Climatic Change & Frog Syndrome

Frog syndrome refers to the first experiment done by Henzman where he came to the conclusion that a frog if put in a large vessel at room temperature and then the water is heated very gradually then the frog would not attempt to escape and gradually will adjust to the rise in temperature, feel drowsy and if the temperature is very high then it may eventually  die. Whereas, if the frog is put in a vessel with water temperature high enough, then it will immediately jump off.

At the basic level the frog syndrome is a cautionary warning against complacency. It has been linked to organizational changes, government policies, our apathy to climatic change, the world over rise in pollution level, the economic meltdown and career related stress.

The world is getting hot, storms have been ferocious, land masses disappearing, arctic ice is melting, air pollution is increasing, more earthquakes and tremors, more severe floods, etc. New researches in these fields also indicate the adaptability of the 21 century human beings. In the face of unprecedented climatic change we are normalizing the weather temperatures and not realizing how truly bad things have become. During lock down it was possible to see Dauladhar ranges and Himalayan ranges from as far as 200 to 250 Km away. We could hear singing and chirping of birds and the wild animals could be seen in villages and rural areas and this clearly points out as to what we have lost and accepted the present situation because it developed gradually. Unfortunately we have normalized all these things and have accepted the present conditions as the new normal.

As pointed out by Moore that” There is a risk that we will quickly normalize conditions we do not want to normalize.” It is also possible that in the future the climatic changes may produce temperatures beyond the psychological and biological threshold of humans besides other kinds of extreme weather.  Taken to this extreme does this mean that human will never realize that like the frog that we are in the boiling pot of water and eventually become extinct? But maybe this will be generalizing the things too far and as the Club of Rome in 1972 with 100 members in their famous report “The limits to growth” pointed out that the technological advances may be able to offset not only this limit to growth but also these extreme climatic changes provided we realize the gravity of situation before it becomes too late.

Issues Solar Plant-Uttar Pradesh

Uttar Pradesh government is in big way promoting solar energy generation and in this endeavor roof top solar energy plants play a big role. Even subsidy by the central government and UP state government is being offered. The PVC solar panels are also easily available at a reasonable rate and installation can done by any vendor including a net metering system to measure what all you have consumed from the grid and how much you have supplied to the grid. Theoretically the bill is supposed to be what one has consumed in excess of what one has supplied to the grid. It looks very simple and straight forward but this is where your problems start.

Even though one have been supplying to the grid he continue to received a bill only for what one has withdrawn from the grid with no adjustment for the energy supplied to the grid. The reason is simple as explained by an electricity board official. The meter readers do not know how to read the net metering system and take the reading in most of the cities of the units you withdrew from the grid on a piece of paper and raise the bill. They do not use automatic readers and where they use they only record the amount withdrawn from the grid except main cities where automatic machine read only what is withdrawn from the grid and do not record what one has supplied. Result is that the consumer looses and the department gains in terms of extra power. Delhi (BSES)raises a bill which shows both these readings and the balance is only charged but unfortunately UP energy has no such method and your bill only shows what you have consumed.

There is a need to train the meter readers and give them automatic readers which will read both the readings and the bill must show both the readings and only balance charged to the consumer. Unless this is implemented people ill shy away from solar installation in UP and those who have already installed will continue to run from pillar to post and suffer losses due to non trained meter readers. Meanwhile till the training is complete what the UPPCL can do is to give a whattsapp number where the consumer can upload both the readings and then based on this the bill is raised on a fixed date as given by the department.

Butterfly Effect

In 1972 Edward N. Lorentz a meteorological professor at MIT   presented a talk in the 139 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held in Washington entitled

“Predictability –Does A Flapping of Butterfly wings in Brazil set a tornado in Texas.”

This generated a lot of discussion among the researchers and academicians about its absurdity but the powerful message of the talk was that the behaviour of the atmosphere is unstable with respect to the perturbations of small magnitude. This gave rise to what is known as Butterfly Effect and is a concept given by Lorentz to highlight the possibility that small causes may have momentous effects. He always stressed that there is no way of knowing exactly what tipped a system. The butterfly effect is a symbolic representation of an unknowable quantity.

The statisticians he worked with thought it would be possible to predict weather, weeks or months away by sourcing the historical records to see what happened previously when conditions were the same. Lorentz was skeptical of the idea and he argued that the atmosphere is too complex and that it never repeats itself. So it would be impossible to find a day in the history when conditions were precisely the same and he did discover that even small differences in the initial conditions can lead to vastly different outcomes.

The butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which small changes in one state of deterministic non liner system can result in large differences in a later stage. In 1961 Lorentz was running a numerical computer model to redo a weather prediction from the middle of previous run as a short cut. He entered the initial condition of0.506 from the printout instead of entering the precise value of 0.506127. The result was a completely different scenario. He published a paper in 1969 and proposed a mathematical model for how tiny motions in the atmosphere scale up to effect the larger systems. He found out that the system in the model could only be predicted up to a specific point in future and beyond that reducing the error in the initial conditions would not increase the predictability (as long as the error is not zero). This demonstrated that a deterministic system could be observationally indistinguishable from a non deterministic one in terms of predictability.

History is full of such small changes which later led to bigger events. Bombing of Nagasaki instead of Kuroko due to cloud cover, Academy of Arts rejecting Adolf Hitler’s application, Cuban missile Crisis, Chernobyl disaster, Indian naval mutiny of 1946 and departure of British, rise of sea temperature and frequency and intensity of cyclonic storms, emergence of Bangladesh, etc are some of the historical example.

The strong dependence of Indian Monsoon on the El -Nino, a warming of sea of the coast of Chile is well known. If affects the onset, progress and strength of monsoon. Recently as per the reports the spread of corona virus which started from Wuhan to the world and leading it to declare as a Pandemic is another example. In terms of Indian economy the massive reforms undertaken by the Central government during the lock down can be cited another examples as these changes will have a very long term effect and bring significant changes in the Indian Economy in future.

Damages for Corona from China

President D. Trump has announced that they are investigating and will claim damages from China on intentionally hiding and withholding information about Corona Virus and this amount will be very high.
China is a sovereign country and enjoys sovereign immunity and therefore is it possible to sue China or Chinese individuals in USA and if the damages are awarded then how it can be recovered.
Missouri state Attorney General has already filed a case against Chinese Govt, communist party and institutions for damages. Mississippi has followed Missouri in filing a case. American lawyer Larry Clayman & his advocacy group freedom watch along with Texas company Buzz Photo have filed a case for $20trillion, which is higher than the GDP of China. A Las Vegas firm has filed a class action suit on behalf of small businesses and one more suit has been filed by Berman Law group which seeks compensation and damages.
Missouri state Attorney General thinks that China can be sued.Two bills has been introduced by American senators and congressman that would strip China and other countries of their sovereign power if they intentionally made representations and for hiding information and facts about corona virus. Harry Jackson society a conservative think tank published a report suggesting that the G-7 nations could sue China for 6.3 trillion dollars. Germany, Italy and other countries are thinking in this direction.
Missouri AG claims that the there are two exceptions in the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act of 1976 which permit filing of the case and claim damages. The second argument in favor of the case is the "Effect Doctrine". It is a doctrine developed mainly by American Courts in Anti-Trust cases asserting jurisdiction over acts of foreign national committed abroad but have effects in American Market lace.
The second difficulty will arise if the damages are awarded then how America can claim these damages. The embassy and its assets are protected by the Geneva Convention and hence can not touched but what it an do is to freeze and attach the Chinese investments by companies, individuals and even by Chinese Govt in USA. If other countries follow the example of USA then it can pose a serious threat to the Chinese economy. China knows that and probably its recent increased military and other activity in south China sea are an effort to divert attention.

Environmental Effects of Lockdown

This lock down has only been for a month and the side effects of improvement in our environment are already visible.  I am not referring to the loss of GDP, Economy, hardship by the citizens, hospitalization bill, loss of jobs, etc, which are very much relevant and important if the country has to survive once we come out of this pandemic outbreak. But I am referring to the smaller side effects concerning changes in our environment due to this lock down. The effects have clearly shown as to what we have lost in our pursuit of progress and GDP and unless we wake up now and take effective measures we will leave our children a place probably not fit ot live. What we are facing now is what our previous generation and we did to harm our environment and what we are doing now will affect the next generation to come.

Air. Within a month of lock down the AIR quality has improved drastically. From Jullundur we can now see Dhauldhar ranges at least 250 Km away clearly when before the lock down we could not even see these ranges from Pathankot which is just 100 Km away. In the night we can see stars in the metros and the air has become breathable again. There is no smell of exhaust gases or diesel fumes, no black smoke coming out of the chimneys of factories.

