2024 May Witness More Natural Disasters

My article 2024 May Witness More Natural Disasters apperaed in Rediff.com

Here is the link...

'The Weather Channel argues that India faces the gravest challenge: Climate change-induced health vulnerability.'
'This is an issue often neglected, alerts Claude Arpi: "Prolonged summers, unpredictable rains, floods, droughts, and rising sea levels are the harsh realities of climate change in the country. These factors increase the frequency and severity of illnesses, pushing people into poverty, and forcing migration".'

2023 has ended. It is time for reflection and resolutions: Time to take stock of the past 12 months and to look ahead to the coming year.
There is no doubt for anybody that the world is in turmoil.
Even Xi Jinping, the guarded Chinese president, recently told some 2,300 delegates at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, 'We must be prepared for the worst-case scenarios, and be ready to withstand high winds, choppy waters and even dangerous storms.'
Apart from the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza, the environment has been the first casualty of planetary happenings.
There is no doubt that the future is not rosy; a few facts: first far away and then closer to us in India, though all are interlinked as there is only one Planet Earth.
 

The Arctic
The key findings of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) annual Arctic Report Card are significant: 'Rising temperatures in the Arctic have led to unprecedented wildfires that forced communities to evacuate, a decline in sea ice extent, devastating floods, food insecurity, and a rise in sea level.'
The report mentions that the 2023 summer has been the warmest on record in the Arctic; since 1979, the Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the globe.
Year 2023 was the sixth-warmest year since 1900 in this region, crucial for the wellbeing of the planet.
The report enumerates the probable consequences such as the thawing of subsea permafrost, which is the frozen soil beneath the seabed that contains organic matter.
It could result in food insecurity.
NOAA cites Western Alaska which recorded another year of extremely low numbers of Chinook and chum salmon -- 81% and 92% below the 30-year mean, respectively.
But also raging wildfires; Canada -- where 40% of the land mass belongs to Arctic and Northern regions -- was among the worst affected by wildfires.
Rising temperatures have led to dramatic thinning of the Mendenhall Glacier, also in Alaska; as a result, over the years, the meltaway water has annually caused floods in the region.
Finally, Greenland's ice sheet is melting faster and faster. The NOAA says that the ice sheet continued to lose mass despite above-average winter snow accumulation -- between August 2022 and September 2023, it lost roughly 350 trillion pounds of mass.
Let us not forget that Greenland's ice sheet melting is the second-largest contributor to sea-level rise.

The Hindu Kush
Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), which keeps a close watch on the Hindu Kush, predicted that flash floods and avalanches would grow more likely in coming years if greenhouse gases are not sharply reduced: 'Melting of glaciers will cause dangerous flooding and water shortages for nearly 2 billion people who live downstream of rivers that originate in the Himalayas,' says a ICIMOD report.
It adds that glaciers in Asia's Hindu Kush Himalayas are melting at unprecedented rates and could lose up to 75 percent of their volume by century's end.
The environmental organisation warns of 'dangerous flooding and water shortages for the nearly 2 billion people who live downstream of the rivers that originate in the mountainous region.'
Wherever one looks, the future is bleak, though very few politicians the world over are ready to take the issue seriously.
They mostly worship another God called 'development', who, they believe, can bring them more votes during the next elections.

The Himalaya
Another report by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI), a network of senior policy experts working with governments, agrees that mountainous regions such as the Himalaya are facing the most severe effects from the climate change.
As the COP28's climate negotiations were getting underway in Dubai, it observed: 'Scientists are calling for more attention to be paid to the region.'
Beyond 2 degree Celsius, Earth will experience 'catastrophic loss' of mountain glaciers and snow, sea ice, and permafrost, notes the report.
ICCI also warns of 'severe consequences for millions -- as well as irreversible damage to glacial areas -- if the global average temperature rise reaches two degrees Celsius ...New developments in cryosphere research have led the report's authors to declare that the Paris Agreement's goal is outdated: 1.5 C (and not 2 C) is the only option.''
The Paris Agreement is an international agreement aimed at limiting global average temperature rise to 'well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.'
Under the Agreement, countries have agreed to reduce emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change ...they are supposed to review these commitments every five years.

In India too
It is not that the world leaders have not been warned with hard facts and scientific reports.
In 2023, Northern Sikkim experienced a severe Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF); the South Lhonak Lake, a lake located at an altitude of 17,000 feet suffered a rupture as a result of continuous rainfall.
Consequently, water gushed into the downstream regions, causing flooding in the Teesta River, in turn severely impacting Northern Sikkim.
The Sikkim State Disaster Management Authority (SSDMA) said that it caused the Chungthang hydro-dam in Sikkim (on Teesta river) to breach, resulting in a large number of casualties.
A scientific report published in January 2023 by Nature explained: 'Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) represent a major hazard and can result in significant loss of life. Globally, since 1990, the number and size of glacial lakes has grown rapidly along with downstream population, while socio-economic vulnerability has decreased.
'Nevertheless, contemporary exposure and vulnerability to GLOFs at the global scale has never been quantified. ...15 million people globally are exposed to impacts from potential GLOFs.
'Populations in High Mountains Asia (HMA) are the most exposed and on average live closest to glacial lakes with about 1 million people living within 10 km of a glacial lake.'
The Weather Channel, an American pay television channel based in Atlanta, argues that India faces the gravest challenge: Climate change-induced health vulnerability.
This is an issue often neglected: 'Prolonged summers, unpredictable rains, floods, droughts, and rising sea levels are the harsh realities of climate change in the country. These factors increase the frequency and severity of illnesses, pushing people into poverty, and forcing migration.'
And this without even mentioning the pollution in the big cities, which will in a long term, be responsible for millions of casualties.
For this too, politicians are good to shift the blame on the neighbourhood states or individuals.

The Weather Channel quotes from a new study published in Climatic Change, using 50 indicators across 640 Indian districts, researchers mapped exposure, sensitivity to the hot weather and adaptive capacities (ACs) to gauge health vulnerability.
The authors identified 38 districts with very high vulnerability, 306 with high vulnerability, 278 with moderate vulnerability, and 18 with low vulnerability.
States with the highest number of vulnerable districts include Uttar Pradesh (37), Rajasthan (15), and Madhya Pradesh (3).
The report concluded: 'India's climate crisis demands a radical shift in development thinking. The old models cannot protect millions facing health risks like never before.'
We could multiply the examples, but it is obvious that the future of the planet is bleak.
Year 2024 will probably witness more natural disasters, calamities, tragedies, either man-made such as the Silkyara Bend-Barkot tunnel in the Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand which caved in, while under construction, simply because proper environmental studies had not been conducted.

