By Erebugha Abraham
Flood is an overflow of water usually due to heavy down pour. Nowadays, heavy down pour is just a minute cause of flooding when compared with global warming and disposal of bio-non-degrable materials to the water bodies.
These are the causes of the continuous flooding in this part of the world.
Global warming is caused by the deflection of the residual sun rays by green house gasses (GHGs) e.g carbon dioxide (CO2) released from fossil fuel burning sources to the earth crust.
Originally, it is only a small percentage of the sun’s rays which were able to penetrate the ozone layer that incident on the earth crust. From this amount, some will penetrate and been absorbed by the earth crust and others reflected.
It is expected that this reflected rays goes back to the sun but it was deflected by GHGs and returned back to the earth causing double incident rays.
The intensity of these double incident rays are hot enough to melt the icebergs in antartic region. The melting of the icebergs in that region increase the water level.
Again, disposal of bio-non-degrable materials such plastic containers and pampers, packaged water sachets etc is another cause.
Where these materials settle, they will stay there and debris will settle on their tops thereby causing shallowness. This continuous release of GHGs and disposal of bio-non-degrable materials in the water bodies is the cause of this continuous flooding.
To remedy this situation, concerted effort must put in place by government and individuals to take care of the following:
1. Recycling of these bio-non-degrable waste materials or total stoppage of their use
2. To carry out Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) process whereby carbon will be captured in the atmosphere, transported to suitable site and stored
3. To carry out carbon engineering process by whereby carbon will be captured and processed to clean fuel.
4. To use the recovered carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) process to boast oil production in depleted oil fields.
With these processes, green house gases will be reduce thereby lower global warming and also flooding too will be reduced.
Engr. Erebugha, Abraham Yerinmearede writes from the Delta State School of Marine Technology, Burutu
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