time for a child’s metabolism.“
Other important factors that can help prevent weight gain in your child are :
Be an example for your child
Make sure to adopt a healthy lifestyle as a parent performing all the physical exercises and confirming healthy eating, including greens and fruits, in your daily routine so that you might inspire your child towards a healthy lifestyle.
Offer healthy food alternatives to your child
Try to replace all the junk food with alternative healthy choices, including air-popped popcorn without butter, fruits with low-fat yogurt, baby carrots with hummus, or whole-grain cereal low-fat milk. Try new recipes and put some effort into making food appealing for kids – the senses are of the utmost importance for kids.
Incorporate new foods
It might be difficult for you to make your child get used to any new food. But don’t be discouraged; kids take time in acceptance. Expose new food to your child in different ways, let them know about the food’s nutritious value.
Be conscious of your child’s sleep schedule
Make sure that your child completes the whole 8 hr. sleep cycle at every cost. Lack of sleep can cause hormonal imbalance resulting in increased appetite.
Use Non-Reward Technique
Offering candy or anything junk as a reward is a bad idea. Stop it now!
With every passing day, the situation is getting worse- a study led by the World Obesity Federation projected the number of obese/ overweight children worldwide to grow by 100 million by 2030. Organizations like WHO, Mayor Bloomberg, former First Lady Michelle Obama, the Obesity Action Coalition, the Obesity Society, the European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO) are trying their best to make people aware and bring changes on a systematic level still stats are a clear indication that we have to deal this matter with more responsibility.
Parents should make sure to take their kids to a child specialist once a year for medical examination. And the government should also take sufficient actions, apply taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB), and improve food labeling, manufacturers reducing the amount of sugar, and school lunch programs.
It can be said without a doubt that every person is aware of the term ‘nutrient.’ We hear it almost every day from TV commercials to our parents lecturing on healthy food habits, to studying the tables of nutritional values of foods in the science class. But nature always tends to balance things out and create paradoxes. In comes the ‘antinutrients’ that, as you might have guessed, work almost in the opposite way of nutrients.
These are synthetic compounds that are mostly found in crop plants and work by obstructing the absorption of nutrients in your body. They usually help the species they originate in but tend to negatively affect those who consume them further down the food chain. For instance, cyanogenic glycosides, that are present in cassava. Working to dissuade herbivores and combat pests, these compounds help plants and are relatively nontoxic. But if one consumes the plants by chewing them, enzymes release hydrogen cyanide which is a very dangerous chemical compound, leading to disastrous consequences. Getting in the way of digestive enzymes is one of their working mechanisms that disrupt the normal absorption in the living system.
According to A. Venket Rao, Ph.D., professor emeritus from the department of nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto, who has worked on and studied compounds in plant foods, “… fruits contain seeds for the purpose of propagation of their species. However, if birds and animals were to eat the fruits containing the seeds and digest them to obtain additional nutrients and calories, then there will be no seeds left for the continuation of the plant species. So, they make compounds that are so bitter that birds and animals discard them while consuming the fruits. Some of these compounds may also prevent the activity of the digestive enzymes so that even if the seeds are consumed, they are excreted without altering their physiology.”
Antinutrients are synthetic compounds that are mostly found in crop plants and work by obstructing the absorption of nutrients in your body
Antinutrients are present in several foods, including legumes, beans, grains, nuts, etc. There are many seed food that also contains antinutrients such as phytic acid, leptins, and saponins where they are mainly used as a defense mechanism, as mentioned above. The tight binding with vitamins and minerals renders them unabsorbable. These are also present in the roots of plants, leaves, and fruits but in a very low concentration that is likely to have more benefits than detriments.
Although a few of them have certain benefits, most have unfavorable effects. Here are a few antinutrients that should preferably be avoided in one’s diet.
Gluten
Gluten is infamous as a plant protein difficult to digest that causes gastrointestinal complications. It is an enzyme inhibitor that also induces allergic reactions and autoimmune diseases, etc. The sensitivity associated with this protein is classified as classic symptoms/adverse reactions to foods like wheat, rye, and barley. The severe form is called celiac disease, but gluten can also cause mild issues such as headaches, fatigue, joint pain, etc.