One could also cite the case of Joshimath, hit by a geological phenomenon known as land subsidence, resulting in gradual sinking of the surface due to the removal of water, oil, natural gas, or mineral resources from the ground; or the devastation in Mandi-Kulu-Manali area of Himachal Pradesh due to heavy rains and wild construction for tourism.
This will continue as long as men continue to worship only one God, 'Development' and forget to bow down another God (or Godess), Mother Nature.
But it is probably too difficult to understand for politicians who have other purposes in life; however unless Mother Nature is also on our Altar, the future will remain bleak.
Nations need to be ruled by a Diarchy, with Environment and Development together giving a lead to the planet.
If the latter is privileged, there will be a backlash by the former, with the dire consequences for us, human beings.
A last prediction: The Himalayas could witness serious earthquakes in 2024. Let us hope that it does not take place.

Tourism and Environment on the Tibetan plateau

The magazine Nature (No 512, p. 240–241) publishes a fascinating article about the ecology of the Tibetan plateau. It quotes a report just released by the Chinese Academy of Science.
The authors of the report should have added another factor: the 15 million mainland tourists yearly pouring onto the Tibetan Autonomous Region. 
For centuries, Tibet has been the most isolated country on the planet. A few brave explorers managed to sneak in, most of the times illegally, on the Roof of the World. But things are changing, changing very fast.
Today, Chinanews.com thus describes Tibet: “Tibet with its mystery is the spiritual Garden of Eden and is longed by travelers home and abroad. Only by stepping on the snowy plateau, can one be baptized by its splendor, culture, folklore, life, snow-mountains, saint-mountains, sacred lakes, residences with local characteristics and charming landscape ”.
Tibet is fast becoming the largest entertainment park in the world; thousand times larger than Disneyland.

The government in Beijing has decided to market the Land of Snows as the ultimate ‘indigenous’ spot for the Chinese people to spend their holidays; in one way, it has become Tibet’s USP (Unique Selling Proposition).
Tibet has two unique assets: first, its physical reality. The beauty of the landscape, the imposing mountain ranges, the purity of the air and the rivers, the dry blue sky (especially when compared to the dusty sky of China’s great metropolis); Tibet is indeed the ideal place to visit and have a break from the fast pace of the polluted mainland of China.
The second advantage is the rich historical past of the Roof of the World, the Land of the Lamas. In Tibet, you can find everything, says the Chinese propaganda: a beautiful Chinese princess falling for the powerful emperor and converting him to Buddhism; the monasteries and nunneries, seat of a wisdom lost in the mainland; the folkloric yak or snow-lion dances; the Shoton (yoghurt) festival; the beautiful colourful handicrafts; the exotic food, you name it, …and a couple of millions of Tibetans (in the TAR) who can guide you through the mega-museum.
Of course, the ‘locals’ are not always reliable and their knowledge of Mandarin is often not that good; in any case, the show can go on without them.
When 15 millions of ‘tourists’ pour into a relatively small place like the Tibetan Autonomous Region, one has to be ready to ‘welcome’ them and provide them ‘entertainment’.  This is adding to the pressure on the environment.
The time has come to start a debate and more importantly, initiate serious and honest researches on the pros- and the cons- of mass tourism in an environmentally fragile region.
But it is still a touchy subject, because tourism is a great source of revenue for a poor mountainous region.


Double threat for Tibet
Climate change and human development are jeopardizing the plateau’s fragile environment.
Nature
Jane Qui
No. 512, p. 240–241
August 19, 2014
Hot, dry weather and progressive urbanization are turning grasslands into sand near the headwaters of the Yellow, Yangtze and Mekong rivers.
A comprehensive environmental assessment of the Plateau of Tibet has found that the region is getting hotter, wetter and more polluted, threatening its fragile ecosystems and those who rely on them.
The plateau and its surrounding mountains cover 5 million square kilo­metres and hold the largest stock of ice outside the Arctic and Antarctic; the region is thus often referred to as the Third Pole. And like the actual poles, it is increasingly feeling the effects of climate change, but rapid development is putting it doubly at risk, the report says.
Released in Lhasa on 9 August by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the government of Tibet, the assessment aimed to address gaps in knowledge about the extent of the problems the 4,500-metre-high plateau faces. It finds that precipitation has risen by 12% since 1960, and temperatures have soared by 0.4 °C per decade — twice the global average.
In addition, glaciers are shrinking rapidly and one-tenth of the permafrost has thawed in the past decade alone. This means that the number of lakes has grown by 14% since 1970, and more than 80% of them have expanded since, devastating surrounding pastures and communities.
The plateau feeds Asia’s biggest rivers (see ‘Running wild’), so these problems are likely to affect billions of people, the report says. Pollution from human and industrial waste as a result of rapid development is also a serious risk.
But the assessment also suggests ways to combat the problems, calling on the Chinese and Tibetan governments to make conservation and environmental protection top priorities. It will help in the design of “policies for mitigating climate change and striking a balance between development and conservation”, says Meng Deli, Tibet’s vice-chairman.
Expand
“The Tibetan plateau is getting warmer and wetter,” says Yao Tandong, director of the CAS Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research in Beijing, who led the assessment. This means that vegetation is expanding to higher elevations and farther north, and growing seasons are getting longer. But some areas, such as the headwater region of Asia’s biggest rivers, have become warmer and drier and are being severely affected by desertification and grassland and wetland degradation.
Human activity, too, is on the rise. The population of the plateau reached 8.8 million in 2012, about three times higher than in 1951. And the number of livestock has more than doubled, putting more strain on grasslands.
Multiple menaces
Growing urbanization is creating more waste than the region can handle. Tibet has the capacity to treat 256,000 tonnes of domestic solid waste a year, less than the amount generated by its two largest cities, Lhasa and Shigatse. “You see a lot of rubbish lying around the plateau, including headwater regions,” says Kang Shichang, a glaciologist at the CAS Institute of Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute in Lanzhou. “It’s an environmental menace.”
A bigger threat comes from mining. According to the assessment, Tibetan mines produced 100 million tonnes of wastewater in 2007 and 18.8 million tonnes of solid waste in 2009. Because most of the mines are open pits and have limited environmental oversight, “air, water and soil pollution is particularly serious”, says the report. Officials release few details about actual pollution levels.
Pollution is coming not just from local sources. Dust, black carbon, heavy metals and other toxic compounds are being blown in from Africa, Europe and southern Asia. The dust and carbon residues are darkening glaciers, making them more susceptible to melting, and the toxic chemicals are poisoning crops, livestock and wildlife.
But the threats from mining and pollution are dwarfed by the potential repercussions of changes in ice and vegetation cover, the assessment says. Different surfaces — snow, grassland, desert — reflect and absorb different amounts of solar radiation, affecting how the air above them is heated. This means that changes in coverage are likely to affect the onset and strength of Asian monsoons. It also has important ramifications for the livelihood of downstream river communities because the glaciers, permafrost and ecosystems act as a giant sponge, helping to control the release of water and prevent floods. “The significance of the assessment goes beyond national borders,” says David Molden, head of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu.
Temperatures in the plateau are projected to rise by between 1.7 °C and 4.6 °C by the end of 2100 compared with the 1996–2005 average, based on the best- and worst-case global-emissions scenarios. So as urbanization and climate change tighten their grip, researchers worry that unbridled development will devastate the plateau’s environment. To protect it, the report says, the central government must evaluate local officials on the basis of their environmental, not just economic, achievements. It must also invest more in ecological compensation, for example by paying herders more to cut their livestock numbers. Moreover, it must be much more open about pollution incidents.
“Tibet will be a test case of how seriously China takes ecological protection,” says Yao. “Safeguarding the plateau environment is crucial not only for sustainable development of the region, but also to social stability and international relations.”

