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IPCC Faux Pas:INDIA INITIATES AUTHENTIC DRIVE, by Dhurjati Mukherjee,8 February 2010 Print E-mail

Events & Issues

8 February 2010, New Delhi

IPCC Faux Pas

INDIA INITIATES AUTHENTIC DRIVE

By Dhurjati Mukherjee

The Union government’s recent decision to form a new climate research body out of the fledgling Indian Network for Comprehensive Climate Change (INCCCA) is both timely and necessary. The new body is expected to comprise 250-odd scientists from different disciplines and would leverage resources to produce a series of annual assessments for different sectors, the first by November 2010. The discussions, which would be initiated with top research institutions on March 12 at IIT, Mumbai, would hopefully help formulate strategies to undertake research in various fields related to environment and pollution control.

However, this comes in the wake of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fourth assessment report which had reported that the Himalayan glaciers might disappear by 2035. Though the IPCC admitted that the report on the glaciers was based on “poorly substantial estimates of the rate of recession and date of disappearance of Himalayan glaciers” and that “well-established standards of evidence were not applied”, the whole controversy has revealed the scientific merit of the various findings of the group. As is well known, the row centers around the IPCC, which found that “the glaciers are receding faster than in any part of the world and, if the present trend continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps the warming at the current rate”.

The claim was attributed to a report by WWF but, in a recent article by Fred Pearce in the New Scientist, he said that the WWF cited a 1999 interview in the magazine with Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain as the source of the claim. This was also disputed by glaciologists from India who argued that the studies on ice sheets or glaciers in the Artic, Antarctica, Greenland or Europe cannot be extrapolated to Himalayan glaciers.

The most important rebuttal came from a review paper prepared by V. K. Raina, former Dy. DG, Geological Survey of India, who based on archival data of the GSI found that the Himalayan glaciers are melting but there is nothing dramatic about it and cannot be compared with the polar regions in other parts of the world. As is well known, these glaciers are located at high altitudes – the lowest level of these glaciers is about 700m while the glaciers in Alaska and the polar regions’ drop down to near sea level.  

There were other discrepancies in the report – the area of the Himalayan glaciers was said to be 500,000 sq km but in reality it is 33,000 sq km while the number of such glaciers was shown at 15,000 when actually the figure stands anything around 9000 to 12,000. It also predicted that the Ganga, Indus and the Brahmaputra will soon be seasonal rivers without considering the glacial sources of the Indus and the Brahmaputra in China.

Some geologists point out that data from some glaciers suggests that the rate of retreat has actually declined. The Pindari glacier retreated at about 6 metres every year between 1966 and 2007 compared to about 20 metres between 1906 and 1958, according to a paper presented at Bali (by Prof. Rameshwar Bali, University of Lucknow). That there is exaggeration about the extent of melting, at least in India is admitted by most experts of the country. 

Importantly, studying the glaciers is indeed a difficult task as the glaciers lie in some of the sensitive security regions of the world. Unlike the Alps, the Himalayas have a patchy photographic record and the history of scientific glaciology is short. Climate modeling is unreliable across big variations in altitude and even the collection of basic data is unreliable. The result has been that virtually nothing is known about precipitation at high altitudes, where the glaciers are located.   

But this anomaly does not alter the overall picture of retreat that affects around 70-80 per cent of the region’s glaciers. The people of the region know that climate change has long-term implications for their food and water security as also disaster risks. In the short-term, it threatens the energy supplies of all the nations that rely on hydropower to fuel their economies. 

As far as India and Pakistan are concerned, their rivers may become seasonal and their monsoon erratic. Already there are reports of the Ganga, Yamuna and the Indus drying up because of reduced water flow as also accumulation of sewage. 

While it is now an admitted fact that the IPCC predictions on glacier melting was erroneous as it lacked evidence and research, it is reported that an Ahmedabad-based retired IAS officer and now member of the Royal Society of Chemistry had questioned long back the sea-level rise which was predicted “to rise 28-43 cm. due to disappearance of the Artic Sea”. All these have opened a hornet’s nest regarding the authenticity and the scientific justifications of the predictions made in the reports of the IPCC.   

There are allegations that these are concerted efforts to force India on climate issues. It needs to be mentioned here that the UN released a preliminary report suggesting India’s poor compliance was adding to climate change by using firewood and cow dung for heating. However, it later retracted and admitted that the results were partial and preliminary in nature and clear evidence linking the haze to changes in Indian monsoon and other consequences had not been established.

Again some time back, the US Environment Protection Agency tried to pass the blame on climate change to poor countries like India. It claimed that wet paddy fields were emitting high levels of methane, an extremely high potential climate change gas but with very short life in the atmosphere. It suggested India had to check these emissions and not blame the ‘luxury emissions’ of the rich countries. But later following a research done independently in the country it was found that emissions from wet paddy fields and animal husbandry were less than one-tenth of what the US Environmental Protection Agency had claimed and that their impact was highly insignificant.

In such a situation, the body envisaged by the government consisting of scientists and environmentalists could carry out or at least verify the authenticity of various studies being done on environmental issues. Moreover, this body could also counter sometimes false allegations of the West, specially the US, regarding India’s contribution to global warming, which definitely is quite insignificant.

It is well-known that tropical countries and specially Bangladesh, India and China are among the top ten which have been the most affected due to extreme weather conditions, claiming large number of lives, as per the Global Climate Risk released last month by a non-government agency. Obviously, the extent of loss of life adds a dimension larger than compulsion of development to nascent domestic efforts to launch clean initiatives. But simultaneously united action already initiated against the US and other western nations has to be carried forward to pressurize these nations to adhere to the conditionalities of the Kyoto Protocol and Bali Declaration in framing a new legal treaty. ---INFA

(Copyright, India News & Feature Alliance)

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