Noise. Noise pollution is down to a level not known before. You can sleep peacefully at night. The constant noise created by vehicles, horns blaring and the noise of the machinery of factories is missing, no loud speakers and no political or other gatherings. You are no longer required to shout to be heard but even a whisper can be heard at a distance. The chatter of the birds is heard in the morning and evening which was missing so far as the noise had driven all the birds out of cities and now they are back. Measurements taken in cities and Industrial areas show that the noise pollution has reduced by as much as 70%.

Water. Water pollution has improved considerably to the extent that the water of Ganges has become drinkable once again in just one month at Haridwar. Yamuna water pollution has decreased by 30% within a year. Drains are going dry with no foul smell coming from them. But there is flip side also. Too much use of the bleaching agent Sodium Hypochloride as a disinfectant in roads, offices, buildings may cause ground water to become polluted due to this indiscriminate use and may result in increase skin diseases, irritation of skin and eyes, etc, but this effect will become visible only after sometime as climatic changes are gradual and exhibit symptoms after a considerable lapse of time.

All these side effect in the improvement in our environment only goes to show as to what we have lost over the period of time in our pursuit of progress and economy. Of course progress is required and our economy has to progress but what is required is to balance the environmental degradation against the progress. WE need to understand as how much the nature can recycle and anything beyond it will slowly degrade the environment. Once this pandemic is over and we start our daily life as usual we need to sit and seriously thing about our environment and harm to nature we are causing. It would be better to declare an environmental emergency, as some countries in Europe have done, and to put into place effective measures/controls/awareness/regulations, etc, to stop this environmental degradation further and try to keep it to the present  level if we cannot improve it.

Is a Brain Dead Person Really Dead

     

Is a brain dead person dead? The answer is both yes and no and depends upon under which Act you are looking and what actions your legal heirs/family members take once you are declared brain dead. How is it possible that the answer is both yes and no? The dilemma lies in the way the death is defined in the two acts, that is Registration of Birth and Death Act 1969 and the Transplantation of Human Organs Act 1994 and this puts the medical fraternity in dilemma and here again they are faced by devil’s choice, unless the legal heirs/family members help them out.

Death is defined in the Registration of Birth and Death (RBDA) Act 1969 as “The permanent disappearance of all evidence of life after live birth has taken place”. The mention of the word all, evidence of life excludes brain death. Therefore even if the doctors issue a death certificate stating brain death as a cause, which normally they will not do, then the death cannot be registered as death under this act. Hence no death certificate can be issued, implying that even though the person is dead and cremated but he is still alive legally.

Brain dead has only been defined in the Transplantation of Human Organs (THO) act 1994 only in connection with human organ donation and has led to the certification being mostly viewed as a procedure. If the legal heirs refuse to donate the organs, this applies even though you may have donated the organs legally as without their permission the donation is not valid unless you have made a living will or what is called Advance Declaration by the Supreme Court. The procedure for the execution of this advance declaration is very lengthy and cumbersome with the judicial magistrate first class being the custodian and executor of the living will and only after recommendation of a medical board as given in the Supreme Court judgement. The act also is not clear as to what will happen if family refuses to donate organs and in that eventuality the doctors will also refuse to switch off the ventilator and support systems fearing legal implications and the cost of treatment will keep rising till death takes place and may lead to a huge bill. Death in THO act is defined as “Permanent disappearance of all evidence of life by reason of brain stem death or in a cardio pulmonary sense at any time after live birth has taken place”. Here brain stem death is defined to mean death and this act will apply only if the legal heirs/family members agree to donate the organs.

Medical fraternity is of the opinion that it is futile intervention once diagnosis of brain dead is made. But it is challenging for a doctor and the family to decide whether to continue life support or not. This is what we often refer to as the devil’s choice, the doctors fearing legal implication and the family worried about the rising cost per day and the bad mouthing by the relatives and friends and social humiliation. The gap between brain death and cardiac death may be days. There is a 10 step procedure to be followed for certifications if the THO act becomes applicable and only if family agrees to donate organs. Conditions are laid down as to when and how the brain death can be declared and the process is to be repeated after an interval of six hours.

Therefore what is needed is that the  procedure needs to be specified under the RBDA 1966 to include brain death as a cause of death along with the procedure to constitute a medical board which will examine the case and conduct tests which can be repeated after 6 hours or as specified and the board will have the power to declare the person brain dead even though the family members have not agreed for organ donation but are unwilling to continue with the life support system due to any reason whatsoever.