Climate Change and the Train in Tibet

According to Xinhua, the railway line on the Tibetan plateau is in danger.
The reason is the over flowing of some lakes located close to the railway line in Qinghai province.
In March 2014, a scientific review had already reported the changes:

Based on topographic maps, Landsat TM/ETM+ images, China Environment and Hazards Monitoring and Prediction Satellite (HJ1A/B) CCD images and meteorological materials observed at Wudaoliang meteorological station, we explore the change causes of Kusai Lake using geographical information techniques and mathematical statistics method. The results show that water overflowing Kusai Lake occurred in September 20-30 in 2011, and the direct reason was the flood from Zhuonai [Zonak] Lake flowing into Kusai Lake.
In addition, Kusai Lake has been growing in recent decades; especially after 2006 it experienced a quick increase that formed the foundation of lake water overflow. The main factor resulting in the flood from Zhuonai Lake was the steady precipitation. Specifically, the heavy precipitation on August 17 and 21 made Zhuonai Lake water outflow on August 22, 2011; then continuous precipitation during August 31 to September 9, 16 and 17 subsequently formed a serious flood from September 14 to 21. Accordingly, there was a sudden drop in area of Zhuonai Lake. As of November 29, the lake decreased to 168.07 km2 (a reduction of by 104.88 km2), accounting for 62% of the area on August 22. The outflow water from Kusai Lake flowed into Haidingnuoer Lake, then into Yanhu Lake. The latter occurred during October 6-20. Due to sudden rapid flow, both Haidingnuoer and Yanhu lakes suffered a quick expansion from October to November, 2011.

This does not sounds good for the future of the railway line which also faces permafrost thawing problems.
In 2009, The Scientific American had warned: "Building a railway across the unstable soil of the Tibetan Plateau was an improbable endeavor from the start, but an army of Chinese government engineers did it anyway. Now, with the frozen soil disturbed by the process of laying down the rail and a warming climate on the plateau, some scientists question whether the $4-billion rail line will survive as is or require major reconstruction."

The website Meltdown in Tibet explains further: "Permafrost across the Tibetan plateau varies from frozen sub-surface soil to layers hundreds of metres underground. The Tibetan plateau comprises the largest sub-Arctic permafrost region on the planet. Frozen for millions of years, the permafrost is now in danger of thawing. It is not known how fast, but it is certain that permafrost thawing has been accelerated where human interference is a factor—such as the building of the railway line to Lhasa. By 'interference' here is meant the drilling of 7.6-metre-long steel tubes into the soil to act as 'cooling sticks', designed to refrigerate vulnerable parts of the soil along the railway tracks. These cooling sticks are filled with ammonia—to draw latent heat out of the soil."
Cooling sticks plus earthquake plus climate change, all this, is quite worrying.
Here is Xinhua's article:

 Rising lake levels threaten to flood major railway line
June 14, 2014
Xinhua
Rising lakes in Qinghai province may affect the safety of the nearby high-elevation Qinghai-Tibet Railway, experts said, as they called for joint efforts between departments to prevent possible damage.
"The railway is now only 8 km from the Salt Lake in the Hoh Xil area of Qinghai, down from 12 km in September 2011," said Liu Baokang, an engineer from the Satellite Remote Sensing Center under the Meteorological Bureau of Qinghai province, on Friday.
The weather in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is becoming wetter and hotter in summer, resulting in steadily increasing rainfall in July and August, according to provincial meteorological records.
The coming flood season will thus push the water level higher, possibly extending the Salt Lake closer to the major rail line, which links Xining, Qinghai province, and Lhasa, the Tibet autonomous region, he said.
In the Hoh Xil area in southwestern Qinghai, four inland lakes, including the Zonag Lake in the west and the Salt Lake in the east, were linked by flooding after a natural dam break of Zonag Lake in September 2011, an event that experts believe was triggered by two nearby earthquakes.
Due to the dam break, about 5 billion cubic meters of water, equal to 485 West Lakes in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, were discharged from Zonag Lake, located in the higher western area, flowing to the two lakes nearby.

The three lakes

Flooding from the three lakes converged on the Salt Lake in the lower eastern area, quickly expanding its surface area from about 46 square km before the dam break in 2011 to around 142 sq km in 2014.
In addition to posing a possible danger to the railway, the expanding lake surface may create problems in telecommunications in the area.
"The Salt Lake contains a higher salt concentration, and the salty water could corrode the communication optical cables nearby," Liu said. The government needs to take action to avoid damage to the telecommunications and railway systems, he added.
Obtaining a more accurate analysis of the direction of the lake's expansion requires a map reference that can give the topographical situation of the lake and surrounding areas to within 20 meters. Such information is available only from the province's mapping bureau, Liu said.
"We urgently need to cooperate with the bureau to share the accurate topographic information in order to release the targeted measures," he said.
Zheng Jie, deputy head of Qinghai province's forestry department, said the government began to keep a closer eye on the increasing surface of the Salt Lake to protect the safety of the railway and other tunnels, China News Service reported.
A professional team conducted a field investigation and handed in a response report to the central government in 2013, the deputy head said.
But Liu said the experts did not agree on whether to rebuild the broken dam, and the authority has not taken any action.

The Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) and Climate Change

Surveying the Yarlung Tsangpo

The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fifth Assessment has come out.
On the 31st March 2014, the report from the Working Group II, titled ‘Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability’ was released in Yokohoma, Japan.
In the Report, Working Group II assesses “the vulnerability of socio-economic and natural systems to climate change, negative and positive consequences of climate change, and options for adapting to it. It also takes into consideration the inter-relationship between vulnerability, adaptation and sustainable development.”
Chris Field, the chairperson of Working Group II affirms: “The report concludes that people, societies, and ecosystems are vulnerable around the world, but with different vulnerability in different places. Climate change often interacts with other stresses to increase risk”.
The report consists of two volumes.
The first volume contains a Summary for Policymakers, Technical Summary, and 20 chapters assessing risks by sector and opportunities for response. It deals with freshwater resources, terrestrial and ocean ecosystems, coasts, food, urban and rural areas, energy and industry, human health and security, and livelihoods and poverty.
A second volume of 10 chapters looks at risks and opportunities by region. These regions include Africa, Europe, Asia, Australasia, North America, Central and South America, Polar Regions, Small Islands, and the Ocean.
The summary for policymakers is not optimistic: “Climate change over the 21st century is projected to reduce renewable surface water and groundwater resources significantly in most dry subtropical regions, intensifying competition for water among sectors. In presently dry regions, drought frequency will likely increase by the end of the 21st century. In contrast, water resources are projected to increase at high latitudes. Climate change is projected to reduce raw water quality and pose risks to drinking water quality even with conventional treatment, due to interacting factors: increased temperature; increased sediment, nutrient, and pollutant loadings from heavy rainfall; increased concentration of pollutants during droughts; and disruption of treatment facilities during floods. Adaptive water management techniques, including scenario planning, learning-based approaches, and flexible and low-regret solutions, can help create resilience to uncertain hydrological changes and impacts due to climate change.”
The Indian NGO, South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People has looked into the references on dams and their relation with climate change in the report.
It analyzed: “It is significant to note that dams, hydropower projects, infrastructure measures like channelization, embankments, etc., are also mentioned in nearly all the chapters of the report. Couple of references indicate dams as a possible adaptation measure, but overwhelming references point to the contrary.”
The NGO cites sections of the Report:

1. Dams and infrastructure projects contribute significantly to ‘non-climate impacts’ which, after interacting with changing climate, exacerbate the overall impact on human societies and ecosystems

• - Sediment trapping by reservoirs, exacerbates impact of sea level rise
• - Hydropower affects local options
• - Climate change and dams together affect a greater eco-region
• - Increased flow fluctuations by dams exacerbate through climate change

2. In case of Flood Protection, dams and embankments may do more harm than good. Ecological measures would fare better.
3. Dams and Hydropower projects affect biodiversity, which is critical in facing climate change challenges.
4. In the tropics, global warming potential of hydropower may exceed that of Thermal Power
5. Dams increase vulnerability of weaker sections to climate change
6. Existing Dams have to be managed sustainably, with ecological considerations
7. Hydropower itself is vulnerable to Climate Change

The NGO concludes: “The specific references given below will play an important role in debunking the simplistic myth that dams and hydropower projects are climate friendly and can be considered as de facto adaptation measures to cope with Climate Change.”
It then lists a number of examples showing that dams have a negative effect.

Regarding Point 3 (biodiversity is critical in facing climate change challenges), some interesting information has recently come from China.
As China and India are preparing to dam the Yarlung Tsangpo/Brahmaputra/Siang river, Xinhua reported about rare species spotted in a recently conducted biodiversity image survey in the area in Tibet.
The Chinese news agency says: “A total of six hundred rare species living in Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon have been photographed by Biodiversity Image Survey To Tibet (TBIS), an agency aimed at recording animals and plants in Tibet.”

 

The Chinese survey asserts that the discovery of new species and subspecies is the greatest achievement of the Image Survey Project: “For example, Metok wingless insect is a species discovered for the first time on the north bank of the Yarlung Tsangpo [Brahmaputra], which is a strong argument to prove the spread route of wingless insects.”
The Image Survey began in 2010; it has now taken place for the third consecutive year. “High-definition photos or clips that contain much more information than sheer specimen photos could offer have been collected”, claims Xinhua.
It is even said that the survey photos can rival any artistic photos in quality, while providing information on the geographical distribution, morphological characteristics and living conditions in the sensitive area of the trans-boundary river.
Though Xinhua affirms that there is still a lot to be observed and recorded in the vicinity of the Grand Canyon of the Yarlung Tsangpo, the new set of photographs captures hundreds of ‘birds, beasts [sic], amphibious reptiles, insects and plants’.
Xinhua concludes that it only represents ‘a drop in the bucket’ of the biodiversity of the region.
Luo Hao, who heads the TBIS explains: “Biodiversity image survey is of huge referential value to the scientific study of endangered species in Tibet".
He says that the photographs show not only the people in a vivid way the natural environment of the Yarlung Tsangpo, but also the species living in the gorges.
Luo’s hope is that the photographic survey can arouse people's love for nature and passion for environmental protection.
What about the deciders in Beijing who are planning huge dams on the river (and those in Delhi who are dreaming a mega schemes on the Siang and other rivers of Arunachal)?
Have they seen the results of the Image Survey?
Will they read the IPCC Report?
This unique spot on the planet may soon be destroyed if Beijing decides to go ahead with a cascade of 6 (or 9) dams on the river.
Ditto for the myriad of run-of-river dams in Arunachal.
The worse would, of course, be the construction of a mega structure (larger than the Three Gorges Dam) which would cut across the Great Bend of the Yarlung Tsangpo to produce electricity the mainland.
Before it is too late, visit the nearby area of Nyngtri (in Chinese, Nyingchi or Linzhi), before the Yarlung Tsangpo enters the gorges.
According to a Chinese site: "It lies in the southeast part of Tibet Autonomous Region. Located near the lower reaches of Yarlung Tsangpo River, it is blessed with a semi-humid climate and fascinating scenery. With a large number of river valleys and alpine gorges, Nyingchi is also called the 'Switzerland of Tibet'. When travelling there, you will be amazed by the lofty snow-capped mountain peaks, well-preserved original forests, cypresses that can grow up to thirty meters, and numerous colorful grasses. Travelers can also take part in various activities, such as mountain hiking, rock climbing and white water rafting, and experience the unique local customs of the Menba [Menpa] and Luoba [Lopa] people."
For how long will it remain so?

