If anyone else - a politician, a businessman, a student, a medical practitioner, an accountant, a software engineer, other scientists or even a hausfrau - keeps changing their mind so often, they would be be laughed out of a job at the best or booked into a mental asylum at the worst.
In the heartland of India, Uttar Pradesh (fortunately not my home state), even senior bureaucrats can be labelled as lunatic and thrown into an asylum for threatening to expose alleged corruption.
Not very far lie the majestic Himalayas, the largest and the highest mountain range in the world. In fact, Himalayan foothills form the northern border of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India and the home of the Central-Gangetic Plain, the food-bowl of India.
One of the scares which keep cropping up every few years is that the Himalayan Ice is melting too rapidly and probably completely melt off disappear by 2035.
About two years back, in January 2010, the UN’s IPCC backtracked and stated that the Himalayan Glaciers are not melting at a fast rate as previously claimed by it, in a Nobel winning research paper to boot.
:-P
Just about two months back, in December 2011, the same IPCC headed by the same Dr. Pachauri, turned around to claim that the same Himalayan Glaciers are melting fast.
8-O
Yesterday, a new research paper was released which shows there has been no loss of Himalayan Ice over the last 7 years [http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/08/glaciers-mountains].
%-)
The new observation is from the pair of NASA’s GRACE satellites which fly around Earth about 16 times a day, measuring minute gravitational changes and thus mapping the distribution and flow of mass over earth’s surface.
What the measurements show is that the total amount of ice on the Himalayas is the same; Ice melting off from the borders of the glaciers are being compensated by new ice formation on the top.
So what does that mean? That the IPCC is lying and exaggerating or at best relying on half truths and fanciful thinking, to feather their own nests? Climate sceptics well say that and try to use this latest finding to try and reinforce their argument that there is no Nett loss of Ice cover and hence the whole global warming theory is a bogey. After all, Glaciers do melt; And if their melting down below is being compensated with fresh ice on top, what is the big deal?
But does that mean this whole climate change theory is nonsense? No not at all. It only proves that mother nature and planet earth are still trying to protect us and working their utmost to prevent a runaway global warming. To put it the other way, we still have not managed to disrupt the system so badly that it cannot be set right.
Because, you see, if there is excessive run off from the glaciers, no matter it is replenished at the top, the excessive flow will erode the top soil from the mountains, hills and even the plains - as it did in Pakistan Flood last year.
Incidentally, Pakistan is a part of the geographic feature called the Indo-Gangetic Plains which are *the* (southern)drainage area of the Himalayan Glaciers.
And the same GRACE satellites have corroborated other satellite telemetry (from 1990) that sea levels have been rising at an average of 3mm per year or 1 inch in a decade [http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-262]. The point to note here is that rise in sea level may or may not be due to melt off/run off from glaciers and the polar regions.
It might only be because the same amount of water in the World’s oceans is expanding. Expanding because it is getting warmer. Which brings us back to the original point - that there is global warming, which is man made and unless we act now, we might end up with a runaway climate change.
Even if you are not worried about skiing in the Alps, you should worry whether the ice will last - at least in there …
(image courtesy studio2f.com)
My Nasty half natters, ‘Say, maddie, now that the Queen strips people of knighthood, will the Nobel committee move to disgrace dubious research?’
update: 3 days after this post (on 13th Feb.), the UN Environment Programme reported fears of Increase in Global Warming due to soil erosion - seems soil holds 3 times the carbon presently held in atmosphere. News via Scientific American here (The link disappeared in Oct 2012).
;-)
In the heartland of India, Uttar Pradesh (fortunately not my home state), even senior bureaucrats can be labelled as lunatic and thrown into an asylum for threatening to expose alleged corruption.
Not very far lie the majestic Himalayas, the largest and the highest mountain range in the world. In fact, Himalayan foothills form the northern border of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India and the home of the Central-Gangetic Plain, the food-bowl of India.
One of the scares which keep cropping up every few years is that the Himalayan Ice is melting too rapidly and probably completely melt off disappear by 2035.
About two years back, in January 2010, the UN’s IPCC backtracked and stated that the Himalayan Glaciers are not melting at a fast rate as previously claimed by it, in a Nobel winning research paper to boot.
:-P
Just about two months back, in December 2011, the same IPCC headed by the same Dr. Pachauri, turned around to claim that the same Himalayan Glaciers are melting fast.
8-O
Yesterday, a new research paper was released which shows there has been no loss of Himalayan Ice over the last 7 years [http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/08/glaciers-mountains].
%-)
The new observation is from the pair of NASA’s GRACE satellites which fly around Earth about 16 times a day, measuring minute gravitational changes and thus mapping the distribution and flow of mass over earth’s surface.
What the measurements show is that the total amount of ice on the Himalayas is the same; Ice melting off from the borders of the glaciers are being compensated by new ice formation on the top.
So what does that mean? That the IPCC is lying and exaggerating or at best relying on half truths and fanciful thinking, to feather their own nests? Climate sceptics well say that and try to use this latest finding to try and reinforce their argument that there is no Nett loss of Ice cover and hence the whole global warming theory is a bogey. After all, Glaciers do melt; And if their melting down below is being compensated with fresh ice on top, what is the big deal?
But does that mean this whole climate change theory is nonsense? No not at all. It only proves that mother nature and planet earth are still trying to protect us and working their utmost to prevent a runaway global warming. To put it the other way, we still have not managed to disrupt the system so badly that it cannot be set right.
Because, you see, if there is excessive run off from the glaciers, no matter it is replenished at the top, the excessive flow will erode the top soil from the mountains, hills and even the plains - as it did in Pakistan Flood last year.
Incidentally, Pakistan is a part of the geographic feature called the Indo-Gangetic Plains which are *the* (southern)drainage area of the Himalayan Glaciers.
And the same GRACE satellites have corroborated other satellite telemetry (from 1990) that sea levels have been rising at an average of 3mm per year or 1 inch in a decade [http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-262]. The point to note here is that rise in sea level may or may not be due to melt off/run off from glaciers and the polar regions.
It might only be because the same amount of water in the World’s oceans is expanding. Expanding because it is getting warmer. Which brings us back to the original point - that there is global warming, which is man made and unless we act now, we might end up with a runaway climate change.
Even if you are not worried about skiing in the Alps, you should worry whether the ice will last - at least in there …
(image courtesy studio2f.com)
My Nasty half natters, ‘Say, maddie, now that the Queen strips people of knighthood, will the Nobel committee move to disgrace dubious research?’
update: 3 days after this post (on 13th Feb.), the UN Environment Programme reported fears of Increase in Global Warming due to soil erosion - seems soil holds 3 times the carbon presently held in atmosphere. News via Scientific American here (The link disappeared in Oct 2012).
;-)
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