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Himalaya’s receding glaciers suffer neglect
Janaki Kremmer, Christian Science Monitor
Scientists monitor only a few of India’s vital glaciers, which are receding by as much as 100 feet each year.
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NEW DELHI – Billions of people in China and the Indian subcontinent rely on South Asia’s Himalayan glaciers – the world’s largest store of fresh water outside the polar ice caps. The massive ice floes feed seven of the world’s greatest Asian rivers in one of the world’s most densely populated regions.
Yet as global climate change slowly melts glaciers from Africa to the Andes, scientists say the glaciers in the Himalayas are retreating at a rate of about 33 to 49 feet7 each year – faster than in any other part of the world.
In the Himalayas, the Gangotri Glacier, one of India’s largest, is entitled to an even more dubious distinction. Recent studies reveal that the Gangotri, which forms a mass of ice about 18 miles long, is retreating at a rate of more than 100 feet a year.
But according to government officials and environmental groups like Greenpeace, very little has been done in the way of a rigorous scientific study. Scientists are monitoring glacial melting on only a handful of the 7,000 glaciers that cover the Indian Himalayas.
And at such a rapid retreat, a gradual increase in droughts, flash floods, and landslides are not the only issue to worry about, say environmentalists. Justwhen power companies are planning more energy sources to power India’s growing economy, a rising level of sediment in regional rivers is creating havoc for many grids.
(3 Jan 2007)
Australia warming faster than world
Virginia Marsh, Financial Times
The seriousness of Australia’s environmental problems was underlined Wednesday with the release of data showing that the country appears to be experiencing the effects of global warming more deeply than other parts of the world.
In its annual climate report, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said 2006 had seen the warmest spring on record, with average temperatures up 1.42 degrees centigrade. The mean temperature for the year was 0.47 degrees above the 1961 to 1990 average. Average global temperatures in 2006 were 0.42 degrees above their 1961-1990 average.
…The trend to more marked droughts, meanwhile, is afflicting the country’s most important agriculture regions. Australia is usually one of the world’s top three grain exporters and the sharp reduction in its expected wheat crop this year has already pushed up global prices.
(3 Jan 2007)
A New Middle Stance Emerges in Debate over Climate
Andrew C. Revkin, NY Times
Amid the shouting lately about whether global warming is a human-caused catastrophe or a hoax, some usually staid climate scientists in the usually invisible middle are speaking up.
The discourse over the issue has been feverish since Hurricane Katrina. Seizing the moment, many environmental campaigners, former Vice President Al Gore and some scientists have portrayed the growing human influence on the climate as an unfolding disaster that is already measurably strengthening hurricanes, spreading diseases and amplifying recent droughts and deluges.
Conservative politicians and a few scientists, many with ties to energy companies, have variously countered that human-driven warming is inconsequential, unproved or a manufactured crisis.
A third stance is now emerging, espoused by many experts who challenge both poles of the debate.
(1 Jan 2007)
Responses from Gristmill:
High Broderism reaches the global warming debate
My problem with Revkin’s article
Science activists blast ExxonMobil on warming
Staff and wire services, NSNBC
ExxonMobil Corp. gave $16 million to 43 ideological groups between 1998 and 2005 in a coordinated effort to mislead the public by discrediting the science behind global warming, the Union of Concerned Scientists asserted Wednesday.
The report by the science-based nonprofit advocacy group mirrors similar claims by Britain’s leading scientific academy. Last September, The Royal Society wrote the oil company asking it to halt support for groups that “misrepresented the science of climate change.”
ExxonMobil did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the scientific advocacy group’s report.
(2 Jan 2007)