This place is located between the cascade of proposed
dams and the gorges of the Yarlung Tangpo

 

 

 

 

 

Asia’s challenge

Srinagar (Garhwal) HEP

My article Asia’s challenge appeared in The Statesman today.

Here is the link...

There is no doubt that the most serious issue that Asia will have to face during the coming decades is the climatic change  and  the health  of the Tibetan glaciers and rivers which feed nearly 2 billion human beings says Claude Arpi

During a visit to Srinagar, Garhwal, in March this year, I was told that a total of 95 hydropower projects were being built or planned on different rivers converging in the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi basin of Uttarakhand.  Why so many dams, I asked? If the Centre does not go for dams and generate power, then Rs 10,000-15,000 crore would have to be annually released by Delhi as Central assistance, I was told. The Centre wants power and the State, hard cash; dams bring a win-win situation, they say. Projects currently underway were supposed to increase the hydropower capacity of the State to 12,235 MW.
Nobody really cared if environmentalists like former IIT professor, Dr GD Agrawal or before him Sunderlal Bahuguna were opposing the wild contagion of concrete infrastructures; they were just labeled as being anti-development by the authorities; ‘development’ being the new God worshiped in the Himalayas.
But the gods are neither crazy nor helpless. They showed it on June 16 and the following days, when torrential rains poured from the sky; the result: several thousands of humans left dead or missing, hundreds of roads cut, villages erased, hydropower plants destroyed, a State totally ruined.
It was predictable and had even been predicted. In 2009, after studying the hydro-electric projects (HEP) in Uttarakhand, a state audit of the Comptroller and Auditor-General admitted that, though most of the projects faced problems associated with land acquisition, forest clearances and enhancement in project capacities “...more grave is the total neglect of environmental concerns, the cumulative impact of which may prove devastating for the natural resources of the State.”
The auditors also remarked: “Negligence of environmental concerns was obvious as the muck generated from excavation and construction activities, was being openly dumped into the rivers contributing to increase in the turbidity of water.”
One visible consequence was seen in Vishnuprayag where the deluge coming down from the upper reaches of Alaknanda completely buried the 400 MWs hydropower plant.
Tragically, the same situation is bound to happen, probably on a larger scale, in Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh.
What depressed me the most is that many swamis or ‘holy men’ were quite happy with the ‘development’ of their Himalayan environment; their ashrams were getting wealthier and they were getting more followers (they probably thought that it was a win-win situation!)
I was in this frame of mind when I came across a refreshing book written by the 17th Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, entitled The Heart Is Noble: Changing the World from the Inside Out. It is obvious that the Karmapa has studied our modern world ‘inside out’. The background of the book is a month-long dialogue between the Lama (called by everyone ‘His Holiness’) and a group of American university students who visited him in May 2011 at the Gyuto Ramoche Monastery in Sidhbari near Dharamsala. It is there that the 29-year old Lama has found a ‘temporary’ refuge, surrounded by the majestic Dhauladhar range as a backdrop.
Though the Karmapa often tells the students (his ‘friends’) that he does not give them a ‘religious’ teaching, the Buddhist themes of ‘temporariness’, ‘interdependence’ or ‘compassion’ pervade the book.
The 12 chapters deal with subjects like ‘Our Shared Ground’; ‘A Meaningful Life: Anything Is Possible’, ‘Healthy Relationships: Orienting Ourselves toward Others’; ‘Gender Identities: It’s All in the Mind’ or ‘Consumerism or Greed: Contentment Is the Best Wealth’. One chapter elaborates on Karmapa’s favorite topic, “Environmental Protection: Cultivating New Feelings for the Earth”.
The young Lama often describes himself as an environmental activist. Born to a nomad family in Kham province of Eastern Tibet, he says that during his youth he experienced a rustic lifestyle which is unfortunately fast disappearing.
The Karmapa asks his visitors to try to realize their intimate dependence with the whole planet. He also sees a close affinity between the concept of ecology and the Buddhist views of interdependence.
His young US friends are warned not to confuse economic success with personal happiness: “Just because we have a market economy, does not mean we need to have a market society.”
In his book, he explains: “In recent years, we have gained a great deal of information about the impact of our actions on the environment. We human beings have tremendous intelligence, but it is clear that there remains a big gap between the brain and the heart. We seem to find it easy to process new information and generate new ideas, yet much harder to produce new feelings. …What we now need to go along with all our powerful new ideas about the environment are powerful new feelings.”
According to him, it is here that our noble heart should intervene. The message of the Karmapa is simple and ‘secular’ -
Page after page, one finds a mature and deep thinker; it is rather rare these days. There is a great lightness in his thought-process, which he is able to share with his young interlocutors.
Karmapa would certain support the Bhutanese ‘Gross National Happiness’ which seems now to have been rejected by the new government in Thimphu. Let us hope that the Land of the Dragon will not take Uttarakhand’s path. It would be such a pity!

The Karmapa likes to say: “If I have the opportunity, I would most like to restore the natural environment in the Himalayas and Tibet, and to especially protect the forests, the water and wildlife of this region.” His language always remains simple. He encourages his interlocutors by telling them that we, humans are far more powerful than we usually believe: “We individuals can become part of the solution, when we recognize this power and start to use it, together.”
For him, the starting point is ‘inter-dependence with others and the planet’; he believes that if each human being can increase his or her own love and compassion towards others, the planet will face much less conflicts.
In conclusion, he outlines what he calls ‘a kind of humanist spirituality’.
Interestingly, he was the first leader to issue a statement after Bodh Gaya’s recent tragic events. Though he was deeply saddened by the senseless violence perpetrated at the Mahabodhi temple, he appealed for compassion and understanding: “I am convinced that, as Buddhists, in responding to this situation, the best homage we can pay to Lord Buddha is to uphold his teachings on love and ahimsa (non-violence).”
There is no doubt that the most serious issue that Asia will  have  to  face  during  the  coming  decades  is  the  climatic change and the health of the Tibetan glaciers and rivers  which  feed  nearly  2  billion  human  beings.  Asia definitely needs more young, dedicated, intelligent, modern and  open-minded  leaders  like  Karmapa,  if it  wants  to avoid a doomed future.

inside each of us there is a noble heart. He tells the youth: “This heart is the source of our finest aspirations for ourselves and for the world. It fills us with the courage to act on our aspirations. Our nobility may be obscured at times, covered over with small thoughts or blocked by confused and confusing emotions. But a noble heart lies intact within each of us nonetheless, ready to open and be offered to the world.  …When we clear away all that blocks it, this heart can change the world.”