Phytate or Phytic Acid
This compound is present in grains and legumes and hinders the integration of minerals in the human body, including copper, iron, zinc, calcium, etc. Research has suggested that around 80 percent of phosphorus in high-phosphorus foods like sunflower seeds or pumpkin can be interfered with and blocked by phytate. The same goes for foods that are rich in magnesium or zinc. Not only that, but it also meddles with the absorption of iron and calcium, which can cause anemic issues and loss in bone density, and with essential digestive enzymes. Consumption of foods that have high amounts of Vitamin C or Vitamin A can compensate for iron deficiency. But, even with sinister effects, phytates have been associated with enhancing immune functions and antioxidant properties.
Lectins
Lectins are present in high amounts in beans and wheat, causing bloating and indigestion. Importantly, they can survive digestion by the gastrointestinal tract and have the ability to harm the membranes of the epithelium lining and provoke autoimmune reactions by interfering with the bacterial flora. Raw grains that have been prepared improperly contain high levels of lectin. But, instead of cutting them out of your diet, you can reduce their content in the foods by preparing them properly, such as “soaking and sprouting grains and seeds” or through “fermentation.” Research has suggested that lectins may help in reducing the risk of several diseases such as diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disorders, etc. Scientists are figuring out ways to understand more about the health-promoting effects of these antinutrients.
Lectins are present in high amounts in beans and wheat, causing bloating and indigestion
Isoflavones
This polyphenolic is present in increased amounts in soybeans that can contribute towards disturbance in hormone levels and digestive issues. If beans are prepared in a proper manner, isoflavones can be advantageous in smaller doses, but it’s still not recommended. Because of their estrogen-like effects, these compounds are classified as phytoestrogens and endocrine disruptors.
Tannins
Tannins are inhibitors of enzymes and cause improper digestion, GIT issues, and protein deficiency. Enzymes play a crucial role in metabolizing the food we consume and help provide nourishment to reach our cells. If they aren’t working correctly, metabolism is severely affected, leading to diarrhea, constipation, bloating, etc. Positively, in low concentrations, tannins work as antioxidants that can inhibit the growth of several microorganisms and may also help to reduce blood pressure.
Even though they have some evil properties, they can be useful if consumed in safe small amounts. It is also thought that they might get an image makeover like dietary fibers, but extensive research is required to accept this claim. Nevertheless, we should always be cautious of what we are putting in our bodies and adjust our diet to our needs.
The NASA Perseverance rover, launched in 2020, successfully landed on Mars after completing a journey of 292.5 million-mile from Earth. The touchdown was ‘flawless’ and the rover immediately sent back first images of the landing site, in which the shadow of the rover over the surface of its landing site of Jezero Crater was apparent.
The acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk said, “This landing is one of those pivotal moments for NASA, the United States, and space exploration globally — when we know we are on the cusp of discovery and sharpening our pencils, so to speak, to rewrite the textbooks.”
“The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission embodies our nation’s spirit of persevering even in the most challenging of situations, inspiring, and advancing science and exploration. The mission itself personifies the human ideal of persevering toward the future and will help us prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet in the 2030s.”
Colorized versions of the screen capture of NASA Perseverance’s first images after its successful landing on Mars Credit: NASA
A composite CTX image of the NASA Perseverance landing ellipse, with the Terrain Relative Navigation data overlain on top. Yellow indicates bad and red worse. The spacecraft did an impeccable job of navigating the surface and finding the safe spot in the blue field amongst yellow and red. Credit: NASA
The landing site of NASA Persevere in Jezero Crater, Mars. Credit: NASA
The landing site in color
The interactive map shows the landing site of the Mars rover. Credit: NASA
Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, also said, “Because of today’s exciting events, the first pristine samples from carefully documented locations on another planet are another step closer to being returned to Earth.”