Indian Space Mission: The French Connection

My article on the Indo-French collaboration in space, published on the occasion of the State visit of President François Hollande in India is posted on Rediff.com.
During François Hollande's visit, one of the 4 agreemnents signed between India and France was a "Statement of Intent for long-term cooperation in Space".
It was inked by Yannick d’Escatha, President, Centre National d'Études Spatiales and Dr. K. Radhakrishnan, Chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation.
It says: "ISRO and CNES have jointly identified the following means to pursue further cooperation including possibilities through Missions, Payloads and Applications; exchange of young Scientists and Professionals in France and in India; conducting thematic workshops etc..."

My Rediff Article:
Indo-French cooperation in the domain of space, which began in the 1960s, is one of the oldest and most stable facets of the relationship, even if not the best-known, says Claude Arpi, as French President Francois Hollande begins his first official visit to India..
As French President Francois Hollande arrives in India on Thursday, February 14, many will remember his predecessor's first visit in January 2008.
Even serious newspapers, without the famous page 3, speculated: Would President Nicolas Sarkozy's first companion be on the presidential plane? Would she join 'Sarko' for a memorable and romantic darshan of the Taj Mahal.
After the visit, I remember writing: 'In this sense, the presidential visit was a great success; whether or not orchestrated, Sarkozy's trip got hundred-fold more publicity than Francois Mitterrand's in 1982 and 1989 or Jacques Chirac's in 1998 and 2006.' Thank you, Carla!
One could have thought that returning to India, the French president would rush to Agra with Ms Bruni, now Madame Sarkozy.
No, he first landed in Bangalore and visited the Indian Space Research Organisation's Satellite Centre. This stop-over at ISRO, before the Taj visit, always intrigued me.
I later realised that Indo-French cooperation in the domain of space is one of the oldest and most stable facets of the relationship, even if not the best-known.
In May 1964, France's Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales and India's Department of Atomic Energy 'embarked upon a programme of continuing cooperation in space research of mutual interest for peaceful scientific purposes.'
The DAE agreed to manufacture, under license in India, the Belier and Centaure types of sounding rockets developed by the French firm Sub-Aviation. CNES eventually supplied to DAE four Centaure rockets with payloads used for vapour cloud experiments. The programme started at the end of 1964.
The main protagonists were the legendary Professor Jacques Blamont of the Aeronautic Laboratory of the Centre National de la Research Scientifique and Dr P D Bhavsar of the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad.
The CNES and DAE wanted not only to encourage exchanges of scientists and engineers between the two countries, but also to share scientific and technical information for some joint (cooperative) experiments.
It was none other than Homi Jehangir Bhabha, the celebrated Indian nuclear physicist and founding-director of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, who signed the first agreement for India; the Department of Space had not yet been created.

Read on ...

Grid and Greed

As mentioned in this article from the National Geographic Correspondent on Water issues, India "suffers from inertia on one hand and from destructive greed on the other. It doesn’t suffer from a shortage of dams"
But there are other related issues which complicate the situation.
Of course, great is the temptation to built new dams, under the pretext to 'produce more', in reality to mint more money like in the Arunachal Pradesh case.
An article in Nature China warns us: "Climate change: Melting ice before your eyes".
Glaciologist Tandong Yao at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and his colleagues say: "Glaciers in the Himalayas have shrunk over the past 30 years", adding: 

The Tibetan Plateau holds one of the largest numbers of glaciers in the world. These glaciers are at the headwaters of many prominent Asian rivers and play important roles in local ecosystems. Recently, however, controversy has raged as to whether glaciers in the Tibetan Plateau are experiencing shrinkage due to global climate change.

Tandong Yao studied differences in status of 7,090 glaciers between the 1970s and 2000s using topographic maps, satellite images and on-site observations. They found that the Himalayas (excluding the Karakorum) experienced the most intensive shrinkage, and that the extent of shrinkage decreases from the Himalayas to the continental interior. 
Interestingly they warned: "if glacier shrinkage continues in the Himalayas, downstream regions could experience unsustainable alterations to water supplies and growing incidences of geohazards."
Even more worrying is the desertification of the Tibetan plateau.
According to Xinhua, as a result of global warming the Qinghai-Tibet Railway is being threatened by desertification on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau .

Photo: Nature China

Wang Jinchang, a senior engineer with the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Company told the Chinese news agency that about 443 kilometers of the 1,956-km railway are in areas affected by desertification, including 103 km that lie in seriously desertified areas.
Wang affirmed that the threat of soil erosion has grown very fast in recent years, mostly near rivers and wetlands from Golmud and Lhasa, and the amount of affected rail tracks almost doubled from 2003 to 2009.
Another expert in soil erosion control, An Fengjie, from China's State Forestry Administrations stated that the plateau region suffered from desertification long before the railway was built: "The railway did not cause the problem, but it gives us an opportunity to witness the severity and scale of soil erosion on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau." 
The Chinese will not admit that the railway line made the situation worse. It appears that sands buried rail racks and disrupted train services over 1,362 times from 1984 to 2002 on the Xining-Golmud section of the railway.
Xinhua says that one of the most prevalent theories blames global warming for the ecological deterioration in the plateau region.
According to Sun Zhizhong, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the temperatures on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau rose over two degrees Celsius on average over the past three years, leaving large chunks of frozen earth to defrost.
One of the consequences is that the Kokonor (or Qinghai Lake), China's largest saltwater lake keeps expanding.
For a long time, this phenomenon remained unexplained.
Xinhua reported yesterday: "The surface area of China's largest inland saltwater lake has been expanding for eight years, according to the latest remote sensing survey."
Zhou Bingrong, deputy chief of the provincial institute of meteorological sciences found out that:

The Qinghai Lake in northwest China's Qinghai province measured 4,354.28 square km, according to satellite data collected on July 19 and published on Sunday, s. The figure was 14.58 square km larger than the same time last year, and the largest in 12 years.

Zhou's institute has been carrying out dynamic surveillance of the lake's surface area since 2001, when the lake was shrinking due to climate change and human activity. 
Zhou takes the credit for the increase of the lake: "We have noticed an apparent increase of water since 2005, thanks to more rainfall and sustained environmental protection efforts," but the increase in the waters filling up the lake is more likely to be due to climate change and melting of permafrost".
The Qinghai Lake had been shrinking since the 1950s, but now is increasing.

India is bound to have new black-outs, if new measures as the ones suggested by Himanshu Thakkar in the article below are not urgently taken.
But is there the will to bring out meaningful changes.
The problem is that these measures may not fill the politicians pockets, while building new dams will do. 
It may be difficult for the grid to prevail over the greed.
There is another angle to the blackout: computer hackers.
In August 2003, a blackout occurred in North America, leaving 50 million people in the dark for four days.
Bloomberg wrote: "[it] provides a glimpse of the havoc a cyber attack could inflict on the nation’s power grid." 
Adding: "Internet-based terrorists would be capable of causing blackouts “on the order of nine to 18 months” by disabling critical systems such as transformers, said Joe Weiss, managing director of Applied Control Solutions LLC, a Cupertino, California-based security consulting company."
Apparently the 2003 event was triggered when a power line touched tree branches in Ohio; it ultimately caused losses of as much as $10 billion, according to a study by the U.S. and Canadian governments.
According to Bloomberg that: "Energy companies including utilities would have to increase their investment in computer security more than seven-fold to reach an ideal level of protection."
A Bloomberg survey of network managers at 21 energy companies found that companies spend an average of $45.8 million a year on computer security and are able to prevent 69 percent of known cyber strikes against their systems.
It is quite ominous!
Though in the case of India, external hackers are not required. Undisciplined Electricity Boards will continue to do the job.


India’s Massive Blackout, and the Environmental Danger to Come
Dan Morrison
National Geographic News Correspondent in Water Currents 
July 31, 2012
An estimated 600 million Indians – more people than live in western Europe — were without electricity today, victims of a massive blackout that darkened most of the northern and eastern portions of the country.
The Great Indian Outage, stretching from New Delhi to Kolkata, comes just a day after 300 million people in northern India lost power for much of Monday.
It is a disaster that’s caused untold damage to India’s economy, its prestige, and its well-being – think of the millions of patients in hospitals, the commuters stuck on trains, and farmers in need of irrigation. Hundreds of miners in the states of West Bengal and Jharkand were trapped underground by the blackout. Some 300 trains were reportedly stalled across the country.
There’s more damage to come, I fear: Forces that have been bridling against environmental regulations and science-based activism will use the Great Outage as a cudgel to demolish future restraints on dam construction, coal mining, and other projects.
India’s humiliating power failure is sure to birth a slogan as reductive and wrong as America’s own “Drill Baby Drill.”
The irony is that this outage was likely caused in part by mismanagement at the Bhakra series of hydroelectric dams in Punjab and Himachal Pradesh states in northern India, according to Himanshu Thakkar of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People.
“Had these dams been operated more rationally, keeping in mind the emerging realities and forecasts, the situation in Northwest India would have been different,” Thakkar told me. “Higher [water] levels in these dams would have meant more power generation for each unit of water release and at the same time more water for agriculture, thus less water [for irrigation] pumped from aquifers, and thus less demand of power.”
Earlier this month, Thakkar’s organization published a short paper criticizing dam administrators for allowing water levels to become alarmingly low.
Thakkar says the answer to India’s current power crisis isn’t more hydroelectric dams, as most currently existing dams aren’t built or operated for maximum efficiency. Instead, power can be saved by harvesting rainwater.
“Since most of our water is coming from groundwater, we need to store the rainfall in aquifers that are fast depleting,” he says. “This would have multiple spin-off benefits.” With healthier aquifers, farmers wouldn’t have to run electric-powered pumps as much to adequately irrigate their crops – a major drag on the power grid.
“More dams won’t help achieve that,” Thakkar says, adding that farmers should shift to less water-intensive crops. “It is amazing that, among all the crops, [acreage devoted to] sugarcane has gone up in this drought year!”
At the Center for Science and the Environment, Chandra Bushan provides some of the hard numbers behind today’s blackout, as well as a simple cause: Indian states are taking more power from the grid than they are supposed to, even as the power system lacks the flexibility to meet seasonal spikes in demand.
In this case, a weak and tardy annual monsoon has millions of households and businesses running their air conditioners for longer than they would under normal conditions. This from the CSE:
Electricity generation for the month of June illustrates this problem:
In June 2012, India produced 8 per cent more electricity than in June 2011.
The generation from thermal power plants was 11.4 per cent higher than in June 2011. Coal-based power plants generated 16.7 per cent more electricity.
However, with low monsoon, the generation of electricity from hydropower plants reduced by 6 per cent compared to June 2011. In fact, hydropower plants produced 19 per cent lesser electricity in April-June, 2012 than the corresponding months in 2011. As hydro plants are also peak load plants, this reduction seems to have affected the peak power generation in the country significantly.
None of this logic – nor the many recent plans and ideas for improving the management and efficiency of India’s power grid – will make a difference to the contractors and bureaucrats in the “Build Baby Build” crowd that has much to gain from poorly-planned dam construction.
The debate over dams has become so silly that earlier this month a minister from the government of Uttarakhand state went on a one-day hunger strike to support more construction on the Himalayan tributaries of the Ganges River. Mantri Prasad Naithani’s constituency is in the region of Tehri Gahrwal, which was submerged a decade ago by the giant Tehri dam. Residents of the doomed town of Tehri were relocated to a “model town” higher up the valley to make room for the $1 billion, 1,000 megawatt hydroelectric dam’s reservoir.
When I visited New Tehri last year, power outages were commonplace.
But it’s brute force, not the rhetorical kind, that truly keeps this movement alive.
On June 22, the Indian environmentalist Bharat Jhunjhunwala was attacked in his home in Uttarakhand state by a gang of 40 thugs purportedly working for a contracting company. At the time of the attack, Jhunjhunwala, 62, had been hosting G.D. Agrawal, an eminent scientist turned swami who is also known as Gyan Swarup Anand. Agrawal was in the region to protest the coming submergence of the Dhari Devi Temple on the Alaknanda river by a hydroelectric project.
In full view of local police and journalists, the crowd kicked in Jhunjhunwalla’s door and blackened his face with ink. He and his wife were forced to flee the area.
“They threatened him that they will burn him alive in the house if he did not stop opposing the dams within two days,” according to an account by Jhunjhunwala’s family.
India’s power grid suffers from inertia on one hand and from destructive greed on the other. It doesn’t suffer from a shortage of dams.

Climate beyond control

My article Climate beyond control, Russia Is Burning; Cloudburst In Leh appeared yesterday in The Statesman. Click here to read.

Dollars, Renminbis and Climate Change

I came across many such articles recently. I was wondering if the Chinese have been able to 'convince' some Indian intellectuals that whatever Beijing does on the Yarlung Tsangpo is China's internal business and that India should have no say in it. 
Of course, when journalists, scholars or politicians visit the Middle Kingdom, Chinese 'hospitality'  is  very well known. It always helps to 'understand' the Chinese point of view. 
It is a bit frightening to think that lacks of foreigners will be visiting the World Exhibition in Shanghai during the coming months. Hopefully they will not all experience Chinese 'hospitality'.
PS: By the way, don't accept an iPhone or a Blackberry while in China, a MI5 document recently affirmed that most of these instruments have embedded  spywares.


Dollars, Sense and Climate Change
9 Apr 2010
ISN Security Watch
By Claudio Guler
Reflecting the cycles of change, brought on by pollution and climate
The myriad facets of climate change denial are thrown into relief, as dollars and sense ally, Claudio Guler writes for ISN Security Watch.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“With all the hysteria, all the fear, all the phony science, could it be that manmade global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? I believe it is.” – US Senator James M Inhofe (Republican – Oklahoma), 28 July 2003.
Such is the rallying cry of the climate change denial movement. Since Senator Inhofe made this statement seven years ago, the drive to discredit climate change and the science that underpins it has enjoyed considerable success, even as awareness about climate change and the threat it poses to humanity has gone mainstream.
The US, widely seen as an indispensable participant in the fight against climate change, remains among the most skeptical internationally. A Gallup poll published last month found that concerns over climate change among Americans declined during the past two years.
The recent 'Climategate' scandal, the product of hacked e-mail correspondence from climate scientists at the University of East Anglia in the UK suggesting collusion to manipulate data, and a row over the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) use of non peer-reviewed sources to claim that the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035 have cast further doubt.
The deluge of criticism culminated in the US with the publishing of In Denial by Steven F Hayward in the conservative Weekly Standard, a piece accompanied by an illustration of Al Gore standing somewhere near the North Pole, nude, shivering and clutching his groin to shield it from the biting cold while being ridiculed by polar bears.
What then keeps the climate change denial movement, a campaign shunned by all but a handful of scientists, alive and kicking? Examination suggests a confluence of factors.

Economics
Money talks. At the individual level, curbing emissions will result in higher energy costs, generating resistance at the polls. The businesses that provide energy to consumers equally do not want to see their profit margins squeezed and regard the status quo – and their position in it – as advantageous.
A lackluster economy, moreover, has likely shifted some of the political urgency elsewhere.
Corporate sector pushback comes in the form of congressional lobbying and public relations campaigns. James Hoggan from DesmogBlog, a website launched in 2006 to track and expose the interests and personalities behind climate change denial, explained to ISN Security Watch, “The oil, gas and coal industries are clearly the leaders in the climate denial campaign, although the big fossil fuel players have also made common cause with other energy intensive industries and even with industries like tobacco, which are also motivated to promote mistrust of science and government.
“Major energy industries like Exxon Mobil [Greenpeace critique] and Koch Industries [Greenpeace critique] (the largest privately owned fossil fuel company in America) have been revealed as big spenders in the campaign to deny climate science. And industry associations like the American Chambers of Commerce are also heavily implicated. But increasingly, industries have started hiding behind ‘non-profit’ think tanks, which can campaign aggressively – and expensively – while concealing the source of their funding.”
Koch Industries is co-owned by the $14 billion (each) brothers Charles and David Koch. David Koch quipped to Portofolio.com in October 2008, “My joke is that we’re the biggest company you’ve never heard of.”

The public space
The role of think tanks, as Hoggan maintains, is to provide a veneer of academic legitimacy to the campaign as well as to ensure maximum influence in the media to perpetuate doubt about the science of climate change. Poison the public discourse, establish a skeptical normative environment, kill legislation.
Some of the think tanks and lobbying groups in the vanguard include: the American Petroleum Institute (API), the Western Fuels Association (WFA), the CATO Institute, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the George C Marshall Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the now-defunct Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP) in Canada and The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC) headed by famed lobbyist and FOX News contributor Steve Milloy.

The individual
The lack of a congenial atmosphere for discussion, moreover, helps taint already strained individual attitudes, argues Kari Norgaard, assistant professor of sociology and environmental studies at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, US.
In a background paper to the 2010 World Bank Development Report entitled Cognitive and Behavioral Challenges in Responding to Climate Change, researched in Norway, Norgaard concludes that the presence of negative emotions in conjunction with global warming (fear, guilt and helplessness), and the process of emotion management and cultural norms leads to the construction of a social reality in which climate change is held at arms length.
In other words, the complexity of climate change and the menace it implies overwhelms individuals and creates a cognitive dissonance. Rather than trying to internalize the concerns and marshal them for action, people cast them aside altogether.
Hoggan further complements Norgaard’s findings with the notion of burgeoning mistrust at the individual level: “Public opinion polls are increasingly revealing unprecedented levels of mistrust in the public mind. People don’t trust government. They don’t trust industry. Some polls show that they don’t even trust one another. And the denial industry has taken full advantage of this mistrust, even promoting it by questioning the motives, integrity and competence of some of the world’s greatest scientific bodies.”
Asked about the divergence in US and European responses to climate change by ISN Security Watch, Norgaard reckoned, “In Europe, where a limited emissions control regime with the EU Emissions Trading System is in place, concern for the environment is more institutionalized than in the states, generating more momentum. But again, even there, comprehensive steps are wanting.”
The climate change denial movement has tentacles the world over, but it is most influential and caustic in the US. Without America’s leadership, other countries, including China and India, have little incentive to act. Obama’s presidential directives, although welcome, only go so far.
For a bipartisan solution, legislators in Washington should look to the CLEAR Act currently being discussed in the US Senate.
Otherwise, it will be up to geoengineering to resolve the matter. That is an exceedingly risky fix.